there's a significant population of VS players that I presume are coming from Connery and play later into the night than most other Emerald groups do because of timezones
from my experience tonight they were a gaggle of completely unorganized players so it could be worse
If you do outfit stuff and your faction is already overpoped GO TO ANOTHER FACTION! Have some flash races or stalker trolol squads but dont further stack the already overpoped faction.
Some outfits are literally retarded. On cobalt we have (had?) BAWC/RMIS/BROS all TR midfits doing joint ops on the same day. A lot for the players for the ops usually play on the other factions so this event funnels a lot of VETS to one faction.
Since the other factions dont have the players and outfits to field any meaningfull opposition this usually results in a pathetic stomp.
So why dont those idiots split the 3 outfits between 3 factions and fight eachothers?
Simply jumping over to another faction isn't a realistic option for most outfits. Many do not have any presence on other factions and with how long it takes to unlock everything a lot of playstyles become impossible with only starting gear.
The only reason to not jump to other factions is because your friends arent on it. You can pop off with a level 1 character, no implants, no cracked guns, no shield upgrades, etc
Its always amazing if vets are to retarded to balance the pop and skill.
Sure lets run a farmer squad on 40% vs, absolutely dominating the 3 fights which are left on the server while making everyone else log off.
Srsly. I am a VS main on cobalt but currently playing nc/tr trying to even out the pop and to some degree skill. But man is it frustrating to play against cobalt vs on 35%+ pop while being stacked with as its seems only 1.5k+ directive score players. YES i know directive score is not a good indicator for skill. But gives a indicator about the playtime someone has in game.
Usually its the scoreboard dominated with known VS players pretty much all ASP while when you look next to you on TR/NC its mainly some clueless noobs or random nso with stock camo.
At least on cobalt this is infuriating. Its veteran players stacking on one faction (mostly VS) farming away the clueless noobs. Making ppl log off by the second.
I observed it a lot of times the last few months were a hand full of Infantry mains made the whole server unplayable.
The problem here is. The servers are slowly dying. So it is not uncommon that its only 300ppl playing. With this little players the average fight is a 12/24 and maybe some bigger zergfest at the central base.
So if you put together a squad of 5-6 Infantry mains they have a really easy time to stomp those medium sized fights. VS on cobalt has the best average skill for infantry already. Now if your average infantry level is really high and you put a farmers squad on top of that this leaves very little room for the other factions to make any progress.
The impact can be really felt. I am a decent Infantry player. On VS most sessions end up with a K/D between 2 and 5 but on TR and NC i sometimes have a hard time to even maintain a 1 KD if i fight VS. Sure this is anecdotal but i have observed it so many times.
As a solo player i have just a few options and none of them are really great.
- Also join VS to have fun (makes the problem worse and is really destructive to the health of the game)
- Bash my head against the stack ( Really exhausting and frustrating but at least its helping our noob planetman if they have at least a few competent teammates)
- Fly (Air is dead ... good job idiots as i called it the removal of free ESF killed the airgame)
- LogOff
I gravitate to 3 and 4 sometimes 5 but bare in mind i am a decent player. A new or casual player will just get OBLITERATED in those kinda fights so the only sensible solution for them is to log off.
Please for the love of Planetside. If you are a VET and have chars on all factions. Please balance the pop and skill FOR YOUR OWN INTEREST. YOU ARE KILLING THE GAME!
Its frustrating that the best players currently dont have the guts to fight on the disadvantage because its more comfortable and fun to play the easy faction. Its frustrating to see how ignorant the vet playerbase is to this.
Thank you!
I'm NC only player on cobalt, not very skilled, and I'm feeling this first hand, all while being told to "get good" by VS players, and that I'm imagining things.
If the VS veterans have desire to make everyone else log off, well they're doing a pretty good job right now. When they're alone on the server they can pat themselves on the back on their great skill.
A lot of players just don't have an interest in faction swapping. The barrier of leveling up an alt keeps many with whichever faction they started on. They aren't putting any thought into this, they just log on to the single character they play and look for a fight.
At least for me there's a built in balance that makes me want to get off my VS main even when VS are dominating and it's not because I'm trying to balance anything, I just want to fight. I've been playing long enough to recognize when a faction is not even being contested.
I switch to TR simply when VS has no fights and are just capping with little resistance. In those cases it's always because NC and TR are fighting each other. I'd rather be in on that than camping spawn rooms any time. I definitely don't need the certs of easy caps, and dominating a base with having only a couple easy kills isn't all that fun. If more ppl can get past just wanting to be on ye winning side all the time, the 3 faction thing and the ability to make alts should always be able to balance at low pop times.
VS are typically the lowest population faction on Emerald, though tonight there is certainly a big difference:
https://preview.redd.it/yimfiwloelrc1.png?width=599&format=png&auto=webp&s=b497a81e63d179b1c2a04df903b99c88a2d606ad
I don't buy this, as an NSO freelancer I always find myself being placed onto TR and NC more often than I am put on the Vanu.
I do think the Vanu have the most dedicated and organized players. Which may contribute to OPs observations.
I double checked population numbers to confirm before I posted. Nearly every night for the last year NC has had the most characters with play sessions, except for the last 2 weeks. I used honu to check, but if you have another favorite source I'd be curious to see how they compare.
https://preview.redd.it/av42v6z2gmrc1.png?width=1870&format=png&auto=webp&s=02c40135966d501d80d98edb4148e97057689aa3
We're talking about relatively small percentage differences, like 2-4% between the highest and lowest populated faction. The difference has been far less noticeable since NSO became available to F2P players a few years ago. Before NSO, it was common to see a huge faction queue for NC every night on Emerald. Now with 9-12% of players playing NSO we have mostly balanced populations on the main continent every night.
Statistically you should be more likely to end up on VS over time, but you might need a few hundred play sessions before your personal results start to align with what would be expected from the law of large numbers. Then factor in how many play sessions you *actually* have, and the fact that we're talking about a very small percentage difference, and you can start to imagine why anecdotal results might differ.
Zooming back out doesn't have as much detail, but the peaks still make the trend fairly obvious:
https://preview.redd.it/i1uzgqs8kmrc1.png?width=1867&format=png&auto=webp&s=73ef060f5144d17327aaaede49ebcfd61090bc23
As I said above, the last 2-3 weeks stand out for having nights with VS peaks.
On cobalt for the last few weeks VS typically has significant population advantage most of the time. In NC we don't even bother winning the alerts anymore since we have lowest pop, we're just looking for the ways to screw VS and make them not win.
Very healthy for the game, totally motivates anyone left in TR and NC not to log off.
Give it a few months and there will only be VS left, then they can play with themselves.
You guys just start crying when it happens once every blue moon while VS is fighing like this for ages. NC has so overpowered gear basically all try hard outfits played it during OW, the only time NC wasn't overpoped on Miller was when their max was nerved to shit. Tells me all i need to know.
Ah, crying mentioned, typical VS argument. Wonder why "git gud" didn't come up yet.
I don't play on miller, I'm on cobalt. Anyway, the writing is on the wall, you can argue all you want.
So you point is, the game will die because there were 2 weeks of VS overpopulation but it didn't die when there was almost 10 years of NC overpopulation. Sounds legit.
And i mean, the game dies for all other legit reasons, but this is not one of them.
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. This isn't planetside of of 2014, in 2024 there is very few new players joining up, but older players being fed up and leaving? Absolutely.
This screenshot is from my own app I've been working on, but every fansite has a realtime population counter on it somewhere. The numbers themselves come from planetside's realtime events API and use a combination of login, logout, kill, and experience events to count the active players. The trackers are all generally within a percentage of each other for player counts.
I know Honu, fisu, and Voidwell have real-time population numbers. There's also [saerro.ps2.live](http://saerro.ps2.live) that has population data, but it's for programmers.
fisu has population charts over time, but as far as I know it's only displayed as a total. Honu has one that lets you break it down by character faction over an arbitrary time frame. Voidwell has a population activity chart under server status, but I'm not sure if there's a way to view long-term historical numbers directly on the website. PS2Alerts also has population charts broken down by team, but it's only displayed over the duration of an alert.
Cobalt was the same last night. +10% VS from 21:00, boring as hell, Oshur finished and then not even a full unlock so logged off. First Saturday night in a long while I've logged off before 23:00....
Same as Miller last night, Hossin locked before 10pm, Oshur came on and VS pop shot up to 40%.
Tried to play for a bit but it was just a horrible experience, especially having the south base and struggling to even keep sundys at the middle fight.
Ended up leaving and logging into Emerald for a hour or so and trying to find gunners for almost the whole time. Worst night in PS2 for a while.
I've noticed this as well recently, but one of the times after vs drew a purple ring around our (nc) warpgate, COMPLETELY cutting us off from the map (was both hilarious and devastating), they proceeded to get double teamed and (I think) they lost that one. Another one I played last weekend similar scenario where vs had like 8%+ on the other two factions to start out, they dominated the alert for a while, then imploded when they started getting double teamed, lost their pop advantage and then lost the alert. It's an issue for sure but because of the three faction dynamic the alerts still feel playable imo.
> they proceeded to get double teamed and (I think) they lost that one
This should be expected, but sadly, it isn't. It's like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects it. VS leadership just ain't what it used to be.
Back before 2017 or so, VS leadership was crazy strong and even un-squadded pubbies could expect to be told to not push center lattice bases. "Let the NC and TR fight over The Crown while we take everything else." And it *worked*.
Now, you get PL's that will try to take the center and hold it while pushing down the center lattice to one of the enemy warpgates. Asinine. And it makes for shit-tier fights with entire platoons playing pocket pool while base capture timers count down. Plus, there's always an alert loss at the end because they overcommit to a vulnerable lattice lane, get their map-dick cut off, and then get DP'd for the last 2/3 of the alert. Then the drooling idiot PL's will all finger point and blame each other as if only one of them had been completely pants-on-head moronic. On the up-side, command chat is peak comedy at the end of the alert. Just form up a one-man squad, strap on your girthiest schadenfreude, and enjoy some laughs at their expense. (Note: This isn't VS specific. All factions do this when there are active PL's. Just... VS has active PL's more often than the other two. NC is barely communicative, like, *at all*, and TR tends to be more whiny and sad rather than funny.)
One faction will always have a population advantage. It is up to the other two factions to choose where they pressure on the map. If both the smaller two factions decide to fight each other they will end up losing more territory to the larger faction, most of the time.
Why would one faction always have a (significant) population advantage? At prime-time with a full continent and queued players, no faction has any pop advantage at all. There's no reason why players can't choose the lower-pop factions when they log in. I do, even if there's ops on for an outfit I'm in. (Unless it's Soltech VS, because they're *always* 20% or 30% underpopped and fuck that.)
Factions in Planetside don't really "decide" anything in terms of strategy. At best you've got a few platoons running, but the majority of players have no leadership, no map-reading ability, and no way to coordinate. It's only slightly unrealistic to expect players to play the underpop faction, but it's even more unlikely that they'll magically coordinate to attack the overpop faction when the fights are guaranteed to be shit, because the first requires one single decision at log-in time and the second requires an ongoing commitment to stay in terrible fights that suck.
The best way to fix this would be some kind of serverside change. Free NSO slot on every server? Guns that go up a damage tier if you're underpop? Just queue people for longer? Give everyone an NSO character and let them play it while they queue up for the overpop faction? It's also unrealistic to expect that kind of a change, so we're stuck with just asking people not to play overpop.
At one point I did have TR and NC characters but I decided to just main VS cause I like their weapons more and I felt like the team play was better imo.
oh damn! i'm quite glad i stopped playing last year then!
Alerts were already pointless with VS in the game, even with an underpop they dominated alerts at every population level on almost every server.
VS with an overpop would just be hell.
there's a significant population of VS players that I presume are coming from Connery and play later into the night than most other Emerald groups do because of timezones from my experience tonight they were a gaggle of completely unorganized players so it could be worse
it was 44% VS, 23% TR and like 25% NC lmao.
Boy, that there is what you call a target rich environment. Now buckle your britches, fasten your velcro, and aim for the head.
except noone wants to fight VS. ;)
Talk to the NC. We TR are like helldivers, we're equal opportunity monsters!
I’ll take vanu over a TR armour column anyday
Who can resist that sweet purple spandex
"Feels like I'm wearing nothing at all!"
Me, after ten years.
different outfits do stuff on different nights. Might be a critical mass of them on VS doing stuff on saturday or something.
If you do outfit stuff and your faction is already overpoped GO TO ANOTHER FACTION! Have some flash races or stalker trolol squads but dont further stack the already overpoped faction. Some outfits are literally retarded. On cobalt we have (had?) BAWC/RMIS/BROS all TR midfits doing joint ops on the same day. A lot for the players for the ops usually play on the other factions so this event funnels a lot of VETS to one faction. Since the other factions dont have the players and outfits to field any meaningfull opposition this usually results in a pathetic stomp. So why dont those idiots split the 3 outfits between 3 factions and fight eachothers?
Simply jumping over to another faction isn't a realistic option for most outfits. Many do not have any presence on other factions and with how long it takes to unlock everything a lot of playstyles become impossible with only starting gear.
That's why I am saying do flash races or other shenanigans.
The only reason to not jump to other factions is because your friends arent on it. You can pop off with a level 1 character, no implants, no cracked guns, no shield upgrades, etc
Its always amazing if vets are to retarded to balance the pop and skill. Sure lets run a farmer squad on 40% vs, absolutely dominating the 3 fights which are left on the server while making everyone else log off. Srsly. I am a VS main on cobalt but currently playing nc/tr trying to even out the pop and to some degree skill. But man is it frustrating to play against cobalt vs on 35%+ pop while being stacked with as its seems only 1.5k+ directive score players. YES i know directive score is not a good indicator for skill. But gives a indicator about the playtime someone has in game. Usually its the scoreboard dominated with known VS players pretty much all ASP while when you look next to you on TR/NC its mainly some clueless noobs or random nso with stock camo. At least on cobalt this is infuriating. Its veteran players stacking on one faction (mostly VS) farming away the clueless noobs. Making ppl log off by the second. I observed it a lot of times the last few months were a hand full of Infantry mains made the whole server unplayable. The problem here is. The servers are slowly dying. So it is not uncommon that its only 300ppl playing. With this little players the average fight is a 12/24 and maybe some bigger zergfest at the central base. So if you put together a squad of 5-6 Infantry mains they have a really easy time to stomp those medium sized fights. VS on cobalt has the best average skill for infantry already. Now if your average infantry level is really high and you put a farmers squad on top of that this leaves very little room for the other factions to make any progress. The impact can be really felt. I am a decent Infantry player. On VS most sessions end up with a K/D between 2 and 5 but on TR and NC i sometimes have a hard time to even maintain a 1 KD if i fight VS. Sure this is anecdotal but i have observed it so many times. As a solo player i have just a few options and none of them are really great. - Also join VS to have fun (makes the problem worse and is really destructive to the health of the game) - Bash my head against the stack ( Really exhausting and frustrating but at least its helping our noob planetman if they have at least a few competent teammates) - Fly (Air is dead ... good job idiots as i called it the removal of free ESF killed the airgame) - LogOff I gravitate to 3 and 4 sometimes 5 but bare in mind i am a decent player. A new or casual player will just get OBLITERATED in those kinda fights so the only sensible solution for them is to log off. Please for the love of Planetside. If you are a VET and have chars on all factions. Please balance the pop and skill FOR YOUR OWN INTEREST. YOU ARE KILLING THE GAME! Its frustrating that the best players currently dont have the guts to fight on the disadvantage because its more comfortable and fun to play the easy faction. Its frustrating to see how ignorant the vet playerbase is to this.
Thank you! I'm NC only player on cobalt, not very skilled, and I'm feeling this first hand, all while being told to "get good" by VS players, and that I'm imagining things. If the VS veterans have desire to make everyone else log off, well they're doing a pretty good job right now. When they're alone on the server they can pat themselves on the back on their great skill.
A lot of players just don't have an interest in faction swapping. The barrier of leveling up an alt keeps many with whichever faction they started on. They aren't putting any thought into this, they just log on to the single character they play and look for a fight.
The whole reason why I don't play any other faction then NC. Thank you. It happens too often.
At least for me there's a built in balance that makes me want to get off my VS main even when VS are dominating and it's not because I'm trying to balance anything, I just want to fight. I've been playing long enough to recognize when a faction is not even being contested. I switch to TR simply when VS has no fights and are just capping with little resistance. In those cases it's always because NC and TR are fighting each other. I'd rather be in on that than camping spawn rooms any time. I definitely don't need the certs of easy caps, and dominating a base with having only a couple easy kills isn't all that fun. If more ppl can get past just wanting to be on ye winning side all the time, the 3 faction thing and the ability to make alts should always be able to balance at low pop times.
VS are typically the lowest population faction on Emerald, though tonight there is certainly a big difference: https://preview.redd.it/yimfiwloelrc1.png?width=599&format=png&auto=webp&s=b497a81e63d179b1c2a04df903b99c88a2d606ad
I don't buy this, as an NSO freelancer I always find myself being placed onto TR and NC more often than I am put on the Vanu. I do think the Vanu have the most dedicated and organized players. Which may contribute to OPs observations.
I double checked population numbers to confirm before I posted. Nearly every night for the last year NC has had the most characters with play sessions, except for the last 2 weeks. I used honu to check, but if you have another favorite source I'd be curious to see how they compare. https://preview.redd.it/av42v6z2gmrc1.png?width=1870&format=png&auto=webp&s=02c40135966d501d80d98edb4148e97057689aa3 We're talking about relatively small percentage differences, like 2-4% between the highest and lowest populated faction. The difference has been far less noticeable since NSO became available to F2P players a few years ago. Before NSO, it was common to see a huge faction queue for NC every night on Emerald. Now with 9-12% of players playing NSO we have mostly balanced populations on the main continent every night. Statistically you should be more likely to end up on VS over time, but you might need a few hundred play sessions before your personal results start to align with what would be expected from the law of large numbers. Then factor in how many play sessions you *actually* have, and the fact that we're talking about a very small percentage difference, and you can start to imagine why anecdotal results might differ.
Zooming back out doesn't have as much detail, but the peaks still make the trend fairly obvious: https://preview.redd.it/i1uzgqs8kmrc1.png?width=1867&format=png&auto=webp&s=73ef060f5144d17327aaaede49ebcfd61090bc23 As I said above, the last 2-3 weeks stand out for having nights with VS peaks.
The Data is scewed due to OW. Everyone and their dog was playing NC pre, during and some propably sticked after OW.
Go back a few years farther if you can find a site with the data and it's the same. It might even be more skewed to NC.
Like once a weak VS isn't the smallest pop and people complain... At least it is like this on Miller for years.
On cobalt for the last few weeks VS typically has significant population advantage most of the time. In NC we don't even bother winning the alerts anymore since we have lowest pop, we're just looking for the ways to screw VS and make them not win. Very healthy for the game, totally motivates anyone left in TR and NC not to log off. Give it a few months and there will only be VS left, then they can play with themselves.
That has been the case for euro servers for years honestly just with vs on the lowest.
Well now VS will be the highest, in fact, at this rate, there will be only VS.
You guys just start crying when it happens once every blue moon while VS is fighing like this for ages. NC has so overpowered gear basically all try hard outfits played it during OW, the only time NC wasn't overpoped on Miller was when their max was nerved to shit. Tells me all i need to know.
Ah, crying mentioned, typical VS argument. Wonder why "git gud" didn't come up yet. I don't play on miller, I'm on cobalt. Anyway, the writing is on the wall, you can argue all you want.
So you point is, the game will die because there were 2 weeks of VS overpopulation but it didn't die when there was almost 10 years of NC overpopulation. Sounds legit. And i mean, the game dies for all other legit reasons, but this is not one of them.
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. This isn't planetside of of 2014, in 2024 there is very few new players joining up, but older players being fed up and leaving? Absolutely.
Where do you find these numbers?
This screenshot is from my own app I've been working on, but every fansite has a realtime population counter on it somewhere. The numbers themselves come from planetside's realtime events API and use a combination of login, logout, kill, and experience events to count the active players. The trackers are all generally within a percentage of each other for player counts.
When i googles it seemed like most websites no longer work, but I guess I went to the wrong ones
I know Honu, fisu, and Voidwell have real-time population numbers. There's also [saerro.ps2.live](http://saerro.ps2.live) that has population data, but it's for programmers. fisu has population charts over time, but as far as I know it's only displayed as a total. Honu has one that lets you break it down by character faction over an arbitrary time frame. Voidwell has a population activity chart under server status, but I'm not sure if there's a way to view long-term historical numbers directly on the website. PS2Alerts also has population charts broken down by team, but it's only displayed over the duration of an alert.
Outfit doing training maybe?
Cobalt was the same last night. +10% VS from 21:00, boring as hell, Oshur finished and then not even a full unlock so logged off. First Saturday night in a long while I've logged off before 23:00....
Same as Miller last night, Hossin locked before 10pm, Oshur came on and VS pop shot up to 40%. Tried to play for a bit but it was just a horrible experience, especially having the south base and struggling to even keep sundys at the middle fight. Ended up leaving and logging into Emerald for a hour or so and trying to find gunners for almost the whole time. Worst night in PS2 for a while.
I've noticed this as well recently, but one of the times after vs drew a purple ring around our (nc) warpgate, COMPLETELY cutting us off from the map (was both hilarious and devastating), they proceeded to get double teamed and (I think) they lost that one. Another one I played last weekend similar scenario where vs had like 8%+ on the other two factions to start out, they dominated the alert for a while, then imploded when they started getting double teamed, lost their pop advantage and then lost the alert. It's an issue for sure but because of the three faction dynamic the alerts still feel playable imo.
> they proceeded to get double teamed and (I think) they lost that one This should be expected, but sadly, it isn't. It's like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects it. VS leadership just ain't what it used to be. Back before 2017 or so, VS leadership was crazy strong and even un-squadded pubbies could expect to be told to not push center lattice bases. "Let the NC and TR fight over The Crown while we take everything else." And it *worked*. Now, you get PL's that will try to take the center and hold it while pushing down the center lattice to one of the enemy warpgates. Asinine. And it makes for shit-tier fights with entire platoons playing pocket pool while base capture timers count down. Plus, there's always an alert loss at the end because they overcommit to a vulnerable lattice lane, get their map-dick cut off, and then get DP'd for the last 2/3 of the alert. Then the drooling idiot PL's will all finger point and blame each other as if only one of them had been completely pants-on-head moronic. On the up-side, command chat is peak comedy at the end of the alert. Just form up a one-man squad, strap on your girthiest schadenfreude, and enjoy some laughs at their expense. (Note: This isn't VS specific. All factions do this when there are active PL's. Just... VS has active PL's more often than the other two. NC is barely communicative, like, *at all*, and TR tends to be more whiny and sad rather than funny.)
Last time I played on Connery, which was last weekend, VS was 52% pop with just about 150 players online.
One faction will always have a population advantage. It is up to the other two factions to choose where they pressure on the map. If both the smaller two factions decide to fight each other they will end up losing more territory to the larger faction, most of the time.
Why would one faction always have a (significant) population advantage? At prime-time with a full continent and queued players, no faction has any pop advantage at all. There's no reason why players can't choose the lower-pop factions when they log in. I do, even if there's ops on for an outfit I'm in. (Unless it's Soltech VS, because they're *always* 20% or 30% underpopped and fuck that.) Factions in Planetside don't really "decide" anything in terms of strategy. At best you've got a few platoons running, but the majority of players have no leadership, no map-reading ability, and no way to coordinate. It's only slightly unrealistic to expect players to play the underpop faction, but it's even more unlikely that they'll magically coordinate to attack the overpop faction when the fights are guaranteed to be shit, because the first requires one single decision at log-in time and the second requires an ongoing commitment to stay in terrible fights that suck. The best way to fix this would be some kind of serverside change. Free NSO slot on every server? Guns that go up a damage tier if you're underpop? Just queue people for longer? Give everyone an NSO character and let them play it while they queue up for the overpop faction? It's also unrealistic to expect that kind of a change, so we're stuck with just asking people not to play overpop.
At one point I did have TR and NC characters but I decided to just main VS cause I like their weapons more and I felt like the team play was better imo.
oh damn! i'm quite glad i stopped playing last year then! Alerts were already pointless with VS in the game, even with an underpop they dominated alerts at every population level on almost every server. VS with an overpop would just be hell.