Past NC Overpop?

Oh, I believe that a lot of PlanetSide 2 players are patient, I just don't think all of them are. The impatient ones will switch/quit pretty quickly (within a week), and although their dent is small, it's still there. This is the reason why I'm not necessarily looking at the changes, but the trends instead: if something starts to become too much, the downward trend starts ever so slowly, but it will only ramp up as the weeks go by with no solution in sight. Comparing the trends between factions also rules out the effect of new players joining, since I assume new players roughly get equally distributed between factions, so if one faction's trends differ from the other two, then something is wrong.

Allow me to seperate each topic seperately.

At the start NC were just better. They had phoenixes and pre-nerf scat MAXes
Over time they started to receive multiple nerfs leading to more NC hatred.

Currently NC have barely any advantages over other factions



VS: I believe the introduction of ZOE must of had a tremendous effect on their pop

TR: Multiple unfixed weapons left undealt with. Update after update they had weapons that were clearly better than faction counterparts.


Every faction had its time. Now its TR time

You clearly didn't play through any of what i mentioned and trying to act like you did so you seem credible, which you are not.

Aside from the fact i never heard of him before PS2 (granted, i'm not the greatest follower of anyone on youtube) i did watch him after and the guy barely played the game, in addition to every review he had was some half arsed overview full of "strange" opinions. The huge influx of TR players after the event proves my point as well. Side note: i actually liked LevelCap cause i share his playstyle but the guy before him was just, no comment. The entire event was a clown show at best that would be laughable if not for TB.

Sirisan is the best tool us players have but it is not good enough for the task at hand because the task at hand is the very future of Planetside 2 since it directly represents it's unquestionably main problem.

We had the "OP" Phoenix for not even a week. TR had their strikers for... -sigh- I won't even bother lol

Lol well atleast they were actually competitive back then. Gauss Saw has received several nerfs from what i've heard

Sure, nerfs have made their rounds, but what really hurt the NC on Mattherson was Alerts.

In the beginning, at the start of an Alert, the NC would routinely have a large territory advantage. But because of poor coordination and tactical play during the alert, NC ended up losing every one. Not some...every single one.
Tactical outfits like 7th Cav disappeared, I'm assuming because they got tired of being rolled over by the Enclave outfit, so the problem just got worse.

After the TR's Enclave outfit left the game, things balanced out between the NC and TR. But by then, a lot of the frustrated NC players, as well as the left over Enclave members had jumped to the VS, helping that faction seize the advantage, which they've held for quite a while.

I'm saying that accessing the advantages of a diverse weapons selection requires heavy cert investment. For the certs I spent to get the Reaper, which I do not regret getting at all, I could have bought NW5 for one of my classes. It requires many tradeoffs and time investment to take advantage of.

The infantry TR guns were always flat-out more effective; they weren't necessarily better, but high RoF and low damage is more forgivable for newbies, while their default weapons favor engagements at ranges that are more like to occur during infantry combat (mid to close range).
Phoenixes were nerfed almost instantly, and neither their introduction, nor their nerf resulted in any major population shifts in NC, even after a month. Scat MAXes were nerfed in March, yet NC still held on to their population advantage well into the end of May. ZOE actually had no effect on VS population when it was implemented (it was implemented in May, the major VS increase was in early July). In fact, people only started complaining about ZOE when VS already had a population advantage (late July, early August). As for the TR unfixed/strong weapons, almost all of them were introduced in April or early May (we're talking things like Strikers and Fractures), and they've had a lot of minor nerfs or rebalances since June, yet the general trend of an increasing TR population only started out in late June-ish, with a clear increase only happening mid-July.

Be careful when talking about specific servers, since disgruntled players could always choose to switch servers instead; it's when the global population dips, then you know something's up. However, NC being disorganized and lacking coordination lends itself to my theory that NC had more casual players, while TR and VS had more dedicated ones (and therefore ones in proper outfits). As PlanetSide 2's population slowly declined, it's the casual players who would have left first, giving rise to the current state of affairs.

I'm kinda agreeing with you, on Woodman, however, VS is the "dominant" faction during alerts. Since the introduction of Alerts, NC has been losing nearly most of them, this resulted on NC not giving a damn about alerts anymore, even if we hold the largest amount of territory at the start.

Playing NC just doesn't feel fun lately..

Hey, if "Max shotgun nerf" was the straw that broke the back. Sure, revert it, but buff TR weapons so our four-barrel chain guns fire at 1000-1500 RPM (being conservative here) and standard mag sizes start at around 200. So yeah, more bullets.

But I'll be frank, not gonna happen. Why? Because NC actually feels balanced and I'm going to bet that whatever statistics SOE has say exactly that.
Fighting VS feels stupid though. For some reason it's like being rolled over by something that feels... cheap. But that's all "feel" If something is OP or UP, SOE has stats. Stats that we don't see.
And I honestly don't believe in devs having favorites when it comes to factions. I don't know about the allegiances of the coders, and I doubt any of them can just sneak in a "tweak" or two for the benefit of their favorite faction and even if it did happen there are hotfixes and... well, contracts. And that sounded weird then I typed it out. But I'll leave it at "There is no conspiracy to nerf/buff a faction."

As for what faction overpops, Flavor of the Month. As a TR my opinion is biased but I think TR looks the best, infantry-wise. And who doesn't like the colors red and black? Not to mention that TR is advertised as the "most well trained army on Auraxis" so that already puts bells ringing when someone looking for teamwork picks a side.

Agreed with the conspiracy stuff, but unintended consequences (e.g. TR weapons being more newbie-friendly because of higher RoF, therefore deadlier in the hands of the average player, even if NC/VS weapons are just as deadly in the hands of a good player) do still happen. Also, I've pretty much debunked the ScatMAX nerf resulting in people leaving NC, since the nerf happened in March, yet NC kept their overpopulation even into late May.
I believe that in a game where people get invested into a character they made for a certain faction, "flavor of the month" doesn't exist for factions the way it could exist for certain weapons, attachments, passives (e.g. Nanoweave), etc. Population changes happen over a longer period of time, and the way they happen could tell you a lot about the players playing said faction, the state of said faction, and the state of the overall game.

There's a difference between people using a tool to essentially one shot infantry from out of LoS and people using a tool as intended, and for some unfathomable reason pilots were too stubborn to take flares in the latter's case. Heaven forbid they have to actually stop rocket podding something.

Right now the phoenix's biggest drawback is that it's rather unwieldy. There's no speed control or some initial slow launch + fast turn that gradually speeds up with less turning capacity as it travels. So basically, a player has to have at least 50m between them and their target to fire from behind cover, and firing this thing in the open over 10m will just get you killed. I have yet to find a way, if it even exists, to cancel control of the rocket when I need to. I don't care if it keeps flying on its own or blows up when I exit, I just want to get the f*** out of missile control when I miss the target or I get shot.

Besides a few various weapons (in my opinion, the AC-X11, Reaper DMR, an AI MAX options) the NC are fairly solid. People just for the most part are horrible players, and coincidentally, TR and VS weaponry are easier on the newbs (like a lock on missile launcher for example...)

A lot of people hung around, hoping for a buff, but a lot of people would have also left immediately, doubtful that the buff would ever come. Though you can definitely assume the former, you don't really see evidence of the latter, with NC keeping their population lead for a few months despite both ScatMAX and Phoenix nerfs. Requests for both ZOE and Vulcan nerfs started appearing after NC had lost the population lead, so that's not really a factor, while if the Striker alone were the cause of the global population decline, you would see the same trend with VS, but you don't.

A valid point, but both TR and VS weaponry have been easier to use since the beta, so I'm doubtful that that is the only reason for the decline; if it were, NC would never have had a large population advantage for such a long time to begin with.

Interesting discussion!

Funny thing is:
A while back I posted asking people what they love about playing TR. I was curious as to why the overpopulation on Waterson was happening. This was quite a while ago.

A lot of people did mention the music. I found that surprising. Judging by all the discussions of "this got nerfed/this got buffed," I really didn't expect music to play an important role.
People also mentioned the colors. They liked the color scheme better on TR, they liked the look.
Lore played a role though if I recall correctly, not quite as much as music and color.

I was really surprised that I didn't really see that much about actual guns or vehicles.

For me, I chose NC and have stuck with it because 12 years ago I played another game with green/red/blue teams (ok, vs are purple) that had very similar lore to each faction. I was blue back then (Solrain, the money/profit driven empire) and thus really like what NC offered.
I went from NC in beta to TR at launch due to an outfit I was in at the time. I adapted to their weapons and got decent enough with them. Went back to NC when I left the outfit for reasons mentioned above... and now any weapon but NC feels foreign. People get accustomed and adapt. I don't think equipment really breeds all that much loyalty.

For everyone except 4th factioners, there are "soft" reasons people play a certain empire. I think in the long run, it's these people that are the meat and potatoes (or avocado and tofu for u vegans out there) of PS2 and the ones that should be cultivated more than anyone jumping ship every time a statistic is tweaked.

... which is all the more interesting as to why so many people might leave their favorite empire at a time that doesn't coincide with any of the major nerfs to their faction. I can only assume that if NC had a large population advantage for a long time, a lot of their players were people playing casually, and who went with NC because they liked the Country/Rock-style music and industrial look. This is supported even further when you notice that at non-primetime (when casual players are least likely to play), populations were largely even. As the general populace started leaving PlanetSide 2 for various reasons, the casual players were the first ones to go, since they were the least invested in the game; the NC, having the most casual players, was affected the most by this decline.

When I joined NC was overpopulated with Helios being the worst case. Then came a series of nerfs with scatMAX and attachment nerfs being the biggest ones and it's been going downhill from there. Vanu population briefly spiked when ZOE was released. Matterson(Buzz and TE quit) and Woodman(Frannkieonpc) became Vanu dominated. Then came the rise of the Striker and Marauder/Vulcan Harassers. Currently TR is overpopulated with Waterson and Miller being the worst cases.

I can see more casuals playing NC and more devoted expert players going with TR or VS because someday very soon planetside might hold competitions for prizes and the best player or longterm players would play the faction with an edge. I would love to hear why NUKE picked TR over the other factions , I would hardly doubt orchestra music and color . Im not saying NUKE is the best in planetside but if their was a Top 10 list you no they would be on it and on that note can you name any NC companys like NUKE . I asked on another thread but did not get a answer. I know this is a little of topic but I believe it does play a role even if a little one.

The odd thing is that even with the ScatMAX and attachment nerfs, NC kept their global population advantage for another few months. Despite what you claim, I see no such VS population spike after ZOE was implemented (May 26th); if anything, it's the TR population that spiked. If the Striker and TR Secondary Harassers caused a decline in NC population, you would see a similar decline in VS population, but you don't. Also, be careful when mentioning specific server populations, as people can always just start playing as the same faction on a different server; it's when a faction's population decreases on all servers, that's when you know something's up.