Why Do Players Percieve NC As FoTM?

I bounce between my TR and my NC depending on who I want to kill more. BR 85 TR 56 NC. I noticed that the advantage to TR weapons is closer range fighting, I mean less than 30-35 meters. Within that range the recoil on our weapons is good enough to put what feels to be at least 80% of bullets into the target. Even though that would be in my opinion the optimal range for fire fights I still find myself in situations where I have to kill the enemy before I can advance at a range greater than 35m.

I love the NC guns, so accurate even at that range. I must hit at least 1/3 rounds past 50 meters and drop targets consistently. On my TR I have to fire more bullets to get the same effect just because our weapons weren't balanced around long range gun play.

My NC - Mostly infantry play

https://www.planetside2.com/players/#!/5428163811549661617


When I'm on my NC and I'm using a slower firing, hard hitting weapon I never feel like I'm at a disadvantage regardless of range. When I'm on my TR if I'm in a short range scenario I feel fine, mid-long range I feel gimped.

I think you are right.

Strangely I am not any happier after find out the cheaper S variant has the same profile as my favourite TR gun

It is quite clear people rather assume malicious intent over everything else. Maintaining perspective isn't the strong suit of players it would seem. Much easier to assume that players change faction out of spite then it is to realise that this a F2P game where people quit, take breaks, or have multiple characters. Having reached BR80 on my VS character I quite often played NC as well because I needed a change of pace(and I find TR is a bit too close to VS in terms of providing enough of a change).

One of the most common examples of this is a player of X faction deciding to make a new character on Y faction. He or she then points to his or her's superior KDR as undeniable proof that Y faction indeed overpowered and/or easy mode. Seemily forgetting that he or she is not a newbie anymore, thus character Y is not starting from the same point of experience as the character on faction X.

Another is failing to account for playstyle, ie, X weapon is crap because I do not do well with it, yet if you ask another player they do very well with it. This often lead to extremely stupid arguments where both are so convinced about their own personal experience is the right one, and the notion that there are other players who have a different experience quite simply do not even enter their minds. Everything must work in accord with their playstyle or the devs are incompetent or the other player, or players, claiming they like it are liars or have some evil agenda to nerf/buff their style.

Finally, the absolute statements such as X faction are the best at what matters. "What matters" usually refers to an area where the player itself does not enjoy dominance or have an edge over the other factions.

TL;DR: Why are we always so very busy trying to point out the strengths in others while failing to realise our own? Human nature perhaps? I don't know, nor claim to have an answer. All I'm suggesting is to have a bit of perspective when commenting, because when you come here and start posting that an entire faction does this, a weapon is "hilarious OP" without anything other than insults and anecdotes you probably won't be met with a constructive response.

Population and balance in this game is fleeting, and your answer to these issues are simple and easy to understand it is probably not the right answer.

"Vulcan... overperforming..." Really? I didn't bother with the rest of your post because you are obviously not thinking clearly.

It also has better reload time, faster bullet velocity and SPA.

It WAS overperforming hence the nerf.
Anyway the new Vulcan is and has been discussed in many other threads.

(The Vulcan should have been treated seperately from Harasser/Prowler.
The nerf on the Harasser was needed, the nerf on the Prowler not.)

That is understating it. KPU is mostly measuring the popularity of a weapon among its users. It is not a performance stat at all. For those who don't know KPU=TotalKills/UniqueUsers. Unique users being the amount of unique people who have gotten kills with the weapon.

Generally KPU is measured on a period basis and then averaged together if looking over a larger time period. This usage of average is obviously a mathematical failure, and leads to amusing things such as posted KPU values for rarely used weapons that are below 1. You can get similar amusing effects when posting VKPU where UnqiueUsers includes people who got infantry kills.

But then someone had to go and involve delta values into everything. KPU as mentioned above is a popularity contest for each user. But it is also about how much every unique user plays. A user who plays more will get more kills and hence will provide to higher KPUs as long as he don't uses more different weapons. Which of the two time periods used included Double XP, Christmas holiday and a more fun to play higher frame rate experience? If you guessed 12/18-12/28 you are probably right.

OK, using deltas as a total is perhaps not so bad as you get relative changes. Well, that was the idea NC_agent00kevin had in any case, summing all the deltas, while of course forgetting to account for the fact that different weapons have different number of users using them, so the delta sum became highly weighted towards a few quite infrequently owned weapons.

I hope I don't need to mention why the Pounder KPU sky rocketed after PU02 as some people decided to farm Auraxium on them.

I could continue, but suffice to say, KPU sucks, and mishandling it further sucks badly.

The noob tube effect is actually a real phenomena. For those how can't view the link, a 200 damage weapon will essentially have ~3-5% higher chance to kill a target than a 143 damage weapon if you output the same raw 2000 damage at the same human accuracy (20-40%).

It is really quite simple....FUN can not be quantified. There is no data point that can be used for comparison, so since you are losing the argument about performance because the data doesn't support your argument, create a new argument that can't be countered with data..

You nailed it on the head, no one was complaining about "fun" when their weapons were significantly over performing, but since we could point to the data and show the over performance, now they wish to argue for a metric that can not be measured.

I think it was actually me that was summing (consider it averaging, given the lack of inter-group comparison and identical group sizes) KPU's, unless Kevin was also. I'm very aware that they are in themselves one giant *********** of statistical fallacy. One does have to start somewhere though, and this issue is still not worth the time to do larger analysis on when most comparatives have only decreased in range. Balance is better, and as good as I feel it needs to be for it not to be a dictator in conflict outcome. If someone feels differently, as many NC players, myself included, did when we believed our weapons were underpowered (which was confirmed by the developers...), it's time for them to put up or shut up. Get on the Oracle, get us some better stats (as noted, the time period we have stats for is actually terrible, both in length and normality), and provide us a detailed analysis that supports your conclusion.

Until then, I postulate that many people (given the amount of tears shed eternally on the matter) have attempted to do exactly that and realised that the wider stats follow the same trend as a prelim analysis does (and as the experience of myself and most other players who widely play all factions appears to dictate); the balance is better than it ever has been, and most issues now come down to splitting hairs. I could even go further to say if anyone has done that analysis, it really reflects badly on the character of them not to have published the stats, not least because hard evidence that TR is not UP may actually slow the bleed of players

I'm entirely unsure what the 'noob tube effect' is (google gives no meaningful results), and the google spreadsheet is largely illegible due to a large (and unnecessary) graph blocking all of the data. There's no explanation as to what is being looked at nor the calculations behind it... But it does give us two VERY important conclusions:

Whilst you can cherry pick 20-40%, why don't I cherry pick 60-80%? Where 143 has that same advantage? With that, I'd say we've been wrong all along and it appears that 143 damage weapons have the higher skill ceiling after all... Who'd have thunk it...

More importantly, % chances to kill get even more convoluted than KPU comparisons imho... Not least because if you factored in that those 200 damage shots are going to take ~15% longer to fire than the 143s, or that the 143 stands a chance of hitting the broad side of a bus when not stationary and ADSed, burst firing or full auto, the chance of utilising a headshot modifier etc etc, it leaves even the realm of the academic.

Yes they were.

But the 'fun' point is actually entirely correct. Given that there's largely no statistical imbalance, the population movement comes down to player desire or perception. There's an element of 'fun' that comes from winning, but more importantly, there's a pretty massive element that comes from game mechanics, and it's there that TR are falling behind. So what needs to happen is an injection of fun, without altering the balance.

The problem is that you can't have that discussion without the usual suspects coming in and crying that NC OP, TR need buffs etc etc and voila; thread derailed, no meaningful progress.

The Striker I do remember (it was just impossible to "fun-buff" total AA and AV domnation), Carbines, LMGs and such I don't really (there were threads asking for the GD-7F to be nerfed in RoF, but that's a bit different to "fun").

Well the TMG-50 is slightly easier to handle, it has slightly slower stock velocity too, but as HVA is now per weapon (as opposed to a general increase) it's impossible to say what the difference is HVA vs HVA (without some serious video testing anyway).

The difference in TMG-50 and Gauss Saw S KPU is seemingly inexplicable to be honest. (then again the Carv-S is outperforming everything but the Anchor ).

That is really why I matched it up with the EM6, if you do the bullet-on-the-wall thing, the handling pattern is identical (apart from the EM6 being a lot longer)

After all it matters how many shots you need to kill someone and how long it takes to fire those shots. You can say that a Prowler does more damage than the vanguard....still it's the vanguard that performs much better against ESF cause it can one shot them. Doesn't help to be able to fire two shots with overall more damage if both need to hit for a kill...if one shot of an other gun nets you the kill too.
That's something you left out in your calculation....

Such QQ in TR/VS in this thread I never been amazed.

TR/VS POV: Look at saw "OMG 200 damage" that sooo goood unknowingly ignores everything else that make the weapon terrible.

1.TR/VS seems to ignore that most NC do not use the 200 dmg because it terrible. If you look at all the high BR NC you will see them not using 200 dmg weapons but mostly 167 damage or 147 damage weapons.
2. EM6/Anchor>SAW
3.Gauss rifle/Carnage > reaper
4. Mercenary/GD-7f > acx-11

TR/VS POV: "Omg a NC max can instant kill infantry at 5m omg!!"
But without knowing NC max needs
1. Extended mags to kill a max that does not have kinect
2. Need to use 90%-100% ammo pool to kill just one max
3. Needs to spend 300 cert to kill at 15m range sacrificing CQC damage and accuracy
4. Even with extended mags a NC max CAN NOT kill a TR/VS max with full rank kinect in a heated battle
5.TR/VS max do not need extended mags and it not mandatory
6. A TR/VS max without extended mags can kill double then a NC max with extended mags within 30 seconds

TR/VS POV: "OMG NC max has a shield that so goood!!!"

That why there were only 5% of NC that had shield certed out? I have full rank aegis shield and I wish I can take it all back. I can give a entire dam list why this shield is terrible and you are better off with charge but im just to dam lazy.

Yup. Didn't mean to argue that NC was OP or TR was UP. It was mainly me arguing in general for my dislike of KPU. I do wish someone could do KPH instead. It is not perfect, but it is far better than KPU.

Even though it is impossible to get perfect KPH thanks to the API only having time used since character creation, you could do an approximate KPH where you start counting the time of the weapon since the last death or last kill with another weapon (whichever came last). You would have to put in a max limit to prevent logging-off for an hour or day to impact the whole thing. But I think it could give a good approximation at least.

The effect part was my addition. Noob tube is just a general term for one shot kill weapons in first person shooters (for some reason sniper rifles tend to get excluded from the phrase). Newbies can use them effectively since even if they miss a lot, when they do hit they kill.

Sorry. The data behind is basically just the data points in the graph, nothing more, nothing less. It is just derived from a massive amounts of simulations firing 2000 damage worth of bullet at a 1000 hp target with various damage per bullet with pure randomness.

Yeah. That was my main point. I was mainly using your comment to give me an opportunity to present some data I generated recently. 143 damage weapons have kind of an undeserved reputation for being noob weapons. (And no, I did not mean to imply that the Gauss SAW or sniper rifles are noob weapons with the data)

What it really comes down to is that when you have lots of randomness, you will end up with less "close but not quite enough" with a high damage weapon. When you have really high accuracy on the other hand you are less likely to miss enough shots near each other that you fail to kill. In more realistic scenarios, I think that the latter is quite rare. If we are talking about bullets that will be random either due to user skill or weapon CoF, accuracy simply won't be that high.

But as you say

Yup, totally worthless. Except perhaps to point out that putting more bullets in the air doesn't necessarily mean a more "noobish" weapon.

Because NC AI MAXes outperform other maxes by 40%.
Because Raven MAX can kill a tank outside of render range.
Because the only way a Vanguard can loose to other tank is if the driver is AFK.
Because Jackhammer is the best HA weapon in game.
Because Phoenix is the best ESAV in game.
Because Reaver can kill an enemy ESF faster then the pilot realize he's being shot.
Because Racer3+AB Reaver can easily outrun any other ESF in game.

There's more to it but this i've mentioned the most important stuff.

I hope i've answered your question.

Took the words out of my...keyboard? I guess.

But yeah ^^^ that.

Because the main cannon of vanguard kills as many ESFs as the bursters, turrets, skyguards of any other faction. But unlike those the vanguard is not specifically designed as G2A.

The Raven killing out of render range is obvious BS and should be fixed with a damage drop off.... This should also be done with the mana turret

The vanguard is best at AV, the prowler and Mag are better at AI whilst still being good at AV just less so (asymetrical balance)

The jackhammer is good but seriously. Exhibit A: Orion

The Phoenix is good but mostly situational, its weaknesses balance it. Its slow, short range, bad manaueverabilty, long reload time. A rank 1 repair tool can out repair its damage easily

All ESF can kill jus as fast if the pilot is good

I agree the Reaver should be slower than the mossie