So, the TR are now the most talented and coordinated faction, right?

The reason why the VS have always won the most Alerts was not because they had the best weapons, that's would be a silly claim. Rather, that across all the servers, the VS just happened to have the most dedicated players and the best leadership and coordination.

Well, over the past month, the TR have now taken the claim of consistently winning the most Alerts. As a matter of fact they've completely swapped positions with the VS, winning between 37-40% of all Alerts. I wonder where this sudden surge of skill and leadership came from? Because skill and leadership, and not weapon balance are what determines overall Alert victories. How did the TR become so good and the VS become so bad?

It should be pointed out that the NC, still in last place. That should come as no surprise. The NC didn't get the LMG buffs leadership buffs that the TR got. And the NC just aren't skilled enough to use the Mjolnir compared to the MLG-level talents of TR Gatekeeper users.

The game has been out three years and Daybreak still doesn't recognize what makes weapons overpowered. Planetside 2 is a game of numbers. In large fights, easy-to-spam weapons reign supreme. High alpha damages just mean you're better of in 1v1 fights or when you get the drop on an opponent. You don't win bases through 1v1 fights. You win bases through just spamming bullets and explosives and groups of enemies. So long the NC are the sole repository for high alpha weapons they've never be significant competitors and Alert victories will just swap between VS and TR, depending on who has the best spammy weapon of the time.

It's flavor of the month (FOTM) crowd shifting around and screwing with everyone's perceptions. Nothing more, nothing less.

Your reasoning might have some plausibility if the LMG changes were the only changes that happened in the last month.

If you completely ignore the introduction of the VP system, the reduction of the alert duration to 1 hour, the massive drop of player numbers (which hit the VS more on most servers) and the lately introduced simultanious alerts, you might actualy have a point here.
But since all of the above happend, I'd rate the impact of the LMG changes on the empire performance during alerts as pretty miniscule (at best).

This accurately and adequately explains why everyone wants to play NC in the Server Smash competition.

To actually respond to you, the NC sucks (typically) because it has the highest amount of brand new players, who are usually ******* garbage. For experienced players, NC is incredibly powerful, even in big fights. When even a handful of exceptional players get on their NC alts, NC will often start crushing and winning alerts. It's a heavily overpopped faction because it's flooded with new players. When new players are going against veteran players (good or otherwise), it's usually not going to be in their favor, even if the new players have the "OP" weapons.

just looking on coblat: most of the time i come online TR has 40%+ server population. thats a big advantage and no matter where you go to fight, the moment a tr base is in dangeer you will have to face a tr overpop of 60-80% verry soon.

Well, as a VS player I can tell you I have stopped playing as much because 90% of the time it's Indar or nothing and TR has a clear advantage on Indar since they are the strong vehicle faction.

What do you mean now? They always were for me.

You can join the nc and get tkd or the vs and watch the numbers drop after every update

Or join the tr. loyalty until death foos

Would that be our playerbase, or our weapon stats that you're referencing?

Our indomitable will to keep playing. Lol

Playerbase typically falls off after a big update. Everyone does it at one time or another. They go f this game and stop playing.

Then they play other games and they all seem small and confining like a straight jacket.

Then one night after playing some boring game they log back in. And the love affair begins anew.

The game is three years old and population has been consistently dropping population, not growing. This idea that legions of new players are joining the NC and dragging down their performance is ridiculous and laughable.

Any data to back that? I wish the ps2alerts tracker would let us filter depending on the time. 3 straight alert victories mean nothing if they happened at AM time :|

TR are defiantly stronger now. Too strong. The Gatekeeper has made it impossible to roll armor against them, and eventually bases just get surrounded by lockdown Prowlers and Gatekeeper Harassers pouncing on any attempt to break out or organize armor from another base.

Meanwhile in reality the NC still have the best LMG in the game.

i don't think VS or TR are the most coordinated
it's wherever the German outfits are fully populated
don't ask me why they are so coordinated
sometimes i get invited by a German outfit almost everyone is a BR100 and they are almost invincible when they play
thy use everything harasser, gal, lib tanks squads, it's really fun playing with them
and on top of things they are not a zerg outfit

So true, always go with the Germans.

I've heard this reason since the beginning, but we don't get that many new players anymore do we? Especially not consistently on all servers.

on cobalt there seems to be huge TR pops since the update which makes alerts a forgon conclusion. Last night we were utterly dominating every continant with pops not far off NC and VS combined.
Infact in the past even with a pop advantage both at region and continant level we still got beat by VS. Now we seem to being having things a lot easier.
Have the VS swapped sides feeling the VS no longer have the best weapons? Have all the VS players gone off to play Fallout 4?
Has there been a sudden influx of players to TR?
Or has the MR11 encouraged the TR to spam armour and actually advance with it rather sit behind base shields farming?
Or is it something else?

Join us in next weeks episode of..... I dunno

No, the current imbalance in player numbers on Cobald has nothing to do with NC or VS players switching to TR in droves. All factions have lost a substantial amount of players in the last 2 months. The VS, and in parts the NC, just happen to have lost more players than the TR. And with a lower overall player count, even smaller imbalances in the population have a more significant impact.
Of course there will be some NC or VS who hopped onto the TR bandwagon, but they aren't the primary reason for the shifted player numbers.

I can see it in my outfit. For the first time ever, we had a day in the last week, were nobody was in the game during prime time.

Meanwhile on Briggs.....