Faction Imbalance

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by CleverAssName, Jan 21, 2016.

  1. CleverAssName

    I have the MCG, it's certainly better than the jackhammer. That's not to say the Jackhammer is bad, I love mine, but it's certainly more situational than the MCG. The TR is even more capable than the NC at hitting headshots because they can put more bullets faster on the head. I understand the NC has better damage, but the TR have so many bullets that, when going for headshots, they typically kill instantly due to the clientside nature of planetside and the rate of fire of their weapons, specifically LMGS like the T9.

    TLDR: Nobody is arguing that the NC are impossible to do well with. What I'm saying is that the necessity of headshots to have effective weapons makes it difficult to win head to head firefights with the TR in particular. If the other factions had no headshot bonus, which is a stupid idea, the NC would have some form of skill-based advantage, but currently, the TR can deal more damage quicker.
  2. Imp C Bravo


    Well actually this is where we all disagree. Let's look at heavy weapons first.

    See, like I said about the Jackhammer - if you go to Oracle of Death and check by KPH you see that the jackhammer performs better than the MCG most of the time and usually by a solid margin.

    Here is the link: http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kph&weapon1=7540&weapon2=7528&weapon3=7533

    But if you sort by playtime you see the jackhammer is the least used Heavy gun by a small margin vs the Lasher and a HUGE margin than the MCG.

    Here is that link: http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=playtime&weapon1=7540&weapon2=7528&weapon3=7533

    So we have a gun that gets used significantly less than the MCG, but kills more than it. That is virtually irrefutable proof that the Jackhammer is better. Is the MCG easier to use and remain competitive? Vastly -- that's why it is used so much more. Is it more flexible and viable in situations? Absolutely. The range allows it to do far more and the constant bullet hose lets it be viable in longer bursts when facing multiple enemies. The MCG is somewhat mitigated by the lower headshot damage multiplier (the multiplier is half that the Jackhammer) but as we can see it is viable, it kills, and it is used to do so by a LOT of players.

    Yet the jackhammer outperforms it despite being the least used Heavy. This is because the Jackhammer has a significantly higher skill ceiling. A new, novice, or average skilled player will not get it to perform as well as they could the MCG. However, once they get good with that gun they are able to destroy infantry left and right (relative to the other heavy weapons.)

    The stats pretty much prove this.

    The same reasoning applies to NC's weapons. At high BRs NC weapons outperform their counterparts in most situations. This is because the headshot system heavily favors weapons with accuracy and damage. NC has the best damage and, for the first few shots, the best accuracy. A highly skilled NC player can make his/her weapon perform far better than a highly skilled TR player.

    In the case of the other weapons it depends on the weapon. For example maybe TR has better carbines but NC has better Assault Rifles (I am not saying this is the case -- that's just a potential example.) It's simply a matter of asymetrical balance. This is when you sort across all BRs.

    You are not at all wrong to say that NC is harder to use at the skill floor. You are not wrong to say that TR (and VS) has a lower skill floor allowing less skilled players to use the weapons competently. However the skill ceiling allows NC a solid gun game advantage at the top tier of skill as far as most people are concerned.

    Start sorting by higher BRs in either KPU or KPH (Q4 and BR100) and you see NC, TR, and VS guns performing almost equally. But if you sort by higher BR playtime you see NC using their weapons less often.

    A gun which you can use fewer hours and get equal or more kills with is better than another no?
  3. eldarfalcongravtank

    i love how OP completely disregards the Airhammer, an anti-everything weapon effective vs infantry, armor, ESFs and Libs. probably the only weapon in the NC arsenal still overperforming to this day. meanwhile its faction counterparts Banshee hardly has any effectiveness and L-PPA is only effective against infantry but crap against anything else.
    • Up x 1
  4. ThreePi

    The NC are the best faction in 1v1 encounters. The problem: 1v1 doesn't matter in this game. How fast you can kill one dude is largely irrelevant when there are another 20, 30, 50 enemies ready to turn the corner.

    Without a significantly faster TTK, high Alpha weapons are bad. You get punished more for bad accuracy. You can't spray and pray through smoke/flash/etc. You spend too much time reloading. Shotguns force NC to crowd doorways which block friendly line-of-sight and draws friendly fire.

    Also, NC MAXes don't become more efficient in packs. Two NC MAXes shooting at a single infantry is doesn't kill the target any faster, just wastes ammo. Two TR or VS MAXes shooting a single target means the TTK is twice as fast, while each uses half as much ammo. Scaled up into a larger zerg, TR and VS just become way more efficient.

    NC just don't work with the meta of this game. Alert victories show this. Continent locks show this. The World Domination series two-three years ago showed this. Why Daybreak can't see this just does not make sense.
    • Up x 4
  5. entity009

    I feel the TR and VS are fine. I feel the NC are terrible.
  6. Chewy102

    Last time I counted wins compared to number of picks. NC gets picked the most but win no more often than TR does. Granted that was months ago and could have changed by now. Plus SS has a rather small data pool and is hardly good in overall balance between all 3 factions as it is never more than 2 factions at any given time, and the fact that TR is hardly ever picked makes it VERY hard to work with balance wise. It being a focused competitive event instead of Live gameplay makes things even harder.

    SS is nothing like Live in short. The faction limits alone make it's balance data unusable.

    But back to what I was going to say before this.



    This is one reason why I quit PS2. For 3 years now NC has been dead last on live servers in nearly all alert stats and world wide events, the only meta PS2 has to date. When they are not in dead last NC is hardly in the fight for 2nd place. All servers, across the entire planet, NC is dead last in any meaningful meta PS2 makes for itself. That does not happen without reason!

    SOMETHING is making that happen even though most players will praise NC weapons to high heaven. But when someone tries to find out why NC can't do **** even with what most call the best gear in the game they get shot down in any way possible. The 2nd post of this topic is a prime example of that. Why bother trying when that is the norm? I got sick of trying myself and just up and left like countless other players.


    The only reason I still read these forums every day is a hope of something changing. PS2 impacted my that ******* hard. But the community just doesn't want to hear any of it.
  7. Savadrin



    So the question from me, still, is why does TR never get picked by the guys in competitive matches?

    Why does NC perform well if picked by competitive gamers yet fail in normal play? Perhaps it's a side effect of the players that NC attracts?

    I don't know, I've never tried playing NC but I find them harder to win against than the VS when it's a fairly even pop match.
  8. Riksos

    Well worded argument, but your premises are simply false. The NC's high damage profile translates to better performance at range than any other faction on average. NC is much less forgiving when missing due to low magazine size, however much more rewarded for controlled fire and accuracy as each bullet is worth more than the other factions.

    Your playstyle just may not fit the NC's faction traits, I don't see them requiring any balance in that sense.

    As a TR player I personally think that although Vanu win most alerts across all servers (PC/PS4 combined), that Vanu are get the short straw on infantry combat as they don't have the TTK in CQC that are the hallmarks of TR and as well their damage per bullet are on average lower than NC weapons at range. VS has an advantage of recoil/drop but when you can double headshot someone as a HA with a starter Gauss SAW since first shot recoil is 0, the bullet drop becomes a lesser benefit.

    I think the game's factions are very well balanced, and over the last few years many weapons have been released that seem to carry traits between factions. Such as the TR's TAR AR sharing similar profiles to NC weapons in the same class.

    TL;DR it's all good factions are balanced
  9. Garrum

    This just in, NC has managed to make their 30 round magazines hold less than the VS's 30 round magazines. Further breaking news, NC's 50 and 100 round magazines also have lower capacity than VS's 50 and 75 round magazines. The U.N. will be stepping in to correct this injustice later this week.

    With the exception of the Gauss SAW, none of the NC weapons are any harder to use than anything similar from TR or VS. The mildly higher vertical recoil is more than offset by the very low horizontal recoil. Gear is not the reason NC loses. Lack of leadership and retaining higher numbers of low skilled players is the reason. I used to play NC on Connery, and you get no help at all from 'fellow' NC. It was like you were trying to solo all of the enemy forces. When I switched to Emerald VS, while there are still a lot of non-helpers, I saw that people would help each other FAR more than I ever saw on NC.

    Why does NC retain more low skill players? Probably because of the NC's 'rebel' presentation. Who wants to be some fruit in spandex shooting lazer boogers at people, or be some derpy fascist with guns that sound like a bird farting? I'll be these freedom fighter guys, with their MAN GUNS and SHOTGUN ROBOTS. Beep boop, dispensing 00 buck FREEDOM!
  10. Riksos


    If you take the average mag size for each class the NC rank lowest across all weapon types in each class. (SMGs/ARs/LMGs/Etc.)

    I am aware that there are NC weapons that have 30 bullets in the clip.
  11. Hegeteus

    Faction balance and performance doesn't hang on trivial things like what gun does X, what gun does Y. It's a faction mentality overall, and it typically has been a bit on the loose side with NC(which is fine with me, I've sure had fun moments in NC)
  12. Imp C Bravo

    Incorrect rationale.

    Yes they are best at 1v1 because of their superior TTK (at high skill levels.) Your drawn conclusion is fairly flawed.

    In your listed argument you say that 1v1 doesn't matter. Of course it matters. If you run around a corner with a low TTK weapon and see 3 guys you will die before you kill anyone (assuming skill levels being equal.) However with the NC you have a solid chance of getting 1 or even 2 before you go down. Assuming you kill 1 you have a solid chance of at least damaging one of the others.

    This leaves fewer enemies for the blueberry behind you to contend with. Lowerr TTK absolutely helps when outnumbered. Fewer enemies on the field means less incoming damage.

    Now consider 3 of you turn the corner and there are 5 of them. Your superior TTK means you wipe out at least 3 -- and probably the other 2 as well. Each of you gets 1 (and maybe 2 but lets assume just 1) and can put a bullet or 2 in the remaining meaning the last 2 are damage so that one of the other of your 3 person group has a better chance to kill.

    Again -- this is at the higher levels of skill. At the LOWER levels of skill miss often and, barring a lucky headshot, won't even kill 1 guy.

    Now try an relatively even fight. 18 v 18. Your lower TTK absolutely wipes the other team.

    As for the other stuff...
    You should never spray and pray through smoke anyway. You should never crowd doors. A good shotgunner is flanking the enemy while your rifle using comrades are distracting them. NC spends less time reloading than TR (dakka) and about the same time as VS (NC has slightly slower average reloads and slightly lower average bullet counts. However, they don't have to fire NEAR as many bullets for a kill so that mag lasts a fair bit longer in the hands of a skilled player and NC can reload less often.

    NC MAX does not stack and become more efficient on single targets (as you said.) Which leaves said MAXs free to target a larger number of enemies simultaneously. NC MAX is not good outside vs infantry so much -- but they are excellent indoors and very very efficient.

    It's not that NC CAN'T work with the meta. It's just that there is a higher amount of time and skill investment required for NC to perform at peak performance. It's fair to argue that the average player isn't going to put the time and effort into this game for NC and even that they shouldn't have to put that much more time and effort to reach competency.

    In the case of blue...average NC players have to "get gud" more than TR and VS ones do to be competitive. When they DO, however, they become far more dangerous per capita.

    Anyway -- yeah -- your conclusions don't really hold up to scrutiny. Sorry.
    • Up x 2
  13. Chewy102

    Every since the youtubers left PS2 soon after launch, TR has had a MASSIVE inferiority complex. Countless jokes over the years just turned into people not wanting to play TR from starting to believe in them. Same with how everyone thinks NC is the team killing faction, but when accounting for population TKs the least overall last I read into it.

    I don't know the right naming for it. But it is when someone hears something over and over and over again they start to truly believe in it if it is true or not.


    As for why NC does well enough in SS but **** in Live. SS is a focused competitive fight between 2 factions. Live is all 3 factions and no real focus at all till an alert. Could be for a number of reasons.

    MAX use is completely different or non existent, only 1 front to bother with, no 3rd faction to mess with a fight or take advantage of an opening, hardly any enemy trolling from AA nests/random vehicle convoy/ect, so on and so on. Basically competitive gameplay is NOTHING like normal gameplay. In Comp you need to focus on the details and certain weapons for balance, for Live you need to focus on the big picture for balance.



    Personally. I think the main thing holding NC back in Live gameplay is MAX weapons. There needs to be NS weapons for MAXes. Or even more ES weapons. Just so that all 3 factions have access to ALL weapon types. In any debate on weapon types, shotguns are ALWAYS seen as the odd ball for many reasons. Noobish, overly niche, needing completely different skill sets, reasons. More or less having only shotguns forces the NC MAX into a corner from the niche.

    And MAXes are the ONLY thing in the game to do such a thing. No infantry class forces weapon types on just 1 faction without choice, no vehicle does this (MBT main guns somewhat does, but secondary weapons don't), no aircraft does this, nothing but MAXes. And to use a Sherlock Homes quote.

    ‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’

    If everything in the game is shared in one way or another but MAXes, then MAXes must be at least 1 reason why. Why else have I been fighting for NS MAX weapons since ******* BETA!
  14. Garrum

    You mean, like, most of them? There's one 24 round carbine, and one 24 round AR, both of them 200 damage. Everything else is 30 rounds or higher (or the same as the other 2 factions, ie; all auto scout rifles are 24 rounds).
  15. ThreePi


    This game has been out for years. The majority of players have been around for a long time. If NC haven't "got gud" by now, no amount of extra time and effort to reach competency is going to help. If your suggestions on how the NC should use their faction advantages (strange how its always the non-NC that just know how to play NC) held any water, those secrets would have been unlocked months, if not years ago.
    • Up x 1
  16. Taemien

    NC has some issues. But it might not be because of any balance reason. But how the faction specific weapons are used.

    For example, in normal play, NC loses a disproportionate amount of alerts compared to the VS and TR:

    [IMG]

    But when it comes to server smashes and the World Record Event. NC wins most of those.

    So what exactly is going on? I don't think anyone is really sure. Many post weapon stats, but those don't tell the whole story. If you look at server smashes and the like, NC dies the most even when they win. That tells me KPH, KPU, KDR, and other kill based stats aren't going to work to tell us if weapons are the cause of the alert disparity in normal play.

    Here's my take on it.

    NC wins when it matters. This is because the equipment, weapons, and vehicles specific to the NC works really well in obtaining objectives when working together as a team. When working solo as lone wolves and working to getting kills instead of taking objectives, bases, and continents. NC weapons and equipment and vehicles aren't so hot. Well according to the stats they're about even actually.

    But when NC plays as a mob, it doesn't eventually win like VS or TR does. VS and TR are about even. VS still has an edge, but its been diminished over the last few months due to changes. Its about evened out between them, with NC still not pulling 1/3 of the wins, but about a fourth.

    So do the weapons need changing?

    I don't think so. They work, and they work well when used in team based play. They work when it matters.

    What players need to understand is when they cert farm and lone wolf. They're not likely to win bases, alerts, or take continents. Just a simple fact of the game. Those avenues are the realm of group/squad/platoon/outfits/alliances. If you're lone wolfing, don't worry about winning bases. Just kick back, get some kills and do your thing. If it gets too hot, redeploy to something more your liking. Hell get blitzed out on your legal/illegal substance of choice. Don't worry about who controls what.

    If you want to get a little more serious and actually win bases, win alerts, and take continents. You gotta go deep and squad up at the very least. NC weapons work for that, they really do. But you can't do it alone.
  17. Jamuro

    I don't think the reason nc "underperforms" during alerts is realy due to weapon imbalance, rather than due to personal perception and the games history.

    A bit more in detail:

    1. A lot of long time players consider the NC the scrub/noob/newbie faction ... and to a certain degree they are absolutly right.
    For whatever reason, a lot of people starting out find the NC attractive and start there.
    A sideeffect of this is that you tend to find more organised outfits/squads/platoons on vs/tr than on the nc side.

    2. Vanu is op, plz nerf
    While this is no longer realy the case, for years vanu had some serious advantages ... especially on the infantry side of things.
    This is stuck ... and i mean realy realy stuck in the minds of a lot of players.
    During most alerts (at least on cobalt) i see the NC/Tr trying to avoid fights with vanu ... as a consequence the nc has a tendency to focus on TR territory at first and ends up getting stomped by TR AND Vanu.

    3. Farming
    This might very well just be my personal bias, but a lot of the times i get the feeling that most nc players (squads even) prefer a good farm to actually capping bases.
    I usually fly ... so my perception here is a bit limited ... but usually when i fly for tr or vanu and i spot and start engaging a sunderer, sooner or later the people on the ground will come and finish it off or at the very least try and support.

    When i try this on NC i not only harldy ever see anyone else going for the sunderer, i even got shot by friendly AA, because "i am ruining the farm"

    This might have a lot to do with number 1 on my list, or and this is a quess again, i think NC weapons have a tendency to underperform during equal fights for a lot of people (higher entry level of skill ... due to the recoil and slow fire rate) and as a result people will desperatly cling to the moments when they can shine (as in overpopped and farming).
  18. Direlithe

    100% agree on this, and pretty much everything OP said. Combine the already unbalanced weapons with VS movement speed/smaller hitboxes and TR armor buff. What does NC have again? Health? For the record, I have a level 80+ TR and a 90+ NC. I loathe the fact that a VS, especially a TR can turn around and kill me after I've fired the first shots at them, especially when I am shooting at them in the back of the head, even more when they are standing still. How is this even possible or fair? Playing on NC is way more difficult and requires you to headshot enemies, and not miss while your weapons suffer from the worst horizontal recoil in the game.

    I play on PS4 and the crappy *** 14-20 fps you get during fights makes all of this even more frustrating 100 times over.
  19. BrbImAFK

    Rubbish. The headshot-meta is present in ALL factions. I main VS, and if I don't shoot for headshots, I will lose far more fights than I win. Especially when I try to use the multitude of NS weapons that seem to be all that get released lately.

    More rubbish. Weapons are more balanced than they've even been, there IS no "VS movement speed bonus" - we move ths same speed as everybody else. Mobility was meant to be one of our advantages (that we paid for with lower damage and lower RoF), but NC/TR cried so hard about it that we lost all those advantages and STILL have the lower damage and RoF so we're screwed twice over.

    And don't even start on the "smaller hitboxes" stupidity. If smaller hitboxes made a difference, every single person would play female - for the "smaller hitbox" - and they don't, do they?

    Ummm.... no. NC have the same health as everybody else. What they GET is hard hitting weapons with the best accuracy in the game, beastly MAX's (with an ability that's actually useful!), the immensely powerful Jackhammer, potentially the most powerful tank in the game (with an IWIN shield on top), default bolt-action snipers, SMG's so powerful that even many Heavy Assaults choose to use them rather than their LMG's and on and on and on. NC was the dev's favourite faction for pretty much the whole of PS2's SOE existence.

    Hey, guess what.... it happens to VS and TR too. And there's only one thing to say about it.... if you really had the drop on them and attacked by surprise, if you really got a few solid hits in before they reacted, and if you STILL lost the fight.... barring hax, you just got straight up outplayed. Go work on your accuracy and positioning or something.

    More rubbish... NC is no more difficult than any other faction. Yes, your VERTICAL recoil is probably the highest in the game, but vertical recoil can be compensated for. In general, NC guns have the LOWEST horizontal recoil, making them the most accurate guns ingame. As for headshotting, EVERYBODY has to do it to be competitive, it's not just limited to NC. And as for the whole "not miss" thing - that's true any time you use a high-damage-low-RoF weapon - whether you're TR, NC or VS. And don't complain that you've only got high-damage-low-RoF weapons either.... GD-7F anybody? Or GR-22?
    • Up x 1
  20. hollowed

    I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination but it is my experience that NC are able to hold points comfortably and I've seen what a couple of their maxes can do charging into rooms and their harrasers, well letts just say the shotgun thingies hurt plenty.
    I play VS infantry almost exclusively and let me tell you that any VS weapons that would benefit from no bullet drop have radher massive amounts of freakin' bullet drop.
    I had a pretty hard time starting out, I'd get dropped by TR and NC alike in a blink of an eye. If the vanu want to cap an indoor point against NC usually overpop is the only way to force ourselves in.
    But here's the kicker... I like it, I so like it when things aren't ballanced into blandness, having to dodge scary shotgun thingies or the TR sprayguns while needing to watchout not to get splattered by a freakin' magryder wanting to drive up the bloody base stairs.
    Years of playing that terrible spaceship game taught me to embrace the pain and now I get anxiety issues when I don't get a fix of it.