Outfits need to be bigger on Miller

Rolfski · 2013-06-07, 06:19 AM

Everybody will hate me for this (we all love our small elitist spec ops clans, right?) but I'm going to throw it out anyway. For Miller standards, we seem to be doing fine but actually we're not. I play on Connery and Mattherson as well and I can tell you this server is increasingly becoming less competitive compared to international standards. On Mattherson you will see big, very well organised 1 vs 1outfit battles over bases that demands from outfits to absolutely bring their A-game to come up on top and capture the point. If you bring in a full platoon on Miller however, there's no competition unless you get overwhelmed by an unorganized enemy zerg, so no need to bring your A-game.

This game is increasingly steering towards sustaining 48+ ingame teams and we on Miller are just like EU, hopelessly fragmented and therefore powerless. Greenies are way too dominant on Miller atm. Outfits should control battle flow, not casual lone wolves. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against smaller outfits but to win the meta game and the alerts while staying internationally competitive, 48+ ingame is where it's at. I even consider my own outfit as too small at times. I'm not promoting zerging btw, I'm promoting our zergs to become more organized and effective.

As a rule of thumb, unless you specifically want to stay small, we should strive as outfits to have at least 50-75 members logged in on prime time week days. In this way, alliances become much more effective because you can rely on single outfits to hold their point.

PredatorFour · 2013-06-07, 06:37 AM

Your a TR right? From what i see when i play is the TR always outpop the other two.

Sunrock · 2013-06-07, 06:54 AM

Lately we have had 2-3% more world pop then other factions, thats true. But when it comes to outfit only 50% of the TR pop on miller is in an outfit and BRTD is the only TR outfit that has have allot of active members. Most TR outfits are just 1-2 squads.

But I agree. However we in Outcasters are trying to recruit new active members but it's hard as hell IMO. All we manage to recruit is ultra casual players. We have about 15 active members that are online every day but then we have 80'ish members that are only online once in a blue moon. So if you play PS2 at least 1-2 hours every day please check us out at http://www.outcasters.net/ We are aiming to have at least 1 full platoon during prime times.

PredatorFour · 2013-06-07, 08:09 AM

Yeh it's hard to recruit players and blindly recruiting yields poor results.

Emperor Newt · 2013-06-07, 08:24 AM

The problem is that still only very few people who pick up the game stay. And those who let it fall usually don't pick it up again.
If you look at RPS numbers when they have their "call to arms" they usually get a lot of new players. But maybe only 10 of those actually remain in the game. And then there also is the usuall bleedout every outfit has to face. Heck I even notice it myself. I am playing less and less every week. And other "veterans" in my outfit feel it too. At this speed I doubt we will still exist in a few months from now.

With that ratio EU servers (not only Miller) are in desperate need of a merge. Especially when the new continents are in.
I don't what to be the doomsayer but currently I don't see much use of EU having more then one server once Hossin is out. The glorious times with several well filled servers are already over.
Also I have noticed in a significant drop in PS2 advertising on Pro7 TV channels. Just saying...

Rolfski · 2013-06-08, 04:22 AM

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

Yeh it's hard to recruit players and blindly recruiting yields poor results.

If others servers have no problem recruiting multiple 500+ outfits, it shouldn't be a problem on Miller as well.

MrEclectic · 2013-06-08, 06:25 AM

Actually I like the fact that we don't have huge outfits on Miller. Huge outfits seem to set the tone for their servers, and in occasion dominate the server's playstyle. I prefer the solution that has emerged here, where we operate as parts of an alliance. The end result is similar, but there is room for every playstyle.

That being said, we in Miller have a lot of unaffiliated players, and also people creating small outfits that seem to be unaware of the existence of the alliances. We need to make them aware of our outfits and alliances. Public platoons are a useful tool. People are looking for more organised play, but they don't know where to look for it.

Also, Miller always had a reputation as a hardcore server, and it's only getting worse. This is a server where a BR50 is just past the newbie state. And especially for NC and VS, this is compounded by the fact that we are underpopulated. A new NC or VS player is facing overwhelming numbers, in a game with poor new user experience and in a server dominated by experienced players. It is natural that this is a frustrating experience, and not many will put in the effort.

As for Rock Planet Shotgun [RPS], we are more of a gateway for the greater Rock Paper Shotgun community to come and see what the fuss is all about. Our Call to Arms events are such a showcase. We get new players that way, but in general our community plays a lot of PC games, and relatively not many choose to focus in just one. Nevertheless, we feel that introducing people into the game, and making the new player experience less frustrating, is perhaps even more important than any ingame or metagame goal, and that's what we're striving for.

Stanis · 2013-06-08, 11:36 AM

But one of the largest VS outfits recruited a lot of players when the game launched.
They culled the inactives. They're left at about a platoon nightly.

RPS are fairly similar in regards that they get a lot of member flux through their gateway promotion and run a platoon most nights.

EMLD have done a fine job more recently. Again, at a platoon.

By comparison Vanu Corp run at about half a platoon plus allies, typically we've got the UBAD guys or other TVA members rolling with us.

And in co-operating with allies we get to focus on objectives that don't need a platoon or division, or team up where extra punch is needed.
(Last night DWG came to assist urgent calls for help at Howling Pass. FRC came for long enough to speedbump the NC zerg and strip most of it's armor then we went back to fighting .. )

In Vanu Corp we typically recruit a few people at most each week - and most of them stay. Low flux. High retention.
Teamspeak is required. We don't require you to play every moment of the game in an outfit squad. We expect you will want to.

Our goal is a stable platoon each night. The lack of new blood on Miller to recruit active players from is a pain.
Given our recruitment strategy that is unlikely to happen so we work with allies.

The enemy on Miller isn't that much difference. There are two or three outfits per faction that run a full platoon and then its specialist squads.

I've been monitoring stats for outfits on Miller for some time.
There more or less evenly about 9k characters in outfits for each faction.
There are about 3.5k active in the past month
About 2.5k (TR) and 2.2k (VS/NC) each active in the past 7 days

(For reference, of the 2.2k VS that are active 35% of them are in 3 outfits)

Those numbers are very close.
Yet right now the following are online :

273 TR
188 NC
131 VS

Less than half the number of outfitted TR online.
Once upon a time the NC had a slight numbers advantage early evening, TR 8pm to 10pm and after about 10pm VS numbers remained while TR and NC logged out.

If that's the effect of recruitment and popularity what we need to attract to VS are people that play casually during the early evening and weekend afternoons.

Most of the VS I know are 25+ with family/kids/job. No idea how true that is for other outfits.

I get what you mean about the American servers, and in part I'm glad I don't have to play that way.
Outfit zerg turns up. In sufficient size and numbers that they are pretty much unopposed because it takes TIME to respond and in 2 minutes turns the whole tide of a fight.
Sounds kind of cool until you realise that this could be worse than "the zerg" avoiding each other - being co-ordinated avoidance.

In PS1 the Euro servers never seemed to do big outfits the way the Americans did.
We seem to do alliances - TRAM, NCTO and TVA are our answer to the mega-outfits across the pond.

Sunrock · 2013-06-09, 04:34 AM

An outfit that fields only one platoon is not that big. I would say it's about medium sized. Really big outfits field 4-5 platoons at the same time.

Originally Posted by Stanis

I've been monitoring stats for outfits on Miller for some time.
There more or less evenly about 9k characters in outfits for each faction.
There are about 3.5k active in the past month
About 2.5k (TR) and 2.2k (VS/NC) each active in the past 7 days

(For reference, of the 2.2k VS that are active 35% of them are in 3 outfits)

This numbers should be taken with a bit of salt. Active members counts every one that just logged in for 1 minutes once that month to those that play 16+ hours a day. If you look at my outfit the Outcasters you can see we have around 100 members online every month, but we are almost never more then 24 members online at the same time.

And if you ask me casual players does not count for more then cannon fodder. They are not online enough to make an impact on the day to day war effort going on in game. IE you will never notice they are there...

Stanis · 2013-06-09, 05:43 AM

Originally Posted by Sunrock

An outfit that fields only one platoon is not that big. I would say it's about medium sized. Really big outfits field 4-5 platoons at the same time.

This numbers should be taken with a bit of salt. Active members counts every one that just logged in for 1 minutes once that month to those that play 16+ hours a day. If you look at my outfit the Outcasters you can see we have around 100 members online every month, but we are almost never more then 24 members online at the same time.

And if you ask me casual players does not count for more then cannon fodder. They are not online enough to make an impact on the day to day war effort going on in game. IE you will never notice they are there...

American Big = 3+ Platoons
Miller Big = 1 Platoon.

It's the curse of all those veterans playing.
On there other Euro servers there probably are a couple of outfits that have reached a large size however on Miller a lot of outfits probably feel that they aren't willing to give up their name or PS1 identity.

Hence we have allies. Lets us be part of something much bigger and keep our roots.

As for the numbers. I know - stats are able to prove anything.
But when you start looking at 10000 players I think the sample size is enough that average and trend is relevant.

So roughly the same number of characters - but the TR get played a lot more.

ringring · 2013-06-09, 06:37 AM

Originally Posted by Sunrock

An outfit that fields only one platoon is not that big. I would say it's about medium sized. Really big outfits field 4-5 platoons at the same time.

This numbers should be taken with a bit of salt. Active members counts every one that just logged in for 1 minutes once that month to those that play 16+ hours a day. If you look at my outfit the Outcasters you can see we have around 100 members online every month, but we are almost never more then 24 members online at the same time.

And if you ask me casual players does not count for more then cannon fodder. They are not online enough to make an impact on the day to day war effort going on in game. IE you will never notice they are there...

More like 100 per week not per month. When we were cooking on gas in PS1 the max I'd see online at once was around 80.

What we don't have now is a high churn rate. In ps1 we did although we also had a reasonably core group that were committed and experienced. From memory we had around 20+ cr5's that played outfit wars for instance.

'Really big has 4-5 platoons'? Wow. So upto 200 players online and of course there will be other players not online at that time, maybe to a ratio of 5:1

I think that's a bit unrealistic, especially for Miller.

Shamrock · 2013-06-09, 06:42 AM

Originally Posted by MrEclectic

Also, Miller always had a reputation as a hardcore server, and it's only getting worse. This is a server where a BR50 is just past the newbie state. And especially for NC and VS, this is compounded by the fact that we are underpopulated. A new NC or VS player is facing overwhelming numbers, in a game with poor new user experience and in a server dominated by experienced players. It is natural that this is a frustrating experience, and not many will put in the effort.

I suspect this is why Miller isn't on the recommended server list for EU (currently Woodman), to be fair to SoE it wants its player base to grow, ie not join a server where newbies will get butchered and quit in frustration before they get a chance to learn the basics.

Rolfski · 2013-06-09, 07:09 AM

Low rate of recruits incoming and frustrating new player experience is probably one of the bigger issues on Miller. Spawning at some tower and instantly getting shotgunned/SMG-ed all the time by some BR 80+ ninja is not exactly inviting.

If anything we could use some Eve Online Univerisity-like new player community.

Aveox · 2013-06-09, 08:45 AM

PS1:
1 squad = 10 players = 7.5% of continental population cap (133 players)
1 platoon = 30 players = 22.6% of continental population cap

PS2:
1 squad = 12 players = 1.8% of continental population cap (666 players)
1 platoon = 48 players = 7.2% of continental population cap

In PS1 a single squad had a much larger impact on continental strategy because they would be nearly a tenth of a continent's population. In PS2 with a much higher popcap you would need 50 people to reach that 7,5%. So if an outfit ran with 1 squad in PS1, it needs to be a full platoon in PS2 to have the same effect as in PS1. So squad = platoon.
Looking in-game I think that is about right. My outfit used to field a full squad in PS1, which was more then adequate in most situations and could tip the balance against a bigger force if we did things right. In PS2, 10 people barely make a dent in anything.

Miller definately needs new blood though. It's nearly impossible to recruit anybody at the moment. I don't think it has anything to do with high amount of PS1 vets on the server though. I think we simply haven't dropped low enough in population yet. And even then we will probably be merged before we become recommended server.

Sunrock · 2013-06-09, 08:46 AM

Originally Posted by Stanis

American Big = 3+ Platoons
Miller Big = 1 Platoon.

Of course every thing is relative but I don't see way "american big" is also big on a EU server. EU servers usually always have smaller guilds/clans/outfit/whatever no matter what game we are taking about compare to US servers. But PS2 is still the same game no matter what server you play on so when you talk about big outfits you need to compare to the US servers too. If not we will soon start to call outfits with 10 members zerg outfits...