Merge Servers - Same Old Pop Imbalances!

If you look at my "population snapshot" thread I made here;
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...ion-population-snapshots-over-24-hours.98099/

I posted predictions (they really were just very very very basic math averages) of what the servers would look like POST-MERGE, which is thusly... how close did I get???

For me, the most boring part of Planetside is being swept up in your team's Zerg and going base to base and hardly firing a shot.
The most exciting part of Planetside is being on the receiving end of a Zerg and being in a pressure situation and trying to figure out how to deal with it in the most efficient way possible.

If Vanu is at c.20% pop, that's 80% of the server pop I get to shoot at. C'mon, that's AWESOME!

Soltech went from VS and NC being the most populated (close to the same population) with TR following slightly below, to now, NC being the greatest, TR following and VS being dead last with half the population of TR.

I haven't played since the merger. Give it a day or so and see what the peak numbers look like.

Did you get those stats from the API? The in game %'s are unreliable.

No, from observation of actual server population figures on all servers globally spread over the course of a 24 hour period, by monitoring the character creation page and logging the figures regularly.

But my own data-gathering match the trends seen by people gathering data directly from the API, which show the VS chart plummeting day by day and at by far the lowest of the three factions these past few weeks, so they are looking pretty accurate (and further observations done throughout the week following me posting my population thread kept matching up to the averages I'd calculated).

I just logged on to Mattherson. Granted it's only 10:20 AM, but the numbers look much better than SolTech normally do. Almost even in fact. We shall see what the weekend brings.

That would be why its called OFF PEAK. Also, who knew that 33% was the same as 33% even where there are more people. Maths are hard.

Its balanced out on Mattherson, I'll eat my own words now, definitely happy to see that!

Helios is stuck with a very underpop TR though, and Waterson still has a very overpop TR issue at the moment.

Cobalt and Ceres (which is closer to peak times as they're EU) aren't too bad either.

We shall see.

All of you need to CALM DOWN prime time for east coast servers isnt for 7 hours!

To be honest on some of the merged servers the numbers will never add up to a less imbalanced population. For the Waterson/Jaeger merger for instance, the populations were basically mirrored for the two servers, TR ~35% NC ~38% VS ~25% adding the two servers together is never going to yield a balanced population no matter how much of a chance you give it.

or that means that 80% of the population are sitting in their tanks shelling your spawn center... which means you have no option but to respawn at the warp gate.

That population is almost exactly what my predictions gave, awesome! If things remain consistent, it should be the most balanced server in the game now, going purely on average faction population numbers over time. Am jealous, I can only play on EU servers (my ping is too poor for the US), and we have no such well balanced servers here!

I haven't been on since the merge so just wait for this evening to see the real effects of the merge. Then we can say if it helped or not.

From all available information, it seems like the Soltech -> Mattherson merge was very good from a faction population balance perspective. The underpop faction on Mattherson was VS, and the overpop faction (from what I read) on Soltech was VS, and the pop differences between TR and NC should be a wash post-merge. All in all, I think this particular merge was very good for faction balance. Mattherson, some could argue already was, is now probably going to be the definitive center of the PS2 universe. With good pop balance all around, a LOT of serious, organized, competitive outfits, and enough population to pop cap Indar and overflow significant people onto Esamir or Amerish, things are going to be very interesting.

Here's to hoping they get the 'Indar lag' sorted out, because it has become absolutely unbearable to play there.

No...just no..

This is taken from their own words.

Stop posting offhour population charts, servers are never balanced during offhours. And since nobody could've played on the merged server prior to 2am pst, everything you've seen so far are offhour stuff. Wait until prime time, tonight's a good time to check, so is the weekend since more people play on the weekends.

No doubt there will still be differences between factions, but when you've hit a threshold above a certain #, I find that with organization a smaller faction can still put up a good fight. The server merges were not done to address faction imbalances, so don't tie complaints to faction imbalances with server merges. The server merges were necessary to bring low populated servers together to make them at least medium to high pop servers. They've served their purpose, but I would suggest letting things play out a bit before making any sharp dramatic statements about imbalances.

The main goal of the mergers was to increase server population

They took empire populations into account but they didnt want to merge different timezones. Just give it time, it's not always going to be 33/33/33 or even close to that.

It's never going to be perfect. Just enjoy the large populations and the great battles.

SO, if a pop has 50% influence then they should be able to fight both factions. The biggest thing with server merges was to add more players to shoot on different continents. I've never seen a community thats so bitter and contradicting.