It seems like really odd timing from SOE to merge the European servers. You just brought out a major new content patch (Hossin), new exciting game mechanics (continent locking), and reduced the available play area from 3 continents to 2, which would allow a server to play as designed with 2/3 of the population. The pops now are down on January, but not by 1/3. I know it's weekend primetime and double XP to boot but tonight on Miller I: - Took part in a well contested alert - Sat in a continent queue for 5 minutes - Had map/model stuttering and delayed hit registration which I'm pretty certain were serverside - Fought in a lot of 25-48 and several 48+ even fights - Fought in a 48+ so large my infantry render distance was 10m (not exaggerating, we were on the roof at Mekala Aux and it was about half the length of the A building) There is absolutely no way that Miller can accommodate twice the numbers. You'd have people spawning into VR unless you raised the continent pop caps significantly. Non-members would never get to spawn into whatever the popular continent at prime time is (probably Hossin for a while yet) - it would be like day 1 of Hossin (I was in a queue of 80 people that day and I didn't get in for 45 minutes). And once you got into a continent there would be zerg vs zerg 48+ fights on every lane, or 4 platoon vs 3 type lagfests where render distance would be 5m and performance would be 10FPS. I like big fights being available, but it's also very good to have 25-48 and 12-24 fights available. Listen to how much everyone loved ServerSmash on Hossin, because the multiple lanes meant that there were only a few massive fights and lots of medium sized ones. It may well be true that off hours, the server is dead. However, merging servers from the same region won't help with that, prime time on Ceres is the same as prime on Cobalt and it'll still be dead at 4am. All a merge will accomplish is an unplayable game in prime time and a loss of customers, if anything. Merging servers also gives an impression of a game on the decline which will reduce the number of new people attracted here. Why not use Hossin, locking and the fact that the roadmap is actually moving to advertise the game to new players and stop the pop decline on the existing 4 servers? The SS footage is something you can use to say 'look here is epic warfare you just can't get anywhere else', as well. tl;dr don't merge servers, it will only cause technical issues and make EU servers zergy and laggy, we have good prime time already, and use recent changes and ServerSmash as advertising hooks
Agreed. They should work on optmization, then after a while merge the servers. I cannot play lately because of the performance drop. Hossin is a piece of crap, performance-wise and it's always one of the continent and everyone and his mother is playing there.
Cobalt seems empty even around prime time. Miller is OK, but there is usually only 1 continent with decent fights. And locking is going to be dynamical, I think, with higher pop less continents can be locked.
I dont know where you play but its definitely not Cobalt. There was a lot going on this weekend, several big 48vs48 fights. So I assume you are not able to deploy to a fight you like?
Dunno where you play but in our world non-only-members double exp weekend happens like once in 4 months. And outside of it, Cobalt usually sees like 1-2 big fights for every faction even in primetime and second continent is ghosttown till alert.
Once you get to play on servers that are nearly full all the time, you'll never want to go back to having low pop servers. Also, you'll only have 1 continent locked instead of 2.
Good idea as the high pop server will easily and naturally absorb the smaller server with no side effects and major changes.
A few things to note: SOE paid Polaris so some of their youtubers would do a PS2 Livestream this month SOE launched Hossin advertisements via Google SOE emailed old players when Hossin/cont locking launched SOE launched 2 non-member double XP weekends (one of which already exceeded the "weekend" part) They haven't been sitting on their lazy bum, they've been actively advertising, and to be honest... (and imo ) the results aren't really there. This month's average population is only around 6% higher than previous month. If you think that's good, look again and think about the budget they spent on the above things. They actually didn't. The max amount of continents locked depends on your server's population. If only 2 continents are open then that means that you don't have enough population to fill up 2 whole continents. Funny enough, they actually are, by 33.48%.
http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=compareall&timezone=0&allfactions=false If you look at the population trends, only Connery has been consistently able to stay above the 2k mark until the recent Emerald merge. I don't know what the current pop cap per continent is (used to be around 2k), but simple fact is that this game "requires" a critical mass of player to keep interest going. Fail that, and you end up with a distilling of players who only like small fights. But on the flip side, raw numbers inversely affect a faction's overall skill level. (a phenomena I've seen on EVERY server where I have alts) The running theory is that this is caused by empires having real competition for a change. The entire inner workings for command, outfit leadership, and individual players sees massive change, and natural weeding of players depending on how their numbers flow. Its almost literally skilled groups of players carrying the entire empire in a fight, and the remaining zergings are the fodder that slows the opposition. There is a missing element of trying to help foster players into getting better.... but at the same time, the entire game (including the mechanics, the progression, and up front skills required) are all working against the players. The merge is needed to help generate fights, and I'm absolutely dumbfoudned as to why the EU servers were last, despite having the lowest per server population, and highest number of servers per region. From what I remember of the old days, the servers saturated at 1 full pop lock plus half a pop lock on another continent.... and that was at the height shortly after launch. The Lock system is also smart enough to rotate locks out when certain conditions are met.
I really really wish SOE knew how to advertise properly, and give people clear messages and stop confusing people by putting information all over the place. Not to mention constant overbalance. Maybe then, the game could grow and mergers wouldnt be a problem in the first place, instead of people pulling their hair out and moving on to different games. This seems to be something that SOE does with most of their creations. Release something new and cool. Cash in as much as possible. Then let it slowly die, and move on to the next thing. Sadface =[
There will be one EU server by this time next year for sure. The merges are inevitable. Embrace them like you embrace VS booty.
Merging EU servers with US servers would be the way to go. No overcrowding and interesting fights to be had 24/7.
Sorry for the unconstructive and propably unqualified exclamation, but HELL NO! The hitdetection likes to screw me over on the Servers in the EU, and I don't think the hardware of a merged US/EU server would be over here. Occasionally needing 20 hits to take down a HA I can barely live with (about as often as I do not), but making it even worse would make it really unbearable.
I won't pretend to be an expert, but I believe it all comes down to SOE sorting out their hardware issues. Either way - the mergers are happening, so we'll just have to see how it plays out.
NO hardware is really able to handle so many players..and who wants to play in 30fps fights.i hate the merge and most probably wont play anymore. i prefer smaller fights and that is something that i always had since release of this game. now i cant really find some without having 2 mins. later a zergfight because everyone is spawing in this small fight area. i really hate the thought how worse this will be after the merge. GG SOE NO MORE MONEY FROM ME AT LEAST
Im not surprised that ads didnt help much to increase player numbers. Just look at the current state of PS2 ... random hit detecion laggy servers many annoying bugs (wonky tank controls, medic revive sometimes not working, enemy bullets/trails not rendering, etc.) splash damage weapon spam (PPA for example) the big fights (PS2s #1 selling point!) dont feel like big fights because render range is reduced to like 10m insufficient tutorial (= lots of unnecessary deaths for newbies = demotivating) imbalanced faction population pricing of weapons is odd, i.e. newbie nosegun costs 1000 CERTs, MSRW (one of the best if not the best LMG) costs only 100 CERTs SOE did a good job with Hossin and it looks like we finally get some regular content updates, BUT when the new players are greeted with the problems above, many of them will probably quit and move to the next game. If i were a SOE dev, i would work on more "quality of life patches", i.e. fix hit detecion, fix/upgrade laggy servers, fix tank controls, fix lockon warnings, fix C4 no damge bug, increase render range in big battles, etc. AFTER that you put big money in advertising.
