Are NS sidearms too good?

A few observations with all sidearms :



All cert unlock only sidearm kills :

All cert unlock only sidearm KPH :

All cert unlock only sidearm Q4 kills :

All cert unlock only sidearm KPU :

All cert unlock only sidearm average BR :



Trying to get all sidearm stats in one graph caused an internal server error, so I couldn't test all of them at the same time. I'd encourage some experimentation with more weapon variants.


There are also the Q1, Q2 and Q3 stats, but they're mostly identical.


In terms of kills, KPH and uniques, most used sidearms are Commissioner, Underboss, Emissary, Pilot, Blackhand, ES starter pistols and then the rest of ES pistols. Only Hunter QCX out of all NS sidearms falls behind ES starter pistols. Interesting to note that each NS sidearm has at least 5 different variants.




I don't have much to say other than NS sidearms, especially at higher levels, are used a lot more than ES counterparts. I'd like to see high skill/high reward ES pistols, as well as revisiting existing ones (most VS sidearms have depressingly low KPH and kills).

To put it this way:

I've done the pistols directive a few times for each faction. Each time I use underboss, emissary, pilot, commissioner and blackhand. If I'm TR I might do the repeater instead of the blackhand.

They don't really feel like pistols asides from mag size and ammo pool, it's just too easy to main with them, and they nearly all out-dps regular weapons, which is a little weird.

These pistols are too powerful, in my opinion. It's much too easy to kill things with the commissioner. With the blackhand at least you're restricted to a 4x scope and have larger coF. With underboss you need to land 2 headshot, which isn't hard, but I guess somewhat fair. Emissary is pretty bad. But since it's super accurate and has a large mag, it's super easy to chain headshots which leads to me mowing down squads with it. Very deadly and great range. But the commissioner only needs a headshot and a bodyshot to kill. Far too easy to do. Basically it's an automatic 'I WIN' card when you pull it on someone. In fact when I see someone pull out the commissioner and run behind a corner before I can finish them off with my lmg, I retreat. A full health dude with an lmg should not retreat from a dead guy with a pistol. But the thing is he'll peek me and by the time I see him appear on my screen I'll be dead due to how fast the weapon kills.

With the blackhand its a bit harder than the commissioner but still pretty broken imo. I farmed a squad of ghost cappers by myself so hard with it one of them bought the thing with dbc. As funny as these moments are, it's not a cool experience to just instantly die without being able to react. In fact I made a few rage quit after "that's the tenth time that dude kills me with that **** pistol". Squad leader messaged me about this.

It's not entirely my fault, I just want to do my pistols directive and I obviously go for the quickest grinds.

Same story with the pilot. In fact for quite a while it was my pistol of choice, because of how amazing it performs in cqc. I would actually just main with it, switching to the pilot in cqc instead of my betel. I'm still in the top 3 of the most kills in the game with the P variant. Very good pistol, but it does feel like the 1hk is a bit too much. Problem is the ammo reserves and capacity in the clip. I would often challenge 5-6 guys and have to switch to the knife to finish off the last one(s). And too many times I ran out of ammo.

Overall all weapons could use a tuning of at least 1 extra shot to kill for the head. This could be achieved by tweaking the hs multiplier for each weapon. And it makes some sense if you think about it.

Just to clarify: KPH and kills is the total number. So if you have 10 uniques getting 1 kill each in an hour and 100 uniques getting 1 kill each in an hour they effectively are similar in performance but the kills and KPH are much higher.
KPU is more useful, but still needs other stats to truly determine what is happening with the weapon and why.

That said, the NS variants see a ludicrously higher use and the Commisioner is head and shoulders above everything. As a finisher the Commisioner is a great choice when a single accurate shot can finish a fight.

I would rather add stuff and make other weapons more useful, although the Comissioner does seem to need a nerf as we don't want pistols all to be that useful.

I would suggest that besides an emergency finisher, side-arms should fulfill alternative roles as well. We have a leg damage modifier, so imagine if we had bullets designed to incapacitate someone's legs so if you shoot them their movement speed is slowed? It's a nice dualistic approach: you get 10% less damage but do nerf your opponent.
This way you can introduce a variety of ammo types specific to pistols to make them more attractive without needing to buff their damage.

Shoutout to the mag-scatter.

The Commissioner is the favourite weapon for infiltrators with stalker cloak, as it's one of the most effective weapons ingame. It's always better to have a weapon that causes more damage rather than having high DPS values in Planetside - the usual automatic guns nearly always get outgunned by shotguns, battle rifles and revolvers

Exactly. The key thing is just not to panic/spam them. A lot of people go crazy and start wildly spamming these weapons which can lead to mixed results. Remember you have the better weapon, take the extra time to aim and you will kill the guy faster than he can kill you.

yep the NS sidearms are absolutely too good,
commie, underboss and blackhand are like having a battlerifle in your pocket with 2 headshot kills,
Pilot is like having a shotgun in your pocket since you can click twice and kill from bodyshots out to 19m
(it does it much better than magscatter, which is actually supposed to be a mini shotgun.)
and crossbow is where things start getting really ridiculous, i've duelled and killed tanks with this thing.

there was a time when faction specific sidearms mattered, Repeater was one of the attractive reasons to play TR!
now just buy an NS sidearm and flashlight with DBC and use it on every character, they vastly outshine the empire specific stuff.

Yes! That is why shotguns are some of the most used weapons in the game!
Wait they aren't.
At least Battle Rifles are used by every man woman and child!
Nope, like shotguns amongst one of the least used weapon types.
Well they should at least perform better right? Nope!
Well at least the high damage faction side-arms are some of the most used and best performing weapons! Oh wait no the burst pistols that combine accuracy and damage are the best.

The best weapons in the game are easy to use. This is why some supposedly UP weapons still perform as good or better than their "betters" as they let players get the maximum out more easily.
The commisioner is the odd one out, combining damage and accuracy in an easy to use and understand package. That is why it's the most used weapons.

Just check some stats before you regurgitate bias onto everyone, reinforcing the bias of like-minded people who then decide that checking up on it isn't necessary.

Making sure that the NS pistols are the most powerful is the easy way to avoid balance complaints.

Didn't need to check stats - like you said, the majority of players use the easy to use guns (automatic weapons). If you meet somebody that can handle shotguns and battle rifles while runing around with those... well game over man, game over.

I recently switched to the Dragoon, and the times I simply outgun people is ridiculous

The Dragoon is one of the Doku weapons, and practically every Doku weapon is one of the better or best of their weapon category. That does not make the entire battle rifle category OP, Just like the Doku Carbines do not make all Carbines OP etc.

Shotguns and battle rifles are specialist weapons. I always give players who think Shotguns are OP a challenge: use them your entire playsession. Do not swap out no matter what fight you are at, and try to be successful with them. Without the right context such weapons aren't powerful. In fact many times players don't seem to register if they kill a shotgunner beyond 15m.

Almost everyone hates playstyles that are not their own and playstyles that make players feel they couldn't protect themselves. Which happens if you with an automatic gets caught at range by a Battle Rifle or in close range by a shotgun. But this is literally complaining that a weapon does what it is designed for. Imagine a shotgunner complaining that an LMG is good at short to mid range, you would laugh at him right?

I switched from the AMR-66, good rifle too. And I indeed used shotguns for a majority of sessions - simply because longrange is dominated by infiltrators anyway (slug rounds can close the middle distance gap a bit with a little practice).

The automatic guns simply don't fill the gap between that two weapons that well. Range restriction by bullet and DMG drop in combination with the inaccuracy make them only somewhat effective in close combat anyways. They simply don't behave like assault rifles / carbines in Planetside. That's my observation from 2 decades of shooter gaming and using real ones as well.

So what I've learned is that your observations are heavily biased and not really worth trusting. That is why I prefer interpreting the actual performance data over subjective experiences. If I did listen to your subjective experience right now I would also have to accept the guy saying that NC's shotguns are all superior or that the Prowler is absolutely the worst MBT somehow.

Come on, "it's not like real life" arguments are some of the worst "I can't think of anything else" arguments. If you want real-life combat or an approximation you go play a milsim, not PS2. It's a sci-fi shooter with guns that have laughable ROF compared to modern weapons, but the accuracy while full-auto run&gunning is better than flesh and blood humans can do while bullets are slamming into their body. Tank fights aren't about one-shot-destructions, repairs to vehicles are measured in seconds rather than weeks of months of specialized labor by dozens of people in a specialized building. Shotguns are a magnitude less accurate than their real-life counterparts and a solidly build pump-action of the caliber portrayed in the game could easily be armed with a 12 to 15 gauge grenade would screw over any armored infantry in a single shot, not to mention that a stabilized solid slug with a hardened penetration core would similarly hit like a truck and punch through armor. Similarly the Gauss SAW would not be a handheld and would rip off limbs.

The problem is that real life rarely makes for good gameplay unless you specifically build a milsim around it. PS2'S entire setting is build differently, not just shotguns and battle rifles. And in terms of power compared to their real-life counterparts the shotguns has sacrificed a lot more power, assuming you don't use birdshot but something like tungsten balls for shot and properly designed slugs.

I find most weapons in the game can be useful. Ironic that the debates about weapons are often based off bias. I have seen misuse of stats in some debates.

Having the NS weapons being the strongest in a category means the 4 factions have access to them. (lets face it most of the best pistols are NS.)

It doesn't have to be super realístic, but at least it should be believable. The guns feel like NERF toys with the low bullet velocity and range. I played a lot of shooter games, and Planetside has the worst gun mechanics of it's shooter sub-genre. I don't know a similar game that has "typical" infantry guns that require 7 to 9 body shot or 3 to 4 headshots to bring an enemy down

You have to use both to make sure you are interpreting the data correctly and that it matches the common observations in game.

I could give you data saying that increased ice cream sales bring good sunny weather. Does that conclusion make sense? No, but the data says so, therefore it must be true....right? Or no, you could use observations and common sense to realize that good weather increases ice cream sales, not vice versa.

If you want a more real life example we can use the Boeing 747. The MCAS system was using data, it must've been infallible! Yet we're lucky some pilots had great subjective judgements and thankfully managed to avoid more tragedies than would've occurred if they relied on the data-fed MCAS system.

First off the PS2 API and the websites that get their data aren't known for their accuracy or reliability. Secondly, interpreting data is more than just regurgitating the statistics. You need to question its validity, analyze any noise in the data and make sure the conclusion actually makes sense. The data itself could be completely false! After all it's gathered through observation as well. It's a whole delicate process. That's why data analyst is an actual job!

So yeah I'm always careful of the kids that look at "facts" or the "data", because they often don't fully understand what they're doing!

Forgive me but I never saw the line where he said the game should be more realistic. He just pointed out there were some obvious flaws in the gameplay, which I can fully agree with. Planetside 1 and planetside 2 in it's early stages felt much better. He points out there's no other game where headshots are as powerful. This is a big issue since they reworked nanoweave.

As you say real life makes for some terrible gameplay. This is because it's not fun to instantly pay the price for a mistake, and not be able to do anything in return. That's why 1hk weapons in game aren't very fun.

Super realistic? That means a single shot could kill you or completely incapacitate you, or as sometimes has happened you can be hit 70+ times and still survive. Most lethal gunshot wounds take time to kill their victim and in shootouts with criminals they often take several lethal hits and are still firing away minutes afterwards due to the adrenaline. Your "realism" is completely based on other games you played and what the movies tell you. A pistol against modern bodyarmor is not going to be doing much and larger calibers would deal loads more damage than they do now. Firing a rocketlauncher from inside an enclosed space would heavily damage and potentially kill everyone inside including the user. Tanks firing would cause concussion effects on anyone near the barrel or knock them out entirely. Tank on tank combat means you mostly either deal virtually no damage or OHK them.

You are not advocating realism, you are advocating the same crap other games already offer. That doesn't work in PS2. A single flank with an LMG would wipe a room if you get your way. Spray&pray would get more useful. Using groups would get less powerful as a single surprise attack could do much more damage. Enjoy the game becoming about SMG infils blowing away 3 or 4 people in a single clip and then disappearing.
PS2 isn't build for your idea of combat. Again the realism card is virtually always played as a last resort. "I don't like this because it's not realistic, but I'll ignore all the things I do agree with that aren't realistic, which is pretty much everything".
PS2's gunplay is one of the better one's. The combination of needing to land more hits and COF+recoil mechanism make it much more interesting as a more tactical shooter, if only they brought headshots back in line to make accurate weapons less dominating it would be even more awesome.

Instead we have a situation were tactics besides "Zerg from X direction" are useless. It's a game build for duels that throws too many players for that into a match. The game has only a few tactical options for what it wants to be. Bigger fights feel like 18th century line infantry combat rather than modern (or even less:futuristic) warfare. Playing in a group still would be more useful than runing around alone, but at least it makes playing lone wolf an option.

There is also the point that switching targets is extreme ineffective - if you manage to hit somebody a few time but he gets into cover it takes another third of the magazine to bring another enemy down. Again, fine in duel focused games like Unreal Tournament or Halo, not in a Battlefield style game with the highest amount of players in one fight.

And for your example with the LMG gunner:
- He dies as fast as everybody else + situational awareness can counter that
- An Infiltrator with a knife can already do the same
- Flanking in small number actually would make a difference
- Besides automatic weapons,somebody good with any other weapon can also do that nowadays

I have to admit that you're right that I advocate the same "crap" other games already offer. For the simple reason that said crap was designed for such kind of games. Like not having a class that can go invisible or an AT class that gets outclassed in destroying tanks by the flanker unit.

There a two perspecitves on Planetside:
#1 It's a Class shooter with arena shooter fight mechanics.
#2 It's an arena shooter with slow movement and too many players

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Exactly, nothing stops the game from being unique through it's fun features like it's massive scale, it's sandbox oriented gameplay...there's no need to add blatantly unfun stuff that's so obviously broken it's not included in any games. I can still build a cool building while keeping the strong foundations normal buildings have.

And it's not like we're asking for stuff that didn't exist in the first place. Planetside 1 had much nicer mechanics. Planetside 2 in it's earlier stages had much better gameplay (and by consequence much more players) without straying too far from what other games fundamentally offered in their gameplay.

Lone wolfing already is an option. What you want is a single player going up against dozens and coming out on top without really earning it.

The fact that tactics are hard to come by is not a problem with the infantry combat mechanics. It's a problem with the available synergies and cooperative mechanics. You are just looking for an excuse to get your idea through.

I really don't see the problem here. You manage to hit someone and they get to cover, sounds like a viable way to play to me. Are you really so desperate that players should always die just because they came into each other's sights? What is the problem with players surviving? Just because there's more?

You seem to think that allowing players to simply gun down half a dozen players with ease is a solution. Instead it will just create bigger problems. I'll gladly see you try to take a chokepoint while enough bullets fly through that doorway to kill entire platoons every second. If we buff the damage of infantry weapons I suspect that tank guns get buffed as well, let's enjoy the OHK fest of giant explosions! Realisms right!
The solution is to add more mechanics, not destroy one of the few good things PS2 has going for it.

Oh come on you didn't even try with these "reasons". Sure he dies as fast as everybody else, that is not the problem. By that reasoning it would be A-OK to have everybody fire OHK bullets, he dies as fast as everybody else! The point is that certain strategies would become far more powerful than they should be. A single flank by a single player should not be able to destroy the efforts of entire groups. Especially if pure luck could let him deal with the players who are supposed to fill in for that situational awareness.
An infiltrator with a knife cannot do the same, unless the group is a bunch of newbies. Flanking with a small number already does make a difference, you can already clear a room of 12 people with 3 dudes if you are good and launch the attack at the right time. And what the hell is your last point about? "everybody can already clear rooms with automatics therefore we can make it even easier"?

The games you mention are limited by the number of players, have limited vehicles available per map, maps designed for symetric gameplay and often player balancing systems to make sure about equal players fight each other with equal skill if at all possible.
You compare that to a pretty unique MMOFPS with few limitations and completely different weapon mechanics and abilities.

Well that explains why you don't have any good idea's for the gameplay. I don't know of many arena shooters that have both recoil and COF to this extent. Or this much availability of weapons, vehicles and aircraft.

With your reasoning you might as well compare WOW to Boulders Gate. After all you control a hero with special abilities, magic, items that buff your stats and you control them to fight right? Let's ignore the viewpoints, amount of heroes you can control, the story structure, the fact that you can make an RPG in a million ways and still have a few new ways to do it etc.

PS2 is not like other shooters. This is good. PS2 does have it's problems, but fornicating the game's infantry mechanics in the butt just because you don't understand it is not a solution.