https://imgshare.io/images/2021/05/22/faction-balance.jpg I could just leave the picture here and everyone would probably understand what this is all about... But let's fill in the details. There is a problem with stagnant fights and unbalanced factions. This wouldn't be a problem if all 3 factions was fighting one another for better dynamics but, for some reason neither TR nor NC wants to fight VS, that's what people say in chat and that's what you see in the picture. And I hear people talk in chat how they're getting tired of playing Planetside2 because of this. In reality, when there's an even server population 33/33/33, it's actually 34/66 since TR and VS never fight and NC have to defend against both. So how about the devs lend us a hand in these situations or actually solve the problem? So what is the problem? NC players are just bad? I don't think so... Since both TR and NC players say it's a "drag" to fight VS and the majority are actively avoiding VS-fights unless they gate another faction. This is exactly what's happening in the picture. My guess is there's something about VS that makes people avoid fights with them, but that's just a wild guess. Whatever the case may be, it would be nice with some balance to the game, and something that makes people actually want to fight VS. Perhaps a boost of some sort for battling two factions at once and some handicaps for being the underdogs during alerts? Idk, I'm not a developer, I'm a nobody asking for a fix to the current balance issues as I'm losing interest in the game myself.
Thank you. Someone else that's able to do simply math and understand that balancing continent pop does not mean balanced fights - in fact often the opposite. It's not just an NC problem. Every faction gets double teamed. There's not much we can do to solve this to be honest. But a good step would be as you say. Significant xp boost for the double-teamed faction, along with nanite cost reductions (by maybe 50%)? What needs to be determined though is how the algorithm will know which faction is getting double teamed, and when to give/remove the boosts.
Yes I can imagine it's a different situation depending on which server people are playing on and people tend to stick to the server which they have most (friendly) population in creating even more segregation. There's already XP-Boosts when the population is low, but I can't recall anything that has to do with the actual land mass lost by specific factions. I don't mean to say weapons are unbalanced, because I think they're not... What is unbalanced tho is the willingness for someone to switch character during unbalanced times. The NS faction is a step forward as they switch sides to the losing team every now and then, but I feel there's still some favorism going on where the NS players relog to different char if they happen to join a faction they don't like (or, they start trolling and/or sabotage). I can only speak for myself tho as if I had an NS toon and happened to fight for VS, I'd hop on my NC toon instead cuz I have my main there, and it's not like VS needs my help winning anyway since they already win 3/5 alerts. What people need is just a little nudge saying "Hey, you'd be more productive logging in with your other toon for a while". Kind of like that MC-mod where you eat a specific food too many times in a row it eventually drops in effectiveness - but the opposite, instead of nerfing players in the winning faction they could boost the players in the losing faction... Ontop of that it'd be nice with faster respawn timers even in overpoped areas if the faction fares ill during an alert like the one in the picture. (?)
The xp boosts are related to continent pop. The highest pop faction gets no boost, the lower popped factions get boosts proportionate to their pop levels in compairison to the other factions. However it's not much, not very noticeable. Yeah most people will often switch to the winning faction because they want those easy certs. Thankfully though most skilled players will switch to the lowest pop faction or the one thats getting double teamed because they want more stuff to shoot. THe problem with that however is these skilled players aren't really interested in the bases or the alert, just farming endless waves of noobs. So it's as much a meta issue as it is a player mindset. However I do believe if they gave nanite cost reductions and significant xp boosts more players would be willing to join the faction getting double teamed, and at least make the fights somewhat fair. Keep in mind it's very easy to defend most bases, even with 40% pop.
He who zergs with the most numbers in a single area wins. Once you pull enough vehicles and bombard, it’s all about spawn camping. The bases have horrible spawn rooms with easy to control choke points and capture points. The vanu weapons cause the worst particle effects with brightness, spam from lashers, they have certain weapons that excel at capture points like the canis and can have constant fire with ammoless weapons like betelgeuse. So it’s obvious that TR and NC like to fight each other or it’s easier if both factions zerg the VS to keep them suppressed.
Yes I edited my post (maybe one too many times) xD It's easier to defend bases since there's a hard respawn point, what I meant is in the edited reply... Maybe if a faction goes below 15% or something they get decreased respawn timers and increased nanite regen (and/or other boosts) for the rest of the Alert as a "buff", this would probably make the factions think twice before gating an opponent, and most importantly encourage players and leaders to attack both factions.
Everyone can have infinite ammo with Ammo Printing tho, besides the Vanu rifle without bullets does low damage, not to mention every Vanu sniper using that rifle is overconfident and is an easy target. The skilled snipers uses weapons that kill in 1 shot. I agree with the bright flashes from certain VS weapons tho, some of them makes it impossible to see anything and I'm sure it's a contributing factor to why ppl don't want to fight them.
Just want to clarify in case someone decides to pick on words... This is the situation on the server I'm playing at, with my main character. Just because I'm complaining on NC being weak or not defending against VS or TR+VS teaming up or whatever... I do not imply that this is a strict NC problem globally. I wish for a change that benefits ALL factions in their time of need to balance the game for everyone regardless of server or faction you play with. In other words, I'm not fanboying, or at least I'm not trying to.
While I'm not a fan of the UA weapons, the heat weapons don't mean constant fire. In fact TR and NC weapons have more constant fire abilities with their larger mags. The betel for example can only fire 50 shots before you get a nearly 6s cooldown. No ammo doesn't mean anything in a zerg that will at least have one engineer with ammo packs.
As said, for now, the xp boost is a bit light and only for the pop number, not for battle flow. But i remember i already see a website who show where each faction fight (for ex : this alert tr spend 70% fighting nc and 30% vs), so the stats are available, if not in real time, at least for the previous alert. And yes, a little help for the unlucky would be nice. It's nice to have the ability to fight back, and a more "hard" fight should also be more fun for the attacker.
The website "ps2alerts" shows realtime and history, and I wasn't lying when I said VS wins about 3/5 alerts, they have 42% win-rate on the server I'm at. But as can be seen, on a global faction-to-faction basis the win rates are very balanced, but if we're talking server-to-server it's very segregated. In other games, you get various bonuses for creating a character on a specific server to balance the factions/races, let's say you make a new TR character on a server where NC or VS dominates in population and win rates, you get EXP and Cert bonus for joining with a TR character... Just an idea, I'm pretty much brainstorming atm xD
A design flaw is the 3 factions in a 1v1v1 scenario - it was a common thing around that time but ganging up against a single faction is simply unavoidable with such designs. Not many people want to fight the NC on Miller for example (because they abuse the META way too hard) - so it's either NC+VS against TR or NC+TR against VS, whoever of them both has the lowest population at that time
This doesn't look like it's balanced. Back in the days at my workplace (lasertag) we used to have 3 teams Red Blue and Yellow, lots of people asked why we don't just have 2 teams and the answer is "dynamics", if the two teams gets stuck a 3rd would always stir the pot. We have tried disabling the Yellow team for a week but the result was always ended the same, one team always winning. So I have no problems with the game design being 3 teams. It's actually a good thing. So it surprises me to see that one team is always more dominating than the rest depending on which server you're at... But at the same time it tells me a lot. It tells me there's a problem. A solution is to give motivation to losing teams, like EXP and Nanite cost reductions, but that's only bound to the population. There also needs to be boosts from major land loss, let's say a faction at 15% or less gets boosted or people will just leave the session which creates even more segregation in the population... A greater 30min reduction in spawn times would be a great boost. Another solution is to give new characters long-term boosts to EXP and Certs for joining a specific server, for creating and playing with a TR character where TR lacks in population and Alert wins. Players should also be given more motivation to switch to an under-populated faction, and to attack both opposing factions instead of just 1. (back to my lasertag analogy) When it comes to lasertag and two teams "teaming up", you know what usually happens? The team-up looses 99% of the times... This might seem odd but it's actually not, as 2 teams join forces the 3rd team gets more people to shoot, and the scoreboard is based on points from hitting enemies. Teaming up in lasertag whether it's intentional or not is like stabbing yourself and I don't see why Daybreak wouldn't be able to implement something that boosts the faction doing the most work. What Daybreak also needs to do is to remove the players knifing in Warpgate, I know at least 3 who spends all day with a click-script preventing them from being idle-kicked just to earn passive Certs.
It has been tripple VS continental lockdowns the entire day, 4 alerts so far and always 3 continents locked by VS... I don't know about any of you guys but as an NC player I feel good when TR wins, that's how bad it is.
