The Real Reason for (insert faction here) is OP threads

Egos.


Players want to believe that they are the best of the best, and when they do well, everything is fine.

However, when they do bad, there is a problem. The statistics say they are bad, but their ego says that they are good. How do they reconcile these 2 exclusive realities?

Ego saving rationalization, of course. They either claim that there were too many enemies (a zerg) or that whatever weapon they were killed by was overpowered. Thus they can still say they are MLG while acknowledging the statistics. If Forumside didn't exist this wouldn't be a problem. This is not saying that Forumside should be removed, just that good and bad ideas result from it. Sure, there would be some rage in game, but there is a block function.

With Forumside, however, those players can take those same Ego saving rationalizations to the next level in the form of an blank faction/weapon/vehicle is OP thread. There, they may or may not show statistics which may or may not be misleading. The only ingredient for success is that the faction/weapon/vehicle be good enough to kill a good amount of other players, The 1st of course, always does. Thus, there are other wanna be pros that will hop on the band wagon for their own Ego saving rationalizations. The cooler heads, when read by devs, will not "pop" as much as "(INSERT/FACTION/WEAPON/VEHICLE) IS OP AOIVHOWABFVIUWA SOE DO SOMETHING AHOSNFOGHVSEA OR I WILL UNINSTALL!!!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!" Thus, whatever was being railed against is nerfed, and the best ego saving rationalization will fall in place, which is the fact that the weapon was nerfed. The wanna be MLG in question will point to that weapon and say "It was nerfed, so it must have been OP' and thus they will be secure in the knowledge that they are XxXMLGPr0Naru4to360NOSCOPEXxX and will live happily ever after. An niched, fun weapon will be turned into unusuable mush, and the nerf train will steam on to its next station.

Good Luck out there on the battlefield,

A concerned Auraxian.

Huh,

Yeah, Cause the striker, ZoE ect ect were always perfectly balanced??

Stopped reading after "egos"

ZOE was perfectly fine but the striker wasn't .

Is it just me or are most of the "everything is balanced threads" started by VS?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Forumers naturally assume everyone who isn't "NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF" is some farmer who wants everything good for their faction. If you actually looked, then you would see that my char was created long before both nerfs.

I bet players were saying the exact same thing about TRwhen Striker was nerfed.

So they were OP, People said so and they were adjusted. Which is were people calling factions OP comes from when they get crazy strong weapons that are not balanced

Exactly! In that case TR was hanging on to the striker; but in this case VS is hanging on to their magriders/orions/AV max.

Then where are all the Nerf Vortex, Nerf Raven/Falcon, Nerf Lancer, and Nerf Phoenix threads? They are all amazing at Long range AV. Its because they kill vehicles, and only vehicles. Thus, they will never acheive the number of appearances in the death screen that PPA and other AI weapons do. Thus, less players feel that they are OP, and they never get nerfed.

A big reason is overpowered repairs. Vehicles don't die to these weapons as often as infantry die, simply because vehicles can fall behind a rock and repair. To get quick kills you've got to get multiple people to coordinate fire at the same time.

Balance repairs, and you'll see these weapons actually score kills. Start by making it so that multiple repair tools scale down somehow, like, first tool 100% of effect, second is 75%, 3rd 50%, etc. 25% reduction in repair speed would be good too. This comment, by the way, is non-partisan, repairs are too much for all empires.

You forgot to name the same reason we have racism: simple misunderstanding of someone else/someone elses equipment. People who play just 2 factions call the last faction OP, people who play all 3 factions have a much better understanding of the strenghts and weaknesses of each faction.

Example:
'OMG the NC Jackhammer is OP! A OHK weapon with high accuracy and fire rate shouldn't be in game!'

This is a real racism argument. It is completely true from the players point of view, and there is little to say against the argument. The Jackhammer IS a OHK weapon with high accuracy and a pretty high fire rate.
However, if you look at the stats of all 3 Faction Specific weapons and try them out you find out that the Jackhammer isn't that good, it might even play second fiddle to the others.
Just as an example, I've helped with a MAX comparison which included the Jackhammer, MCG and Lasher, both against other MAXes and each ES weapon against eachother. We found out that a maximum kinetic armor MAX died to a little less than 80 bullets of the MCG at a range of a few mere meters. The Jackhammer needed 2 whole magazines to kill the same MAX at point-blank. This showed a severe lack of damage potential compared to the MCG against MAXes, and shows that the MCG has an easy oppertunity to outdamage the Jackhammer against groups and single targets, especially with the Balistic Refire toggle. The Jackhammer retains an advantage in CQC by sheer burst-damage, if you fail that first burst-damage the MCG will be able to outdamage you quickly.
In the test of the Lasher versus the MCG, the Lasher could easily defeat the MCG at range, and the Lasher also has an incredible damage potential against MAXes that makes the MCG pale in comparison. However, the Lasher isn't the easiest to use, giving the Lasher a higher skill-ceiling to get his maximum damage potential to work.
This shows multiple things: There are stats, there are live tests, and there is the actual ease-of-use that each define how a weapon is balanced. People usually see only one of these and form a true argument that ignores the other balancing features.

And just like the Orion and PPA OP threads are always started by NC and TR.

The MCG and Jackhammer weren't designed for Anti-MAX, so you comparison is pretty moot. The MCG has spin up time as well, which greatly affects its TTK. The Lasher's incredibly slow, easy to dodge bullets, make is pretty bad for actual combat. Plus, hitting those pellets isn't all too hard.

Exactly, these other weapons, while amazing, simply do not get the kills that AI weapons do, which exposes less players to them, resulting in no nerf threads.

1v1 me fox only final destination no items

I think it's a pretty big misconception that the devs buff/nerf things because a couple people whined on the forum. The devs clearly have their own methods for determining balance, and it doesn't necessarily line up with what forumside wanted. Take, for example, the recent Walker buff. No one asked for it, most everyone was surprised by it, but here it is. Same deal with the bulldog nerf, more or less, although I recall a few complaints about bulldog galaxies (where the players blamed the galaxy, not the gun). Or take the spiker and mag scatter. Nearly everyone who tested these guns said they were too weak, but the devs held the line. Or the HA shield non-nerf, where TONS of people cried for the nerf, but they didn't get it. If a ton of people cry out for a nerf, and then that thing actually gets nerfed, maybe, just maybe, it needed to be nerfed. True, the devs have a real habit of OVER-nerfing things, but that's beside the point.

melee or brawl? I have no playtime on fox anyways, though I usually play with no items.
Anyways, If your trying to compare an MMO shooters balance to that of a party fighting game, that's a bit silly. Nintendo did a much worse job than SOE anyways, just look at Meta Knight on the Brawl rankings. He's literally in a class of his own.

Well, they did cave into the PPA and Lib nerfs, and those both looked like appeasement nerfs. I mean, ammo nerfs and clip size nerfs? My play with both weren't changed at all. Sure, Zephyr was better than Dalton AV, but that was an internal balance.

I didn't know the striker was killing lots of infantry.