Oh lord, playing PS2 is fucking depressing now

[Babyfark McGeez]

Seriously, what happened here?

I stopped playing again for a while, and after i did log in again this week on miller-tr i noticed how utterly horrible the gameplay has become.

First, the population imbalance is atrocious.
I don't care that planetside is "a game about numbers", infact i even like being outnumbered, more challenging and more to shoot at (not to mention a small, free xp boost).
However there is a point where it just becomes a joke. There is barely ever any remotely even fight to be found. Usually two continents have overwhelming numbers on one side (50+%) and if you're lucky one continent has a somewhat acceptable population.
But as tr it was allways the same anyways: Ok numbers up to 8 pm, then all of a sudden numbers drop like a stone and the faction becomes more or less nonexistent (atleast on indar).
Vs is the opposite, which is why a vs player and me determined that tr is the faction of kids and vs is the faction of unemployed people.

Second, farming mentality.
I use to point out where enemy sunderers are located via regionchat. Now two things can happen: Either nothing, or i get told that "we know that, but it's a good farm". Then when you proceed to down the sundy, best outcome is your own team is pissed off silently. Worst outcome is you get fucking teamkilled. Great stuff.

Third, my faction consists of fucking morons now.
You can bet that if there is a remote facility, disconnected from the mainland, everyone will go there, losing all the other territories in the process. Getting back your own tech plant? Naaaah. Defending a base for an alert? No way man.
It doesn't even make any sense, i somewhat understood it during that joke of "WDS", but now? people flock to the most retarded bases aslong as they are disconnected from the mainland. The only "order" i saw during my playtime was someone ordering support for such a disconnected base, while the tech plant right next to it was being under assault and an amp station needed defense for an alert.
Nobody knows what they are doing, it is as if all the coordinated outfits have left the game and all that is left are either newbies or lonewolf farmers.

Am i just unlucky in my server/faction/continent/time of the day combination or is that really how PS2 is being played these days? Because, fuck me, that is depressing to witness.

[AThreatToYou]

IIRC that's Miller for you. Every server but Waterson.

But let me be entirely fair: that's just the game. Tactics? Winning? Lol, fuk that! Winning is having the highest k/d and/or score per minute!

[HereticusXZ]

Yeah, pop imbalance is pretty fraking frustrating, correcting it with XP "incentives" is just making the problem even worse!

I also agree it's extremely frustrating when no one wants to nock out the enemy spawn because "It's a good farm!" but we lost the base!!!



IMO if you you lose the facility while in it, You should lose half of the XP you gained in the fight, punish people for being greedy, Don't reward them! Give them a incentive to pick and choose to participate in reasonable fights and to fight harder!

The game really needs to get away from XP incentives and give us tactically important incentives similar to Tech-Plants controlling the production of MBT's. a Bio-Lab should control production of MAX and Amp-Stations should control the production of Liberators!


ABOVE ALL, Solve the god damn pop ballance! I don't care about Alerts, OMFG, WDS, Nexus, Hossin, or any of the Community Clash bullshit if the live-game that we play every single day is royally fucked with one-sided populations!

[Babyfark McGeez]

Well last time i could atleast pretend it was actually about territory control and didn't feel like the only one playing that way.
But this time it's like people aren't even trying anymore. The whole "k/d ratio, spm and certs" gameplay was so "in your face" that my eyes nearly fell out of the socket from rolling so much.

Maybe i should try waterson. :J

[DviddLeff]

Get yourself a positive outfit and start having fun again.

[CraazyCanuck]

I play Mattherson and Connery depending upon which of my buddies are on 8pm+ eastern and can almost always find a good fight. Might want to give either a try. Amerish last night was a blast. I've also played early in the morning on occasion and that's when I find similar issues to some of those you've mentioned.

[Dougnifico]

Ah.... so happy to be on Connery. lol

[ringring]

@Babyfark this is the game, the devs made it this way, we've been pushing the intercontinental lattice stuff since beta but I don't think anything will change until it comes in.

[HereticusXZ]

See I've been Connery TR from Launch and it's no exception to the population problem...



Connery' History was for the first 3 months absolute TR domination, holding control of Indar uncontested for 2 and a half straight months + the Prowler & Striker problems, to NC total domination for a few months during the Hacksaw OP drama, then the Helios Merger + ZOE Fiasco and the VS are suddenly dominating.

Connery has this illusion of being a "balanced" server because you have Outfit Alliances and competitive Outfits carrying the whole faction against a 42% or higher world-pop enemy faction. I presume other Servers have a similar situation if not far worse one to deal with!

Say what you will about target rich environments, that argument caters to the XP Farm crowd. I'm here to capture territory to get resources so I can enjoy the game. If I just want to farm I'll go play some BS Arena Shooter game, or maybe cookie-clicker!


TL/DR: Being Out-Poped is NEVER a good thing, no matter how you try to twist it!

[Stardouser]

As far as population imbalances, I don't think that can ever be stopped. But SOE could end the days of zerg support. Zerg support, to me, is when a game provides exponential advantages to a higher population that go beyond the advantages that simply having a higher population would normally bring.

For example, if you have 20 guys taking a base and the enemy has 5-6 defenders, you might expect the defenders to at least inflict losses and delay the enemy. But because of endless revives, revive grenades, and just plain revives being so fast that you can bunny hop or a-d step while doing it to stay alive even under fire, if you have more players in a fight, just have a few medics(more for spectacular effect) and you won't take much losses (where loss is defined as being forced to respawn).

Get 15 enemies holed up in a flag building and 5 guys can't even permanently kill one of them due to revives and you see the point.

And then, where vehicles are involved, repairs are too fast/easy and overpowered as well and cause a very similar effect. Even solo tanks, when they take damage, can back out and repair with ease; but if you have just one engineer repairing (making you a two man tank basically even if you're a Lightning) then you can hold multiple AV without moving much.

So, zerg support is a real thing. Among the possible solutions:
1. Institute responsible limits on revives (ie, after 2nd/3rd death, must respawn)
2. Add nanite ammo to revives that has to be replenished at a sunderer or terminal
3. Require medics to stand still while reviving or it is interruped
4. Add 2-3 seconds to the time it takes to revive (especially MAXes)

1. Add a 2-3 second delay to the start of repairs if you jump out as a driver (to combat solo repairing)
2. Cut repair speed by 50% across all tool cert levels
3. Make the overheat occur faster
4. Limit the number of repair tools that can affect a vehicle at once

[Edfishy]

I have a lot of fun when I roll with an outfit that works hard to win. Just gotta pretend like gating the other team will lead to an assault on another continent, PS1-style. =P

In regards to "fixing the population balance", how can this be done? Only a alternatives I can see are:
- Eliminate free accounts (... ain't gonna happen)
- Respawning in a 24-48+ territory respawns in 'waves' and has a queue similar to joining a full continent. The higher the pop, the longer you wait in queue (maybe paying players get the queue priority here?)

Your turn. Alternatives go!

[camycamera]

i have really gotten back into the game again, but i have really seen lots of idiots as well.

people lacking knowledge of using their classes properly (i have constantly yelled in front and followed a medic/engineer for help), and general incompetence.

yesterday actually while in a MAX i witnessed a teammate teamkill someone else for no reason, in which i slapped him once when he nearly killed him, and when he did kill him, i v-0'd him "cease fire! you're hitting TR!" then i bitchslappped him to death.

later on, when i was heavily damaged, i called out for engees to repair me. 3 did, and all huddled around me. but then, all of us was killed by C4. and it was that same FUCKING idiot that was TKing earlier on.

god, the attitude of some players these days are appalling. that was the worse TKing experience i had lol.

[Calista]

Imagine what it will be like on PS4 with the running and gunning CoD 4chan yoloswag 420noscoping trollololers.

[ShadoViper]

Originally Posted by Calista

Imagine what it will be like on PS4 with the running and gunning CoD 4chan yoloswag 420noscoping trollololers.

Pretty sure the bulk of those kids are on the pc more than a console.

I know the matherson vanu empire was absolutely filled with an overabundance of brony-reddit-9gag subhumans.

[bites]

Originally Posted by Dougnifico

Ah.... so happy to be on Connery. lol

Must be nice from your point of view ... but being that this is a persistent world ... I can tell you its not _THAT_ nice ... what used to be "NC IS OVERPOPED WAAH" is slowly waltzing into "VANU ALL THE THYME!!!"
ZOE Started it down this path of nasty and its been progressively getting worse ... WDS highlighted this especially ... "Even pops during prime" (which in reality means TR is below both VANU and NC, NC who sometimes BARELY outpop Vanu ... in most cases) any time outside of that however (eg theres more than 5 hours in a day people...) Vanu zergfit around with up to 50% pop, they cruised round ghost capping EVERYTHING and took WDS via attrition rather than any form of skill or strategy.

Honestly I don't know how .. or why they still do it ... it boggles my mind that after this many months they are still zergging the shit out of the server to the point that during a late night Alert .. all NC does is try slow down the massive zerg (the plat leaders just outside peak used to actually state this as the goal, fact is most are gone and your lucky to find 2 open squads now).. and TR (rightly so) just don't bother ... which you can't blame them for at all!

The result ... it sucks, and slowly but surely while the "pop" remains relatively the same .. the server itself is hard pulling to one direction and taking itself out of the race for fun.

TLDR Still love the game (read as "TAKE MY MONEY!!!"), but outside of peak times (or during them for our TR overlords) its quickly becoming an uphill skiing event that isn't that much fun (you can still play in the snow .. but you won't be climbing mountains anytime soon...)

Sauce: http://borderlinetactical.net/rsnc/w...ld_id=1&zoom=3