Dear Moderators Much of these useless OP and NERF threads, (which no matter what you do will never end, due to Planetside 2's unique FACTION balance.) can be answered if you just pin a post with something similar to this and possibly a little more developer explanation. From the Wikia, which seems to explain things better than the SOE PS2 site for some strange reason. Character Creation The first step in creating a character is choosing an Empire. In PlanetSide 2, which empire the player decides on means a lot more than just which color armor they will wear. Each of the three iconic Empires has access to unique weapons, attachments, vehicles, abilities and more. In choosing an Empire, the player is really choosing a play-style that will mold a character throughout its entire lifetime. Visiting the Empires page will give the player access to not only a quick debriefing of each Empire's strengths, weaknesses, and philosophies in greater detail but also the full history and lore for PlanetSide 2 in the Rise of the Empires section or a quick view of history found in the Timeline of Events section. Terran Republic – The Terran Republic’s philosophy of warfare stresses top of the line conventional technology. Their tactics rely on the allowance of maximum sustainable damage, rapid fire rates with less damage output, and high ammo capacity weapons systems. They also have more lightly armored vehicles which are the fastest on the field. New Conglomerate – The New Conglomerate’s philosophy of warfare stresses brute force, so their tactics rely upon heavy tanks, hard-hitting weapons systems, and shields. Their objective is to smash the enemy during initial contact before they can react. Vanu Sovereignty – The Vanu Sovereignty’s philosophy of warfare stresses technology equals might, and their tactics rely on energy-based weapons using plasma-like ammunition. While they do not have the impact or fire rate of the other Empires, their weapons are deadly over a wider area than their counterparts. Also regardless of all the whiny "I am going to quit unless x nerf because of y being op" these people will STILL quit if they are going to quit, you will NEVER satisfy these types and really most will go stomp off and return when the continent balance changes actually make the fights more interesting again. So regardless of the initial numbers of PS2 subscribers/players going down, it is not because you did not NERF X, it is because that always happens after a new release. Nerfing this and that will NOT change that very much. A lot of current players will not even go near the NERF and OP threads so do not let those that FOCUS on only that cause you to make decisions that really do break the Faction Balance as it was intended. Faction Balance is working as intended. We really need all the focus of development to be on reasons to defend and continent balance, to have more even battles like we did before we had 3 continents. This is also more important towards keeping up the numbers of subscribers and the money rolling in, please do not get derailed by these ridiculous op this and that threads. If you make it work better "The MetaGame" they will come. You must have people playing all three factions, and see some of what I have seen as far as the issues concerning air and teamwork and how some of these ridiculous accusations about air and individual weapons has more to do with the faction and server and continent population and its distribution. There are even subtle differences on how each side is played, on the server that I play NC on even with good numbers they rarely control the skies they rarely have enough AA Maxes, Vanguards go boom left and right to Liberators and rocketpods, it was not because air was to OP, it is the way the players are playing on that server. Most all Outfit vehicles are locked I can never get a ride even with half full, never had that happen often much on VS or TR. Orders on NC think I saw it used once in 24 hrs of play. This is not the case on the VS, VS on Waterson have orders coming through all the time and people actually try to act on them. The weapon balance issues are not the issues that need the most attention, especially since Faction Balance cannot be accurately judged at this time due to the state of the zerg and continent imbalance. You can Nerf X to oblivion and buff Y to be higher DPS and yet this current lack of balance or a reason to defend or the paltry XP for even trying will leave this game stale and unrewarding = less moola for SOE. So to speak in the only terms that really matter, your shortrange to midrange returns will increase if you fix the Metagame and balance the continents. You will only make 50% happy and 50% angry with every nerf/buff it is a battle you will not win. You do not give the customer what they WANT you give them what they NEED.
i think there needs to be something stickied as well about asymmetrical balance asymmetrical balance does NOT mean that for every advantage the TR gets, the NC and the VS get one. it means that the TR might have 2 small advantages, but the VS and NC get 1 bigger one each asymmetrical balance does NOT mean that you are going to be winning 50% of your fights against the TR/NC/VS. you are likely going to lose more often in a specific situation, but you are more likely to win in another situation. see also: Rock, paper, scissors. Asymmetrical balance means that your success is 100% reliant on finding your faction's advantages, AND EXPLOITING THEM TO MAXIMUM EFFECT!
One problem is that NC weapons are completely mischaracterized in the lore and various articles. The misconception goes "NC are the close range combat faction". While they do have a few special shotgun-like weapons, as a whole their weapons are clearly biased towards longer ranges as evident from their stats. People expecting to outperform the other two factions at close range will be confused and disappointed.
The basic HA weapon (SAW LMG) apparently is a long-range weapon; yet is plonked on the Heavy Assault (i.e. close-range) class. Makes for some much confused playerbase.
Yes, in regards to the explanation of each faction, I do think a better write up is needed but it helps make the point about not just choosing a side for the look but also making sure it fits your playstyle. For instance if your playstyle was only going to be focused on one vehicle, faction choice will directly impact your experience. You have to take the bad parts along with the good. If you like to play 3-4 different classes it could be those certain classes/vehicles would be far better in one faction than another, but the overall faction balance is ok. I can agree that after we get more of a population balance throughout the continents and better strategic/tactical battles, then we may look at what is wrong, but till then really any changes are being done for the wrong reasons. We need to all agree the Metagame and continent balance are more important than any nerf or op at this point, I play all 3 factions equally now, and really on Waterson, Jaegar, Mattherson, I am completely bored hopping around looking for a good drawn out battle, last night was good though.
BUMP this thread. There are so many threads about...who ever, being under or over powered. Just look at the weapon stats and vehicle stats...they're Very balanced, exept for maybe what "home" territories they have near their respective warp gates. Oh, and, I did notice after starting a TR character just to see all three. their weapons have the same damage models but start with 40 shots per mag... This is a big difference. I thought their tank was a litle weak. You can't see the right side of the screen out of the NC tank. the Mag riders cannon is so low that you have to expose yourself almost completley to take a shot. Point is, there are tons of small variables and they've done a great job of things at SOE. It will need continued tweeks though.
Actually it's not... and Higby said several times that they were still evaluating it over a month ago and did see evidence of NC being weaker. TR got some really teeny tiny little down-tweaks to a couple of their bullet-hoses but nothing major was touched This is a reminder by the way since it seems a lot of people keep bringing this topic up but with approaches that just beg for their threads to be removed for violating TOS. Here's the overall stance: All indications from the Devs show they're not ready to tweak these issues yet. There's still too much bug/optimizing patching and other "combined fire" issues to sort out first as the sticky at the top of this forum clearly demonstrates. And all hints we can gather from the data they've told us they looked at, completely ignores more advanced underlying skill floor-vs-ceiling factors like "Suppression" /flinching / screenshake -&- hovertank-compensated / "Air-cushioned" Aiming... Which deep down, they know they're going to have to look at as well if they want to tackle some of the root causes instead of merely the symptoms (that keep flooding these forums). We therefore must give them enough time to argue those topics out amongst themselves first.
