Faction Imbalance

It does feel that way when I play TR, but if we take into consideration the disparity in alert wins NC has compared to TR and consistently underpopped VS, what better explanation can you give? Even if we take average weapon stats at face value and say they're more or less balanced? The only other conclusion I can come to ruling those out is that the system is allowing more spawns at strategic crucial territories for some factions than others. Other than that, I can't possibly think of any valid reason that the most underpop faction is winning out against the second and first highest pop ones.

I can think of a reason but the VIDF (Vanu Internet Defense Force) is here saying their Magriders need a 10 second duration mag boost, and that all Vanu victories are a result of superior skill.

Maybe it's because you can't judge a faction's options only by the on paper stats?

For those of you who want the TLDR:

Argument 1: NC are under-powered, please buff (i.e. shotguns/carbines)
Argument 2: NC are fine, git gud (with complementary wall of text)

The salt from all the Vanu here man, I'll put that on my freedom fries thanks.

Anyways, I've played for almost a year now and back & fourth mainly since the servers seem to get worse over time. But I will make an effort to put down my thoughts.

Let's start with the Vanguard, I only pull armor on low intesity combat since, even with the shield deployed it will get hammered by every ******* AV weapon in existence. I honestly think it needs a bit of an armor buff, yes, an armor buff. Not massive but enough. The NC is supposed to have armor & damage on its side, so why does it have the same armor stats as the other 2? Just a slower Prowler with 2 gun. Either that or give it the railgun, I highly doupt it will break performance now anyways since we also have a railjack which is basically a shrunken version of it (of course give the TR some Empire Specific equivalent like a rotary gun and plasma burst cannon ir something).

For the Reaver, it is the worst ESF by far, mainly because it lacks enough armor & efficient firepower to combat Mosquitos, yes it gives the most damage but what's the point if it has very severe bullet drop & is literal garbage at anything not trying to hug your face, I recommend the Kestral instead. But with it's large shape it's easy to hit at all angles, the mosquito is hard to hit period with low health. The Scyth is easy to hit from the bottom/top and hard to hit elsewhere, and the Reaver is basically a mosquito that sucked too much blood from farming, give it at least more health to compensate for its fat***, either way, ESFs are glorified helicopter airframes that defy all laws of physics. If you put 2 well trained pilots in a Reaver & Mosquito and made them fight, I wouldn't doupt the Mosquito coming on top. The air hammer is also... odd, I don't understand the point of a shotgun...on a plane. It would ha lve made a lot more sense if it was a canister round.

Actually, I don't quite mean that NC is 'fine', just that any comparison that relies strictly on "LOOK AT THESE STATS" won't show that. The strongest indicator for how good a faction is, is alert victory %.

Yeah cuz it can't possibly be the case that something is inherently wrong with the game, or the way the game has been developed til now. PS2 is perfect every1, NC just sucks balls. Always has, always will. Nothing to see here.

Give me a decent reason why. Also if you're VS tell me again why no one wants to play a bunch of loons who worship aliens lol.

I currently don't think any faction is majorly "underpowered" or "overpowered", I just think some of the traits from each faction should have been rethought. The TR have fast RoF and accuracy & less recoil? The f***? Usually you would expect a gun that fires faster to give MORE recoil and LESS accuracy, I don't care how advance the technology is, same logic still applies. While the NC perform horribly at anything NOT long range since the spread & recoil is so bad, then the VS are busy being like "hurr durr LAAAZZZOORRSSS". I still don't understand how ESFs work, whoever designed them needs to rethink themselves, the Reaver is just an Apache airframe with jet engines, the Mosquito looks like a flying Dolphin, and the Scythe, well I simply don't understand how a design like that lifts off the ground. The recoil caused by the Prowlers turret design IRL would be weird, and the Magrider would be affected by gravity too much for the hoverjets to climb steep hills. A lot of longer range combined arms engagements are ruined by weaponry that focuses on shorter ranges, mainly aircraft & tanks, look at the tank buster, you have to hug your targets if you wish to end their suffering quickly, why would you want something that flies to fly that close to what they are destroying?

What I'm trying to say is Planetside devs have no regard for physics.

The main problem for each faction is the time in which certain outfits are online, I am in the ZERG outfit for Emerald on the NC and despite the name, Zerging isn't common, I find the platoon fighting TR heavy assault zergs most of the time while VS end up getting warpgated without much effort. Whenever a major TT outfit isn't online however NC usually ends up locking the continent, even when NC doesn't have an outfit online. On equal terms I'd say the NC would win, though I disagree with some of their weapon balance (why would the SHOTGUN FACTION have shotguns that perform the same as the others?). TR just wins by having massive zergs that spam heavy assault 24/7.

I was actually being sarcastic. My bad for the lack of /s. Aside from that misunderstanding, I agree with most of what you're saying about TR's high RoF and less recoil, and add to that more ammo capacity; NC's lowass RoF and shotguns not differentiated among other factions, despite having shotguns on everything; my previous comments reflect this.

I mainly don't like the way TTK is handled in this game, and just gives more advantage to the already overpopped TR on servers. It's just too easy to take down NC without getting hurt when you get the jump on them, hardly any bullets will be exchanged when you're a high TTK against low. I can stay competitive with GD-7F and mostly use that, although it's garbage at long range where a TR gun with the same damage can reach just fine, costs 1k for me and nothing for them.

I really don't know why NC is losing so much, but I'd rather not wax poetic about how certain playstyles, lifestyles, life choices, or personalities that are drawn by NC, which is why as a whole, they're all 'stupid, disorganized and unskilled,' according to popular belief(but we all know it's a stereotype). Unless someone can give me compelling evidence to believe these colorful 'explanations', they're going to stay in the speculative bull**** corner where they belong.

I completely agree with you, NC platoons can be REALLY effective, I don't see any teamkilling from purposely shooting friendlies. If you run infront of a firefight you deserve to die. The TR have their fair share of things, such as dicklord pilots & heavy assault spam. While VS tend to just s*** on everyones opinions. Only issue I've had with NC is we get too into a firefight and end up getting back capped up the wazoo.

Also apologies for not getting the sarcasm, it was very difficult to distinguish it from VS/TR tryhards who like to keep their farm up while s***ing on the NC because they like believing faction stereotypes. TR zerg & VS have low pop, that, unlike the NC teamkilling, is fact.

TR's changun weapons on vehicles are way too ******* OP!!! Almost all those TR players use them and it's way too stupidly easy to kill armored vehicles with those weapons for them! Those damn weapons need to be nerfed and FAST!!

Why do you think i feel like there are a lot less VS players actually playing the game now? most of the time it's the TR having more population than any other factions.

DAMMIT DAYBREAK!! Fix your damn game, and also, those damn aimbotters are ruining it!!!

i agree on the TR's Vulcan Harassers. They just melt armor and infantry alike

You only notice Vulcans because the tank itself, and its main gun, are terrible. Prowler is the worst performing main tank. Prior to the HE nerf, it was at least leading in infantry kills. But in modern times, it's neither good for infantry farming nor does it perform well against other tanks. It can't compete against Magriders that can dodge and boost away, or against Vanguards that have shields and superior hull armor. In fact, it is severely handicapped because it must land twice as many shots as their opponent to match the damage of any other tank's cannon. Lockdown is, and always will be, a sick joke; giving it to TR was a huge boon to NC and VS. Sacrificing ALL MOBILITY for a MINOR increase in damage output is ludicrous.

Then I must've done a pretty convincing job

2 AP from Prowler = 1250x2 = 2500 damage
1 AP from Vanguard = 2075 damage
1 AP from Magrider = 1865 damage

So that's not really true, it does more damage with 2 shots, 475 more than Vanguard and 635 more than Mag.. The prowler also has a much faster reload compared to Vanguard, and still an even faster reload while anchored.

the damned vulcans vehicles chainguns turrets from TR should be limited on what kind of vehicles in can damage, for example, it shouldn't damage, at all, heavier vehicles like tanks and sunderers, because right now i swear 95% of TR use those on tanks, harrassers and mosquitos to kill sunderers and tanks. And those bastards are just laughing right now because they just need to be immobile near a sunderer, even if they have an extra shield, to destroy it in about 5 seconds. THAT is NOT FAIR at all!!!

The Vulcan has lower DPS than the Mjolnir, it's just really run to use.

You do realise that the "Vulcan" is an AV weapon, right? There is no "Vulcan" for the Mossy (unless you mean the "Banshee", which is for AI work). It's the go to weapon for TR Harassers because it has great synergy with the vehicle itself. As for Prowlers - it's for those who favour a very aggresive playstyle; pairs well with Fire Supression, but has no place on an Anchor loadout.

Only on paper anyway...

Asymmetrical balance always looks like imbalance to the average player. While some might be imbalanced, the best example of tradeoffs I've found is the harasser topguns.

Mjolner (or meow meow) has no damage falloff, high DPS but does poorly against infantry, requiring 7 shots landed directly on infantry in order to kill them on a slow projectile weapon.

Vulcan has high dps, a good muzzle velocity and can kill infantry relatively well compared to the other two, but suffers greatly at range and will often lose to a mjolner or aphel in a ranged fight

Aphelion has a projectile wave that is accurate and pretty damn fast for nailing infantry when spun up, can range better than the vulcan and anti infantry better than the mjol.

Again, while I think the factions are more or less alright there can be some instances where things aren't all right, where stats in one area mean far less than another area, but for the most part I think it's pretty fine.

I'm all for having some asymmetrical balance in PS2, but examples like the topguns are, in my opinion, ample reason to argue against it.

Mjolnir has a maximum effective range of about half of a meter off the tip of one's nose and is only marginally better when within that range. The Vulcan is just great and if I recall correctly the Aphelion is better still when utilising the wave shots.

The Mjolnir is just flat worse than the other two; the weapon usage shows this. NC generally prefer to use a Halberd or Enforcer over it.

(Source: http://ps2oraclestats.com/monthlystats/)

If the devs. could ever actually balance anything right then it might be a different story.