Time to merge servers? - Page 4

Qwan · 2012-12-17, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by Juryrig

There is a lot of good information on Youtube, BUT - expecting (in fact, requiring) your customers ('cos that's what the players are) to look 'elsewhere' for an explanation of how your product works, and what makes it different, and better than the competition....that's just bad business practice.

Many people will be quickly turned off by their initial experience, and won't bother going to Youtube or anywhere else to look for information or guidance - they'll just log off and try a different game.

And as a supplier, SOE shouldn't expect them to do anything else. They need to entice new customers in, not require them to go to third party sources to work out how their product works. Granted the basic controls are the same as many other shooters, but the overall experience and mechanics are different. Which is what should make the game great (eventually), but for now it's just a barrier to understanding, and IF SOE want to attract and retain customers then they need to address this.

True I guess by putting it directly on the web page a link or somthing. But even without lore or a story I myself find it a good game (Im a vet though). I think that players should read a little more as well, I know in today's video culture we want movies or a audio book. But as far as consolidation of servers I think it should happen because of the size of each server. As they add more continents the servers will grow larger and as that happens the population of each server will seem smaller, so its coming probably within the first added continent. I just hope they dont frack it up.

Rivenshield · 2012-12-17, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by Rasgriz

They might do the thing they did with SWG and keep lowering the amount of players that triggers a "Medium" and "High" server pop displaying.

/groans, puts head in hands

sylphaen · 2012-12-17, 07:10 PM

Originally Posted by CaptainTenneal

I really wish characters were not bound to servers. If everyone could pick there server at the start of each game, we'd always have at least one packed server. The game looks dead if anyone tries for the first time during the day. Very bad for keeping them interested!

I felt I should highlight this comment.

capiqu · 2012-12-17, 11:40 PM

Maybe experience given should be local rather then continent wide (rolling XP). So if you have all the players in one base/outpost such as The Crown, experience there then goes down and experience is then raised at another outpost or base. Hopefully this will encourage people to move on to lightly populated areas.

AThreatToYou · 2012-12-18, 01:08 AM

Originally Posted by capiqu

Maybe experience given should be local rather then continent wide (rolling XP). So if you have all the players in one base/outpost such as The Crown, experience there then goes down and experience is then raised at another outpost or base. Hopefully this will encourage people to move on to lightly populated areas.

What? No, no! That's a terrible idea!

Plunkies · 2012-12-18, 04:56 AM

Edit: Nevermind. It seems that the server list also includes servers that aren't even available to play on.

Ritual · 2012-12-18, 05:58 AM

When they add more continents they have an excuse to merge servers because the population the server can support goes up with each continent added.

Right now we are lucky to have one continent population locked during primetime.

With six continents the ideal population will be three continents full. There is no way the current server populations are supporting population locking three continents.

Server merges down the road would be healthy, just for the best playing experience. Not as a sign the game is dying.

EVILoHOMER · 2012-12-18, 09:00 PM

So Planetside had the problem of static servers where the population didn't all get forced together as it declined and naturally spread out as it risen. SOE have made no attempt to fix this in Planetside 2, it wouldn't surprise me if they thought because it was F2P they didn't need to. They had way more backup servers that were never turned on, I think either they were just trying to be prepared or they thought F2P couldn't fail. Though I have my doubts about the second option as they've had F2P games before and they've all failed.

The problem is with any normal FP2 you have lots of servers of 64 players and as the population declines people naturally seek to join the server with the most people. However in Planetside you cannot switch and you cannot see the player count in character selection so you cannot do this. As you have 3 characters MAX and are locked to them as what your purchase is character bound and not account, why would a delete a character or b make a new one?

For 83.4% of the day the population is low on every server with only really a small window when people are online and playing. However even the big battles are becoming much smaller, when the game first launched it was every cont is packed, you couldn't even switch conts it was so packed and there was a 700 person queue to get in. Now there is no queue, each cont is nowhere near busy, in fact the population seems low enough the majority of each faction can stick to a single cont and dominate it.

We can see a general trend each weekend of the population becoming smaller and smaller, it is just sad. SOE have really double the servers they need, really during off peak times they could have a single server just to create big battles. The problem is there is no dynamic server system, they cannot open and shut new servers as the population grows and falls. What is clear though is they cannot have static servers, all that ends up happening is every server is a ghost town for 83.4% of the day and then a select number of servers are population during the peak.

SOE need more Conts and less servers and then they need a way to control people going to too many conts during the off peak times.

People will hate on this thread, however I'm on Miller which is the most populated EU server and I've noticed a big drop off. My other 2 characters on alternative EU servers aren't even playable any more due to how dead those servers are.

SOE really need to do something to consolidated the population during both highs and lows of the day or Planetside suffers the same sorry fate of Planetside. The strength of Planetside 2 is the big battles, just like Planetside, there are much better shooters out there and so if Planetside 2 reduces in size then it suffers and people quit and play other FPS games.

Just like a thread here once said, SOE need to be active and not reactive, it'll be too late to merge servers when people have already quit for good, you need to do it now before more people quit because it is harder and harder to find big battles.

I mean during any other time that peak, I can cap a base with like 3 other people :\

Saintlycow · 2012-12-18, 09:26 PM

TBH, i'd rather have a queue to get some good fights, then have no fights at all.

If they rebalance servers, they need to check for pop imbalances. For example, Waterson has a huge TR population. Don't merge it with another server overpopulated with TR.

Rivenshield · 2012-12-18, 09:33 PM

We all know that to do so would sound the beginning of the end. The PERCEPTION is that server merges are the death knell for any game. They are associated with shrinking content and layoffs and pathetic free giveaways and all manner of fail.

However... you are both right.

/ponders

They don't need to merge them all at once, you know. Merge two one month, two the next....

CaptainTenneal · 2012-12-18, 10:23 PM

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

The problem is with any normal FP2 you have lots of servers of 64 players and as the population declines people naturally seek to join the server with the most people. However in Planetside you cannot switch and you cannot see the player count in character selection so you cannot do this. As you have 3 characters MAX and are locked to them as what your purchase is character bound and not account, why would a delete a character or b make a new one?

Agreed.

I really feel people need to stop the 'merger' talk, and ask why we can't unbind players from servers. This doesn't have to be a negative topic to bring up to SOE, picking servers is what other games do, and for good reason. Call it an enhancement.

Saintlycow · 2012-12-19, 01:42 AM

Originally Posted by CaptainTenneal

Agreed.

I really feel people need to stop the 'merger' talk, and ask why we can't unbind players from servers. This doesn't have to be a negative topic to bring up to SOE, picking servers is what other games do, and for good reason. Call it an enhancement.

I totally see from where you're coming, but there is one large problem.

Continent and world populations would be skewed beyond belief.
A player would log on, find a server with a high population of their faction, and play there. Large imbalances would occur. Of course, there are possible solutions, but this is a problem that would arise. Much like the continent imbalances we currently have.

Wahooo · 2012-12-19, 02:26 AM

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

We all know that to do so would sound the beginning of the end. The PERCEPTION is that server merges are the death knell for any game. They are associated with shrinking content and layoffs and pathetic free giveaways and all manner of fail.

However... you are both right.

/ponders

100% The game is new and i'm sure there is an expectation it should still be growing. You don't shoot yourself in the foot and merge servers, especially one month in from release, that would go down as one of the worst game launches in history. Reality? pshaw who cares about reality when you have perception.

I think unbinding toons from the server and introducing a ~12 hour empire hopper timer for THAT server. You can flop empires to your hearts content just not to the same server you played a different faction - for some time period.

Imbalances through population XP bonuses. Make them sever side, then bigger bonuses for continent side where you are out numbered.

Vashyo · 2012-12-19, 03:12 AM

I haven't had to sit in a queue since few first launch days, and I havent seen population count go above medium at all on Woodman. There's only one decent sized battle and it's at crown at all times.

Feels just like PS1 when I last played it, so little people and so many empty bases. And then outfit people thin the ranks even more by going around capping some bases that we do not need. Like going to all the way north to cap mao and surrounding bases then just to lose everything in 30 minutes anyway. :/

CaptainTenneal · 2012-12-19, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by Saintlycow

I totally see from where you're coming, but there is one large problem.

Continent and world populations would be skewed beyond belief.
A player would log on, find a server with a high population of their faction, and play there. Large imbalances would occur. Of course, there are possible solutions, but this is a problem that would arise. Much like the continent imbalances we currently have.

This is just me personally, not sure how other people feel. But if I see two servers, one is 33/33/33 [High] with a queue, and the other is TR60/20/20 [Medium], I still want to go to the first one if possible. And if the empire balance was hidden in this screen, new players would still easily find a battle. I don't think they start out from the gate trying to XP farm (they don't know how yet).

That's my biggest concern, I want this game to survive, and I want new players coming and staying. I feel bad when I explain to people that "it gets better at night, trust me".