Population %'s on Mattherson do not seem accurate going up to and post GU12

Mattherson

Mattherson has always been my favorite server and I've played on Mattherson since the first day it launched. During Prime Time Mattherson always has had the most epic battles in Planetside2 to the point you can almost always expect it every single day. That being said Mattherson also has almost always had imbalanced populations for the entirety of its existence when it isn't prime time. I'm making this thread for 2 reasons.

1. To show that the current faction populations numbers may or may not be accurate, and could potentially be being manipulated so we don't complain anymore. Feel free to inform me developers, but I haven't been seeing huge loads of stock Prowlers or BR1's to compensate for such a quick massive change on the Frequency Graph and in game bar graphs while I play.

2. To show that the underdogs over most of the course of Mattherson's recent existence have actually been the TR.

Displayed below in the link is a population frequency graph that displays population frequencies all the way back to March 2nd.

Planetside 2 Population

4 Facts from this graph to keep in mind that will support my point

1. The Faction with the most hours as the most underpopulated faction as of March 2nd is by a long shot TR, and the difference between them and VS/NC in this category are in the hundreds of hours.

2. Since March 2nd Mattherson TR has spent roughly 30 hours as the most populated faction, and the other factions have spent 400-500+ hours as the most populated faction with NC having the most time followed by the VS.

3. Prime Time on Mattherson is by far the most balanced/epic time on Mattherson

4. On July 10th at 8 A.M a strange drop off happened which lessened the VS overpops on the graph afterwards.

Faction Population Screen Shot Timeline

April 16th, 5 P.M

April 19th, 5 P.M

April 24th, 3 P.M (Yay Digital Camo Bug)

April 26th, Past Prime Time

May 22nd, Past Prime Time (After a lot of 4th Faction NC had defected to VS)

June 1st, Past Prime Time

June 4th, Past Prime Time

June 7th, Past Prime Time

June 9th, Mattherson Prime Time

June 13th, Past Prime Time

June 24th, Past Prime Time

July 11th, Prime Time the night before GU12

Past Prime Time, July 12 and the night of the day that GU12 was implemented

Conclusion

There is no way that over the course of a few days Mattherson got enough TR to displace the insane VS overpopulation numbers at night. On July 12 ,the night of GU12, BWC had gotten done with an OP 8-11 P.M. After that many of us went to bed along with most of the other TR outfits on the server just as we usually do. Later that night I took this picture between 1-2 A.M. However how is it that TR still had basically even populations with the VS consistently having 40-60+ Faction population up until then? After playing on Mattherson since the day that it launched and regularly monitoring population fluctuations has lead me to believe this is in fact impossible with merely having Mattherson be a recommend server. I know you asked all the major VS outfits on Mattherson if they wanted to move to Waterson, but from what I'm aware of they all said no.

So tell me SOE did you

1. Manipulate the numbers to make us think the server population imbalance is fixed?

2. Do something massive behind the scenes that we don't know about?

3. Somehow fix the population problem merely by making Mattherson a recommended server for TR/NC?

If you remember how quickly populations skyrocketed when a server became recommended for all factions, these numbers make quite a lot of sense.

2/10 Post attempt

Still would read again though, nothing else good to read.


















Everyone knows Mattherson has serious problems, of all servers I play on, Connery IMO has the most balance primetime population.

Is it possible that many people were playing their TR alts for the first time in a while? As we all know, many people have more than one character per server. So I wonder if much of the additional TR pop might be made up of people playing TR characters that perhaps they haven't logged into in a while? Which would explain why you don't see a ton of BR 1 characters, as these TR would have had plenty of time to level them up, gain certs and so on.

Whether these people are VS who switched over for the night, players from another server, I have no idea. Population numbers aside, I did notice a LOT more TR last night. I played pretty much all day yesterday and TR seemed to have plenty of troops no matter where I went. We had large scale battles going on in multiple places last night. Normally we don't have the pop to leave Indar, but last night I saw 2 large fights on Indar, one on Esamir, and one on Amerish all at the same time. All involved 48+ TR according to the map.

I'm not saying that's what is happening. Just wondering if that could be what we saw.

Possibly, I would just like some ideas on how this happened. This thread was meant to spark a conversation.

What fascinates me is that it took this long to figure out that recommended server should be based on population after faction preference... I made a thread about this exact same system about a month ago when the imbalances started to get rampant...

Yup right now it's 31 VS/37 TR/32 NC, making me rub my eyes to double check that if I'm seeing it right.

While it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn SOE was fudging the numbers, my own eyes tell me TR pop was higher last night. I do have to wonder where it came from however. As a TR player, I don't really get to see other TR's BR unless I happen to get TK'd by them. So it's possible we had hundreds of BR1 players running around. If so, then where da f*ck did they come from? Do we really have that many people joining the game? I'd LOVE to learn the answer is yes, that would be awesome for game population in general.

If they were players who logged into their TR alts, then where did they come from? Mattherson VS players who gave in and decided to even things out? Waterson players? EU or Chinese players? Some other server should have noticed a large drop in pop due to that many players coming to Mattherson. To me it also looked like the NC got a nice pop boost.

So many questions, so few answers.........

It's because GU12 is a patch for terribads, and would ya look at that? Suddenly TR's pop is competitive again....


Sorry, couldn't resist. The chance to slate GU12 -AND- TR in one observation. On it.

7.5/10, for the combo. Should have added something about Striker.

I would like to hear other peoples opinions on the matter too. I used a very long amount of game experiences, a frequency graph, and a population screen shot timeline to come up with 3 possible answers. It would be nice to know what people think the answer is between 1-3

Hey for all I know this is could be to trick the average player into making the populations more even.

It's not impossible. As you said, Mattherson VS didn't switch to Waterson because obviously they like being dominant; but within the first day of Waterson being a recommended VS server, the VS such a huge pop boost that their numbers nearly matched the TR and sometimes, for the first time in HISTORY, surpassed them to become the most populated faction. VS numbers have gotten a goo 5-10% boost with their pop being consistently above 30%, while NC has dropped to below 30%.

Possible, but Waterson Vs made complaints about TR being Overpopulated plenty of times on of the forums so could SOE have done the same thing with Waterson? It's just crazy for such a long nightmarish situation to be undone in 3 days.

There are definitely more VS, they are capping conts and confronting TR platoons head on - lots of low level guys running around too. Usually the dynamic was TR > easier to fight, VS > hard to fight, but over the past couple days the pop boost has, as with NC back in February, watered down the skill level; unless you run into one of the original outfits, VS units are not that difficult to defeat, relatively speaking.

Let's put it this way: if you have 25% world pop, you're probably not going to cap Indar. VS did it the day after GU12 when their pop soared.

Hey NC, since TR is the popular faction we need to band together to survive the coming red tide. So....



any takers?

Hehe didn't think so........but still fun to post.

Holy mother of God....................No..........just no.................like not even no, but seriously.........

I mean SRSLY HELL F*CKING NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Waterson TR are convinced this already existed since launch day. It's not true but it helped them feel better

For crying out loud stop reposting the damn thing, it's burning my eyes out.

Yes I know it's coming from me with my sigs, but it's lil ponies. my eyes........,my eyes..............the pain..............ahhhhhhhhhhh