Age, while a good idea in spirit, it ruins the flavor of the game. The fun of the D2 is the swinging of balance in numbers. Offensives might as well be called off if this rule came into effect. Most of the fun I've had is when Die Hard decides to have a Crack Whore offensive. The idea was to get as many Fed, or Alliance players on at one time as you could(at some damned weird hour of the late night or early morning) and go for an objective. We've done it on almost every server I've played on, the most memorable being the Hydran Expedition on GW2. That was a blast.
The whole idea is to "get there fustest with the mostest". The Coalition decided for once to have a Crack Whore server. It happens.
This server was a fiasco, numberswise, but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. By making players log off to keep numbers even, you'll drive off more players than you'll keep.
While having a great number of people log on to do a strategic push is certainly permitted and possible in the D2, I would say that it is hardly fair or equitable. I understand that it has been a source of pride and fun in the past, but for me it really does not pass the smell test and I believe it never should have for most people. The idea to me is that people are logging onto the D2 to play with and against other people, not steamroll over the AI. As I said before, you don't play a basketball game 20 vs 3. Therefore, the outcome in the instance of equal player numbers all the time would be that the most skilled players are successful, not just the side that can muster the most numbers. Further, the idea of winning or losing a server becomes absurd, as at any time one might be fighting for either "side" on the server. One would therefore be basing one's enjoyment of playing on a server on interactions with fellows, game play (as opposed to some sort of vicarious strategic reward that one may have played some vague part in), and the satisfaction of well-fought, even contest.
I have played in pure PvP campaigns and I can tell you that in those campaigns real strategic decisions were being made as to the allocation of forces and the timing of offensives and those offensives were met by the full force and intellect of human players determined to turn back the tide. If you want the glories of war and a strategic victory that is where it lies as each victory is fought against the full capacity of another human being, not the AI. What won those battles was skill, game play tactics, and strategic thinking, not merely logging on with 20 people to whip up on the AI.
I continue to fail to see why the objective must be to win, rather than to play. The fun is in the battle, not the victory. If one wants to win all the time, play the AI exclusively. Hell, log off and do a single player campaign. To me, there is nothing to brag about in logging on when no one else is around and smashing up on the AI to claim what for me would be a meaningless objective. Is that sporting? I think not. Is it sneaky? I think so and it points up a win-at-all-costs attitude as opposed to "let's log on and actually play the game" as opposed to flip hexes.
I know for a fact that the system I suggest will never be implemented, but it is in fact the only equitable solution. I'd like to see someone explain this Crack Whore server mentality to someone who has never played this game and see if they think it is fair. I'd like to see someone explain to their kid that the way that Daddy's side wins a server is to play the game when no one else is around and run over the map while everyone else is asleep, etc. I can tell you that kid will say, "That doesn't seem fair" and it's really that clear if you think about it.
This however is not my main point. I merely think people would find it more enjoyable to play on a server with balanced numbers where victories were fought for, not given at the expense of the AI. I could certainly be wrong.
