Q: Why would anyone want to play the underpop faction?

A: You wouldn't.

#1. Continental underpop bonus XP is a joke. I get 50% more XP for fighting out of my warpgate against 3:1 odds? Or I can pile my faction onto one continent and get no bonus? Thanks SOE...

#2. Resource system and facility benefits give further advantages to overpopulated factions. Overpopulated factions generally will own >50% territory on at least one continent, meaning spent resources are easily recovered and more vehicles/MAXs can be pulled. Especially on Esamir, with Eisa being the centerpiece, the faction with the most population on the continent will generally own the facility meaning they can pull MBTs from any tower and you can't.

#3. Alert system greatly directly encourages playing the highest population faction. Why play the lowest pop faction when you can get huge chunks of free XP winning the alert with the highest pop faction?



Congratulations SOE, you've successfully created a game which outright encourages and rewards population imbalance. Not sure what you are waiting on to fix the game... perhaps you'd rather just wait until at least one faction disappears from each server.

I love being the underpopulated faction.
More things to kill, and if you have the Heroic boost, you feel like a member with that additional +50% Exp; So...

A: I would.

Can't argue with that statement.

Sunday primetime:

The problem is you get to only take joy from your own personal gains while being handed defeats and being insulted all the way. I don't play lone wolf so much as I am one of the bodies that try to slow the zerg down maybe to the benefit of the lone wolfs but I am not good enough to outgun the 4 enemies who are gunning for me. Well its been my experience from late night playing on Matterson as TR.

Some of us would, "target rich environment".

And yet you don't play the lowest pop faction on your server.

Actions speak louder than words.

Populations change and we picked which empire we'd play as on day one (well end of beta).
Plus you can always just go to the cont that you have least people on regardless of server.

If you get on the periphery of a big-ol' zerg-roll, you can skim kills from the edges. Or, if you're more vehicle focuses, destroy sunderers and abandoned tanks at the back of the zerg-roll.

Target rich environment was nice before resource change. Now all the targets are in vehicles and low pop faction is starved for resources. It just turns into one spawn camp after another.

Annoying the zerglings is a fun activity, especially with an Enforcer Harasser. Beside, I don't always lone wolf, we tend to do awesome stuff with my outfit even if we get overwhelmed by enemy pop.

Wrong. Notice that under pop faction is 20-30% pop? Yeah, all of those people are proving you wrong. They're also proving that you are the problem. You may yourself be on an underpop side, but your negativity about it means either A: you discourage people from getting involved, or B: you'll eventually leave and foster the situation.

I love being under-pop. Wouldn't have it any other way. There was a moment where Miller looked like the NC might begin to rival the TR that I really worried about. I rolled NC in beta because we were under pop (beta players know when I joined haha). I rolled NC at launch because we were under pop. We turned our under-pop status into an advertising campaign (NC=Hard mode), even making a joke of the many imbalances skewed against us. The result? <25% server pop and still competitive, because we got the players that wanted the challenge, that didn't want to win every time, they wanted to win when they made it happen, and they'd make it happen when it mattered.

Sadly, the stagnation of the game via the move to MLGPR0420XxXN0Scop3N0Hop£ without providing something for the outfits that want to play a game not a reality TV show with a viewer base entirely consisting of its own participants, mean that most of the key members of the community have lost faith, lost drive, or left altogether. But NC's still free, and all you ******* can come at me 3:1, and I'll still take you down, even if it means running from the spawn room naked throwing poison till I get one-hit (SWG reference). Grim determination and a death wish will see me through. It's the Rebel NC way.

Easy targets

Lots of targets that are half-asleep.

Ladies and gentlemen we have a winnner!

You sir hit the nail right on the head. On matterson my VS lvl 70 toon with a 4.4 k/d ratio (before this stupid Kill nerf which has helped scrubs raise there K/D ratio) has tons of med kits, mines, and other resources because VS usually have a pop advantage. Meanwhile my lvl 50ish TR toon with a 3.8 k/d ratio struggles to keep grenades and mines on him. And guess what? That is the most underpopulated Empire on the server. I can't tell you how many times I am left with no Bio-lab and having to fight over some base that gives me Aero/Mech resources while the infantry resources bases are owned by other empires... So what am I left to do if I want to play or just log out in disgust. I must log into my VS toon and play a already overpopulated empire!

Now I know all types of Matterson TR will come on here saying they own and they have a abundance of EVERYTHING. But the only thing they have an abundance of is Bull lies (...) lies. Screen shots with dates and server pops with the dates or go suck on a lemon (since this is cupcake moderated forums now).


Server population is the number 1 problem in Planetside 2 atm. Why the DEVS do not have a empire switch timer in, like Planetside 1 eventually put in to limit empire hoping is beyond me. But a lot of stuff these Developers chose to leave out in this version of Planetside, that was in the previous version is a mystery to me.

I guess that is why the games overall popularity is going down month by month.

On Connery playing with an outfit feels worthless (VS) They are either rude or not very organized. Alerts happen all the time so those don't mean much either. The only reason to currently play is for personal goals.

I love being the underpoped faction. Back on helios the TR and VS were always outnumbered. This presented a nice killing field of NC.

Underpoped factions gets out all of the people you don't want on your team. IE trolls,griefers,and fourth factioners. This leaves you will a population that will work as a team and stop at nothing to win as losing would be very bad.

Everyday on Connery I hope the NC or VS will get 50%+ pop So I can actually enjoy playing with my team again.

As it stands play with pubs on Connery after 3 minutes you want to call in a nuke on top of them all. Play with pubs on Good old Helios ( Rip Helios the hamster) It was actually enjoyable since you could actually count on them to do the right things and win the battle.

Q: Why would anyone want to play the underpop faction?

If you are in game to "win" an objective, i agree, you would not.
But i am not in game to win anything, just to kill.

So in reality, i enjoy being part of the smaller faction, more targets.
The larger the enemy zerg, the more targets i can shoot.
I feed on the edges of the zerg, moving with it.
I do not care if they warp gate us. Its just makes it closer for me to find targets.

Makes sense, but I sort of like the underdog, as well as a target rich environment, so when I created a character for each faction (each on a different server) I tried to choose the faction with the least population on the respective server. By some twist of fate, I now find my characters are all in the biggest factions on their respective servers, which defies the odds, especially since I have one of each of the three factions. So even if you add sufficient incentive to try to get new players to take the least populated faction, somehow things can still get turned around. Perhaps due to server merges, or to outfits moving en masse. I don't like the idea of people having multiple factions on a given server and swapping (the so-called fourth faction), so one things get out of whack, I have no good idea on how to remedy the situation.

If this was true then the underpop faction wouldnt exist.
Mattherson and Woodman would be VS only

Do you actually feel insulted from some stranger in a game?
lol
I get enjoyment from their taunts.

I am the lone wolf you speak of.
I am not here to "win" just to kill.
So with that in mind, I could not care less if they outnumber us a zillion to one.