You make no sense but ok.....I guess it's not random that the two people who have a problem with that screenshot are both VS
It's okay. You speak very well for yourself without me even having to argue your point This makes it very easy for me to dismiss you as either a troll or someone who really has no idea about stastics and how to judge the value of data. In either case you have nothing relevant to say.
Someone is taking this a little too seriously. Unless you can literally force people to take a side when they log on and create a character and have to stick with it nothing will solve the problem. Some people will always join the 'winning' (ie larger) side every time. Look at the constant team switching that happens on every game server. I'm sure as many people like blue as red (purple maybe not so much). For me its just a target rich environment.
What are you talking about? Go get a screenshot from prime time infact you dont need to, look at real data of WORLD SERVER POPULATION. READ Below.
I wonder when people will actually get that isn't an issue about TR population, or even population balance itself. It a pretty simple matter of percentages. TR has had roughly the same number of extra players as it always has had over VS, same as NC has had over VS also. Each faction is bleeding players at roughly the same rate as the others. But as the population shrinks, those small number of extra people become an increasingly larger percentage. Look at it this way. If one faction has an extra 10 players in a server with the other factions having 1000 players each, that difference of 10 players amounts to nothing in terms of percentages. But once that servers population dwindles, those 10 extra players mean a lot the more the population shrinks. If I was to resolve the above example to reductio ad absurdum, where the other factions shrank down to 10 players each. That would give the faction with the extra 10 players 50% of the world population. The problem isn't TR or any kind of population balance issue there in. It not caused by OP this, or UP that, or even 4th factioneers. The real issue is simply the lack of population and its dwindling state. The issue is that SOE are losing more players than they are getting. Why is this? Because players are leaving due to crappy game mechanics, lack of metagame, poor optimization, bug ridden code blah blah blah etc. take your pick of poisons. All of which are not faction specific issues, but simple profit being placed over substance in the game development. v v v The cat says it all.
While I agree with some of the things that you said I will have to disagree with your assesement that it is not a population imbalance issue. Actually you pretty much said yourself that the result of all the problems with the mechanics that you have listed is population imbalance. The TR very often has just as much players online as the two other faction (Who are supposed to fight each other too) combined. Og course this is a population imbalance issue. But of course there are reasons for that, just as you have said. In any case it is a problem that is not just going to fix itself out of thin air without SOE or a large amount of the playerbase actively trying to change something about it.
I don't think you quite get it. Yes there is population imbalance, this isn't a perfect world and there will always be an imbalance in population. But there is an acceptable % margin of difference. The problem is, as the population shrinks, so does that margin of difference in terms of hard numbers (not %). Now TR has always had a couple hundred extra players during the peak hour each day compared to the VS baseline. Now consider that the servers have a capacity of 6000 players, that difference is nominal and was barely noticeable at the start of the game. But as a server we are struggling to even fill less than 1/2 of that capacity during the peak hours. And there is no sign that the overall population will stop decreasing. Each faction is suffering the same issues, resulting in all losing players in equal measures. What that means is that what was within acceptable limits, is no longer acceptable. This has unfortunately been exacerbated by the lattice system. Whereas this difference in hard numbers would have been spread out over many hexs, is now concentrated into a limited number of engagements on the most popular continent. The problem isn't TR population directly. TR is not overpopulated, it just less under populated than the rest due to the causes taking longer to affect the TR population. Nor should any solution be to try and resolve the TR population. The TR feeling overpopulated is merely a symptom of the underlying cause. Stopping the shrinkage in all factions will only arrest the situation from getting any worse. The solution is to reverse the trend of the past months and increase each factions population at the same rates they have been shrinking. This can only be done by gaining more players than SOE is losing. This can only be done by fixing the game in a broader sense than simple faction fixes or the current perceived trend of trying to fix a single faction.
Come on, you can't be serious... this was the population on esamir at the very end-step of the conquest. This has nothing to do with the population on the server. You DO understand the difference between the population of a CONTINENT and the population of a SERVER right? I was there for this attack as far as I can remember the NC never made any real effort for Esamir all night. The thing is though - you easily COULD have. Nothing was stopping you. Look at the end of june 2 and start of june 3 in the graph: http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=10&timezone=0&allfactions=false Tell me, did the VS at any point outpopulate the NC or the TR? Sorry mac, but if you don't bring your soldiers to the battlefield you end up losing it. its not our fault you chose to fight elsewhere. When vanu had the least players on at the time and still had this advantage on esamir then by pure logic you must have had an even grater numerical advantage elsewhere. That's got nothing to do with over or under population whatsoever... If you really think this was some sort of zinger then I'm sorry to inform you that you've completely missed the point... The complaint people have is not having enough soldiers to match the enemy - not that the enemy isn't engaging them in 1-to-1 sized armies. For example when TR gained the indar lock. We had pretty much every last VS on Indar to defend, and we still only had something like 28% to TR varying between 68-72%. THAT'S the issue. -Stigma
TR is overpopulated in the classical sense: There are more TR than the environment can sustain. Eventually they will consume all food-sources (e.g. people willing to fight the zerg), and will start to die out due to starvation. Even if they were to magically reverse the trend, what to stop the TR from just gaining more new players, just like they allegedly are losing fewer now? I am not actually interested in nerfing the TR, but there needs to be a mechanism in place that makes it rewarding to be a Spartan and unrewarding to be a Zergling. Say TR has a 45% pop, the the two factions in the twenties should get at least a 2X bonus, and possibly reduced timers. Offering 10% to 15% bonus when you are being zerged is either a bad joke or a direct insult.
There's loads of things they can do to help balance factions. From empire swapping locks to population locks to decent EXP rewards (or EXP reduction) to direct gameplay enhancements (or reductions) for the underdog faction (dominant faction).
Yeah for some reason MMO companies are always very scared of using methods that work. Was the same in PS1, DAoC and WAR. It's puzzling,
I DON'T CARE about what happens when I AM NOT ONLINE. I only care what happens when i am online (as i am sure most people do). That most people are online during "prime time" doesn't mean that there aren't people online during other hours as well and guess what We are Also Customers of SOE. So i should go up against 12 to 1 odds just because i don't log during prime time ? Some of us work 12 hours a day so it's not like we have a choice. And then we have other things to do. So SOE should fix this in its entirety and not just during prime time and just against the TR or NC or VS.
Even during off hours, TR has pop advantage or at least during off hours factions are more even. So I think your confused with "continent" and "world" population. The latter is the real server population. Take a look here: http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php?world=10&timezone=0 Also you work 12 hours during night or something? Prime time is when people have finished work/school etc.
TR are not losing fewer players than the other two factions, they are losing players at the same rate. If you want you can go check the population data yourself. As for the concern about reversing the trend for all factions. If you saw the new players per faction data that cupboy had produced (before he took it down, as he put it </ragequit>), TR was getting far less new recruits than the other two factions. I can not take credit for this idea. But as an interim solution for the population balance, players should get XP boost based on the faction they are killing, based on population balance and territory control per continent. That way you won't get a VS farming NC, when they are getting a big fat XP boost because TR have the highest population. Nor will you get two factions farming a warpgated enemy because they have the highest population. This will forge a temporary alliance between the two factions to focus against the larger enemy who is dominating the continent. But maintain the focus of preventing anyone faction on trying to gain the continent by making the other two faction start to look at each other once they start to gain the majority of the territory. It a ebb and flow system that consistently puts the focus on the faction with the most influence, be it population, territory, or both.
In your infinite wisdom you think that most people work from 9 to 5 ? I work up to 10 o clock in the night sometines so i can't be online on prime time. So according to you i should leave the continent i am on and get on another just to have better pop numbers ?
does anyone noticed, that since lattice, nc and most importantly vanu wins more alerts then before ? ( i play nc)
Well its pointless being on a continent where you getting completely owned unless your in a outfit and can make a difference to balance the population out.
