The VS as a faction needs some serious rethinking

You are missing the point. We are not talking about getting advantages. We are talking about the ideas and concepts that serve as foundation to each empire.

TR are the standing army. Weapons favor rate of fire at the expense of hitting power

NC are renegades and freedom fighters. Weapons favor hitting power at the expense of rate of fire.

VS are supposed to use alien technology and look accordingly. There is no distinctive difference to their weapons. Pray tell, why doesn't it atleast look different with same stats?

VS weapons are the same projectile weapons NC and TR have, with stats somewhere between them. They are the "average". Weapons kick less than NC weapons but more than TR weapons. Don't know how OP it would be if VS weapons didn't have ADS recoil. Or even less than any other factions. Magrider has no recoil, but the infantry weapons most definetly have recoil. They have more recoil than TR weapons.

But lets be realistic here. VS won't get big changes anymore. Game has been out for too long. VS have to get used to mediocrity, to being the "average" of the two factions.

The faction traits are fine, you forgot the good things like Saron and PPA and Scythe and Orion. Magrider is extremely fun to use when you spend several thousand certs and 30-40 hours into it to get the basics.
What is lacking is Lasher indeed. ZOE is also useless in its current form. May be a specific faction carabine that uses no ammo and charge fire would be fine to replace one of the useless Solace clones, something that TR Jaguar and TR Lynx have.

Indeed my huge problem with Vanu is population not the tools. Someone mentioned the alerts. Today I lead platoon as Vanu in Ceres and didn't moved from Indar for the Amerish alert because NC had 15% more pop and TR had 20% more pop at the beginning of the alert.
Playing the territory control alerts is pointless if your empire have less then 5% continent pop then others.

Organized play of whole outfit platoon means nothing if the enemy have 2 unorganized zerg platoons, it gets impossible and not fun to play if their 2 platoons are outfit based and organised. Skill does not matter much in 48+ vs 48+ fights when your 48+ people have 30% and the enemy have 70%, even if the whole team is pro battle rank 100 MLG players that use teamspeak and coordinate flawlessly they have no chance.

The game and alert mechanics need change so the overpoping faction get less resources based on their overpopulation. Getting 3% less resource income per each 1% over 33% would solve the issue.
Winning alerts with 40-50% continent pop should give the winning empire 20-40% less Win reward. This would stop people that switch empires for the sake of farming and winning alert rewards versus the underpopulated faction.

The most unpleasant thing that can happen in this game is to be beaten and underpopulated and get killed by Platoons that primary play VS ,on their alt NC or TR platoon thing because they does not want to play the underdog.

Leading Platoons when your empire is underpoped is really frustrating because you stare at the map and see how no matter what plan you have, no matter how good or organised your force is your chance to win is 0. This frustration leads to neglecting and to full ignorance of the tactical situation and focusing on making some certs while using the waypoints to markers where the AA is or not pulling sunderers and not setting beacons.


I scrolled the statistic VS is underpopulated since the beginning of the year, I am already so used to play the underdog so it does not matter much, however this is the situation now, in a few months TR or NC could be in the underdog position so this changes must be made for the sake of all players.

I personally find TR weapons more accurate than VS guns. I've been playing TR for a while now and I'm enjoying them way more than VS. Shame I've wasted so much time on VS.

They feel unique with their high rate of fire and feel. NC is the other end of this spectrum. VS just feel like watered down of NC and TR features. Lets just say VS don't feel different enough.

I don't think his point was to try and say the VS were universally the worst, but rather the VS universally are kinda meh. Not to hot, not to cold. While this is fine from a balance standpoint, it's terrifically boring from a gameplay standpoint as the grass seems to be greener everywhere you look when you straddle the fence.

Our accuracy IS better I'll give you that. But again, not by crazy OMG amounts that can define us as a faction. Same with TR and NC. TR's weapons have large clips, but really? Not that much larger than everyone else's and NC's weapons DO do more damage, but not THAT much more than everyone else's.

I can't possibly be one of the few people that think SOE could do better with faction uniqueness? The whole TR one side, NC the other and VS in the middle couldn't really be the best thing SOE can imagine right?

-Q

They could atleast make them feel, look and sound like laser guns instead of just high pitched machine guns that fire tracers with harder sustained fire control. Want to see what I mean? Go look at Planetside 1 Pulsar. THAT was a laser gun.

Lasher is the only DIFFERENT and UNIQUE gun that represents what rest of the guns should be. Just like Jackhammer and MCG do.

You probably aren't using the Lasher the way experienced players do. If you watch this video here by Wrel you might gain a new understanding of how it works.

Oh indeed besides the fact that in the same video around min 12.20 the guy basicly softly say that Lasher is trash at short range and works better at medium 40m range( Read where Flare is 1000% better) and in min 14.50 he says that you need good sidearm for close range (read where Orion is 1000% better), FFS why I would relay on freaking sidearm when I run heavy gun on heavy assault? It is not stalker cloaker right?
So Lasher looses to Orion in CQC and to Flare/Ursa at Mid range should I use it as Scout Rifle then?
Lasher was always crap compared to Jackhammer and now it is crap compared to updated Chaingun.
Lasher suffers the typical Vanu treat to be good in nothing and it lacks field of usage compared to the alternatives. May be it is useful only in squad action in Biolab, same story with the Lancer- too narrow specialized usage where it dominates and useless in most situations.

The TR thingy i said was just as a imaginary example. Sorry if you didnt see that.

Seriously dude, I am not saying that VS is not underpop.
I am saying that VS has not been underpop since launch.

Population on servers can highly be determined by the skill play of a certain faction in that server.
For example Mattherson VS is the best faction on Mattherson, even when they are not overpopped.

In short what I have been trying to say is:-

Yes, VS have been underpopped lately.
No the VS have not been underpopped ever since from launch.

I still think that Global population is an irrelevant unit to use in balancing stuff.
Its the same thing as stats, which can be inaccurate in different ways.

You can use global population as one of the factors in determining stuff, but saying that "VS needs a buff because its underpopped" is wrong.

Other stuff may include:-

Server players
Server outfits
Outfit communications with other outfits
Weapons
Fun weapons
Player preference, simply made on the Lore of VS.

These are all factors of what may cause underpop. SOE only controls 2 of them; weapons and fun weapons.
I do not think VS lacks good weapons, although I think that they can use some fun weapons.
Please dont mistake fun weapons with good weapons, they are different things.

Prowler HE is a good weapon, but not a fun weapon.
Unless you find fun in seeing a "you killed" bar.

How interesting that the weapons you have stated that are the Good things for the VS are also the ones that have been in the Nurf crosshairs of the Forums warriors for a while. They Have nurfed the Saron more then any other Tank weapon that I can recall, There are cries to nurf the PPA, Orion. The Scythe, while good in a 1v1 situation for Dogfighting, loses its advantages in larger fights, not to mention for Ground attacks it Drops like a stone compared to the other ESF when aiming downwards.

I really do hope they find a way to help the pop balance as a whole, because to be honest I'm starting to get annoyed with 25-29% world pop on Prime time Connery, if only because the lack of global population forces where I can fight.

Well I'm talking about damage/magazine so damage/shot doesn't really factor into it (you could have two weapons with 5000 dmg/mag, one which did it with lots of low-damage bullets and the other with fewer high-damage ones, and both would have the same capability of handling multiple foes)

So when you have VS carbines with 4290 dmg/mag that starts you with just over 2 kills worth of damage if you land every shot. But with nanoweave involved that only 3432 damage which isn't even enough for the second kill unless you get some good headshots.

Whereas with TR you get 5720 dmg/mag and even against two max-nanoweave targets you'll do 4576 (which means you have enough to kill 2 players with 576 damage worth of shots available if you miss some shots.) And since your overall headshot rate isn't going to be much different, you also have the potential to dip into the 3-kills-per-mag range sometimes.

Admittedly weapons work on a sliding scale between mag size and reload speed, but currently it's not tuned well and the advantages on the reload speed side of things aren't worth it

How come I can use the MCG and the Jackhammer in pretty much almost every situation while the lasher is only useful in 1. Doesn't seem balanced to me.

You don't have that much of an argument. Matherson Vanu are literally the best Vanu in the game (might even be the best performing who knows). Literallly the ONLY time when Vanu had a decent pop (not overpopped DECENT) was when ZOE existed. Before ZOE was in the game our population was trash. After it got nerfed our population went back to trash. And literally the only time I see Vanu population go above 30% is after 9:00 (10:00 eastern) on Matherson. We have always been underpopped where have you been?

Weaponwise the VS are fine. They are lacking in the art & "feel" department - they lack the militaristic polish the TR/NC boast and sport a teen-anime look to boot. I dropped my VS alt for that reason alone.

DMG/magazine is the most worthless stat to make any comparison against. I would take a 30/150 high DPS gun over a 100/300 tickler anytime. I don't care how many bullets I have left in my mag when I'm dead... Sure - it's convenient to have leftover ammo after you *win* a firefight, but that's the last thing I take into consideration when rating weapons for personal use.

I'd love to see you use the Jackhammer to lay down effective fire at 20+ meters... Same goes for the MCG at 40+ meters.

I started playing TR to BR57 and then started playing Vanu to BR60. I play Vanu exclusively after starting it, just to see how I would do without the toys. Now I have most toys and find the Underpop issues annoying. I dislike being in zergs as it is not challenging and neither is being subjected to Zergs. Often I can't find any battles going on that are mid sized (25 or so) that are more or less equal in pops. It seems that I'm stuck with constantly defending bases from a zerg whether its TR or NC.
Now on to observations. I found that the Vanu weapons "seemed" more accurate than TR but always suffered some defect. A good example is the mini chain gun. When i played TR the thing was a loser because it would take awhile to spin up before it's 800RPM -143 damage-100 round mag would start annilating everything in its path.so....you would come around a corner and get killed. Well they buffed that by being able to get an add to spin up faster, really....how is that fair. You take the main defect and get rid of it making it OP compared to T9 Carv the 100 round mag-143 damage-750 RPM HA main LMG. I dislike the Orion because although it hip fires well (T9 wont) and is 750RPM-143 damage, its mag is only 50 rounds. So it compared to MSW as almost same gun. Then we have the Flare-167 damage- 550 RPM-75 round mag -225 rounds available, compare to NC God saw at 200 damage-500 RPM- 100 round mag, 400 ROUND AVAILABLE , OMG the weapon with the highest damage has the most available ammo AND a 100 round mag instead of a 50 round mag meaning it can theroecticly kill how many guys with one mag? Compare that to any other factions guns and show me which will do that and then consider that is the Standard issue gun for HA on NC.

Next, anyone who has never shot Vanu weapons is in for a real treat at night or even daytime becuase you cant see what your aiming at becuase they do a Tesla coil emission of electricity with every shot taken, so while i have my 4X scope in a close range situation and am trying to line up head shots I cant see the enemy because all i see is this electrical discharge where the enemy is, way to go Sony. I never had to deal with that as TR, its like exposions going off all the time , I just cant see what i'm aiming at.
The orgainzation of TR and NC seems to keep getting better and since we all know that its resources and the proper use of them by your team that determines a win unless you have greater than 60% numbers overpop then the team that brings Airplanes, Tanks, and Maxs in that order....wins. Any team that has 6 or more ESFs and 3 or more Libs controlling the skys cannot be beat unless the other side has AA burster maxs and skyguards and R-L HA's in abundance. I have been and seen burster Maxs getting killed repeatedly by LIBS and ESF rocket podders when the double team Maxs and especially if tankers are adding to it. Infantry alone has an imposible time of getting rid of Planes and Tanks if the have to deal with snipers and enemy infantry in numbers greater that 40% pop. Organization is when a group gathers for a dozen maxs to crash the A point, or a dozen ESFs to spawn from a nearby base or Warpgate to take on the enemy. I haven't seen that kind of organizition from Vanu. It seems from what i've seen the TR are better pilots (when i fly I get killed most often by TR mossies and lesser by NC reavers but almost consistantly they are high BR pilots).
I'll take a lighting out and charge the Sundy parked only to get instakilled by HAs and maybe another tank or pounder Max, but....If 3 of us took out Lightnings the Sundy would be no more. Its the same with the Magrider, the tank has nice features of mobility but seriously the gun is ****e, and the cannon drop is inexcusable. Again, if you dont have a second gunner using the superior Saron you cannot match a NC or TR MBT ....EVER....and you prolly wont even if you do. A Vanny or Prowler can be put into play by a single soldier and do signifacant damage but the Mag cant.

Is there any concrete examples of this?

Oh the final comparison is that the Vanu Max in any configuation is crap against the NC or TR Max. The other factions have superior ablilitys at every level. I think the Vanu Max i use is equal only in using Dual Bursters which each faction is identical in. Once you get to AV the other factions are equal or better with Ravens, Falcons, Fractures and Pounders being better that Comets and Vortexs. In close quarters no one will argue the NC is not King. The Dual Pounder Max has the added joy of being good in anti infantry AND anti veh (close range only). So if the Pounder MaX is surprised by tank it can do some serious damage as well as serious damage to another Max whereas the NC and Vanu cant. In addition a dual comet max is almost worthless against infantry but decent against vehicles (but best at longer range-up close killed instantly).

I think the problem is when new players select their faction for the first time they get:
The fast firing guys in red and black
The heavy damage freedom fighters
The miscellaneous purple space cult people in tight pants.

That was my personal (and I dare say *logical*) opinion. Said logic behind it is fairly simple - sustainability is nice, but it's effectiveness that matters. You need to count yourself among the living to make use of extra ammo, hence - I prefer guns which allow me to drop the enemy more effectively (be it due to higher ROF, better ACC, or higher DMG/bullet) to guns affording me more sustained fire because all those additional bullets go to waste once you get outgunned (and drop dead).

An example? Compare the Armistice and the Hailstorm. They both have the same damage profile, but where the Hailstorm has unparalleled magazine capacity it has subpar ROF; the Armistice on the other hand has a small magazine, but boasts an awesome ROF. As a result the Armistice is an effective and competitive weapon in it's class, while the Hailstorm is widely considered trash and rightfuly so, because it can hardly hold it's own in a duel.