[Guide] The PS2 population is now down to bellow what it was before Escalation.

rather than new continents i'd they work on unfinished stuff like NSO,
Defector feels like a placeholder, but the finished version never came,
Javelin was hurled into the game after only 1 week on PTS and we were told "yes its unfinished but we'll be working on it".
and they've forgotten about it completely.

i'd also like them to focus on fixing annoying bugs that have been around forever,
like generation 1 battle rifles being forgotten in loadouts when you log off.

but totally agree with you that anything is better that letting Wrel screw the game with his awful ideas.

I'd also rather have the bugs fixed first before DBG introduces anything into the game.

o7

THE DEVS WHO BROUGHT BASTIONS TO PLANETSIDE 2 SHOULD BE FIRED, TODAY OR TOMORROW
THEY LITERALLY KILLED THE GAME
DYING WITHOUT EVEN BE ABLE TO FIGTH BACK.....FROM AN ALMOST CLOSE TO IMMORTAL BASTION...YEAH, MOST PPL JUST ALT F4
AGAIN, BASTIONS MUST BE LITERALLY DELETED FROM TEH GAME FILES (NOT NERFED, NOT CREATING MORE COUNTERS), JUST DELETE THEM, ERASE THEM FROM THE GAME FOLDER.
aND THE DEV (S) WHO COME WITH THE IDEEA, SEND THEM TO UNEMPLOYMENT LINE, PLENTY OF WORK AVAILABLE FOR PPL WITH NO SKILLS

Quiet. You already created an entire thread to "air your grievances." Now if you don't mind, we're going to go back to having legitimate feedback discussions, instead of ranting at the developers and wishing them all to be unemployed, especially during such a volatile time as now.

Its not that most of the stuff is bad per say. Its that the developers, and especially the PR stunt gone horribly wrong called Wrel, are too stupid to use them right and too arrogant to admit that they screwed up.

Take the Bastions for example. They could have been the ultimate middle finger to 50%+ continental population zergs, double teaming the smallest faction etc. But instead of tying them to continental population, territory controled, and if a hostile faction is on one sides warpgate for too long they were used as an inducement to get people A) into the "air game" and B) push them into joining big outfits. And the staff are too vainglorius to admit that the players might just know more than they do.

Trust me though, its going to get worse. Much worse. Until the population literally craters so badly that all the servers outside Cheatsville, er Soltech, get merged into one they will "stay the course". They've done it before and their is nothing & no one at Daybreak that has the means & and the will to make them do otherwise.

I'm not "intereceding" in your lovely and passionate conversation with Hoothers, but what you wrote made me think of something.

These population stats (if true, I'm assuming they are true, there's no reason I can think of why they might not be true) are like the grades you get in school right?

I mean the number of customers in your game goes up, that's like a good grade, if it goes down, that's a not so good grade.

So what grade would you give the devs?

Personally, seeing as the population now is EVEN LOWER than before Escalation, I'm failing them!

Big fat

F

So yeah, volatile times or not, when you don't do your job, in a normal company, you lose your job. That's how it works.

Naturally. It's a pattern that's been going on for years. I'm not gonna bother grabbing all the exact numbers cause you can just look at the graphs and find the bumps for yourself real easy. But as a concept, the population has been going like this:

2,000 players before a major patch
2,500 players when the patch hits
1,900 players once the hype wears off

1,800 players before the next patch
2,300 players when the patch hits
1,700 players once the hype wears off

1,600 players before the third patch...

Escalation was a bit different. I think it's cause there were additional factors so we had:
- The amount of players that always come back after a major update
- Additional players that came back because Escalation seemed marketed somewhat which hasn't really happened since OMFG or whatever
- A ton of players that were stuck at home due to the pandemic and had nothing better to do
- Players that only want PlanetSide 2 for the large, 48v48+ battles, which are hard to find outside of prime time with <1,000 players per server, but easy to find when *four continents are open* - like me!

But the players who came back for the update left for the same reason they always have: nothing in the game improved. Players that came in because Escalation was a big deal allegedly either left for the same reason the previous group did, or were brand new players that left for the same reason all the other new players do. Most of the world is recovering from the pandemic now. And with all these players leaving, there's no reason for the "I'm just here for the large fights" group to stay around cause the large fights are hard to find again!

Honestly a big reason I started sticking around again had nothing to do with Escalation. I left before cause I was sick of everyone one-shotting me through walls. When playing during the Escalation hype I didn't notice any of that! Population was at an all time high and the servers seemed to handle it like a champ - I was thrilled! (And no, my home network hasn't changed at all in the past 7 years. I think my router's dying and will need to get replaced soon cause it keeps disconnecting, actually. Just thought I'd mention that for the people in the past who said the game's trash netcode was my fault somehow.)

...But now I have bastion spam to look forward to, and now that I don't have to worry about getting instagibbed by a buckshot shotgun from 30m away through 3 walls, a set of stairs, and a rock I can clearly see the problems all the vets before me saw which caused them to leave, too. What's over the horizon to save us from the bastion and reduced population? Why, the most inane PTS notes I've ever read in my life, of course! DBG seems fully intent on not giving newbies OR vets a reason to stay - they're going straight ahead and making all the reasons people quit even worse. Brilliant.

(In another thread I mentioned I got some newbies into the game so I'll say how that's going for some insight:
I, who has been playing on/off since closed beta, just got back into PS2 like 2-3 weeks ago and I'm already feeling burnt out and am not looking forward to the future of this game.
My friends, who started playing after Escalation, have told me they have ZERO interest in the gameplay, progression, etc., etc., etc. They're only there because it's neat to be in large battles where lots of crazy stuff is happening around them.
But once "large battles" stop existing, or the "wow" factor wears off, guess what? You got it - the whole group will be moving to another game!)

m8 I work in the software industry since maybe 30 years. If there is something that I have learned there is that "Nothing is more definitive than an unfinished change."

Good software engineers (I am a former one) take pride in delivering quality work, believe me. But "Game Designers" (oh and BTW from where you get the skills/qualifications to be a Game Designer nowadays? By making youtube videos ?) have visions and strategy and usually tend to be annoyed by some details not working...

yeah, seriously, there's only so much disappointments we can take.

lot's of other games out there that disappointing vets can turn to.