Faction Imbalance

lol sit down and enjoy your OP weapons, high rate of fire, virtually no recoil, and short reload time guns for the time being. FYI you really don't have to work on your accuracy or positioning because playing VS is so easy to drop fools at any range. Try playing NC, like really play with our weapons for a solid month and you'll see the ******** we have to deal with. But you won't. You'll continue to ***** at how much the disadvantaged faction doesn't need fixing because everything is fine, especially after VS got their weapon buffs. I've played plenty of hours on TR and NC to know what I'm talking about.

You don't play NC do you? I can tell, lol. Obviously vertical recoil can be compensated for, it's why I only mentioned horizontal recoil. And sorry to break it to you but most guns on NC have the most out of any faction and are therefore the least accurate. I really don't care whether you think it is or not. Because it's true, regardless.

The horizontal recoil discussion reminds me of something that was just discussed a few days ago in the "are vanu guns bad" thread:



NC not only have the least recoil on average across all their guns per shot, but their rate of fire is so low that their apparent horizontal recoil when you dump a few rounds down range is even lower.

When I play NC I don't even think about horizontal recoil. They obviously have higher vertical recoil to compensate. I played NC for quite a long time until I switched to TR. I noticed the increased horizontal recoil immediately.

The increased apparent recoil for Vanu and TR vs NC basically means that if you hold the fire button for the same amount of time, you'll need to compensate more, moreso than you'd expect just looking at the direct recoil values, which would put NC at an advantage horizontally but not so significantly as you actually experience in game.

tldr NC horizontal recoil is very much so much lower than TR and Vanu (which are both so close that they can be considered the same vs NC).

This doesn't specify vertical or horizontal. Ooc, where is this from?

I specifically mentioned horizontal, multiple times. These are just the values from the wiki put into a spreadsheet.

Yeah, you also mention vertical and apparent recoil. For clarity's sake, it's best to label what kind of chart it is if you're mentioning more than one type of recoil.

I'm the opposite. I played TR for a long time and switched to NC, and not only noticed horizontal recoil but also the drop in rpm, velocity rate, smaller mag round, and longer reload times.

Well, if you noticed an increase in horizontal recoil going from TR to NC, when the actual numbers say the exact opposite should occur, by a significant degree, I don't know what to say.

It's possible you only used guns with very low (horizontal) recoil for TR and only used guns with very high (horizontal) recoil for NC.

But we're talking across all of them (or at least across all the LMGs).

I thought OP must means numbers issue.... Not weapons etc

OP - Balance of that kind of **** is pretty good overall. One or two tweaks maybe but on the whole bloody good!

Not sure why this thread started up again but what the heck.............

The thread title is "Faction Imbalance" and I see no sign of that, bearing in mind that balance is asymetrical. It is certainly not determined by LMGs and heavy weapons alone, whichc seem to dominate the posts.

As a moderately experienced infantry player I can manage recoil and burst control so I find the NC primaries good at medium range but their relatively slow rate of fire punishes misses more than the other factions. This particularly hurts in CQC if targets are moving faster and farther relative to my FoV and often using high RoF CQC weapons as well.

But you can run with high RoF carbines and ARs on NC and LMGs like the Anchor are great if you can land the few shots you need to get the kill.

Most of the other gear I use is cloned - shotguns, RLs, BASRs although I would say that the Phoenix ESRL is my favourite of the three faction choices.

Can't speak to Heavy weapons - don't use them but I would guess that the Jackhammer has the shortest range and that would explain it's less common use maybe?

I can sometimes escape when I bump into a TR or VS Max in CQC but never when confronted by an NC Max.

One thing I would say is that I do better playing NC medic than VS or TR medic - TKs and friendly fire injuries are more common amongst NC on the EU servers, especially when NC is trying to farm from, or push out of a camped spawn room.

I actually find VS the hardest faction to get results with but I don't know why.

I talk about no LMGs, but LMG's on NC are next to crap compared to the other factions. I don't know how old that data is, but dbg completely changed recoil behavior sometime in July 2016. As nearly everyone who plays NC states in this thread, low rate of fire is more punishing to the user if they miss. Add in recoil and that's a recipe to miss. Add to that a slower reload time and lower mag count and what do we get? This is why I agree with OP that there is no feature that distinguishes NC infantry from the others, at least nothing positive. Our Jackhammer is complete shyte thats why NC uses LMG instead. It's not a preference, it's their only decent option.

The data is all current.

Low rate of fire (and high damage) is also a blessing when you hit.

I agree the Jackhammer is garbage. But the MCG and Lasher aren't incredible either. MCG has great DPS but has a windup as well, and even though it isnt' very accurate I think it's probably the best Heavy Weapon out of those 3.

On the topic of "heavy hitting, lower rate of fire weapons are more punishing when you miss" - we hear this all the time, but what does this actually mean? Let's compare a few guns and their behavior over a short time and we can see whether or not you're worse off with a lower rate of fire higher damage weapon.



Lets examine what is happening in each case:

Case 1: No headshots, no misses. Each of these three LMGs manages to kill within 20 ms of each other a target with 1k HP (that is, anyone not running nanoweave and not using heavy shield).

Case 2: First shot is a headshot. In this case, the SAW manages 1k, enough to kill an 'unarmored' target, while the LA1 and MSW-R both need 400 ms. Not a huge difference. However, the next bullet, even if it isn't a headshot, allows the SAW to kill a target which is running max nanoweave - while the LA1 and MSW-R need another bullet beyond that to do the same, putting them both about 100 ms behind the SAW.

Case 3: First and 3rd shots are headshots. Now things are pretty interesting. At 240 ms, the SAW has already dealt 1000 damage, putting it 60 and 80 ms ahead of the LA1 and MSW-R. When the SAW hits again, this hit can now kill a max nanoweave target. On it's next hit, it has dealt 1.4k damage - enough to take out a heavy running Resist Shield. The LA1 and MSW-R need nearly the same amount of time to kill a nanoweave target now that the SAW needs to kill a resist heavy.
At the last shot of this case, for the LA1 and MSW-R, the MSW-R wins out marginally against the LA1, as the MSW-R just comes to the tip of the damage required to kill a resist heavy. Although the LA1 is behind, the extra damage would allow the LA1 to kill a heavy running aux shield as well, which isnt common, and could be ignored here.

The above pretty much matches what we know: guns with high damage are rewarded for headshots. Particularly the SAW, as th difference between the LA1 and MSW-R is pretty much nonexistant here.

Case 4 agrees with this, again showing the SAW to be superb when all the hits are headshots, with the MSW-R now trailing, especially when it comes to attacking a target which may be just outside the 15 meter range - although not shown in the spreadsheet, imagine that the target is at 20 meters rather than 15.

What happens? The LA1 still manages a kill at 500 ms, while the MSW-R does not; the extra 103 damage that the LA1 has over the 1.4k goal compensates, while the 30 for the MSW-R cannot compensate so well.

Case 5 and 6: misses, and headshot mix. Each miss gives the MSW-R a slight lead; but each headshot gives the SAW and LA1 a slight lead, equalizing it when you have a miss for every headshot.

What does that mean? It means that you are punished for missing harder when using a lower RoF, higher damage weapon - but you are also more greatly rewarded when headshotting.

The "low RoF guns are bad cause misses mean more" is a bad meme. Your headshots also mean more. A lot more in the case of the SAW, and a lot more in the case of the LA1 given the right distance (it's kindof a paradox that you want to fight just outside 15m with an LA1 but if your opponents are all running MSW-Rs, and you are fighting with totally equal skill and reaction time, this is the best thing for you to do).

Yes, a blessing in disguise, but only in the best case scenario. It's a beautiful thing in concept but when you actually have to deal with clientside lag, framelag, screen tearing, and all the other gems PS2 drawbacks offer, NC suffers the most in terms of infantry fights, which in turn contributes greatly to NC losses in alerts.

Oh, praise vanu my headshots mean more! You easily forget that headshots only make up a fraction of any players given stats, but if it MEANS MORE? You're only helping to prove that NC is that much more difficult to play.

Mini chainguns are so easymode. And they actually work.

While we're on the topic.... where can you find the complete LATEST stats? The best spreadsheet I can find hasn't been updated in like 6 months....

NC does lose alerts most often, and I agree that this is a problem. Something is wrong with the faction; and it may be that the SAW is the default LMG, as yes, for a less skilled, more unaware player, the downsides of it are magnified, and that player's ability to get headshots etc is greatly diminished.

However, at the exact opposite end of the spectrum if you could get just one headshot out of 4 rounds fired (not a crazy amount!) you are already at an advantage against other LMGs (parity when no headshots), and are at an even further advantage if TWO of your first three, or of your first four are headshots. Neither of these are too out of the ordinary for a decent player!

I like the MCG, but it isn't exactly as good as you seem to think. Although it's been buffed recently, it isn't going to win out against any player in a 1v1 situation unless they are extremely bad at aiming. The MCG has 2 main features: high DPS, and initial, unchanging bullet spread (forget the windup - as it can be compensated for by pre-firing).

At very close range, you are likely to not have been prefiring - you are at an advantage just like you'd be with a shotgun, as the target may fall within your spread.

Consider, however, the spread at any range that isnt that close; even 15 meters, and 30:



Any player should be able to score most hits on the target at 15m; and most at 30 as well. However, even with perfect targeting, you will miss some randomly due to spread by the MCG; so even at full RPM (850), if you are just 90% as accurate with a 750 143 damage LMG as you are with the MCG, the MCG will lose.

At 30 meters there is no contest. Your chance to hit (let's just estimate based on the size of target vs size of circle and say approx 40%) is greatly diminished. An LMG may miss more at 30 meters than at 15; but if you have any ability to aim whatsoever, you aren't missing 60% of your bullets like the MCG would with perfect aim.

None of this takes into account the loss of headshots for the MCG - but the chance for one of the random shots to be a headshot benefits the MCG too, which means that skill plays less of a factor for the MCG - if you're good with a normal LMG you will get many more headshots by skill than the MCG will by luck (at 15m the MCG looks like it will get ~20%).

Keep in mind I purposefully overestimate the hit and headshot rate for a MCG above so as to make it seem better than it actually is.

But again: I do agree that the Jackhammer and Lasher are simply worse (and more importantly, less fun) than the MCG.

I have a feeling the problem is not limited to just the Gauss SAW and extends to much more than that specific gun. But at least we're on the same page about faction imbalance.

These two statements appear contradicting

I assure you there are plenty of decent players, some even in this thread, who struggle to overcome the disadvantages given to us, disadvantages that have been glossed over by the devs patch after patch while they continue to improve the balancing of TR and VS weapons.

I'm just gona stop you there.

Play the other two factions up to at least BR30. You're completely biased and making stuff up.
You have zero insight into your enemies arsenal which results in a very exaggerated view of their performance.

For example this.

NC also has 200mag weapons with "blistering rate of fire". The only faction that doesent have 200 mag weapons is VS.
Also what shotguns are you talking about. The only shotguns TR has access to are the ones who are identical to NC (and VS).
However, NC in addition to those shotguns gets even more shotguns exclusive to NC.

I dont know what server you are on, but i 100% guarantee you NC doesent lose alerts because their weapons are weaker than TR/VS.

1st character: Lvl 37 VS
2nd: Lvl 83 TR
3rd: Lvl 95 NC

OP is 100% spot on with this thread. Call me biased. I dare you.

You are biased.

You dont count.

The highest RoF NC LMG that can have up to 200 rounds in a single magazine is the EM1, which is 659 RPM. I don't know if you've ever used an EM1/Rhino, but I can tell you that it does not feature a "blistering rate of fire."

Just saying.

NC>VS>TR most of the time. Each faction does have things which are objectively the best though. TR have the best sidearms. Hands down. VS has the best directive weapons (couldn't honestly think of anything else right now, but there are other things). NC has the best shotgun, best max, best carbines (IMO, some will say that TR ones are better), best LMG, best SMG, second best sidearms.

VS no bullet drop isn't an active trait for any of the weapon classes where it would be useful, and our MBT main guns actually have MORE drop than the other factions'. TR weapons are very inaccurate for the most part (high random component to recoil and fast bloom), and scale the least well with the player's aiming skill. To compensate for this they get more rounds per mag but that only really helps bad players/good players killing bad players. VS weapons are generally more accurate than TR ones, but still have a higher amount of randomisation in their recoil than NC, making them less effective in the hands of a skilled player. Additionally VS consistently has lower damage per mag than the other factions, crippling them at mid to long ranges.