I remember the days when there was an imbalance between countries and there was talk about randomizing which country a new member would be assigned to. There where also squads that switched in an attempted to balance things out. We also got the ENY system in an attempt to even things up but more on ENY in a minute. I don’t know if those measures worked but I certainly don’t hear about the imbalance between countries anymore. It is either fixed or having more than one arena masks the imbalance. But you really don’t want balance anyway.
If the arena had 100/100/100, you might think they are balanced but you could have 100 Speakers against 100 Vets, or 100 Loners against a 100 working together in organized squads, or you could have two countries ganging up on one. The numbers would look good but the actual play would not be fair or balanced. You would hope that you would get a normal distribution of skill and organization between countries but then what would you have? Stagnation. Every time you logged in the play would be exactly the same in every arena. It would quickly get boring. It is the imbalances that make everyday a little different and keeps the game interesting.
ENY was introduced in an attempt to both balance out the sides and the advantage. I say the ENY’s primary purpose is to balance the countries’ advantages and the side balancing is just a byproduct. As a country gets more players as compared to the other two countries, that country has a greater advantage over the other countries. This, of course, assumes that there is a normal distribution of skill and organization between counties. As a country gets more players, they get a higher ENY value which forces them into less capable aircraft and equipment which diminishes their advantage. Not being able to fly their favorite ride may compel some to switch countries and help balance out the sides and eliminate the advantage.
With ENY you have choices. You can live with it, you can switch countries, you can log off, or you can now switch arenas. But with arena caps, you either live with it and go into a different arena or log off. The problem comes down to having more choices. Having the ability to join a low numbered country in a caped arena is adding another choice.
I personally have not had too many problems with the caps; but what I would like to see, is the caps removed and more information on the arena selection screen. The screen should show the total number of player, the number of players in each country, the ENY values, and the map name. Not having the caps will give the players choices and having information may help them make a better choice. Obviously this approach opens the possibility that a map can get over-saturated with players and become “unhealthy.” If this is the case, I hope the “smell” will compel people to move to a different arena. But if not, as data is collected (maybe it is already known) and it turns out that a map gets “unhealthy” with a certain number of players, a hard cap could be set for that particular map.
Anyway, I think it is the feeling of not having choices that is the real problem with caps.
