I am TR and have lots of items, certs and whatever in my TR character. As a TR, I always felt the faction weapons underwhelming as I was losing nearly every single firefight when fighting face to face even when I have pretty good aim. The only weapons that I had great success killing other players are NS Yumi, NS Pistols, Arbalest and Dragoon. By great success I mean 10 kills for every death (ON AVERAGE). I decided to try other factions weapons after 7 years of playing the game. Actually Arbalest I feel is the only top tier weapon for TR as it melts enemies. I felt Dragoon inferior to NC's Bishop as Bishop kills footmen with 2 shots to the chest while Dragoon kills with 3 despite having the same 334 damage at all ranges. I tried VS weapons and they feel awesome in terms of precision. You could put a bullet in the middle of a coin from a mile away. NC's though felt superior as it kills with less shots - because I rarely miss. Then I moved to NC. Now I am doing over 20 kills for every death (ON AVERAGE, I was able to do over 30 many times). It's a huge increase from the best TR guns. With a crappy Light Assault, without any armor/damage reduction/implants, I started winning over 90% of the face to face fights. Actually I started winning at all ranges, even outsniping Infiltrators with my 200-143 damage AC-X11 carbine. OMG it's so different and easy to headshot with this weapon. Feels like changing from a third world country to a first world country. This carbine simply destroys in a couple of shots. I started taking out Maxes, which I could only do with 700 damage sniper rifle or C4 before when I played for TR. Ok, so I went from TR to NC, weapons are better. Planetside is pretty much a respawn race. The faster you can respawn and the closer you are to objective, you win. NC players simply ignore enemy Sunderers in their faces. Am I missing something here? Is there a policy to let enemies respawn to farm them ignoring the risks of being overwhelmed? And also, NC players dont mind playing cat and mouse (which I find pretty exhausting). What I mean is, they never use the Recon Detection Device. So NC's keep running after Cloakers, they lose sight, cloakers kill them, NC respawn, run after cloakers, lose sight, cloakers kill them. Jeeezus! Who the hell does that? If you keep doing the same thing over and over the result is going to be the same! Is there a policy of not using the Recon Detection Device to let the enemy escape so they can farm us? Dude I swear I would use it if I had the certs for it but since I'm a new character my priority is getting the best guns in NC faction (next is Vanquisher). Really as a faction, TR despite having the worse guns they have a much better play.
The faction flavors attract different players. The players who find organization, orders, objective play or any sort of plan to be repulsive seem to be drawn to the NC. I'm not saying that all NCs are like this, just that there's a reason my NC toon is the only one I never got to ASP with. Shooting people is fun and all, but I like to play for an objective with a team, NCs get mad at me for killing the enemy sundy because "YoU rUiNeD tHe FaRm!" They also intentionally don't help take the last biolab satellite, instead sitting in the biolab waiting for the farm to come back.
Its always the same. If a VS player tries TR or NC, then obviously all those weapons and vehicles are superior! If a TR tries another faction the same happens, and again with NC. The first time I tried the TR it was a great time. The weapons were forgiving with deep magazines and you always had what is essentially your pocket shotgun in the repeater. The Prowler is a smooth murder machine, I actually ran out of ammo on the thing and not because I had been wasting ammunition either! That is the same damage potential as the other MBT's with its total ammo capacity so unloading it all means that damage is done! And on the VS? The Magrider is the chariot of the gods! As a 1/2 Magrider while waiting for my buddy to show up I held back two reasonably good Vanguards at range, one 1/2 and one 2/2. Having to retreat only after dealing more than 70% to one Vanguard causing it to retreat and 40% to the other. Later on as 2/2 Maggie I absolutely wrecked 2 Vanguards by using terrain in ways they could't dream of and then fought off some other tanks while retreating. The weapons on the VS are also forgiving and solid. But the teamplay on the TR and VS? At least on the TR you get a response, even if it is an insult. The VS seem to actively run away from any objective you place on the map and scatter across several bases the moment resistance is met. Yet the problem with this? Just like everyone else, this is just a subjective experience. Whenever someone brings up the superior teamplay of the VS I just have to roll my eyes, or when people say that the NC don't do teamwork all I have to say is "just because they don't instantly listen to you does not mean they don't do teamplay". Although the idea that people have to listen to one person for teamwork to exist is such a toxic and viral notion that most of the playerbase thinks that bullcrap is true. Stop using your bias and subjective experiences to gauge how the game works. You enjoying the NC weapons? Fine! Enjoy them! Don't turn around and say the TR weapons dont work. They do work! You just have too much bias build up over the years to see it.
This is happenning on every single day with all factions in Miller now. Which is really annoying and is not what game was designed for..
I can´t speak to your personal experience (or that of anyone else, tbh) but I have played all factions, mostly LA or Medic and I found the new gen weapons like the TR Kindred, Bishop and the Arbalest pretty decent. The Jaguar is a solid carbine for me too. I would say that maybe they need to be used at closer range than the NC equivalents for similar effect. I am currently playing NC with similarly good experience of new gen weapons and find the Vanquisher AR a better fit for me than the Arbalest. The Charger is pretty awesome as well - a slight upgrade to the very useful Mercenary. But as to the point about the NC playstyle, all I can suggest is to find a coherent outfit. I belong to one which fields well organised and disciplined platoons which don´t muck around. I´m on Miller and I see plenty of NC recon detector devices. That could be anything to do with server you´re on, time of play or some other random factor. My only grumble about Infils has been well-rehearsed by others in the forum and is to do with the number of very high BR players with SMGs like the Punisher. Hunting Infils in the high places as an LA used to be my bread and butter but it is more like walking into ambush territory nowadays. It is so long since I´ve played VS that I´ll not comment on that faction, other than to note that the no-drop Obelisk was an awesome experience when shooting at longer range IIRC.
Stop right there. Bishop is NC. I said in the main text that Bishop (NC) is superior to Dragoon (TR equivalent to Bishop). They have the same damage 334 but even so Bishop kills with 2 shots to the chest while Dragoon kills with 3. As I said in the main text, Arbalest is the only top tier weapon for TR in comparison to what NC/VS/NS have. NC has 3 top tier weapons being AC-X11, Bishop, Vanquisher. TR has 1 top tier which is Arbalest. NS has 2 pistols, 1 AR Yumi. All the other top tier weapons are VS except that most VS weapons are like firing a flashbang into your own face. ACX-11 compared to Kindred is way superior as it does significantly more damage. Damage > Rate of Fire. If you kill with 2-4 shots you dont need to spray your weapon. Thats what ACX-11 does. First shot goes to chest, second goes to the head as it has pretty high recoil so you bring the weapon down, third shot goes to the chest and fourth goes to the head. Its pretty easy to headshot with it and headshots with 200-143 damage is super strong. I went back to TR because NC gameplay is pretty lackluster. There are some good players but they simply refuse to go after whats nuking them, to reveal infiltrators and to destroy sunderers. Its frustrating. TR weapons are inferior, whatever but I'd rather play with smarter players than play in a team of dumber players with better guns.
I think this is a big issue in Planetside 2 that 1 avoided with most the gun's being NS. A lot of factions are designed around being REALLY good in a faction specific area. When I play an HA, sometimes i wish i was TR because the CQC on some of their LMG's just rip me apart. Than at medium range i want the accuracy of the Vanu, and at long range i want the 200 damage guns. Some of the factions can dip into it but it's always the "bad" version of said gun. PS1 most the guns had the same TTK, heck for the most part the best ttk was a punisher slamming a plasma nade than gunning them down.
Due to headshot damage multiplier, NC have the best weapons in the game. TR has the most "newbie-friendly" guns -- which does not make em better. VS is technically a bad faction since their weapons are niche and does not exceed in anything. And no, getting instagibbed by a specific player using (add "grass is greener" faction here) does not make the whole faction godlike.
It's some psychological phenomenon. If I play a given faction for a long time then go back and visit some old favorite it seems like their guns are better. They aren't and the feeling wears off. When I switch to NC after being away for a while the thing that usually comes to me is, "oh yeah, I forgot... I don't have to chip at that guy at range, I can just jack him up.... " For TR the thing that comes to me is the bullet hose thing. RoF reduces the miss penalty to nothing. I feel like when I'm trying to headshot that I can just fish around for the head while firing. Beer sloshing out of my mug in my free hand...I can miss all of the place and still get the job done. As for the players? Ug. There has been a brain drain across all 3 factions. Much strategy and meta knowledge has been lost and it's reached the point where new players no longer get it taught to them. So what happens is during certain hours the concentration of old school players reaches an acceptable level. But only perhaps during primetime do all 3 factions reach that level. The rest of the time there is one faction playing well and the other two being just utterly stupid. No one faction has a monopoly on the derp behavior.
I did some sample math tests, and for equivalent weapons on each faction the COF growth per damage point was virtually equal regardless of damage model. NC is more likely to be punished for a miss since it loses you more damage and it takes longer for the next shot to be fired.
NC attributes: Thick skull. I’m talking 6 inch armor brah. Ears. NC don’t have any. Guns. Yep, dig ol bick ones. PSAF. Play Stupid And Farm. o7
Dumbs down planetside 2 from planetside 1 Wonder why every player has the IQ to run in front of an HA and dont know what a brake is when they see allies. I play all 3 factions and all sides have *****, it just became an NC joke imo cause it happens a little bit more.
As has been covered in the past, its down to NCs generally higher damage per bullet, making TKs significantly more likely to happen if you catch someone with a stray bullet or two. But every faction has its share of fools. It depends on a lot of factors, like there being local leadership of any kind, like BHO (which is infamously pretty much a one man lead platoon or two, but still does pretty darn well at alert ops through numbers and direction).
NC weapons being the most powerful 1v1 in "the Right hands" is why we also we have the highest Ratio of same-faction kills and likewise deaths from other NC. That's the only unwritten Policy we adhere to one way or another. Some times we see the blue dorito ahead of time, and keep firing anyway. We're also just as likely to blow up our own faction's Sunderers as we are the enemy's because reasons.... (some times, it literally the only way to other get the blueberries to change lattice lanes)
VS main, it took me a long time to "get" VS weapons and I prefer the ones people usually don't. For instance, a couple of my favorites are the CME and Corvus AR's. When I play TR I feel like its a different game. Yeah, yeah, no more peppering targets from 100 yards away, but I'll take that trade for being able to win 3 times as many turn-the-corner fights. Also, I hate NC guns. They feel like they fire in slow motion. I'm sure, with time, I could "get" those too.
