Waterson Has Become a Nightmare As "Emerald"

Long story short, this game has become a nightmare for anyone playing NC or TR on Emerald. The Vanu is the dominant faction by such a ridiculous factor that it's pointless to even bother with anything other than farming the opposing non-vanu faction, or making a vanu character of your own


I haven't played this game much lately, so I'm not up-to-date on all the server drama, and buffs/nerfs, etc., and this isn't because I dislike this game; the game is fun, but for most of the year, I raid 5-7 nights a week, and simply don't always have time for Planetside 2. However, this was always a great game to play when I wasn't busy... when Waterson existed...


Waterson wasn't perfect, but it never struck me as being game-breaking-broken in terms of faction imbalance. For most of my time on the server, NC was generally the better performing faction, and for that reason I have most upgrades/weapons etc., that I want, already on my NC character, along with a few thousand certs to spend on whatever else. I remember we won the "WDS" thing on the NC as well, but during all of that time, I never felt like the NC was as grossly problematic as the current day VS on 'Emerald'. There was some population imbalance, but it wasn't ever this bad


On Emerald, I have literally zero reason to play this game. I can log onto my level 10 VS character with nothing unlocked, get frustrated, and log out, or I can spend my time getting obliterated by the VS army. As the NC, our options are to fight the TR, or run from the VS. Fighting the TR is more or less just bullying a smaller person who can't fight back, while the both of us run like hell to avoid the onslaught of Vanu players... or we can fight the VS, and lose


The "Alerts" are, in effect, a complete waste of time for everyone involved, because the outcome is pre determined. The Vanu will win them almost 100% of the time, so there is no point. It's boring for the TR to get rocked by the NC and Vanu no matter where they go. It's boring for the NC to farm the TR, and get destroyed by the Vanu whenever they show up (which is always, everywhere)... and it's boring for the Vanu to capture bases that are almost empty, because 90% of the TR is fighting 90% of the NC on a hex far-far-away from the Vanu


Overall map control is a waste of time, because the Vanu will invariably win that as well. You can't take much from them, before the massive waves of troops show up, and you can't defend anything against the often 2:1 numbers game that the Vanu brings


"Oh you suck, get skill hahahahahahaha"


No amount of 'skill' is going to stop you from dying to the 15 explosions masking every doorway


"ha ha learn ALL TACTICS"


No amount of strategy is going to help you against the overwhelming force of superior numbers


My plan was to just log onto the Vanu once a day to get the 12 certs, and then eventually make the faction switch once it had enough to get some basic items, but apparently that would make too much sense


Something has to be done, because this just isn't fun anymore. I don't want to change servers or factions and start over with no weapons and upgrades - that isn't fun either


To be constructive, I will offer my suggestion: make certs account wide, this way I can have a proper character on all 3 factions, and just "go with the flow" when these ridiculous situations arise


I will add that this is NOT a complaint about the "game balance" as far as the factions go. The balance itself isn't perfect, but it's acceptable. This is a series of problems caused by the Vanu on Emerald simply having vastly more players, and a much higher percentage of competent players (more organized, etc), while NC and TR simply bleed players who re-roll to Vanu, or quit the game entirely

Btw, VS on emerald has no more pop than TR or NC

Let's take a few hypothetical numbers


Given this "equal" population, we'll say (for example) that all three factions have 500 players online. However, the TR's 500 players are mostly spread out in packs of 10-30, doing nothing of importance, with 100 or so on a random continent doing... nothing, then maybe around 200 spread out and losing battles to the NC and the VS. Then you have the NC, with better grouping, but still stuck in chunks of 50-150 players per area; at least 50% of the NC is off farming the TR, and poses no threat to the VS. Now you have the VS, with their 500 players pretty logically distributed, always bringing more troops to the fight, than the enemy - this is easy for the VS to do, because the TR and NC prefer to fight each other, rather than lose to the VS



So while the actual server population might show itself as being "even", the effective battle population always favors the Vanu



I know the response to this will be "GET SKILL HAHAHAHA" "BAD FACTIONS XD!!!!!" etc., but this is exactly the reason I avoided Mattherson in the first place. I want nothing to do with these "hardcore FPS gamers", or really anyone that gets too excited over an FPS in the first place. I'm all for taking video games seriously, but an FPS is... an odd choice of genre for that. If I wanted to play the "PRO GAMER SKILL" faction, I would have just played Mattherson VS in the first place. Unfortunately, our beloved Waterson has fallen into this miserable abyss of 'Emerald', where both of our Vanu populations combined into some kind of unstoppable monster

NC weapons and vehicles are the best in the game. They are also incredibly disorganized and lack real leadership or tactics in almost all situations. VS have middle of the road gear and vehicles, but are almost always super hardcore on platoons engaging in actual tactical play. That's why we win. Because NC is dumb.

From what i have heard, when GOKU changed to TR for a day they whooped VS and NC butts.

So this is really a case of the TR and NC not having what it takes to compete with the VS. That's not the fault of the VS. And the more you complain, the more you encourage them to ridicule you in the chat.

You want a solution? Get your own platoon and fight back.

Yeah, the VS dominates Emerald, for a myriad of reasons--mainly better unit cohesion and cooperation, a few outfits with exceptionally high skill, maybe one or two weapons (coughPPAcough). But the tough question is, do we really want to punish a faction (VS) for actually playing the "right" way with skill and coordination, even when it starts to have a negative effect on the server as a whole? My instinct says "no," but the VS domination is definitely causing problems on Emerald and makes me wonder if we can keep going the way we are without running people off, which is the one thing PS2 cannot afford to do right now. I don't have a good answer. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I've never yet seen an MMO that came up with a good answer to that question, and PS2, as a persistent-world MMOFPS, isn't in well-charted territory in terms of examples to go by. It's a hard question, and it's one that SOE better think long and hard about.

I think we all know what we must do.

Create big robot suits and put our best pilots into them.

A la battleframe robotics? Yes please xD

They dominate because you let them dominate.

Grow a pair of your preferred genitals (No gender bais here!) Find a group of like-minded people, AND HIGBY THEM RIGHT IN THE NEW CONGLOMERATE.

so TR and NC are displaying a defeatist attitude and wont step up and thats the VS problem how?

This is not Vanu players fault, its just the result of two years of SOE balancing the game... Competitive players always gravitate to the best gear, not looks, not lore, just the best and/or most versatile gear, I'm not saying that VS is op right now, but it was for such a long time, that most of the best and most competitive players ended up playing VS, and that has a snowball effect, competitive players hate loosing all the time, and??? the join VS and stay there... So if someone is to get the blame for this disparity, that would be SOEs awful work at keeping the game balanced...

This.

We're on our TR week now but our first TR week was fairly successful at showing the TR the best way to fight for points and territory. Sadly most of those lessons didn't stick for the week we we back to VS but we're back to help again.

To the TR, it's not an issue of players (server smash vs Connery proved this when they thought AOD was one of the best outfits on our server ) or equipment (I would trade every VS AR except the terminus for any TR AR that isn't the TAR) but more an issue of leadership and teaching them why you attack some lanes and not others in an alert, and how to better coordinate troops in an alert.

To the NC... don't ever expect GOKU to help you since from our view it would be a complete waste of time.

Do please tell at what time VS was this OP faction outside of the 5 months of ZoE? If anything VS has been varying between underpopulation by 3 to 10% in prime time to the other factions on most servers for the last two years.

If we look globally from start to date (data is here) you'll notice the peaks are either red or blue, never pink, meaning that VS has not been the most popular faction that according to your theory that it should be )plenty of pink on the bottom though). If anything NC was dominating in population from December to April, then TR took over for two months and it's back to NC having the most population again. Looking purely at Emerald once again it's NC having the highest population on the server consistently; so if NC wants to complain about being outnumbered in a base they only need to look at their own factions failure to support them for the problem.

This is pretty wrong.

TR is underpoped by pretty decent margin on some nights.

With that said I've never understood all this Emerald VS tear n' fear people having spouting.

Yes you win the most alerts....other then that I find VS hilariously easy to kill at times.

When I sometimes ESF around, and I'm barely mediocre even after all these years, I'm heading to purple land. NC has much better pilots imo. In VS territory I get to practice more, usually.

Please, read carefully what I wrote.... never said VS was/is the most popular, even though in Matterson and now Emerald, that's precisely the case, I said the MOST COMPETITIVE players flocked to VS, big difference, and the reason why Emerald and other servers are in its current state

People who just want to have fun, or who likes a particular lore trait, and does not give a **** about WINNING 100% OF THE TIME, they will probably stick with its faction, even if it does not have the best or most versatile gear.

Support the effort to wipe the purple scourge from the continents! Join the NC/TR team-up and warpgate those xeno-lovers!

I've made an alt on the NC on emerald. I have logged in a total of 5 times, 3 of which I random Pubbed with people. Each time I pubbed, the people were arguing with each other, ******** about command, and whining about imbalances. It's a negative environment, no wonder the NC don't work together.

I haven't been doing much with my TR on emerald because I started a TR on Connery. On the TR on connery, I joined an outfit which just does general bul******** and swarm tactics, but they do have their **** in line and often will manage to sway alerts with only 1-2 platoons. I haven't been playing much on my emerald TR recently but when I did we would always use sound tactics to try and take bases that were fair fights or ghost caps.

Here's my advise, get a squad together or a platoon if you can. Select a base with a similar number of enemies as your squad size. Tell your squad to fight there. Don't try to pick a base with 1-12 people if you have 24 people in your platoon. Don't try to pummel a low enemy pop base, that's boring as hell. Don't try to take on a 96+ enemy fight when you only have 12-24 people. Stay away from that. If you select the right fight, mobilize your people, and go there, you will probably see a victory. If you start getting zerged, re-deploy your platoon to a different fight that is fitting for the number of people you have. Do not retreat to a previous base on the same lattice lane, as you will just get zerged again and again until you get away from that zerg. Your enemies may take some territory from you, but at least you will possibly get a few wins out of it, and who knows, maybe you will end up winning the alert by fighting on an even front.

NC do not have the best weapons and vehicles in the game, the Vanu do. Yes the Hackmax is a beast in close quarters, but the Vanu have the best weapons period. The TR trade damage for faster fire rate and the NC trade fire rate for higher damage, but the VS have great accuracy at the expense of.....what?

The Vanu's greatest strength has always been their unparalleled accuracy, due to the super low recoil and no projectile drop on VS weapons, allowing VS players to hit headshots and targets reliably and easily. This was balanced by giving VS weapons a huge damage falloff at range, making it so that while the VS could hit us, it did less damage than other weapons. Then SOE removed this downside giving VS weapons all the upsides without any of the downsides. And EVERY VS weapon is like this, thus making EVERY VS weapon the most powerful in the game.

And the Magrider is the most maneuverable of any MBT allowing it to "sidestep" rockets and other projectile, and the speed boost allows it to get out of danger quickly. And the Scythe has been (arguably) the best ESF in the game from Day 1. Not to mention all their weapons also get the aforementioned OP traits.

Redeployside meta came from mattherson 4th factioning...

I play on Emerald every day "mostly around 3-8" and the Vanu are no where near as dominant as you claim. As for vastly more players that is the dumbest thing i've read all week. 90% of the time I log in pops are within 3-4% of each other on every faction which is very respectable.

You're making a pretty foolish argument that reflects badly on the rest of us that don't whine or complain about balance like you do.