And we're losing pop again. Predictable yes, but it just proves escalation update is just like the others: disappointing. The devs don't listen to the community, don't fix any of the problems that caused players to bleed out, and then expect them to stick around after poorly executed updates. Really, did the devs think adding mass spawn-camping tools for a few outfit leaders was going to be amusing for everyone? If anything, it made the problems worse. Bastions go around killing all the spawns in fights, shoot through the spawn and wipe out everything, as a result, all the enemies redeploy elsewhere. The bastion is basically invincible, it wrecks havoc on all fronts, even in fights with no adjacent lattice. As a result, the fights when a bastion is online just end up disappearing. People spam orbitals to get as many kills as possible, with no regard to friendlies and strategy. Really, people complain about hesh and spawn camping and zerging, the devs bring out more stuff to encourage this. If being 1hk from a thing you can't even hide/fight back against sounds fun to you, great. Unfortunately, most of the players don't seem to enjoy this, which is why we're already losing pop. At the end of the day, Planetside 2 will be Planetside 2. People who stuck around since beta will continue to stick around (or will they?) despite the horrible direction the game is taking, but we can't expect to actually keep player influx by simply hyping up undesirable content, and not fixing the main flaws of the game. Patches like these are band-aids applied next to the wound, in a fruitless attempt to stop the bleeding. https://ps2.fisu.pw/population/
well the pop trend for sure seems to be decreasing since like 1 month ago. I'm not surprised, I think a lot of people tried the game because of good marketing and communication, that some of them, or many of them decide not to stay, or rather, the reason they don't stay, now that would merit a huge mega super long wall of text of a thread imo
Hmm the servers still seem very busy - i'm not disagreeing about 'issues' and it's possible (probable) that the population will decline but around 10000 players or more hasn't been seen for a good many years. Fair to say this update has attracted more than any others - player retention will take a while to assess (personally I still think any genuinely new player would have a hellish new player experience and probably won't hang around long but that's just my opinion). Edit: Although it does make a welcome change to shoot someone from an elevated position and not have them instantly turn to face followed by multiple headshots - at least occasionally
They are busy, it's just the trend he was pointing out, or at least, that I was looking at, and it's been declining since the launch of escalation, if you click on his link, you'll see a graph, you can then choose to "zoom in" or "zoom out" from 1 day to 1 month to 1 year etc
They actually encouraged bullying with Zergfits and spawn camping is something they never addressed, plus some factions are just completely mismatched with certain weapons. I think many players played for free and just jammed up server space and didn’t spend a dime, good riddance to them. It was a lackluster update that I found was unexciting and the true essence of the game lies in the solo player, most of the time you are genuinely alone fighting.
A decline is nothing unexpected. Planetside 2 has a steep learning curve for beginners. And as time goes by, it get only steeper since newbies face 8 (?) years veterans knowing every corner of the bases, capable to milk every shot of their weapons and well versed in clientside, ADADing, crouchspamming, chugging restokits and so on. Yes, Recursion has attracted many. But only an handful will stay. As usual. I still remember Wrel talking in his videos about player retention...
No one, including RPG, expected everyone to stay. Every single MMO in existence see a spike in activity then decline after a big update. Good thing for RPG though, the game is still very much active and there is no mass exodus to be seen. Naturally they need to keep working at it but this is an excellent start. Plus, I think most PS2 players expected some bumps in the road given there have been no vehicle like the Bastion in PS2. Indeed, I never expected them to nail it on the execution on the first try. So, no, this was no big surprise nor proof everyone hates Escalation. And there's this... They are posting new job openings at RPG because things good right now. People are spending, people are playing. More devs better game and bigger updates!
just thought of something, there's (finally) some PvP MMOs out or coming out (I'm thinking of red dead redemption 2, or Last Oasis, plus other MMROPGs out or coming out soon or soonish. It's possible that players will move to that kind of game. I know I will, just need to "finish up" one or two things here first hahah, but generally, for the past year or two, I've been playing PS2 mainly because I had nothing else to play.
I know it’s unrealistic to expect everyone who came to check out the game to stay. But the whole point of hyping these updates is to get people to come, and at least get a few of them to stay. A lot of people came to check the game out again. Some of my favorite og Planetside youtubers and friends I haven’t seen in years cane back for a few weeks. Yeah, they all remembered the games glory days, but they’re not sticking around. I’m not talking about one or two guys here, at least 60 people who I hadn’t seen in years came back but aren’t going to stick around.And that’s the overall trend. You see, population spikes after updates are normal, and so are decreases after the spikes. Planetside 2 however doesn’t manage to retain anything from those spikes, in fact, after most population increases, the population quickly decreased to become even less than before. That’s not healthy. What’s worse is that many of these players used to play in beta, and have since left the game. Despite this, they still continue to give the game a chance after almost every update. The fact that the devs can’t even retain players who are interested in the game is a pretty big issue; how can we expect new players to stay when not even past players want to? I would work on fixing the core problems that are the reason population left (the CAI, battle flow) before releasing more garbage. Really, it’s understandable that not all players stay past the hype phase. But that even less players want to play after such updates is a big red flag, no? As for the video. Yeah, allegedly a few spots are opening up at dbg. Don’t get too excited though. Most of these jobs aren’t permanent. For large tasks, the devs hire a bigger team, and then fire them once the big project is over (this have happened plenty of times during the games history). Also, I have nothing against that YouTuber, but he’s been wrong a couple times about subjects like this. One more thing I’d like to add is that most countries have established a quarantine. There’s not much else people do but play video games when they are confined in their home all day. The servers have been terrible, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the devs hired extra help to fix some poor netcode and try to give the servers a much needed boost. Really, just because they are hiring doesn’t mean those jobs are permanent, and it doesn’t even mean the company is doing well. Many times have more people been hired in an attempt to save a company, but just ended up further dooming it instead. Take Planetside arena as an example. Loss of revenue, lots of hired devs, lots of nothing, lots of layoffs. I admire your enthusiasm, but I’d really love to see the updates that they will do with these new devs. More of ‘throughly tested on PTS’ patches like this one? Maybe they’ll finish Hossin? Maybe Oshur? Maybe they’ll change the “temporary” lattice system? Oh, I know, maybe they’ll revert the combined arms initiative?!! Yeah, I don’t know how long you’ve stuck around their false promises, the story that just repeats itself, and still continue to hold on to false hope like the rest of us. Just be a nice veteran and express reality in the forums. We all for some reason hope this game will succeed, and we still desperately hold on to it. That still shouldn’t prevent us from acknowledging the games situation.
Yeah, me too, I don't really agree with Escalation or what they did, at least not all of it, I think the resources is pretty cool, but even if I don't agree, you have to admit it's not bad either. What I'm interested in, is what's coming next, because that will (tend to) show the direction the game is taking from here, and that can be make or break for me, and probably for a lot of people.
Personally, I'm staying optimistic. Escalation is going strong and the dev team is already teasing new content. (Wrel teasing the PS1 TRAP; leveldesign team hinting at something. Maybe Oshur is coming for real?)
It's nice to be optimistic, but we also have to be realistic. Escalation as I pointed out is not "going strong" and this really shouldn't be a surprise. You can release as many 'big updates' as you like, if they aren't going to fix why new and old players don't stick around, they're not gonna do much for you. Worse, if these updates enhance the games problems, some of the vets might not even stick around either. My hope is that the devs are working on redesigning the physics engine. Realistically, the devs could be doing more outfit wars maps, or maybe finishing Oshur, which they had put aside. Knowing dbg, it's probably none of the above, and they'll be at best wasting resources chasing the golden goose in some escalation or outfit wars part 2 update. Or actually, they would be using them to finish the sanctuary no one uses. That really wouldn't surprise me. We'll see where they go with this, but yeah.
New players come to try the game out. They get **** on. They leave. PS2 has a super steep learning curve and the majority of people do not have the force of will to play though it. Of 12 friends I have tried to get into the game only one stayed and got the hang of it. The rest got dunked on a few times and I can't pay them to play again.
