World Domination Series Scores

it is time to eek !

You can call me what you want honey.

I think TR have a slight advantage in combat under 50m. Slight being the key word. Its one of many things that also needs to be looked into.

Its much less that their weapons are inherently OP, and far more about the fact that situations in which NC and VS might perform better 50> are currently hobbled by game mechanics like bullet damage drop off and nanoweave making said combat far less important.

Otherwise I agree, entirely as you note (and i've noted elsewhere) 5% makes huge amount of difference. Populations don't need to be 10% or 20% apart (though they can be) for things to really get ridiculous, at least in the current game mechanics.

I'm not jumping to conclusions, these conclusions have been formed by 10 months of playing the game in an active outfit that regularly puts itself in situations where we are outnumbered.

What I see every day, is simply being borne out in the stats.

I would love to see the final data as well.

From what I can tell, WDS is designed at least in part to generate some really interesting data.

I think people are seeing 'excited' as meaning 'everything is fine!'

I am reading 'excited' as 'this data is interesting, and will give us a much clearer picture of what is going on across different servers, etc.'

I was checking the WDS score once again and the % in the pie chart suddendly looked so familiar..












NANITES? I don't think so.

The population issues would be much less of an issue if there was more emphasis or some kind of reward for being part of an outfit. So many times you hear that the obvious solution to the over-pop issue is for the factions that are under pop to double team the dominant faction. Good outfits know this. Good outfits do this. Good outfits on Miller probably account for 20% of a factions total population on Miller in my estimation.

There need to be better tools in the game for commanders to earn the respect of their faction and for people to work under their leadership as they become known, at the moment this is not the case. From a personal point of view if I want to competantly direct battles on a continent I need to know how many players I have available to me so i can use those numbers to their best effect. Nothing in game does this quickly and easily.

So we then come to alliances using out of game comms systems. Great I now know how many forces are working with me on a continent and because they are led by competant leaders they will follow a plan. So let's fire up alliance comms this should be epic, SOE have just launched an epic event so surely all the guys who agreed to be part of the NC alliance on my server will be fired up and ready to bash TR skulls? Hmmm 3 outfits here, we have 6 squads between us - not to worry because that's enough to win alerts and fight the TR in an effective manner surely? Nope, ok **** it let's just have a fight - sigh

TR population outside of alerts is not too bad (for the times I play). During alerts it becomes nigh on impossible to force a win due to the population swings though and this is at primetime (the only time I can play) because not enough players are in competant outfits and those competant outfits largely would rather do their own thing instead of working together because when it comes to alerts the NC level of apathy is extreme.

I still have fun personally because I dob't care about alert outcomes, I don't care about population imbalances, I just want to fight. However I am getting very worried about the health of my outfit that has historically had a very stable activity level of 2-3 squads a night and 4-5 squads for operations but in the last month this has dropped to 2 squads a night and 2 squads for most Ops and this severly limits my outfits effectiveness.

Last night we had a full platoon for our operation for the first time in a month and 3 of the 4 squads had an absolute blast because we smashed the TR on all bar one of our fights for 2 hours, just like the old days before the population dramas occured and you know for the first time no one in my squad mentioned TR pops because we were winning. I think theres a lot to be said for psychological impact that constantly having to fight at 100% capacity for months on end and still failing more than you succeed is leading to NC and VS losing players while TR retain theirs.

TLDR - we do not have the tools to easily organise ourselves as a faction. Outfits need to work more together and care less about the outcomes and more about their personal fights since the outcomes are not something we can control ourselves when faced by over whelming numbers. Enjoy the game for what it is not what you want it to be.

You know what's funny?

No matter which faction would be on the top, the remaining two will call this event farce and claim that they are underpowered.

There are 3 factions but there can only be one winner. So far it happens to be TR but that's just the nature of competition. Sure we have advantages (4th faction + best WG on Indar) but hey. It's pre-season. We can draw conclusions after it's over.

Yes but I think the two issues compound quite easily.

The dozen or so descent outfits on the NC on Miller do have to compete with tagfits and unwieldy zergfits that rarely last a month. However, they have to compete within the space of also being outnumbered 60-70% of the time.

Even if the figure changed from 20% to 70% the situation would not improve to the point where facing the TR whom have 50-70% descent outfit membership and overall superior numbers would not longer in itself be an issue.

And as I've noted, the months and months of overpop on the Tr's part even by a platoon maximum most nights are in part what have got us into this state.

Thing is though, this event only lasted a couple of days and we can already see a clear winner, it's no competition.

It makes it even more epic though, doesn't it? ;]

While you are correct upto a point, my point would be not to win alerts but to put up a good fight during alerts and frankly any other time of the day. If 70% of outfits were competant and part of the alliance and working together we could counter TR on a continent and the situation would not be as bad as it is.

Sometimes you have to accept you cannot win but you can put up a good fight, at the moment it seems to me we have given up the will to win and also now lost the will to put up a good fight bar very few exceptions and that worries me greatly for the health of the game.

I don´t need the whole season, I can draw conclusions after just three days: Such events without just the slightest tools of population control and against faction-hopping are a bad joke rewarding winning team joiners and punishing all others who want to get some balanced fights.

Unfortunately, the morale is so low after being beaten down by overpop and better weapons, that will to fight has left, and coincidentally, so have a lot of players. Even worse, a high profile "massive" team game is out in a month or so. With its balanced team populations and equivalent weaponry, that will sound a death knell that Planetside may find it hard to recover from if we as a player base aren't shown that the Devs are listening, and they are taking action to correct this issue.

Additionally, its not just the overpopulation and the better weapons that cause the issue, its the perception of superiority. It isn't enough to bring the TR in line with the other factions in terms of gear, we have to actively discourage people from playing the over populated faction. I still believe the best way for that is to make the resource timer and respawn times increase for the over populated faction, by a percentage of how much extra population they have. Its simple, the AMSes and bases can only do so much, so, for every % of population on a continent the faction has above the others, a second is added to respawn times. And a minute for resource timers. Should discourage it a lot when the TR have a 12 second respawn time from having 10% extra pop.

Victory is our tradition, yo.

I have to admit, I do feel like they should have this data already. Population imbalance has been brought up many times for very long in all kinds of different ways.

If it were not for the population issue, I think WDS would be pretty cool. Fun concept. I like the idea that NC on every server is fighting toward the same goal. (or VS, or TR)

However, to come in and say that they need this to get data so they can figure out what everyone has been telling them for months doesn't really make much sense. I find it very hard to believe professional developers didn't have the tools needed to keep an eye on things very early on... as in beta at the very latest. None of this should be news to them.

Keep in mind how very long this has been going on.

It would be a completely different story if there had never been a population imbalance issue, and suddenly the TR proved an amazing foe and took a great lead early.
That's not the case though, at all I'm afraid.
This is something that everyone would love to have an honest shot at but, instead, we wind up facing the very same thing we've been facing for months. Of course, now it's not a 2 or 1 hour alert... it's 5 weeks of it. Joy!

There would be complaints, absolutely. There always is. The difference here is that these complaints are completely justified while those other complaints (assuming the score was much closer, like 32.5%/35%/32.5%) could actually be explained by organizational or skill difference on a few key servers, particularly the lower populated ones.

Hell, even some TR complain about the current state of things.

---
In the past 24 hours on Miller, according to http://www.therebelscum.net/world-population/?world_id=10
TR held the population advantage for all but 12 data points (2 hours), and out of those 12 data points, almost half were with NC having 1 (one) person more. And it was during off peak hours, naturally.

Off-peak doesn't matter as much as primetime for gameplay enjoyment, but each hour in a 24 hour period is equally important for this pre-season. TR had the population advantage for 22 hours, and at worst points had about three platoons worth of extra men compared to NC, 5 compared to VS.

And while the graph is a more accurate representation than Sirisian offers (every 10 minutes rather than every hour), it still does not show how many people are actively playing. The apathy on NC (and VS, probably) means that more of those players who logged in idle at warpgate or log off after claiming their "passive" certs.

And the strange bit is that yesterday wasn't the worst we've seen. Check out this for example: There are multiple occurrences of TR having 200 more people than NC and VS fares even worse. Though there are examples where NC or VS have the population advantage, these aren't usually at primetime, nor as big advantages or as long lasting..



That's what we've been living with for months.
And Malorn dares say we don't have a skewed population.

And dev find it interesting that TR are wining on miller. Dev your incompetence is shoving and it's quite embarrassing.

It's like a foregone conclusion, everyone knew this was going to happen and the Devs still act like it's a complete surprise that came out of nowhere...

Its a shame its an unrewarding experience on two fronts, firstly and obviously lack of CERTZ. Secondly, however heroic it secures no meaningful strategic impact.