Yea, I see SOLAR has been on your tail a lot, but please, I have one question. What have you been doing to have managed to kill your self today more than 15 times ? Suicide
Solar ? Easy to kill )) About being organised or not, I agree, it's painfull to watch what some platoon commanders do and don't do.
You only have 500 more Vanu kills!? I am sitting at 1700 more VS kills than TR. Yes the VS population is annoying during the night but I dont feel as strongly about it as you do OP, I guess it comes from the fact that I have been hanging out almost exclusively on Esamir the last months and for some reason Cobalt VS has some special affinity to that continent as almost everytime I log in the NC is out numbered there. As I see it, the NC needs to step up and become the battle hardened small elite force that surprise everyone with their battle prowness just like the VS did when they were underpopulated. Because lets face it, VS is becoming bloated (just like the Cobalt NC was before) and with it the "average skill" gets lower, sure the old VS core players are still there and are a very skilled bunch but I find that they are more diluted with lower skill players now. So pick your fights wisely and enjoy the farm. I am not some super elite player either but if I feel like farming I go and pick a fight with the VS not the TR. But what bothers me the most is the bad manners and bad attitude which I have only experienced in the Cobalt VS so far.
Somehow I expected more flaming in this thread. Anyway, Vanu nightshift can be anoying if your schedule only allows you to play at night, when there are so few good fights and add being outnumbered to that, it really takes alot from the game. But to me the bigger problem is ghostcapping, which so many players and outfits on Cobalt seem to love. Not just at night, but at day aswell. So many times I've seen +48 VS at Zurvan and +48 TR moving twoards Howling pass where there is no resistance.
Daytime pops are usually fine (Speaking from UTC/GMT time zone, or the UK). I don't play other Servers, but the continents themselves can some times be wonky in player distribution though. It can be it's just alerts at play though, on some occasions. I generally don't tend to have any gripes about Pop balance though. I have seen the shifts between all 3 factions depending on FOTM, but I believe Cobalt tends to survive the turns of tide well.
If anything Cobalt is probably the most pop balance server in Europe. NC has had a consistent small advantage in numbers for a while now, so I find it very amusing that it's an NC player whining about VS. The only faction with any right whatsoever to complain about numbers is TR as they've been under-popped for a few months now. The fundamental fact time and time again on Cobalt is that the NC as a faction doesn't have a clue. They have some good players and they have some decent outfits. But in terms of co-ordination they really don't know what they're doing. TR play smarter. VS play smarter. NC just doesn't. TR and VS are pretty equal in terms of organisation and player skill. NC is way behind both, which is why they keep losing time after time even though they have a small pop advantage. If Cobalt TR had the population advantage NC has, they'd be a force to be reckoned with. What they lose out on is that they don't have the massive outfits that VS has. VS has the advantage of having TRID and 0WND providing focussed numbers, with a number of very highly skilled smaller outfits (IVGD, F00L etc.) filling the caps and adding flexibility. TR has some of the best outfits on the server, but they simply can't co-ordinate the sheer numbers that the Big Two VS outfits can. When I see NC roll over the horizon with multiple outfits I know we'll stop them if the numbers are even remotely equal. But when I see TR outfits rolling together in our direction I start to worry. VS respects TR. We don't respect NC.
Thanks! I had seen the server event around the crown that had been organised but I hadn't heard much about NC involvement, sadly that doesn't seem to actually surprise me too much though that there was a lack of organisation on our behalf, which in its own way is quite the let down. I know there are a lot of people who would obviously like to smack talk other factions/outfits on the server, but I actually think some of the most rewarding play is when groups can come together to actually take advantage of PS2 in the whole. It's something that frustrates me with the NC no end because it seems they cut off their nose to spite their face and don't even attempt to bridge the gap. Just to cherry pick one or two of your points, I would agree entirely that the NC on Cobalt does need to step up its game entirely. There have been one or two alerts recently where it seems the only reason we've made any headway at all was because we bludgeoned our way through with sheer numbers more than anything, and during the normal hours of gaming we seem to be a very lethargic side that does't really proceed with any purpose. What I will say however is that I think there is a bad attitude in general on Cobalt rather than it being exclusively with the VS. I've actually had more grief from my own faction than that of the VS or TR, but I don't think that anyone does themselves any favors when half the time people love to set out and goad one another. I was in a platoon the other night during an alert on Esamir when the topic of the new ESF changes came up - safe to say there was a lot of smack talk and denigrating of the VS in particular which I don't quite get myself, which then led to others flaming them on the regional chat. Safe to say these kind of individuals are more toxic to both communities than to any one side as they just propagate the problem. Just as a final note, I've always seen it as that Esamir belongs to the VS on Cobalt and that Amerish (not so much recently) was under the dominance of the TR. NC only manages to get influence on either continent when the other two are at their lowest whereas the others can do it usually during prime time with no problem at all.
I honestly don't think numbers matter here in the slightest if I'm honest with anyone on Cobalt, and I think on many servers actually the skill of the factions and their constituting outfits play a greater determining factor. I honestly feel it wouldn't matter if the NC outnumbered both VS and TR 2:1, we'd still be steamrolled by both faction for the numerous reasons that the topic has already covered, though which Selerox summer up quite well here:
Depends on which time during the day you play. VS have always been overpopulated during late nights. When NC was overpopulated the VS was not exactly quiet about it either, reversed roles eh....
Come on, who cares about the population at 4 AM.Oo And I usualy play beetween 8 PM and midnight, like the huge majority of players. And from month, at these hours, we were the underpopulated faction. So crying now is a bit excessive, and absolutly hypocrit.
Ah you crossed out the server Shurrikken. How do we know you're not lying and this is really on Cobalt?
With such a hugh playerbase per server and faction, the spread of "skilled" players for each faction will be roughly the same. The only real win/loss factor for battles in this game is the size of your zerg and the ability to place a green marker for your grunts. I think I never won or lost a battle because of superior players or tactics. Just more guns to point at the enemy. So thats the reason why most of VSTR kill more NC. Yeah, we have and had a slight popaddv. but even with this, theres no anti vanu bs.
Moin NC just won the alert on esamir. I think we won an alert or two yesterday too. That said, VS actually IS the strongest faction on cobalt, both in numbers and organisation. I've created a VS character to get a bit experience with scythes and magriders, and I usually log on this character shortly before an alert ends, because VS seems to win around 3/4 of them. In the past 2 month I witnessed maybe 2-3 wins by TR. I feel sorry for you guys, most of the time you get an underwhelming 3rd place. Always a nice populace XP boost though . But it's not the numbers that make VS so strong on cobalt, it's the teamwork in the faction as a whole. The last times I've logged in, somebody just gave me a fully certed harasser or magrider (without me asking him) before spawning a lib or ESF, probably because he was ressource capped. When playing VS I nearly always get a place in someones harasser, magrider or lib (and be it for transport) because people methodical spawn vehicles, while NC tends to have 10 guys standing around a vehicle terminal and wait for another guy to spawn it. And if nobody does, they spawn a flash. VS (and even TR) have more top notch players on cobalt too. We have a lot of really good people in the NC, but compared to VS and TR we lack skill and orientation. And that's why the NC often loses alerts/have less territory, despite having the biggest numbers. Even though it hurts me - as a main NC player - to hear things like I can fully understand it. I don't know what it is. Maybe NC has more new players who switch to VS because they constantly get OWND (pun intented :>) and think it's the faction. I really do not know. Grüße, regards, the Toast
Cobalt NC... Ah yes. We've just got too many casual players. Let's break it down a little. There's at least 10-15 BR100 VS... There's at least 10-15 BR100 TR. How many BR100 NC... 3-4 What does this say about the the faction? We have a smaller number of 'good' outfits. Why? Because casual players don't want to look for a better team. I do some recruitment for Jesters and we get many applications. How many of those applicants actually follow through and join the TS server to get into the outfit? Barely 1 in 5. And that's all it takes! Our applications process is a ****** test to ensure that people are able to download TS3, join the server and message someone. On top of the impact on formative group play; casual players don't develop into better players. They don't read patch notes / watch videos / talk about strategy. They don't learn how to farm the enemy by taking advantage of the tools available. One of those tools is the command channel; NC command channel is usually a ghost town. And has been stated before - if someone does start issuing orders it only invites a bunch of spam and trolls. Back in the days of Lithcorp i used to run public platoons and explain my orders. I found this very effective - but only during the session i was leading. None of the information i gave out would be absorbed and repeated by another platoon leader. I would run public platoons to try and raise the skill-bar but i would be lucky if the group actually bothered to listen. Half the time i got told that i talk too much! The largest NC outfit on Cobalt is RE4 - The Reapers. And as far as i am aware they don't have any strong leadership. Mainly because the leaders either left to form KAIN or joined JEST. What is left is a large outfit that doesn't want to break apart but lacks any significant order and structure. There are a whole bunch of smaller outfits that can field one or two squads. And they have skilled players with good leadership. They get zerged by entire platoons of enemies throwing themselves into the fight to win 'at all costs'. It's not really a problem of organisation or population. It's just that NC on Cobalt means Noob Casuals. And we can't rely on the blues to achieve much unaided. And the players who have bothered to organise themselves get zerged by superior numbers - even when NC has the population advantage! One of our players got heavily involved in uniting the NC on Cobalt. He gave orders to every willing outfit and co-ordinated multiple platoons to great effect. Why did he stop doing it? Because of the backlash from people who don't appreciate the effort and can't do it themselves. And the whole thing broke down into politics and power plays. So he stopped bothering! NC on Cobalt defeat themselves.
I actually believe that the VS and TR field more regular, committed and experienced players on Cobalt than the NC are capable of. From experience it seems more often than not that while there certainly are some very decent players that we have available as a faction, they are actually few and far between, and what really kills us is our lack of coordination and organisation. I also think that its not necessarily true that the size of a zerg really has any precedent on the outcome of some of the battles on Cobalt. Numbers of course can play a massive part, it can be easy to steamroll any enemy with superior numbers, but more often than not, the other empires are able to then roll back any advance the NC makes because they simply wait until we have over exerted the momentum of that push and they are easily able to counter it. The organisation of the VS on Esamir for example is why they tend to hold it so well during alerts. They are able to rapidly respond and redeploy, they are able to counter a threat with a force that is nowhere near as substantial as the one they can field. You can see the NC roll out of their WG and begin a steady push which soon turns into a crawl where we are then held in place, this being done while the enemy still has more than enough troops to then engage the other empire as well. I really do wish we were able to field anywhere near that sort of organised and capable players time and again without pause.
