Why VS win all alerts ?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Eroulca, Sep 7, 2019.

  1. Exileant

    :( I still think it is just because you all do not play Vanu as a main. When I first started off, Vanu never won anything.... :eek: Like ever, unless it was a stray island like Hossin from time to time. And that was due to Ghost camping.... I had to make my certs turret hunting... o_O The Upgrades we have gotten helped for a spell, but were quickly nullified with the nerfs we received on various weapons and turrets... N.C.? :confused: Anytime I visit, I take my out of the box toys and just go full insanity on people. o_O The guns are so strong and the numbers are so high, you can just camp and kill nobody will really notice you if you know what you are doing until you have killed at least a squad worth, and you will score kill after kill in anything over a 20 person fight. :eek: You know the guns are strong when you can out damage an over-shielded Heavy for the win in a head to head duel.... As a L.A. or E.
  2. pnkdth


    So the TL;DR version of this is you have no evidence for equipment being the driving force behind the results. I have pointed to several factors we can observe and also what has happened/been observed in other games, while these aren't scientific claims I never claimed they were. You, on the other hand, have made a point of demanding high levels of data. Feel free to fill in the blanks but as it stands now it looks like you've just been throwing science-y words around with no substance.

    Why is it relevant to consider everyone who aren't playing PS2? Just seems like a way to artificially make the numbers seem fantastically small or "impossible." The probability that a PS2 player is playing PS2 is 1:1, just like everything that has come to pass is 1:1. I also question just how you even came to the numbers in your calculation as they seem arbitrary at best and pulled out of your behind at worst. Then there is the possibility and likelihood that each player score different on a slider rather than being a binary value. i.e. share many traits which score differently (but are still there) per person. It would have been an absurd claim to say no one on the NC use teamwork.

    Meanwhile, we see very different results from each server versus the global stats per faction. Alerts in particular, which vary on a server by server basis. If there were no difference in player skill or levels of cooperation we should expect things to look nearly identical on both server and global alert win percentages.
  3. pnkdth


    I do not recall it as being significant. Better, yes.

    It could easily become a detriment. i.e. bumper cars-syndrome and lacking concentrated fire/limiting fire lanes.

    I'm not one to claim the Maggie's weak though but when we look at unique vehicles you should expect unique circumstances. Especially when see such difference in numbers of uniques.
  4. Demigan

    I see a pattern emerging. Vanu wins most combat on all servers, yet every time you come on they suddenly start losing. Could there be a correlation between you being online and the VS capabilities suddenly dropping like a KT meteor.
  5. Campagne

    Shifting those goal posts pretty hard there, aren't you? If you want to discuss ES equipment disparities next I'm all for it, but don't try to distract from your flimsy argument being blow out of the fuekin' water refuted.

    Otherwise there are three possible explanation for the alert victory differences:
    1. The playerbases for each faction are different. This is not the case as I have already demonstrated.
    2. There are population size differences. Yes, but not in favour of the VS but rather the two teams which lose much more. The VS have been chronically underpoped for as long as they have been the top faction on in terms of victories.
    3. The empire-specific weapons and equipment used by each faction is causing the differences in success. Cannot be refuted, relies on the fewest factors and variables.
    If you cannot provide evidence you must concede the point. Anecdotal notions (which you have failed to actually provide examples or demonstrate) are insufficient and do not even provide probable cause. Secondly, "science-y?" Do you even know what I'm talking about here? Google the words, they're being used appropriately.

    Why is it relevant? Well it's not really, but working with a non-normally-distributed population with an unknown skew? Yeah, no. If that's possible I don't know how to do it. The claim requires the population to be skewed even though it's sufficiently large enough so it has to be compared to the next closest thing which is normal. This just happens to be the overall playerbase of all games, as PS2's playerbase is contained within it. A way of sort of "forcing" normality upon an abnormal data set without actually changing it.

    We don't know at all how PS2's general population relates to the overall game-playing population or how the type of game affects player type, retention, or behaviours. Sure if you want we can just assume PS2's playerbase mimics the general population, (if we just ignore the glaring contradiction that would create) but then we can't apply the probability to the entire playerbase as a whole as they won't be considered a single population anymore. We'd have to multiple the probability by the number of servers, which would produce an even lower probability but with a lower degree of certainty. It's just a safer bet to apply a larger population over top, not to mention much easier.

    Hey, if you want small we can go smaller. Like I said we could faction in the fact that the trend is seen on all servers, but the calculation also doesn't consider the NC or TR populations. For now they're just assumed to be normal, but technically they ought to be considered majoritarily average to blew average as otherwise there just wouldn't be a noticeable difference in teamwork capabilities. And again, this would have to be true for both factions on a ll servers. And then of course I was being generous by calculating only 30% of the population and not a greater amount. Those 30% won't all be online all the time after all.

    We're talking about at least 40%-50% of VS comprising of the top 15.9% of team-oriented players and 60%-50% of all NC and TR being comprised of the lower 84.1% across all servers cross the world. To be blunt, a 0.00000058877% chance of the claim occurring naturally is a generous estimation all things considered. Yes, statistically impossible.

    No, no player is on a slider, each player is a set data point. One could put them on a slider, but that would just be a simplified bell curve. You and I if placed on any bell curve would have a specific value, whether that would be the time in seconds to fall asleep on average or number of soft drinks consumed in a year, resting heart rate, anything, we as individuals would hold a single data point. If one entity occupies more than a single value on a bell curve and error has occurred.

    Also, just a nitpick but any given event does not automatically have a 1:1 probability. Roll a pair of dice, 2-12 whatever number you get was not a guarantee. There is a 9.09% chance of any given roll and any observations are merely that. Nothing (in this sense) is predetermined.

    Random distribution, as would be expected. The individuals in each server population vary but overall the differences are insignificant. This is indicative of external factors. Take for example of collection of studies looking at smokers and nonsmokers. Each study will have a different number of different people but the external factor of cancer-sticks causing cancer and lung disease (as well as cardiovascular disease) will result in a reduction in average life expectancy in smokers compared to the nonsmokers. Each study's data sets will vary a degree but the overall trend will remain the same.

    It is nonsense to continue to push this narrative as even remotely plausible.
  6. pnkdth


    I believe my first respons to you were because of 1) you claimed teamwork has no effect 2) equipment is the sole driver for faction performance. Since then you have been demanding I provide studies and hard data or I have to concede the point. A point of which I've provided examples of cases and patterns in PS2 which suggest things are not as linear as it should be if things were so simple as players having a singular traits which is always true (another reason why the model you used to calculate it is massively flawed).

    1) You've not demonstrated any such thing. Your premise is flawed to begin with. I mean, if you have to force the model you use to fit you are using the wrong model. Even the most rudimentary Jung personality tests won't have the value TRUE or FALSE because humans do not work like that. I mean, even talking about what makes a good player creates a rift on these forums. Which is not terribly surprising since in many cases we usually reach a point in the discussion where we realise that we have fundamentally different ideas about what PS2 should be and what makes it good. Similarly though, we have also reached understanding of each other's positions.

    2) Alerts are rarely subject to global population due to continent limits. Low pop with alerts can even be an advantage since outfits and friends are not broken up in queues. Inter-outfit play is also affected by this as the same people are communicating and cooperating, thus do not need to form new alliances. Similarly, within the outfits the same people get to routinely play together which is a godsend to anyone who's ever been leaving platoons and/or squads. A real life example of this was the organisers of Server Smash made a ruling so the servers couldn't stack their teams every match. They would have to rotate outfits since who might be "the best" probably varied depending on who you asked and to prevent server politics and elitism/gatekeeping.

    3) "There is always an easy solution to every human problem. Neat, plausible, and wrong." - H.L Mencken. I would add, extremely susceptible to personal bias. We have, for instance, seen that the Magrider have had a positive impact by two players working together rather than separating themselves and their attentions (this is true for all multi-crew vehicles too but it an interesting outlier given the large differences). We know that if a squad has a prearranged agreement which classes to play, how they should act/communicate, that they've entered a social contract of sorts that they will follow the designated leader. They might have strategies and tactics, a larger goal. You know, teamwork...

    4) Teamwork is not the only factor though and equipment plays a significant role (well, as far as we can know). And we haven't even touched on the psychological effect of feeling like you are on the winning team and/or with a good outfit. That's another factor which has outright killed servers on PvP MMOs and turned them into a one faction server (which lore-wise might actually make the most sense). This factor tend to become more relevant the older the game gets and we can see clear hints DGB are trying to anticipate it (NSOs and various pop control attempts). That is the advantage of a three-way PvP though since it is much harder for one faction to completely take over... Sadly, it usually means the losing faction tend to stick out more. That said, the variance (alerts) is rather remarkably small between the factions, relative to previous PvP games I've played. The curious nature of all this is that if VS was this easy mode super duper faction the usual behaviour tends to be they run to it. VS (given all the talk of how OP they are) should be the biggest faction.
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  7. Liewec123

    yesterday's primetime was so much fun...:mad:

    [IMG]
    Welcome.
    to Wrelside 2
    all hail Vanu.

    i logged out when i got bored of 80% vanu overpops spawn camping every base.
    i then went to play a less bias game...
  8. Towie

    What server ?

    I played Cobalt last night - VS (as they were so heavily underpopped - quite common) and found they were being double-teamed and had single digit territory. They had low 20s %pop.

    Still I kept playing - next alert was an air alert and that shifted the focus a little and we managed to get back some territory - but still very tough, underpopped but mid to high 20s.

    Then there was a continent alert. Over the course of the next 1.5 hours the VS pop grew - NC and TR declined significantly - to the point that at the end, VS had mid to high 40s pop and most of the continent (even warpgated TR whose pop had all but disappeared).

    Worth mentioning that I was in a fully staffed outfit platoon for the entirety.


    The moral of this story ? If I took a snapshot at the beginning of the evening, VS had nothing - no territory - no pop. If I took a snapshot at the end of the evening, VS had everything - territory and pop.

    Maybe there is a server with a general VS overpop but that is a rarity in my experience. Often quite the opposite.
  9. Liewec123

    it was Cobalt, and all through primetime i never saw VS at 20%

    they started off with slightly less pop than TR (with NC being lowest) and even then they were just zerging mindlessly over everything.
    but then the numbers just kept growing and growing and the zergball became more and more ridiculous.
    as the pic shows i quit when the number of Wrels favourites hit 43%,
    at which point it was just spam magriders lobbing HE at spawnroom exits...

    if it was 20% then it wasn't primetime, because i played from 6pm right through until 11pm
    (i played TR and NC, i can't stand to play VS anymore, the bias disgusts me too much.)
  10. adamts01

    That's absolutely nonsense. Everyone has provided evidence, but as we're debating something largely immeasurable the evidence obviously isn't concrete. I, as well as everyone else that I can see, has put forth VS's superior teamwork as a theory, which is all it can be with what limited data we have. What's absurd is you arguing OP equipment as an undeniable fact.

    This is no different than people giving evidence that God exists, and because they can't provide concrete evidence we need to concede that he doesn't exist as fact. That's not how it works.

    And your stubbornness at denying there could possibly be a human element to any of this is even more absurd. Any and every time people are part of the equation, there's a human element. That's not to say it's the dominant influence, but an influence non the less.
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  11. JENKMAN

    bro just find enlightenment
  12. adamts01

    I am for the next 12 battle ranks. For some strange reason, and I immediately regretted it, I got a subscription for that 4x XP event. Anyway, My goal is to ASP my VS and NC before that subscription runs out. So yeah, 12 to go on VS and I think 14 to go on NC.
  13. Campagne

    Yes, that is my point. But we've not been discussing my point, we've been discussing yours. Suddenly and unnaturally cutting attention away from your argument immediately following refutation without acknowledgement is shifting the goalposts. I have demanded evidence of your claims, that's it. If you are to make a bold claim without substantial basis which would go against conventional norms you'd better have substantial evidence to prove it. You have provided baseless anecdotal assertions and nothing more. Hell, even a study in an unrelated field --aside from studies where the human behaviour is the thing being tested, that causes a logical loop-- demonstrating a human factor altering the expected outcome purely due to the human behaviour of the participants would be better than what you've given us so far, though it would still only be circumstantial at best.

    Also again, the larger a population is the closer and closer it becomes to normal. In statics a population is considered normal if it has more than 30 data points. Personally I reject this, but we're dealing in the hundreds of thousands anyway. Human factors blend out.

    1) That's the beauty of it, isn't it? I have to force normality on it because the claim is so faulty it automatically assumes the data is not normal despite every stand convention indicating it is so. My calculations rely on the faulty premise being true and they still result in a statistical impossibility.

    Furthermore, you've yet to actually indicate any reason whatsoever why my calculations are wrong. Only baseless assertions "because human factor." What makes a good player is subjective. Math is not.

    2) Entirely irrelevant. Try to win against the zerg when it's 1-12 verses 12-24, unless you spam force multipliers and the enemy doesn't numbers alone will cause defeat with PS2's long TTKs. Queues at least try to maintain even faction balance anyway. Server smashes, again, are not indicative of live gameplay and come with a host of artificial gameplay restrictions not seen or used on live.

    3) I prefer an approach a little closer to Stain's. "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." --Joseph Stalin. :p

    Magrider benefits more or less the same as any other MBT does with a gunner. The gunner himself benefits more from a Magrider than he would from another tank.

    Again, baseless assertions that because teamwork, win. Plan and articulate all ya' want, that 10/20/30/20/20 split of I/LA/HA/CM/E isn't going to magically beat out that 95/5 HA/CM squad that just chose the best loadout for the job. HAs are generally better suited for live gameplay and are generally much more successful because of that...

    4) "As far as we can know," give me a break. How about you and I duel with our pistols. I'll take a Commissioner or maybe a Pilot and you take a Candy Cannon or Flaregun and we'll go best of three. Equipment obviously matters and has a significant impact on player success.

    Again, please demonstrate how this psychological effect might have real-world consequences in large enough scale to affect the overall outcome.

    The variance in alerts is most certainly not small. A difference such as what we see existing for the entirety of the game's lifespan is once again impossibly unlikely.

    And ending it all off with another strawman. As above the VS aren't strikingly overpowered (at the moment). You can bet you bottom dollar that the VS' pop inflated massively around the time of ZOE or the PPA. Regardless the ability to win without a numerical advantage obviously indicates they have an advantage somewhere else, and as I've shown it's clearly not in the players themselves. :p

    No, for both parts of that. Failure to support a claim naturally results in refutation. And again I am the only one to have provided literally any evidence at all. Anecdotal claims without basis in fact or reality are not evidence of anything. Funny, if the evidence can't be concrete how can you be so sure of your own position? And how do you explain concrete math and statistics proving the complete impossibility? Theories require testing and evidence. What you have given is a hypothesis.

    Strawman, again. I didn't say the VS were necessarily overpowered, only that they may be better suited to the game's live-fire conditions.

    |
    Haha, oh boy. Trying to "prove" the metaphysical/supernatural is just impossible because all human understanding is based in the physical/natural sciences. But believe me, we could go on for days on the subject of demonstrating the existence of God by proving certain natural/physical things to be true or untrue. This is not the place for that though. :p We don't even have an off-topic subforum anymore!

    This differs in that actual player behaviour is natural and can be "physically" measured. As such, there is a definite outcome with a single truth. As you said, that's not how this works. ;)

    Again, kind of a strawman, maybe. It's a little loose. Any human factor will be washed out by sample size, it's just as simple as that. Take any large sample of any human behaviour and you will find a set trend. More often than not it will just be normalcy. Skew is the result of universal factors.

    Take for example a bell curve of the average time between drinking water for the average person. It will be normally distributed in a large population. Now take the time in hours it will take for a large sample of people to die of thirst. It will have a negative skew as most people will die around the same time with very few dying sooner or after everyone else. The data has a human element but is ruled by the universal factor of thirst.
  14. adamts01

    Why are you dancing around the topic. Just admit it. Damn, you really should go in to politics. Your claim is that VS have equipment that makes them more effective in live conditions, leading to disproportional success. OK, that's the definition of OP. What conditions other than live matter?
  15. pnkdth


    No u.
  16. Campagne

    You say I'm dancing around the point then proceed to completely ignore my argument? Yeah, seems legit. The only thing to admit is that I'm playing chess with a pigeon here. :p

    Well if you want to play the semantics game the NC has been chronically underpowered, leading to disproportionate loses.

    Are you being rhetorical? I don't understand what you mean. I've already stated server smashes are meaningless many times before.

    No, u!
  17. CobaltTR

    [IMG]

    How much clearer can we make it? We don't want to fight VS, its not fun to fight VS, do something about it devs!
    TR and NC having a great fight in a corner while the rest of the map is practically a dead retreat to the warpgate, thanks be to the fallen TR and NC heroes who stood strong in the faithless fight against VS to prolong the real fight happening in the top corner.
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  18. pnkdth


    You guys are literally locked in a perpetual farm whilst ignoring the alert. If I were playing TR/NC during this s***show I would have long since logged off. I guess all you need as VS to employ superior leadership is simply to participate in completing the objective of the game versus only focusing on cert farming. Seriously, talk about setting the bar low and still have the nerve to cry for the devs to fix a problem you, yourself, have created by your inaction.
  19. adamts01

    For the record, I don't hold his opinion, but his point is that NC and TR choose to fight each other, as balanced factions, rather than fight against OP VS. He's making an argument why NC and TR don't play the objective.
  20. Trebb

    Yeah, I'm not going to post 30 pages of stats and a thesis on how VS is OP, instead I'll just throw another voice in the mix: It's just not fun to fight them.

    HA guns that NEVER have to reload, lack of bullet drop, hitscan launchers that aircraft can't dodge (murder in a Valk crew, yes striker is bad this way too). Tanks that strafe, climb impossible mountains and farm infantry fights. Scythes that seem to ram with impunity, and have the best working Hornets STILL (yes, their NS weapon functions better, look it up).

    Totally fun to play with, not so much against.

    In other words, if I have more fun fighting NC, I will. My gaming time is precious :p
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