Lets End the Nerf Culture.

Or maybe you should look at what the forums and in-game has been like for the last couple months.

1) TR and NC whining especially hard post-Emerald merger about how unfair the VS is and how the server is ruined. VS are winning too much, it's not fair. It's because of their OPness, it's because they zerg, it's because they redeploy, it's because they have more players than us, it's because they're too hard to see at night, blah blah blah.

2) Literally the day after the PPA nerf was announced, the front page had three threads about how the Orion needed to be nerfed and how broken the Betelgeuse was. These threads were a dozen pages long each.

3) In-game, for the last few months, the NC and the TR especially has been acting like children. The ****-talking in /yell about how the VS are a a bunch of pricks blah blah PPA PPA PPA not fair etc. etc. 80% of the time I fight TR, /yell chat is full of vitriol and hatred. The NC rarely act like this, and when I play on my NC character, the TR don't act like that.

4) SEVERAL posts about how 'fighting the VS isn't any fun' because all they do is spam the PPA, apparently. Higby himself, exercising a complete lack of tact, made a comment about how the VS 'use overpowered stuff', which basically has served as an official sanction for both the TR and NC to criticize the VS even more.

5) TR and NC vowing some sort of alliance specifically to 'punish' the VS. The VS have begun losing alerts because the NC and TR have specifically been ignoring each other just to try to warpgate and punish the VS simply because the VS 'won too much' and had the PPA. The TR actually sacrificed an alert specifically to make the VS lose, by giving all their territory over to the NC without a fight (NC went from about 28% to 45% in, like, thirty minutes) while they sent TWO 96+ zergs at two VS bases. I would chalk it up to TR terribadness, but considering all the 'alliance' posts and how this behavior mimics every alert I've played in the last week or so, where there's not a single 96+ fight to be found between NC and TR lines, well, that's what I put it up to.

6) The ZOE didn't get balanced, it got nerfed to the point of ruination. It's a liability now, and will get you killed if you use it. The PPA didn't get balanced, it got nerfed equally badly, and it's now good for absolutely nothing. The VS pretty much gets nerfed badly and never actually gets anything improved. Ever. The Spiker is the first actual buff to a useless weapon the VS has gotten that I can remember, and even then it's still a ****** pistol. The Lasher is still a useless weapon that nobody wants. The Magrider is still a slow, underperforming tank with the worst cannon in the game. The Phaseshift is still a clunky weapon that punishes you for using it at long range. The Beamer / Cerberus / Manticore are still awful sidearms with no redeeming features whatsoever. I can name several weapons that the NC have that excel in their particular niche, and I can name several weapons the TR have that excel in their particular niche. Nobody has a problem with any of these weapons being powerful. The ONLY weapon the VS have that can possibly be described as being exceptional is the Orion, and that's only if you compare it to the other starting LMGs. It's still trounced by other LMGs, like the Anchor.

The VS has been treated like **** by the developers and the community on both the forums and in-game for a while. And it's only getting worse. Now that the PPA is nerfed, suddenly any discussion about balance is "JUST SOME QQ VANUS TRYING TO GET REVENGE-NERFING LOLOL". Anything that's clearly overpowered is "JUST HOW THE GAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE ROFL DUM VANUS". PPA got nerfed, now it's time to "END NERF CULTURE OMG".

The Striker gets overnerfed and the TR waste no time whining about how broken it is, and it gets buffed by the next patch. ZOE gets overnerfed and now I literally have never seen anybody use it except <BR15s, and it's been this way for months, and SOE doesn't care. We effectively have no MAX ability. Even the maligned TR lockdown comes in handy SOMEtimes.

Even you tried to blame it on the Vanu being ********.

http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=q4kpu&weapon1=501&weapon2=502&weapon3=503

And if you use the Q4 KPU, it's not nearly as cherry-picked and obvious as you tried.

Also, even on your example, the difference is minute. Did you not look at the numbers along the right side? The difference of 1 KPU is almost irrelevant, and considering how frequently the lines intersect, it's well within the margin of error.

Check the Oracle of Death stats for your Banshee, It isn't just good, It has ALWAYS far outperformed the other faction equivalents.

You bring up the Orion? Lets go then, Let me show you why the Orion is not getting nerfed and why it is not OP like people try to say.

For this example, We are going to use the NS-15M. This weapon has a 0.75 ADS speed modifier and is available to all factions. Below you will see where I have pulled the NS-15M stats from Oracle of Death.

VS NS-15M 301001 - 17687 - 879 - 20.01 - 25.53 - 0.05 - 0.02 - 68.6 - 0.218 - 530.7 - 35.57
NC NS-15M 301002 - 12543 - 813 - 15.33 - 20.8 - 0.06 - 0.02 - 66.3 - 0.203 - 445.3 - 29.34
TR NS-15M 301003 - 11691 - 739 - 15.76 - 20.68 - 0.05 - 0.02 - 69.2 - 0.21 - 392.9 - 31.31

Red = Average Kills.

Look at that, The VS NS-15M is outperforming the other faction versions of it by a large margin.. It MUST be OP in some way or form because its doing better than the others, right? NO. It outperforms the other faction versions because of population alone, NOTHING MORE.

You may be asking "Well what does that have to do with the Orion?"... The Orion is following the exact same trend as the NS-15M because of two major factors.

1. Due to the server merges, VS population has been at the highest it has ever been on majority of servers.
2. The Orion is available as the default weapon, Which means EVERY Vanu Heavy has to use it before anything else while the other factions have to pay certs or station cash to unlock their equivalents.

Back to your Banshee, It needed a nerf far before the ESF PPA did. Check your own stats.

M14 Banshee= 4906 - 15787 - 1060 - 14.84 - 17.56 - 0.41 - 0.45 - 76.5 - 0.008 - 316.8 - 51.16
Light PPA= 4305 - 9198 - 908 - 10.07 - 12.86 - 0.32 - 0.28 - 75.7 - 0.011 - 225.5 - 43.92

Red = Average Kills.

I don't really care to label these numbers, You can see clearly how vastly the Banshee is outperforming the ESF PPA according to Oracle of Death. The fact you are trying to defend the Banshee from getting its future nerf is faction biased in itself.

Some nerfs are just down right silly, like infantry complaining that anti infantry vehicle mounted weapons are killing them, what do the devs do? Nerf it so it no longer works against infantry. Takes me 4 indirect shots just to kill a heavy now with a marauder. That's 4/5th of a mag without full certs.

Liar! Players that are not using the ordained weapons blessed by the Great Cheese are nothing more than vile NPCs wholly deserving of eternal death!

Several months ago, the TR were the targets of the month, during which there was the occasional alliance of NC and VS shooting them every now and then. Before that, there was the NC, but they were cracked down upon practically immediately and designated Shotgun Faction.

Thats the whole point. Most stats that are posted show a biased half picture, not the full story.

You do understand that im saying the Orion should NOT be nerfed?? Also with the OoD, i can play with the sheets to make the EM6 to look like its performing better. The point is, stats do not ALWAYS prove something is OP, because the best of something does not make it OP.

People can use stats to make most arguments to there benefit but if players are honest we all know whats hot whats not. The Orion to use again as an example is a great LMG but nobody runs away from it do they, because its not a instant death gun, its just good.

Yet if you look at the Marauder is is now actually performing more or less in line with the rest of the vehicle AI weapons.

Prior to the nerf it was outperforming them all by 3x or more.



This is basically the problem with threads like this, people see a nerf to them as undeserved, even when statsistically it is blatently justified.

(and you can't just say "well all AI weapons should all have been buffed to Marauder levels" because that would have thrown balance out the window and resulted in mudflation where infantry needed better AV weapons and then other vehicles needed better AI weapons etc. etc. When it comes to a choice between nerfing 1 obviously overperforming thing and buffing 24 things that are actually fine, there's only one remotely sensible outcome.)

Stats can be funny and even misleading, but rarely do they stand up to any scrutiny if they are.

For a while the NC (IIRC) was doing much worse with frag grenades than the TR or VS, I often wondered what was behind that and it may have been possible to find out if you were SOE, but for players there simply wasn't the data.

Ironically Claymores that were being shouted about on the forum at the time as being underpowered were performing better comparatively to VS/NC mines than NC frag grenades were to VS/TR frag grenades (dispite the latter being identical).

They were, of course, buffed.


Yet since the buff Claymores have been the best peforming mine (by waaaaaaaay more than they underperformed prior to that).

In KPU
In KPH
And Q4 KPU

All showing the same thing, Claymores being (now) by far the best mine.

In this graph, you will see only from the 29th of October have they increased, but about the same time people shouted Nerf, so guess what, everyone is now using it. So depending on what you want to see, you will see and find it, like we both agree i think, stats are misleading.

http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kills&weapon1=1045&weapon2=1044&weapon3=429

To counter your argument, by your logic ( not you personally, just as your example ) you would nerf the claymore due to the stats you provided ( hypothetically ), but the VS when given the same stats claim more people use the Orion so it should not be nerfed as the stats are misleading?

People cant have it both ways can they buddy?

Kills really isn't a good stat for using, as it basically skews very easily and only really reflects population issues, although even there if you look back at bit more you can see the Claymore being clearly ahead.



In the case of the Claymore the stats weren't misleading at all, peoples interpretation of them was - Devs aren't immune from this either as anyone that lived through the EQ1 Monk nerf knows (the Devs eventually admited they were wrong and repealed it, but it took 18 months).

That is the stats were showing a minor difference (which was hit upon and highlighted by those wanting a buff), but that difference wasn't real (in a performance/balance manner - as I argued at the time, in fact), but after the buff there is now actually a significant difference (suggesting I was right at the time, I guess).

This is just another factor in why there'll always be buff and nerfs, because sometimes nerfs happen are not needed, as indeed are buffs, and this eventually tends to be corrected later on down the line.

Yes, claymores are successful - because they are invisible! How should I avoid getting killed by them if I can't even see them?!

I can say with confidence that I am fairly good with statistics and drawing conclusions.

Idk what rock you've been hiding under but the accepted stat used as part of 3 total stats is "KPH" and not "KPU". The reason being is we get outliers like what you found, weapons that are the same but are somehow better because the outlier outperforms the others. KPH is better, as it takes the total number of kills made per hour and averages them based on how many users there were. KPH for the MANA turrets tells a much different story than KPU, and that story tells us that the weapons perform similarly to each other.

KPH is only one stat however, the other two are Uniques and AVGBR. The Uniques graph for your example shows us that everyone uses almost the same number of MANA turrets, which is nothing surprising and honestly expected. Uniques indicates popularity and perhaps could indicate how useful the AVGBR and KPH stats are, because if there are only a few users of a weapon the stats will be erratic and skewed, while if the line is mostly smooth we can see trends in performance more clearly.

AVGBR is the final stat, and the one used to judge the KPH stat. It is widely accepted that the higher the BR, the more skilled and therefore better performing the player will be. AVGBR for your example shows us that it fluctuates, but on average it is the same. However, if you look back to the previously mentioned KPH graph you will see the spikes in BR show spikes in performance as well. Surprise surprise, better players do better than not so good players.

In short, stats don't lie, they are misinterpreted. You used KPU only and didn't further investigate the issue. That is the exact opposite of what you want to do, and instead you want to observe multiple graphs to figure out trends and draw conclusions. Even the three stats I provide don't tell the whole story, so it is up to you to figure out which stats best apply to the situation at hand.

This is your problem, I think. I won't argue ZOE, everyone knows it needs a buff, but you seem to think that the new Spiker is terrible, the new PPA is terrible (we'll wait and see), the Lasher is terrible, and the Magrider is terrible when they really aren't. Higby's comment sure seems to hold true, because I doubt you'd be happy with any of these weapons unless they were flat out better than the other faction's counterparts.

The new Spiker? Better than the Magscatter, and arguably better than the AMP now that it's a Desparado with an added AOE charge.
Lasher? It's great weapon used to great effect by people who aren't trying to use it as an Orion with splash damage.
Magrider? It's only under performing if you don't count the Vanguard. Mag is still a good tank, even with the PPA change.

So I'm sorry you got your farm tool taken away and you are now relegated to good weapons instead of OP weapons. I guess you'll have to prove Higby wrong, right? Or are your poor, poor pistols justification for having OP stuff?

And make a video where Magrider has same DPS as Prowler

I only want to say Manticore is nearly a Clone with a very small difference of NC4 Mag-Shot.
And I think it`s OK but VS have buy it and NC get it for free.

You don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about do you? You just decided to blabber off a list of ****. People like you are the prime reason why these forums are ****.

Constantly calling for buffs will make the whole game one hit kills. NO.

A request to stop Nerf calling may fall upon deaf ears I'm afraid. Most people cry Nerf in a fit of passion. They are upset about being killed over and over and have chosen the perception that their deaths were no fault of their own failure but the fault that the weapons used against them were simply more effective than their own. Nerf calls are the unfortunate byproduct of this perception and no amount of reason will stop the poster from posting.

On the other hand the devs have the power to ignore or censor these posts if they are so inclined. The problem is that if ignored the Nerf requestot may become even more furious and make even more of a fuss until he has a positive response. This is an ongoing social problem with few clear solutions.

My recommendation to the devs is to simply work on the new content.. You're never going to clear up all the whiners and your game will suffer if all focus is on buffing or nerfing things constantly and no real progress gets made as a result.

OMG SOE nerfs too OP pls nerf nerfs.