How's population these days?

Buren · 2012-12-11, 05:09 PM

I'm currently at school, and am unable to play. However, I get on during breaks and incoming changes to the Uni wifi policy may allow me to start while school is in session.

My main concern is - how's the overall population doing? Specifically on East US servers, but throughout as well. I would hate to see the game decline while I'm gone, and feel vaguely guilty about not being able supporting the game in such a time of flux.

Can I hear from someone who gets on on regularly? Is population a problem, or something we need to be worried about in the forseeable future?

Ghryphen · 2012-12-11, 05:18 PM

You can see the server populations at any time here, http://www.planetside-universe.com/server_status.php

There are a few that say "high" in the evenings.

Miffy · 2012-12-11, 05:24 PM

They need to merge servers, they made too many and the population is so spread out, really only Miller for the EU is where people play. During off peak time there is no one, the game is dead, seriously playing in the early morning and there was like 5 ppl on for our team and I captured a base with just 1 other person.

They need to concentrate the population during off peak times especially, Planetside 2 has just turned into Planetside where you can only play during peak times. Also with only 3 characters you cannot just make a new char on a populated server, especially if you're spent money. I don't see why there is this dumb limit :\

I don't see why SOE never attempted to fix this population issue Planetside had.

Basically means come 1am - mid afternoon don't bother playing.

I dunno what the US servers are like, you cannot see server status once you've made 3 chars and the one on the launchpad is useless, just has loads of servers that don't exist.

There is a population decline though, people are bored of there being no winner. SOE knew this in beta, they needed more conts, they needed the ability to lock players out from conts like Planetside. That way too you could have less servers and lock conts as the population declined to concentrate people.

People are fed up of the the broken meta game, most complaints I see are the spawn camping base capturing mechanics. The Influence system is horrible, just means camp the spawns until you're finished. Lots of new people to the game get thrown in, die, have no idea what is going on because the Map is useless and just quit. You cannot easily work out where your forces are if you look at the map, you can look at it and think you're taking over a place because you have more influence and then it's like....... oh shit it's over run with enemy... sadly the map doesn't display who is taking it over and who is losing.

The biggest issue I see though is everyone says the game runs like crap and quits, so many people I know don't play because it is unplayable. Again SOE knew this in beta but rushed the game to release and they'll never get those players back again, they know this better than any one but they rushed to release again.

Out of 7 of my friends who have played, none are playing anymore, mostly due to poor performance even though they have beefy machines and others don't like the base fights...

The bases are poorly designed though, it is basically be spawn camped and don't get rewarded for defending so just bail and attack a base instead. Any base that is getting attacked generally falls because people get fed up of being spawn camped.

The bases are so big but have no infantry area, everyone is just camped by vehicles apart from the area in the top of the Bio Lab.

Any infantry fight there is just turns into a nade spam like Tech Plants :\

james · 2012-12-11, 05:36 PM

Its a problem with the game, do to the bugs, poor predominance, the state of balance in the game, and the horrible new player experience. The pubs aren't staying. If you look at the servers that are getting the higher pops, its because of the outfits on them. It will be interesting to see 2-3 months down the road if this becomes into nothing more than outfit wars

SGOniell · 2012-12-11, 05:51 PM

Population on US East Jaeger seems fair enough. Medium or high mostly. Issue I'm finding is (for NC at least) we split out forces unevenly throughout the continents. Makes things difficult when you get zerg rushed on Indar or Esamir, which are about the only continents I play on to try and make a difference.

bpostal · 2012-12-11, 05:54 PM

Originally Posted by Gryphon

You can see the server populations at any time here, http://www.planetside-universe.com/server_status.php

There are a few that say "high" in the evenings.

Neat!

rTekku · 2012-12-12, 02:16 AM

Populations are terrible right now for a game a few weeks old.

Miffy · 2012-12-12, 05:30 AM

The problem is everyone is quitting because there are so many things wrong with the game and SOE knew about them but still launched. I don't get why they shoot themselves in the foot every time, I've been in every beta for their major releases and it is the same story.

"We're treating this beta as a beta and not a demo"
"We wont launch until it is ready"
"Don't Worry we're working on fixes before launch"
"We're releasing in 2 weeks"

*Forums* "WTF? The game is no way near ready, please delay the launch!"

*Game Launches* Everyone has a bad first experience, the population slowly dies and the game never recovers. SOE stop updates, shift their focus onto something else and then wonder why they had another flop and are still being beaten by WoW.

*2 years later* Bugs are still waiting to be fixed from launch and we're still waiting for the fucking Underslung MCG!

Babyfark McGeez · 2012-12-12, 06:16 AM

How's the population? Declining.

In the first week i started a character on Ceres(EU) because on Miller(EU) there were ALLWAYS queues, sometimes with numbers of 500+.
But i haven't touched my Ceres-Char for two weeks because now there are never queues on Miller, maybe a ~10 ppl queue at prime time, but that's it.

I recall alot of the servers being "red" (i.e. "high") in the first two weeks, but now even prime servers like Miller are most of the time "medium".

To a certain degree that is to be expected with a new title, hype and all that. But if the trend continues SOE might need to merge / shutdown a couple of their servers to maintain a healthy population.

Frotang · 2012-12-12, 08:22 AM

I hate admitting it but its true, its not looking so swell at the moment. Some people claim most players are burnt out from dbl xp weekend but IMO if people have to take breaks from a game bc they grinded it out one weekend then that game simply isnt good enough to keep players hooked.....ive been feeling it myself lately. Had all yesterday evening to game and yet i logged in for maybe an hr got bored of doing the same thing ive already done before and opted for a movie instead.

Beerbeer · 2012-12-12, 08:26 AM

They need to merge servers. This game doesn't work very well with low pops.

Dragonskin · 2012-12-12, 08:32 AM

Originally Posted by Miffy

*Game Launches* Everyone has a bad first experience, the population slowly dies and the game never recovers. SOE stop updates, shift their focus onto something else and then wonder why they had another flop and are still being beaten by WoW.

I'm not sure why I am surprised.. but this was the last place I would have thought I would see a WoW comment.

Too early to say the game is dying... this isn't your typical MMORPG.. there is no end game to rush to.. no raid dungeons.. no pve content.. no story... what you get a launch is pretty much what you get depending on how you unlock weapons.

This is a very niche game and SOE released too many servers at launch. Maybe once servers are consolidated and people can log in and trully see wars going on 24/7 then they can build back up.. but still, the game is niche. It's not your typical run of the mill COD/BF/Halo.

Lafen · 2012-12-12, 08:46 AM

EU Server will never merged.

Its under ProSieben control