Waterson

I play primarily NC on Waterson.

Having our crap together is primarily a function of time of day. During late evening EST hours the outfit/platoon leads that come on are familiar with one another and work well together.

At these times, good fights are to be had (TR definitely doesn't suck during these hours).

At other hours, command chat is crickets or bickering and we get our collective butts handed to us by both TR and VS.

I've no idea why this seems to occur but it does. At certain hours you get better coordination.

Consider playing at different hours -OR- do something about it. Get some cross-outfit communications going. Invite other leaders to forums of your own outfit. Get familiar with each other and you'll start working well together. Those ghost caps that a single squad could handle? If single-squad leaders out there here good command chat from the big platoons then they'll be inclined to work along. If a couple big platoons ask for a squad out there to help something small then you'll get the cooperation.

Above all though - don't let yourself get psyched out. NC and TR are no better on Waterson than VS. Don't let a silly perception take hold.

Maybe we think your server is unhealthy with all the tryhards and people who seem to take gaming a bit too seriously.

To be quite honest I dont care about whether or not you are anyone else views Waterson or any other server as 'unhealthy'. In fact, I think its a rather arrogant statement to make. Im pretty damn sure the rest of Waterson would be in agreement. So Ill tell you what: you have your super serious tacticool server and we'll have our super fun lets-not-take-this-too-seriously server eh?

Different strokes for different folks. If I gave two s**** about winning alerts I wouldnt be in a 10 man Outfit called EFFU wasting 100% squad lead certifications now would I? Because its a game. Call it unhealthy if you will, but my own opinion is that being an arrogant insult slinging armchair general is a good deal more unhealthy.

The problems with Waterson VS are largely in part due to a constant under pop which has never really managed to "resolve" itself. Back when the old Vanu Alliance was still a thing the NC and TR hated to fight the VS because we would put up a hell of a fight. If we really wanted to win an alert we would but it required more effort then it was worth for us. The fact the VS have always needed to put more effort has tired a lot of the Vets out who in turn stopped trying to win alerts. You will often find the VS perfering to farm then win.

Yep. And I dont mind farming a bit.

Having coordinated fights with armor convoys, Last minute Galaxy drops, AV nests, Tank Convoys, coordinated firing lines, 1337 infantry divisions making Spartan like last stands against the odds on a regular basis, and a very healthy competitive factor between outfits is way more exciting epxerience than what you find on other servers that mostly just offer zerg blobs. Going up against try hards mean you will be challenged more, be forced to deal with more flanking, more tactics, and overall it will make you a better player or else you will give up and then be just another victim that was ravaged by the wolves which are the outfits on Mattherson. You become a better player when you're up against better players. When you play on Mattherson you also become a part of an awesome experience, a part of a server specific meta game that can be truly entertaining, and become a better player in the process out of sheer necessity. However if you disregard all this and don't play on Mattherson, well then you don't matter son.

I hear players from Waterson saying their server is becoming a ghost town, hard to find good fights, and is stagnant. I also hear that Waterson VS are doing very bad, while our VS is literally the best in the world. Btw not all our outfit leaders/ PL's/SL's hurl insults. You'd have a hard time finding any bad/truly offensive outfits leads in the 903rd or BWC . If you're scared of trash talk though I'd stay away from Mattherson Vanu if the servers ever get merged, and if you see "GINYU FORCE RULES" being spammed I'd advise redeploying.

The most coordination I've seen on Waterson was a ball of 10 TR heavies parked on the end of the bastion wall, not even trying to cap the base. They all had strikers, and were just farming our air. The only VS attacking them was me, and they just swarmed me with their MCGs. They were also invincible. I shot at them with my XM98 and didn't get hit markers even on stationary TR.

Is there anything more to life than making money?

Yes, it's the only reason I still post on these forums and play the game, actually.

This is 100% correct. I try to play VS as often as I can, but often get frustrated to the point of rage quitting. It isn't the low population either - those are the kind of battles that I look for on my NC as well. It is the complete and utter lack of knowledge and/or ability required to play support classes correctly. I play Medic on VS to somewhat help the issue, but when I am consistently forced to use my Beamer or fall back to the spawn room for ammunition despite there being Engineers around... well it it dampens the spirits a bit. Worse is when I play Engineer to help that issue, and get stuck with Medics running right past my dead body.

If I could play a class with ammunition drops & a heal/revive tool I would, but unfortunately I have to rely on someone on the VS to do something.

When we ran ops on Waterson, we kept getting tells from people asking us what server we from from, because VS didn't normally fight back. That's not a good sign. Regardless of what you think, if public players aren't having fun and think that their faction is always losing, they quit and the server dies. The only reason this game works is because there are a lot of people on all servers who put their time and effort into making sure the game is fun for other people--lose that and there's no game.

Thank you Verviedi for the AWESOME PLUG to suggest my outfit, Quantum Dawn, as a competent group of soldiers.

Now I do not think you can point to one or a few reasons why the VS (or any underpopulated faction on any server) is playing worse than the others. What I do consider is that when a faction is underpopulated the overall weaknesses of pubs becomes more prominent. A group of soldiers that are not lead are never as effective as a smaller group that is coordinated and disciplined. Coupled that with the psychological effect which occurs when you know you are the underdog makes any lower populated faction difficult to fight well.

In short I believe that this is prevalent in every server whenever there is an underpopulated server. This phenomenon would also occur on Waterson with the TR and NC as well whenever they are underpopped.

Waterson VS overall seems to be a broken faction... its either Indarside 24/7 or risk getting farmed to death if you dare venture elsewhere. Makes it a very boring and one dimensional game. I've seen a group of VS just minding their own business ghost capping somewhere, and the NC will drop a platoon on top of them and kill the advance instantly. They've got the pops and can do it anytime they want to.

Its not that the old Waterson VS are bad - they had great coordination and were able to overcome the odds for the longest time ever, but I do think that in the end, attrition, fatigue, has slowly diminished the faction. And I'm not sure about new player retention either - if I was starting PS2 pretty new, and decided to seriously play VS, I'd probably just start a new VS character on Mattherson or Connery and abandon a pretty newish getting started with the game character on Waterson VS.

Yeah, that's more what I was getting at in the first post in saying that the server isn't healthy. If something's that wrong with one whole faction, the whole server dynamic suffers. That doesn't mean people can't have fun or enjoy their outfits, but it does mean someone needs to come up with a solution for long-term improvements to occur. Not sure what do do about it either--I'm not sure how organized NC outfits are on Waterson, but perhaps one or two of the larger ones could run VS ops nights once or twice a week. It's small gesture, but when public players start to see their faction winning even a few times a week, it can dramatically improve morale. I know when Mattherson TR was really suffering, one thing that really saved us was a bunch of the VS groups taking a night a week (different nights usually) or so to come play on TR and help us out, and it worked wonders, because it was just enough to give us that edge a few more times a week so that people started to play more.

Agreed, I play all three factions on Waterson, and I only enjoy my VS time because I play with friends from other factions (uh, we started playing together as TR, I'm not advocating cross-teaming, lol) and we work together. Like the guy you quoted, if you see a mass of Vanu on Waterson, they're going to be about 60% HA, 20% SMG Infi, 8% MAX. The other 12% are AFK in the warpgate, lol. If I need ammo, I redeploy, or flank enemies and use their ammo packs. If I need a heal or rez, I pull out my medstick or spawn somewhere else, because help is not coming. Granted, I play vehicles a lot, but I'm br45 on my VS now, and I've probably been rezzed by randoms less than 20 times.

I will say this, though. When you have the luxury of playing with randoms that have a clue, the VS on Waterson fight hard. They win alerts underpop, as the TR and NC like to mass zergs and smash into each other for two hours.

I didn't post this to rip on the VS of Waterson, I've got a lot of respect for the old heads still hanging around. I'm just becoming increasingly disappointed when I log in and have to choose a faction based on who's actually fighting, because the server is under-pop when I can play. Like I said in another thread, I made a Connery character, and I suffer through the lag just to see real, large-scale fights, which are mostly absent from Waterson these days. I just wish I had some friends there, you can only spend so much time laughing to yourself as you splatter meatbags on your chrome bullhorns.

This is also 100% true. Numbers are a huge factor in this game. With fewer VS players, teamwork & raw ability become extremely important.

Unfortunately though VS lost the majority of their all-star players. With ZAPS gone, VS really doesn't have an outfit comprised of simply amazing infantry players that can effectively turn the tides of losing battles (although I've seen you guys do some pretty amazing things). Without an outfit like ZAPS, losing battles (colloquially known as 'farms') typically stay that way. I can't speak for vehicle play, but I'd be willing to bet that in air v. air & tank v. tank VS is similarly boned without the ace pilots & tankers ZAPS had.

When the VS is besieged on all fronts, I pull Scythe. When I am shot down 7 minutes later, I pull harasser and do stunts with GunnerySergeantHeartman in the desert. More people should do that. Ramping sand dunes is fun, and distracts from the "losing on all sides"

Well you can expect newbies when you have all the "cool alien LAZOR PEW PEW VANU" attractions.

It's great to generalize a whole faction consists of thousand of player even though I've barely scratched BR30.
Welcome to Waterson! Warning! Experiences may vary.

i can say as of recent i can agree with the OP...waterson used to have some of the best vanu outfits and were really organized...then they have slowly died out and can only find one or maybe 2 platoons to join when i log in. and after playing in one for a little bit, i have to leave due to poor leadership (not always the case, i have come to find a couple decent leaders that i like to join when i see them leading)...i think some of it has to be due to the fact that there are a couple youtubers that play on waterson NC so they tend to have higher pops...the NC i noticed, too, have some very well lead outfits (i know it depends on whos leading but whenever i run into TIW i know im in for a good fight or they are just going to push us back until their attention is diverted elsewhere) idk there are quite a few reason more i can think of but now im rambling so...yeah

False. I'm BR31. BR has nothing to do with skill. You can get BR60 just by farming in a lib all day. I have 10 hours of computer time a week. Time is limited, and I don't farm. I get better at the game without gainin much XP.

You still don't get it do you Eskimo?

Not everyone is a tryhard, and not everyone wants to be a tryhard. In fact, most people don't - why do you think the other servers aren't like Mattherson and Miller?

Most people, judging by how most servers operate, don't care about having a 24/7 grudge match against the best players in the game, they just want to hop on and shoot stuff and have a laugh with their friends. That's what Waterson and Connery are in contrast to Mattherson - the difference is, Connery is less fun to play on because of general stupidity and the abundance of players using cert-farming cheese tactics. Waterson always was just about having a fun shootout.

You're still not helping with the stereotype that Mattherson is full of itself. In fact, you're perpetuating it intentionally, I think. Saying "you don't matter" for not playing on Mattehrson is an insult to every good outfit that ever graced the other servers. NUC, The Iron Wolves, Future Crew, Recursion and several outfits from Connery TR would like a word with you.