The consequences of server transfers vs merging

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by SenorBeef, Jan 9, 2013.

  1. Uben Qui

    -Servers only hold 5,850 players at any one time.You can have 10,000 attached to that server, or 20,000.. in the end all that can ever get in at one time is 1,950 of each faction, for the total of 5,850.

    -People are not going to transfer from something like Helios to Genduine. The way it usually works, is that people from Helios and Genduine transfer to a server that has more of their faction already on it. So the NC losing on both? NC will migrate to an NC heavy server.

    -Servers are in different locations of the world. FPS games rely on ping. People try to find the best ping in most cases.

    So a ton of people from the UK are not suddenly going to jump on West coast servers and cover the time frames like some believe. East coast users will go to east coast servers, west coast to west coast servers.. Leaving less in the off times, and even more in the prime times. If you swap to a server that has a good mix at prime time and shows full, you are going to wait in a que.

    You take your 200 man outfit that plays in the prime time on the east coast to a server that has a capped pop on the east coast in that prime time slot. You, members of your outfit, other people who were there and used to be able to get in at that slot.. now wait for a que.
  2. Garzin

    I think this is their exact thought process.
    • Up x 2
  3. SenorBeef

    Why don't you go ahead and save yourself the trouble of even arguing then? Because you're bad at it.

    There are no high pop servers, not in the US. There are ones that will hit high for maybe 4 hours a week, primetime on friday night, briefly. No servers are anywhere near their capacity at a regular basis. Not sure about Europe, I don't monitor them.

    Merging servers doesn't create population imbalances that didn't exist already. You're just combining two servers. I mean, let's say one server has 15k vanu accounts, 12k TR, and 8K NC. And let's say you merge it with another server that's also imbalanced, also 15k vanu accounts, 12k TR, and 8K NC. Using your logic, the VS are now out of control because you merged 2 servers that have too many VS, except.... nothing has changed. Those two servers used to have 50% vanu, and the new merged server has 50% vanu. See how that works? Magic.

    More likely, merging servers will actually iron out local population imbalances on one server, since sometimes servers have too many of one faction because of the ultimate showdown leader thing, or simply because when their faction gets lower numbers people start leaving.

    So, either there are just too many of one faction across the board, and therefore the merged servers will have that faction have THE SAME PERCENTAGE ADVANTAGE they already had, or more likely, merging the servers will iron out population imbalances and actually bring us closer to even.

    You could merge Genudine into Connery or Helios and almost certainly not hit a queue. There aren't even 6k players total across all US west servers perhaps except for weekend primetime. When was the last time you saw a US server that had indar population locked, which is only 2000 people? I've never seen it myself. We're not even close to hitting the limits. You vastly overestimate how many people are playing this game at any given time. We could merge all US west servers into one server and still not fill the server up.

    And please, I'd vastly prefer an occasional queue where I had to wait 15 minutes and then got to go into an awesome battle everywhere to continuously spending an hour trying to look for a fight because my server is a ghost town.

    Okay, so your arguments are 1) it will create population imbalances - it won't, it's not even logical to suspect it will, and 2) queues will create drama - and they will rarely happen. And because of these two faulty arguments - which aren't even compelling if they were true - I should just stop suggesting that SOE follow the most obvious, most game improvement change they could possibly make?

    Stop wasting your time with this stuff.

    Two problems with this. Are people just supposed to pack up and abandon their characters that they've put time and money into to do this? Secondly, even if they did, you don't seem to understand that this game does not have the population to sustain 3 US West and 4 US East servers. You're saying we should normalize the population, but the new incoming players would just leave the few servers that actually were reasonably well populated and make them into low pop servers too. You're essentially saying the solution is to have people leave medium servers to go to ghost towns so that we all end up somewhere in between. That solution sucks, because even the higher population servers currently are nowhere near filling up their servers. They still all basically have 2/3rds of their continents unused.
  4. PharmD

    How can even think this? You do realize that Sony advertises priority log-in access for paying members, right? They're obviously fine with non-paying ones having queues. In fact, there were 5 minute queues practically 24/7 the first week of release. If anything, this creates more of a demand to play the game. If I'm just starting out as a new player and I see a queue, I'm going to think to myself "man, this game must be popular." And if I really like the game, then I'm going to buy a membership so I can avoid those queues altogether. How you can genuinely think that servers merges will never be a viable option for this game is beyond me.
    • Up x 1
  5. Mark467

    One thing they can do is offer one free transfer token.
  6. SenorBeef

    I agree that this would be better, but it would still incur the other problems - people having to decide which group of friends to transfer with, or their outfit. Some people wanting to stay, some wanting to go. Possibly faction imbalances if people start matching factions to servers deliberately rather than getting an equal combining of all players, what to do with half-dead servers after people transfer out of them, etc. It still leaves us with too many servers for the current population, which is the fundamental problem. Only merging fixes this.
  7. Akrasjel

  8. UrMom306

    It will turn out like it is on the continents already (or at least on Jaegar). Currently when i get on i see indar having tr pop, esamir vanu pop, and amerisha nc pop. Imagine that inbalance...at a server level. Totally agree with you, they need to either control transfer or just merge the servers. Too bad they couldn't have a dynamic server system, where when you join it would put you on whatever server needed you (to balance the pops), problem there is it would be near impossible to play with friends.
  9. Metsuro


    You just need to stop. You have no clue what it is your talking about.

    I regularly on Mattherson, have a queue to get into indar. A single medium server. How can this be you say? A server with a population thats full? Oh noes!

    Theres more than 20k+ people playing in NA alone at any given time. To say there isn't you are bonkers. This point here invalidates the rest of your argument as you have no idea on the concept your are trying to argue.

    A high pop server means 5-6k. A medium pop server, is 4-5k in population. There isn't 6k players in all of NA at any given time. You sir are mad.


    You point about merging two servers and still sitting at 50% of one population is again invalidated by your non existence understanding of the problem. If for any reason you'd merge servers it would be to fix the population imbalances, not just to move people to a single server. They wouldn't move two different servers to still have a 50% population while the other two are at 25%. To even think so is lunacy.

    They'd only ever merge the servers in an attempt to great an even balance across all 3 factions on a server, or not at all.

    My solution is also to disable all creation on anything but the low population servers. Know what does? Gives them more balance within a few days there populations would rise. Because they can't go anywhere else. Again proving my point you are just spouting off trying belittle an idea you don't understand.

    I'm done with you, because you can't take the time to think about what your typing before just spouting off.
  10. LadyE

    @ the OP.

    SOE will allow players to move themselves at a COST (Profits for SOE and cannot blame them for it) aka Transfer Tokens for a period of time. What this will create is a few servers like Waterson/Matherson where players will transfer too and the other servers will lose population because of it. Eventually, the majority of Token Transfers will be used up, and when the metrics show that the rate of token purchases no longer exceeds a mythical value that is predetermined, then SOE will annouce that those ghost shell servers will be shut down and any remaining players on them merged into existing servers.

    Money Making Plan by SOE. I cannot blame them for doing it, as the game is free to play.
  11. Metsuro

    Most causals will see the queue and leave because they dont want to pay, to play a free to play game. Creating the drama I spoke of.
  12. Zorlox

    transfer are great to an extent, assuming they aren't used to offset empire pops but I have to agree that avoiding the bad publicity associated with server merges and just giving us a pay or play in a dead server option(pay for fun yay!) is pretty horrible when SOE has already admitted that server population is key to the health of this game. This is definitely a scenario which shows that revenue is more important than your community.

    I mean it's great if people want to move off full servers so they don't have to wait in queue or transfer to play with friends and so on, but this should not be the solution to population issues.

    And no, it won't be necessary for me, I'm on one of the few populated servers.
  13. Bloodlet

    I have to agree. I'm on Mattherson which is a great server and unaffected but I do feel for the people on much much less populated servers.
  14. Ak69

    Don't listen to this peanut.
  15. SenorBeef

    Except I said region, and not continent. US West and US East are regions.

    You don't know what low/medium/high means. Medium is definitely not 4k-5k, not even close. Medium starts at less than 2000. We can know this conclusively, because Genudine hits medium all the time, but has never had indar have a queue. And everyone fights on Indar. The Esamir/Amerish population combined is usually well under 100. More likely, their numbers are something like 0-1k low, 1k-3k medium, 3-5k high, 5-6k very high. Your idea of medium starts at 4k - and if that were true - you would have to see at least one continent queued on medium, and you would likely have a second one queued sometimes too. This is quite easy to demonstrate as wrong. And yet you so confidently tell me I have no idea what I'm talking about.

    It's impressive how much you miss the point. This game relies on high population density to be interesting. Getting into 5 vs 5 fights, or spending an hour looking for a fight at all, does not serve this game. You're saying they'd never merge for higher population density and that's just stupid - that's the entire reason for merging. This game needs high population density or you might as well go play battlefield.

    Merging will not create imbalance problems, and will likely solve them as it homogenizes population. On the other hand, these voluntary paid transfers may indeed cause imbalance problems, if people choose to transfer to the server where their factions are more dominant. By arguing against merges in this thread, you are implictly supporting the paid transfer solution. Merges won't result in any greater imbalance than the combined servers, but voluntary transfers well may.

    I like how you're super concerned about the "drama" of having to wait in a short queue, but completely unconcerned about the drama of people being unable to create characters where their friends, who may have even convinced them to start playing the game, are playing.

    I hope this is true, you're just embarassing yourself.
    • Up x 1
  16. Ak69

    +1 for mergers, no paid transfers. SoE have way to many servers for the current amount of players for the experience they want to deliver, every server should give you the marketed scale. Either that, or don't have 3 active continents at the same time, that splits the server into ghost capping worlds.

    PS - I want ques, i want to wait 15-20min to get into the server @ prime time.

    Good for the perception of new players, shows a thriving eagerness to get connected and keeps the servers at it's peak more often than not.
  17. Rage Kage

    im on genudine i refuse to pay for an x-fer off;

    they told us they were going to give us account wide SC unlocks but thats still nowhere in sight; the message from SOE is clear:

    pay us to x-fer servers or quit the game.

    im going with the latter option. good riddance.
  18. Assist

    It's a F2P game, you have the option of making a character on a different server at no cost. *********************** YOU HAVE THE OPTION ***********************


    You people need to stop complaining about everything. They're giving the player base what they want, except the players don't want to pay for it. It's quite simple then, don't pay for it and start a new character. If you have some allegiance to your already empty server, then stay there and it will be more empty. It really solves the problem for everyone except some people don't like how it's being done.

    Cash grab? Maybe, who cares, it's going to allow some of us to transfer to new servers with our characters so we can enjoy the game the way we want to enjoy it.
  19. SenorBeef

    So wait, I should take the 15000 certs I've earned on my main character, and the 20,000sc I've spent on it, and then just up and abandon it and start fresh at a new server? And tens of thousands of other people should do the same? This is a better solution? I must be one of those ungrateful non-paying players. Yes, that's the reason.

    They're not "giving players what they want" - what they want is big fights and to play with their friends. Merges accomplish that. Their half-solution does not. This is the whole point of the thread.
  20. Hunter_Killers

    Yeah, who cares that someone already invested $100-$200 worth of SC on a character already.

    I'm sure you would.
    • Up x 2