On faction flavor and hard numbers [Graphs]

I see there is a lot of complaining about faction balance on these forums. Most of the time posters refer to "gut feeling", "common knowledge" and k/d ratio when arguing. So I thought I should take it upon me to add fuel to the fire.

Thank you to StormFrog for linking some raw data numbers. I felt these was not presenting me the numbers in a way I could easily relate to so i spent the day crunching them into something I find a little more readable and chose to present them in the form of faction flavor measuring each stat based on the faction average with each weapon type.
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...-from-the-game-files.55319/page-2#post-689572

*Note that I am using the same sample size for all factions and taking the AVERAGE of all the guns in each category. This may or may not give you the result you want, but to make the numbers as accessible and easy to relate to as possible I felt this was the best approach.

First to clear up.
Shotguns: They are all IDENTICAL across the factions.
Scout Rifles: They are all IDENTICAL across the factions.
The only stat that varies on these weapon types are bullet drop for VS and that is arguably balanced out with loss of damage.

I chose to focus on Damage, Rate of fire and Accuracy stats.

Damage:
Damage consist firstly of damage per second (dps), this is the most common reference for most players. I feel dps only tells part of the story and more data is needed to get an overall idea of how each faction performs. So I have included quite a few stats to show more detail about one of the most important stats. I always thought of raw damage to be the NC stat.

DPS*

*This is dps between reloading.

Damage per Bullet

Damage per Magazine

Normalized DPS*

*This is DPS when emptying your magazine including reloading time until you are out of bullets.

Normalised DPS leads us to the next obvious numbers, the reload time and rate of fire (RoF).

Rate of Fire:

This is the TR stat if there ever was one, spraying bullets wo a care in the world is what i always thought would be the Terran way of solving problems.

Reload Time

Rate of Fire

Lastly we move on to accuracy. That means recoil, bloom and Cone of FIre(CoF).

I Always thought of this as the Vanu stat. That seems to fit well with the no bullet drop theme.

Due to the huge amount of data available to count for accuracy I have chosen the following stats the represent the playstyle i seem to encounter the most and that I feel are the most important factors when trying to hit your target.
That means I will mostly focus on ADS shooting since accuracy mostly comes into play at longer distances with a few exceptions.
ADS bloom
ADS CoF
Vertical recoil (Yes this number does not tell the whole story, but is the easiest to compare across weapons and factions)

ADS Bloom

ADS CoF

Vertical Recoil

Conclusion:
While I don't think these stats show any clear winner when it comes to balance I still feel some conclusions are possible to draw based on these numbers.

• Vanu and Terran seems to be more accurate on total with their guns. Full auto seems to be very possible with VS and TR just based on numbers alone. Vanu comes out on top due to 0 bullet drop
• NC have more recoil, but this can be compensated for by good players and as a reward they have less CoF, but again more bloom. This seems to reinforce what I hear from top NC players that you should learn how to burst your weapons when playing NC. As a "reward" they have considerable higher dmg per bullet.
• I am a little surprised to see Terran have the highest DPS when not reloading. Especially with Assault rifles they seem to be far ahead of the other factions.
• Based on these numbers alone I feel TR comes out slightly ahead of both NC and VS overall. Please do not take that as a "set in stone" conclusion since there are many stats I chose not to include that may or may not play a big part in this. This is also since TR seems to have the best stats that I prefer.

In conclusion there is no be all end all stat you can refer to when it comes to balance, but at least I think you can see that these numbers clearly show the difference in flavor for the different factions. For me at least there was very few surprises when doing the number crunching.

Thank you for reading.

- Rune

Thanks TC, now the NC is going to get another nerf because of the zerg complaining that the blue bar is so high on most of those graphs.

It really doesn't matter if we have the highs Damage per shot, as we have the highest recoil. Cant kill if you cant hit.

Holy crap a good post appears.

Good stuff man.

So now anyone with half a brain cell can realize how MINISCULE the differences are and finally stop whining? You don't like your gun? Get another one or play another faction. It's FREE.

ADS CoF = Smaller number would be the better one?

I'm guessing yea, when I use the NC starter Carbine it definitely feels like it shoots better ADS than my VX6-7 on Vanu. But the VX6-7 hip fires with a tighter CoF.

Bleh, still wish my friends had gone NC instead of Vanu. All the crying about NC weapons and I still prefer their carbines over Vanu's.

Yea. If you're used to FPS titles and are already in the habit of tugging your mouse down to counter for recoil than you'll end up hitting more at range than your opponent. NC basically suffers from a high learning curve with a decent payoff in 1v1 situations, with diminishing returns against larger groups of enemies

Awesome post, should be stickied imo so we can point people to it constantly and finally bring a stop all these idiotic whine threads.

Do TTK, since it's pretty friggin' irrelevant if NC weapons do 10x more damage but shoot so slowly / inaccurately that they still die first. There is no "payoff" if NC's TTK is still higher than anyone even if accuracy was 100%, which it won't be in any real situation.

Maybe NC doesn't need buffed. Maybe TR needs nerfed so their damage is more in line with their higher RoF. Look at the dps chart here, or any ttk calculations around. They routinely have faster kill rates, while benefiting from less recoil and less penalty for missed shots.

I would love to add TTK, but I cannot seem to find any hard numbers for shield and health values. If you have a link for this then ill be happy to add it in.

I thought NC has the fastest firing carbine =) Or u just mashed all the weapons together ?

Data data data..... I prefer better recoil then dmg.

This is actually a very good post! I'm glad someone took the time to look at the evidence.

Yeah i took the average for each weapon type for all factions, I considered adding in best gun for each faction for each stat. I think adding more info into the mix would have made it more confusing. I might compare best of weapons later if I find the time.

I just want to point out that I was linking someone else's spreadsheet to forums. All credit for the work that went into making it and identifying the weapons goes to him.

This just further reinforces my already solid position that the cycler is overpowered.

FOR GOD SAKE THIS!!!!

then you picked the wrong faction buddy.

compensate the recoil? i don't know... if recoil goes upwards... pull the mouse downwards? like in every FPS? don't tell any1! it's a magical secret no1 knows.

OP, good post. Graphs are always preferable to spreadsheets for the laymen.

Highest recoil AND bloom, sure. Meaning if you just mash your LMB and point in the general direction of your opponent, no, you won't win a 1v1 outside of a range where your CoF covers the entire target... but then again that's true for all of us. Factor in one of your rounds in your smaller CoF scoring a headshot multiplier and you can see why so many TR players would trade guns any day of the week with NC. Hitting isn't hard with any of the factions' guns if you learn to control your fire and actually aim. TR's big CoF and weak per bullet damage hurt us as much as your recoil and bloom hurts you.

Personally, I think they should just set the default fire mode to semi-auto instead of full-auto so the unwashed masses will get it through their thick skulls that volume of fire doesn't always trump accuracy of fire.

Thank you very much OP, very good stuff.

But one big complaint; in many of the graphs you did not start your base measurements from zero - why?
To someone who reads the data listed (like me) its a non issue - however to the casual browser giving this a quick once over the information relayed could be really far off base.

For example in the "ADS Bloom" chart if giving a quick glance it would appear that NC carbines have more than double the Bloom of VS and TR - when in actuality they have around 20% more (0.5 -> 0.6). This is making a visual comparison that is about 500% the actual difference.

Or in the "DPS" chart TR rifles appear to have about double the DPS of VS rifles - which is again far from true, with the actual DPS difference being only about 7%, again greatly exaggerating the visual difference by almost 1000% greater than it is in reality.

I know it might seem tedious and redundant to show the lower values for many of these stats as they are of course included, when showing the higher numbers - but I think many people here would be quick to misinterpret the information (remember you did make these charts for those who couldn't be bothered to dive into the spread sheets like you and I did) either based on simply not reading the charts correctly or wanting to be the "faction balance police" and seeing what they want to see.

I would like to see all the charts revised from a "0.00" starting value.

2c.