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

"There are alerts? "

I for once barely notice that there are alerts these days, unlike before the VP implementation.

Whoops wrong thread. durp.

*pretends that didn't happened*cough*

Stop it right there.

By that logic TR has no right to complain -ever- because of the original Striker, the old Vulcan, Fractures at their release (earthquake guns) and HE prowlers. Throw the pre-nerf banshee in there for good measure while you're at it. And every TR gun before the flinch rework.

Or you can realise that that's not how this "balancing" thing works.

By that logic the TR and VS have no right to complain -ever-. Because of the original Striker, the old Vulcan, original ZOE, original PPA, etc, etc.

Guess what? There's a very obvious trend of what weapons tend to be overpowered, steady DPS, spammable weapons. All those weapons listed above are steady damage-over-time. Plus how many times was the Viper nerfed? Fury? Zephyr/Datlon? lolpods?

High-alpha damage weapons fall under two categories: 1) niche or 2)useless, and the NC trades in them almost exclusively. Given equal or roughly equal TTK, the higher damage, slower ROF weapons will always be the worse choice. You're overly penalized for accuracy, lag, performance, bad hit detection. And three out of those four are completely out of the player's hands. Probably the sole NC weapon that bucked that trend was Ravens, and they were never overpowered to the extent that those other weapons were.

But that's besides the point. The point of this thread was to put to rest this notion that the VS performed better because of "better leadership" or "more dedicated players." Those arguments were and always will be nonsense. The fact that a minor LMG balance patch and the release of new AV weapons have completely flipped faction performance has shown how weapon balance is the real determining factor in who wins and loses. And given that NC has historically lost for years since dating back to the World Domination Series, Daybreak needs to really sit down and figure out their weapon balance.

And NC with the Phoenix, former ScatMaxes, VG shield bug, past AH etc etc...

Of course the point was that saying "beacuse past weapon XYZ and ABZ this and that" as reasons for why one faction or another isn't allowed to complain is ridiculous.

The Phoenix was OP for all of like 2 days. The VG shield bug was just that, a bug. Even at their strongest, ScatterMaxes have always been restricted by range and have always had limited viability at most bases. And the AH has always been a high-risk weapon.

Regardless, what NC has excelled at, and what NC has been OP at has always been 1v1 performance. But you can't 1v1 your way into capturing a base. TR and VS have always had the spam weapons with large kills/mag which is what makes them so much better in a zerg, and which makes them better at taking and holding bases.

So now they suddenly don't?

Not really. Lower duration means that it is even more likely to go to the empire with the higher starting territory. The fact that it doesn't lock out the continent or give bonus exp really takes away the sense of accomplishment, as well.

Is there a way to check statistics on successful continent locks? Because it seems that half the time I log on, the VS has both locked continents under their control.

That is still far from the point I tried to make: Every faction has had their moments of utter ********. To say one isn't allowed to comment on what is balanced and what isn't based on what has been out of whack in the past is what I disagreed with. That's it.

So because of the lower duration the faction that supposedly (so we've been told for months) "magically" attracted the most organised and cooperative players now suddenly doesn't?

Nope, still don't see the logic there, if anything the shorter duration would help such a faction (of course, no such faction actually exists).

Honestly I think many here pretend to read some kind of pattern in players psychology behind certain stats. Imho that's just a ridicolous attempt to find a scheme in a very obvious fact: TR have now the best AV weapon and VS lost their ADADADA boomstick. And I bet this was more than enough to move a big mass of players from a faction to another.
Luckily Miller seems to be still pretty balanced population wise.

You missed the point entirely. I'm saying less VS are participating in alerts, not less VS are playing. The point is that alerts are not the primary objectives anymore. Continent locks are. Tell me who has the most continent locks.

I am an objective-oriented player. I'm a HA main with a 1.0 K/D because I push points and suicide against vehicle zergs. The new alert system makes me less likely to play alerts and more likely to try and lock out continents. I often play on continents that are nearly deserted with a few opposing squads trying to outmaneuver and cap each others bases in the most efficient fashion.

I despise the 96 v 96 stalemates that alerts have become. Right now, my experience with alerts is that at a random time we get 30% bonus exp for a while and the faction that started with the most territory gets 3 free VP.

Find me info on which faction locks the most continents. Then you should have your answer

So you're saying that the VS are still the faction that "magically" attracts the most organised and cooperative players, it is just they suddenly aren't bothered by alerts, dispite them given decent victory points for a lock in anything other than ghost-continent locking (they still do there, of course, just its is quick and easier not to bother waiting for an alert) and are now less bothered than the TR who have become more bothered about winning them? (and the NC have remained pretty much the same level of botheredness)

Possible, certainly, but Occam's razor suggests (backed up by ALL STATSTICAL EVIDENCE that VS player were just players like TR and NC players, not uber players) that it is more likely something more straight forward like balance/population changes.

i can attest to vanu getting dumber, perhaps because of good players leaving, at least on Emerald.
not saying that the TR are Not now more OP (GK EVERYWHEREEE)

Let me just put this out there: Does TR have an outfit like DaPP that routinely organizes squads of non-outfit people? I tried out all the factions a bit and what made me choose VS (other than pew-pew lasers) was the fact that half of the time I was playing I got invited to a squad and experienced players helped coordinate me and others. This only happened on my VS char, so I ditched my TR/NC. Keep in mind that I played until level 15-ish for each faction.

Just remember, it is not impossible that one faction has a more objective-oriented playerbase just by chance. It could even be that (like with me) the objective players gravitate toward a faction due to the already-present players, causing an even greater skew.

As a matter of fact, yes, all three factions on Emerald have outfits who organize pub platoons pretty much nightly.

Know what I never understood? People who decide to go for 'objective based gameplay' and then define that as being rapidly capping continents as quickly as possible which, over 90% of the time, involves ghost capping OR dropping 2-3 squads against 1 squad. VS seem to do this more than the other factions, but all three have players that are guilty of it. If you want to play small time battles with vehicles, why not play Battlefield? If you hate vehicles, why not play Call of Duty? Both of those games, despite any problems they may have, have got better low-size fight gameplay.

But yes, we've known, pretty much from the very start, that the winning faction is the one with the best toys. If you've ever thought otherwise, you are an idiot. NC always used to win Biolabs 90% of the time, did we suddenly lose skill when we left Biolabds? No, the skill level didn't change, its just our thing that was overpowered as hell in enclosed spaces was no longer particularly useful. VS is capable of locking down all vehicles in Northern Indar but gets rolled by vehicles on Esmir. Did their skill go down or do they have a weapon that greatly effects their advantage on the terrain of north Indar? TR got a very good weapon that allows low accuracy high efficiency engagement at very long ranges and suddenly it is far more difficult to keep Sunderers alive against them. Did they suddenly get more skilled, or did they get a weapon that allows that?

I also notice that TR have now very often got highest or nearly highest pop on Emerald and amusingly enough VS has the lowest. Does that mean VS weapons attracted FoTM players who wanted an easy win over something that required learning how to use?

I think we all know the answer to that. Ask the PPA.

Every faction has theese squads but not every faction just willy nilly invites everyone into it some of us figure that if you wanted to ***** be in a squad you would just join one they are open to the public for a reason.

You don't understand the draw of small-squad tactics in a large-scale world? You don't understand taking a few friends, initiating a cap, and having an enemy squad respond to defend? The small-scale skirmishes around the larger battles can be huge deciding factors, especially if you cut off an adjacent territory. For what it's worth, I don't play BF or CoD, but I do play Red Orchestra. That is a game that manages to be balanced while maintaining the historically accurate dynamic of German weapons being technologically superior and more effective than the Russian counterparts.

Sure, some players go where the best weapons are. Other players have "faction loyalty." Still other players are completionists. And a very small slice just like to look at pixelated spandex butts. I'm telling you that as a VS Heavy main (I have something like 70% heavy and 20% engi with not much anything else) that the lmg nerf has had no real effect on my desire to play, but the lessened significance and reward for completing alerts has made me less likely to participate in them.

Well, one of these reached out to new players on multiple occasions. The fact that I am active on the forums should tell you that I eventually seek to delve into the gaming community, but the guys in DaPP (and SSGO who recruited me through my squad play via DaPP) were there from the beginning.

Again they are on all factions SSGO and DaPP arnt always doing this you just happened to be there when they were AOD also does this along with a few other smaller outfits on the other factions but they arnt always inviting new players and teaching them the ropes (also known as recruiting) weather or not you were on when any of the factions did this was pure coincidence.

Here's the thing though; the majority of the time when I run a squad that DOES respond (and usually we have like 5 people in a Valk) the other teams (more often than not VS) will either immediately pull out or call in triple our numbers AND start throwing MAX units. That is what I see most of the time with 'tactical' outfits. They are also almost always the loudest whiners when a fight doesn't go their way for any reason. They will initiate a small scale skirmish and then laugh when they finally win with 4:1 odds.

Further, what I was specifically talking about were the people who jump to a continent where their faction has 70% population and who proceed to spend an hour or more ghost capping everything to make sure their faction is in a good position when and if an alert pops on that continent. Again, this is virtually always VS on Emerald doing it. How can anyone possibly find not playing an FPS while playing an FPS entertaining?

And I am sorry, but you can directly correlate prime time faction pops with whenever a new weapon is considered by the community OP. For the longest time, that was the Orion. Personally, I never thought it was on the face of it OP, just that it was far and away the best starter LMG- I honestly like the GD-22s more than it. But that is neither here nor there, the main point here is that a not insignificant number of players jump to whatever faction is perceived as overpowered, and that has been VS more for the history of this game than either of the other two.

ZOE and PPA come to mind especially- during the time those were a thing the game lost something like 25% of its total playerbase and every night, every night, the VS rocked at 40-45% population on every server across the board. And during that time? They won virtually every alert. And you know what they said here? You guys just need to organize better.