Late nights on Mattherson

Can anything be done about 4th factioning short of going and tking? I can't stand playing late nights anymore because one, its over popped as sh*t and two VS gets another 10% pop boost from 4th factioners every alert. All it is is a big steam roll. First comes the lol podders, then comes the tanks and AA. Set up a defensive sundie? Nope already got hero blown up by 800 drop pod light assaults with C4.

Suggestion: make cont pop during alerts match each others. This would discourage people from hopping factions to an overpopped one because it would no longer be "free certs" and they would likely spend a long time in a queue.

Sample: 80 NC online 100 TR online 200 VS online
Alert continent: 60 NC 60 TR(20 in queue) 60 VS (100 in queue)

This would do 2 things during day alerts also. It would keep alert pop even and it would make ghost capping Indar during an Amerish/Esamir alert a lot harder. For some reason people think that a whole platoon isn't needed during an alert so they go and try and ghost cap Indar for the cap bonus.

Other games have balancing features i.e. auto balance, and swap. Planetside not only doesn't have balancing features, but it also punishes you for trying to make the game more fair. When VS pops began to snowball a few months ago because of ZOE, my outfit had enough and tried to switch first to the NC (we gave up because the NC are beyond help) then to the TR where we still actively play. What did we get for it? We lost our high BR characters, characters we all spent $30+ on only to have to do it again. We started at level 1 and faced a massive population imbalance with no tools. Early on there were night we couldn't deal with something as simple as a few MAXes and a Lightning. But we stuck with it and I think we're about the only ones, and I can understand why. Starting at BR 1 against a general populace that is fully armed is too much.

"Late nights on Mattherson"

Why would you do this to yourself man?

go EU server then. i go US server early EU mornings and late EU evenings.

Yep,

Been wanting to play as VS for a few months but the thought of losing all the time I have put into my NC is just irritating.

Starting off without max cloak, max repair gun, a well certed Lighting, 2 C4 etc is crap.

So I can play on a character with nothing unlocked, and any certs I earn I won't be able to use on my main anyway?

Yeah, it's easier to find something else to play.

I left this game a few months back and recently started to play again since I missed the game's concept and gameplay style. I assumed that by now there would have been numerous fixes. Fixes to the game client so it doesn't crash out randomly in game or while logging out. I expected fixes to faction weapon balance. And I expected population balancing. Needless to say SOE failed hard here...

I came back to alerts, which I thought were cool! But I noticed something "off" after a few of these events. It seemed that the NC disappeared whenever these went up. I thought they were going elsewhere avoiding these fights. But then I noticed some interesting names of VS toons. They looked like ties to their NC names. So, NC disappeared and all of a sudden a flood of VS would appear. Then I noticed people talking about this "fourth faction" stuff and it all made sense. These alerts created a massive imbalance.

Since I came back playing, at random times of the day/night at that, NC hasn't won a single alert yet. And VS is basically power-leveling their toons. This is the exact same nonsense that got me to quit a few months back. VS being massively OP and over pop, NC and TR getting shafted.

I want this to be my "go to FPS", but it'll never be until SOE fixes this. But it looks like it never will. Is higby and that matilda or margaret still at SOE? If so, that would probably explain a lot. This sucks, I want to play this game, but it just... sucks.

Now imagine if you were a new player to the game. You have no idea how to play, have few friends if any, no certs, and if you chose NC/TR on Mattherson you are doubly screwed. Clearly, the devs need to accelerate exp at lower levels to help new players be competitive. It isn't until BR30 that there is some feeling of your character's effectiveness. Anyway, this is nothing new to gaming even WoW had accelerated exp gains for new players and as new expansions were released so was the exp gain.

Every new created character should get a 2 week 50% xp boost. They catch up in levels much faster AND.... AND.... they get to feel what its like to have said boost. Once that sucka expires and they see their cert intake cut by half they get the itch. They see the worth of these boosts and vala, many will purchase since they actually see what kinda difference they make.

All true, all true. Mattherson at night is a mess, and clearly the devs don't care. We've been screaming about it for literally months, I bet there are 100 threads about it, and they don't care. Meanwhile, the player base exacerbates the problem, 4th factioners jump over to VS, TR doesn't respond to the alert and about half of us stay on Indar, and the cowards on the NC that don't switch refuse to fight against the VS. At this point, just log off. The devs don't care, people are still spending SC.

How do you say to the veteran VS that they should switch sides when they already played through 25% pops, were commonly warpgated, and were even pitied by The Enclave. Those players put in their time, and it's exactly those players the under populated empires need guidance from in addition to the influx of BR 1s via server suggestion.

Not true at all. I started a new character on Mattherson TR just to see what was going on. I put maybe 150-250 certs total into the character and used stock weapons. You can be incredibly effective with a character with very little cert upgrades.

250XP/min unboosted
2.94 K/D

https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428095401452993905

Matherson has always been overpopped by VS after dark.

Even since launch their pop swells after the midnight mark since all the TR and NC go to sleep so they can get up for work in the morning.

TR had the population advantage most of the night between 36-40%, suddenly it's VS at late night when everyone heads to bed?

And stop the bickering about lacking certs/items on a fresh toon, I do it all the time, roll and reroll on different servers, it takes no time to get ~300 certs if you just keep people supplied and healed throughout your first 10 levels.

Just remove the alerts, they are a big joke.

remove the alerts , all it is , is power leveling for vanu accounts and alts

Yeah, but it's not the original VS players that caused the problem is it?

It's a perfect problem. No one caused it and the only players who want it fixed are the minority. The player base will have moved onto BF4, CoD:Ghosts, next gen consoles, Everquest Next by the time SoE understands this issue.

Yeah...something needs to be done. Lashing out on players won't do anything though. SOE has to come up with a solution for population imbalance.

I was talking to my brother yesterday (he plays LoL a lot / works as a programmer / analyst, I'm also a programmer / analyst). Our talk, in combination of a few other elements coming from EQNext explorative designs, the F2P model itself and LoL ranking system was crunched into a solution :

SOE needs to communicate with outfits. Offer them compensation for transfer servers and further compensations / fame / etc for accomplishing certain goals. Granted they accomplish those goals, they would progress on a ladder. This is very similar to an FPS trying to balance stacked teams after a match.

Because this is not a 32 / 26 / 8 player match but a massiverly multiplayer persistent game, you have to adjust the concept. Instead of 8 players, you might have 8 outfits, etc. Instead of a match, you have a server transfer + goals + time limit.

Friends and outfit members enjoy playing together so the transfer needs to be offered to them as a whole, to preserve relationships.

These outfits transfers should happen often, as people join / leave outfits.

In other words, it takes the idea of alerts (goals) but also takes into consideration balance of skills and population.

When I heard SOE talking about MLG, I didn't think it made much sense...sure, the game itself has core mechanics that would eventually allow competitive gaming but there need to be features to manage the competitive nature of the game, ladder, outfit ranking, server transfers, rewards, etc.

I'm completely neutral / unbiased when I look at outfits / factions. So please, given the next example keep in mind I have no ties to the outfit and I could easily replace the example by another outfit's name.

Take The Enclave on Mattherson, when they left the game, regardless of if they were liked or not, they created a vacuum of organized players. Obviously, the faction with the most organized outfits will take over and that's when population imbalance is happens (4th faction joining the winning faction on alerts amplified that). Outfits can greatly impact a server.

It makes sense to move outfits, it gives them a challenge to push their limit vs similar ranked outfits. It allows juggling with population and skill level of the server, creating interesting battles. A crushed, demoralized player is more likely to quit. Give them hope to fight and they will stick around (that's one key concept of explorative designs in PvP, trying new heroes in LoL, different builds, facing equal skilled people, etc you keep trying because you want to find something that will beat someone of your skill and progress).

What does it mean to the lone player? Problems being solved, they don't have to participate in outfits if they don't want to, nothing will change about it. They are not losing anything, stats are still being collected about their character. Some care, some don't.

Its just the 4th faction. Pops are nearly always balanced UNTIL the second they sense the VS gaining a lead then every one of the scrubs switches over until its 40+ % VS. They need to lock the character switching for alerts. You can just watch people logging into their VS alts throughout the alert and you still a month later of participation based xp have ******* logging in with less than 15 left. Its hilarious really due to how stupid this group of players is.