The VS as a faction needs some serious rethinking

They should introduce 5 different damage tiers.

112,125,143,167 and 200.

TR gets 112,125 and 143
VS gets 125,143 and 167
NC gets 143,167 and 200

Making VS the most versatile faction. Considering that NC can not have a taste of really fast RoF weapons and TR will not get a taste of high damage weapons.

I don't agree with the OP at all.

I still love playing Vanu as much as I did pre-release. It's the most fun faction, imo, with the most unique kit and the most light-hearted outfits. I also like the 'cultish' backstory.

No changes are required, really.

When the VS have been underpopped almost permanently since release, changes are needed.

Can be server specific, but not true in general.

Sure it can.

http://borderlinetactical.net/rsnc/world-population/?world_id=0

Set the zoom level to "1w" for a reasonable balance between resolution and length of time, then slowly scroll back to the ZOE nerf in PU02. Look at the three faction balance in prime time and see if you can spot any trends. Even before the ZOE nerf the VS was often lowest prime time population globally, just not significantly so.

Completely agree, I slowly stopped playing my VS char, cause it so boring to get a million drawbacks because somehow the dev's think LOL NO BULLET DROP, MEGA OP!

All guns look horrible, its by far the worst gun design in any game i've played in the last 10 years. Even when SOE reskinnd a couple of guns, VS got the least changes, ursa and corvus only. And nothing since. Our shotguns are carbines aswell.

That last drop was the terminus, horrible bad and prob one of the lowst dps'ing guns in the game, maybe coming in 2nd, since first place is the corvus which has the highest TTK of all teh guns in PS2.

I still stick to my own statement.
The population tracker you posted supports my argument.

The guy I was replying to said "When the VS have been underpopped almost permanently since release, changes are needed."
I said "Can be server specific, but not true in general."

Do determine that, you need to set it at "All" not "1w".
And if you do that, you will see that VS has not been underpopped since release, they have been fairly balanced.

Connery and Mattherson VS have been overpopped for a decent period of time.

Also matters alot in tanks i.e where VS outclasses other factions with massive drop shotguns with slugs was one of the few ways you could really benefit from it pulling off heatshots up to 100m with IRNV sights without drop... but the 3-4 TR/NC ppl that got killed that way, cried so hard even that got nerfed....

The link I sent was already set to show all the servers combined, I suggested setting the zoom to 1w to see fine detail, and that showed that accross all servers VS has been clearly the lowest populated faction globally since PU02, and was usually the lowest populated faction even during the Autumn, when ZOE was still regarded as ridiculously OP. Between GU02 and ZOE the VS was comically low population globally, though I do not have the statistics here to prove it.

You now seem to arguing the reverse, pointing to specific servers where this wasn't true, and arguing that that means VS has not been underpopulated. Can you please be a little more clear as to why you feel VS has not been underpopulated on the global scale for an extremely long period of time.

Dude, my point is simply that VS has not always been underpopulated.
The guy I was replying to, claimed that VS has always been underpopulated, which is not true.

Global underpop is pretty irrelevant, unless you bring in WDS.

You can bunch in TR in one server, but that still wont change the underpop of TR on other servers.
Sure TR will still have massive overpop world-wide, but in specific, there will only be 1 server that has TR overpop.

So I suggest that you stop using global population.

Buff the Orion!

The hull gun is a massive disadvantage for Magrider. It restricts its use to places where it can move and turn unhindered. Going over the hill is also disadvantageous because it has to reveal the entire tank to be able to shoot, where as Vanguard and Prowler can fire from hull down position, with less projectile drop.

Magrider is more like a catapult that uses low trajectory instead of high trajectory, making it useless in long ranges.

Some say Magrider is good because the aim doesn't wobble around when moving over rough country. Now imagine how f*cking bad the tank would be if it did.

Also this topic isn't about buffing the VS. It's about thinking the special traits each empire has. Currently the VS have no distinctive and unique trait to their empire weapons and the way they are played.

NC have hard hitting, slow firing weapons

TR have fast firing, weak hitting weapons

VS have nothing. Only thing that distinguishes them from other empires are batteries and f*cking spandexes.

Global population is the only legitimate metric that we can use when talking about global faction changes. Unless you are sayign that we should change the VS weapons on everything except Mattherson, then Global metric is the only legitimate metric.

The fact that Mattherson have a VS overpop, despite the VS being globally underpopulated, only makes other servers even more underpopulated.

The TR underpop on many server? What servers would that be? They are overpopped like there is no tomorrow on Ceres, with 40% not being uncommon, and i'm pretty sure they have been zergrolling on Miller for the last year aswell. They seem to be overpop on Briggs and Woodman too. I didnt' bother to check more servers, but i doubt the pattern changes.

It seems like you are just depserately trying to avoid seeing reason here, and resort to absurd amounts of nitpicking, because you refuse to accept that the VS faction have a problem which is clearly evident my the huge population issues they are suffering.

"Yup, that was spandex's lover"

They should look no further then the AK47 for how to use the same general model or body yet make each gun look truly unique. I mean the AK47 is the SVD, AK74, PKM, VSS, AN94, RPD, RPK and yet they all look strangely unique and easily identifiable as to what they are.

Right now it seems they used the M16 as the base....M16, HK416, M4, AR15, the M16 sniper....idk what its called off the top of my head...Heck, they even made Beowulf I think its called, a 50cal M16 based sniper rifle....yet its still an M16 lol.

BUt they are all different guns, but the exact same model...

In game, yeah, pretty much all VS guns use the frozen fish model all NC weapons are based off weird M249-ish LMG models, including the Sniper Rifle and the ARs look like futuristic M16s, esp the Warden.

TR are based all off what look to be either slantedish futuristic G3s or futuristic MG3

Vanu have one faction trait that absolutely gives them an asymmetrical and distinct advantage:

Best camo coverage. I've been killed countless times by VS infantry right in front of me that I couldn't see. Their default camo is black. Their secondary colors are dark purple, grey, and teal. Only the teal even remotely stands out, and in practice it looks like NC blue. The VS have a distinct advantage over the other factions due to their coloration, and this advantage isn't going to ever go away from the looks of it. Even now that black camos can by obtained by the other factions 1) its still not as good due to the secondary colors being better on the Vanu side, and 2) Its beyond clear by now that the vast majority of the playerbase isn't going to spend the money to get a black camo.

Its to the point that whenever I lead a platoon, I give strong consideration to attacking TR at night, and saving any combat against the VS to the daylight hours, when their camo advantage is somewhat mitigated (its never completely avoided).

Aww c'mon… I've been pulling for separate and unique factions since I started playing right after release. I'm just incredibly biased for the VS and harp more on how cool we could be as opposed to the other two!

I know you agree, I can see it in your eyes

Quite untrue. The great thing about VS guns is SUPER low recoil, respectable rate of fire, and amazing control-ability. The VS have (in general) the more accurate guns, especially during sustained fire. I can't tell you how many times I have been sniped by an Orion from well beyond standard TR accuracy ranges for sustained fire, the amount of rounds a VS weapon can accurately put on target at range in a short time span is remarkable.

It's always a slog to get to the truth of a balance discussion when people mix empire pop, the popularity of things, and weapon balance.

For example with all the newbies using CARVs, that gun is dead last on that ps2-stats.com site, yet the CARV definitely isn't a bad weapon. Another example being that the VS Knife has 40% higher avg KPH than the NC Knife, even though the stats are identical.

And don't even get me started on mistaking empire population with balance concerns. When WDS events happened trying to convince people that WDS scoring had almost nothing to do with weapon balance was a massive chore.

Any post that basically walks through every type of weapon and tries to make a case that one empire is universally worst at all things is doomed to be wrong. They're filled with a few valid points, like personally I feel VS' entire carbine lineup is weak due to really bad magazine sizes. Other points I suspect are true but haven't personally confirmed (after the ZOE reduction I never actually gave it a fair shake to know for sure whether it was too weak (nerfed) or merely balanced. Certain Charge sets the bar pretty high.) But overall the presence of so many wrong balance opinions tends to distract from the genuine issues that may exist. People just go "oh that guy just doesn't know what he's talking about".