What is your impression of the enemy factions?

Miller

VS: a couple of good outfits. a few really big messy zergs
NC: a couple of great outfits. a TON of new players
TR: the zerg. a couple of elderly outfits (With problems getting it up) pissed about the zerg.

lots and lots and lots of 4th factioneers (everywhere)

On Miller (IMO):

VS: Not a lot of players, but they like to move in groups. Are especially fond of their Scythes and MAXes...

TR: Dem zerglings... unless you happen to come across one of the more organized outfits.

Yup. the rest of VS trying to work together while 90% is like 'Crown fight!' and 'Xroad Fight!'.

NC/RTR: I've noticed the other two factions seem oblivious to the amount of MAX units they pull. Maybe if their MAX units would glow red/blue they'd realise they also tend to pull tons of MAX units. They also seem to talk about how broken ZOE is even when ZOE isn't being used, so I guess the real problem is how large of an effect the MAX has on the battlefield when employed en masse, especially if there are a lot of highly certed MAXs involved. Kind of boring from a tactical standpoint how powerful a MAX becomes even with the most rudementry of support. Force multipliers/synergy is good but it is just too obvious and simple it becomes dull.

So, in a nutshell, I've noticed a lot of holier-than-thou attitude and confirmation bias. Same goes for VS, mind you. Some people, especially on the boards, take this game way too seriously for their own good, some even seem to become very angry and hostile merely by the mention of a specific faction. Tend to be the same people who claim X faction only bring Y unit, or whatever. Other examples are the hatred some have for specific classes, assuming everyone just want ez mode or bla bla bla.

People, in general, needs to apply a bit of critical thinking to their own claims. Self-awareness and carefully reasoned arguments gets you far... Well, no, this is sadly not true. They tend to go unnoticed because this is forumside, and hyperbole carries the day. Now, if you would excuse me I am going to jump into my ZOE MAX who I am apparently always playing as(the 4% play time on player stats are obviously lying since the devs favour VS all the time, trollololololol).

I've played just about every faction on every server.

My impression? The players themselves in skills, knowledge, teamwork, etc are approximately the same on every server and every faction.

The main difference? The NC have burnt out while the VS and TR have things they can have fun with when they fight. I don't think I need to go into the reason why that is the case, its pretty well covered in other threads and my own post history.

Cobalt
TR: A step above NC in performance. Vulcan harassers everywhere. Use aircraft more than others.
Vanu: Best performing faction. Most skilled. Wins 7/10 alerts and are superb at taking and defending biolabs. Makes significant use of pump shotguns and UBGL.

Ceres (I have both TR and vanu but I play mostly TR)
NC: Significantly better than their friends on Cobalt. They actually win alerts time to time. Each big assault there is at least 1 phoenix user. On Cobalt I am the only one most of the time. On par with or just above TR.
Vanu: Overall good. Doesn't make me feel frustrated like the others sometimes do. The players feels like they know what they're doing.
TR: Can't say much. At rare times they are dumb to play with but much less so than NC on Cobalt.

Woodman
NC: average in everything.
VS: ZOE ZOE Magrider ZOE Magrider ZOE Magrider, if fails, repeat ad infinitum until people from other factions start leaving or porting to other regions. No VS player ever employed different tactic. Easy mode faction. They win 80% of all alerts, outclass every other in terms of weapon effectiveness and vehicle power. Permanently control 50% of territory.
TR: Fun faction. Joly zerg that allows even partly compensate total domination of VS. Overcoming with masses of expendable cannon fodder ZOEs and Magriders. Weakest and most useless vehoicles and MAXes. One on one cannot even hope to win against VS.

Cobalt:

TR: Rarely play any important role at the times I'm online. Seem to have a fair number of small, organized groups but otherwise just OK. In alerts at the evening I have yet to see them fighting for the win, being always 3rd when I'm online.
NC: Pretty decent. Put up a very good fights at alerts but numbers are dwindling rapidly come late evening.
VS: I can not judge them so well as I play VS but it seems that most success only comes from sheer numbers rather than good play.
Trident seems to be the only really big outfit and them having no recruiting standards at all makes them a mixed bag with a lot of clueless players and 4th fractioners.
Sometimes VS dominates a good bit, sometimes they are incredibly dumb, fighting with TR over one hex while losing the alert to NC ****** the **** out of our entire territory. Bad memories of the Crown come back at those moments.


Lithcorp used to be:

VS: Decent all around.
NC: Lots and lots of them, most being pants on head ******** subscribers of some Let's Play guy at that time. Imagine Pewdiepie fans. 60% population and almost no territory anywhere were quite common for them. Good to see they left along with the server.
TR: Very competent and a lot more fun to play against.


So the merger pretty much changed NC and TR around with the exception of TR being far from as bad as NC was on Lithcorp. NC, however seem to be a bit better.

I can't judge any faction for other times of the day other than esarly to late evening so take that with a grain of salt.

Warning: There follows broad generalisations!

All factions playstyle seems to be informed by their favourite toys.

NC are hard-charging, foot-stompers, seemingly mindless, with the one human wave strategy. It can work, and you've got to admire their aggression, but generally they're the inferior force, and so probably the one I most like fighting against. Perhaps they don't have a favourite toy? The Vanguard is the best anti-tank tank, but I guess an anti-tank tank is only as effective as a hero with C4. I'll call them barbarian invaders, others might call them muppets.

As an infantry force, TR lack NC's gusto. They just don't have a taste for blood (not that there is any -- nanites), unless supported by air. Playing as or against TR can be embarrassing, as nothing seems to happen until the air support shows up. I think they've become too dependent on it. Without air superiority, there's little way of taking ground, forcing the enemy into constant defence. I'll call them sky-lords here, others might call them gay-lords, but then the Vanu would claim trademark infringement.

VS. Do seem to have it together, but I think their strengths and even weaknesses, suit the PS2 gameplay most. The Magrider, frex, is the worst tank. Yet tank vs. tank combat is generally a waste of time and resources. And tanks don't clear infantry out of bases. But MAX's do. The ZOE ability isn't even that OP, but was, so a lots of VS have certed MAX's and want to use them. I'll call them masters of assault, others might call them a**-masters.

Just asking, I dont quite get what youre saying, do you think magriders and VS weaponry is OP?

I'll separate this into two different mindsets: 1) Ragemode, just got killed by cheese mindset 2) Calm, collected, actually thinking mindset.

RAGEMODE

TR: Goddamn, why can't I hit those bloody ADAD spam jumping ZOE MAX suits and VS/NC LAs?! God that Vanguard is so OP! Why does my Vulcan suck soooo hard? This damn Prowler isn't good for ****!
NC: Why are my weapons so strong? Why can't these idiots get organized? Why can't my MAX kill anything?! STOP SPAMMING ZOE!
VS: lalalalalalalalala point + click + dead

Calm and Collected

TR, NC, VS: Each faction has their trait, each one is protraited. Almost nothing is blatantly overpowered or exploited, with good balance in A2A engagements, and Infantry engagements. You always feel like the other faction is overpowered when you're used to playing one of the others, it's just natural. I swapped from TR to NC for a while and thought that all their weapons were overpowered as hell, but looking at it now it's just that I had a chance to start over and know what I was actually doing, and using weapons that I actually felt comfortable with.

Blatantly OP things being: ZOE, Vanny shield, AA from anything but Skyguard, Pump shotties, Vulcan within ~15m, HE nerf (was op because unnecessary)

TR: Seems like everybody knows each other. Like the whole faction is one giant outfit, that divides itself into platoons just because there is no way to form companies and battalions in this game, otherwise they would. They play well together but rarely play either too well or too poorly.

VS: Seems like they take this game a little too seriously. Too many times have I been in a platoon that started to attacked a basically undefended facility only to suddenly be fighting dozens of BR90+ Vanu that seemed to materialize out of thin air purely to spite my platoon. And spite it they do, very successfully. They almost never die to bouncing betties, they conc grenade almost every room before entering, the ZOEs have entire micro-armies of engies running behind them. They're just not fun to fight at all, especially in biolabs. Anytime I find myself in a biolab with VS around, I just say screw it, leave the platoon, and go solo sniping literally anywhere else, even if nobody is there. Still better than fighting VS in a biolab.

NC: Exact opposite of VS. We run around circle-jerking and making lame jokes and laughing at each other when we die. Sometimes a galaxy will crash into a tree and kill an entire squad, only to be met with laughter from the other 3 squads in the platoon. Can be remarkably effective for some reason. Even as NC I'd have to say you'd think we'd be the least effective faction, but we seem to win our fair share of engagements. I can only guess our lack of caring keeps moral high or something.

On Mattherson, having played as and against all factions for quite some time:

TR: They can be the toughest faction to fight against, they definitely have some of the most skilled players on the server. However, the big downfall is that when the TR captures a base, they'll often move to the next base on foot. Though, when the TR zergs, it really zergs. However, in almost any small or moderate battle, you'll be lucky if the TR maintains even a single Sunderer. Some of the smaller TR outfits are some of the strongest, even able to defend against numbers much greater than their own. The TR seem to be populated by mostly adults.

NC: Solid, strong, definitely some of the best pilots... they usually bring a lot of Sunderers to a battle, one after another. The organized groups of NC are always a strong match, but there's not a lot of over all organization. Large NC zergs are rare, but they do happen. When the NC come in force, they're definitely a powerhouse... but, they don't always come in force. That said, a small force of NC can still make a great fight and hold their own. Like the TR, the NC seem to be populated by mostly adults.

VS: The VS are literally like the Zerg, while there's a few (a scant few) good players... there's a *whole* lot of bad ones. The VS tend to win by numbers and strictly by the numbers, you'll rarely get a VS win on equal or less than equal terms... and that's even with the heavy population of ZOE. Usually, there needs to be at least a 60% pop for them to win any fight, even a defend. In every battle I've ever fought with and against the VS, this has been the case... I've never seen an underpopulated win by the VS... and there seems to be very little to no organization at all. From what I've seen, the VS tends to be populated by mostly kids, but the anime future style probably attracts more kids than adults anyway.

TR: Defeatists. Some openly announce that they're 4th factioning at the START of alerts. Even if TR for some reason has territory leads to begin with and no population issues.

NC: Paulbots. Warpgate's full of wannabe John Galts that want to tell strangers on the internet why they shouldn't have to pay taxes on the vast fortunes their IT degrees will get them once they have them.

VS: Jerks. They rub in victories rather obnoxiously. I don't mind being outnumbered, but getting really excited about caging people in a sea of Scythes and Magriders isn't that much to boast about.

There are about 3 or so VS outfits on Cobalt that insist(ed) on using the current rage of the month above and beyond healthy limits.

Magrider blobs decimating enemy armor zergs with impunity before the tank projectile speed changes? Yes. 20+ Sunderer rush? Why not? ESF platoons rocketpodding you out of existence before the blanket AA buffs? Yep. Release of the pump shotguns? You'd best avoid indoor combat until they get their auaraxium medals in. AV MANA? You'd better dig your sundy underground. ZOE? You betcha your sorry butt they will!

Did not exactly foster sportsmanship behaviour, if you catch my drift. It went even to the point when TR and NC have tried to warpgate them in the most defensible Indar warpgate during primetime just out of spite.

Tempers run much less hot nowadays. But there is noticeably less players than there used to be too, so...

Our NC are decent enough folk, incidents of whole platoons packing Cyclone + some kind of shotgun and shamelessly splatmaxing everyone into the ground while the game allowed notwithstanding.

Our TR? Gympsy is an a-hole and the atmosphere he fosters in his outfit and in the ORDERS channel is just plain bad. There are some random dudes that would C4 your vehicle if it accidentally clipped them (not even killed!) some, but from what I've seen there are always some people like that. Other than that, the people I usually play with have turned out to be surprisingly nice and awesome. I like it here.

I have a VS alt on Woodman. Some very nice outfit platoon work there. It always warms the heart seeing a coordinated group of 4 (!) Skyguards setting up the perimeter around the alert-critical sundy push.

Playing as NC on Miller is just... painful. TR farming squads rolling over groups of players up to 3 times as numerous as them is not that much as an exaggeration as I would've liked. A giant chunk of NC people being seemingly completely clueless certainly doesn't help.

Waterson.

TR are zerglings. Very rarely do I see a good one. They only ever accomplish objectives when they have their airzerg around, or when they have us outnumbered three to one. Even their best will do things like run straight at a 200 damage per-bullet weapon, and that's just the height of newbishness.

VS are much the same, except they can't get anything done without pulling droves and droves of ZOE MAXes. I can name a few relatively skilled Vanu players, but there really aren't many.

Fellow NC need to get over our faction's weaknesses, stop wallowing in self-pity, and try. The TR and VS really aren't as good as they like to say they are, but the NC seem to want to make damn sure that we're the ones who lose every time.

I actually agree with both assessment and I play TR.

You sure haven't played on Miller in the past? This was them until about 2 months ago.

My humble impression of my enemies on Connery:
1. NC - gheys.
2. TR - gheys with funny uniforms.

I absolutely hate those jerks in TR and NC.

Oh ... they're right behind me, aren't they.

Yes, but they're too busy slap-fighting each other to notice you.