I totally agree with some of the suggestions above. T4 is not used … ( maybe because alot of us now have T5 ( for Sec Conquest) and the fact that ( MOST) T5 ships are so much superior. Why would I even bring out a T4 ship ?
In fact, I changed my stage 2 ship of blackwood from a LRF to a bubblebringer. Now you HAVE to kill the mobs. Just rushing the beacons don’t work anymore. Stage 1 and 3 however, remains the same, although the HB nerf is still a pain vs the punisher boss. I still remember once I got in a game with a 3 men squad, 3 maulers and my centaur. We melted the boss in the middle of the first pulsar cycle. That was glorious.
T5 was released prematurely. I am fairly sure that content hacking incident pushed them to roll out T5 earlier than scheduled. If not, then the decision was just plain bad.
R11+ Sec Con limit was probably a strategy to encourage T2 and up to migrate to T4 thus shifting the bulk of the server pop from T2+T3 all into T4. That would be an improvement.
But (and there is always a but) unfortunately with top Corp death squads patrolling the dark sec con alleyways them kids are discouraged to make the move regardless.
Got no ideas how to fix things. Too busy learning PVE to grind for xxxx. But I am confident that:
Tier 4 needs exclusive stuff. Stuff that even T5 don’t get.
Features that will draw the T2+T3 crowd up the tier and populate T4 for good.
How about giving T4 a playable pirate faction. Credit pirate ships. T4 only. Credits only custom paint on T4 ships for 7 days… etc.
T5 was released prematurely. I am fairly sure that content hacking incident pushed them to roll out T5 earlier than scheduled. If not, then the decision was just plain bad.
R11+ Sec Con limit was probably a strategy to encourage T2 and up to migrate to T4 thus shifting the bulk of the server pop from T2+T3 all into T4. That would be an improvement.
But (and there is always a but) unfortunately with top Corp death squads patrolling the dark sec con alleyways them kids are discouraged to make the move regardless.
Got no ideas how to fix things. Too busy learning PVE to grind for xxxx. But I am confident that:
Tier 4 needs exclusive stuff. Stuff that even T5 don’t get.
Features that will draw the T2+T3 crowd up the tier and populate T4 for good.
How about giving T4 a playable pirate faction. Credit pirate ships. T4 only. Credits only custom paint on T4 ships for 7 days… etc.
i think they should increase the gold rewards for the sectors Maybe increase to 20 GS and make a few more sektors GS.I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET DEM GOLD STANDARDS even if i only have t4 ships
T5 was released prematurely. I am fairly sure that content hacking incident pushed them to roll out T5 earlier than scheduled. If not, then the decision was just plain bad.
Nah, people were asking for T5 to be released at the time. Don’t forget that in particular the Russian players have been around much longer than those who came in only after the Steam release.
R11+ Sec Con limit was probably a strategy to encourage T2 and up to migrate to T4 thus shifting the bulk of the server pop from T2+T3 all into T4. That would be an improvement.
Originally there was a T3 limit, but again players were demanding that SecCon should be end game content only and to remove perceived useless T3 players from it.
Originally there was a T3 limit, but again players were demanding that SecCon should be end game content only and to remove perceived useless T3 players from it.
It was fun back then… squad vs squad both for man but one with R7, 2nd with R14-15
T3 was banned from SQ because people got pissed at pug allies bringing R7 ships against ESB killsquads. The Devs were given ways to make T3 work in SQ and ignored them all, so banning was all they had left. By then the damage was done. SQ was, like everything else, launched half-finished with nobody so much as reading the design docs and thinking about what would logically happen.
Want proof? Read the player predictions from the Dev blog. Numerous vets saw the fail coming and were ignored.
Those in SecCon are not the majority. Remember when we used to have only T2 and T3 and how much they differed.
Well that’s what should happen with T4 and T5 + SQ today.
Squad focused teamplay with the odd team minded pugs play T5
Corps send their reps to Sec Con
while the rest slug it out in T4 occasionally venturing into T5
As is … I still see veteran pilots looking for games in T3 presumably for contracts and general fun because T4/T5 queue times are still long.
ranks 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 combined would probably tally less than rank 9 alone. not exactly the accurate way of looking at MM queues but does illustrate the point. T4 is deserted. Devs should strategize towards getting all those guys in T3 below to move up to T4. This is old news, been discussed months ago. Rather amused to come back here after 6 months and see no real progress made on that front when that really is the end goal for SCon.
Only thing I can think off atm is giving T4 unique features to attract people to play that tier.
Those in SecCon are not the majority. Remember when we used to have only T2 and T3 and how much they differed.
Well that’s what should happen with T4 and T5 + SQ today.
Squad focused teamplay with the odd team minded pugs play T5
Corps send their reps to Sec Con
while the rest slug it out in T4 occasionally venturing into T5
As is … I still see veteran pilots looking for games in T3 presumably for contracts and general fun because T4/T5 queue times are still long.
ranks 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 combined would probably tally less than rank 9 alone. not exactly the accurate way of looking at MM queues but does illustrate the point. T4 is deserted. Devs should strategize towards getting all those guys in T3 below to move up to T4. This is old news, been discussed months ago. Rather amused to come back here after 6 months and see no real progress made on that front when that really is the end goal for SCon.
Only thing I can think off atm is giving T4 unique features to attract people to play that tier.
T4-T5 random games are relatively well populated, with solo and 2 man squads, in EU/RU time
Those in SecCon are not the majority. Remember when we used to have only T2 and T3 and how much they differed.
Well that’s what should happen with T4 and T5 + SQ today.
Squad focused teamplay with the odd team minded pugs play T5
Corps send their reps to Sec Con
while the rest slug it out in T4 occasionally venturing into T5
As is … I still see veteran pilots looking for games in T3 presumably for contracts and general fun because T4/T5 queue times are still long.
ranks 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 combined would probably tally less than rank 9 alone. not exactly the accurate way of looking at MM queues but does illustrate the point. T4 is deserted. Devs should strategize towards getting all those guys in T3 below to move up to T4. This is old news, been discussed months ago. Rather amused to come back here after 6 months and see no real progress made on that front when that really is the end goal for SCon.
Only thing I can think off atm is giving T4 unique features to attract people to play that tier.
The only real solution is to finish whatever feature they already started rolling out (like open world). Fix issues. And then finally release the game and make advertisement.
Many players don’t have a license so don’t even spend money on the game (if I look at the bonus in logs). That means it takes them quite a while to get to higher ranks even with all the sales.
The current amount of players is terrible. There was a major drop a few weeks ago. The evening population went from 550+ to 380. There is not much that can be done before the official game release. I imagine it will get worse as in summer usually less people like to spend their time in front of a computer.
It’s not surprising vets loiter in T3. Even ignoring population, consider the following:
The four most expensive DLC packs, which total something in the region of £200 or more all cap out at Tier 3. I bought them at a discount, but even so that’s a lot of money and I am not going to just drop those ships because the Devs want more people to fly T4 and T5.
If they want people to move up then the answer is simple; move all the DLC ships up a tier and adjust their stats and modules accordingly.
As long as T3 has more ships than any other tier, as long as DLC packs focus on T3, and as long as T3 is P2W, people who invest won’t leave it.
The evening population went from 550+ to 380. There is not much that can be done before the official game release. I imagine it will get worse as in summer usually less people like to spend their time in front of a computer.
You’re talking about NA times around here, seems the game is really not popular in America for some reason. In EU it’s always the same for 6 months now at least, i can tell the general hour just by looking at the population. About 1.8k every evening around 19:00-20:00. 1.6k before, 1.6k after. And the ques work okish for T4-T5, around 2 minutes. Lately I’ve even been even getting consecutive matches < 60 secs.
So again conclusion, America’s big, but the game’s not popular over there at all. 400 people is nothing. 1.8k is nothing, but at least it’s playable.
As long as T3 has more ships than any other tier, as long as DLC packs focus on T3, and as long as T3 is P2W, people who invest won’t leave it.
First, give me one reason tier 3 is pay to win. I still have to find a premium ship that is OP compared with the same ship in the same rank.
People stay in T3 because most people with DLCs use those ships for credits and synergy farming, since T4 and T4 has lower population out of russian prime time. Since 2 or 3 months ago, T4 has become playable (many new players are already reaching T4) and since then, I only go back to T3 if I’m in a 3 or 4 men squad and we don’t get fast games.
T4 is much, much better in terms of gameplay than T3.
And I love how the devs keep doing 50% discounts on high tier ships (even in premiums!!) to help populate high tiers.
The next step will be to populate T5, but that will take a bit more, and most likely will only happen after the release.
You clearly didn’t look very hard. Virtually all ship lines are out of whack in T3; no free R9 Gunship or Recon for Empire, no free Tackler anywhere, etc. The Styx is the only ship that isn’t outclassed by the Premium / DLC equivalent, and even then they had to overhaul matchmaking for that to be the case.
Yup, release and advertisement will clearly help the population issues in higher tier. I don’t see the game as a pay to win, and that’s refreshing. I just think that maxed synergy credits ships should have a little bonus, a bit more than 1% synergy gain.
I heard of server instability when there is too much pilots in the past… I hope it already have been solved by the devs.
I tend to play SecCon and T5 only because I don’t want to think about what the contracts available, but with more time on it, it can be done in T3 too.
By now, the pop in T4 and T5 combined is roughly the same as the pop in T3 or T2 alone, from information given by the matchmaking graphics.
After release and with more pilots all will work well