IMO 50 and 50 is better than 90 and 10..
No. Because before caps kicks in, there are 90 in an OPEN arena. I can always get there. And 90 players is more fun than 50. AWwrgwy's proposal of caps on all the time will make it almost impossible for me to get any decent gameplay at all.
Right now I'm at least occasionally able to play with halway decent numbers about two hours before caps kick on at 7pm. Enforcing caps all the time will take this away from me too, without solving anything or making gameplay or "arena health" any better.
My problem is NOT having to go into a 200 player arena instead of a 300 player one. Things like 200 vs 140 or "all my buddies are in LWO" is a kind of "luxury problem" of US players.
Allow me to exaggerate a bit:
Sometimes I have the feeling, players like me are paying the price for prime US time arena health and gameplay. Two arenas of 300 are better for HTC growth and gampelay then a single 600 one - no doubt, I have played a lot at prime US time and having to play with "only" 300 or 240 is absolutely no problem.
BUT - once I was able to fly & fight against 200+ players at my prime time. Now I'm often facing 50-80 players only even though 200 are online. THAT is my problem. And it is a very distinct change in gameplay resulting of it. Not for the better...
And that is the reason why I am rather desperately looking for improvements on that whole split arena & caps thing.