A Dangerous Trend in Faction Populations

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Jolanar, Jan 11, 2014.

  1. Xasapis

    That was back in the summer. Since September TR and NC populations worldwide were about equal, then after October NC started gaining more steam (tbh, VS were losing more people than TR to NC) until we reached the winter time, where NC have a complete world population dominance.
    More like a huge bonus towards the least populated faction, which at the time happened to be the VS.
  2. Boomotang

    I'm glad that some VS have actually noticed this trend on Waterson.

    The problem is that most NC and VS have been pretty darn slow at noticing this trend. They continue with the mindset of beating up on the TR (while ignoring many opportunities to attack each other as well) because we have the highest population, which simply isn't true.
  3. Redderic

    This reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-Four where, "we have always been at war with Eurasia". The TR and NC have repeatedly traded roles as the Overpopulated and / or Overpowered faction. The VS and the "underdog" will group up on the forums and heartedly agree that the "other guy" is to blame. This will pass, just like has multiple times before. But no matter what, the VS will never been the Overpopulated faction - (with exception of that brief period of time when we had a massive influx of brand new players when the server recommendation list changed).

    So I don't feel bad for the NC or TR when they have temporary decreases in population, because their decrease is still higher than the VS population 90% (arbitrary statistic) of the time.

    Stick with your faction when you have a population disadvantage - it will be make you better. It's especially fun when you use NS equipment / vehicles (without Empire Specific weapons) to dominate the other faction - then it becomes clear that your hard work has paid off.
  4. Flukeman62

    and you have to remember the pre-gu2 days
  5. RyanGUK

    Just wanted to say also, this discussion is based just for Waterson yeah? Because Miller seems to overpopulated with VS or TR nearly all the time, it's very rare I see the NC go above 37%, but even then we're normally getting reared by either the TR or VS at around 35-36%.
  6. Aegie

    Hardly a mass migration and this completely overlooks the fairly consistently TR over population for the last year. Yeah, SOE could have implemented a reward for sticking with your faction sometime over the last year when it was clear that NC was UP across a variety of items and weapons classes, consistently coming in dead last performance-wise, and a joke in any of the "competitions" like WDS. You were TR so you may not realize that WDS was basically a huge incentive for all NC to log in to any other faction but NC and yeah, TR was crushing WDS and in part because of population.

    I agree that there could be more done about switching factions during alerts but I stayed loyal with NC for over a year despite all the convergent evidence that they were hardly balanced so it is hard for me to empathize.
  7. Selerox

    On Cobalt, VS is at a pretty consistent pop disadvantage and has been for a while now. NC is consistently the highest pop faction, with TR a couple of points behind it. Today we were dealing with 28/36/36 split between VS, TR and NC. That's a non-starter for any kind of meaningful gaming if you're having to deal with those kind of odds. Especially if you factor in Cobbalt TR and NC's habit on concentrating on us rather than each other, which lengthens the odds even further.

    It's getting pretty demoralising when you know you'll be fighting on an uneven footing for the foreseeable future...
  8. Xasapis

    Funny how reality can differ so much from perception. Here's population charts from Miller.

    sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=10&timezone=0&allfactions=false
  9. RyanGUK


    Could you serve me up a dish? I think I need to eat my words. :p
  10. zaspacer

    This has been expressed as a concern in multiple threads by multiple players. However, population stacking has not been acknowledged by SOE as being a problem issue. I encourage you to continue posting, replying, and liking on the issue. SOE is historically much more likely to recognize and respond to an issue if it makes a lot of noise over a period of time on the forums. But for now, you have to play as if it is intended by SOE and act accordingly.

    Alerts used to give the XP Bonus for anyone logged into the winning faction at the end, which influenced players to only switch factions to the winning side at the end of the Alert. This kept Alerts more faction balanced during most of the alert. Now that the Alert rewards players XP proportionate to the amount of time they were on the winning faction, players are influenced to switch to whichever side has the largest population advantage.

    Another change is that Alerts used to be only a single Continent, where only so many of a faction could be on that Continent before it was locked to more players of that faction. As long as there was enough people playing on the server, this nullified the impact Faction Stacking could have, and kept factions during Alerts balanced and influenced players not to switch to the dominant faction. Now some Alerts cover all Continents and this allows for Faction Stacking to become a dominating strategy.

    The more Faction Stacking occurs and is successful with the same faction winning, the more players start to automatically switch to that faction when Alerts starts. Also the more players of the other non-winning factions stop attempting to participate in Alerts (these other factions will often use this opportunity to attack targets specifically not part of the Alert), even the to point that even when an Alert is winnable by a different faction, that faction's players will typically not bother to check Alert status to attempt to play for the win. I have played on Connery where I was on a non-dominant faction and they could have won during an Alert, but the players were to focused on non-Alert engagements (zerging empty bases) during the Alert. This is indicative of the "Learned Helplessness" Experiments of 1967, though in this case it might also be term Learned Apathy/Ignoring.

    And due to the benefits of having faction Overpop outside of Alerts (zerging, Resources, Certs to spend, etc.), this often leads to players staying in that faction even when the Alert is over. Which in turn influences players to join that faction due to Overpop bonuses.
  11. Grimno

    Logged on today to play on TR and when i got to the menu, I was hovering my mouse over TR and then saw the population was
    27% TR, 31% VS, 42% NC.
    I logged into my TR character to check the Alert. Capture and hold Tech Plants. NC had 5, TR had 0, Vanu had 2.
    Saw zero reason to play TR right now cause even on continents where the populations were near even the TR were double teamed back into their warpgate.
    So I decided to just go on my NC guy as a medic, not heal any NC cause i'm loyal to TR, only shoot Vanu and then for good measure taunt and laugh like everyone else does.
    Or at least I wanted to. Sorta just sat in the warpgate as a heavy, starin at the map and kept saying "...i'm not NC. All my work, my hours, my effort and money, are all on my TR guy..." and I had no motivation to do anything. So logged off to go play another game till it gets late tonight and the population evens out a bit.