[Suggestion] The fourth faction is alive and well on Emerald

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Gammit, Nov 15, 2014.

  1. Gammit

    [IMG]


    Hey, SOE. This is not worth my subscription price anymore. I don't knock the players; they're just doing what's fun. In fact, much respect for the TR for not just mossie farming and spawn camping. SOE, come up with much better incentives not to join the zerg herd.

    Among this, the still-present eject button bug, and the lack of content to keep high-BR players for a nearly a year (including but not exclusively any meta game), I won't be renewing my subscription. The few scraps of certs and station cash, the small discount at the store, and priority queue is not worth my money anymore. It would be much better spent buying a $3 hat once a month.

    There. Constructive.
    • Up x 2
  2. RykerStruvian

    Was this the alert that just happened? I was fighting as NC on there, fighting TR somewhere (some old biolab). I didn't check the pop before I left though.
  3. Gammit

    Yes. The NC had most of its population in the Biolab with you, which was completely cut off from all friendly territory. You can see it on the far east side of the map.

    But at least the Biolab stayed blue.
    • Up x 2
  4. AFK1

    I don't know why anyone would play the NC anymore. SOE has made it abundantly clear that they hate the NC, and the NC is not allowed to have fun
  5. Dieter Perras

    SOE should focus on making the game more fun rather then more competitive as with population imbalances the game is never going to be completely fair so trying for an absolutely perfect competitive game isn't going to work. However if they focused on making the weapons funner to use and more engaging to get attacked by then the game would see more improvement.

    That's my two cents at least.
    • Up x 2
  6. Rovertoo

    A real good idea I read somewhere (I'd give credit if my memory wasn't so bad!) was to implement spawn time increases for overpopped faction, according to the hex/region they're in. So a 55% to 45% pop would be minimal spawn increase, but 80% would be massive spawn time increase.
  7. Mezramort

    NC have the most fun empire specific stuff and most diverse weapon choices of all factions and the least duds that aren't worth using.

    If you're not having fun on NC, you're not going to have any fun on the other factions, and especially not TR.
  8. RykerStruvian

    Turns out it was Hayd Skydock. But still, I had a ton of fun. Love Hossin.

  9. Tommyp2006

    Well, except for the Pheonix, which frequently literally shoots duds.
    • Up x 2
  10. SpartanZero

    The arising an obvious issue is, free accounts, free character/faction switching. Switching factions should have a lockout timer (2-4 hours) for the account. Just as well, the game should have had a purchase requirement, with free 2 play/subscription monthly option for "perks". This wouldn't stop the multi-user account players from simply purchasing a second or third account to setup alt faction characters for the tryhard diehards. It would reduce the degree of 4th factioning by a large portion of the playerbase, as well foster more incentive to picking a faction to be loyal too.

    I'm sorry to see players leave, in any format. Mostly from a shared opinion on what could be an awesome FPS experience. I'm not calling for the desire for Planetside 1 with modern graphics FPS fluidity, but it did have more robust thought out features that gave players more a sense of achievement, of strategy/cooperation paying off, just as well the small scale tactical work, the niche for spec ops to have a part behind the lines. A simple but effective logistics framework that also played an integral role to the ebb an flow of battles, so those epic 2 or 3 hour battles over a single major facility carried that great sense of pride in success.

    Hopefully after the PS4 port, this game will get back on track.
    • Up x 1
  11. Alarox

    The fourth faction exists only in your imagination.

    1.) "People keep changing factions to the winning team during alerts!"

    The number of players who switch factions every day represent ~1% of the population as confirmed by SOE.

    2.) "People keep changing their main character to the FOTM faction!"

    If you watch the population charts each faction consistently hovers within a few percent of exactly 1/3 population at primetime. If you look at the population totals, no drops in a faction's population correlate with spikes in another faction's population. Additionally, the populations for your server aren't representative of all servers. Just because one faction has the least/most on that server it doesn't make it the case for other servers.
    • Up x 1
  12. Gammit

    Sources?
  13. Gammit

    I also think the closer you are to your warpgate, the more powerful your defense should become. Whether this is in a health/shield/armor boost, a discount on all consumables (or the opposite: consumables become more expensive the further from the warpgate you get), there are things other games have done to help mitigate this.
    • Up x 1
  14. gibstorm

    Huh?? one continent?? At off peak times is the whole game??

    Right now there is a 1% difference in world population on Emerald
  15. Alarox

    There was a developer thread a while back by (I think) Malorn where he addressed the "4th faction". There he says that only 1% of the population changes factions on a daily basis.

    You can watch population trends on the Sirisian or Borderline Tactical sites.
    • Up x 2
  16. ScrapyardBob

    It wouldn't have for long, TR was setup in force on the SCU shield generator when the alert ended. NC defense was a joke at that point.

    And the population balance has nothing to do with 4th faction -- and everything to do with people logging off (that alert started after 11pm eastern) or just going to another continent once they started losing. That's been proven over and over with graphs showing how faction pops drop off during an alert once it starts to get lopsided.

    SOE needs to add more XP incentives for the lower pop factions on a continent to attack the higher population faction. With a second incentive for attacking the faction with the most territory. So during an alert where NC has 20%, VS has 30% and TR has 50% population:

    TR - gets no additional bonus
    NC - gets +60% bonus for killing / taking something belonging to the population leader
    VS - gets a +40% bonus for killing / taking something belonging to the pop leader (TR)

    When TR has 80% territory and NC has 10%? NC should get a +70% bonus (on top of the pop bonus) for taking territory away from TR. They should get a +35% bonus for fighting on TR controlled territory.
  17. ScrapyardBob

    That's what "local resources" are supposed to do - but SOE is about 18 months late on delivering on that promise.

    A single spawn-tube should only be able to spawn in 6 players per minute long-term. With an initial buffer that allows up to 18 within the first minute of action. Engineers should be able to place a deployable (instead of being able to place their turrets) on the side of the tube that boosts that sustained spawn rate to 9 players/minute and there should be something that attackers can destroy that cuts the spawn-tube regen rate by 50%.

    Sunderers should have a similar limit (including squad members spawning into the vehicle). A burst buffer of 18 within the first minute, then only 6/minute after that. If a second "generator" sunderer is parked near the deployed sunderer, that can be boosted to 12/minute.

    A single spawn tube or single sunderer should not be capable of spawning in a full 48+ platoon within 30 seconds. That should only be possible if there are multiple sunderers in place - or at a facility with 6 or 8 spawn tubes.
    • Up x 1
  18. Elrobochanco

    http://www.therebelscum.net/rsnc/world-population/?world_id=17

    Populations don't move from one faction to another, They just leave one and stay gone. Players log off in waves on all factions at roughly the same times, just losing factions bleed more.

    The reason people think the 4th faction exists is that the population graph in game is population per faction as % of all players rather than of the maximum for that specific faction (that is when 50 NC players log off, both TR and VS population % goes up even though no new players log on).
  19. Gammit

    That's not a bad idea either.
  20. Gammit

    Thanks for the link, what you said makes sense looking at this.