This time last year the game was getting ready to triple its population. Today all that pop is gone.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NotsiMadz, Feb 28, 2021.

  1. ican'taim

    Case in point: I took a break because chapter 3 got delayed and FPS issues I've been having, doesn't mean that I've quit.
  2. JibbaJabba

    Stretch the timeline out to 3-5 years and analyze the graph again. The net gain after the bump went away has still been positive. It has overall flatlined the decline quite a bit.

    Game is still alive. But it's a 7 year old game. You want more? Get a membership and buy some pink gun.
  3. OneShadowWarrior

    It shows with the right effort the game can skyrocket.

    The problem is, we’ve seen nothing original, new or anything exciting since the Bastions, which I had always chastised as a step in the wrong direction. The whole reaching for the meta game was the same seed that sewed the end of the first Planetside only back then it was BFR’s - Battle Frame Robotics. When are they going to realize the real content is in the solo player, the maps, the battles and the content that goes into combat?

    Outfit Wars is another example of how detached they have been. I have no clue who they are listening to.

    The numbers say it all and I will shutup now.
    • Up x 3
  4. NotsiMadz

    like this?

    [IMG]


    (my yellow line)

    Anyway, 4k players joined, and 4 players left, why? (that was the question)
  5. JibbaJabba



    Yeah, It's more like 4k joined 3k left. Your point is still made I think. The point I was trying to add: It's added some life to the game.
    • Up x 1
  6. NotsiMadz



    I think there are 2 ways of reacting to what you are pointing out (and I'm not saying either is wrong, in fact I think both are right) :


    1. if you simply check at the end of 219 (not 2015), and compare that to "after Escalation" (from 3 months after till even today) then yup, even after those 4k players left, the pop is higher and so you could argue "we're still better off" or "even if it wasn't a resounding success it did breath some life into the game".

    "say what you want but there are more players after Escalation then before Escalation".

    That kind of thing.



    2. The yellow line.

    I find the yellow line really interesting for lots of reasons, but to avoid long walls of text that no one reads, I'll pick 2.



    a)

    You could speculate that had Escalation never happened at all, that yellow line would be in the same place today. You could conclude that by doing a sort of projection (which people use to predict the future but in this case could be used to "predict" what would have happened, basically, you see 3 dots in a straight line you could project that a 4th dot would follow the same trajectory).

    Yes I know, that doesn't really prove anything, it's just speculation.


    b)

    On the other hand, what it does prove is that constant downward trend, from 2015 until today, hasn't ever really stoped, and isn't showing any signs of stopping either.

    In other words, (like most MMOs) the game is leaking population at what looks like a pretty constant rate, and that loss of population isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

    From that point of view, (a and b, or if you dispute a then just b) Escalation didn't do anything to counter this downard trend that has been going on since 2015.

    ___________________________

    PS. As I write this post, I am aware of potential mistakes I may have made. For example, I didn't mathematically calculate that yellow line, I simply drew it myself. What I mean is, this is what I think, i know it isn't fool proof, and I'm absolutely prepared to admit I'm wrong if I'm shown to be wrong. But I think it's right, it "makes sense" and "feels right", if you know what I mean.

    PPS. that was my "not wall of text version" lol
  7. iller

    I'm dead center in the "most exciting" aspect of them right now on Connery, and I'm already bored of it.
    We literally have people coming after us for Political Intrigue and being 'too friendly' to other outspoken platoon leaders.

    [IMG]

    I just want to be driven around again in a Sundy on Esamir all day while I aim the Walker at stuff
    • Up x 1
  8. Snow Sheltie

    Retired Bittervet here,

    I used to play this game. The last time I played was in 2018. What made me quit wasn't anything about a bad community or the game becoming boring. It was the devs themselves updating the game to a degree that I was unable to play with my outfit anymore. The update in question? The population balance update. That one which turned the population cap on the continents from a set max player count to a "each faction must have even pop on ALL continents, no matter what." This update single-handedly killed my outfit in a way that all those mutineers could only dream of.

    You want me back? Get rid of that damn population 'balance'. This game wasn't meant to be played with even teams across the board like some Halo matchmaking game. The game had a larger strategic element to it that was just never truly completed. A faction (or outfit) could decide to go capture an otherwise defenseless continent and could succeed if nobody responded. I imagined they wanted this to have more meaning and for the continents to be inter-connected but this never came to fruition. When the population balance was added, it just screamed to me the devs cared only about trying to attract the COD crowd to the detriment of everyone who played Planetside to begin with.

    What kept me playing the game so long, in spite of all its shortcomings, was the enjoyment I got out of leading platoons. I was probably one of what felt like a very small group of crazy bastards who actually enjoyed the challenge of leading open platoons and getting a bunch of random players to operate as a cohesive unit. Quite frankly, had I not joined Phoenix Battalion after a month of playing, I probably would've quit the game much sooner.
    • Up x 3
  9. MonnyMoony

    ^^ I agree. Putting hard caps on population just smacks of a lack of imagination.

    There would be far better ways of encouraging balanced gameplay like linking rewards to population. Underdog populations would receive a higher rewards than a massive overpop who zerg the continent.

    All a hard cap does is stop people from getting into the game. If I log in and there is a long queue to get onto the continent I want to play - I just log off and go and do something else instead.
    • Up x 1
  10. pnkdth


    Even back in the day when the VS pop on Miller was down to 18% we still had lots of epic battles all over the place. Sure, it often ended up being impossible to win as the numbers mounted but it was a damn sight better then than it is now. It really helped bringing the outfit together to overcome those odds too. It was frustrating at times but that only made the wins that much sweeter.

    All the equal outcome arm-chair balancing with incomplete data is useless (and even harmful). My own dumb self even used KPU as a performance metric before giving my ignorance the smackdown it deserved. Nowadays I wonder just what the heck SEO/RPG were thinking when they read those threads where we tried to make sense of the PS2 world.

    Even if you, in the general sense, have reservations about removing pop balance/limits you should be able to admit the current system is failing the game. "Welcome to Planetside 2, massive battles and epic 30+ minute queues!"
  11. JibbaJabba

    You realize you weren't actually playing planetside when you did that right?


    The max population queue still exists of course. The faction balance queue only kicks in when it gets really bad. When conditions arise that the faction queue is in place there is at least one other off continent you can join.

    But yeah... if it's bad on that off continent you're are gonna get queued. The guys on the other team need at least some chance at having fun. It can't be all for you.

    But you wanted that? To just **** on the few people that were there? And you hit a queue because you aren't even helping pay for the game?

    I spose you best just keep staying away then.

    Rest of us will have fun without you.
    • Up x 1
  12. Snow Sheltie

    So here's a little history lesson on population balance in PS2. It was very common on the servers I played on (Jaegar, Waterson, then Emerald) for at least one faction to have a population detriment for a variety of reasons. It seemed the most common reason was that one of the three factions is perceived to have the best stuff at the time so there's a migration towards that faction. On Jaegar, the factions were generally even. On Waterson, the vanu were virtually non-existent after their precious ZOE max was nerfed. It was quite a shock to the system when the Emerald merger occured and suddenly we were up against good VS outfits again (GINYU FORCE RULES! :)).

    The underpopped faction had a few benefits. They usually had the least amount of territory but they could often decide the fate of alerts by choosing who to focus on (and thus who will lose the alert). It happened a whole lot in Waterson with the TR and NC attacking each other viciously and the VS occasionally popping up in the middle of those fights to cause a little chaos. I always saw being on the underpopped faction as a practice of "target-rich environment" as in I didn't have to go very far to get into a fight and I lead squads or platoons with that in mind. It sometimes meant fighting at bases that rarely saw action so a nice change of scenery so there was fun to be had being the underdog.

    Yes, capturing an empty continent was still playing planetside. People usually did that for a few reasons; they want smaller fights, an alert's on the continent, or they were trying to unlock a different continent. My outfit loved empty continents to run OPFOR training but that became literally impossible after the faction balance was implemented.
  13. Johannes Kaiser

    Do you by chance know the criteria for when it applies? Recently I saw Amerish with 50% NC, 48% TR and 2% VS. No queue. I guess the reason was that NC and TR were technically balanced against each other, but I'd love to know how this system works and when it decides to kick in.
    • Up x 1
  14. JibbaJabba

    I don't exactly.

    Overall population on a given continent seems to be a factor.
    Number of continents open seems to be a factor.

    If it's nearly full the faction balance seems more strict. Starts kicking in at like 35.
    If there is a second really low pop continent open it seems to allow worse imbalances.

    The idea isn't to totally prevent people from playing. who would do that? The idea is to keep the playing field as fair as it can be with the given population imbalances.

    I play NSO a lot so I'm always on the underpop faction. It's borderline bearable as it is.
    • Up x 1
  15. Exileant

    :eek: Well, Genudine has been packed, so much so that it is almost impossible to do the missions.... :D When they decide to work. I have been RAKING in the Certs. o_O RACKING! The original reason people left was a lack of new concept weapons and material. Almost everything here is "Point A to Point B" Neat little concept weapons like the Nest launcher are in order to REALLY bring in the crowds. For example one of Destiny 2's premium weapons that draws attention is the Outbreak Prime. The reality of the weapon (By itself...) is it is not much more powerful than any other exotic, but the fact that when you shoot people with it and kill people with critical damage (Head-shot), it starts spawning baby missiles that attack that target and any threat near it keeps people playing to see what it is all about (It is GLORIOUS BY THE WAY. A few weapons to hunt for that did a little more than shoot straight at its target might be just what the doctor ordered to over crowd all of the servers back to the horrible point of NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY FOR 15 MINUTES AFTER LOG-IN.... :confused: I prefer log in times now. It gets sluggish enough when there are too many people around as it is.
  16. NotsiMadz



    lol I wanted to check the Genudine population chart, but there isn't one on the wesbite I use..

    It's got Soltech, Apex, Jaegger, Emerald, Cobalt, Miller, and Connery...

    Oh wait, I just figured it out, Genudine is a PS4 server!

    Also Crux recently merged into Genudine? (that would probably explain it)
  17. Liewec123

    give huge bonuses to XP and nanites based on the difference to the faction with most players.
    currently the game offers minor xp bonuses for having the underpop, what we need are huge bonuses.
    like double XP and 200 nanites a minute when there is a big underpop.
    i've be happy fighting for the overpop if i'm chainpuling maxes/vehicles or hurling c4 and nades all over the place.

    also i keep saying it but the map population needs unnerfing, it used to be 2000 players per map, but it was nerfed down to 900.
    and 900 players just doesn't justify how big the maps are,
    with the player counts as low as they are these days we would be able to fit the entire population of a server on one map,
    no more getting stuck in the deserted overflow map because the main map is "full".
    • Up x 2
  18. Tr34

    No new maps, weapons, vehicles etc. for a long time. They have to give people new content to play from time to time.
    Outfit wars don't affect most of the playerbase, they are wasting development efforts for the fun of a small portion.

    Campaigns don't worth it as well because rewards are simply unnecessary for many players, I personally don't care about
    that banner reward so I'm not hyped for chapter 3 at all.

    For example they were going to release a new continent(Oshur), what happened to it? I've never heard about it for a long time.
    They were testing new top guns for vehicles on PTS, they disappeared as well. Think about it, even addition of bastion brought many people back. If they added a new continent, weapons, events, alerts with a big content update I'm sure even more people would come back.
  19. Pelojian

    adding new continents, weapons, vehicles etc can only keep old players that left interested for a short amount of time, as long as the core issues of the game are not resolved (poor mechanics like crouch spam, bad base design, lack of meaningful tactics and strategy tools and flow and organic objectives with suitable reward mechanisms) could stop the trickle of people leaving the game.

    the only thing planetside 2 brings is large battles, strategy is non-existant outside of human wave tactics.
  20. Scatterblak

    Devs promised Oshur, and delivered outfit wars and turned off TI because they can't figure out that the lattice sucks. No mystery there, really.