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

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by CoreCombat, Sep 13, 2013.

  1. Spookydodger


    I don't know if they really do squash data, but I can potentially see the point.

    Stats are numbers and numbers in a vacuum can be deceiving or can lead people to believe something is happening when it isn't, or is happening for more complex reasons than the statistics suggest.

    So I can see some censoring happening in those cases because then it gives the paranoid of both sides ammunition to amplify their negative rants. Few statistics are going to be used to say "things are going great, no worries here!".

    Not saying it is right, just saying that they might be trying to take the napalm out of forumsider hands, if they do anything at all with the posts.
  2. Spookydodger


    And yet many people complain about the strength of lockon launchers in general.

    Straight buffs are usually the last thing you want to do because it just can create more problems. How many Annihilator users are there? Will you just take the same problem that exists for the Striker and bring it to a launcher that everyone has so that aircraft and vehicles everywhere can experience the pain that TR opponents feel, or bring the Striker more in line with the Annihilator and giving it a different distinctive advantage rather than "buffed damage"... say make the Striker fire all 5 shots at once, doing exactly the same damage as an Annihilator, but flares cause a random number of the missiles to lose track, so you at least always do a little bit of damage even if the user flares.

    I appreciate that you have your opinion in such a succinct form, but would you mind thinking of where the Annihilator sits within the pantheon of lockon launchers?
  3. Van Dax

    [IMG]
    I know.
    • Up x 1
  4. Aegie

    Yeah, I was not really trying to suggest that doing this for the competition was 4th factioning- just that the equivalent would be that. I think DVS made the right call for themselves given the conditions. I was really just trying to somewhat dramatically point out that they felt it was in their best interest not to play the faction they regularly play and that is unfortunate.
  5. Xae

    [quote="CoreCombat, post: 2133139, member: 152173"[/quote]

    Correlation != Causation.

    You're completely mixing up cause and effect with 0 actual 'proof' of which is causing which.

    It is equally as likely that NC is the most 'popular' faction has higher turn over and therefore lower BR and therefore less experience and therefore worse statistics. Also KPU is a **** tier stat, people need to stop using it.

    You are trying to make sweeping balance statements from metrics that don't support it.
  6. Bill Hicks

    Correlation != Causation.

    You're completely mixing up cause and effect with 0 actual 'proof' of which is causing which.

    It is equally as likely that NC is the most 'popular' faction has higher turn over and therefore lower BR and therefore less experience and therefore worse statistics. Also KPU is a **** tier stat, people need to stop using it.

    You are trying to make sweeping balance statements from metrics that don't support it.[/quote]


    what?

    You think we all of a sudden said that NC gear is subpar JUST from these STATs?
    LOL
    FIRST of all, we have been saying that NC weapons are subpar long before this data.
    We are using it to back up our argument.
    We have alot of other evidence.

    As a long time FPS player. I can tell you what is good or bad.
    And NC weapons fall behind the VS and TR

    "It is equally as likely that NC is the most 'popular' faction has higher turn over and therefore lower BR and therefore less experience and therefore worse statistics"

    LOl really? BR does not equal skill. And as whole, your scenario is not equally likely. Based on personal experience of many many many other players. This is due to poor weapons. Long time ago, when everyone was low battlerank, people were saying NC weapons were subpar. When the TR and VS stomped the NC in the tournament, it was obvious. So your battle rank theory is weak.

    Well looks like you were trying to be the cliched SENSIBLE one in the thread, but ended up with fallacy.
  7. Dethfield

    This is EXACTLY why i hate talking to people who obsess over the hard stats. They think its the "end-all be-all" of the conversation and it is not. Spooky nailed it. The vanguard i definitely NOT the worst tank, it stupidly easy to destroy other tanks with a decent vanguard and competent crew. But the stats do not take into account that a vehicle kill does not guarantee a player kill. Its laughable that anyone would assume the vanguard is the "worst" tank based on stats alone (almost makes me wonder if these people actually play the game, or at least in the roles they are talking about).

    There is no doubt that some of the NC unique weapons need improvement, but overall i see more problems in the use of many of these weapons than the weapons themselves. Stat tables dont take this into account.
  8. Drsexxytime

    It hasn't just been since the showing of these stats that people are "crying" for NC buffs. The people who were here since launch knew that NC were really lacking, and been pointing out, then asking, then begging, for NC buffs in that window. Many of which then have either moved on to greener pastures to be at least competitive with TR and VS, or just moved on from the game not wanting to be shoe horned into a faction they don't want to play.

    I just started playing a VS toon a bit. This is because Mattherson is a lost cause for NC right now, and it's also a ghost town outside of peak hours, and SOE refuses to fix this...

    ANYWAYS, playing NC for that period of time and going to VS is like stepping on deck and swinging a bat with a donut (weight) on it before stepping into the batter's box.
  9. axiom537

    You are correct obsessing over the stats and the stats alone is WRONG. However, there have been multiple discussions regarding the NC by NC discussing areas where we feel we are severely lacking or where other factions equivalent empire specific weapons out preform our own. So, in this regard the Stats by themselves are not proof, but they do support much of the complaints coming from the NC faction in general.

    My take on it, is that there are some areas where the NC need a boost and any weapon system that is not operating on par with its equivalent enemy counter part needs to be brought in line.

    In my opinion, the best thing that could happen to the NC is they stop sticking shot-guns on all our damn vehicles.
    - Remove one of our 3 Shot gun AI max weapons and give us a guass variant that will give us some mid-long AI capabilities.
    - Give us a Guass type AI weapon for our vehicles, instead of shot guns.
    • Up x 2
  10. Handsi

    As an NC player I can appreciate the hard work for making this data clearly show the deficit compared to the other 2 factions but I can't help to think: SOE doesn't care.

    They left the Striker stay in it's current state for how many months now? They have all the data (plus more for sure) yet for some reason they do nothing about it. Striker shouldn't be Annihilator 2.0 but it is. Nerf the Strikers damage to Annihilators damage (roughly) and air is more closely balanced. All lock-on weapons should be heavily nerfed; it's skill-less and too much of a pain to balance.

    Ground is different and more complicated as is infantry. The biggest problem I see is all the empire specific crap they keep tossing in the game. Yes it's nice and add's flavour but I think they follow the empire specific lore too much where NC keeps getting handed "rustic junk salvaged from tin cans and shoots slow but hits hard!". It's time NC got something cool to attract players. There's a reason new players goto TR; fancy weapons, flashy rockets and a tenancy for higher population which compounds the issue more.

    TL;DR Wake up SOE.
    • Up x 3
  11. Dethfield


    Nah i understand that. The NC does have some subpar weapons, like the enforcer modified (watch a video a real cannister round and prepare to be amazed, ours is a water pistol by comparison), phoenix (could be argued either way, but i dont find it very useful), and some of the small arms we have. But i cant help but feel alot of is also player incompetence when i see a horde of bone-stock vanguards rush into an amp station (and i mean INTO) that is swarming with enemy infantry.

    As for the NC MAX, i personally prefer it over the others. The only thing i would change is to improve slugs somewhat, more accuracy, harder hitting at long range. I suspect they were intended to be our mid range AI anyway, and while they are "adequate", they arent really up to par with the TR and VS weapons.
  12. axiom537

    I think the NC have some great weapons the phoenix, the max shield, and the scat max are all awesome and fun. But.... They are too situational, which would be fine if the other empires equivalent weapons where just as situational, but they are not. They perform just as good if not better then the more versatile NS weapons, which the NC tend to use more because of the lack of versatility in many of our empire specific weapons. We as NC use our situational weapons to great affect, but we tend to use the NS weapons a bit more, because most of the time it is better to use a slightly less powerful but more versatile weapon.

    As for the scat max I agree it is fantastic, but it is still very limited, have you ever used it in an open area to support your infantry. I highly doubt it because anything past 10m is out of your range, but this is not the case with the TR or the VS their AI maxs often run with their infantry, and it is why I think we should have something like a gauss weapon option as well, to give us some range.
  13. St NickelStew


    Unfortunately, in stats class one doesn't learn very much about experimental design. You did a lot of work and wrote a lot, but all of that work provides no constructive evidence for any meaningful conclusions.

    I would *expect* the numbers you provide above, because of the population differences among the factions. More people spend more time playing TR than either VS or NC ... so the TR *should* have more kills either other faction. NC are the most underpopulated faction, so they will naturally have the fewest kills.

    The dependent variable you want to use in your statistical analysis is not total kills, but kills per minute (KPM) played on each of the factions. If you and I both play NC for 10 minutes and between us get 5 kills, then we have .25 KPM (=5/20). Comparing KPM across the factions will be *much* more meaningful than the analysis you did. Also compare score per minute (SPM).

    Once you get this data, what you need to do to demonstrate significant differences between any two of the numbers is to run t-tests: compare TR to VS, TR to NC, and VS to NC (i.e, 3 t-tests). Significance of less than or equal to .05 is necessary to be able to describe two numbers as being "significantly different". And please don't bother with showing all that standard deviation stuff, because it doesn't demonstrate anything.

    [This post was written by some random dude on the internet who has a Ph.D. in accounting and has both reviewed and published research that utilized statistical analysis.]
  14. CoreCombat


    Quick rebuttal if only for the population being the factor. Yes the population IS a factor but to correct you quickly on the assertion that the NC has less" Unique killers" / population , they do not. In fact the NC as a whole nearly has as much unique killers as they do for the TR , while the VS does not have as many as either the NC or the TR per : ( sources )

    http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=56268&page=15

    [IMG]


    and

    http://sirisian.com/planetside2/population.php

    For the planetside 2 population site , I'd recommend you zoom in to see the actual population or mousing over the lines if you can count the pixels without zooming in .

    The TR have * slightly* more population then the NC, while the VS has less population then the TR or the NC . TR - most , NC - slightly less population then TR while VS - the least in terms of total population.
    • Up x 1
  15. Lampenfieber

    Good Job!

    At least now we can contest NC really made lore true, with second hand weapons and about the damm striker too...

    But, nothing will be done and game will continue to be like this...
  16. CoreCombat


    I don't think nothing will be done about it. If I believe that they are not going to do anything about it then I would have never taken the time to post this post . One has to consider that this game is less then one year old. I am sure that SOE will make the changes once they have collected data for this . For now it looks " hopeless" but I'd highly doubt that this will be ignored constantly . It takes time to balance things, but ultimately changes ( like removing shotguns on vehicles/ a recoloring for the VS to aid in their population issues ) will go a decent way in fixing the faction imbalances .
    • Up x 2
  17. Drsexxytime

    What the...

    A year? It takes almost a year to collect data before doing something? In a game? A shooter at that?

    Is this a Smedly/Higby alt account? Or are you applying to SOE?
  18. St NickelStew

    Once again, though, I would suggest you will most productively look at minutes played on each faction.

    Planetside 2 is FTP, so it is *very* easy to start a character but not play the character. The statistics you show simply document how many characters have been created. You have shown me that roughly the same number of characters have been created across the factions, but provide no information about how much those characters have been played.

    So my own position remains the same ... the most meaningful statistics you can provide would use a ratio of kills per minutes played by faction as the unit of the analysis (and score per minute played). Anything else has too many confounding variables. And even that data would not be positively conclusive because balance across factions includes faction traits and is complicated; for example, the NC Vanguard is the best anti-vehicle MBT, but suffers in other areas compared to the other MBTs. If you do not have access to minutes played data, then your analysis is much more susceptible to criticism, and I would suggest not being too bold with any conclusions you might draw. In fact, in general, statistics should always be interpreted with caution.
  19. BigMacDeez

    Always be wary of any player generated "stats". Despite the fact that they may be from the API, putting them on a spreadsheet made on Google gives one the opportunity for "adjustments" in their favor...
  20. Odin

    Have you watched the community clashes, nc getting beat down every time no matter what clan it was, last one they asked if maxes couldn't be used so it was more fair, what does that say about balance.
    • Up x 2