SOE tell us this is FUN !

From Connery NC with no love whatso-freaking-ever

This is fun right... shell we just get rid of a faction or maybe two?

If you want NC to pwn everybody else you should consider changing server to Cobalt
Every server has it's own overpopulation problems. The best solution would be to allow players from overpopulated factions to change servers (for free).

I don't want to "pwn" ...i want some resemblance of FUN, but consonantly forget that SOE is in charge, so people are not allowed to have any. You are either bored to death ghost zerging or can't leave warpgate.

And if you ask SOE what's up with this crazy imbalance, they will tell you "that after looking at numbers, they can say there is no problem". Because just like measuring average temperature across the hospital patients, all factions appear to be evenly represented (at least during blue moon, under a magic tree sprinkled with pixie dust and while riding a unicorn).

There is another thread going on forumside where the foundation of some arguments is that TR never wins on Connery.

Typical Forumside.

Each faction goes thru over pop to under pop moments depending on time of day and days or weeks. I have seen it bad for extended periods (continuous days) but it always turns around eventually. Its frustrating to not be able to find a good fight where you have at least some chance of success, but sometimes that is not available and only spawn camped bases exist for your faction. It is what it is.

It doesn't look fun at all, along with the very many myriad and uncountable other things in this game that aren't 'fun' unless you are the exploiter doing them.

And the answer is always the same - if you are not enjoying playing a game, in this case this one, then go and play another one.

I can understand wanting to enjoy this game and persisting, but persistence turns into futile masochism and you'll just enjoy it less and less.

Go and install something you have never played before and savour the sensation of playing a good game that delivers the enjoyment that this from of entertainment should.

My current recommendation is - State of Decay.

Unless of course you are an exploiter and the population imbalance is ruining your exploiting. Then maybe an invisible sniper running around backstabbing with a silenced SMG?

We can ignore the population on Esamir. Probably some leftovers from after the lock who are going around exploring the continent. There needn't be more than just one person on the continent to have 100% of the population.

Looking at BorderlineTactical for Connery last night/this morning, the NC were actually paced with the TR for most of the evening, maybe +50 logins at some points on average, while the VS were almost always higher population than either of the other factions. At around midnight EST (9PM PST), the NC numbers started to drop and they typically hung about -25 of the TR. Meanwhile, all populations followed the hourly trend as well. The TR lost a number of players at 3AM EST (midnight PST) and then kept pace with the NC again while the VS stayed dramatically populated by comparison. The NC actually were slightly greater than the VS during the middle of the afternoon yesterday.

The TR held third place in population for the most of the whole day and you can see how most of the trends correspond to which two of the factions are competing with the NC: very early into yesterday evening, it's the NC and TR for second place, later it's the NC and VS for first place, it then becomes very muddled in the late evening to erly morning hours, finally going back to NC and TR for second place.

The NC have no excuse for the kind of poor showing your images demonstrate against anyone but the VS.

I have to say that the continent capping appears to create a "meta" game (witnessed a great decision yesterday to cap Amerish immediately after VS capped Esamir during an alert) but that this "meta" appears to involve all the factions ghost capping different continents. So, there may be more 'meta' game but there is less 'game' game.

Depends on the time of day, really. Log on some other time and find the NC dominating.

The only issue with NC on connery is that no one has really stepped up to plate to fill the hole that the old 666th left. Just a shadow of their former glory now. Recursion is basically the best outfit in the NC, possibly the server or even game comparing size to other factions, but they are under 100 IIRC and can only do so much.

ADK has its moments, but they basically try to collect anyone they can and hope to herd cats. It generally doesn't work, but they mean well.

Meanwhile vanu have future crew with some amazing players but moderate coordination, and TR have dreadlegion who seem moderately skilled at the least but always very well placed on the map.

Since this was posted at around 2am I'm going to assume this is a poor representation of the pop on Connery. The VS on Emerald generally run with 42%+ world pop after midnight. It is what it is.

I play NC connery and I don't have any complaints. I mean ya the pop advantage swings wildly during the off hours but that is to be expected. There are so few players online in the middle of the night that it doesn't take much to look like some huge population in balance. I logged on one morning at like 4 am and out of all the unlocked continents I found one fight with more than 1-12 vs 1-12. So basically during peak hours the pop seems fine and during the off peak hours it does what literally every other MMO does, dies down.

Making the wild assumption that you took these at prime time and not 2:00 AM... So?

What are they supposed to do about it?

Locking factions sounds great if you are getting rolled, but forumside would explode with people furious over "spending money and then not being allowed to make character X on server Y!" or what not.

When you have a game this large in scale, this will happen.

It isn't fun for you then I would suggest you don't play at these times and make an alt on another server to play during these time. I would hope that you don't add to the problem on another server by going the overpop faction but it is up 2 you, so pick a faction you can enjoy and play Connery at different times when its more even.

PS2 players tend to be like water. They follow the path of lest resistance, not all but most. So what happens is they know they will win battles so push the underpop faction to get some feel good wins. All factions do it and when 2 underpop factions attack each other like this it lets the overpop faction stomp all of them.

If I get rolled at a base, it means my weapons are UP, your weapons are OP, my faction is underpop/sucks and yours is overpopped/MLG.

I wonder sometimes why people play this game. In general I play a PVP game to have a fun battle with other players, but it seems often that I am in the minority.

Like the OP I often see large 50+ zergs chasing empty bases, even if there is another branch with 0 population, they most often will not split up and take it. It is some form of path of least resistance and some laziness I would say. But in the end of the day say you spend an hour capping empty or nearly empty bases, are you really having fun. What is even more ironic is often in those zergs you will see yell chat talking about how boring it is, and they want a battle.

Anyways with the way many players play I suggest this. Lets make one server for each region that only has one faction, NS faction. They can use the new cont locking/flipping mechanic and just chase around empty bases till they cap a cont, then another cont is unlocked and reset and they can continue till whatever point in time they see fit. They can rack up there certs, and use them to upgrade whatever, even though they sit in large zergs in empty bases and have no use for upgrades anyways.

But on a serious note OP I agree I see this every day, large imbalances that get even larger and wonder why these people play the game at all? Don't you play the game for fun? Is that fun? I dont know maybe its just me.

Definitely need to focus your pop if you're spread out like that and losing. Really if players play properly pop problems pretty much disappear, since the two underdogs gang up on the leader and (barring 51%+ leader pop) things become relatively balanced.

So if that isn't happening then either your empire or the other underdog are doing things wrong, and earning the loss you all deserve.

Oh for once Connery NC isn't high populated, guess all the NC kids are out camping.

Connery NC has never really been organized, even with +45% pops, they lose territory more than VS at 28% pops do.

if there were sanctuaries and not home warpgates on every continent this wouldn't be a problem. It should honestly be a rare thing to have all 3 factions fighting over the same sontinent in this game if it were to work correctly.

The problem is with the way gamers are nowadays. They want everything for very little effort or time put in. Which is why you see so many games getting dumbed down further and further from their original counter parts.
Which is also why you see PS2 going down the road it did go down.

Take Call of Duty for example or even Battlefield.

Call of Duty, Call of Duty United Offensive and Call of Duty 2 were some of the best of the series both single player and multiplayer. After those the series just started to get dumbed down and watered down further and further.
Then take the Battlefield series and Battlefield 1942...one of the greatest of the series IMHO and with the Forgotten Hope mod added on was the best multiplayer FPS games I had played of the series. And now look at the series.. a shadow of its former self and catering to the ADD infected kiddies..much like COD is now.

One reason...

This is what the modern gamer has become. They want everything handed to them with no effort put in to get it..hence people pouring into the overpop faction just to steamroll a continent..they want to win with no effort and to them that is "fun", though I personally don't see how it is.. Also why you see them pull out or run the minute any kind of resistance is started against them.

And what is worse is SOE keeps catering to this group of players over and over again.

CWorth - you are for real? Yes, it's a problem of me wanting to have something to do with my character that I've invested so much time in that is a problem. After all, i can just go "CWorth" style on them and zerg the other factions by myself. Because that's what CWorth would do.

TeknoBug - not for once, NC has been underpoped for a while now, but i dont care about just underpop. What i care about is that LOCKING+Latice+ faction imbalance = nothing to do in PS2. And no - switching faction or joining another server isn't a solution.

I think one of the major problems is the collapsing server population and server mergers. Connery gets a ton of Asian players at night nowdays (who mostly play VS) and some outfits that moved from other servers to start fresh on Connery (because their servers were low pop) are also adding to the problem.

Idle

- it's not a solution, its workaround and a bad one. Investing so much time to unlock all the fun things for the faction i wanted to play only to be forced to abandon the character? I don't really choose the time i can play, it's when i have spare time (mostly at night).