[Suggestion] How much stuff is actually 'faction specific'? Some suggestions...

There's a lot of talk about 'asymmetric balance' and 'faction traits' and so on,
but what do we have currently that is actually specific to each faction?
What isn't just a cosmetic re-skin of the same stuff?

Legend:
NS - Nanite Systems = yellow (available to all factions)
TR - Terran Republic = red (only available to TR)
VS - Vanu Sovereignty = purple (only available to VS)
NC - New Conglomerate = blue (only available to NC)

Classes:
Infiltrator (NS and a few ES weapons, pistols, rifles, AI mines - Claymore, Prox, Betty)
Light Assault (NS and a few ES weapons, pistols, rifles)
Heavy Assault (NS and a few ES weapons, pistols, LMGs, Heavy weapons - Minigun, Jackhammer, Lasher / RLs - Striker, Phoenix, Lancer)
Combat Medic (NS and a few ES weapons, pistols, rifles)
Combat Engineer (NS and a few ES weapons, pistols, rifles - AI mines)
MAX suits (NS and ES weapons / abilities - Aegis, Lockdown, ZOE)

*Note: most of the ES rifles are only slightly different between factions.
(There is no 'faction specific' class... this has been suggested by others)
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/empire-specific-classes.102720/

Vehicles:
Flash (only NS weapons)
Lightning (only NS weapons)
Harasser (NS and ES weapons) !?
Sunderer (only NS weapons)
Vanguard (NS and ES weapons)
Magrider (NS and ES weapons)
Prowler (NS and ES weapons)

(So 1 out of 5 ground vehicles is faction specific for each faction...)

Aircraft:
Liberator (only NS weapons)
Galaxy (only NS weapons)
Reaver (NS and ES weapons)
Scythe (NS and ES weapons)
Mosquito (NS and ES weapons)

(So 1 out of 3 aircraft is faction specific for each faction...)


So as we can see, NS dominates the choices for players of any faction.
(So there's really not much Empire Specific choice anyway...)

If we could change this for the better, here are some suggestions:

1. Provide TR/VS/NC skins and weapons for the NS vehicles / aircraft.
The skins would be purely cosmetic, but cool and immersive at least.
The weapons would need much balance testing, lest we re-visit the Harasser mistake...
(Example:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...berator-not-a-rant-srsly.174578/#post-2520082
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...-flash-lighting-and-sundy-lib-and-gal.107159/)
TR/VS/NC skins and weapons for the Flash, Lightning, Harasser, Sunderer, Liberator, Galaxy, etc...)

or

1. Actually introduce TR/VS/NC vehicles / aircraft / items to replace the roles / niches filled by the NS stuff.
(Move towards a 'true' TR/VS/NC balance system and remove NS items altogether.
Would require a lot of re-skins, models, balance testing, etc...
TR/VS/NC versions of the Flash, Lightning, Harasser, Sunderer, Liberator, Galaxy, etc...)

or

3. Provide TR/VS/NC vehicles and aircraft to all factions, so balance is same for all factions and only cosmetics / aesthetics / colours are the difference.
(discussed here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...x-most-of-the-problems-with-imbalance.153919/
VS & TR get Vanguards and Reavers
VS & NC get Mosquitoes and Prowlers
NC & TR get Scythes and Magriders)
- This is the easiest solution, but raises cries of 'boring' and kinda loses the point of having three empires (besides having different coloured / looking 'teams' to fight against)
- choice becomes a cosmetic one
- battles are won / lost through numbers, skill, leadership, terrain and luck, not faction differences.

or

4. Introduce a legitimate 4th faction, "Nanite Systems", and remove NS vehicles. aircraft, weapons from the current 3 factions TR/VS/NC .
(would require introducing some TR/VS/NC versions of the NS items to fill those roles left behind)
(Red vs. Blue vs. Purple vs. Yellow)
NS faction would need balancing, due to lack of MBT and Fighter
Other factions TR/VS/NC would need balancing due to loss of all NS vehicles, aircraft, items...)
*This option would require the most work to implement and is really just a variation on suggestion 3.


What do you think?
Did I miss anything?
Any different / better suggestions?

Amen! I've said it before and I'll say it again: I want to be a soldier of the Vanu Sovereignty fighting the Terran Republic and New Conglomerate, not NS Purple fighting NS Red and NS Blue.

I actually like faction specific stuff, it makes it feel like a different experience when I play a different faction. It's one reason I fell in love with games like Rising Storm and Natural Selection. When everyone has access to the same weapons and the same vehicles I don't see the point in faction loyalty, yeah it's good for balance but its lazy. Battlefield and Call of Duty took the route of making everything the same for each team and imo dumb down the game for a more casual crowd. Battlefield at least re skinned the vehicles but they are still copies of the other vehicle.
TR are supposed to be the Republic army with large magazines and fast fire rates
NC are supposed to be the Corporate back rebels with high damage slow fire rate.
VS are supposed to the scientific religious faction with alien type weaponry.

More of this:

I would like less NS stuff in general.

Unfortunately I can see SOE preferring to do NS stuff over ES because it is easier to balance a weapon if everyone has access to it and it is cheaper and faster to develop 1 weapon as opposed to 3

Instead of the NS Valkyrie I would have preferred to see 3 faction specific variation on the idea of a light transport vehicle

I love seeomg this chart. It needs to be expanded on.

Honestly as a TR guy I'm not sure how much more Faction Specific weapons I want to see.

I mean more faction specific weapons are cool if you're NC and and you already have weapons that represent TR strengths, or if you're VS and get weapons with low Horizontal recoil and decent ads speed.

More in more toys are always cool, but the TR must of been naughty bc I feel like we keep getting more and more coal.

We get weapons that are on par with VS RoF, that have higher recoil values, lower ads movement values, longer reload times, but larger mags. That's our niche? That's a horrible trade. And the rest of our toys are so boring, lock on weapons (something all factions have access to) the special ability to not move in a game where movement is life, a tank weapon that requires you to be in shotgun range on our lockdown tank, and a objectively worse scout rifle.

At least with all this NS weapons I can look forward to actually having something that might be worth using.

What's wrong with coal? That's fossil fuel. Burn that stuff!

I see your point. Everyone has access to high RPM weapons so it doesn't seem like a TR faction trait anymore, and some of your weapons have severe identity crises; the short-range Vulcan on the mobile artillery platform, as you mentioned.

Thinking back to Planetside 1, that game had a ton of common pool vehicles. In fact, there wasn't a single empire-specific aircraft in the game. There were also ES variants of common pool vehicles, but that was because we couldn't choose what weapons to equip on vehicles so more variants were used as a workaround. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the only purely ES vehicles in PS1 were the heavy buggies (Enforcer, Marauder, Thresher) and MBTs (Vanguard, Prowler, Magmower). Everything else was common pool or was a variant of a common pool vehicle with ES weapons. Looking at PS2 now, we're pretty much par for course, trading an ES ground vehicle for ESFs.

We have many more ES infantry weapons in PS2 compared to PS1 so there's no real comparison there, even though the differences in performance are minor. I wish SOE could be a bit more creative with weapons without causing us to scream our heads off.

I would like to see the NS vehicles changed. Give them ES skins, but have the exact same stats as their counter parts.

NS should exist to fill the gaps that factions have in their arsenal. Not for every other new weapon. But there are some things like sniper rifles and shotguns that would make it hard to do pure ES and no NS reskins.

On the idea of filling parts of the arsenal, if you ever wanted a T5 AMC with more accuracy and 5 less rounds than you can buy the NS-11C. NS weapons should be clones of other faction's weapons that fill a certain role that other factions don't have. Or roles that are entirely new and would be hard to balance with three unique weapons. Just my two certs.