SOE, can you please answer one simple and neutral question?

What is the max number of players per continent? It was said something like 2000, but for now I find it hard to believe. More like about 600 when it's full.

And what made you come to this conclusion? I've been in fights where there were at lest 200 people present, not counting the rest of the continent.

I, too, have begun to wonder if they've started to scale it according to the number of online players. We've definitely got a few hundred just on comms alone fairly recently, but other times I arrive on a pop capped Esamir and can't find a single full squad, much less multiple platoons in each base as we've seen in previous years.

I'm not sure I believe it's a bad thing to scale it though; in fact, as solutions to issues we face with alerts etc, it's not a bad idea at all, aside from how unfair it is on those who can't make it onto the continent.

That doesn't make sense to me, and sounds like baseless rumor spreading.

The whole point of a communications team is that they should address baseless rumours to calm the playerbase. That's what they're being asked to do here.

It's not baseless either. I've run platoons of platoons since launch, and been involved with most major outfits on three factions; I get a really good sense of how many players are around and active, and whilst that number has dropped, locks still occur on continents that -feel- much more empty. Now that may be a side effect of lattice meatgrinding, of course, but that's why the question is being asked...

It's not about spreading the rumour, it's about getting an answer to a question that's clearly played on the OP's mind (and mine, and most of the other leaders I've spoken to)...

And there is never more than 3 ~200 people fights on 1 continent.

We've been asking for the same bit of honesty for nearly 10 years and never got a clear indication from Sony of how many people were on continent..until the servers went empty. You had to do some involved calculation when the continent was pop locked...besides a rumour is far harder to beat in a numbers game when the competition arrives. I look forward to the competition...it's been too long.

Might as well as some more speculation to the rumor mill: what would be the motivation for lowering the limit? The preceding comments indicate that some people are thinking it might be to help achieve more population balance (unless I misunderstood). If it has actually been lowered, it seems plausible to me that it could be an attempt to boost game performance, i.e. reduce lag and improve FPS.

I'll grab my tinfoil hat.

They can't create threads to respond to every stupid idea some fool dreams up to troll the forums with, they would be at it all day.

To me it seems like a rolling total. The warp queue staggers entry after a certain point for a period of time. Perhaps it is in this time that they are load balancing and bringing more resources to bear on the situation. There may be no maximum.

iirc the planetside 1 continent maximums were 500 (beginning) > 250 > 150 > 133 (end), these values reflecting different periods in the game's history.

Max number of players per continent: 1998
That's 666 players per faction.
Pretty sure thats right

666x3 for continent (x3 for server)

I always wondered if that 2000 limit was for every continent or for the server. Even if it's for the server, that's still a pretty big number. Though if it's by continent, here is hoping we get near that limit on some days!

During some alerts Ive had a short que to Indar lately, with at least 3 massive battles raging. Id say 600 something players per faction is still the cap. As far as scaling, if they did, then we wouldnt be seeing massive ghost cap zergs on Amerish and Esamir with that faction (*cough* TR *cough*) having 70% population.

how do you know that? do you participate in 6 battles simultaneously?

Your chances for a developer response are higher if you try the reddit PS2 section.

i like to see numbers of players in facilities not just 64+ vs 64+ look balance fight ^^
but when you look at % balance is 20% to 80% so it will be 100 vs 600 ^^ you will se 64+ vs 64 +

It's a shame /who has been disabled otherwise you'd actually be able to gather some hard numbers.

But back when it used to work(maybe a month or so after launch, not sure when /who was patched out), I used to use it every so often and I even made a thread talking about how /who could be used to gather actual live player statistics if you had the mind and time for it.

But anyway I'm rambling a bit, back when the command was available I'd see about 100-150 friendlies in even battles with all 3 sides taking part, so I'm guessing there'd be at least 300 people in 1 area in what I felt were the most populated fights. But it's hard to tell, my perception might be biased.

As a note for those of you that don't know /who would reveal the number of friendlies in the area.

666 per faction , per continent afaik.

Based on the asumption that you see some 48+ vs. 48+ on Miller while one faction only has 25% regional pop ( so >48 vs >144 ) + warpgate 48+ + 3-4 more locations with 48+ during alerts.
You can never know for sure tough.