Population for sure increased but I noticed something, and I don't know what it means :)

I was looking through some population statistics of PS2 (while mindlessly killing turrets),(there's a few sites that provide that information, if you're interested, just google "population planetside 2 charts" or something like that, and I noticed something.

First, over the past few months, there's been a very big increase in population, at least in relative terms (ie : % increase), since the average pop has more or less doubled, mostly "more" than "less" lol.

That's awesome, and as much as I hate to say it, well done devs and rest of the team, you must be doing something right ! I was really afraid you'd given up on this game, maybe the Arena failure was a blessing... Anyway....

What I noticed was the difference between 3 curves ; Max, Average, and Minimum is what really strikes you when you're looking at a graph.

What I mean is, before, like 6 months ago, there would tend to be let's say 2k population on a continent on average, and 2.5k max and 1.5k minimum, with a 500 difference, that's a 25% variation.

Whereas, lately, that varation is a lot bigger, which is to be expected, but its like 100% variation..

This may be totally normal, I've never studied statistics of this type and never took the time too look at them closely before, so I have no idea if it's normal or not..

And I know most people couldn't care less hahah, but there might be one or two nerds out there interested in this kind of thing + I have nothing better to do since I'm killing turrets

and these past days, especially today, for the first time in my life, I saw not only all continents open and loaded with players, but as soon as an Alert finished and locked the continent, it would instantly open again lol.

I swear I've never seen tthat, it's pretty cool

(this is on Cobalt)

One of your graphs has at least one literal Bell Curve in it. This is one of the most universally observed statistics there is in human behavior. Another is called the 80/20 rule that I won't apply here. What it tells you though is that we're just back in the MMO-Tourism circuit which is a Fickle b**ch let me tell yooouu.

It's not actually a positive "Trend" at all. It almost always ends in permanent overall decline (except for in a few exceptions like FinalFantasy14, Path of Exiles, and AlbionOnline currently). And When talking about Statistics, Trends are always more important than the 2 biggest "outlier" values. The trend in this case can actually be counterproductive to the goals of the Updates. And it would have been even worse if they hadn't allowed "EXCEPTIONS" to the Faction Balance queues when the server populations spike *really high*

....these Exceptions haven't actually even been explained yet, but we can still observe them sometimes when you see a population of 50% Vanu on Hossin but you're running into a LONG Queue as an NC player on Esamir where your faction only has 1% more of the population than Vanu on that particular continent (possibly based on which order they opened in???)


In any case, Queues are goddamned stupid how they're setup anyway.... Like Cyrious said in a video right before the update: the Devs should be basing it on territory control instead or something else more intuitive that would also create more positive trends for these Time-sensitive "Variations"

I find that really interesting. There's one point in particular though, that makes me have to ask, and I'm not denying or putting into question what you said, it's just that I don't see the reason for it in what you said, and that is :

--> why does "it tell you that we are back in the MMO-Tourism which is a fickle *****"?

-> Why isn't it a positive trend? / Why does it almost always end in permanent overall decline?

It’s going on a 8 year old game, I don’t think the update was that good at all, because all it did was promote big outfits and encourage zergfits and bullying, which is far more toxic than it’s ever been. As for the Soloist, their left doing that, scavenging.

Meanwhile, great, lots of players returned, the bigger question, are they spending? Are they buying memberships? Are they putting money into the game? Is the heart and wallets of the community opening up?

Or are all the returning players just taking advantage of a free game and sucking up server space? To be honest the new update for me has been bleak with the wallet staying closed often.

This was a great update. What about solo players? They can do whatever they want just like before. You can't add much to solo players who are just running around in circles in bases for better KDR on lowest settings. This game needs to focus on big open field battles, outfits and teamplay.

Higher pop always means more money, even if you want discredit it. This time we have all kind of new and returning players.

I took out a mentor squad on Cobalt NC yesterday. Most of who came from the Spiffing Britt stupidity event.

It was very hard if not near impossible to defend the "Space **** can fire into a spawn" or even why it's in the game. ( Still can't find an official comment on this being a bug or not )

These guys were of the just passing through type. Very few wanted to team play on any level. Out of the full squad over two hours two said they may stay. This is so very important for our future, as it always was.

Because tourists have a tendency to go to the next tourist location. And a sudden drop in population, even if it goes back to the levels before the update, is felt as a bad thing causing more people to leave.

Solo players are the core of the game. Squads, platoons and outfits have been mishandled since the beginning and are more a burden than a positive thing.

This is how you get players to go for good and solid teamwork and get even the average player to create increasingly elaborate tactics:
Solo player-->meets allies who he can work together with (requires mechanics and features. Currently you are in competition with each other over kills rather than playing together)-->allies who complement you will encourage you to create squads and platoons-->If such squads and platoons persist an outfit is created.

Each time the choice for doing any teamwork comes from the player getting something out of it immediately and without having to exclude other players. Even in a squad or platoon the next random player could still do teamplay with you. The choice to form a squad, platoon or outfit is because the players find someone to play together with and want to make it easier to keep doing this, rather than making the squad/platoon/outfit a mandatory thing to do the bare-bones of teamwork (voice-comms and sticking together a bit).

PS2 currently does this:
Form a squad/platoon/outfit-->teamplay I guess?
Previously most players joined for at least some idea of wanting to belong. Now they'll join to try and get the benefits of OS's, ANVIL's (which are mismanaged ofcourse so no one uses them due to item limits favoring OS's and such), Steel Rain and Bastions. A big problem here is that it's in the hands of the outfit leaders to use them, and the gross masses will only really benefit when a Bastion is pulled and they get to... Pull a free vanilla ESF... Great.
The biggest problem with this sytem is that "teamplay" is basically one guy screaming in a microphone while no one else can communicate with the guy right next to him for fear of making it impossible to hear the screaming guy and then all 12+ players just doing the same thing to out-zerg someone.


So your question "what about solo players?": Current system does not allow them to continue as before as there's a bunch of superweapons over their heads they can't use themselves and forces these solo players either into a zergfit where they'll be a number to be screamed at or they get to leave the game (or try to stick with it while getting nuked and zerged). They could instead be handed tools to work together. Any two players who meet should look at each other's class and instantly have an idea of how they can actively complement each other beyond "we both shoot at the same target and hope that I get the kill". If a player dies then the next person who walks into the room should be a perfect candidate to play together with. You should always be able to amplify each other in some way, and mixed groups of classes should be one of the most powerful things rather than 3 medics, 2 engineers and 1 Infiltrator for an entire platoon of Heavies. Squads, platoons outfits... They aren't encouraging teamwork, they are encouraging segregation. You don't work together with randoms, people from other squads, other platoons or other outfits (aside from one leader telling another "I'll zerg this lane you do that one"). This is the sin of current "teamwork" design.

What do you mean by that? I don't understand..

Bastion carriers can kill everything inside a spawn room. Over and over and over and over.... If you revive those killed you do not receive xp.

It was on the PTS in this form for a while, it was listed as a bug by players only. I can't find any reference to it by staff as a bug or intended.

Logically therefore it's left for older players to explain to new players it's a feature even if we don't know why.

oh wow ok, never heard of that one before.

(I never stay in the spawn room anyway I'm not saying it doesn't suck, of course it does but .. you know what I mean )

I'm a returning player from the very early days, coming from a 5y "break". Tbh the new Escalation-update got me hooked, and with all the time that passed I hoped some of the issues this game had since its creation would be solved. What I found was a game that focused even more on infantryzerging (some call it "teamwork"). Redeployside hasn't been fixed. Force multipliers like vehicles have been heavily nerfed, but can still be spammed. The airgame on Cobalt has changed for the worse. The only good thing for me is my new PC that is finally able to run PS2 with decent fps even in larger battles. I'll stick around for a couple more days/weeks I guess, but at the current time I doubt it will be for longer, and I certainly won't invest money into the game again.

Maybe one way of putting it (I was playing in the early days too but my "breaks" were shorter ), maybe one way of putting is it is that it used to be more of a "combined arms / tactical / strategy / open world sandbox / action game, whereas , now, it's more like "arcade combined arms shoot em up"

I would put it to a change in evils.

At launch you had a semblance of combined arms, with infantry, tanks and aircraft being able to fight alongside each other, but it being massively unbalanced with easy to achieve and drive tanks being able to kill infantry in droves without them being reasonably able to defend themselves, the most obvious of which being Prowlers stopping entire platoons with just 1 or 2 MBT's or PPA Magriders blocking area's no matter how large an infantry force you brought.

This has slowly been changed for segregation rather than combined arms. Walls were build to protect infantry against tanks, and for all the reduced AOE on tanks in the end it is the infantry that suffered as the infantry AV weapons now need more shots at shorter range and more times to expose themselves to OHK fire in order to kill tanks, while tanks are no longer punished for bringing an AI main gun. On top of that the practically non-existant strategy in the game has simply shifted from "zerg/ghost cap towards your goal" to redeployside and still zerging. Any teamplay that has been won over the years has been lost on the other end with the increasing focus on segregating players from other players who arent in their squad/platoon/outfit. How terrible is it that the very thing that is supposed to be teamwork is actually the biggest segregation tool the game has promited? And 95% of the strategy in the game that is being excercised is "get more guns pointed at the same enemy". Its the barest of bones teamwork, its pathetic and held back by all the people who applaude the current system of squads, platoons and outfits.

We need alternatives to voice-comms. Only one player can talk at a time and present information or orders to their players, which is a sin against teamplay if you have 48 players in a platoon who could be sharing information with each other if we had easily accessible visual and contextual orders. Or the fact that classes barely interact with each other, and when they do one is closer to a butler who looks at you to repair/heal/revive.

I'm not pissed at you, I'm pissed that the game hasnt progressed in terms of teamwork despite trying. I'm pissed that players keep promoting player segregation as teamwork. I'm pissed that simple additions could already help teamwork, but they are either ignored or added as gated options for outfits instead of boosting the game for everyone. Just imagine what a steel-rain ability could do for every random, squaddy and platoon player if anyone could activate it under circumstances to create flanks or circumvent chokepoints. Or how useful it would be for teamplay if someone could set up an ANVIL area to give alternative vehicle spawnpoints and allow defenders better access to vehicle spawns. Or unlocking free ANVIL and steel rain usage when you are fighting outnumbered to make it fun and engaging to be outnumbered.
Missed opportunities, lacking options encouraging players to do teamplay. They should finally get working on what works, not on the segregation players keep asking for.

MMO-tourism is one of the worst trends for a Role/Class based MMO to ever get stuck in. Dark Ages of Camelot actually lost nearly all its pop in a couple years time due to how it reverberated with other unfortunate events. A lot of what Devs use to balance and set incentive systems in a multiplayer game is Metrics and huge uncertainty or what's referred to as "punctuated equilibrium" in science tracking Adaptiveness .... is very adversely affected by MMO tourism. It first puts a big demand on limited resources leading to waste later, and it also gives a sense of false security which is one of the worst traps to fall into. You can't just widen a bunch of arteries for example, and then let the blood pressure drop to 1/3rd later and still expect everything to work as designed.

Social incentives SCALING always has, and always will be the biggest thing that MMO devs always get wrong. There is no reliable test server for future scaling Metrics based in a calculable reality, only Hindsight. And players who only show up to play for a week or two are the whole reason we can't have nice things like way more Sub based MMO's or Buy to Play stuff anymore

So, returning players come back for the awesome big fights the game had back in the day.
But after a little while, they notice that all big fights are destroyed by space laser spam and a flying brick.

Add to that the performance and latency problems and all the things which used to work but are now broken (e.g. voice).

How long will such players stay before leaving again?

I really like the idea behind the Bastion. It's just its implementation that (like a lot of other stuff in this game) leaves much to be desired. Yesterday we had a nice 48vs48 TR vs NC fight at an Amp Station. It was a good bit back and forth and felt a lot like "the old days". I played a bit of infantry and a bit of Harasser, pretty fun. Until a VS Bastion showed up and farmed the sh*t out of both TR and NC. Perhaps the devs get it right at some point, but in my experience they break as much stuff as they fix. For example I noticed yesteday that they completly broke the M40 Fury. Yes, it was an owerpowered weapon when it was first released, but now it's simply not worth taking anymore. Now I'd take the Halberd any day of the week. Same as the M30 AH. The huge dps nerf combined with the thermals nerf keeps me from using this weapon now.