Updated activity and ESRL stats

The problem here is not with the statistics but with the fact that the hypothetical mother does not understand statistics. There is far far more to statistics than averages and there are right ways and wrong ways to interpret data.

Example: The moment most commonly referenced in regards to household income is the median and not the mean. Why? Because household income is often highly skewed. In other words, in most countries the vast majority of people cluster towards the bottom of the scale with a relatively small portion of people having incredibly high household income. The mean, as a moment of the data, is far more sensitive to outliers and skewness in the data than the median and will be pulled in the direction of the skew. Median household income in the US in 2011 was ~$50,000 but the mean would probably be at least an order of magnitude greater- think closer to the ~$500,000 mark. Yet your typical household in the US does not make anywhere near $500,000. Does this make reporting the mean household income misleading? Not necessarily, you just have to understand how the mean behaves- it is no more or less misleading than reporting the median they just present different information about the distribution.

Look, I applaud CupBoy for being one of the few posters in the forum who tries to be informative and present meaningful information. Of course we could always dig deeper by presenting more information about the distributions- mean, median, mode, standard deviation and that kind of thing. We could even run analyses like ANOVA, hierarchical modeling, structural equation modeling, non-linear dynamic analyses, etc. but this is not a peer reviewed journal and I doubt very many forum users would either be familiar enough with these kinds of techniques or interested in properly understanding what is being presented. Cupboy strikes me as finding a nice balance between utility of information and parsimony of presentation. If you do not care for statistics then ignore them but quoting someone who thinks statistics are worse than lies is neither helpful nor informative.

That's average score per hour you dolt.

In this example it would be 1,676 phoenix users generating a combined total of 29,319,944 total xp per hour.
You would compare that to 1,806 Striker users generating a combined total of 32,910,738 total xp per hour.

The Striker users are generating 12% more total xp than the phoenix users while having only 7.7% more people using it.
Actually, we don't need the number of users at all since the score number is an average, per hour, per user. If we look at it on a per user basis the striker is earning 4.1% more xp for it's user than the phoenix is. Period.

And that's why there are more people using the striker than the phoenix, better score/hour rewards. The number of users may also be skewing the kills ratio. Only one of the people shooting at a vehicle can get the kill, but multiple people can get assist xp. More users shooting at the same number of vehicles means less kills per user.

At this rate VS will be extinct within several months. It's pretty clear PS2 is becoming just 2 sided war.. I suspect most of the lost population were VS.. i guess that goes to show you what developer faction bias and poor balancing will do.

I'm on Mattherson and between the TR Civil War and the NC sharing the nearest WG, the VS are holding 75-85% (were 10 seconds off a cont capture early this morning) of the continent. I can't wait for the mission thingy cause the VS are going to be fed a LOT of points.

The only thing you're proving with is that you shouldn't try to read statistics if you don't understand how to use it... and yes, that is absolutely correct, but it does in no way imply that you can't trust statistics.

People complain that a +15% Defense Bonus to XP isn't enough to encourage people to defend. I seriously doubt a 4% "bonus" to Score has any significant affect on the desirability of the Striker compared to the Phoenix.

Talk about hyperboles. I guess owning 31% of the world population as one of the 3 factions means it's going extinct. VS lost 2% of its population hold within the past 5 months. I'm not sure what calculator you used to figure that VS will go extinct in several months, but yeah, not really.

Bwah!? The numbers don't lie, but that's the absolute last thing I expected. I... I guess it's time to try that thing out outside of VR. Huh.

I got a trial lancer to see how it was in actual combat instead of VR. At first I absolutely hated it, it takes a while to get used to but once you do it seems to be a great launcher. I only got 1 kill in 30 minutes with it because it took so long to get used to. I see a lot of people using it more as a rapid-fire AV weapon but I see people get more success when they know the charging time.

I feel like all 3 launchers are much closer to being balanced with eachother now. The phoenix isn't one-hit-killing infantry, the striker is fairly standard lock-on with a little bonus damage as long as all the rockets hit, and the lancer is actually being used. The scores are actually close and the kills are too.

I feel the reason the lancer has higher vehicle kills and score with later usage is because after you get a feel for how the weapon works it gets much easier to shoot at aircraft. No warning and fast projectile so if a group focuses on an ESF they can take it out of the sky before the pilot can see them.

I think a big part of the lack of VS/TR is both factions see their weapons as extremely similar and both feel inferior to NC.

While NC weapons are more effectively varied than either of the other two factions, including some of their vehicular options.

Now I'm not going to go into balance concerns, but I do feel like TR/VS are much more solid clones of each other than NC and everyone wants to feel a bit more unique or stand out, that's why in a military faction game, everyone has a different stupid camo pattern on.

Maybe its because they target infantry too not just vehicles

No it's because it is difficult to hit moving targets with it and the range is low plus hitting air is impossible if they are moving.
Which means there are less AV targets to shoot at.
I just played 9 hours on my TR alt and got shot at by a Phoenix ONE TIME.

I bought the striker on my TR a couple hours ago and I find it 10x more useful.

Also before anyone says "Nu-uh, since the Phoenix has the most vehicle kill average too", I would argue that the reason for that is that since the Phoenix does one big hit as opposed to more damage over time like the Striker, it is more likely for a Phoenix to get a last hit, while the Striker and Lancer will get way more assist xp by softening up a target but are more likely to not get the last hit.

Because lock-ons are superior to manual guide or the lazer thingy. Specifically, they are great against Air while VS and NC versions suck against air. So TR gets extra air kills

Ya I was getting a lot of assist xp with the Striker which is fine by me. The lockon gives them warning and they tend to jump out at the last second. But that is good too because you can clear an area just by locking on to things and use it as a deterrent.

The Phoenix lacks that warning so they don't get to jump out. But there are less targets to shoot at. I don't target infantry because I can generally kill them faster with my gun.

I'm finding pilots in particular are getting used to defeating the Striker. Was on Esamir and a several Reaver pilots would dive the moment I launched on them, driving my missiles straight into the ground. Fair call if this is the balancing aspect of the weapon, I still find it very effective against armor. Versatile weapon that I would almost always equip and effective at deterring or destroying air and ground. Wish they'd solve the inability to hit turrets due to them aiming for the base.

Phoenix, I largely use against armor but if I fire and the armor I was aiming at is dead or retreating, I'll turn it into infantry if I can. By far the most fun weapon in the game but I would actually achieve more if I swapped between my lock-on ground, air and Decimator as the need dictates rather than relying on the Phoenix. 300m is quite limiting when you're facing a decent sized armor push - and if they're backed up by a fair air coverage, the Phoenix is next to useless. If it weren't so fun to use, I'd never equip it again.

I like the concept behind the Lancer - I have 2 NC and 1 TR so I can't try it out until we get 3 more faction slots. Will roll a VS and give it a try. Videos seem to show people who are using it in less than ideal conditions and concluding it's UP and others that are dominating with it in the manner it seems to be intended for.

Personally, I think the Mag nerf was a bad idea. If Mag was superior to others, then others should have been buffed.

I think the gradual decline active player numbers is partly due to SOE putting too much emphasis on infantry and marginalizing armor. Armor represents the end game content, it costs resources and has spawn timers, which adds risk and excitement to play it. Infantry cost no resources and has 10 second spawn timer, that means no matter how good you get as infantry, you will never feel like you are accomplishing much since all the people you kill respawn 10 seconds later with all their gear, no death penalty at all. It makes combat feel more pointless than it should - add that to the lack of big strategic objectives (base capture ping pong is only fun for so long) and you got a game that has little to offer to serious players.

The main reason I still really like this game is cause ESF combat, which involves risk (resource cost and spawn timer) and great skill. There is nothing better than dogfighting another good ESF player. But the increased lock-on missile spam is rather annoying.

I am fine with the idea of some infantry being very powerful, but that power should come at a cost, resources and spawn timers. Without those, death is meaningless, and when death is meaningless, there's little sense of accomplishment in killing your enemies.

All that aside, there are some things that could make this game much more interesting to others:
*) More realistic physics. People expect at least something resembling Newtonian physics when they play modern games. Physics make things more fun. And if SOE keeps boasting about PhysX capabilities, they better actually use it for actual physics and not just fancy particle effects.

*) destructible environments. People like that in a game, no doubt about it. The only question is how to properly implement resetting of the destroyed environment in a persistent online game. If SOE is smart, they could come up with solutions. The current environment is too static

*) rare items. It's a simple concept that works for many modern games. Introduce some ability to "find" items that are slightly better than their stock counterparts and keep things interesting by making them limited use - such as certain number of shots/hours before it becomes broken. The advantages of such items shouldn't be overpowering, just enough to keep people interested

*) ability to actually defeat the enemy. That sounds obvious, but many online games fail to realize how important that concept is. Simply letting players kill each other for sake of killing isn't gonna cut it. If "warp gating" enemy on continent is a victory, that's a rather crappy one since all you get is some lousy 10% discount bonus on certain resources, and the victory is not recorded or announced or anything special. Not to mention it's near impossible on well balanced continents. There have to be viable victory objectives.

The Phoenix does kill dramatically more players

Infantry you mean ? I would expect it to, since the Striker probably kills exactly 0 infantry, and the Lancer not so much.

Well the Fourth Faction is almost all with the NC, keep in mind the 4th faction are horrible at using all things, so naturally a lot of the players on the NC are more likely to hit rocks or even a Vanguard before a Prowler or a Magrider