PS2 is a broken game... and why.

I'd just like to add my Hossin experience from last night where the Vanguard was eating the Prowler alive all night. That's an entire CONTINENT where the Granny has an advantage, but it's dismissed because <reasons>. And it doesn't fit the GK whining narrative.

We had a lot of trouble dislodging the NC even with packs of harassers. Lack of coordination didn't help. But getting titan AP sniped as an engi through the jungle by a Granny I couldn't even see doesn't lend itself to the whole "we can't hit anything because pebbles" idea. But wtf do I know anyway?

Again, before I exit this debate as well - I don't care if the NC get a long range weapon on par with VS and TR. They gave the VS the Aphelion which I honestly feel is WAY better than the Vulcan on a Harasser. The VS whine because their gunners don't know how to use it properly. Not my problem. I can say in a toe to toe DPS match of +10 meters the Aphelion wins. People cry Vulcan OP but don't see the amount of deaths that happen when every time you want something dead in under 30 seconds you have to be basically touching it. They only remember the time they got 1 clipped because we caught them tunneling like a *****. The Enforcer absolutely wrecks house in Vulcan range. It's stupid. But how many people use it? None, they all whine about "Oh halberd is our only option." In fact, the ONLY time the Vulcan wins is less than probably ~15m, MAX. That's clearly realistic in a common vehicle fighting scenario.

Nobody on VS uses the Vortex because they think it sucks. Couldn't be further from the truth. The Vortex works on the same mechanic as the GK - lower, sustained, incredibly precise (far moreso than the GK) damage. A smart VS MAX with cover can singlehandedly push a tank column out of its real estate. They have no choice but to move or die, or lose major DPS (like the GK?) because ONE of your players in a 2/2 MBT must constantly repair. And that repair tool only lasts so long, even maxed. And that MAX can shoot you at damn near render range, where the tank is so small the center dot obscures most of it. Where's the whining?

The NC have Ravens and the Phoenix. Two of the most OP AV weapons when used PROPERLY. One, a constant stream of guided rockets, the other, a rocket that can be fired from completely behind a rock and driven to it's target. It's IMPOSSIBLE to get to a smart heavy with a phoenix unless you have air. And you would have to completely expose yourself to do it anyway. Where's the whining?

Where's the compensation? The GK.

But again, the GK only shines in one scenario: Long, like super-long distance. And you wonder why that's where you see it the most. That's what the prowler is designed to do.

I can't wait for the Fracture buff. The tears will be ******* delicious.

My biggest gripe with the game is the cloak, hunters cloak is useless, might aswell have a neon arrow sign over your head pointing down screaming you are here cos every sod can see ya even when stood still. Then to piss us infiltrators off even further they bring out a torch so they can see us even betterl(its bloody easy to see us as it is), do they make our cloak any better noo. So why bother in the 1st place creating a class that everyone can see that is suppose to infiltrate when cloaked.

ps. before anyone starts, yeah i know its a blur, but the blur is ridiculasly garbage!

LOL, I just want to point out....that tactic may be "easy" for you, but we're talking about a major cert investment on a cloaked flash, a cloaked sundy, and a MBT worth playing with after all of that is said and done. Probably only players 50+ BR and up are even capable of performing this.

Alternatively, join up with a liberator crew. It's probably "easier".

What do you expect out of it? To be invisible? Invisibility is an illusion. Illusions are the realm of fantasy and magic. Such as Lord of the Rings, Everquest, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Cloak in PS2 is Active Camouflage. That means it takes what colors are behind you to the viewer and brings them forward. Its just a high tech form of advanced Camouflage.

You know what camouflage is supposed to do? Lowers your outline to make you harder to see by being harder to notice at a DISTANCE.

That entire post is personal views and filled with examples of "I, We, Us, ect". You spoke entirely of exact conditions and never once thought of anything but your own personal experience or that of players in top 1-5%.

If you only think of the 5%, then the 95% will leave and never return. We seen this since PS2 launched with it loosing MASSIVE AMOUNTS of players every month from the devs 100% failing to balance the damned thing as seen in every brokenly OP thing being put out. Now that those things are mostly balanced, not perfect but workable, the game is still loosing players. Why?

The game at its core is still unbalanced. You don't keep players or gain new ones if a game at its core is not balanced. Where is it still unbalanced?

Limiting or locking weapon types to one and only one/two faction/s.


MAXes are the biggest example of this, and are the last true core balance **** up PS2 has. Everything else can be fixed with number changes in stats. But you can never, NEVER, make shotguns and MMGs equals.

MAXes are the, biggest, reason NC sucks in Live. And MAXes are the biggest reason NC wins in SS.

Shotguns ******* suck for fighting over entire bases and that kills NC in Live as that means NC can't use their MAX where TR/VS can. But shotguns are great in clearing single rooms and that boosts NC in SS, that and the fact that NC is the only faction to bother even pulling MAXes in SS.

You would have a good point if the population diversity wasn't as equal as it was. For example. If we had 100000 players at start, and 33% of them left because the NC sucked and the populations went from 33-33-33 to 45-45-10 you'd be absolutely right.

Instead we frequently see close populations across the servers (during their primetimes). Even more so than other PVP oriented MMOs.

If NC was so underpowered that the NC all left. You'd be right. But they didn't. If we're going to go by population...

TR was OP at 5pm EST
NC became OP at 8:30 PM EST
VS was UP for over a month.

Is the game also broken because we have to engage in endless flame wars on the forums about balance? Are there other games that don't compel us to take hours writing whole pages of text arguing with other players? Would we rather play those games and avoid doing this forum craziness altogether?

Just my thoughts on what I've been thingkin.

Those games don't exist. Forums are already full of balance complaints, valid or not. Most of the ones about balance on this forum are relatively invalid.

NC has the most of the best things. Those stats are skewed because VS attracts technies/nerds who are usually pretty good players and TR attracts the militaristic crowd while NC gets the lolfreedom 12 yearolds.

If NC got players of the same tier as TR, they would steamroll everybody 24/7

You are doing it again. Being blind to everything not in your face and seeing nothing but black and white.


Ask yourself these questions and try to figure them out.

1- Where are the factions not equal?
2- Why are they different in those areas?
3- Is any of this recent or part of a long term pattern?
4- How would "I" fix it?

Nothing to fix. I seriously don't have the problems described by the OP when I play NC.

At this point I'm going to chalk it up to playstyle. Switch factions if NC isn't doing it for you all. If you can't find a fit, might be time to look for another game.

PS2 is broken because the class with the most defense also has a ridiculously strong offense.

So you are perfectly fine with NC being a laughingstock? And the fact that the game shown zero signs of long term population improvement SINCE LAUNCH!




The boiling frog syndrome works much better but I couldn't find a proper pic for it that isn't some propaganda crap. The point is that once you accept something, you become blind to the negatives. Never stop questioning and try to always see with new eyes.

Let's talk about those NC populations shall we?

Go to the various population trackers and check the NC populations. For some reason.. NC have historically had the HIGHEST population. Never dropping below the VS (the one that typically wins the most alerts. What you're trying to tell me is VS and TR are leaving in droves because the NC somehow sucks.

That's the argument you just made. and you wonder why I am not taking you seriously.

You don't know me very well, I'm probably the quickest to drop and discard something that is useless. And I do play more than one faction. I can honestly say the grass is not greener. Except for one thing: Coordination is better.

I've been playing MMOs for almost 2 decades. One thing I've learned is no matter how well geared you are, or skilled you think you might be. You need to have teamwork and coordination to be successful. That's something the NC largely lacks. Especially during non-primetime hours.

It's broken because it has random orange discs.

After 3 years of NC consistently loosing more alerts than they should for any number of reasons and not being blessed with some brokenly OP gear to gain the 4th faction hoppers it is no wonder NC doesn't have leaders anymore. They all left YEARS AGO to play VS/TR or some other game and quit outright. You have to be a certain type of person to keep playing the loosing team by choice.

Also in those same 3 years the only promotion PS2 ever had has been nearly 95% NC focused. Outside of the Youtube followers at launch nipping at the feet of AngryJoe, TotalBiscuit, Criken, DevilDogGamer, and many others almost ALL went TR, damn near everything has been showing NC front and center. So any new players are more likely to join NC to start with but then they quickly jump to TR/VS or quit after seeing how bad NC is.

Combine both, and remember that this is over 3 years, there was NO chance at NC keeping organized players. The amount of work needed to run a random NC platoon is staggering when most all NC ES gear is crap in random hands. Meanwhile TR/VS platoons have ES gear that works well enough in the hands of randoms. TR/VS platoon leaders don't have it easy either but at least they aren't FORCED to make each and every player in their platoon work with each other in a certain way in order to be worth a damn. Get any old group of TR/VS players and odds are they have weapons that are going to work in most situations. Do the same with a group of NC and odds are they are going to have niche/highly focused weapons that are only work in certain/exact situations.


The lack of balance caused the lack of organization over time. You will NEVER fix the latter without fixing the former, and the longer balance is out of wack the worse things get. After 3 years of problems one after another that lasted for months each, things snowballed rather hard.

It's a wonder PS2 is still alive. Crap like that would have killed any other game in under a year, 2 tops.

Hello. OP here.

I thought I'd pop back and see if anyone had replied to what I originally wrote. Quite suprised to still see it on page 1.
The original intention was (and was clearly stated) that this was a message to the devs, and not aimed at players from any faction. I love (or now loved) players on all factions, nothing I mentioned was their fault.
There was zero Wahhhhhhhhs or tears, just a sadness.

I just want to make one thing clear. I specifically mentioned the Gatekeeper, more as a final straw... but clearly not the only issue.

But here's the deal. All I ask from a game is that it is fair. When you join a faction (and end up investing plenty of cash into it, to support the concept), the only thing that matters is a good fair fight, where you know that the line that divides between players is their skill level. Sure, there will be a grind at the start to get the things you need, but beyond that, you should be able to compete.

For this game to work... and for the devs to have a much simpler life, each faction should have very equally matched weapons. Make them look and sound different, but underneith, keep them effectively the same! Balance issues will vanish!
This whole stupid faction attribute thing is just pointless, because it will never balance out, and all it does it make the players feel frustrated (different factions have had this issue throughout the years... that is why I'm not picking on TR, it's just their turn to be OP) and the devs probably have to spend (or should!) endless hours/days/weeks trying to work out how to balance it all. They can't anticipate how it will really impact the game, and once they have put it out there, they are slow to react, and can't really take it all back because people have paid for it half the time.

If Daybreak eventually decide to make PS3, then do the players and yourselves a favour, make the capabilities of each faction more or less the same, if not exactly. Let the deciding factor be skill. Go wild on the design front, make any weapons out of the ordinary a capturable thing, so you have to fight to get control of the mega weapon (that is awesome to see in action, even if you die from it!)... that sort of thing!

But right now, every new addition to the game increases the variables of balance and ultimately make the game frustrating and less fun.


tldr: PS2 (or PS3!) just needs the following...
Fair fights.
Equal capability weapons for all factions.
Skill and tactics as the deciding factor in winning and losing.
and that's it. It is how all good fps games work, it isn't rocket science.


I appreciate that PS2 is different, and has given the faction attribute thing a go, but it just doesn't work.
TR, I love you guys, and I'm glad you have some power etc right now, but no one wants to fight you because of it (like VS and their maxes a little while ago)... this is ruining your game too. Its a domino effect, not any players fault, which is why I emphasize again that this message is for the devs. Thank you for replying though and helping spotlight the post, as I do hope the devs read and consider my points.
I really miss playing the game, but I just know if I play it I'll get pissed off again. I just want to enjoy big, but fair battles again.

Miss you all. Have a good weekend y'all.

Losing team? Is that why they win 60% of server smashes? You're not going to be able to get around that fact. If NC was so bad, they'd never win a SS. And they shouldn't have won the World Record Event.. which was the largest Alert in PS2 and Gaming History.

Who cares where some second rate players go that just want to score some revenue for their streaming and uploads? As soon as a shiny new game comes out, they drop what they are doing because thats where the money is.

You want to know why NC lacks coordination? Because of you. If they don't have leadership, why don't you take it up? Take personal responsibility and step up. If you don't step up, you deserve to lose.

Don't blame Daybreak.
Don't bame your faction.
Don't blame the equipment.

Blame Yourself.

The fortunate thing is SOE/Daybreak knows its the players' fault. That's why you won't get buffs. So quit or keep losing. You're incapable of winning. Even if you switched to VS or TR. You'd still lose. So don't drag them down with you by switching.

All you all expect the devs to have the same thing? Typical of a millennial. Holds a celebrity (in this case a dev) to higher standard them themselves. Its amazing what an individual is actually capable of when they hold themselves to the same standard as they hold everyone else to.

I do. You all don't.

That's why you have issues and I don't.