Waterson im so disappointed!

Waterson was always a fairly balanced server after the tr pop went away. It was one of the most competitive most fun servers in the entire game. The server had such a fun history of great battles epic holds and other such stuff then came what i seen these past couple of weeks. The pop here now has joined this silly 4th faction bs. Today was the worst showing yet. Nc was winning an alert with a 36-38% world pop like ususal. Tr was holding 2 tech plants nc 4 vs 1. Then came the event that made me just shake my head with disgust.

The pop 4th factioned so badly that Tr couldnt even hold its techplant it defended 3 times on indar. The world pop went from 36-38% with other to having 30-31% range to 28%vs and 26%tr. Nc jumped to nearly 45% thus allowing them to steam role Hvar on the tr a base that was held so valiantly throughout many underpopulated battles during the alert.

Is this the kind of server we really want to become? One where all the play comes down to us switching to this degree and ruining the entire server. You Waterson players really need to think about this because you are going to ruin the greatest and most competitive server with that behavior

There's no reason to play on Waterson these days - its a sea of blue. At most, if TR and VS all run to Indar, that's the only continent that even has fair fights, while the rest turn all blue.

Where have you guys been? It only took a week after PU02 for the 4th faction to swing from TR to NC.

I think you missed the point Emmett. Up untill now the 4th faction while making you guys strong was never that severe. it was always 36 to 40% range if you won. This took it to a new level nearly half the server was on a single faction. This has gotten to the point where TR early super pop advantages. But the difference is this is during peak hours not off ones like where tr had those pops.

The 4th faction natively plays in the faction that has the top warpgate on Indar. When it's TR or NC, they overpop the other two factions, when it's VS, then pops are generally even on all three factions (though, because 4th factioners typically suck at the game, VS loses almost all alerts still anyway).

Same thing applies to alerts -- if TR or NC are about to win the alert, they'll get 5-15 % more pop then they had that'll disperse 10 minutes after the alert. VS almost never participate in alerts unless they're on Indar.

Been holding the line, as much as I can. Not giving up until the cap, but when you watch the room fill with scatter maxes and your team gets steamrolled into the ground, well, not much you can do at that point. Not sure what's so fun about 4th factioning.

Well Since SOE confirmed there is in fact No 4th faction, putting the figure of Faction switchers for alerts at about 1% based off their data, I think you guys are miles off the mark on this one.

"We looked the timeline trend of players who change characters on the same account, and found them to be about 1% of the population across all servers on a given day. They don’t all switch to the same faction, though they do tend to sway to one faction or another over the course of several hours. This does not account for multiple-accounts, but we are trying to get at that information too.

We are continuing to study the 4th faction, particularly how they related to logoff/logon rates, and longer-term switching such as those who follow particular warpgate rotations, and changes that occur around alerts starting and stopping."

If huge population swings where occurring there would be obvious data to show it. Given the large amount of Data SOE collects this would be childsplay to detect.

http://borderlinetactical.net/rsnc/world-population/?world_id=18&zoom=0
That is a lot of NC for waterson.

I think the TR are getting to feel what it was like to be NC for the last year.

What a change from last summer.

I dunno, it does seem there is a shift once the alert is all but won. Although there was a fair amount of strategery involved on Indar.

Wow...I wish that graph could overlay the times during which an alert was active. I'd be very interested to see if those big and very obvious spikes in NC population were at the time of an alert (probably are, just nice to have confirmation).

Yeah, but neither the NC or the VS have felt what it's like to have both of your factions gang up on us, even when you're the top pop!

There is no 4th faction.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/proof-there-is-no-4th-faction.173517/

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/4th-faction-1-of-population.172632/

Please, just stop.

And as one of the few of us who enjoy a good challenge, I welcome the NC with open fire!

Okay, sure, I'll just stop believing my eyes when I see the NC start an alert with 35-37% world pop and end that alert with 43-45%.

I been playing my VS on waterson lately, so it feels about the same to me..
Only difference being the tanks outside my spawn have only 1 barrel now.

Nothing you seen suggests that players are changing factions. You only see change in percentages.

EXCUSE ME???
clearly you forget what you and the NC did when TB played and the TR had 50% world pop

Doesn't really matter if it's 4th faction or not. The fact is that, on Waterson, NC are grossly overpopped, particularly during alerts, and it seriously impacts the playing experience there.

Thats great.
Threads spreading misinformation on what is happening does not help that.
People should look at what about alerts causes large population shifts and discuss that.