I log on, apparently during an alert and I see this on my NC char. And then I switch to my VS char that I admittedly rarely play and see something even worse Combined with the real lack of new content, this is really killing the game for me. Hopeless wars. What could we do to fix this? I like the idea of continent locking but I've always wanted that so i'm a little bias. Suggestions, forumside?
It would make the problem waaay worse. Let's say VS has 50% server population. There are 1000 VS on each continent, and 500 NC and TR on each. VS captures and locks Indar. Suddenly there is 1000 more VS on the other 2 continents, and the other 2 continents are stomped even harder than Indar. The population cap is only reached during primetime, and even then it's still very rare, so it's not like the VS have to quit after stomping everything.
It's not going to get rid of it, but it will "split up" the overpop forces more. Instead of right now, where a force can push out in all directions from their warpgate in sort of a fan, and be easier to keep both sides at bay, they will be forced to fight on two completly seperated fronts. It won't help a LOT, but it should help in those time when they are hovering in the low 40% region.
But, there won't be TR and NC fighting during that time. So it would be a combined force of the 2 littles against the one big.
Oh and Btw your math doesn't work. If there was 1000vs there would be 500 on each continent and if NC and TR had 25% there would the entire faction on each continent. Instead of there being 150 nc on indar, then 200 on esamir, fighting 800 vs and 200 TR
There've been a few decent suggestions on how to fix this problem. There've also been some good suggestions on how to stop people from relogging to the winning faction in those cases. Simply implement a timer that locks you out of other factions on a server for a specified time period. For example, say I'm playing my TR on Mattherson. An alert starts just as I log in and I fight the good fight for ten minutes then relog to my VS on the same server. That would be fine. However, say I play my TR for twenty minutes then try to relog to my VS character when the alert starts going south for TR. Having spent more than twenty minutes on a TR character on Mattherson, I get locked out of any other faction characters on Mattherson. I could play my VS on Connery but not Mattherson. The lockout timer would have to be like...two hours at least from the time that you log out of a server. Or something. That's just one way, there's definitely others and some of them could be layered on top of each other to make a really robust system that encourages patriotism and/or playing the underdog.
That is why we need more continents before we get cont locking into play. It still won't help with any one faction having 50% of the population but no one solution or mechanic will. What helps when it gets to that level is a reason to gang up on the overpopped faction. When TR on Miller was overpopped (and it went on for quite some time) the VS and NC rarely fought each other. That more than anything, helped negate the sheer numbers. Still though, that in and of itself isn't going to help. What is really needed is some method of negating those excess players. Planetside did this with extra XP, health and shields for every player. This won't work in PS2. My suggestion would be to allow for outposts and facilities that are held by the overpopped faction to cap even faster (scaling linearly with the population) such that if the overpopped faction doesn't properly coordinate and efficiently spread their forces they're going to lose. Typically any faction that has such a population imbalance to where it has that many players is unable to effectively coordinate on that scale (and god help you if they can) not to mention that after a while the overpopped faction will get lackadaisical in their tactical and strategic gameplay. Not the perfect solution but the best I can come up with.
The only thing that is going to save the overpop problem is an: ARENA!! Free for all deathmatch's. Teams with all factions combined. PS2 saved!!
Continent Locking has one logical outcome...massive, massive zergs. Anyone who thinks different is deluded.
