Biggest problem with this game (and it's not what you think)

[EVILoHOMER]

There are too many conts for too low of a population. I never see big battles any more, it was a struggle to get them on Indar in the first place but now you just get masses of one faction switching conts to dominate. People are just so spread over that giant Planetside style battles don't exist any more and if they do I don't know where to find them. All the time I fly to hot spots and it's like 20 or 30 people and it is lame and it will only get worse when the game launches and SOE has like 20 odd servers or whatever stupid number they decide. As the population declines they'll fail to merge servers and the population will drop even faster as a result.

They need to actively merge and create servers as the population falls and increases. During peak non peak times they need to shut off all but one Cont because the only time you can ever find people is during peak and that is not good enough. It just becomes so frustrating when the only time you can realistically play is a short window in the afternoon and evening.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

There are too many conts for too low of a population. I never see big battles any more, it was a struggle to get them on Indar in the first place but now you just get masses of one faction switching conts to dominate. People are just so spread over that giant Planetside style battles don't exist any more and if they do I don't know where to find them. All the time I fly to hot spots and it's like 20 or 30 people and it is lame and it will only get worse when the game launches and SOE has like 20 odd servers or whatever stupid number they decide. As the population declines they'll fail to merge servers and the population will drop even faster as a result.

They need to actively merge and create servers as the population falls and increases. During peak non peak times they need to shut off all but one Cont because the only time you can ever find people is during peak and that is not good enough. It just becomes so frustrating when the only time you can realistically play is a short window in the afternoon and evening.

Well homer I think you should take into consideration that this is the end of beta, everything is about to get wiped. So alot of players are catching up on things that they may have not done during early beta. For example myself I am doing alot more girlfriend time and homework, so my PS2 time is less, this is so that on release date and days after I can really get my grind on. But its mostly to get caught up with homework, my girl plays PS2 as well. I think during release you will see the numbers go back up, and then some. Hang in there big guy November 20th is G-day for us.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

There are too many conts for too low of a population. I never see big battles any more, it was a struggle to get them on Indar in the first place but now you just get masses of one faction switching conts to dominate. People are just so spread over that giant Planetside style battles don't exist any more and if they do I don't know where to find them. All the time I fly to hot spots and it's like 20 or 30 people and it is lame and it will only get worse when the game launches and SOE has like 20 odd servers or whatever stupid number they decide. As the population declines they'll fail to merge servers and the population will drop even faster as a result.

They need to actively merge and create servers as the population falls and increases. During peak non peak times they need to shut off all but one Cont because the only time you can ever find people is during peak and that is not good enough. It just becomes so frustrating when the only time you can realistically play is a short window in the afternoon and evening.

Well the server population are usually only really bad between 3 am to 10 am and I can live with that. I been playing on EU01/Eurydome and at least there the population have been good from 3pm CEST (witch is the time the servers have gone live in Europe during the beta) to 2am CEST.

So I can't say I have had a similar experience to yours. So I guess it really depends on what server you play on.... But that has been the case with every MMO to date that have been released. So nothing new under the sun.

[Tenhi]

Has anyone ever seen Indar being locked yet? I think I have never seen it on the EU Server. And the bug that wont let you spawn MBTs outside of your Warpgate doesnt help the whole matter

[dethred]

LOL @ thread complaining about a problem for which a solution (more than 3 continents eventually) has been mentioned by the devs since day one. Bravo! What I've come to expect from the PS community.

[dethred]

Originally Posted by Qwan

Well homer I think you should take into consideration that this is the end of beta, everything is about to get wiped. So alot of players are catching up on things that they may have not done during early beta. For example myself I am doing alot more girlfriend time and homework, so my PS2 time is less, this is so that on release date and days after I can really get my grind on. But its mostly to get caught up with homework, my girl plays PS2 as well. I think during release you will see the numbers go back up, and then some. Hang in there big guy November 20th is G-day for us.

Finally some sense! You are exactly peg on. I know no fewer than 7 people that are just waiting for release, and I've been putting off playing because of the character wipe, studying as much as possible before release (at which point my education will be fucked). Tuesday is going to be like DC traffic on a Friday with heavy rain.

Get ready for absolute chaos from tens of thousands of new and returning players... for better or worse.

[Crator]

^ OMG, can you imagine what the server load balancing act will look like? Wonder if they have a plan for that or 50+ server free-for-all grab. Should be interesting.

[Funkyfresh]

Biggest problem to me is the ultra-short time to death.

[TheStigma]

Originally Posted by Funkyfresh

Biggest problem to me is the ultra-short time to death.

The TTK is already more than twice of what it is in every other competitive shooter in roughly the same genre, and that is for the most squishiest infantry units. HA's and MAXes are obviously on a totally different level altogether.

Significantly increasing the TTK much more above what it is now would be detrimental to many aspects of the game that I'm not sure you are considering.

-Stigma

[Knocky]

Originally Posted by TheStigma

The TTK is already more than twice of what it is in every other competitive shooter in roughly the same genre, and that is for the most squishiest infantry units. HA's and MAXes are obviously on a totally different level altogether.

Significantly increasing the TTK much more above what it is now would be detrimental to many aspects of the game that I'm not sure you are considering.

-Stigma

The only other game in this genre is PS1. Compared to PS1 the TTK is fast. In addition, MAXes go down faster then Lewinsky on Bubba. MAXes need some serious love from the Devs.

[TheStigma]

I agree with the OP that this aspect needs a bit of work. The fact that it can get a little boring with a lack of really big battles going on anywhere at non-peak times is also an issue. Ideally you would want there to be at least ONE really big battle going on at all times even during the night - and that should be possible, but only with some smart systems that can shape the population-density into optimal numbers for those big fights to occur.

I think the first, easiest and most obvious solution to that issue is to temporarily lock out one or more continents when the server detects that popultion-numbers are dwindling. low-population servers SUCK in this game. No-one wants to barely see any enemies and have the gameplay reduce into running from base to base unchallanged capturing them ultra-slowly. This will obviously happen every night unless they do anything about it, so you need some way to cope with that.

Locking out continents as population drops below certain levels will assure that the rest of the population flows over into the remaining continents and helps them stay alive and active. I don't think most people care THAT much about playing in a spesific continent that they would cry over that as long as it helped create more active areas - but just in case you should have a semi-smart system that chose what continent to lock-out. Primarily start with the lowest population one, but also make sure that its not the same one that gets locked out every time - to promote diversity (most people will play what they are familiar/comfortable with over new stuff unless incentivised)

-Stigma

[TheStigma]

Originally Posted by Knocky

The only other game in this genre is PS1. Compared to PS1 the TTK is fast. In addition, MAXes go down faster then Lewinsky on Bubba. MAXes need some serious love from the Devs.

I kinda smelled that one coming, but be real here... PS1 and PS2 in terms of the shooting mechanics are nothing alike - and obviously the game that we have now is very close in mimicing a game like BF3 in terms of its shooting mechanics. The only major difference is the scope and the high-level strategic layer. You can hate that change or love it, but that's what it is.

PS1 also had terrible TERRIBLE shooting mechanics and inf-on-inf battles that had a very flat skill-curve and promoted quake-style strafing battles and spammy gameplay around corners. A lot of that (but perhaps not all) had to do with the very high TTK, so I wouldn't use PS1 as an argument for higher TTK. For all the things PS1 did right the whole infantry shooting mechanic was certainly not among those things...

As for MAXes specifically those are sort of an exception obviously. I think they might need some help as you say, but I don't necessarily think that just adding more HP would be the key. Too much HP and being able to withstand to much burst-damage would make them exponentially more powerful with engineer support (and they are already pretty powerful when you actually have engineers trailing you to repair). I'm pretty sure I heard an idea about adding riot-shields as an arm-equipable and one of the devs saying that this was something that they were planning on (I can't remember the spesifics atm so take it with a grain of salt). I think something like that would be great to have since it would allow the MAX to do its "siege-breaker" job even after the enemy numbers become so great that it can't just survive on its large HP-pool.

MAXes are still easily the most scary opponent for me, at least indoors and in biolab fights ect. but I agree that they should be given that they are now somewhat limited. They might need a slight buff. The only question is if they should be balanced on the basis of how a MAX works solo or in a group because those two are very different things.

-Stigma

[Bocheezu]

It's hard to know how to feel about this one, since pops have been so low the past couple days. I should have done a video of my play experience yesterday; basically it broke down to

50% driving around
40% standing alone at a 2-person capture point, while everyone else tries to kill people behind spawn room shields
5% repairing stuff
5% actually fighting other people

It was really pathetic, but I know the population was really low. The question becomes, isn't that what most of the continents are going to be like? I don't know the continental pop caps, but how many continents do we think are going to be pop capped during peak hours? Are you left to the play experience above if you can't get on to one of those continents?

[Bags]

Originally Posted by TheStigma

PS1 also had terrible TERRIBLE shooting mechanics and inf-on-inf battles that had a very flat skill-curve and promoted quake-style strafing battles and spammy gameplay around corners. A lot of that (but perhaps not all) had to do with the very high TTK, so I wouldn't use PS1 as an argument for higher TTK. For all the things PS1 did right the whole infantry shooting mechanic was certainly not among those things...
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PS2 has even worse shooting mechanics.

And inf on inf took skill in PS1... PS2 is spray spray and spray unless you're more than 30 m out... lol. Really not much skill in this game.

[TheStigma]

Originally Posted by Bags

PS2 has even worse shooting mechanics.

And inf on inf took skill in PS1... PS2 is spray spray and spray unless you're more than 30 m out... lol. Really not much skill in this game.

PS2's shooting mechanics might not be perfect, and I think that some other games do them better overall. BF3 I think has really good gunplay, and PS2 obviously aped BF3s mechanics a lot, but I think they made a mistake in having much too low recoil overall and also not enough incentive for burstfire. Both controlling recoil and directing COF on full-auto is a little too easy currently IMO and I'd like to see that tweaked upward for a better skillcurve.

That said, saying that it is worse than PS1 just makes me laugh. I can't even take that seriously. I will chalk that up to rose-tinted nostalgia-glasses on your part because that is the only way it makes any kind of sense...

As for the no skill part - that's weird. I must just be the luckiest person alive then because in inf-on-inf I can consistently down 3-5 people pr life or even more sometimes if I can avoid too many 1-on-many battles. I also have no problem noticing the names of certain players who seem to be performing well above the rest of the enemy troops. If its just random luck then we are certainly seeing a lot of statical abnormalities.

I can't really agree on the spray-and-pray either. Hipfire is generally weak in this game compared to most others and isn't going to win you any battles beyond literally a handful of meters unless you have a specialized CQC weapon and an advanced laser. Bullets from all weapons also have a pretty tight COF now (after the big changes to it) regardless of weapon as long as you don't full-auto for much more than 7-8 bullets. If you want to hit something you are going to have to put the crosshair on target pretty exactly - including lead for a moving target - even with a weapon like a high ROF LMG. How that equates to spray-and-pray I don't get at all. The only spray-n-pray weapon ive seen in PS2 so far is the mini chaingun but that is sort of the point of the weapon...

-Stigma