Anyne else worried about player population?

There's a bigger problem with your "population numbers":

they add together 2 formats. that's not legit math:

on pc, there are hundreds of games like planetside, some better some worse, but TONS of choices.
on console, at the moment, there is what there is, which really isn't $hit. never really is, but that's console.

these numbers you're quoting, if they were ONLY console numbers would be about the exact same place as the graph for both M?AG and 514 before they got the shut down notices. im sorry if that irks folks, but those of us who are lifers know this to be true. once your numbers hit this point in a game, it's the "agonal" phase or the end of the line.

but again, that would be if it was just console numbers. the fact that it's divided between 2 formats that are completely opposed makes the situation worse. cut your numbers in half and it's probably closer to reality: 1500 people playing on each format give or take.

1500 out of the planet population means the game is operating at a loss. sorry, that's just biz 101. no way on earth 1500 people are paying to play this game on either format any more.

on console, planetside 2 IS dying and was dying back before the division came out. the division took a huge chunk of the pop with it.
this game has basically May. in june, you got e3, 7 days to die, ark survival evolved and no man's sky coming to ps4, each one doing something new (on console) that will make ps2 look even more stale.

the idea of planetside 2 is great. the execution leaves a lot to be desired. couple that with a waterheaded community that really can't play the game because they were raised on cod and the rest is just a matter of semantics.

once you're below 7500 on a server, game is dead financially.

the one thing they couldn't do is make premium continents or such, anything else other then unique skins would be pay for features(like new squad map marker mechanics etc) or pay to be able to unlock (weapons, vehicles etc that you can't pull/unlock with nanites, certs or DBC without the expac)

any MP game which makes maps or levels exclusive to a purchase, pre-order or store special features in any manner only divides the playerbase because some can't play on those maps/levels. a good example is CnC games some maps were from special versions or store specials so if you didn't have those maps in MP you couldn't join a server that had one of those maps chosen as the current one.

any way they try to make expansions there will be someone that will cry P2W if there is something that is tied to an expansion for PS2 since PS2 is all PVP and no PVE

What the hell are you talking about? PS2 servers can't even physically hold 7500. Never have.

Everquest servers were capable of holding 2500 in 1999. They've only recently been able to hold 5000, and that is for Ragefire, Lockjaw, and Phinegel.

800 is the number a continent can hold before issues happen. About 1100 is the max. The game launched with THREE continents.

Currently we can only have TWO continents open at a time, meaning the most a server can hold is 2200. 3300 if they open an extra continent, 4400 if they open all 4, all at degraded performance.

In case anyone's questioning the max pop values: https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside...and_server_tick_rate_why_is_it_so_low/cwjhfto

Straight from the horses mouth, aka Daybreak.

Well, they do seem to have been putting effort into preparing for the ANT, resource system, and base building.

Is it too little too late?

I don't know.

I'm pretty sure whenever it is finally released, if they publicize it well enough, people will turn out to play the game again ... at least to check out the new system.

Now, how lopsided the construction system makes the game, how much drain it will take away from actual battles, how much battle will focus around the construction system, how long it will take to mine for resources and set-up construction sites, and how much in-fighting there will be over resources < ---- well, that will all have a big impact on the initial roll-out.

Before or after whatever initial issues are ironed out, people will come and decide it's garbage, enjoy it for a bit and leave, fall in-love with it, or completely ignore it as best they can.

F2P games aren't about finding a nitch and being good at it; it's more about appealing to the widest demographics.

Fortress building and defense is very big on the market these days and the new ANT, resource building, and base construction might lure some of those people in .... to a deadly shark tank of unremorseful predators.

This is not a forgiving community.
Killing people in the spawn room when they are looking at the map to guide troops is an offense punishable by death for some.
Making Alts and equipping P2W gear and slaughtering new players in Koltyr is great fun for some.
Many outfits shun new players.
Not only do new players often not get help, they get abused for their lack of skill.

This community needs to be more accepting of new players in order to get and retain players.
Outfits are key in this.
I don't care what side you are on, stop dis'ing the new players and farming them in Koltyr.
Instead help them succeed and learn to enjoy the game and there will be more people to kill on the battlefield and a greater longevity of Planetside 2.

Can you dig it?!

Peak PC pop is 3,000-5,000, not 1,500:
http://www.therebelscum.net/world-population/
What were you saying about legit math?

Is EQ any good and is the f2p side fair?. If it is good then i wouldn't mind playing it and chucking money at it.

I used to play wow and was in a very good guild called "WE PVP FOR FOOD" and we used to do city raids and all sorts. Proper smashed it and did a lot of world pvp as well.

I also played ultiima online.

Nice site, seems a tad easier to go thruoght han Sirisian site.

Its F2P being fair... is a matter of opinion. I would personally say no because you need to be a premium member to have access to everything and you need to purchase an expansion to see the latest stuff. But expansions award ALL expansions prior to them.

I would treat it as Free to Try till level 90-95. After that you'll want to pay. Some of the best gear and augments are Prestige tagged which means member only. And mercs are restricted to apprentice rank which makes them dicey to use past level 75.

And of course you need to be a member to access the progression servers. Thankfully Kronos allow you to be a member without paying, by trading items or coin for them.

Ok cheers.

Well a lot of it they have already promised and just abandoned. If it wasn't for RadarX bullying me, I would pay serious money for Battle Islands, a Light Assault revamp, and a new combat infantry class etc etc.

Expansion are easy. You just give us NEW STUFF. It's not hard.

Though mostly spot on you are factually incorrect with your talking about the Final Fantasy 14 expansion, they were up over 5 before the expansion hit. If you played it there is also zero reason to buy the expansion unless your completed up to 2.55 storyline because it actually doesn't unlock anything new to players before you actually enter heavensward.

I'm also kinda disappointed in your relentless support of this organization. You know as well as I, that SOE used to be the leading edge in mmo games. As there is word of something new in the pipeline not much has been mentioned about anything. Landmark and the no more Next doesn't speak well for DBG compared to what SOE used todo.

no. the most important part of any MMO that focuses on demographics is to decide which demographics they want to attract and stick with them and remain consistent. players get pissed off when a company chases the latest and largest demographic which they haven't catered to in the past so the older players of the game's development of what they want is adversely affected.

it's one thing to focus on multiple demographics to attract customers so you don't make a niche game, it's another to develop a game for specific demographics then decide to dump a couple in one expansion to focus on the new popular demographic which the game was never designed to attract in the first place.

Since the first exodus, a few weeks after release. I barely knew how to switch continent before people asked for server merges.

3K for pc is horrible.

again, if you split the total pop then you are exactly where i keep tellin ya ya are. it's endgame, man. these are the same numbers that mag and 514 put down before they died. mag had a peak pop of 75k at one point during the beta and not long after early retail but the numbers soon dwindled to what ps2 has now and there were groups of people who clung to both games swearing the devs were working behind the scenes to fix everything and both groups got hosed.

some of yall are taking this stuff on a personal level because you got a lot of time invested and you had good times on it. cool, im not saying it wasn't worth it. im saying numbers like these aren't anything to be braggin about. they are a fiscal wreck for something like infrastructure that keeps generating costs not profits. they can't afford to advertise, they can't afford to augment. they can keep scaling back but unless there is some patch that can pull both the bf and cod communities away from their games, then this game is too niche to survive much longer.

The servers were designed to hold 1,800 players each, and at launch, we all remember seeing the launcher server list reading "very high" on the pop. So yeah, they definitely intended a big hit, otherwise, what would be the point of these gigantic continents? The much hyped Hossin is now a ghostcapper's paradise.

Remember the plan for 12 continents? lol Would've been great, but they made some really bone headed mistakes, and now there's almost no one left to play on the continents that they do have; at least, we certainly can't fill them up. The biggest mistake was (and still is), IMO, failing to merge servers in a timely fashion, and never merging enough of them, so we were never able to return to the glory days of big battles *everywhere*.

If you want to succeed, you can't make colossal mistakes. Small ones are understandable. Show stoppers are not. And there's no legitimate 'human' excuse for failure to merge servers. Any gamer above room temperature can tell you that when they install a game promising big battles, that the game should deliver big battles.

Miller pop is slightly higher during primetime than Cobalt 's pop is. Pops are equal before/after Primetime. Miller's Prime has a slightly higher pop.
Why do Miller people complain while people from Cobalt are fine with their pop ?
Connery and Briggs show lower pop, way lower.

Cobalt have "big battles" before and during Primetime. I don't understand why it wouln't be the same on Miller which have a higher pop.
As a player who started to play right after the realease, i enjoyed "big battles" when i was a noob. Nothing bores me more than 96-96 battles now. I guess i'm not alone in this case.
The game changed, it needs a more powerful computer now to be able to play large-very large fights. And even with a powerful computer, large fight sometimes have rendering, hitreg, fps issues. I don't really see any real benefit to any merge. It would just bring full zergs-large battles everywhere all days and nights long. With issues and boredom.

I am, I like this game even with it's current broken meta and resource system - and I think they should address that first. However we are getting insane new content with the construction system - I'm just worried that's not what we needed.

I really hope they can get the macro/meta game fixed so we get back to fighting for bases because we need them/want them not because it's "the only good fight here" or "roleplay" or "it's a good farm". If they manage THAT I think this game can be relaunched like Wrel was on about and hopefully stay alive for another four years. I know I'd keep playing for that long.

As far as the GFX being dated. Not a problem for me - scale and variation is more important. They could always buff textures even more and maybe get some kind of physics to work again if they had the money. Render distance would be my priority though - it gets really, really bad in larger fights and kinda prevents vehicles from supporting infantry.

Personally I don't bother with bases much anymore - I drive or gun harassers and tanks. If there is a base fight we definately help our team by taking out sunderers - Harassers are very good at that, and support other vehicles as much as we can, but thats about as far as it goes. I, personally, will spawn as infantry in my currents spawn area to protect that base if needed - something a lot of harasser crews don't do :'( But outside of that I mostly roam the open wide these days.

That's very ironic since the game's advertising and attraction factor was 'gigantic battles', and there were countless players like myself earlier on complaining of boredom when all that could be found much of the time were small skirmishes, 2v2 and ghostcapping.

I certainly understand that many players like smaller battles, but the skirmishes and ghostcapping that constitutes much of the gameplay, and that many like, is unfortunately the result of poor design and failed management. I occasionally enjoy a smaller battle, but that's not why I installed the game, and frankly, if I really want smaller battles, I can have much more fun in other games that are designed for them.

The big battles aspect has improved some since I last played which is why I'm back and have spent substantial money, but I would still love to see it condensed further.

My numbers come from 2 months prior. If all those people jumped in to level after I saw those numbers, right before the expansion. Then I'm still sorta right. I do know about the 2.5 storyline.. buddy of mine who bought the expansion.. having only completed up to 2.1 found that out the hard way.

Leading edge in MMO games? EQ never quite got the sub numbers of Lineage and always was neck and neck with UO. EQ2 was sort of a flop that recovered. SWG, don't need to say more there, Vanguard was DOA, as were a few others. DCUO seems to be doing alright, as is PS2.

The issue Daybreak had as SOE. Is they ran themselves as a large corporation. Complete with bureaucracy and all the BS that goes with it. Despite that they never were that big. Not in manpower and not in resources. Then they gutted themselves and still sort of ran that way.

Once they dumped the producers and the CEO.. its only then they started acting a bit more efficiently. Not that I support the layoffs, quite the opposite. But its seems the people left (in the admin departments and other non-coding/art jobs) got their heads out their rears.

I don't have unrelenting support for Daybreak. I just read the facts and make my own opinion. I don't jump on bandwagons. Its very popular for millenials to hate big business. They eat up big business products like they're their drugs, and then blame big business for taking their money.

I work hard for my money. I spend it how I want. And I regret nothing. I go on about how I was 'tricked' by big businesses to spend my money on their 'crappy' games. You see thats what they do. They buy what they like, just like I do. But they don't want to be seen 'supporting' it by their friends or in their minds. So while I can spend 3-4 hours a day enjoying a game. They can't. They have to take an hour of their day blasting the game to feel justified in their minds and the minds of their friends.

They don't understand that to not support something is to not play it, not buy it, and not post about it.

Who are the millennials in this? My group averages over 40. We been doin this a long, long time. I'm tellin y'all stuff based on past events. You spend money on ps2, that's your mistake and it shows in how you defend the game because you feel they are attacking something you are vested in. One of y'all has to be wrong and at this point, it's looking more and more like diehards are screwed because nobody else is spending on the game the way u are and there aren't enough of you to cover the cost

U shoulda gone with an obamacare analogy, woulda had more traction.