the waterson server pop is absurd

Thanks for making a big deal out of nothing!

Yeah. This is often what my days in Planetside 2 boil down to:

Log in to game.

Click my main. Oh. 50+ NC server pop. Log into server. Check continents. Two are 50+. Oh, cool. The least NC-stacked continent is a ghost town, which is still 44% NC. Nice.

Log out.

And my alts don't help me. One is Helios (formerly Genudine) NC. The other is Connery TR. Both were created before pop imba was out of control. Both are now part of the extreme overpop faction, which I have no interest in being a part of.

Why should they care? Probably because I'm going to cancel my sub right before it expires. I had enough confidence to grab a 6 month, and I'm gone when it's done. Oh, and during the next NC sale, they're not getting a big chunk of cash from me, like last time.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth!

I didn't say that at all... not even close... % is a deceiving way of measuring population anyways. The total number of players at the time that screenshot was taken is over a thousand lower than prime time. So 60% of jack **** isn't much! It's not like there's 1500 TR guys and a couple hundred spread out over VS and NC. Several times a week I actually play 4 to 8 AM CST... there's MAYBE 1 TR platoon up (usually ODAM) and it's rarely full. Then a few tiny squads. That's it... no huge zerg... there aren't multiple platoons... so stop throwing around "zergling" and "60%" like that's really going on because it's not.

Then factor in the amount of duders who are worthless by testing stuff in the VR, dork'n around at the warp gate, or never leave the Crown area. They are useless at taking any continents.

So you have a few hundred total players spread over three factions, three continents, ghost capping whatever they can and MAYBE getting in a small skirmish of 5 on 8. Again... nobody cares... it's 2 or 3 or 4 AM... we are just fart'n around, maybe ghost cap'n, maybe just harrasing deep in enemy territory, maybe working on flying skills, whatever but not making some massive coordinated push to take continents. That doesn't start happening until about 7 or 8 AM CST and by then the NC population is soaring up and usually meets or exceeds the TR. The VS population increases too just not as much.

In other-words completely irrelevant... who cares what the pop is at 3 AM. We care what the spread is during prime time hours when multiple platoons on all sides are really trying to fight for supremacy. That's when it's sad to see the VS at such a disadvantage; I wish their pop was higher! Then again they do GREAT even with a lower population; those guys are coordinated and effective... kudos to them.

Also NC won an alert on Amerish today with a pretty harsh pop disadvantage.... so again... who the hell cares what the population is at weird hours... I certainly don't because it has little bearing on anything meaningful.

True story^^.

It is for this reason I have started a VS alt and haven't played my NC char for about a week now. To be honest I'm loving the extra challenge and the xp boost is great.

Quite often at least 30% due to pop, 20% if I take part in an alert, 15% for defence, 25% membership boost

Watching the game descend into a NC v TR battle is bad for everyone and SOE need to sort it or at least give players the chance to do something about it with server transfers. Though I wonder how those would work and if the player base could be trusted to even out the servers

I don't think you're using the term "ghostcapping" properly. These guys aren't flipping as many points as possible as fast as possible, they're probably just sitting around waiting for the bases to cap, one at a time, moving in groups, cert farming empty territory. Much slower.

If there had been a platoon- maybe even a squad- of dedicated, actual ghosts on TR, coupled with some support from squads and zerglings to take the final bases, TR would have had a wonderful view of the NC and VS warpgates.

Basically, they could have had the triple cap, they're just too bored and lazy to actually do it.

Some are ghost capping others are sitting around waiting for the XP.

You really didn't refute anything I said; just tried to pull some technicality that doesn't even matter to what we are talking about.

Again... nobody cares about crazy population percentages at weird hours of the day...

During prime time the population on Waterson between TR and NC is usually very close; sometimes NC has more! This whole "OMG TR HAD 60%!!!111ONEONEONE" is a rouse. The sad fact is the VS having a 10 or 20 % pop disadvantage during prime time.

I've said it in many threads and in this thread... I wish that could be fixed. They should merge in some other server with a large VS population or somehow encourage ppl to play VS.

Lol. Europeans suck at fighting europeans so they fight outnumber americans during their prime time to feel good about themselves.

The game itself really doesn't care what the population percentages are, except to hand out exp bonuses. And, while the game and everyone else are busy not caring about population percentages, a determined group can get on in the dead of night and basically ninja the entire map, letting NC and VS wake up to a TR triple cap, which they then bitterly fight to reverse. The actions of a very few can make many hundreds QQ in despair. This is the soul of ghostcapping, and it's why I do it.

But if the population's imbalanced late at night, which is the perfect time to take continents out from under people's noses, it makes the practice incredibly easy.

See the problem yet?

I have friends on all factions so I don't really have an allegiance to just one, why shouldn't we get to enjoy the whole game or better question, why make life harder than it should be? it's f2p bro

This is how waterson TR triple caps so often, then they come on the forums the next day and brag like it was some feat lol. Thats what your pop looks like late at night

You have member status right now?

Create more alts on less pop fact/servers

Well, here's the thing.

All west coast servers are ****** by the same issues. There's simply less US pop on the west coast by a LARGE margin, so giving east and west the same number of servers is stupid. That will naturally create one of two problems: either east coast servers are overpop or west coast servers are underpop. The latter already has happened. On top of that, both Connery and Helios have huge imbalance problems due to Chinese players stacking one faction. For East servers, at least most Euro players are on Euro servers. Only a tiny fraction fled to US servers to avoid the Pro7 ********. _ALL_ Chinese players are playing on US West servers. They completely dominate at night.

It's not only night, either. Most of the ppl playing from China are probably the kids of the nouveau middle class in China's more prosperous cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, cities which are predominantly on the country's east coast. They're 9 hours behind us. So primetime, which we'll call 3pm to 12am for US West, is 6am to 3pm for Chinese players. On weekends, Chinese players are more than able to skew our primetime numbers too.

And I don't really feel like rerolling. I already have most of what I want on my VS main, and I've got a fair number of upgrades on both the ESF and MBT of TR/NC on my alts (which are the things I like to fool around with).

So should I start from scratch on certs, deal with higher latency, AND spend a bunch of money on a char on a "better" server, just to encourage SOE's complete ignorance of what is approaching the status of being a game-breaking issue on some servers?

I don't feel like doing that.

Funny how all the people saying pop isn't a problem are all the people on TR.

5:36 PM EST, TR 44% world pop, Vanu 23%, NC 33%.

Players should make a form of boycott by playing alts on TR only for a couple of weeks. To the point that they have nothing to shoot at aside from each other.

Maybe the devs will pay some atention to the problem then instead of releasing cute hats.

it's pretty obvious that the screen was taken after server merges, as you can see the newer camo and helmet pretty clearly. A population imbalance is a population imbalance, and TR have had at least a 5% pop over the rest of the server since school let out. I suppose it makes sense, as TR appeals more to the cawadoody crowd, and most of those kids are still school age.

What's being ruined now?

6:45pm EST, TR 40%, NC 34%, VS 26%

7:30pm EST, TR 38%, NC 34%, VS 28%