Planets have been irrelevant for a long time.
They have to put the mode on life support to get people into the queue, see if it generates enough interest for the MODE itself.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy with how this is going either. But if they keep the limited crowd that enjoys FP as fragmented as it current is, spread out among the ten factions, it will never get enough players playing it to stick it out and actually let them reintroduce real faction impact.
Right now the wait times are so long, or the competition so rare that people have simply abandoned the mode itself. It's not fun to wait forever and MAYBE get a game for most people.
So, they cut off the leg to keep the disease from spreading in the hopes they can get the mode itself healthy enough to re-attach the ****** later.
It's not an optimal solution, but at this point no amount of lore, polish etc will get people into the faction play queue in enough numbers to keep the mode off of life support on its own. They need to get people compressed into a small enough playing field (i.e. two sides, four planets) to get people excited about the dynamics of the mode itself. THEN they can start making the planets matter, make loyalists matter etc and then spread us between factions again.
I'm not holding my breath, but it's honestly better than what most people are suggesting and frankly, doesn't ignore the fact that the FP playerbase is too tiny at this point to be sustainable. Short of ridiculously over the top rewards for planet ownership, they aren't going to entice people to play the mode through anything but making actual matches possible (the #1 complaint against the mode imo).
Edited by Lukoi Banacek, 07 September 2016 - 07:41 PM.