The 90 minute long alerts are favoring the larger pops even more than the 45 minutes did. You can overcome certain nunerical disadvantages with teamplay only for so long until you get overwhelmed. If a faction only has 25% server pop during peak hours...or 30% continent pop during a 90 minute alert then it can't win unless the other 2 factions just hit on each other. So the longer you make those alerts the less chances the smaller faction got. Then even more players leave that faction. The situation gets ever worse until you reach a point of no return. If I see the faction numbers for last week and compare them with the last month on Cobalt then it seems even the pretty infamous VS there can not stand this for much longer. When it comes to total population then Vanu seems to be pretty unpopluar in general. Something should be done about that instead of making the situation worse...
VS is unpopular since release and you cant solve that. You cant solve it because most of that unpopularity comes from the general visual style and feel. I played VS alot in the past, but at some point i switched over to NC. The Magrider is not fun to drive and weapons feel and sound like you have a tuned toaster. You cant simply fixe this because its part of the game. With NC i got weapons that sound and feel better and a MBT that is an actual tank. The only way to solve this issue to some degree would be to allow all factions to use all weapons and vehicles.
45 min did feel like a good amount of time. Also wondering why VS has been so low in numbers, to the point I had to switch to TR to have good balanced fights. Team work is exceptional, gear feels good, and the alien/mad cultist/advanced tech theme I know plenty of people who do enjoy it a lot. If aesthetics and faction theme is a concern, I'd say NC is the one severely lacking.
Color scheme, tight suits...scientist backround. All that is not really "cool". Then they are using alien tech but the design just looks a bit futuristic. If you would just show someone a model of the players and the weapons then nobody would say "that's might have something to do with aliens". The trait of no bullet drop is only an advantage for noobs...everyone else knows that you get used to bullet drop with time. The innovative fun alien tech is usually subpar when it comes to real use for single players. Flashy balls that do little damage and hide your target are more annoying than fun. Then the experience from other games that you do not join the underpopped side cause it usually only gets worse. Nerfing them while buffing the other factions and introducing stuff that makes the pop count more important definitly ain't helping at all...
You wonder why VS has low pop and then do the very thing that causes VS to have low pop and you dont even seem to realize it. How can you have a good and balanced fight when the faction you play on are outpoping the others by a large margin? Playing as VS on Emerald today with both Esamir and Indar open, TR had like 40-50% pop VS around around 27-29 with the rest being NC on both continents. But what really puzzles me is how the hell one faction can manage to have such a major population advantage on 2 continents, unless they are somehow bypassing the queue which would quite frankly not surprise me.
By fighting NC on my TR exclusively. True story. Check my stats. Also, I've not abandoned my VS, but expanded to 2 factions since VS is so consistently underpop, so now I have options whereas before I was stuck. NC generally has, on average, the most players on Emerald. Check the server stats by faction. http://ps2.fisu.pw/population/?world=0
The point I was trying to make which I think you missed here is that by switching factions you help contribute to the very problem you seem to complain about. Is that not what people would consider hypocritical? Dont get me wrong here, I understand what you are saying about having options and it's of course your choice to do so and I'm not going to tell you how to play the game, just sharing my viewpoint on the issue.
It's temporary abandonment not hypocrisy, since I made the TR initially to fly the mossie, but then switched since it was clear with low global player pop to continue to enjoy the game meant 'you must construct additional pylons.' VS is BR99 > TR BR, so I am still doing my part for VS pop, just not recently.
The Population imbalance is rather simple to explain. VS currently has nothing that is imbalanced and around 10 to 15% of the pop follow the OP things regardless of faction.
