For the moment I'm not sure on how to solve this as I'm not sure if how the game itself is being done will make it an issue and if it does I'd need to know more to think up a fix, I just thought I'd highlight this as a possible issue.

Basically in planetside 2 there is an issue I encountered a LOT where 2 sides would be fighting over a area and instead of trying to take it both sides would agree to just farm each other there as there was a easy respawn point and fighting there was worth a lot of exp. This ruined the game for other people as the whole point of that game was taking lots of bases on a map so 1 place being a deadlock for hours because both sides refused to do anything but farm meant it was impossible to win.

As I said I'm not sure if the way this game is being done will have this as an issue but its better that they plan for it being an issue now than wait and see if it happens.

If we make territory capture based on population pressure (the side that crams more peeps into a contested zone pushes it towards their side) then such stalemates would be very difficult to maintain, since people will be able to push the cap just by showing up.

Of course, if we were to do that we would have to design our spawn system so that it is possible for a small force to push a larger one out of a contested zone by strategically destroying/denying their spawn points. Otherwise it'd just be zerg=win.

Both sides agreeing to farm? Huh. I've personally never experienced that before, even though I won't speak for everyone and obviously OP had an experience like that. I guess it can be combated to a degree with a modified spawn system but the potential will always be there with any game that has xp as a leveling system.

This is extremely common in a lot of games I've played. When I was in a small guild attempting to get someone to High Warlord in Vanilla World of Warcraft I became aware that several of our guild leaders had made an agreement with the Alliance to "win trade" in Warsong Gulch; rather than spend half an hour where you actually tried to win, you could spend 3-5 minutes per match.

It's really upsetting when this happens, but it's human nature. It's the path of least resistance. This wasn't a failure on the individuals in the guild which wanted to do this, it was a failure in game mechanics which made this both possible and profitable.

I was speaking more of my PS2 experience, but I see your point.

They could implement a system where if an area is contested for a certain amount of time it becomes overrun by nids and both sides get forced out.

I like this idea

It wasn't massively common in ps2 but there was a few alerts where 1 base was being fought over for 2 hours so eventually the outfit I was in would turn up to find people just having a friendly killing each other without trying to push for points at all, just camping in 1 spot shooting each other.

Perhaps it was just idiots who had no idea how to win a fight but it happened way to often and people didn't seem to be trying at all, they just sat there farming kills. Whether or not it was people agreeing to farm each other or not its something we need to assure doesn't happen in eternal crusade ever as it ruins competitive pvp when some people refuse to compete and just farm.

Personally i think that population driven pvp sucks. Why?

In the fantasy wh mmo , i remember the very usual occasion where pvping was a no-go because the other faction was more populated or you were unlucky enough to log in when the enemy's guilds had a scheduled pwnfest.

In EC , its obvious that the orks (for being f2p) and the space marines (for being the posterboys and eternal hype of 10 y.olds) will overpopulate CSM and Eldar. Not saying that we wont exist but i guess for every chaos marine there will be two space marines and three orks. Ofcourse these armies will also have the lowest quality of players but this doesnt matter much. Population driven pvp has little concern about the two sides' skills. Sure there will be the exceptions of twenty comando dudes who spent their lives on the game and can kill a tank with emotes but for the majority of the players , it will be hell. Joining to play for a couple of hours and finding out that i cant go out of the respawn because there are thirty orks dancing outside , while i have 4-5 guys at my side.

I think the best possible solution is to have organized pvp. Battleground instances where there is a gap , 10vs10 , 30vs30 , 100vs100.

Now before all you kids raise the pitchforks , organized pvp does not cancel open world pvp. Dont worry , im going to gang you out of your respawn for sure. Organized pvp just adds the option to play in a more orderly fashion and can balance sides. It does not mean that there wont be fighting outside , fair or unfair.

There are ways of dealing with this, like 'instancing' each server for each 100 players so that the factions have equal-ish numbers, plus having a different spawn system. I'm looking forward to it, plus I'm making one of each race, just so the balance is preserved.

The problem with small 10v10 fights is they are dull as hell, even 100 vs 100 its not the same cos its just a little battleground you're fighting over. Warhammer online had a lot of problems but the massive rvr made it playable, the feeling that you were part of a huge war for territory instead of just minor battlegrounds which meant nothing in the long term.

The best solution is to put a limit on the number of players from each faction on a server to avoid zerging though other solutions would be better. I definitely don't want to see only battlegrounds as pvp as if thats what happens despite it being 40k I doubt I'll play, iv had enough with pve MMOs and battleground pvp is a pve thing to keep the what they consider scummy pvpers away from the purely pve areas (which are the entire game). If they wanted it to be battlegrounds for pvp they could have made it a server based thing like medieval age of chivalry and saved a lot of time and effort then made a seperate pure pve game.