PROS and CONS of Emerald

PROS:

• I logged in last night around 3 AM EST and there were 48+ vs 48+ battles raging.
• During prime time all three continents had epic battles raging. As someone else stated, nearly all lines of the battle lattice had places to fight.
• Much more balanced populations during peek hours
• Many more options for different sized battles across all three continents
• Unbelievably large battles I have never seen before in PS2
• No more sweeping victories during an alert by an overpopulated faction
• Many new players to befriend
• No server side performance issues. I think anyone experiencing issues has tweak their game settings.

CONS:

• I had to lower my model quality settings to low but kept everything else on maxed out settings. Lowering the model quality really was the only thing I needed to improve my frame rates. My PC is pretty beastly.
• Air dominance is now even more powerful making it hard to traverse large territories in a tank or a flying vehicle with out being locked on or destroyed by the many extremely talented pilots in this game.
• Hard to follow general chat while participating in a large scale battle.
• Allied indicators in the HUD is more cluttered than ever. Overwhelming in large battles but this problem existed before.
• Emerald population tests map and base design. Maybe even puts the lattice into question as I believe many of the bases, especially on Indar, were not designed to host 48+ vs 48+ battles.
• Notice an increase in griefing, TKing, and vehicle blocking players. (The only explanation I can think of is more players makes a single player more anonymous which could lead to immaturity).
• Vicinity microphone spam has increased.

Conclusion:
Overall and unexpectedly, I am very pleased with this server merge. Emerald is now a true massively multiplayer FPS. PlanetSide 2 fully realized. I can imagine Hossin will only add to the experience. The PROS far out weigh the CONS here. I am happy to see each faction having large populations. Before on Matherson, the TR was very much the underdog while the NC and VS usually had the upper hand. OK no more typing, time to go frag. Great job SOE. I am very pleased with how you guys interact with this community. I come from StarCraft 2 and before the Counter-Strike and I always felt there was a disconnect between the community and the developers. I have been playing PlanetSide 2 for a while now and its has been really amazing to be part of its evolution from a buggy hodge podge into a perhaps the greatest multiplayer experience that has ever been. I have no idea what BuzzCutPsycho is smoking but he better knock it off and give PlanetSide 2 another chance.


Matt Higby if you read this, I want you to know that you ******* rock!

Welcome to Planetside 2.

I think SOE does a pretty good job of community interaction compared to other companies for games I've played. It's also cool to think they too reside in San Diego. Higby probably gets his ideas for how the Magrider should operate by jet skiing.

(I'm only kidding about that last part. Kinda.)

Make the text bigger, i really need to read this from my bathroom.

planetside 2 is NOT fully realized

it's got the makings of greatness, but as long as higby is in charge, this game will never be more than a pathetic CoD?BF clone

Pro:
Massive late-night battles

Con:
Feel like nanites at work the next day

pro:
more targets to shoot at (which is pointless due to reasons below)

con:
imba zerg fights only
massive latency and rubberbanding issues
less performance


this is the first time after so many months that i'd really like a character transfer option. the game has become unplayable for me

Pro: Connery got an influx of TR and VS after the merge slightly balancing out the highly overpopulated NC. TR could use a slight increase ~2% to really even things out.

It is easy to forget that no game gives you an experience quite like PS2. Not even close. Higby is a passionate gamer and I think he blends a lot of things that work in other games and adds it to PS2. PS2 is also quite original in many ways.

Pros: So many vehicle battles in the open field!
Cons: People are starting to learn the power of 500m range AV when the render distance for infantry is 300m...

Am I the only one who doesn't necessarially see this as a pro? Giant-*** fights typically dumb any battle down to just spam and nonsense.

The people who think that that's the bee's knees are probably the same people who played 64 player Metro 24/7 in BF3....

They should do the same for other servers. Ceres seems pretty drab overall, you can find the one nice fight occasionally but it's way too often a zergfest of overpopped factions and dead continents.

Am I the only one who thinks that it would be awesome if there was only one super-powerful server (don't know how that could be done, multiple arrays of quad Intel Xeons maybe?) hosting one, huge map designed for 256v256 battles (IE no small outposts, huge open fields)?

I was following you in my Lightning about three hours ago (skirting over the hills around Howling Pass, past Crimson Bluff and to NS Materials) and yea, you totally overextended and started getting pounded in the rear all the way from NS Materials.

Welcome to Matt Emerald!

You ALL knew this before the merge since some of us stated our opinions against the merge with this exact points so grab a glass a water and swallow it. No point making this thread posting CONS when everyone asked for it.

That was literally the most moronic thing I've done in-game all week. Luckily my next tank lasted me over an hour.

The AV didn't kill me though, it only chipped the paint. Me chasing after a Sunderer surrounded by 4 Lightnings got me killed.

When it comes to AV I'm talking more about the Mao->Howling Pass, or Mao->Brigg's Laboratories fights. The ones where you really can't even get close without hopping from cover to cover, and once you get there you need to be especially cautious.

That's because they had to blow up the Lightning behind you first.

Oh...

US East have always been more populated than EU during their respective prime times. Yet EU merge isn't even being considered at this point.
I personally don't mind -- I have an NC on Emerald and am too busy to play anyways. But seriously, I know multiple people now who immigrated from Woodman to Emerald. The ghost town syndrome is only going to get worse, until you might as well merge all four into one.
Yes, it's darn bursting full over there. I'm glad I have a char there. Ping is ****, but I'm willing to put up with that. Just to finally leave IndarSide (and not even Indar with Indar alert during prime time has queue here - and there are servers with less population...)

FTFY

Con #1-GOKU spamming they rule in yell chat while I wreck them.
Con #2-Matthersonian strategy of spamming beacons on buildings,allowing them to get ~20 ppl on a roof of a certain building.Next to impossible to clear out.
Con #3-Waterson outfits seem overshadowed by Matthersonian ones.All I keep killing is GOKU,903rd,etc.I have yet to see a guy from the 382nd,BRIT,or other Waterson outfits.
Con #4-All enemies seem to be BR 70 or above now.Although it's not really a con...