STATS STATS AND MORE STATS ! - NC - "hardmode"

I don't dispute the facts although some of them are murky at best. Also if they are collected over multiple servers with differing pop problems, it will impact the outcome, as well as different types of battles such as the number of factions being fought against. Aggregate data from release on doesn't help, not does it help if all of the analysis doesn't come from the same time period.

The problem in general being, I'm TR and I don't experience anything that thing would indicate on a per play basis on Connery. The NC are just as likely to win or lose a battle as the TR/VS. Trying to lump all of the weapon statistics as a whole doesn't really help analyzing as there is no basis as to where those numbers come from. For example, until recently (after the Helios merger) at primetime, the NC consistently outnumbered the other factions. This doesn't happen. A lot of this is impression and isn't helped by the fact that since release this is the NC mantra. Maybe individual tweaks need to be made, maybe this is the way the game is. All I know is that I get killed by plenty of NC and VS.

And so we've established from your post that:

VS and NC-turned-VS are the 4 highest-ranked teams. And we all know what that means. Blame TR.

The bigger question should be to whomever was assigned to rebalance the Vulcan. It has a higher anti-infantry DPS, superior accuracy, and superior projectile speed to C85.
Someone or something should've said "this is broken".

It lends credence to that these buffs were handed out without any consideration at all in regards to existing weaponry.

To be honest I don't know there's even a way to balance the C85 at all . shotguns for infantry are difficult enough as it is to balance. Shotguns on vehicles ? Good luck . That design in general should be scrapped for GAUSS technology that the NC should be about.

I vote we replace all vehicle shotgun weapons with some kind of rail gun that fires a large AI slug.

I am curious to hear what the variation in NC experience is across servers.

Jaeger/Matherson here

TLDR: If things like the ACX-11 really are just fine compared to the other options then I would really appreciate if someone can politely show me some evidence because if it is that is fine and I will just continue to practice as I have been.

I am well aware that my bias for NC has an effect on my perception and one of the last things that I want is for NC to be OP or get some kind of change with little explanation that draws in all the 4th factioners. I prefer being somewhat outnumbered as well.

That being said, I would really like it if part of the dev team can take a breath and take the time they need to have as clear a picture as practical and see how things are working out. A fair explanation of how things are panning out that is technical enough to be sound but accessible for the larger community could do wonders, I think, for the long term health of the game.

Personally, as someone who does a lot of stats for a living, I think that could be fun job- like a Myth Busters for the forums. Personally, I think that kind of open honest feedback would be more appreciated as a bi-weekly update than many of the patches.

Of course, they should be upfront with disclaimers that nothing is ever really set in stone and there are likely to be times when things may appear a little out of whack but out of whack in such a way that it is important to gather more information or do more digging before they would consider making any changes.

It would be nice have a third party who is not necessarily affected by faction bias and has easy access to the SOE databases chim in from time to time. Similarly to how they approached the Magrider MBT issue where they basically posted "so, this is what we are seeing and these are the reasons why we plan to do the following". Now, granted, those were not necessarily the smoothest changes as I remember poor Maggie being a little busted for some time but I do think that kind of an approach is beneficial.

Now, if they take a look and come back and say "well, we see what you are getting at but here are these other elements that are a lot more accessible to us" (like a paired samples test of different characters/factions played by the same person over time).

"According to what we have been able to tell, we do not yet see a way to make this work any better but we will keep an eye on it". Basically, it could get logged for exception reporting.

At least then I for one could say, "OK, well that there is as good as she gets so its up to me to take it or leave it at that".

I have intentionally been favoring certain things I think need a closer look just so I can get better with them. Idea being that this is really the only way I have to test whether it is my skill with the item or the item itself. Still, until/unless that happens I am likely to feel that certain things are better than others in ways that decrease the enjoyment of the game when using or not using them.

I think the devs can help here by being more open and honest with us- I understand very well that by the very nature of the situation there will always be, numbers wise, variation so I am not expecting everything to perform equally well. However, there is an ongoing discussion about these issues throughout the forums and it is clearly an area where people are eager to discuss. Yet, the very people who could help moderate this discussion participate only very rarely in ways that help guide us towards meaningful discussions that can improve the game.

That EM9 Stiletto sniper or whatever rifle they showed off is a nice start to making NC weapons have a real Gauss flavor. Watch it just be a shotgun in disguise.

I would say it's remarkable that they haven't "tuned" NC right yet to make them more competitive overall, but then again, the game's almost a year old now and hasn't seen a real content patch yet, which is a death sentence in Free 2 Play games.

And think about the impact this difference makes beyond just the kill difference, but also the cert gain advantage and the time sink needed for those players to respawn and get back into the action. If it takes 10 sec. to respawn & get back into the action after being killed, then C85 with only 164 kills, the C85 took those players out of action for a total of 27 min, while the Marauder with its 18K kills took those players out of action for over 3000 min or 50 hours.

Well, to be fair. A large part of the first and second place team's score was capture/defense points and considering that there's no way a six man team can realistically do that on their own without gaming it or ghost capping, Well, yeah. Gaming it and ghost caps.

On Connery, the experienced players on the NC have simply left for other games. The inexperienced players are there in droves. The gear for the NC is sub-par against the other two factions by a decent enough margin as to simply say its a matter of experience. With skill being the same across the board, the guy with an M-249 will wipe out 20 men with muskets. Same is true on the NC. Those that are not purely loyal to the NC have gone to '4th Faction' status and joined up on the TR side. As learning how to use TR weapons is pathetically easy compared to that of the NC.

The information in the OP's comments simply show the evidence to what most in the NC feel: Why play a game when the odds are so heavily stacked against them? Why....SPEND....MONEY.....WHEN.....NOT....HAVING....FUN? I WAS a paying customer. And most of my outfit of 600 were as well. All loyal members of the NC. That's a good chunk of money right there. Since then we've gotten into a host of other games. SOE wants our money and loyalty to the game? Maybe they should get around....REALLY QUICKLY....to improving the gear of the NC.

DVS Gaming is an NC outfit on Waterson. They were VS but switched to NC AFAIK.

Wrong, DVS has always been a NC outfit for regular gameplay ( not during competitions, they will select what is strongest at the current time ) source(s) :

) .

and

http://dvsgaming.org/?page_id=55

I'm sure Evilmind or Delrith would second that.

The faction weapons would be better balanced as:

NC - highest actual DPS, middle accuracy (effective DPS), lowest ROF and sustained damage (ammo)

TR - middle actual DPS, lowest accuracy (effective DPS), highest ROF and sustained damage (ammo)

VS - lowest actual DPS, highest accuracy (effective DPS), middle ROF and sustained damage (ammo)

Take a look at the Leader Boards...

Top 5 Kills are all TR on 5 different Servers, 3 are VS and the loan NC is #10...

I agree, I doubt you would notice. For one thing your not on the receiving end or becoming frustrated with weapons, that are quite good, but extremely situational. And all things considered even if the culminating imbalance is a modest 5% overall dis-advantage it really isn't going to be terribly obvious, but its going to give those players a feeling that something just isn't quite right and when we look at the stats provided in this post, look at the leader boards and take into account the experiences the NC say they are experiencing and they all are pointing in one direction, then I think we can make some reasonable conclusions that something really is wrong.

I am DVS as well and we are an NC outfit. And yes the decision was made that based on the rule set provided for the tournament, that our chances would be best if we went VS. The primary reason was the ZOE and its killing power. From what I understand part of the reason we did not do better is that base captures and defenses where weighted more heavily in the scoring then we expected. And we would have gone TR if Harassers would have been allowed for points.

Makes sense, given that there's $$ involved. It makes logical sense to pick the strongest faction at that time.

Yep, and they did awesome as well. ZOE's with engy/med support absolutely tear through infantry, even more then NC Mattocks, because of the range and damage per clip. Why SOE counted base captures and defenses, made no sense considering it was a 6 man teams, which would have had limited impact on most captures and/or defenses, but those where the rules and we kicked ourselves later for not zipping around in a reaver, to make sure we grabbed the points from bases flips, we had no influence in, rather then focusing on killing players in an FPS.

also another flaw in the stats posted the harrasser turret is not the mbt secondary they are different weapons with different stats.

They are different, if you cross check the stats the stats of the MBT secondaries versus the harasser gun(s) they're different. Also the unique ID's for the guns themselves from the data pull are different for each weapon.

So wait...I just want to make sure I'm on the right page...

So there are things that are clearly superior and we can assume lots of people, presumably some of them developers, are well aware of this...

Unfortunately, it sounds like the best solution is to 4th faction over to the best faction like the pros because the developers apparently are not going to do a damn thing about it...yet Higby is wringing his hands trying to figure out how to stop the 4th faction from ruining population balance...

Brilliant.

Here I thought you might cut down on the 4th faction population imbalance if you made all the factions equally enjoyable and viable. Or at the very least acknowledge when discrepancies arise and work as best as possible to fix them...

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