What if I told you no faction is easier to play than another?

What if I told you there was no easy mode faction?

What if I told you there is no better, just different?

What if I said good players adapt, bad players blame their tools?

What if I said NC is easy mode, VS is hard?

Context of the topic:
I was having a rather heated conversation in /y chat with a couple of NC fellows (I was also NC) the other night who were claiming VS was easy mode (we won't mention PPA for the sake of this topic).

They were claiming they were playing the hard faction, to which I jumped in and stated the first 3 statements in this thread. Now they were having none of it and were quite defensive of their ability and skill and were quite confident they were only being rekt because the other teams are easier to play.

Now long story short I am convinced that as a whole the game is well balanced, yes there are a few things here and there, a few minor annoyances (PPA, but I said I wouldn't mention it so.......).


I am convinced it is a case of factions play different and will simply feel better to different people not because x faction is as a whole better but simply better for that one person.

I personally find NC easier to play than VS. I find NC guns easier to fire and control.

I do not think this is due to NC being easy or VS being hard or vice versa, they are just different and my personal feel makes me perform better with the NC

How much of the complaints players have is due to players having to high a regard in their own abilities or too much pride to admit they are either out played fairly or simply not suited to their faction for whatever reason?


Or am I missing something somewhere?

TLDR:
What if I told you the issue is not weapon balance but YOU!?!?!?!

Your style, your preferences not being complimented by your factions quirks

For the most part, and with the exception of a few outliers, you're pretty much right. Good players will do good regardless of faction.

YOU LIE!!!!!!

This one guy on Forumside said VS were easy mode. He has 400+ likes so he must be correct.

But then this other guy with over 500 likes said NC were easy mode, so I jumped on his bandwagon.

But then this other guy said TR was easy mode, and he had almost 1000 likes, so obviously he is right.

I've a TR, NC, and VS on Emerald. To be honest, they're all easy mode, and all hard mode. It changes for me. Somedays I can't control the recoil on my TMG-50, or get a kill for anything with my VX6-7, but I'm wrecking with my EM-6. Next day, EM-6 hates me, and the Serpent is my new best friend, or maybe it's the Carv. That's just me though, and I'm not all that good a player. Too twitchy. Probably why I'll never have a BR 100, I bounce between toons way to often. I just can't find one faction where I feel comfortable all the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

What people will deny until death.... or just until they grow up

This would suggest the devs are masters of balance. It's very hard to balance two, let alone three different groups.
Looking at other decisions the devs do not strike me as very competent regarding game design and balance.

I would simply ask where is the test of this hypothesis.

Thing is, as with a great many questions, they can be approached with the scientific method and usually doing so will provide a much clearer picture of reality.

What if you went and found that there are differences in various performance stats based on faction when looking at all the available data on performance measures? As in, what if there is a stable and predictable difference in, say, KDR, where one faction consistently has the lowest?

What if I asked you to explain the performance of that thing you do not want to mention?

Finally, how would you know the difference?

Just playing a little Devil's advocate. Not saying I'm going to go dig all this up from the forums and other websites or bother getting into a heated back-and-forth.

All 3 factions are balanced as a whole.
No faction is easier or harder to play. I have logged almost 400 hours on each, I can do a K/D of 2 on all of them, without much problems.
Certain playstyles are harder or easier to play in a faction, but claiming a whole faction is easymode is just wrong.

Each one has areas where they clearly outdo the others and things where they are outdone by the others, but unfortunately way to many players don't have the capacity to understand even that much.

i would subscribe to your newsletter and dedicate my life to your truth.

See, this is the mistake.

We cannot engage in structured, rational discourse when we're engaged in emotional argument...

...least of all when we're shooting/have been shooting/have been shot at by the very peers we wish to converse with!

Of course it's easier. When VS takes a point and nobody's around, I run over there and shoot the one I see, but four other VS there shoot me. I don't have four people working with me, so their faction is clearly easy mode.

I don't think you can find a problem with this logic.

OP, you are completely correct and I would encourage people to play other factions more. It's never fun to be on the recieving end of "******** easy mode guns" but truth is every faction has them . It might not always be the same equivalent, as you (did not) mention the PPA is always annoying when I'm playing TR or NC, but the ScatMax frustrates me just as much as well as that far far far away lock down HE prowler (RIP).

TLR Grass is always greener on the other side.

what if i told you NC has an OP ace in the hole with camera guided rocket spam. the only faction that can take out enemy vehicles without presenting a target. id say that makes NC pretty "Easy mode". because no faction has complete advantage over another. but they do have insurmountable situational advantages. hence the nerfing/buffing.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "easy mode". Generally it's taken to mean that the equipment available to that faction has a lower skill floor, which can (but not always is) be accompanied by a lower skill ceiling. This means that the difficulty in getting used to such weapons is lower for the "easy mode" faction, whereas it is more difficult for the other factions.

To find out if such an "easy mode" faction exists, I think all you would need is to look at the performance of "new" players, that is either those who are very low BR or some of the starting equipment. If you can see a significant difference in performance among either category across factions, then you might have an "easy mode" faction.

So let's take a look at the starter Carbines.

We have the NC's Mercenary, the VS's Solstice, and the TR's TRAC-5. Out of the three the Solstice has the best average accuracy (20.6%), followed by the Mercenary (19.8%), and the TRAC-5 is last (19.2%). The Mercenary though has the best headshot accuracy (18.2%), followed by the Solstice (16.3%), and the TRAC-5 is again last (15.6%). So we can say that in terms of accuracy the VS one is easiest to use overall (*coughbulletdropcough*), the NC one is the easiest to get headshots with (my guess is that recoil is kicking it up), and the TR are just the least accurate (though presumably this is balanced out by RoF and magazine size). Overall performance shows that the Solstice gets the most Kill Per Hour (14.2) and the best Kill-Death Ratio (0.91). The TRAC-5 actually pulls into second in terms of performance, with a KPH of 19 and a KDR of 0.9. The Mercenary is in last place with a KPH of 13.8 and a KDR of 0.87.

What we have here is the TRAC-5 being much less accurate than the other options, yet performing fairly well for what it is. The VS's Solstice is the most accurate and is the best performer, and the NC's Mercenary is middling in accuracy but the worst performer.

If we assume an even distribution of skill among the factions across all servers, then we start to get hints that maybe some factions might have a lower skill floor and be "easier" than other factions. Obviously Carbines aren't the end-all be-all of PS2, but the point is that if you did this analysis with each of the bits of faction equipment, you might be able to identify a stronger or weaker faction. In the case of Carbines, you have the TR missing more of their shots but killing more people, which some might call a lower requirement of skill and thus "easy mode".

Difference does not preclude one item being "better" than another item. For example, among the ESHAWs you see quite a bit of difference. But the performance metrics show that the Jackhammer is obviously the most deadly of the three options. The same is true of the TR's Prowler MBT and their TRAP M-1 "sniper" rifle. So things can be different and better at the same time.

What if we reduced all NC weapons down to 1 damage, and gave the TR a 100x HP multiplier? Are the NC simply bad players for blaming their tools, and if no NC could adapt to that situation (hard to see that they could), then are all NC bad players?

Obviously this hypothetical is an exaggeration, but there can be unbalanced equipment and it's fine if players identify those imbalances.

I'd say, "Show me the data." Because using performance data we can come to conclusions. Now I'm not saying that the NC is easy or the VS is easy, or that there even is an "easy mode" faction (it's possible that all factions are performing in a balanced way). But what I am saying is that theoretically it is possible to rely on the performance data to see whether there is an "easy mode" faction or not.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/29y4m6/auraxis_weekly_combat_report_29th_june_6th_july/

this is from about a month ago, but the point remains.

we *have* data on weapons, and its fairly obvious that one faction is clearly superior here by one hell of a margin

I'll take the blue pill.

You'd probably be branded a heratic around these parts.

Some people even consider witchcraft.

all i see in that report is NC TK'd the most out of any faction in that time span lol. guess im not going to touch NC

Can someone photoshop Morpheus holding three pills?

I agree but you have to admit that the NC Gauss SAW has horrible recoil...