NC win rates are dreadful

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Callsign-YukiMizuki, Sep 7, 2017.

  1. Callsign-YukiMizuki

    Source: https://www.ps2alerts.com/[IMG]
    In an ideal world, all 3 factions should be hovering around ~33% wins with some ~3% ups and downswins every now and then. But this isn't an ideal world and using this data as reference;
    VS wins = ~36.5%
    NC wins = ~25.7%
    TR wins = ~35.3%
    Draw = ~2.5%

    There are multiple factors into this.
    NC is not very new player friendly with how NC playstyle and characteristics are.
    Larger and more co-ordinated groups simply might be playing other factions.
    Timezones
    Lore/role playing/preferences
    Faction representation
    Playerbase size differences

    Problems like this are not exclusive to Planetside 2. MechWarrior Online also had a similar problem when Community Warfare was released, the Clans pretty much dominated. While I realize this is something that is VERY hard to perfectly balance, I do think that this is something that should be looked at more. Overpop is a large contributing factor to continent winning, but at the same time, it does not *always* guarantee a win.

    Teamwork and co-ordination is OP and should not be tempered with. Players should also not be restricted as to what faction they can and can't fight for. My proposal is to give NC/whatever underperforming faction a temporary MINOR buff on weapons/Nanites/whatever. I'm thinking of +10% weapon damage (or something similar). Basically something that gives them an advantage until their victory rates are aligned with the others. Although, nerfing the dominant faction(s) should not be a thing. I know I'm playing with fire here, but I'm throwing it out there.

    Another alternative is to represent them more. Make them more appealing and give other people reasons why they should fight for the underdog


    I've been playing Planetside 2 for about ~6 months now, and yes, I am pretty new I guess. The NC fits my playstyle, aesthetics and preferences a lot and I'm not willing to switch factions if it means experiencing victories. "If you can't beat them, join them" is not answer. It gets VERY demoralizing everytime I log in to the point where I know my faction isn't going to win. Why bother playing? How am I supposed to have fun when I'm constantly getting pummeled? If this treand continues, I can see myself and many others who share this feeling as I do get demotivated from fighting for the NC or in playing at all

    The new update seems promising, at least the losing faction still get something even when they lose right? But will that be enough?
    • Up x 1
  2. MuggieWara

    They are steamrolling us on Cobalt lately..Although with massive overpop most of the time.
  3. LordKrelas

    Any such boost like that results in drastic changes in all small fights, that spiral into large fights.
    Alert wins would be solely due to that side's boost not any balance changes - resulting in severe inaccuracy in the alert data.
    While also screwing all usage of weaponry on \ from said boost, in addition to skewering the balance of everything used by & against them.

    As in, the data would be whomever tried to win the alerts with the Boosts \ whomever didn't have the boost nor Pop.
    The side with both Boost & Pop, would likely be murderous hell.

    Your second option, depending on how it works, isn't as prone or literally set-up to cause a feedback loop-level of trouble.

    Well, the trick there is that switching sides is less profitable.
    Not that fighting for the underdog is.
    Making the larger side lose the alert is also encouraged however, if on the lower pop or simply other team.
  4. Campagne

    While I certainly won't claim to know exactly why myself, in my opinion the differences in alert victories isn't just simply due to each faction's respective playerbase.

    I find it very hard to believe only one of the three factions attracts the most uncooperative/independent/unorganized players exclusively, nor that this could be a sole reason as to why. While I could understand poor veteran retention when new players are dropped into the deep end with weapons like the SAW, I don't personally think this could realistically be considered the primary reason.

    In my opinion, the primary factor --Of which there are many I sure-- is that the NC typically have significantly inferior vehicles & vehicle weapons. If I had to choose between a harasser with a Vulcan, Aphelion, or Mjolnir, I would not choose the Mjolnir. If I had to choose between a Scythe, Mosquito, or Reaver, I would not choose the Reaver. The topic of which tank is statistically best & worst has been beaten to death already, and while many say the Vanguard is the worst already, its primary strength(s) is/are being nerf'd in the upcoming "CAI" update.

    In my opinion, if we all had NS vehicles & vehicle weapons, the difference in the number of victories would shrink dramatically.
    • Up x 3
  5. Zuprize

    Didn't know people cared about alerts since if you want to lock a continent you can just hive it away.
  6. MichaelMoen

    I can probably explain Connery's nearly 22% rate myself at least. NC has a quite a bit of good players that play solo, while at the same time has many more lower level players that congregate to Zergs that do nothing but farm or be farmed at a single location which tends to never make any progress on the map.

    At the same time, the TR have quite a few well organized Outfits and Platoons, especially the Vulcan Harasser squads that just wreck havoc wherever they go.

    And of course, the VS has a LARGE Asian population that logs on and overruns the Continents during the night hours. NC never stands a chance.
    • Up x 2
  7. Eternaloptimist

    That would be a uniformly average world, which some people might not consider ideal. What period do the stats cover? Things tend towards the average as the numbers get larger.

    You are making the unsupported assumption that Alert Wins are equally important to everyone and that people put equal effort into trying to win them.

    This would not be a balancing argument so much as manipulation of circumstances in an attempt to achieve a biased i.e. artificial result.

    Generally, I don't see any lack of NC numbers on the EU servers that would explain poor performance in Alerts and on Cobalt in particular NC performs as well as TR on Alerts. There may be an issue here but if so, I'm afraid that it does not appear to lend itself to simple statistical analysis.

    Personally, I suspect that Alerts are the domain of organised outfits/platoons/squads more than anything else although that is what statisticians would call a "wild guess" :D. Myself, I hop from one faction to the next (two on each across my six avatars) looking for a decent fight and with no idea at all which Alerts might be going on or who is winning them.


    You could maybe look at prevalence of outfit membership per server (by faction) if the stats are available. High Alert win rates combined with large populations in outfits might be a starting point.
  8. Demigan

    The reason the NC loses is because of it's weapon selection and MBT. "Teamwork" has nothing to do with it, as the most powerful "teamwork" PS2 offers is "get more guns pointing in the same direction". Only with extremely heavy teamwork+communication can you achieve something over the extremely simple tactic of the Zerg.

    The NC weapons overall are more frustrating for people to use. Where do we see this back? In the TK rate. NC weapons don't necessarily hit allies faster or kill them faster, in fact higher ROF weapons would have an easier time achieving that, but the frustration of not achieving something due to the higher punishment for misses means a higher rate of venting that frustration. Since enemies are harder to take down, you vent that by murdering your allies or not caring if they jump in front.

    The Vanguard, despite being flaunted at the king of MBT vs MBT combat, is barely better at taking down enemy MBT's than the Magrider. The Vanguard also is behind in just about everything else. The only thing that the Vanguard has is a bit more survivability due to it's shield, and that's it. With the coming plan to murder the Vanguard shield people will finally realise the trash that the Vanguard actually is, and it'll hopefully get it's just upgrades to the vanilla chassis so that it can actually rival the other two tanks.

    One thing to note: PS2 alerts takes the stats from launch to now, which isn't as representative as say the last month or three considering the mass of changes to population and balance changes we've seen in that time. So the only thing you could reliably use is the victory timeline, but that one isn't as easy to read out. When looking over the last few months (or year), the NC does still seem to be lagging behind with a lot of blue sticking out of the bottom of the mass of red&purple.
    • Up x 3
  9. adamts01

    I've made almost a full switch to NC on Connery. TR does the Asian zerg almost as bad as VS. Critical Mass better work some population/anti-zerging magic if Daybreak wants any more money from me.
    • Up x 1
  10. Cup of Coffee

    Out of curiosity, why is the "zerg mentality" so frowned upon? I mean, if they have the numbers advantage, wouldn't it make sense to capitalise on it? Is it because the whole zerg thing doesn't promote teamwork? Or is it because it eventually wears out even the most organized defenders, mentally and physically? Are there any known strategy/tactics to break zerg attacks besides cutting off their spawn points/"try harder"?
    Honest question from a curious newbie.
    That said, feel free to delete/moderate this post if it derails the thread discussion, thank you.
  11. Ziggurat8

    Genudine was created after VS Orion and ZOE changes so Alert wins were never effected by that. Also Genudine does not have construction so there is no "Hive Locking".

    Finally in the 2 yrs I've played on Genudine VS has broken 30% pop a few times that I can recall. VS has had greater than 33% pop maybe 10x out of all the times I've played. NC usually hovers between 36-40% and TR make up the rest. Pop has little to do with Alert wins.

    Coordination wins alerts. When TR gets organized they're pretty much unstoppable but they don't always have guys "doing work". VS is very organized most of the time with 2-4 outfits "doing work" all day every day but they're always under pop. NC is the least organized that I've found and usually can't field a win unless TR or VS ****** it up.

    At least that's been my experience. NC till a lot less vehicles overall and I think that contributes a lot too it as well. Again just my experience.
  12. Callsign-YukiMizuki


    Tbh "Zerging" is a valid tactic that holds a strategic advantage when done right. The problem is that in practice, it is something that devolves to degeneracy. The attackers farm the spawn room which lets be honest is not fun. Getting farmed is even worst. Based on personal experience, the only effective way to counter a Zerg swarm in a realistic sense is by having your own Zerg swarm. At this point, we often find ourselves in a WW1 scenario, Everyon's dugged in, no one is really making any progress and both sides are committed. In this sort of scenario, you either have to pull away people from other fronts and pour in more reinforcements, simply Zerg harder or have a team to flank go around capturing bases to cut off the enemy territory. (Depending on the battle location/lattic links, this could mean capturing as much as 3-5 bases)

    Having large scale, epic battles are fun but there is a point where it gets old real quick




    It would be, but if all factions are constantly in ~33%, that means all sides are about equally strong. At that point, it's about which side can outsmart, outperform and co-ordinate better than the others that will win continents. Right now, using this stats alone, we sorta have this situation except it's TR and VS only. They're *about* equal while NC is losing territories to both sides

    Using this data from the same website, the graph is pretty much purple/red on the top.
    [IMG]
  13. Bambaleilo

    All starter guns of any faction should be the most newb-friendly ones. Thats clearly not the case for NC.

    But its not even the worst part. NC doesnt have a medium to long range options for MAXes. You can point on shotgun slugs but they are the most expencive option as its viable on mattocks only AND they suck. You have to be fully stationary and damage drops very quicly

    I wanted to say that Reaver is the worst newb-friendly ESF of 3, but somehow sky is full of reavers currently, at least on Miller.
    • Up x 1
  14. DarkStarAnubis

    Blame the NC [lack of] leadership.

    I remember a contested base on Indar, intense firefights already 10 meters after the spawnroom.

    Here comes a NC rambo yelling on the chat "i will kill everybody who is standing close the spawnroom!!" then gets out and promptly shoots in the back 3-4 guys to show how it is done by a pro.

    I thought" **** you pal", logged out and logged in immediately after on the VS faction to push against.
  15. MichaelMoen

    Yup. That was my experience tonight on Hossin, (after Esamir was locked forcing everyone there..) VS and TR were in just one battle along their lines, while NC were split in half on the defensive against both TR and VS zergs coming at us. This same exact stuff happens to me over on Elder Scrolls: Online, it's a 3-way PvP over there too and the same kind of ganging up on focus happens to my faction there as well.

    It feels like this even warrants a College Research paper or something. I've argued this over on the ESO forums as well. The Human mind always defaults to an "Us vs Them" mentality, not an "Us vs Them vs Those" etc. For some reason, the majority of players when placed into a competition with more than two sides, will tend to single out one and make some sort of unspoken agreement to focus most of their effort against them, while ignoring the other.

    On ESO it's the Ebonheart Pact that gets shafted. Over here, it's the New Conglomerate.
    • Up x 1
  16. MichaelMoen


    Yeah, I've encountered a guy like that too... Yelling in chat at everyone to get out of the spawn room, then started chucking C-4 at everyone. The TR outside didn't even have to keep fighting us, we started doing it for them.
  17. Bambaleilo

    Yes, bombardment of bases with meat from Galaxies is the most advanced stuff NC outfits came up with. All air units strictly fly by themselves, wings on NC side are nonexistant.

    Thing is, no one will come to NC to play on a selected vehicle type as all NC vehicles are inferior to those of other factions. Because of that, you will never form NC air or tank outfit (although there were some instances, last time I saw exclusively air outfit on NC they switched to TR fully cause Mossie is the best ESF out there).

    Most of the ppl who play NC play it because its easiest from point of color recognition. I remember when I first opened Planetside, I've started TR. But shooting blue and not shooting red was too much for me so I've switched to NC.

    And stuff with shotguns only for maxes... Just why this wasn't adressed in all this time? I dont rly get it.
  18. FateJH

    The main problem with the NC as a cross-server faction is that it doesn't want to be who it is. Nothing that has ever been done for the NC has ever lead to an uptick in their success rates. It's not just equipment deficiencies, often cited as the primary reason, as there are systemic failures all up and down any hypothetical chain of command that could be established.
    Just because the NC don't appreciate a unit that can destroy an enemy squad trying to pass through a door doesn't mean it isn't a good idea. What the NC should have been complaining about for years is that MAXes are now auto-spotted on minimaps, and that harms the element of surprise that their unit relied upon.
  19. Bambaleilo

    Oh wow, a dude with a sword camping a doorway can kill any dude with a rifle who comes inside!
    Swords are OP as higby himself.
    Pretty fken please.

    Presence of balance issues is unquestionable as it seen in numbers.

    Even more. There is some lessons in history. Longbow vs crossbow balance issues. Longbow was OP but it took ppl to train with it from early childhood. Crossbow was pretty meh but anyone could use it. Guess who won.
    All NC weapons are have longbow similarities.
    • Up x 1
  20. Callsign-YukiMizuki


    I really want that Flamethrower MAX from the NC trailer. It would be a new weapon type (assuming NC exclusive) that may attract players to actually try it out and play as NC

    That would be lit