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question: how will they balance faction populations?
Jakdstripper
Member RarePosts: 2,410
so as far as i understand there are 3 "factions" you can choose from and they all duke it out for control over this large persistent world.
my question is how will they prevent people from joining the more predominantly winning faction just so they can win more often, and besically making that one faction into a disproportionally huge zerg twice or even three times the size of the other 2 factions?
will factions have a maximum ammount of players allowed per map? will people from the same faction be denied entrance in zones where there is already a large portion of that same faction fighting? will there be buffs for those factions that have less players?
how exactly are they going to try balance out numbers?
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSide_2
SOE has been taking into account balance issues from the first game. Matthew Higby, the creative director, has stated "We're definitely going to be rewarding combatants on lower population empires through mechanics such as proportionally increased advancement rates and resources and we'll be attempting to balance the overall empire saturation on each server as much as we can without force-restricting folks from being able to play with their friends.
okey but if they proportionally increase advacement for those always loosing because they have less people what will be the point of trying to win?
if i get rewarded more for losing then winning, i'm not really gonna try am i? i'm gonna show up and go afk and hope we lose.....
Three faction usually balances itself. There is always a dominant faction and often the other two will gang up on them at times.
While there will always be players who want to run with the dominant zerg, there are equally as many players who take pride in beating the crap outa the zergling nubs and playing at a numerical disadvantage in a target rich environment than picking up scraps trying to get in hits on alreay dead enemies.
The trick is only let players play one faction per server. Once they let players play 2 or 3, it's all going to hell.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
The proportion added to the smaller faction will likely be smaller than actually dominating all the time.
But yeah, it's probably going to be something that is going to be hard to effectively deal with.
that is true. i can see the gang up factor playing into it.
Easy solution is once a faction has maybe 2-3% higher pop than another faction lock out that faction till the other 2 balance out, then reopen it, can be done automatically most likely. Make it be by number of accounts in that faction and not number of chars so people can't flood one side with chars to lock it out. Of course this is the smart automatic solution but SoE is not known for having anything resembling a brain when it comes to their online games.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Faction balance wasn't ever a problem in Planetside 1, at least on my server when I played. You rarely saw one faction go over 40% of the server's population and certainly never over 50%. IIRC, TR and NC were usually about even, with Vanu slightly lower, but still pretty close.
This is a really bad idea for several reasons. The first of which is the fact that you are locked to one faction per server in this game. Doing this would effectively lock people out of the game and prevent them from playing with their outfit.
They should never prevent people from playing simply because the factions are imbalanced. That is absolutely terrible. SOE has enough smarts to know that you don't prevent people from playing because of faction balance. If the factions didn't [balance out a person could be prevented from logging in for days. I can't believe you would insult the company for not using such a terrible system.
This system also defeates the nature of planetside. This game isn't about fair matches like you would find in other shooters. If that is what you are looking for then you will find it in any other match based shooter out there. Planetside at it's very core embraces the idea of population imbalance. It's war, and war isn't fair. You don't want to fight your enemy in a fair fight, you want to find every advantage you can to beat them. You attack when and where they are weak while you are strong.
I want to play with my outfit. It's the entire reason that Planetside is compelling. I want to log in and play in a structured coordinated environment, not be forced to play on a seperate server or account with another faction and be a part of the zerg. Again, Planetside isn't about making sure there are the same number of people on each team. It is about persistent war.
There are many ways to overcome a faction imbalance by the players themselves. If you are outnumbered that must be considered in your strategy. There is a 2,000 player cap on each continent. There are 3 continents. This means that each server can have 6,000 people playing at a time. These numbers may change at launch but we'll just use them for this example
If VS only has 1200 people on a server, but TR and NC had the other 4800 people split somewhat evenly. Obviously the VS is outnumbered by each faction so they seem to be in trouble right?
What they can do to help themselves is be coordinated. If they can get most or all of their players onto one continent, they have about 1200 out of 2000 possible people on that continent They just need to fight on that continent where they will actually have a numbers advantage over anyone that shows their face.
Lets assume they steamroll that continent and turn it totally purple, and NC and TR are not interested in fighting them there now. Well mathematically there would have to be some TR and NC there due to their large populations locking the other two continents. There would have to be at least 800 people on the VS continent. We'll just ignore that though and assume they aren't posing any threat to the VS there. Assume they left or something, but the VS is still at a lower pop.
The VS are forced to leave this continent now to continue fighting. They can't go head to head with one of the other factions in a fair fight because there is no fair fight to be had. What do they do? Where do they attack?
It's simple really, they attack where their enemy is the weakest. So if the VS have their pick of the other two continents they can look at who is fighting where on the maps.
Lets say NC has control of a large portion of Indar, and the TR are attacking from the south of the continent. The TR are defending their front at the bottom of the map and the TR are capturing territory on the south and working its way up north.
To take advantage of the situation, the VS can attack the NC from the far north of the map. This does a couple of things. First it eliminates the numbers advantage the NC has. They now have to split their forces on that continent to defend against the VS and the NC at the same time.
It also prevents the VS from getting caught up in a battle with the NC at the same time as the TR, at least for now. The TR won't be anywhere near them while the NC will have to travel to the VS assault and defend. This weakens the NC on both fronts and gives the VS an advantage over them. Of course, eventually the VS and the TR are going to run off the NC and start fighting.
This was a long explanation, but the fact of the matter is that the game is never going to be perfectly balanced population wise. There were imbalances in the original but players learned how to overcome them. Just because you have less people doesn't mean you can't win a fight.
If SOE were to use some heavy handed method like the one you propose, I would be furious. It would ruin the game. If you want perfectly matched up sides in a sterile controlled environment, go play any other FPS out there. This is Planetside and it is all about war.
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It was generally always pretty even during Prime time in Planetsides golden days.. It was only during the early morning hours when one side (usually the VS ) would have a majority..
But it wasnt really a problem like you would think, only thing was the side that would have the advantage in numbers would be attacking while the smaller side would be defending.. Then the Third faction would more then likely attack the side that had the higher numbers forcing them to defend...
Now don't get me wrong... There were times when the lowest side would get run off the map, and we called that "Sanctuary Locking".. Usually that side would go back to their Sanctuary and cry and complain, have a few ant races and then mount up a invasion force to take a base lol.. So that side would not be out of it for long, as a matter of fact they usually came back pissed off alot more focused and ready to cause some pain.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
if i get rewarded more for losing then winning, i'm not really gonna try am i? i'm gonna show up and go afk and hope we lose.....
I doubt you would intentionally lose, but even if you did you'd be +1 to your population and if trying to scam the system for faster advancement was a tactic then it would be self defeating.
Not only that, but you get few points just sitting around because you get points by doing things like killing and conquering. Your faction might get a bonus, but you personally wouldn't reap the benefits unless you tried to do your best. If you did your best and people were joining because of the low population and they all did their best then the population would naturally even out.
It's a good system for people that are point whores, no offense intended. I also think the population will even itself because of people like me who would much rather be on the low population side because I like the greater challenge and I like that with a low population you always have more people to fight, and that's what it's all about for me.
Asdar
This doesn't make sense. How is giving extra XP or resources rewarding losing? It's actually adding extra rewards to success.
You get XP while offline, sure, but you get more from doing stuff. What's the purpose of logging in and going AFK or intentionally losing? You don't get the bonus for losing you get it from winning.
In the first Planetside you got bonus xp on the lower pop empire. That means you have to actually do something to get the reward. They don't just give you free xp for not doing anything. You get 3% extra XP or whatever. 3% of nothing is still nothing. However if you are helping your empire by getting kills and capturing bases, then you are rewarded more. The more stuff you do the more reward you receive.
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The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
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