Fourth Faction view of the Connery empires (VS > TR > NC)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by phungus420, Jun 24, 2013.

  1. phungus420

    I fourth faction on Connery, playing whichever character I want, and switching when I run out of air resources to grab my ESF, because I can and there is no reason not to.

    There are some very clear differences in the factions. They can be summed up though pretty easily. Vanu players simply play smarter, and actually focus on teamwork. NC do not play optimally, to put it kindly. I see this in a number of ways, how their faction leaders push the battle flow (especially on alerts), and how players behave in fights. TR are in the middle, and they clearly have some good leaders who can step up and get things done, but they are not nearly as consistent as the VS.

    Let me go through a typical playsession for me to show what I mean. I log in, lets say I chose TR and fly my mossy, I go to Esamir because the lattice sucks for peasant farming with my rotary and Amerish is dead. On a typical session I'm getting around 20 air resources a tick on Esamir, and eventually I just can't keep up with the unrealistic expectation of only dying once an hour in my ESF, so I run out of air resources. So I switch to VS or NC.

    Now my first action is to grab an ESF and go flying, eventually though I'll change things up for a change of pace. I'll look at the map and find a tower or other defensible base that is under heavy attack. Here is where things are really interesting. If I'm VS other players spawn there, taking advantage of their defensive location. We often succede in defending the base and if we lose we make it hell on the attackers. Medics are running around reviving, engies are dropping ammo and reparing MAXes, and infiltrators are spotting targets. If I go NC, I do the same thing, only when I play NC only a handful of people spawn at the defensible base, and I'm far less likely to get my MAX repaired, or see ammo dropped; NC players just don't do that sort of thing. TR is 50/50, sometimes they have their **** together, sometimes they don't - but VS and NC always behave this way.

    I'm not even going to get into the leaderships decision making. Suffice it to say that the VS are leaps and bounds ahead in terms of tactics, where to attack, where to defend, and how many players are needed to do these things. TR and NC for the most part's leadership just seems to look at the map and always have the same answer "attack", there is no defense, and there is no splitting up platoons or outfits to reasonably use force - it's just attack on mass, in the most obvious place.

    Anway just wanted to share this observation. I found it very interesting. For those who fourth faction on Servers other then Connery, what do you guys notice? Is it the same as Connery, or drastically different?
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  2. Owleyes

    Connery VS were always under popped back in the day, People use to get TKd if they didn't drop ammo or heal. Maybe thats why they work together? lol, Thats why i just repair and drop ammo without thinking now.

    When your outnumbered you either work harder or complain on the forums ( I refer you all to the population imbalance threads that won't stop)
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  3. Vortok

    Huh, I don't even know of any really good VS outfits (ones that can focus on the map instead of finding the best farm), but I suppose it's harder to see effective allies than it is to see which enemy outfits are overrunning you. Plenty of NC/TR outfits in the outfit forum compared to VS. There was a dude that made a thread looking for an outfit that runs organized armor on VS. Last I looked there wasn't a single reply and it's several weeks old.

    I've noticed a lack of support (Engi/Medics) from time to time when I play TR (repair/rez my MAX :(), dating back to when the character was on Helios... but don't play him nearly enough to have a good idea of the norm. I swear, on Helios it felt like 50% of fights for TR were composed of nothing but HA, LA, and Infs. Of course I'm usually the guy playing the support class on VS whereas I generally play different classes on other characters for a change of pace, so easier to notice the lack of someone doing the role when I'm not filling the gap myself anyway. Been way too long since I put any serious time into my NC character to know how that faction feels, too.
  4. Sebastien

    Seems exactly the same.
  5. G3arfried

    idk about you but lately vanu on connery has been doing some ******** things. From sitting at a hill shooting to get out zerged by giving tr or nc enough time. To shooting each other for 1 kill. Some panic so hard they might rocket you for no apparent reason.
    I used to play alot of nc till helios nc arrived(a lot of helios nc are mentally challenged and kill their team more then the enemy). Now the same is going on in vanu. Makes you wonder if the helios nc scrubs switched to vanu.
  6. phungus420

    I meant as a general rule, the things in the OP are what I noticed. You will find terrible selfish players on vanu, and great tacticians and teamplayers on NC. It's just the ratio and prevelance of these types of players is not evenly distributed among the factions. I get the impression you "main" vanu with little time playing the other factions, if you did I think your impression might change.

    Knowing how and when to farm is part of what I am refering to. Say if crossroads is being attacked and VS control it, they will spawn there en masse to defend it, because it is a great place to defend and kill/cert farm. TR sometimes behave this way, I can never tell what I'm going to see when I play my TR. NC will almost never spawn in to defend these types of bases; you just find yourself alone with a few other people, which isn't enough to get a good farm going - and on the off chance people do spawn to defend you hear "need amo" and "need repairs" incessantly because no one does these things.
  7. phungus420

    Any other 4th factioner's care to weigh in, especially in regards to other servers? I'm wondering if it's just something with Vanu that atracts a more FPS focused playerbase (only nerds are willing to play with ugly purple and teal spandex characters?), or if it has more to do with the fact VS were severely underpopulated on Connery for so long that they adapted and now that they are more equal in pop they just are more effective in general.
  8. Terrex

    VS players on average are great. I get repaired, there is always ammo. If anything there is an excessive people trying to help me out sometimes. People are aware on what is going on, active leader / command chat. TR and NC could learn from us.

    Edit: Bad sunderer drivers though. Stop driving into me pls.
  9. Talurok

    I've long played vanu on servers where we were underdogs. I kind of like it that way because it breeds a better player. Anyone looking for quick points or a zerg gets out quick and we're left with players who understand teamwork as a necessity for staying alive. We lose a lot of battles on numbers but it's still a better experience, imho.

    As for the fourth empire, it seems to go to whatever faction has momentum at that moment as much as anything on Waterson.
  10. Roy Teppert

    That's because before the mergers VS only had 20-25% of the population, while NC almost always had 40% or more. VS had to learn to work together or they would die. Meanwhile, the NC could just rely on their overpopulated steamroller and never really needed to organize or learn how to work as a team.
  11. Compass

    Baddie.
  12. Terrex

    I just like to pretend I know what I am talking about sometimes.
  13. Clutchstep

    I didn't intend for all my alts to be on the same server, but thanks to the server merges I fourth faction on Connery too. I don't think I play enough to get a sense of how the empires manage as a whole, but speaking as a someone who primarily plays an engineer, my experience matches what the OP is saying. When I play VS, it is a mix of repairing and fighting, because the other engineers will repair regularly and so any MAX or vehicle that runs by will get repaired. When there's 3-4 guys repairing something, they barely have to stop and the repair goes by quickly, then I can turn my attention to shooting at people a bit before the next person needing repairs rolls up. When I play NC though, if I'm in repair mode, I pretty much stand there repairing the entire time, because the other engineers don't repair. So I have to go through multiple cycles of my maxed out repair tool to repair one vehicle, and a queue of vehicles and MAXes line up. It gets to the point so that I switch classes because I get bored with repairing. As the OP says TR tends to be somewhere in the middle.

    I can kind of understand why others don't repair as much for NC, as it's a vicious cycle, and the less people who repair the more boring it gets for those that do repair. Even though it's easy xp it's too boring to do for the whole play session. I don't understand why people don't drop ammo though. It's free xp that takes 3 seconds for you to do.
  14. NoctD

    I play different servers with different factions myself. Yet the observation I have is the same.

    Waterson VS - very close knit group, always working together. Always outnumbered, and they do get pushed around sometimes (only so much you can do without numbers) but the organization, leadership and teamwork is top notch.

    Mattherson TR - the middle of the road... generally organized but they don't always approach the flow of battle correctly. Repairs are a mixed bag if you play a MAX outside an outfit.

    Connery NC - the worse most chaotic mess I've ever seen anywhere. People doing random stuffs and its hopeless if they try to rush out of spawns most times.

    Your observations to me hold true, not on a server only basis, but across servers, and is more of a faction cohesiveness. Miller has very coordinated TR movements though, but generally VS seems to be the best organized faction overall.
  15. Glorin

    Just from what I've noticed on Connery, VS tend to be a lot more purple, NC seems a lot more proficient at wearing blue camo, and the TR are usually better at wearing red camos than the other two factions.

    Other than that, am I the only one who really dislikes faction generalizations? They're pretty silly.
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  16. bulletchaser666

    since this is a fourth faction thread i'd just like to point out that TR is most commonly underpopped now, not by much most the time but still usually under, there are times when TR and VS will be around the same but NC are always over pop except for when VS or TR are winning the alerts then NC drops and who ever's winning becomes a hetic troll zone from hell till the alert ends. i can always tell when the VS have the fourth faction because they try to rush instead or their norm of tactical flanking and sundy busting.

    on another note i'd like to take the time to thank the VS for always putting up a good fight, unlike the NC VS don't take the same path 16 times till the point caps, they always keep it fresh. as a loyal TR, thank you for catching my bullets with style.
  17. TheGlitchReport

    I can imagine a fourth faction, but not until the balance between all the factions on each server has been balanced.
  18. Bill Hicks


    I was playing on helios before the merger And the VS were the overpopulated faction with tobasco sauce. The VS didnt learn to play better. All the good players went VS or TR because the NC have crappy vehicles. We got all the drool cup pro allstars.
  19. Bill Hicks

    Generalizations? The kid is right on the money. The NC are complete morons.
  20. SolLeks

    I play NC and I agree with this.... There are times that I go into 'medic mode' and can not put away my medic tool dispite not being the only medic in the area (wile watching all the non outfit medics run around asking for heals because they don't know what the F key does...)

    I have not really played TR or VS enough to get a sense, the little I play of thoughs alts are with good outfits (Merc and Future Crew, but again I don't play these toons often, TR - br19 VS - br8) so It is hard to tell.