Why is Vanu Significantly Underpop?

It wasn't a problem that existed only on the VS side, so no one has any right to attack anyone, period. As a TR I can curse NC all day long for having OP weapons that they had and still have today like ScatMax as well as Higby the fired NC-loving developer for spoiling them all those years, but the NC players were in denial and cried with excuses like "friendly fire" or "NC shoot each other" (aka low IQ). On NC I can also remember the red terror of the Striker squad, Vulcan harassers, Banshee rain, Gatekeeper, etc.. Most of which got nerfs much quicker than other factions' toys, something that the TR players always remember. The VS had some cool things that I tried before nerfs like beta Magrider, ZOE, and Orion, but nothing really OP like NC's pre-nerf treasures like Airhammer (C4 damage type at launch), Vanguard shield, Jackhammer, etc..

You talk as if the constant problem comes from only VS, but that's because you have been seeing them as the scapegoat, which makes you part of the problem, or "parasite" as you call it.

I have virtually no experience with other faction weapons except the default TR LMG. The ghot feels strong to use for obvious reasons and about 80% of my kills with it are headshots. Serpent was my 2nd auraxium and in terms of effectiveness the other vanu carbines can't compete in any way IMHO.
These days i am forced to play a lot more infiltrator than i would like to, this is because often times VS will get absolutelly boxed into spawns with infantry and vehicles and purelly out of being sick of the ghost and SMGS I use the biggest BB gun of them all, a supressed artemis and its surprisinlgy effective although somewhat unsatisfying to shoot.
The vanu LMGs feel lackluster to say the least I understand the orion is considered to be amongst the best LMGs but It feels like a BB gun to me.
I steer clear of NS weaponry beacause I view them as a copout and they just look wrong on a VS soldier, the only exception to that is the comissioner which I use as a sidearm pretty much on all loadouts because the VS sidearms are just terible.
This is all subjective as I have next to no experience with playing other factions apart from a few hours of TR HA.
Anyway the other factions weapons mostly feel stronger to me subjectively but I'd say this is down to most of them just having better aim than I do with different weapons.
Don't even get me started on the no bullet drop insult of a faction trait lol.
Atleast running around and inside the enemy lines with a supressed artemis spaming proxies under their feet getts them supper upset a lot of times

It wasn't meant as an attack to you or your weapons. It was more a general pointer to emphasize that what you mentioned are not Vanu-specific things. When you ask 'what is TR/NC specialty/trait' you can give a clear answer. It's not really that case for Vanu.

Vanu do not have a unique feature that's widespread throughout their arsenal. We do not have a unique trait to distinguish our weapons from the other faction's. Sure we may have unique combinations of stats to provide a more accurate weapon but all of those stats can be found in other factions as well. We do not have a 200 damage tier. We do not have a 900+ RoF weapon. We don't have 40 bullet magazines for free. We don't have a distinguishable, defining trait. And that's sad. And that's bad for PR.

Sure we have infinite ammo on our directive weapons, but that's not an argument you'd use to convince a new player. 'Come play our faction because if you make like 6000 kills with a weapon type, you finally get something unique.' That's not appealing.
And yes, I know we have faction unique things - but only within the empire specific items! Yes, we have an infinite ammo sniper, just as we don't have a burst sniper and we don't have a railgun. Yes, we have the Lasher, just as we don't have a burst shotgun or a chaingun. Those are not arguments for vanu's trait. Vanu's trait should be oozing throughout their entire arsenal - not just the empire specific things.

It's not speed, it's not damage, it's not DPS, it's not DPM. And it's hardly agility. I don't even know what the Vanu trait is at this point, since everything that is/was unique and powerful to VS is either nerfed or super niche. Oh well, I hope this is just my bias speaking.

Vanu need a more - catchy - oomph - phrase to better define their empire. Power! Armor! Dakka! High Alpha! DPM!

Pretty much this, however, I wouldn't say parasite. He simply were at the receiving end of some really poor design decisions on then SOEs part. Just how much it sucked to face pre-nerf HE/HEAT Prowlers and Strikers. The TR defended those weapons as well, much in the same manner as he accuse VS of doing. The TR on Miller abused these to the point where it nearly killed the server. At the most extreme, TR pop reached 50% global on Miller and VS were down to 17%(occasionally dropping down to 14%).

Generally speaking, players who stuck to one faction for a long time or still are tend to have less favourable things to say about the other factions than those who's played all factions(and by playing all factions I do not mean log in for 30 minutes and conclude X or Y weapon is OP).

Too many players look at what the other faction can do, and instead of maximizing their own advantages, they try to emulate the other faction. Predictable this leads to frustration, which leads to resentment or even hatred.

Oh please, you're complaining about what? A shotgun doing well in close quarters?

The only acceptable NC weapon to complain about is the Anchor, it is straight up overpowered. Nerfing the Vanguard shield by making them unable to fire can work too.

Outside of that? The NC are pretty solid in terms of what they should be.

We're talking about notorious problems in the community, and for a long time, the most notorious one was the pre-nerf VS community, who were objectively the worst.

So for example with the vulcan, banshee, and strikers. The argument was made, and won several times, that because the TR lagged behind in infantry weapons, that they should be able to excel with those three, because it let them win. So that since it was harder to use TR guns, you could make up for it be having Mosquitoes with banshees clear out an area, or get a vulcan prowler or harasser to destroy sunderers. As well as the striker making up for the fractures, which were abysmal.

The NC however weren't in a bad spot, because the NC was and is pretty much perfect in terms of where it should be. It has significant strengths and weaknesses. What should be done is bring others to their level, then you'd be good to go.

And when NC got some nerfing to balance them out a little more, you didn't get anywhere near the amount of screeching that we all got from the VS community.

The VS was outright objectively, the most OP faction before the nerf, and had the worst community I've personally ever seen in my life. They were notoriously bad.

I'm not saying other people never whined or acted out, but the TR community was fairly often right, the NC were more reasonable more often, but the VS community? Hell no, they were notoriously bad, everyone who played during those days had to deal with them and their superiority complex. They were an objectively bad community. Now it seems they're gone, I say good riddance.

I just had to.

In the original text I wrote, I had added: Pls don't say spandex, las0rz or disco. I omitted that, because I assumed the tone of the post was serious enough to warrant serious replies. Guess not

Anyone thinking of complaining about saying one faction whined more than one of the others really has no place. I've been around since Alpha and all the factions have whined massively. Once again picking one of the factions out is straight up hypocrisy.

A single lancer was always less scary than a single phoenix or striker. And one of those 3 was very good at one point in killing ESF's, I'll let you figure that one out. The multiplier is what made the lancers seemed op but if you ever used the multiplier in a group with the other two they were just as scary. The render range was an issue but that was an error by creation. Same with the Vanilla Gatekeeper render range bull.

It funny the few things you could actually do some controlled outcomes, like the MLG at a time when apparently VS was OP. Who was the faction that won the majority of those? These are the question I find interesting and funny. If you know the outcome of controlled settings and can't use those to make evaluations? How are you going to make judgement calls in the open game.

Heh, each empire does go through its Zerg phase and this has always been the case.

Frankly that's why early on, I saw the writing on the wall and hedged my bets, making characters on all factions. I'm at a point now, having started early enough, years ago, that I have everything on every faction.

If you play VS and are sick of getting beat down and over popped, well play another empire.

Will you making the problem worse? Yes, but frankly that's not our responsibility.

The only responsibility you have is to enjoy yourself and, sometimes, the ONLY way to do it is switch factions. Start building up your NC and TR characters so you can hedge your bets too and guarantee some semblance of fun any time, any day by having the characters available.

One day the VS will Zerg supreme once again and you can always dust off your VS character then.

"Assumption is the mother of all f**kups."
Paulo Coelho

Personally I love playing the lowest pop faction.

When I login, I always go with the underdog empire at the time, unless I'm with friends who want to play a specific faction.

If I play at different times during the day, I get to play all 3 factions.

i played all 3 factions and its all peaks and drops. But even so, VS still win alerts so its not a entirely a big issue for them. I generally play VS for fun and as a test account. generally get some perspective on the other factions and experience what hurts and what works so i can use it on my other accounts.

Alerts are a very poor way of evaluating a faction... if it was a 1v1 faction I'd reconsider that statement but in a 3-way there's as I've stated in this thread way to many variables to consider to make that a valid point.

Here's another tip: one faction will typically get concentrated on. Unless you like being outnumbered, switch factions away from that empire.

I call that BS right now and will continue to do so until shotgun max get nerfs. Server smashes are the best way to compare faction strength, so you don't have to "tell" other people how NC is "OK" because players from multiple servers will tell you NC is not balanced. I have shown many times already on the forum the comparison of DPS output by Scatmax vs TR/VS max alongside an analysis of infantry shotgun DPS vs carbine DPS, and numbers don't lie.

A corrected version of your sentence: The NC was outright objectively, the most OP faction since launch, and had the worst community I've personally ever seen in my life. They were notoriously bad.

You can also stop talking about TR since you don't know and don't care to know TR history I mentioned. Almost every single good thing that TR ever had lasted no more than a couple of months, whereas NC on the other hand kept their goodies like Airhammer OP for years until very recently. NC Jackhammer was the only One-Hit-Kill shotgun with its triple burst until pump shotguns were introduced for all factions, and once again it took years for developers to make NS Baron so the other factions can compete with a similar medium-range shotgun.

Like you said, "And when NC got some nerfing to balance them out a little more, you didn't get anywhere near the amount of screeching that we all got from the VS community." NC got "nerfs" that "balanced" them to be less OP, whereas VS/TR got nerfs that made things useless. At least TR has got buffs that made things such as Striker and Banshee useful again, VS on the other hand... (no wonder DBG made a twitter recruiting post for VS)

Well then I'm just going to cut this short because I don't care for your whining.

Number 1, well then keep whining, no one cares. Maybe in small arenas, the NC have the advantage, but guess what? Planetside is a game that relies on massive numbers, and wide maps. If you can only slaughter in very close quarters, you're not going to be in an open field. So stop whining about shotguns working the way they're supposed to.

Number 2, maybe in the past. Since I started playing, it was the VS.

Number 3, pfff, more like your history, your "alternative facts" I'm sure. And I love this, you complain about a shotgun...killing really well at close range. Love it. A gun that can't fight long range, or medium range, can only fight close and very close range, does really well at close and very close ranges, but sucks anywhere else, is a problem? Next you're gonna tell me that sniper rifles being effective long range weapons isn't fair I'll bet.

Number 4, maybe for the TR they made things useless, not for the VS. Devs never seemed to do well with balancing TR. That's not even the point really too, the general behavior of pre-nerf Vanu community was abysmal, just purely abysmal. Had the game magically been free, and the devs never wanted and needed money, I'm sure they would've mass-banned a large portion of the VS community during that time. They were that bad. And if you've been around for a couple of years, then you yourself should also know, unless you're one of them, which at this point, might be a reasonable suspicion for me to have.

And that's where this ends for me. I'm not going to listen to your whining about the NC, nor your obvious defense of the old VS community. Go take it somewhere else to someone who wants to argue about it.

Well I'm just going to post this link as I would of used the official patch notes if still available, but they are not. Basically this post is before your account was even created. You have yet to post anything to validate what your talking about and are strictly being opinionated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1gbcvw/pts_pros_and_cons_of_zoe_nerf/

Ah so you want to declare yourself the arbiter of what is and isn't validated?

Well High Lord ridic, that's too bad.

You said you were around since alpha, then you should know very well how the pre-nerf VS community behaved. They were especially bad.

It's both, it's opinion, and fact. It's opinion because I'm saying that I they're worse, and that's coming from me. We know it's fact because back then, the forums were filled with people who were furious at the VS community, and the VS community lashing out against everyone.

So spare me your nonsense, you said you were around since Alpha, so you should know. Now perhaps during the Alpha days, and the Beta days, someone else was the bad guy, but that was back then.

What me and apparently the rest of the community who was around then agree on, is that the pre-nerf VS community were the worst, by far. Again, you say you were around for quite a while, you surely were on the forums, you surely played against the VS several times, and several times with them. You should know how both regular joes, and more hardcore players felt about the VS community on the forums, and how people thought about the VS in game. Which in both areas, was pretty bad. The VS community back then was just about as favored as North Korea.

So no, it's more your opinion that anything else, you're not above anything. You're not in the position to be the arbiter of what's valid, and what isn't. And what's with the link? What do you want me to get from it exactly? It's a discussion about the ZOE nerf, nothing particularly interesting.

Yet you talk about it as if it's still fresh and still affecting your perception.
You were called out because you're bringing up bad things from the past in a negative, toxic way. Maybe VS was toxic. Maybe the nerfs were warranted. I don't think it's that black and white. At the same time, TR and NC have their share of whine, hate and bias, too.

But I also don't think there's a point in this segregating way of talking. You (and ridicOne) are not helping anyone with this discussion. Both of you have an opinion, both are defending that as fact. But until you provide a verifiable means of measuring the 'toxicity level of a certain community', you can't claim anything. And even if you could, it's in the past.
And even if it was relevant today, not everybody in a community is equally minded. It just makes you look like a generalizing bigot.

So please, keep the forums civil and don't engage in pointless, hatred inciting opinion flinging. Instead, try to engage in the discussion the OP posted


Yes, I know, this reply is off-topic, too. And yes, I know, I'm not a forum mod... shush.

Wow... there are some really salty people floating around here! I recommend chocolate!

CHOCOLATE FOR EVERYBODY!