Mattherson, I'm out until populations are balanced

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Pat Cleburne, Jun 23, 2013.

  1. EliteEskimo


    I think the purpose of doing it would not be for our own fun, it would be to purposely imbalanced the population the same way that is on Mattherson on another big popular server to force the developers to get off their butt's and do something about this faction imbalance occuring on almost all servers. Personally I'm against this and BWC is holding up fine to the competition, but that being said we to are annoyed that Prime Time is the only time times populations are remotely balanced on Mattherson. Curse you 4th Faction VS, CURSE YOU!!!!!!
  2. Kazune

    Competition aside, a move of that size (in context with the post you quoted) would make the TR on Waterson what the VS are on Mattherson; you'd only compound the problems further.

    Though my first loyalty is to the VS, I've recently rolled a character for the TR on Mattherson. Someone has to pick up the slack.
    • Up x 1
  3. NoctD

    The fix is really simple actually - just suspend all VS account creation on Mattherson.

    Suspend TR/NC account creation on Waterson.

    So new VS > Waterson, new TR/NC > Mattherson.

    The pops will work their way back over time, then remove said restrictions.

    This has nothing to do with faction balance, etc... each server has different issues. Limiting new account creation is such a simple thing to do, it should have already been put into place.
    • Up x 2
  4. chrisbeebops

    Jokes on you. It hasn't even been 1 month since the population imbalance problems started on Mattherson and yet I've seen about 10x more posts about it than any other server. Waterson population has been ****** since at least February. The devs don't give a crap, and even if they do care they have no idea what to do that won't completely ruin the game. They have basically left the problem up to the community to fix, and the community has responded by making the populations even more imbalanced. Applause all around.

    Sever populations will continue to be completely screwed until Waterson and Mattherson are merged, at which time the pops will probably be about even across all 3 factions.
  5. chrisbeebops

    That won't work, for 3 reasons:
    #1 There will always be someone who wants to play on a specific server to play with friends, and thus there can never be hard locks like you suggest.
    #2 This will just create a giant influx of noobs to one faction, encouraging better players to switch sides even more to farm the new players.
    #3 This will greatly hurt player retention. Waterson was recently the recommended server, and we did see a large increase in VS population. But the increases for NC/TR were much larger and much more sustained. Who honestly wants to spend all day playing against 2:1 odds? No one, and especially not a new player. It is not something that fosters new player retention. New players just didn't stick around.
  6. EliteEskimo


    Problem is with the NC they were consistently 40% around prime time and were poorly organized so it wasn't that bad, Mattherson VS has some of the best VS outfits in the entire game and has 60% faction population after prime time and is getting worse with each passing week. We also have NC outfits which has defected to the VS, and no outfit ever defected to the NC when they were overpopulated on Mattherson. Lastly the developers have at least asked on reddit, seriously get off of reddit dang nabbit, asked for ideas for how to balance Mattherson population. The theory goes that instead of asking for ideas on reddit they'll actually come to the forums asking for help since they'll be losing buckets of money, or will actually do something. If there is one thing we all know it's that SOE loves cash, and if the players take that away from them they will be forced to act.
  7. chrisbeebops

    No, I think you don't understand what I am saying. The developers can't push a button or write some script which will magically balance the server populations. The only way the population will get balanced without ruining the game is through community action.

    The only other option is to make the underpop bonus be so absurd that everyone will want to always play on the underpop faction. I don't mean more XP or more resources, I mean something absurd like an increase in health or damage based on world pop %. If your faction has less than 31% world pop, you get a big buff on health & damage, and if you have more than 35% you get a big penalty. Players will then (hopefully) jump to the underpop side for the bonus, which would cause it to be negated as pop evens out.

    Things like this have been suggested more times than I can count, but have been pretty much universally rejected as game-breaking.
    • Up x 1
  8. Beef Castle

    Ahriman Corps has suspended playing VS for a few weeks now because of the runaway VS pops due to ZOE absurdity. Currently we're playing TR with The Overlords. Being without all the items we've collectively purchased on our VS characters is absolutely frustrating. As a small outfit, you have to be able to adapt to all situations. Generally speaking, you need to spend $50+ to have most of those items. What a mess.
  9. Morchai

    I don't see why characters have to be tied to a server in the first place. Why can't we pick a server every time we log in?
  10. NoctD

    If they want to play with their friends that badly, they can wait. The locks are not permanent. I would actually prefer rolling locks that are coded based on server world populations, so it wouldn't have to be changed manually. 37% and more world pop, you get a message that "New accounts for this faction are not available on the server at the moment. Please try again later or pick another server."

    If you're not getting new players to join an underpop faction, where do you expect to get the numbers to balance the pop out? At least the new players can be taught, brought into outfits, trained.

    Do you expect a bunch of experienced players to suddenly appear and even out server populations instead?

    That's because the recommended servers allowed people to join all factions... its terribly broken and just useless at the moment. With restrictions and recommended servers that are faction population based, the influx to Waterson would be ONLY VS... so those 2:1 odds will disappear pretty quickly. The problem was more NC/TR were allowed to join Waterson... that's why it didn't work at all.

    Do you have any better ideas?
  11. Kegbuster

    I have to agree with the OP, the population on Mattherson is out of control. The VS has on the average 60%+ of the population between the TR/NC. It has become so very frustrating to play and SOE NEEDS to introduce population locks like they did in PS1. Each faction should only be allowed to have so many troops active on any given map. If you faction is out of control like the VS then sorry.. play another character. People have become so very frustrated in the NC that many have quit, taken a long break, or made a VS trooper to at least have some fun for their money. Something really needs to be done soon because the population of Mattherson is getting smaller and smaller on the TR and NC side each day.
  12. Kunotron

    Ugh. Think I'm going to be bailing from this game as well. Mattherson drama is what made this server fun to play on for me. Now with TE gone and the VS population rising higher than the national debt, Mattherson just turned into a boring 1-over-pop faction server, just like all the rest.

    RIP Mattherson. At least you died before the BFRs eventually came.
  13. Pat Cleburne

    So basically what I'm getting from all of these threads is this:

    A. Everyone agrees pop imbalance is a major problem
    B. Everyone on underpopulated sides wants a fix
    C. Everyone on the overpopulated side only wants a fix if it doesn't require them switching servers, or giving up basically anything to achieve pop balance.

    What I don't understand is why the people who are on the overpopulated sides, think that the developers should bow to them in fear of hurting their feelings, while the underpopulated players should be forced to suck it up and continue playing in unfair fights?

    Lets face the facts, most of the players who are riding the gravy train by playing on dominant sides don't want anything to interfere with that.
  14. Xae

    Hilarious that when TR was at 40% pop during prime time for months there was almost no thread about it.

    Now that TR aren't the one being overpopulated they are crying rivers.
  15. DxAdder

    SOE needs to create incentives for people to create and play characters for underpopulated factions.

    Such as during the first X hours of play the get X bonus experience.
    Hitting goals such reaching BR rank X grants them X bonus certs.
    Discounts for buying empire specific gear.
    Recruit a friend .
  16. EliteEskimo


    Well well well we meet once again Vanu Spy Xae!:eek: It's basic math to know that 60>40% and is much harder to go up against and that 20% more people is a big difference.
  17. Pat Cleburne


    Since day 1 on Soltech, through the merge with Mattherson, till today, I have not seen TR in the majority other than a handful of nights. Much less running 40% pop for months.
    • Up x 1
  18. TWolfJaeger


    Because TR was never stable at 40%. They were often high-numbered, yes, but NC and VS were generally within 5% parity. TR and NC often flip-flopped for high numbers, and VS had slightly less numbers.

    The point is between server population, and the number of decent outfits per empire, all three factions were generally well-rounded and the fights were fair.

    Now it's non-sensical. Vanu dominates every alert with sheer numbers. Someone else brought up the point that VS continent pops surge far faster during the first ten minutes of the alert, and made the misguided assertion that VS "reacts faster", so they must be better at paying attention to the alerts. This is incorrect. The reality of the situation is that many fourth-faction players (mostly NC traitors, relinquishing their freedoms for the hippy commune Vanu filth like the dogs they are) are abandoning their posts to dogpile on the VS, while TR and NC have largely given up caring, because the outcome is already decided.

    There's little fun to be gained in the alerts when VS can outnumber TR and NC on all three continents at the same time. You're just pissing in an ocean of purple.
    • Up x 1
  19. siddar


    Mattherson had a small NC population advantage Dev's chain nerfed NC. Mattherson NC mass switched to VS and created the huge VS population advantage.

    To fix problem you have to keep side with population advantage playing. Mattherson right now could just as easily have a huge NC population adavantage if people playing VS went back to NC.
  20. Saecryd

    I believe that the server population imbalance is immensely demoralizing and effecting how and when people play.

    As a newer player I've been jumping into various open platoons in order to get a better feel for the game and take part in a larger overall objective. I like listening to comm chatter as we try to deal with new challenges and obviously the people I'm playing with love it, too. That changes over time as we attempt to do much of anything because it's only a matter of time until the VS shows up en masse.

    Speaking personally, I've yet to take part in an op where anything we were in the process of capping was not immediately overwhelmed by VS reinforcements. Even with my platoon leader stressing to the the platoon that defenses must be prepared -- and they very often are! -- we're eventually overpowered and forced to retreat, often right off the continent to find something we can reasonably tackle. Once there the same thing occurs again, we begin to make headway and we are soon carpeted in VS troops, armor, and air.

    I think I've taken part in a platoon that fought the TR on one occasion. That's nuts.

    I can only offer the same solutions presented by others before me: enforce login queues to maintain a manageable ratio between each faction, allow for certain factions to transfer to certain servers in order to balance out populations, and give just a little bit more incentive to fight when the odds are stacked against you.

    I certainly don't mind being outnumbered, but there's a difference between being outnumbered and being completely overwhelmed within minutes of doing much of anything.