[Suggestion] Faction Diversity is Dying. It Must Be Saved.

There's no reason to get rid of the NS weapons. (And we already know that SOE neither reimburses nor removes.) The important aspect is that they have to be truly generic compared to the faction variety.

Okay, they can keep the bizarre reload animations and the good stability, but that's it. Damage model drops, only if absolutely need be to maintain their comparatively generic nature.

I do not feel that NS should be wiped out entirely and do not wish to bring that upon them. Nanite Systems does have a place in the game, But I do not feel that it should be getting as much development attention as it has been getting. Things like events (play guns), one time things that will probably not happen again, Those should be Nanite System projects. Some peoples game absolutely depends on having the current NS weaponry. I feel Nanite Systems will have enough vehicles when they ultimately decide to release the NS Colossus tank, Not to mention, The upcoming ANT vehicles once the resource system is finally completed.

I could never ask that those elements be removed, So what I will ask is that they focus on making more faction specific things that are different and unique to support the health of faction diversity. We have more than enough NS items planned for future update content. (ANTs, Colosus Tank...)

We definitely need more empire-specific vehicles.

Because we have not got ONE new empire specific vehicle SINCE LAUNCH. That is completely ridiculous. We're still stuck with just one tank and one hover-fighter-copter thing.

Empire specific things were a major thing driving me to this game and everytime som e new NS comfy easy balance stuff is put out I die a little bit inside.
Worst day was when the gave the same new missles to the esfs but of course you still had to BUY them seperately for each empire. They were even too lazy to give the scythe version a vanu like look (You know shooting blue plasma orbs instead of normal rockets)
I also hate how the NS secondary guns all look the freaking same. Why are there AMMO boxes attached to the Vanu Basilisks etc. Cant they at least LOOK like the VS reengineerd them to shoot plasma? (They would still work the same)
So I highly agree with the OP. NS should really take a break now I want some unique and cool stuff and I want Vanu feel like 100% Vanu anbd not like some wierd compromise

If you are saying just art direction, then sure. However, keep in mind that faction diversity and whatnot is pretty well set. There are discernable trends in weapons that make them unique (relative to the other factions in most areas) while not being OP (in most cases).

Honestly, instead of having a bunch of guns that only look like they belong to your faction, SOE should have just made a bunch of NS weaponry "essentials". All ES stuff should have been truly ES, even if it ended up being less in number than what we have now.

Edit: This could have even led to increased weapon variety, as everyone could have had the same basic Rocket Launchers (2 dumbfires, 2 lock ons) from NS and then a couple of ES ones. This would also have meant less resourced needed by SOE.

I am saying art direction AND functionality. I want completely new and unique stuff to each faction. We have to slow down the Nanite Systems Cookie Cutter.

WTB hover bike for VS

The people who whine about faction differentiation and asymmetric balance are usually the people who 1) don't have any idea how to accomplish either well and 2) are the first to complain about how OP faction X's widget is.

As far as weapons are concerned, however, the developers have only been creating at most two NS weapon to fill out the basic categories (rocket launchers have three and they're not even really classified by the game as a weapon). The absurd number of alternate color variants for many of them throws the numbers off; but, they're all basically the same weapon, d amned how those Directives categorize them, and the cosmetic change hardly wastes implementation time.

As far as Vehicles go, we aren't lagging too badly either, especially not compared to our predecessor which contained an exceptional number of common pool Vehicles (including our ESFs). The really faction unique ones were MBTs, the Buggies, and BFRs. The BFRs are a pipedream (or pipe-nightmare based on how you view them) and we're getting buggies at some point. Other faction specific-like vehicles from the original game were just recolors of each other. Take the Ground Transport certification line: seven vehicles, but more like three in practice. Theoretically, for six vehicles, two were specific to a faction, but actually all the ES ones were reskins of two models with slightly different weapon mounts. As I pointed out in another thread, the wiki image for the NC Thunderer is a VS-hacked Thunderer which looks almost exactly like the VS Aurora. If you simplify the Ground Transport category into three models, of approximately 34 vehicles in PlanetSide Classic, only 12 were truly empire specific. In Planetside 2, we're at hovering near 50/50 right now.

bikes should be in this game, as they were used a lot during world wars

This is ******* ridiculous, I have a TR alt and TR weapons are not piss poor as you say they are.
You are suffering from the "grass is greener" syndrome, and the game is suffering from NS: We as a community can cure one of these problems. Guess which?

NS:
Galaxy - Launch
Valkyrie - New
Liberator - Launch
Lightning - Launch
Harasser - New
Flash - Launch (reworked twice, gained Wraith)

ES:
MBT - Launch
ESF - Launch (some ES traits removed since launch, such as Reaver's extra armor)

Looks more like 75:25 to me, unless you're triple-counting the ES stuff (ie counting each faction's variant separately, even though individual faction's mix will still be 6 NS to 2 ES).

I'm counting the ESFs as separate and the MBTs as separate, since they all use separate models, so that's six.
That's why I specifically isolated the Ground Transport certifcation as an exception to my count for the original game, to indicate that I was counting by model and mechanics.
You can argue, if you want, that I shouldn't count them as unique for some reason.

That reason would be that I can't pull a Magrider or Prowler on my NC. When any given player opens up their list of available vehicles, they're going to see 6 NS vehicles and 2 ES vehicles. And that's kind of sad. Our ES motorpools really need to be filled out more.

ES buggies will be a nice start if they ever get here. An ES IFV would be nice too (medium transport that carries 6 people and moderate armament, the ground Valkyrie to the Sunderer's Galaxy).

Would also be nice if we got some kind of ES gunship/bomber. Or at least some ES weapons on the Liberator. That they said they would give us and then never actually did it. >_>

ES frigates to rule the land by the sea!

You mean like the deliverer? It had 1 driver, 2 gunners, and 2 passengers. Could obviously be updated to seat 3 instead. And made ES instead of NS.

They were going to do ES lib guns, but decided not to, because the community rejected their ideas, except for the TR one, which was the Duster, and look how that turned out.

As said, I was making comparison to the original game. At least in this game, all Vehicles are available for spawning as long as you have access to the appropriate Terminal. You'll always be able to spawn your empire specific Vehicles from somewhere. And you'd still have to go out hack-hunting for a Magrider or Prowler if you wanted to use one for a while in PS1 anyway.

You'd only personally see access to as many PS1 ES vehicles as were available by spending a significant amount of certifcations for them, and before higher levels that cut into your Infantry utility. Tallied right now: 3 for the MBT, 3 for the buggy, and 6 for access to both BFRs. Additional efforts such as BFR imprinting and the basic BFR Merit Commendation required to use the flight-variant BFR should also be considered. Before BR40, you'd need to spend 12 certifcation points and a bit of effort in and outside of the Caverns getting unique kills to have access to all four of your faction's exclusive vehicle models. Add 2 more certification points, and you can add the copypasta Ground Transport vehicles to your roster. Along with the faction-flavor vehicles, you'd also get access to five other common pool Vehicles (seven if you separate the ATVs) at the same time, and you always have access to an ANT. Everything beyond those four/six options on any player's terminal is going to be common pool. We also had a lack of faction-specific flying Vehicles (the BFR did more "boosting" and "gliding" than it did flying).

tl;dr - We're still in a better rut in the Vehicles department than we were with our predecessor. Other faction Vehicles will be coming down the pike at any rate.

Why can't TR have flamethrowers? That'd be a cooler ESAI than the Marauder, which is far too similar to the Fury. A flamethrower as an infantry / MAX weapon would be cool, too.

Honestly I hated most of the faction diversity. . Its the reason hardly any competitive outfits exist in TR and instead are mostly VS/NC. The Planetside back-story/lore and faction 'traits' really weren't that well done at all and it cripples the game. I much would have preferred diversity on a individual and outfit level (think infantry online) rather than a forced faction diversity that is bland, dated and poorly done.