How long is SOE going to just ignore the VS underpopulation?

The VS have been underpop pretty much permanently since the game got released. The only time we reached a global pop of ~33% with somewhat frequency was during the ZOE days.

Now and pre-ZOE, we are hovering around 25-30% global pop. Obviously something is wrong. If one faction have such a big difference, how can anybody say there is not a problem somewhere?

When the TR dropped after the Nanoweave patch, the forums got filled with complaining day after day nonstop. And the TR didn't even drop particularly low. They just stopped being overpop. The VS still had a lower population than them.

Despite this, SOE rushed to give the TR 2 weapon reworks and across-the-board buffs to their weaponry. Meanwhile, nothing is done about the VS being far worse off in terms of population and several weapons needing reworks for a long time. A surprisingly small amount of VS are saying anything aswell.

If the VS are going to, for once, have a decent population in this game then SOE needs to step in and do something, and the VS population needs to show that they want changes too.

The VS should have weapons and vehicles that are better than their TR/NC equivalents pound-for-pound and a lower pop cap. We're using alien technology right? Yet right now our weapons are overall worse than the other factions, and they all look the same.

Vanu is not smiling upon me

Imo VS are tricky, you could give all 3 factions nothing but NS items and I believe VS still would be under pop'd ..
As a faction they are not very appealing to the wider audience and some of the reason in the past they have got even or over pop'd is because they were given OP **** ..

Now giving OP items just to balance pop is stupid in the extreme .. Imo VS need a total redesign from the ground up .. Both in looks and ES abilities .. Not going happen though.

The unfortunate thing about threads like this is, they raise a valid point of faction under/overpop in such a poor way, that it inevitably turns into a cesspool of nerf/buff calls, coupled with people complaining that their faction is underpowered and/or the other factions have such nicer toys.

I play all three factions.

The Vanu have the weakest weapons and ES abilities overall.

I'm not sure what server you're on but on Mattherson the Vanu were overpop here for countless months. However now the Vanu population on Mattherson are finally balanced with the other factions and I never have to look at situations like this on a regular basis ever again.

I've also played all three factions, and I wouldn't say VS have "The weakest weapons" overall. Rather that they lack a diverse selection of weapons, the ones which they do have being competitive, for the most part, but bland.

As for the empire specific abilities, ZOE is now trash, I concur, but Magburn I found to be terrifically useful. I suppose no bullet drop is a bit of a gimmick at best.

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Though, I realise in pursuing this I'm contributing to the problem I complained about myself...

Simple fact that Hades brings up. It's part color and part design. Darken the purple all you want, it's still purple. For most males it's not a common favored color. While on the other hand, blue and red are very prominent colors (just look at how many countries use blue or red in their flag)

Then move to the armor on first look. Purple guy, cheesy spandex looking outfit or red/blue guys with more conventional, slightly sci-fi, looking armor. Granted, VS can look cool with camo and cosmetics, but I'm talking about what a person sees first.

Srsly, if you turned their armor jet black. I can assure you this population thing would swing in their favor, over time.

Join us on the dark side, we have cookies.

To rise the vs pop SOE needs to revamp their aesthetics.

Fix the underpop problem? Sure thing. Just tweak the world pop numbers so that they always show a reasonably even split rather than the actual, real percentages.

Other than that, what do you expect them to do? I can't say I like the idea of buffing a faction just to try to convince more people to play it. That'll just end up turning into some flavor of the month round table where people just switch to whichever faction they think got the last round of buffs.

I wish I could've seen such a glorious sight with my own eyes. Alas, it was not to be.

If you want VS to not be underpop, you need people to sign up the VS or run VS nights. I believe a server did that (Think it was Briggs) where outfits played as VS and got others to play with them. They resolved the issue through that.

If you're underpopped, try stuff like that. The devs cant magically make a population appear.

I usually play the faction that has the lowest population so I don't have to compete so much for targets.
The most fun I have had in this game was a couple days ago on Connery at the NC Esamir warpgate.
We were being swarmed by every TR on Esamir (60% pop).
A wonderful target rich environment with the safety of the warpgate at our backs...

Connery prime time during the weekend (Chain Alerts thanks to captain higby) .. Solid 33/33/33 for hours.

Loved it.

Past 10? .. Vanu 40%+ everywhere!

http://borderlinetactical.net/rsnc/...ld_id=0&daterange=1399222758356,1401062400000

You know you're in a tight spot when the Libertarians and a totalitarian dictatorship are beating you in popularity.

Connery had an NC and VS overpop for MANY months, pretty much nearly a year. While little ol' TR had the short end of the stick almost all the time.

Now, that was due to the VS having a ZOE, a very op'd piece of VS tech. Which got nerfed, but was and is still OP'd in the correct hands. Now that they gave something to TR, people flocked back to TR. However, it's dwindling down and soon it'll be the same on Connery as my previous statement.

Every time VS underpop is mentioned, there comes a bunch of Mattherson players who doesn't understand that Mattherson =/= The world. Yes, the VS is overpop on Mattherson. On the remaining 8 servers. we are severely underpopped.

This is what my server looks like, and it's not the only one:

I'm sorry, the ZOE in the right hands is OP? I really hope you have some sort of Proof of this as Not a Single person I know, uses the ZOE in it's current form. In fact If The devs gave us usage numbers of the various Empire Max abilities I wouldn't be surprised if the ZOE was the lowest of them all, with the NC being the highest.

Also hate to say, that looking at the forms, the VS seem to have the most Empire weapons in the Nurf Crosshairs at the moment, so It is far more likely that the VS will be handed another Weapon nurf and have our pop drop again.