So I'm currently in a clan that players all fractions or atleast some members move fractions.. I would prefer it if people stuck to one fraction and played that instead of going other fractions because NC are getting wiped 24/7 and could use the help. But I also get why people want to move fractions mid game. Maybe a friend comes on and they want to join them at TR or whatever But With that in mind how do you guys deal with stuff on pc? Does a lot of fraction outfits move to other fractions and go from one to another? Or do they just stay dedicated to one fraction? I bought some stuff for NC, got auraxium armour directives done and other stuff. All in the name of NC but then most people just move fraction and we lose anyways. But For example 4th fractioning seems common or atleast I seen somebody the other day spawning out sunders 1 after another and another so we lose spawn points. Went to spawn on a tank and had no points left but 4+ sunders everywhere with 2-3 quad bikes piled up at bio downstairs. Then see a guy trying to blow up the sunders after he's spawn them out. Is this a thing? With all that I feel like they should lock fractions so once you play a fraction and the game has started for 6+ hours you can't just swap? And haven't I wait till continent gets wiped. I get people say well I change fractions based on how populated they are, the least populated and I either leave or move to that fraction to help it out. Let's be honest that most leave. When it's a close win nobody wants close so they leave and join another fraction then overrun everyone. It confuses me because I am still rather new at a month and a half but see people swapping fractions, 4th fractioning all the time and just moving fractions throughout the game based on who's winning. i still haven't bought invisable for my sunder because people can just move fraction and see where it is and then go back to other fraction and find it and kill it? Stuff like this confuses me so maybe you can clear it up?
Well, for starters, drop the "r" that shouldn't be in the word "factions." We also have natural movement of players and characters on the PC's. Some people prefer a degree of faction loyalty and some don't care. Recently, we also have the NS mercenary faction that's supposed to assist the low population standard factions, but that would-be solution is rife with its own complications. The best answer is, I suppose, that we don't really deal with it. There are no great insights to offer.
4rth factioning is a much smaller problem than it seems. When you look at population numbers you can see when a faction is losing that it loses members but barely any of those who leave join another faction. The reason the losing faction starts to lose more is simply because the population drops. As for forcing faction loyalty, it is very important for players to experience other factions.
i just go and continiue playing, it doesn´t bother me ... factionflipping in alerts does not help the player as the less time you spent with a faction during a alert the less you´ll be rewarded .. so if people choose to swap faction mid alert purely for winning ..... meh whatever ... still it can very well happen that people who switch to the winning faction may lose in the end for various reasons .. could well be that in the last 35 min or so the winning faction got doubleteamed hard ... ... sooo factionswitching for this is not gurante .. there is no need to enforce factionloyalty, ultimateley this is a game you play for enjoyment, it´s a sandbox, everyone plays how she/he prefers it ... let´s not limit that freedom ..
I play the 4th faction but prefer to jump to whoever is the least populated/losing. The only exception is social reasons, e.g. playing with a group of friends.
If you're new, yeah stick to a single faction. Get all "tribed up" and excited about it. It's a fun aspect of the game. Eventually though you'll sort of finish the content for one faction, or get close to it. You may decide to explore the toys others are playing with. The veterans that have been around for a long time have done this more than once. Many have maxed out characters on multiple factions. They also introduced the NS faction which is of interest to these folks. What not to worry about: Someone finding your cloaked sundy by faction switching and blowing it up. Has it ever happened? Sure. It's rare enough that most people have never seen it happen. Definitely don't consider it an actual factor in gameplay. Same thing about people switching to the "winning" faction during alerts. The loser reward for a full alert is higher than the winner reward for a partial alert so they don't really gain anything. Some folks will switch to their "main" at the start of an alert, but they do so at the start to maximize ISO and certs. Most multifaction players I know of switch to follow the lowest pop. They prefer no queue times, and more people to shoot at.
While it's slightly irritating, I suspect some or most people who do it are more interested in joining more active fights, at times when such population shifts occur the lowest population can still win alerts because the higher 2 just end up fighting each other more. It might be an issue that sort of resolves itself so I don't know that any sort of "fix" needs implementing.
I play all 3 empires generally equally. When I first login, I always go for the faction with the lowest pop unless a friend is playing on another then I'll join them
Thanks for your answers. especially Jibba. I can agree that most just want a good time, they do switch fractions but not for the purpose of finding sundies or enemy or to wreck the game but merely to cure Boredom. I have seen NC level 12s with same outfit name as the enemy who team kill us but it's only happened once. In clan group on ps4 it's confusing as one guy mains tr but plays NC and since we are NC outfit you would be slightly confused as a new player thinking well I'm asking for NC players to come on and give us a hand but have TR in chat as well. He does however play tr and NC and vs and is pretty good. My logic was well why do we have tr watching what we do. But I don't think it's like that. I guess if you're in an outfit and some members play other fractions it's difficult. You would think they would all play the same fraction to win but most want to try other stuff and just have fun. I think it's safe to say that some do 4th fraction troll but it's not as big as I thought.
I admit I will 4th faction all the time, I'm mainly a lone wolf player and if Tr is basically just ghost capping because all the Nc and Vs are in a juicy biolab fight. I'm gonna log onto them and join in the fun. Otherwise this game can have long spats of boredom, and that's bad in a shooter game. It's also important to see the game in the other factions shoes and trying out the faction while they're getting double teamed you'd might think it's because the factions ****.
Yeah! I seen 2 level 12s today destroying sunders or should I say team killing 2 sunders.. ceres is kinda meh so I just logged off and forgot about it. Lately I've been rather bored with planetside. Ghost capping is rather meh also and if your not careful it can be a long boring ghost cap vs ghost cap fight, never thought of 4th fraction verses the ghost cappers. Interesting!
