Mattherson problem.

You're right, it is player driven, but fueled by the developers. There is no balance between the three factions, so the bulk of the players will go to where it's currently "best". TR hasn't been "best" for awhile so the sheep will follow the easiest path. Mattherson TR have it the worst; on Waterson it's at least manageable for us since the overpopulation isn't too out of control, yet.

Population balance will soon be irrelevant. With continent locking and continent lattice the outnumbered factions will be forced to primarily throw their forces against whoever is winning instead of each other. Problem will be solved. As cool as freedom in the game is, there have to be mechanics that support balance. It's on its way, give it a few more months, enjoy the game and ignore trash-talking spoiled kids that think they are good because there's more of them. It'll work out in the end.

It's a mix of both.

When I step outside of the game, I can say this:

You're right, you couldn't reasonably say that Mattherson's pop issues are only pop driven and to argue so is complete nonsense. When consumers abandon a product, you generally don't blame the consumer, you blame the product, or its competition. Either the product has gone down in quality, consumers have gotten bored of the product, or there are better competing alternatives. Seeing as how there is no other game out there that offers the scale/perspective combination that Planetside 2 does, my first pick would be that the gameplay experience of Mattherson TR has simply lowered in quality to the point where players are walking away - though you could argue, as some players (unintentionally) are, that other servers are the "superior competing product".

Looking back at the thread history, it's very obvious that the decision makers made a big mistake to allow balance issues to fester month after month, the response time has been terrible, even taking O:MFG into account. There's no way to spin it positively. I don't know who in their right mind would allow long standing game imbalances to stay unaddressed for months on end without expecting active player attrition.

However when I step back inside of the game, I can say this:

What's done is done. Here is the reality of Mattherson as it is currently.

Does Mattherson VS outpop NC and TR? Quite often, though not as badly as when I got back into the game a few months ago.

Is VS OP right now? Not even close. I personally feel that game balance has been better than it has been in quite some time. And even then, as I've been saying for a long time, one faction having a slightly better LMG or carbine than the others isn't going to cause the game swinging alert/event outcomes that we still see on Mattherson.

Mattherson VS didn't crush NC and TR in World Domination Points because VS as a faction is OP, they simply knew how the play the event for what it was and was able to organize everyone onboard. That's a purely player driven phenomenon and that means that there was nothing preventing NC and TR from achieving the same thing beyond their players refusing to organize in a similar manner.

I'm not going to speak for the TR, but I can say that there was definitely refusal on the NC's end. There was nothing stopping NC from rolling into gigantic mega-zergs like the VS did at the beginning of WDS to rack up those points. It would have been an awful, boring, mind-numbing exercise, but there was nothing to stop NC from doing it, we just didn't (again partly because it would have been an awful, boring, mind-numbing exercise). That's purely player driven decision making.

When we fail alerts because some outfit leader decides he wants to commit a platoon or two into a meat-grinder/VS cert farm at some Biolab for an hour and a half instead of striking at an undefended facility, or playing bait and switch on the VS to draw out their pop from another Biolab, well that's player driven decision making too. The firing mechanics of the VS LMGs, or the agility of the Magrider, they've got nothing to do with this equation here. It's all on us, not them, and not SOE.

When NC and TR pile desperately on each other to each other's detriment - ignore the VS, even when pops are relatively equal, lose alerts and get outplayed, and then throw our arms up in the air decrying VS for being OP, or tryhards, or hackers, or whatever other nonsense comes to mind, that's also purely player driven decision making and that's something we have to blame ourselves for. And then we lose those alerts, and we lose those fights, and put up with trash talk from the VS and get demoralized to the point of quitting, because of bad decisions made by our own players.

That's all on us, it is not mechanics driven, it is player decision driven.

And because it is on us, it is up to us to fix it as well.

You can start by letting me kill you every now and then. Sheesh

Short Term Fix to the mattherson problem.

For those interested at least.

Devrailis loves being shot at with Prowler Shells

Quality over Quantity. You've killed me enough times already.

My anus was not prepared.

I've been trying to do this by driving to warpgate the TR on Indar after every alert where they immediately roll over to the VS, which is pretty much all week except Friday nights.

You guys are too cowardly and dysfunctional to form an AVSA so an ATRA seems like a solid solution.

This man knows things.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/looking-for-a-growing-tr-outfit.173554/

Well, there is a reason people don't want to play against VS. As another player put it in another post - they are just not fun to play against.

Yes, they are better players. So much better that it's not fun being crushed by them 24/7. Just like you won't like to play against your friend who is much better in fighting games than you. You don't stand a chance. Not fun. This is what happens when teams get stacked. This is what happens when one side dominates for so long - all others begin avoiding any contact with it. "We The Players" won't fix it, because TR/NC playerbase lacks the skill that is necessary for it. We just don't have the sheer number of skilled players to put up a fight against hordes of skilled VS players.What will fix it though is enough new players with enough skill to compete against VS. So easy, eh?

This situation has become ingrained in every long-standing Mattherson player - fight against VS = loss. People don't like to lose, ergo they don't even fight against VS. That's why you see so many TR/NC blob fights while VS is being ignored.

I really miss SolTech, and all those outfits that used to be organized. TR Matthreson will keep losing pop if we don't do something. Devs are not going to help us with this. We need to fight VS with all we got, eventually we will have the population to win an alert. I never won a single alert against VS since the alert system was launched. That's ****** up.
They say that TR won an alert back in xmas day. Miracles do happen.

TR on Mattherson won the first alert of the new year. (yeah yeah It was 1 in the morning )

Have you seen the bulk of NC? Like 2 platoons fighting 25-48 TR while the VS push past rashnu. Or ghost capping esamir during an amerish alert. Maybe it's because there is more of them but it seems that redistribution of forces is severely lacking with them.

One thing i have learned when playing this game. NEVER EVER develop a MMO FPS like this with 3 "fantasy" factions. All it creates is balance whine between everybody who plays the game.

I would rather see a WW2 MMO FPS like this. That way everything created in game is based off "real" physics and statistics on the vehicles in question. Someone complains about a weapon or tank being OP, just throw real world hard data in their face. BOOM problem solved.

Don't get me wrong, the NC aren't perfect, but what you're seeing is the NC saying "**** this noise" and pulling out of the alert because at about the halfway point, the TR rolls over and just dumps everything they have against the NC as they get warpgated on the VS side on all 3 conts. At that point, the NC are facing 80% of the TR and 80% of the VS, who by this point have likely hit 40% server pop. If you check ps2alerts it will corroborate this.

There no way to win that battle, because if you try to evely spread your forces you get crushed in 60/40 battles and if you just try to hold one, everybody just piles into that base once they're done taking everything else.

It's just frustrating and pointless, so once the fights dry up after the alert, warpgating and camping the TR is extremely cathartic.

Been done. WWII Online. It never really caught on, for any number of reasons. And the same things that happen here in terms of side stacking, population balance, zergs, ghostcapping, etc., all happened over there for years and years. It's the nature of the MMOFPS beast.

skill=numbers=organization

player retention turns into skilled players

solid outfits retain players

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/looking-for-a-growing-tr-outfit.173554/

+1000. After getting kicked in the face enough, even a disorganized mob like we NC will learn not to go there anymore. So we'll go fight the TR because fighting the TR is more fun and we have a chance of winning as opposed to the massive never-ending purple sparkly zergroller of doom. And so the VS dominates another alert, and the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing prophecy. It's honestly front-page news on Mattherson now when the VS don't win an alert, of any type.

The scary thing is, I've seen VS dominating territory-capture alerts on Indar when they were at 30% continent pop. The TR and NC are all over the place while the VS are focused in one or two or maybe three spots, gaining more territory. They may be underpopped at that moment but they've got their forces concentrated so they are dominating right at the point of contact. There's that combo of the well-known Mattherson VS organization, and actually caring about winning the alert more than NC or TR do.

And that's the frustrating thing about it, because like I've said a few times, the VS aren't really doing anything wrong. They're playing the game within the rules, and doing it with a commendable level of skill. So how do you fix a problem like this without punishing the VS for doing the "right thing" and pursuing victory? Like other folks in the thread have said, this isn't so much an SOE problem, this is a playerbase problem first and foremost. And I'm not smart enough to have an answer on how to fix it.

The solution is quite easy, disolve AOD.

And now you just have to prove this equation.