[Suggestion] DBG take a look at VS and fix them

If you knew how to read I was talking purely about their population, and the others cant fight each other theres a massive wall of blue separating the other factions. and I have played NC quite extensively it was my first faction.

Yeah idiot, no where did you ever say the NC was the strongest faction. Definitely not in the very first words.

No one wants to fight an uphill battle. If one faction is overpoping everyone else they win and everyone lets them. And it is, according to you, that even with one of the most meaningful advantages a faction can have in PS2 they somehow still lose a disproportionate amount. How could the NC be even close to the "strongest" if they can't even win with a major population advantage?

I doubt it, it really doesn't show.

Strongest faction because they have the most people, as should have been common sense since the rest of that post was all about population, but I guess expecting people to have enough sense to do basic deductive reasoning is too much to ask for. And the reason NC loses with the most population is because before the alert started they were dominating so they have plenty of border territories for the other factions to take.

And this false idea you're trying to spread that nobody wants to fight the stronger faction, remember back pre PPA nerf when VS was dominating the servers NC and TR teamed up to double team VS in every alert because if you dont then you'll just get stomped by the super power. The same thing is happening now, rather than spreading forces evenly between 2 fronts you focus all on one front and you'll only be on the offensive and wont have vanguards rolling through your own territory.

"NC is the strongest faction and has the highest pop..." --NXR1 Ya' see, the "and" here creates a distinction between the two ideas. You're stating the NC is strong, and that the NC has the highest pop, not that they are strongest because they have the higher pop. I guess it's too much to ask that others be to be able to read and write English either.

If the NC has the most territory before the alert starts, they were able to hold their territory.

People will almost always take the path of least resistance. This is a well-known fact. This is even why there were so many PPAs to begin with.

I used to think NC had the short end of the stick till I certed out some NC toys. So put a +1 on the list of people who've changed their opinion.

That's easy enough to PROVE false. We can all agree that the majority of players in this game choose to zerg against little to no opposition. The majority of players have the tendency to pick EASY TARGETS.

This is a great point. I've played extensively on each faction on Connery, and I think VS is avoided not because of their gear, but their extremely successful use of cheesy tactics. Dropping on points at the last second, Cloaked Fury/Deci Flashes, Ramming Scythes, Air-lock squads, Harasser zergs, Hives glitched in terrain, Hive Side 2, long range Lancer Squads (when that was possible)... They find something broken and exploit it to an extent TR and NC never have.

Actually, the only example to the contrary are the Sundy balls NC used to run. TR doesn't even exploit Striker Valks, and NC doesn't take full advantage of their Maxes.

But I can't speak for all servers.

My point exactly. What could be further from an easy fight than a 2-1, or a 3-1? When one side is dominating sheerly due to pop they will always have the ability to massively outnumber their enemy, hence why players would choose to fight the other faction instead.

Hey guys I am glad to see some healthy debate going on here about this issues.

To come back on a couple of items.

Pop and alert logging sites for this game stopped being updated properly some time ago, we dont have accurate information anymore except from Steam which only shows logins from their platform (which I do), this has shown a significant drop in the last 4 months. When a population is already on the low end when this happens the impact is even bigger hence this issues on the servers now for VS. This is compounded then by players jumping (even vets) to the other empires because its no fun being ganged and defending all the time. In PS1 they introduced a 24 hour timer on empire switching for a reason.

ZOE show me a VS player that uses it, I challenge you, it was OK only for AA but the range nerf ruined that so it became pointless.

PS1 data and history is there for DBG not to repeat the mistakes in PS2, when an empire pop drops and organised outfits stop fielding platoons the empire is easy meat. Steam rolling a weak opposition gets boring, been there bought the T-Shirt on PS1 against TR and starts the slide to the end of the game.

This is effectively my post from the outset, I dont care what empire it is that has a problem its the game I like, all 3 empires need to be roughly equal or the game dies (also new content or its gets stale).

Right now there is solid proof on the servers that VS population is a problem, that problem has to stem from imbalance and that is DBG's problem to sort out.

If DBG like Blizzard offered character transfer or empire transfer you would see VS disappear on most servers right now.

Firstly its not creating a distinction between the two things, they are the strongest, they have the highest pop. It just happens to be the reason they are the strongest is because they have the most people, but when I said strongest I mostly just meant they are doing the best they are the most solid faction right now because they are never under popped.

And once again its not about the other factions attacking NC purely because they are winning, its about the factions fighting to retake their territory they lost to the dominant one and once the zerg starts it doesn't stop it keeps going until the dominant faction becomes the weakest. It happens to TR (it just happened today) it happens to NC and it happens to VS it just happens to NC more now because they have the highest server pop so they usually are going to be dominating when the alerts start.

I'm afraid it is, but that's just English. They don't often have the highest pop as far as I can ever tell, and they are easily the weakest faction hence the fact that they lose much more than the other two faction and always have. I wish the NC was never underpoped. One time, I was literally the only NC on Esamir! But obviously every faction is under and over-poped sometimes.

If the other two factions weren't fighting NC before the alert, it would have to be because they were not attacking the strongest faction.

Again, there is no evidence to ever suggest the NC is ever dominating anything when all they ever do is lose alert after alert. If they were somehow dominating before, why can they suddenly not continue to win? If they had the vast majority of territories, the TR & VS would have no other choice but to attack the NC as they get cut off and forced into NC-only lattice lanes.

yeah this was exactly one of the points I was getting at.
It's frankly a little bit Creepy to me how well they've always gotten along and never had any Egos/Personas like BuzzcutPhychoes distracting from their daily push. There's also all the other things... like how they're still the hardest faction to see at night, Their MBT's still break the physics everyone else is bound to, still have best ESF Hover in a game where 2/3's of all ESF roles come down to exploiting Hover to be the most annoying threat in the air, and their awareness Skill Floor on most of their worst players is still higher than the other 2 factions making it less effective to attempt to Farm them.

Whatever it is.... I honestly think they have a harder time finding Fights than the NC and TR do. They often have to go cut off one of the other factions to get them to engage the VS directly. And I think that explains more of their pop imbalance these days than the claims that they're somehow not successful ENOUGH

I dont know what server you play on but I was purely speaking about emerald where NC ever since I started playing again a few months ago has been massively overpopping every single day, I dont think theres been a single day where NC's server pop was lower than TR or VS's. Also NC is winning most of the alerts too just yesterday they had every cont locked except indar and TR only got indar because VS helped us with a last minute full pop drop on one area.

Miller. Sounds like a perception bias, but not impossible that the NC despite having really no changes or additions suddenly surged in pop on Emerald, every single day...

Even if the NC did win almost every alert for the day, this is only one day on one server where the history still hasn't changed.

NC pop has been growing ever since VS got their toys nerfed and all the 4th factioners had to find someone else to go to. With NC getting things like mjolnir, promise, and gladius the combined arms update being a massive buff for vanguard and NC MAX being massively superior to the others its not really surprising people chose NC to go to next for fun toys.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone's just trying to pull my leg, or if basically no one ever reads anything I have ever said. Maybe both.

The Mjolnir is craptastic, the Promise is the NC's worst LMG (thanks to the few forumsiders who actually participated in the thread ), and the Gladius is the worst SMG, worst 200/~500 and nigh one of the worst guns I've ever had the displeasure of auraxing.

But don't take my word for it! Here are the usage stats for each: Mjolnir-H - 3097, Promise - 3640, Gladius - 4103.
Source: http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/items/weapons

Now, to give a frame of reference, the Mjolnir-H is the NC's most popular harasser weapon according to the number of users. (Vanguards use hardly any). The next best is the Canister-H at 3055, for some reason. While true the Mjolnir does seem to be the best the only competition it has for the slot is the Halberd (2294) or the Enforcer (1639). To compare it to something actually overpowered, the Vulcan (6247), it has less than half the popularity.

The Promise is the second least used non-directive NC LMG, or standard-variant NS-15M or Naginata, with the first being the lame old SAW S. The fact that there are more GODSAWs about that SAW Ses should tell you everything you need to know about that. Even the EM1 has a good 508 more users than the Promise.

Gladius is just a bad gun, but to keep with the numbers here it is once again the least popular non-directive NC or standard-variant NS SMG with the only exception being the NSX Tengu with a whopping 100 less users. Again to give an idea of the true most popular SMGs, the PDW (13,008) and MKV (6912), the Gladius is ~1.5x to ~3x less popular than the two most popular.

If these weapons were at all good or useful one would expect to see them being at least somewhat popular or in the Mjolnir's case as common as their supposed faction "equivalents."

Vanguard is literally no more effective than it was prior to the CAI while suffering a longer repair time. It was just a flat nerf.

NC MAX is as always massively overrated by players whom have never even tried to use it.

The NC doesn't exactly have a lot going for it, hence why the lose so much. I think you're just trying to through me for a loop here.

I'm convinced that Connery VS is suffering from 4th Factioning. Just as I logged on, VS had somehow pushed to the TR's AMP Station, and a lock alert began. NC and TR immediately seemed to abandon their fights with each other, and proceeded to blitz-zerg the everloving bejesus out of the VS, with unprecedented pop numbers while VS pop seemed to immediately drop. It can't be anything else. People are logging off of their VS accounts to farm easy VS kills and XP since all of the half-decent outfits left when the Korean and other East Asian players came to the server, and the only people running the show are TWC2 (a known skill-less zergfit with incompetent leadership).

Its not about whats good its about whats fun. Promise is a gun that fixes alot of peoples biggests problems with this game, the massive CoF, the gimmick with the promise is, no CoF. Gladius is definitly the best SMG in the game for SMG infil Ive had some stupid amounts of fun running around with a gladius even more than with the infamous cyclone. Canister is a rapid fire HE shotgun, compared to vanus exploding orbs of hurt and TR's exploding orbs of hurt its unique. The new sunderer weapons NC is getting a railgun, vanus getting a double saron and TR is getting, oh wow, another grenade launcher. NC is basically the only faction that is currently holding any uniqueness to it when I play TR or VS the weapons feel basically the same, TR has a few more bullets VS has no drop other than that its more of the same, when Im playing NC its like a whole different world and NC has such a vast arsenal from DPS machines like the cyclone bandit and GD-7F to long range hard hitters like the gauss saw and the a-tross its no surprise that people find NC's arsenal the most appealing, I love TR but that NC arsenal is almost enough to make me change sides.

Those got cancel'd for sunderer and the models will be re-purposed into Harasser/MBT topguns.
Currently the vanu one is a Chargeable wave beam that can penetrate multiple vehicles, the TR one is a rapid-fire laser guided launcher and the NC is probably going to be a heavy hitting rail gun.

What's fun is a matter of opinion, though again the lower popularity of the weapons in question generally suggests most people don't find them fun or at least not fun enough.

Being NC I certainly don't share the opinion that a shotgun is at all a unique weapon. I actually would go so far as to call it a lazy boring placeholder. Negative uniqueness!

Sunndy topguns were first added to the PTS a while back but obviously were never released. As far as I'm aware there still aren't any plans to bring them back to live. Just as well, if ya' ask me.

Arsenal wise the only thing actually unique to the NC is the 200/~500 damage model, and maybe a few specifics like the Railjack and Magscatter. TR have their special guns too like the Watchman and the TRAP, and the VS has all the special flavor. The general arsenals of each faction are surprisingly similar however; A lot of players say the NC has the most varied arsenal but it's just not entirely true.

That exodus of players impacted all factions, not just VS. As for incoming Asian players, VS really did luck out with the Koreans, so don't complain so much. As for TWC2, they're a zergfit, but arguably the most functional zergfit on the server. Would you trade them for PAL3?

Seriously, FPSK and Don have spoiled VS for the past two years. Whether you flew, tanked, or just went infantry, VS has been easy mode for quite a long time. Anyone with a shred of honesty who hops factions half as much as I do knows this.

NC has the most versatile arsenal. TR is all close range innacurrate bullet hoses that dakka dakka better than anyone else. VS is about accuracy and no drop so they can get long range headshots with minimal effort. NC has everything from close range headshot machines like the anchor the bandit and the cyclone and long range headshot machines like the atross reaper razor gauss saw. There are no gaps in the NC arsenal they have a gun of every type for every situation. VS is probably the most niche since they dont have the DPS or the range. and TR is pretty much all just bullet hoses some less so then others for medium range fighting but not much in the ways of long range guns except for the sabr and arguably the torq.