The merges made this game way better.

The good became great, the great became insane, and the derpy got derpier (I'm always down for a good laugh so its all good). Here is a compilation of the first night of merges made by my outfit member (RIP SolTech - In our hearts forever):

Agreed, big battles, fights on multiple continents, even when a server with pop imbalance became a non issue because when Indar is locked, you are at 33/33/33 so you have equal number of players on all sides. Fun times.

Connery feels left out.

Still indarside with 20% VS pop every day.

Helios is the bee's knees now.

Can't be worse than Woodman.

The mergers have about killed the game for me. My laptop was only capable of playing the game in zerg free zones, and even then I was lucky to get 20-25 FPS. That meant Indar was almost 100% off limits to me. Now post-merge, Esamir has become just as crowded as Indar so 2 of the 3 continents are off limits to me. I'm consistently getting single digit FPS when I try to join bigger battles and sieges. I'm sure the population is great for people who have systems that can handle it, but it's been incredibly frustrating for me. Looks like the only way I'll be enjoying the game again is if I drop a lot of $ into a new gaming laptop.

sup halo. just posting to say I've been playing my TR since merge, incase we run into each other haha

Why a laptop? You pay twice the cost for half the performance of a desktop.

+1

good job with vid. made me laugh a few times

Dark Cloud was a cool game.

I might get shot down about this but in my opinion it seemed relatively fine on SolTech Indar before the merge. I know the other continents were kinda dead but at least Indar was balanced for the most part. Some days you'd see VS pushed to the warpgate, some days it would be the TR, and even NC up at the top would lose some territory. Everyone took turns losing some and most fights were long and drawn out the way they should be with large numbers going head to head.

Now it's almost as if the missile pods had just been released again. All I see now are hovering ESFs anywhere from 3-6 at a time missile podding bases to oblivion with AA and AA maxes having little to no effect. I rarely even see the ESFs reacting to AA fire at all. Sure one or two might go down from all of the AA firing together, but the waves of aircraft aren't suppressed at all.

Tank zergs are also a MORE common sight now than they were with many of them sitting hundreds of meters away and spamming bases indiscriminately killing anyone there.

The zergs are intense and can even be fun at times but I wouldn't be upset if they were limited somehow on all sides, at least for vehicles. The reason being that the fights become one sided and totally unbalanced/pointless while drawing in spammers, cert farmers, and less strategic players who could be spread out elsewhere to balance the fighting across the continent.

More players is great and all but only if some form of balanced gameplay holds together. This is just from what I've seen so far on Indar, and it may pan out eventually or even be completely balanced while I'm not on the server, but as far as I know this is how it's been whenever I get on.

Seeing a lot more air on Matherson. Feels like day one never ended. Though Python HE annoys me immensely again...and until that day I will continue using guided AV missiles on HE tanks without remorse. Perhaps I'll switch over to the Lancer if the damage is good enough.

Yep, same here. I use a lappy for most of my stuff and had been on gaming hiatus for about four years now...damn Planetside for sucking me in again.

Guess I'll have to make room in my life for a new desktop. It gets even worse when the CPU gets busy and generates heat like nobody's business. Doing a lot of standoff combat myself, and I'll probably have to switch to long range AV duty, guided missile duty and vehicle repair when the frames start to kick the bucket.

Playing on Woodman, the other designated low population server, also is a bad experience.

I agree, I've have had some really great battles since the merge. Helios always had decent fights, but I bet for the small pop servers, this has been a Godsend.

But I fear the downward spiral for the game has begun, on Helios, the NC zerg and NC pop advantage just gets bigger and bigger, it's headed to 50% later at night. For now, the saving grace is there are enough Terrans (VS seems to have 2nd largest pop) to keep at least Indar fightable. Esamir and Amerish are usually 50-70% NC pop while Indar is queue'd.

When I log in and see that, I either immediatly sit in the queue for Indar where the fight is even, or I log and play something else.

If the pop advantage keeps going one way like this, it will be time to fold shop. Evetually even the NC (or whatever faction is 50% on your server) will get bored too.

But for now, it's good. Hopefully that will hold so until Rome Total War 2 comes out.

Oh and it's getting old being warp gated every night on TR Helios.

lol, says the NC 50% pop'er.

I'm loving the game post-merge. All continents are now playable, I was getting really sick of Crowndar. Although the major downside is that post-merge ghost capping is over 9000, the system is borked.

Haven't seen ghost capping in a while. Apparently the other teams frown upon ghost capping and ********* it. No problems here :3

I think I'd like it if my framerate and connection didn't spaz out the moment I enter a combat zone. Seriously, I see a 30 frame drop just by looking South sometimes. It's all CPU bound, and my CPU is only at 30% usage.