The VS as a faction needs some serious rethinking

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Ztiller, May 20, 2014.

  1. LIKE A BOSS!

    Are you serious what idiot would use a lasher at at those ranges for killing NOT suppressing. Literally EVERY weapon in the game will out damage you. Go use a lasher for a day and ask me would you rather use a Lasher 24/7 or a Jackhammer 24/7. In most cases where fighting happens in the game (CQC) the jackhammer AND the MCG make the lasher ****.
  2. Vixxing

    Ever heard about IRNV scopes?
  3. pnkdth

    Well, that's within the same faction, and they fill different roles. Since we're talking VS here, I thought there was a point to compare VS and TR weaponry painting TR as having pea-shooters or something in order to have more bullet per magazine.
  4. \m/SLAYER\m/

    Cobalt, VS owning some alerts with lowest pop.
  5. NinjaTurtle

    Some people just can't pull off the spandex look like me.

    I look fabulous :cool:
  6. Lord_Avatar


    No - I didn't mean to compare TR and VS weaponry in this manner, but the same principle applies to all factions. I was advocating the utility of high perfrormance weapons vs high capacity weapons. The role the Hailstorm fills is being utter rubbish - the purpose of an SMG is a CQC powerhorse - a role at which the Hailstorm fails badly. The PDW deviates from this by means of it's increased long range capabilities which the Hailstorm lacks.
  7. minhalexus


    I never was trying to have much of an argument.

    Do you have any proof that VS was underpop before ZOE?

    Even if we go with what you say, its like saying: VS always had underpop, except for the 8 months in which ZOE existed. keeping in mind that this game is only 1 and a half year old.
  8. Krutyifix

    no...
    Most of the new players have no concept of fractions arms properties
    very simple reason a lot of TR
    Look at NC/VS fraction choosing menu: character / color looks ridiculously
    It was simply a lame graphic

    Otherwise.... 20 people can destroy the entire Zerg TR
    Log in with TR, and blow up all your OWN faction sunderer. SOE does not care about the game balance
    New outfit: *****
    Who wants to join?;)
    (I'm playing since beta)
  9. Krutyifix

    New outfit: J1HAD
  10. Shockwave44

    Sorry, I like guns that kill, not scare people off and hurt me in the process.
  11. Shockwave44

    Because you're an expert on VS...

    Tell you what, you worry about your faction, and we'll worry about ours.
  12. Kid Gloves


    And this is pretty much exactly what has happened with VS Briggs.

    Just after the Briggs outage (which didn't help the player numbers), Connery server returned the favour by doing a 'Connery invades Briggs' event. In the same way that everyone from Briggs piled into the Connery TR, everyone from Connery piled into Briggs VS.

    For that one, brief, glorious moment it was fun being VS on Briggs.

    Then it wasn't.

    VS has issues that the OP has hit on well, but when a faction community takes the kind of hits that the VS on Briggs took it becomes a poverty trap that requires a major injection of new players to recover from.

    The Briggs VS story is slightly more interesting in that it used to be Briggs NC that were the red-headed stepchild faction, though not nearly as badly. A chunk of Briggs VS changed faction - for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to outfit politics - taking a fair whack of the good VS players over to the NC. When that got combined with the NC's patch-in-the-sun where we all saw NC populations soar, the VS just nosedived and hit rock bottom.

    If Briggs VS is going to seriously recover, it needs either a short time-period where the VS are ridiculously overpowered (hint: this is not a good solution long-term!) or the game needs better ways for a hideously under-pop faction's players to have fun. It needs small wins for those players, to give people a reason to bother playing.

    Which is not to say that Briggs VS is devoid of skilled players. There's some good, talented and still active outfits on Briggs VS. And it's not to say the problem is limited to Briggs either, because it most definitely isn't. Briggs just exacerbates the issues because of its inherently smaller population anyway, combined with the recent kicking the server had.

    I do know that in most cases when an alert comes up, there's a sentiment amongst a fair few VS commanders on Briggs of 'oh great! most of the TR and NC will leave, and we might have something resembling a fairer fight with whomever doesn't go play the alert.'

    This is clearly not the intent of alerts, but it's an entirely understandable position for the players - whose primary motivation is to have some fun - to take.
  13. Bennybones

    What's fascinating here is that loads of people in my own outfit, including myself, have spent quite a lot of time on the VS side and we all agree that the VS weapons are more versatile and more accurate than the TR weapons. Honestly, I think the difference between the factions is so minimal we can't pick it out. Looking at the stats the VS have access to ever RoF up to 800something down to 577. In fact, I would argue they have more versatility in terms of weapons choices than the TR do. And let's face it, the TR have 4 weapons out of what, 40? That have an unusually high RoF and all of those weapons except for the Armistice have come in the last month or so. Before that the TR were literally identical to the VS except with slightly different choices in terms of RoF models (only speaking about infantry weapons here).

    If it weren't for our outfit a lot of us would go VS in a heartbeat. Specially when you take into account the Swagrider, the PPA, the ZOE max (which I'm sure needs some tweaking but is also capable of melting face on an unprecedented scale) and the fact that with the new helmets available (plus camo changes and stuff) the VS look really awesome. And I'm sure a lot of VS feel the same way about the TR, which is why I suspect that the difference between the factions is actually minimal and there are a handful of items on either side that differ between the two and may (or may not) need some rebalancing.

    All that said, the VS could definitely use a few more empire specific and unique weapons. I like the idea of guns without ammo that perhaps charge up. Imagine a semi-auto AR or LMG or something that goes from 125 damage to 250 (whatever numbers, you get my point) depending on how long you charge it for. Let's say you can just tap tap tap and it'll do minimum damage, but if you hold it down for .3 seconds you fully charge it. So fire rate might be, I don't know, 600 normal and drop down to 400 if you charge it, giving you a lot of options. Or something along those lines anyways!
  14. Kid Gloves


    Charge-up weapons aren't the option. They're a fun gimmick on one or two things, but they become very painful to use when you need reaction time.

    Something I'd love to see come the VS' way is actually a variation of an idea from PS1:

    What if VS guns had high ROF, but quite as good as TR in that space, but when you change fire mode (press B to go single-shot or 3-round-burst), the characteristics of the weapon actually change? So in single-shot mode it does more damage per round, bringing the gun more towards the NC end of things but still not as good as the NC.

    So the gun isn't as good as the TR guns in TR-mode, isn't as good as the NC guns in NC-mode, but unlike either of the others it can switch modes, thus giving more flexibility in the field to the operator?
  15. AdamRah



    haven't seen you on ceres in ages!
  16. Ztiller



    Are you aware that the ZOE damage buff literally does not change the TTK whatsoever, aswell as being nonexistant against Air and Vehicles, due to the range limitation of the damage buff?
  17. pnkdth


    VS was in such a bad shape even SOE were trying to figure out on how to make VS more popular. VS Miller had 17% pop at peak hours, and there was much rejoice when we managed to get 20%. We lost a lot of players to other factions and servers because people got tired of/burnt out playing. There were even TR/NC outfits who took it upon themselves to have "playing VS events" to equalise the population somewhat. These days we are normally around 27-28% which means we have be competitive during alerts but it also means we very rarely can have any presence bar one continent at a time. Also, just do some searches on VS population issues on these boards. You're going to have your hands full...

    That said, I do not adopt the doom and gloom attitude anymore. ZOE got the attention of a lot of players, and some even decided to stick around after the nerf, but seriously, don't try to downplay the issues VS used to deal with(and to a lesser extent still deal with).
  18. Bennybones

    When did they remove the damage buff from the ZOE max?
  19. Ztiller


    Look again. In the last year, the VS was constantly moving between 30% and 33%. The NC are almost constantly stable at 33, and the TR are moving between 33 and 38%.

    And this is when we had the ZOE, which many swapped to the VS just to abuse. SO can you imagine what it looked like before the ZOE got released?

    No, the VS have always been underpopped and something needs to be done.




    They didn't remove it. They just changed it to a static of 10%, instead of the increasing 10-25% it used to have. However, 10% damage increase is not enough to reduce the numbers of bullets you need to kill someone. With or without ZOE, you still need 7 bullets to kill.
  20. EliteEskimo


    Other than giving the VS more ES laser/plasma pew pew weapons and a Sci-Fi overhaul to make the faction more cool I really don't see a clear solution outside of making the Vanu OP, which no one should want.

    In the meantime Ztiller I would recommend creating a VS alt on Mattherson. Even when underpopulated they win alerts, and overall are the most coordinated and highly skilled VS in the world. So winning regularly as Vanu no matter the situation should make you feel better I would hope.:D