Why is Planetside 2 losing so many players?

tried reading the youtube comments to that? it was highly amusing watching console fanboys think that we are raging xD

and that has to save this game... HAH

I know this is a old thread,
Have you seen use recently? I'll sum it up for you, 7000 player peaks, with FTP this cannot be good. I have not played much at all in 2 months. the reason is, population imbalance, at any given time there is twice as many TR as Vanu, the TR equal the more than the other 2 factions combined. I've spent over $50 on a game I don't play anymore. I know some that have spent tons more. I've logged in at peak playing times and none of my old friends are on, the Outfit that I'm still with, use to have at least 50 players on all the time. during this same time 5 were on, counting me.
I've notice the Big defenders Are TR! there a surprise . As for the CS comments.

http://steamgraph.net/index.php?act...d=218230q49520&from=1357016400000&to=End Time

Because its an awful game, with awful balance, full of awful, trashy scum players who abuse every single thing they can to ruin the fun of everyone around them. A small percentage care about having good, big fights. A larger majority only care about farming or capturing territory, no matter how empty it is and no matter how hollow their 'victory' is. PS2 isn't going to die only because SOE is screwing up (and they are), the players will also kill the game by being ****** to each other (and they are).

There is no place for skill in this game. Just abuse the most powerful tool at your disposal, until it works. That's why PS2 will die ultimately, because it is a game where mindless zerg and rock/paper/scissors gameplay are the order of the day. There are a vast number of other shooters out there that actually offer compelling gameplay, and PS2 cannot compete with them in anything but spectacle.

Scum will be scum, unless you keep them in check through proper balance and mechanics. Instead of proper balance and mechanics, we get all sorts of easily exploited ******** to enable the scummy players.

SOE won't fix it, because at this point the only ones who are sticking with the game are either *******, or scum. Both of which are willing to spend money on it. They are past marketing the game to FPS fans looking for a challenge, because anyone who has tried this garbage knows that there is no challenge. There will be no growth. Only a collapse into a smaller and smaller number of servers.

Performance was a huge factor for me. While Im still running an older CPU, a Phenom II X4 at 4.06 ghz should be able to melt anything it plays, and it does - except for PS2. It doesnt break a sweat in any other application, even compiling Source maps. To run this game at acceptable framerates (including stabiltiy - I can get 70fps in some areas and 20 in others) it seems you need to go out and build a new i7 or at least an i5 PC, which is ridiculous for a F2P game. F2P titles typically target the largest audience possible, which means scaling your game to run on older hardware as well.

Then you have the constantly changing nature of the game. The lattice system, endless nerf/buff cycles, the GU's and the subsequent patch and then the hotfix for the patch, terrible hit detection and rendering in any large battle...it feel like a beta still. It feels like Im playing with a broken toy. And every time they add something new, it feels more and more broken. Then you have the ultimate cheese of having enemies log into alts in your own faction to thwart your efforts from within, then switch back to their own faction.

I have a 6 month membership wasting away because I havent bothered to log in but 2 or 3 times in the last month. There are far too many problems to make up for...whats good about PS2 just isnt enough to outweigh whats bad.

Exactly. I honestly don't know why anyone who isn't part of a fun outfit actually plays this game. There is just so much annoying ******** to deal with, and even if you find a good, interesting fight that suits your style, you can be sure that it will end very soon.

When PS2 first came out I was excited and eager to tell my friends about it, and try to get them to play. Now? I wouldn't even mention that I play it if people were talking about it, because its a ******* embarrassment.

There's also nothing to talk about. Faction bias is so cancerous that you can't have a discussion about actual balance without a mouthbreather losing his goddamn mind.

There is just so much wrong, I won't even go into more detail, it's too depressing.

This is a common trend with some mmos. F2P just means it happens faster than games that require a subscription.

The reason it looks so bad is because most of the people who quit playing probably did so because there system couldn't handle the game even though it met minimum requirements. Also with all the bugs after game updates probably frustrated a lot of people that started playing.

I will say however that this game is beggining to stabalize. For every person I hear saying they are leaving I've seen new guys log on and play. However most of these new guys come from first person shooters and not mmos which means they usually play solo instead of joining an outfit. Being in an outfit is what keeps most people playing the game.

I think one of the core problems with this game, a serious design flaw, is that victory is too much dependent on player head count rather than player skill and organization.

Having a simple majority is the most significant factor. This creates a sense of meaningless of being a "good player." This has very negative impact for long term playability of the game. Fortunately, there are some parts that don't fall into this category, such as ESF combat - where individual player skill is a significant factor, more significant than simple player majority.

It also applies to Infiltrator combat, since you can be pretty competitive with that despite of the zerg.

SOE needs to figure out how to make strategy and player skills to have greater impact on winning. People need to feel like there's room for them to improve, that getting better actually has impact on the game.

Also, the game needs much more clearly defined victory conditions. The current "capture the continent" is terrible in the way that it is almost impossible without overwhelming pop advantage. And the current alerts are too broad with victory conditions, they set impossible goals and just determine winner by who got closest to that impossible goal - it's not as satisfying as having a realistic winnable objective that may actually be won under 2 hour limit.

don't exactly know what you guys are seeing.. I'm finding the population to be pretty healthy overall. And the game has been nothing but tons of fun since the lattice was put in. Definitely gonna make a big push for some of my console friends to join the party this holiday season.

Once the novelty wears off, all any game really has going for it is skill. Those with a high skill ceiling will retain players longer. One only keeps playing any game if it challenges you to become a better player. Sadly the only part of PS2 that requires skill is dogfighting, and that's simply due to crappy controls forcing people to relearn the skills they already have.

Theres also the teamwork side which I think appeals to a lot of people, myself included. Its along the lines of your skill theory, except its getting 40-80 dudes to work together like a well oiled killing machine. I guess for some of us its all about what WE can do not what I can do.

Where to begin. Population imbalance. The lack of any metagame. Numbers are always going to win over skill. Performance. Weapon/vehicle balance. Easy to hack...then SOE lets hackers back in. It goes on and on and on. No death penalty with instaspawns. This will become a niche game before long.

True, but when the team work ends up being a numbers game rather than skill it gets rather tiresome.

This thread does not age. It's like that famous immortal jellyfish.

I find it pretty funny that you say this, because it's ******** with a capital T, the forums are filled with garbage players who thinks planetside 2 is a numbers game, why then do the vanu sovereignty on waterson do so well with a pop disadvantage of over 10% regularly, its because your theory is balls and because you're an idiot.

You stay classy now.

Just shows that most players do not play via Steam (I don't). My server (Woodman) alone peaked at nearly 5000 concurrent players the past weekend.

I still think that population imbalance is the #1 issue, along with the 4th faction nonsense that goes on at the end of alerts.

- Bring back the old server-level pop bonuses for being under pop and make them as large as the current per-continent bonuses.
- Encourage new players to create characters on servers where the faction is under-pop.
- Allow free transfers from servers where your faction is over-pop to servers where your faction is under-pop.
- Consider handing out a +30% XP boost for the first two weeks to new characters on an under-pop server/faction.

As for the 4th faction issue on alerts:

- Make it so that you get no reward for the alert unless you have earned at least 6k XP during the alert.

GLARING IMBALANCES KILLED THIS GAME FOR ME, I AHVENT LOGED IN 2 WEEKS NOW, PROLLY I HAVE BEEN KICKED FROM MY GROUP ALSO, BUT YEAH, IS KINDA OF DEAD GAME NOW

Population imbalance is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.

The disease is the horrible balance cycles after every major game update; And as cynical as it may sound, the impression is that it is done intentionally. Every month some new mechanic or item is introduced to a specific faction that throws game balance out the window, in the hopes that players will spend real money on the unbalanced item. This drives away players either to the other faction or away from the game completely, causing the imbalance.

True or not, many players feel that way and simply lose trust in SOE delivering a game that can be enjoyed in a consistent manner.

My Steam is telling me I have 394 hours played in Planetside 2.

I seriously doubt I spent all that time looking at a launcher.

That said, I know I haven't played that much, so it's definitely including the times I've left the launcher running in the background while I went away for a day or three.