K/D All servers all factions.(repost from reddit).

I play all three factions (BR79 tr, BR47 vs, BR 44 nc, about ~1200h playing time, never used XP boosts) on three different servers and I have to say playing as VS is the easiest of all for me. (My KDR is the highest on VS (4.5) too but it's beacuse on Woodman there are so many VS medics, someone will always pick you up in 5 seconds if you die.)

I'm not a good fps player at all. Good NC players kill me all the time but most players are not good in Planetside and for these players VS and TR weapons are more "user-friendly".

If I meet noob NC players 1 on 1 even on longer distance I'll win 95% of the time. The SAW is just a terrible starter weapon and you need a lot of certs to make it better and still it will be too specialized. You must go for headshots all the time. I think if they gave the EM6 as a default gun to the NC their KDR would be closer to the other two factions.

The other thing that makes NC's KDR worse is their MBT and ESF. I don't use vehicles but almost never been killed by Vanguards or Reavers.

If I could loot other players I would use these weapons:
LMG - Orion
Carbine - Jaguar
Assault Rifle - Carnage

Aahhh, its the NC's psyche that makes them underperform!

Oh lol. This is probably the weirdest argurment.

The skill makes NC underperform. NC is full of newbies, noobs and objectless casuals. When i play NC, is see many players just standing or running around with no plan. They just follow the zerg. Any experienced PS2 player knows how easy it is to deafeat a uncoordinated zerg.

Also NC weapons are hardest to use (not necessarily underpowered) and their ESF and MAX are crap.

Three points:

1. In PS2, easy mode = playing in the most populated faction for a given server. So how can relative population not be a factor in overall K/D ratio? People like to brag about "having more targets" or whatever, but that's BS. The higher populated faction will achieve vehicle dominance, all other things being equal, and that's when the farming begins.

2. Are these K/D ratios generated from recent play, or from everything that has happened from launch of PS2 until now? If it's from launch until now, then they cannot possibly reflect current balance issues accurately.

3. In general, people don't choose their faction randomly. If they did, we wouldn't have seen large population imbalances arising over time. It's an open question as to whether one particular faction's ethos / aesthetics etc. attracts a better class of player, and how European / US / Asian culture affects that.

This is pretty much it as far as I'm concerned, at least as far as Miller goes. Which makes sense, since I'm pretty sure the NC is the go-to faction for most new players.
But what feeds into this is poor NC leadership. The difference between public squads in the three factions is staggering. I invite anyone on Miller to play the other two factions for a week, joining only public squads, and to see the immense differences in the co-ordination, strategy and teamwork between the VS/TR and the NC.

I think using the mean skews results quite badly.

I think it would be more representative of KD if you were to compare the range of KD across servers and factions.

Same on Cobalt. VS have best organization, TR 2nd best.

When i started my VS char after playing ~100h NC i was awestruck by the organization. Players are talking! Platoonleader is active and gives orders via voice comm! When he says "Bravo go burster MAX and defend the canyon against air", a few minutes later the squad is in position with sundi and engineer support.

When you try to do this on NC .... half of the squad doesnt even know what a burster MAX is and most of the other half will ignore your order, so after a few minutes you maybe have 2 MAXes in position with no engineer support.

Nice text color choice. I applaud it.

Yep L2P issue on every server. That train is never late.

questions to soe/the devs: do you think NC is on par with the other factions?
if not:
do you want it to be like this (which may have some deeper sense) or do you just don't know how to change it without messing up something else?

I play all 3 factions pretty seriously. I have a BR100 NC, a BR 72 VS and a BR 62 TR all on Waterson. There is very little difference with regard to the people themselves, but there is a pretty big difference in respect to how the different factions approach battles due to the gear the game provides them. That in turn greatly affects the statistics and relative success of each faction as a whole.

NC infantry weapons, with few exceptions, have to be burst fired to be effective unless it's a, "stick the muzzle into the guys' gut", type of fight. Burst firing WRECKS your time to kill. NC's thoeretical time to kill is already far worse than TR & VS who are neck and neck in that department, compound that with obligatory burst firing and there lies the problem on the infantry side.

On the vehicle and anti-vehicle side of things, the only thing NC can accomplish with any degree of alacrity is uninterrupted 1 vs 1 tank duels in situations where manuerablility cannot play a decisive role. Given the scope of combat in PS2 that is of very limited value to a large scale engagement. Compare that to the prowler's ability to forcibly respawn vast quantities of infantry and you see the problem.

The NC have extremely lackluster ways to deal with vehicles, outside the Vangaurd, which is at the mercy of infantry. The Phoenix is a novelty that is only good for sniping engies humping their turrets and abandoned vehicles. The Ravens are little more than heavily nerfed fractures, the wire guided feature doesn't make them any better. Compare that to Striker, Fractures, ZOE with Comets and you see the problem.

In the air, NC have the Reaver, slower than the mossie and the easiest to hit...So, you see the problem.

The end result is, TR &VS have the NC trumped, in one way or another, in every facet of the game that makes any difference. Both VS & TR generally prefer fighting NC over each other because of this. So, not only do NC have inferior equipment and the least flexibility, but they are also usually facing the bulk of both the TR & VS forces because of it. The net result of all of this is the NC are being farmed PS2 wide.

Below are my 3 characters that demonstrate I know what I'm talking about...
NC https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428011263360929041
VS https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428059527817570145
TR https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428059527817569889

Does this survey exclude characters below a certain BR, e.g. 35? If not, it certainly needs to.

Does this survey only include data from (say) the last two months? If not, it won't be correlated very strongly to current balance issues.

Is this an overall K/D from the beginning of the game? Daily K/D? Weekly? Monthly?

What about the sample? Do they take into account unused accounts with 0 K/D?

Also, how viable is DasAnfall?

I do hate when people come out with nonsense like this. It's like you're incapable of separating what you've been taught about statistics from common sense.

Sampling does not need to be randomised when you are using 100% of the population. It is actually the most accurate and scientific sample possible; a random sampling would reduce accuracy, not increase it.

The self-selection argument is the only viable argument, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest NC players play as lone wolves more, are less organised, are worse in general etc. -THAT- is something that a random sample might be used for; to poll players for mentality, and also to switch their factions and monitor performance variance.

There is also a compounding variable that should be noted (for the sake of SCIENCE ) - players are not forced to stay with their choice. New players who note [a factor which may amount to TR/VS having a better/easier time] may leave NC immediately, leaving a low KDR character on the stats for NC, and then playing more on TR/VS, naturally improving their abilities, and thus seeing their KDR improve; this way one player may skew stats by providing a low KDR NC and higher KDR TR/VS. That would only leave us with the necessity of a study into what that factor that forces faction switching at low BR and consistent playing+improvement after switching though.

It is absolutely not necessary to eliminate the extrinsic factor of self selection though; there are only two factors here (the paragraph above is still an example of self-selection): game mechanics and self-selection. For a certain conclusion, we would need to eliminate it yes, but to apply common sense/logic, or simply Ockham's Razor, it's far more likely that there are game mechanics at least partially in effect here than that the average player inclined to pick NC is 10-20% worse than the average player inclined to pick TR/VS.

A study of players with characters on three factions on the same server would add weight to this argument without the necessity of lengthy normalisation studies too.

If you want to get scientific, don't be a naysayer. Be a yaysayer.

NC characters have the lowest K/D? I refuse to believe it.

Again you are just making assumptions with no facts. What you 'observe' from a player perspective during individual local fights, (however accurate you may think your assessment of what just took place is) is not accurate information on which to base assessments over what is, or is not, contributing to the 'overall' win loss between factions, across all servers; and the level of that contribution. It is an overall impression at best. You have no idea of the exact numbers involved in the fight, you have no idea about 'every' decision taken by both sides, you have no idea of the predominant weapons used (how much and for how long) you have no idea of the K/D ratio for each player (the original point of this thread)

NC fall well behind on K/D ratio, so if you have a local fight, where numbers are fairly even, and the NC are always consistently dying more than the opposition because of some weapon imbalance that IS going to have an affect. To what degree exactly, is unknown. How often this is the case is also unknown, but you have no basis on which to call it 'incredibly small' You might think from your 'observations' that you won because of a decision you took as a leader, but the reality might well be that you won because the NC died twice as much as your team. A higher K/D ratio can translate into an effective population advantage even if the actual numbers are equal.

Now I'm not saying this K/D ratio stat is some hard evidence that NC are under powered, but when we see NC lose every server in the WDS, even ones where the pops are even or where we have a pop advantage, and we see stats such as K/D ratio being well behind the others I think its time for SOE to look at why, which includes looking at faction weapons and how they perform in the hands of both good and mediocre players. the answer is not just to just assume its because of numbers, or the other factions are more organised etc etc just because that's how it 'looks' from a players perspective in game.

And finally, every battle is not a zerg, which means there are potentially plenty of close fought battles that 'COULD' be determined by a weapon imbalance.

There is no need to carry this on any further, you can reply with your point of view, I will read it, but I wont respond, as we simply have different view points. I don't have hard facts to prove what I am saying is right, and I am not trying to claim I am, I just disagree with your assessment that weapon imbalances are basically irrelevant in the outcome of WDS or overall K/D ratio

NC has a 0.3 lower KDR overall compared to other empires! OH MY GOD
Such difference
Such skill
Such balance
pls buff nc
Really?Jesus, that was terrible

Not really; this would necessity significant time investment in the game, more than the majority of players. You would indeed have a good go at balancing the game for those with skill+experience, but it would go nowhere towards balancing the average player's experience.

Epidemiology is -not- 'bad science'; it's only bad science when used by bad scientists. The kind of scientists that believe that selecting a small sample size from the total population increases accuracy rather than decreases it...

The observation that with 8 different population variances, and infinite numbers of differently skilled subgroups (outfits) etc, no matter all of those variables changing, one faction is consistently underperforming (and, from a quick glance, performing the most consistently also) is a powerful observation, regardless of whether it fits our ideal experiment model or not.

Give me a budget and I'll run the proper studies for you, but without, this is more or less the only model we have for investigation. It necessitates a homeorhetic balancing approach, but it's really all we (or the devs, who you can bet use this same 'bad science' to investigate balance complaints) have.

As I said, go to Miller, play all three factions for a week, then come back and tell me they're the same.

VS and TR noobtube more. NC actually fights for their faction even if they know they will lose. I just see faction loyalty here.

It only makes a tangible difference in two cases: MAX Comets and slug shotgun sniping.