Is NC doomed as a faction?

I took about a 6 months break from Planetside 2, only came back recently just to check out Hossin. For the past 4 weeks+ I have yet to see NC win any alert, mount any successful push, or hold any camp for more than 2 hours. Hell, I rarely see any Vanguard or Reavers these days. What's going on? Not to say NC was doing great 6 months ago. But now it just appears NC has collectively decided to just stop trying for some reason. I won't bring out arguments of any artificial imbalance, as I've only recently got back into Planetside 2, but the way NC performs these days is just... *sigh*

which server?

Connery

NC doesn't seem to be doing that well on other servers either, from what I'm seeing, though.

I'm NC on Ceres.

All appears fine to me.

Depends on the time of day.

NC is recovering from being overpopulated on Connery. Some of the zergfits (such as ADK oddly enough) are making improvements. Connery pop right now is being juggled on who has the most continents locked lol.

FUNFACT: NC across all servers have the lowest KDR out of all three factions.
FUNFACT: NC is only consistent with the highest HSR across all servers.

NC, statistically speaking, is the worst faction in the game. #NChardmode

[source: http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/worlds/]

One thing people need to understand is theres not much wrong with the factions themselves, its the players.

Well yes and no. Having someone whos never played an FPS start of with the Gauss SAW is rather terrible. Its only good if you have good aim, the other starting weapons are more lenient since missing a shot doesnt detriment potential damage to target as mush. So NC as a whole will under perform slightly considering there are always bad players, and bad players scale worse with low RoF weapons.

But yes, not necessarily bad load outs... just bad players being bad with weapons they shouldn't be using which happen to be the default. Its been argued since beta and the new player quiz and free weapon do help... if they chose wisely.

The assault rifles are decent though (you need only Carnage anyway)

Looking at the stats the issue of NC having lowest KDR is easily explained without blaming the players and their skills. NC has most lower rank (new) players. NC also has lowest collective playtime.

On Connery at least, VS is simply unstoppable. They got both the numbers and organizations. Scythes and Magriders quite literally roam completely unopposed most of time. Yes, TR still hangs on. But NC is all but completely marginalized. From what I'm seeing, the story is pretty similar in the other servers as well, Just switch TR with VS.

I totally agree. NC is a uselass faction on the connery server...NC may have won a few alerts but now its getting worse everyday....I made this point almost a year ago..and it hasn't gotten any better. What a waste of time for a whole year...I am definitely not renewing my subscription..

Doooom!!! Seriously, you make it sound like an epidemic or some kind or global plague is upon us. Personally as an experienced player I switch factions to support the lowest pop faction on my server (Emerald). Right now I am TR but I've played all the factions over the last few years. All of the factions have niche weapons, NC bullets kill just like the other 2 factions weapons. you can easily look at ttk numbers and see that if used properly the weapons are generally balanced. The fact is, most of "FPS" is "Awareness and insight" anyways which has nothing to do with your equipment.

FUNFACT: NC have the highest TK rate, making their KDR lower, not even going to pull stats because everyone knows it.
FUNFACT: NC have the highest vertical recoild, making bads get more headshots than horizontal recoils TR and VS have, and also is home to the only bolt action sniper br1 certless infil.

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/server/17

Read my posts again, and see if I brought up weapon balances in ANY of them. But since you started it...

So how do you explain it? If your'e gonna go for "NC just has the worst player base." condescending jerkwad route, then this conversation is a wast of time. Or the old "Oh, NC weapons just have high skill ceilings, they're great once you're good enough for them" argument. Which still make things unfair as hell, when the fact only the TOP most skilled NC players in the NC faction can be competitive, while the beginner-average player struggle with these so called high-skill-cannons. Compare that to the fact that the other two faction's players of ALL skill level can all be at least decently competitive with their guns. It paints a rather gloom picture doesn't it? Furthermore, this also means often times, a new NC player will play the NC guns for a bit, hating it, then move on to one of the other two factions and then stay there.

As of now, be it skill level or weapon balance, doesn't matter, NC as a faction is more or less cert farm for the other two factions. On every servers.

On Miller, we (NC) are often able to win alerts, and hold camp's for more than 2 Hours.
In my opinion, we aren't weaker than other factions.
Sometimes, we are even stronger.

I disagree, NC isn't doomed.

Not when I'm playing NC. I didn't realize I was in charge of explaining your perceived notion of how the NC weapons are under performing. Isn't the Mercenary the defacto most popular weapon to Auxaxion? The gr-22 is sweet and I still do like the cyclone. I'm sure you will bring up the gauss saw as beign to hard for a new player to control the kick from recoil or the slow rate of fire, conveniently forgettign about the fact that standard LMGs do 143 damage max whereas the gauss saw does 200 damage per bullet and has the highest headshot percentage among the LMGs. You're definitely right and justified to attack me personally as a "jerkwad" That's constructive.

Cobalt (EU) could do with a few more competent players. I remember when I started playing it was the TR who would completely dominate, then the bias shifted to the NC and more recently it has been the VS who are kings of Cobalt.
I adore the NC. By no means is the NC doomed though.

Don't take words out of context. I was only gonna write you off, if you were gonna start the whole "NC players just all suck" condescending crap argument, that we hear all so often whenever somebody even consider the possibility of NC just being a difficult faction to pick up because of their weapons.

And 200 damage on Gauss SAW really doen't matter as much as you might think. As it doesn't offset the terrible bloom, recoil, and slow 500RPM nearly enough. Remember, 200 damage is only worth 200 damage IF you land the hits, and thanks to the crappy handling of the Gauss SAW, it is extra difficult to land hits consistently on a moving target (Which's majority of your targets). Even when you got the correct lead, you'll still have to wrestle with the recoil + the fast blooming accuracy which you can do nothing about + slow RPM. There's a reason that the most widely popular weapons for NC players are the ones that behaves the least like NC.

Wasn't the NC used by the latest ServerSmash victors ?