Just because VS dominated the event doesn't mean that they are OP

The populations will be getting fixed from the continent lock. If INDAR gets capped by the NC, TR, or VS the other two populations will shift to Esamir and Amerish -> this occurence on Amerish was very rare and its only applicable to UES. Normally on Amerish its always one Empire with a 70-80% population when an outfit decides to cap the continent and the other two empires with 5-10% population each. After January 30th this will be fixed.

Realistically I can only comment on what I have seen on the server I play on. The majority of VS on Cobalt just ghost cap all night. Primetime fighting is usually restricted to Indar, where the population stays fairly balanced in the evening. If VS players were that great they'd wouldn't have to resort to wandering around empty continents. Declaring a victory when you've have 75-80% population on Amerish and have ghostcapped it before the event kicked off is pretty lame.

On Ceres it was like that as well. One of the VS zerg outfits even came to Amerish 1h early and capped all of it.

I think SOE did a bad job of letting people know about the event (a system announcement 1h before the start might've prepared people better).
By the time we got some NC mobilized to go to Amerish the VS were camping outside the gate with 5 libs and countless magriders.

I wouldn't say penalites are needed for the higher pop factions, rather some proper incentives for lower pop ones (5-10% xp gain is not enough to make anyone spend a few hours getting farmed, they're still better off joining some zerg on Indar).

We know VS are overpowered because we fight them every night.

Its that simple.

^this

Event was an unorganized PoS. PS2 is not yet where it should be, pop unbalances + ghostcapping and starting with warpgating another faction. This event came too soon. First fix your game, then organize these unnecessary events.

Must be true Matt higby says so.

We had 3 Full platoons on Cobalt EU last night as VS, we took everything before the event because we knew it would give an advantage. It's hardly our fault the NC or TR didn't even bother to show up and prepare, in the end you were dominated by just one Outfit. GG.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I knew this thread would somehow be made.

Let me tell you what I think:

I think these people plan to cycle the OPed balance based on populations or turns, my guess is that TR is next, wait and see.

Ocean of salty qq, delicious

I was only there for the first challenge, but

On Ceres, the VS capped up Amerish an hour or so before the event - with little to no resistance. We had 60-70% population... it didn't seem like TR or NC even knew what was going on. This was on a server with (very close to) 33-33-33.... I actually checked that while we were doing the rounds because I simply couldn't believe that we were the only ones to even attempt setting up.

We got sorted with defensive positions, then when the Pop jumped to 40-40-20 just ran a coordinated defense. TR made some ground up, but their pop dropped as we managed to hold them back, even though they did have us on the ropes for a while. NC pushed out once but didn't really seem like they wanted to get involved.

The fact that VS were the only ones to pump troops onto Amerish before the event says to me that we're more coordinated than the other guys, and the impression I'm getting from people who played on other servers is that very very similar things happened elsewhere. (And it seems that reading through the forums there's a great deal of proof to that)

If more coordinated players are drawn to VS - which seems to be the case, it gives an advantage. It doesn't mean there's a game-mechanic advantage, it means there's a personnel advantage. If I were to play golf (god forbid), this is why there's a handicap system. So I can level the playing fields with whoever else I'm playing with.

The VS need a handicap. I don't believe that this is anything to do with game mechanics (but plenty of people do and I won't argue that), I think this is to do with personnel. But I find a game more fun when it's challenging. I want to struggle (and overcome struggle)

Not simply waltz in while NC and TR are out taking a piss because my outfit happens to pay bloody attention. Nerf the VS.

I was one of the few TR that bothered to show up on Amerish as soon as the event kicked off. We would have captured more territory, but it took a while for us to blast our way through the wall of Magriders at our warpgate. Despite the huge advantage in population and territory I didn't see that much domination going on when you had a tiny bit of opposition. Good job.

Forgive me if I'm completely off with this, but the main "issue" doesn't seem to be with weapon balance, player skill, player personality, teamwork, et cetera.

I'm not intimately aware of the state of all other servers, but the servers I have played on, Amerish would appear to be the "home continent" for VS. Meant in the way that it's the continent that VS tends to control the most. Outside of peak hours it's the continent most likely to have a VS pop-advantage, and during peak hours the continent the VS are most inclined to try and maintain control of.
Also, during low activity hours such as late night and early morning - where it took place in EU - VS usually have Amerish locked down, NC have Esamir locked down, and TR have Indar locked down, meaning that, along with the following inherent advantages, started out with a huge advantage on most, if not all, non-US servers.

Whichever way you look at it, that would mean Amerish is practically the VS home, meaning more VS are likely to be intimately familiar with the continent, giving them the strategic and tactical advantage. Which is more or less unavoidable, the same would hold true for NC on Esamir, and TR on Indar.

Secondly, that would also mean that those not trying to participate in the event from NC or TR side, were more likely to be engaged in fights on Esamir and Indar. While those on the VS side not actively taking part in the event, were more likely to do so.

Finally, the natural resting point of Amerish being in VS hands on most servers(?), means that on all non-US servers, these issues were exacerbated. VS had complete control of the continent to start with, server populations were low, so strategically, base captures would take more time as neither the participating NC or TR had sufficient forces to effectively push through the mix of participating and non-participating VS.
And on a final side-note, for those watching the stream wishing to help out, the 15 minut delay meant the timeframe for each objective was cut by more than a third, giving less time for NC and TR to react and attack the bases already under VS control.

All in all, on Connery, well done VS.
On all other non-US servers, the event schedule simply skewed the results.

Does this mean VS is horribly overpowered? Certainly not.
Neither weaponry, player skill, teamwork, or any other aspect of VS is immensely different from the other two Empires. Were that true, we'd see the same kind of degree of domination outside of the event, and that is far from the case.

Does it mean the event was horribly planned and executed? Yes.
Had they reset control of the entire continent just before (1 hour) the first objective, subsequently reset the next objective and its surrounding areas, and possibly spread out the objectives across all 3 continents, it would have been on more equal terms.

Had we got the same results using the scenario, I'd be more inclined to suspect VS were either overpowered or simply vastly superior to NC and TR. But as it is, I see no less headless chickens in VS than I do in NC or TR, nor do I see any VS have high kill-streaks more often than NC or TR, nor any higher degree of cohesion amongst players or lower degree of unwillingness to cooperate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the VS didn't do a good job and don't deserve the praise for winning the event.
I'm just saying it shows less about player skill, empire teamwork, weapon imbalance, and so on, and more about the execution of the event, seeing as the results did not even remotely mimic the usual situation over-all, but instead inadvertently favoured one empire due to the reasons stated above.
All things being equal, we'd either see close to the same degree of domination throughout the day, if it truly were some aspect of VS being overpowered or vastly superior when compared to its counterparts, as previously stated, or we would've seen a closer result, had the event played out on more equal terms.

Fully agree
Santiak

I understand your point, but I would hope the player base is not that shallow. I chose VS because I liked there background the most. Coming from a RPG background I had no idea what respective guns and tanks would be like.

I am sure there will be people that shallow. Don't assume that is how it is across the board. Indeed, there will be whole mix of reasons people play what they do. You can't just isolate one factor and say this is how it is. In the same way you can't look at these results and make solid conclusions without a lot more contextual data.

As a side point however, devs (probebly) don't make changes based on players shouting 'nerf this!' they have data and stats. And I'll bet things are far more balanced then most folkes on these forums believe.

They have the weapon advantage. There really is no denying that.

Thus, they are the easier class to play, and as result of this, they attract the majority of players who don't want to be disadvantaged.

I knew VS would win the majority of these events with a mass population like they have. If anything, statistics will show the advantage, and future patches will hopefully equalize these advantages with an equalization of the population to follow.

Wow, just wow. Is this seriously an argument floating around now? 24 is not even close to being close to being close to large enough number to expect anything even remotely resembling a statistical distribution.

I think you underestimate how many people pick VS because of Magriders and Scythes.

Honetly, pick any "new player". Make him/her play all three empires for an hour or two. Make them test the different classes, weapons, vehicles etc then ask them which empire they like the most, and found the most fun to play.

I honestly don't see anyone picking NC. VS would be hugely popular given those criterion. TR would do fairly well.

our event on cobalt was a facepalm.

TR are hated on cobalt and the VS and NC actually teamed up and held us at the TR warpgate.

before the event had started the roads were complely mined and the VS and NC tanks were all aimed at our warpgate. They had complete air superiority over the gate before the TR had come into the continent.

When TR did join VS's population was double ours
When the event started VS's population evened out while the VS attempted to take Indar while we were all pinned at the warpgate.

Still it was fun to start because of all the certs we were getting, as things were going down left and right.

what was NOT fun was all the friendly fire. We were attempting to assault the biolab and their were a bunch of IDIOTS who kept dropping C4 and grenades and blowing up the TR OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.

The medics were ressurecting and it was being repeated over and over.

It was at this point the game became not fun for me.

Overall i wished TR on cobalt were not outsmarted (NC and VS took the entire continent before the event and well played on that) and we brought our game to Amerish and gave a good fight - those VS tanks tho... We stuck it out even though we were the underdogs but when the biolab FF started happening... thats what made the event go bad for me - we could have taken the biolab without the FF idiots.

If this bore a semblance of truth, then the AK-47 would never be used in Counter Strike. If someone mastered controlling recoil, would he pick the TR, NC or VS? For sure it wouldn't be the VS b/c functionally he's just gimping his dps or damage over longer ranges.

Assuming we're talking about weapons that are signature to the VS like the Solstice, not the high RoF Orion.

NC weapons would need a 2.5 or 2.75 headshot modifier to reward accuracy like the AK does, they are not nearly as reliable.