What bothers me the most is that there's very little empire specific content when you look at the game closely. I honestly don't mind having weapons with identical stats across all factions, I understand it's easier to balance and people are more likely to buy an NS weapon they can use on all their characters instead of 4 separate ones. But it really does ruin the immersion, especially when it comes to the vehicle aspect. How many vehicles are there in this game? Like 15? 16? And of those ONLY 2 ARE EMPIRE SPECIFIC!!! - ok 3 if you're on NSO but that's not even supposed to be a main faction. Seriously, it's ridiculous and often gets confusing especially with certain camos or simply when the vehicle is far away. 'Is that a friendly vehicle? I can't tell, they all look the same'. The sad thing is the two vehicles that are es are the mbt and esf. Flight controls are as annoying as the pro pilots patrolling the skies, and mbts are expensive and require a partner so basically the 2 vehicles that look unique are the least seen on the battlefield. It really makes the game look a bit dull on top of the confusion. Like really, as a new returning player, imagine seeing the game now, after 9+ years we've still got no new faction specific vehicles, there's even more NS weapons as ever (and there's more that are going to be added with the Oshur patch) and on top of that there's an entire faction that's NS now. I'm not saying this is all bad, but it really hurts the lore and appeal of each faction. Why should I use a faction specific pistol, when all the best pistols are NS? Why do all my vehicles look like the enemy's? The game would look a feel a lot nicer if we spent more time reworking stuff to look empire specific, and adding more empire specific weapons. I'm not asking to redesign every vehicle to have it's unique ability and weapons, etc. I understand it would be extremely hard to balance, and probably isn't worth the hassle. All I'm asking is that for vehicles - and even some weapons, they get an empire specific look. Sure this would take time, but since it's just the artwork changing, there wouldn't be balance complaints, it would literally just be improving the game, making it more polished and unique. Doesn't matter if all the stats are the same and we're fundamentally shooting at each other with the same weapon. The effects, the look - these help with the immersion. If I choose the vanu because they have all this alien technology that makes them fly and stuff, then I log into the game and realize I'm gonna be spending 99% of my time in the exact carbon copy of my enemy's arsenal, it really kills the vibe. Like why isn't the vanu flash a hoverbike? Why does the vanu harasser use wheels? The sad thing is that most of the designs already exist, and I'm sure the community would be happy to help design/polish more, they just need to be implemented. As for the weapons, both for vehicles and infantry, we could do the same thing. The halberd for example could be reworked to be a giant railgun for nc, some sort of cannon for TR and then a giant plasma cannon for vs. Exact same stats, just the look of the weapon and it's projectile updated to look unique. The commissioner, could be redesigned as an old revolver for TR, a handmade shotgun looking thing for NC and some alien looking thing for vanu. Same weapon, same stats, different look. It would really help with the immersion, and also help some players better identify threats. There's no need to remove NS weapons entirely, but when there's like a dozen versions of the NS-15, more than half the arsenal of each weapon category is NS - and those NS weapons usually perform better than the empire specific variants....I think it's necessary we tone it down a bit, even if it's just by reworking how the weapons look just to keep the essence of the game. And then of course, I'd advocate to spend more time developing weapons and abilities with unique traits for each faction. I'm glad they've gradually started doing a bit more of this during the years, and I hope they continue in this direction. I was a bit disappointed to hear they're just gonna release only NS weapons that fire underwater for the Oshur update. I really think this was a chance to add faction specific traits, especially for underwater weapons, since underwater fighting's going to be a meme anyways, I really do think they could've gotten creative. Maybe a supercharged minichaingun that uses the water to cool and therefore spin even faster. Perhaps a vanu weapon that absorbs the water around it to fire a supercharged projective (that maybe even penetrates tanks) and then some nc magnet canon that fires rusty nails.....idk, but I'm sure they could've thought of something, and I'm kinda sad this opportunity for new empire specific stuff was put aside for more basic NS weapons. Idk I just feel after Oshur at least it's time to tackle this and make the game more unique, emphasize those faction traits and lore even more. At least the vehicle reskins would be much appreciated and help make the game look 100x more cool.
1 NS weapon/vehicle is good for 3 factions. 1 ES weapon/vehicle requires the development of 3 distinct models, damage profile, attachments etc. Its 3x the investment for the devs and harder to sell to the players. A simple way around this is to start introducing ES abilities for NS (and ES) equipment. For example lesser versions of the sabot ammo for NC, explosive bullets for TR and lasher bullets for VS. Even if they have to balance them out per damage model and weapon category it would still be less work than creating and (un)balancing 3 entire weapons from scratch. This way you can relatively easily create many empire specific mechanics to all weapons and vehicles.
Not sure you read what I said but I acknowledged that and said as a workaround they could just use the exact same weapon stats, just change the design. They'd sell these weapons as bundles, priced the same as a single NS weapon, because essentially that's what they'd be. ES abilities would be cool and ideal, but at the very least all I'm asking is that weapons/vehicles have faction specific looks. It'd be as much/less work than implementing ES abilities for NS weps, without the downside of balancing issues. Just having unique looks for things across factions would help make the game better I feel.
Actually there are 18 vehicles in the game and 9 of them are empire specific. That's half the vehicles in the game.
?????????????????????????? Do you even realize what you're saying? On each faction, there's only two vehicles that are empire specific, 3 if you're NSO. Ok so there's 18 vehicles in the game, so 15 that are NS on each faction, 2-3 that are empire specific on each faction. In total there's 17x4 + 1 = 69 (noice!) possibilities for vehicles total, 9 of which are faction specific (13%). That's not half the vehicles in the game lol. At best if you're NSO you'll have 18 vehicles, 3 of which faction specific (16.7%) but if you play the main factions you only get 2 vehicles of the 17 that are es (11.8%). On top of that, those are typically the least used, most people pull harassers and lightnings. So yeah can't tell if you were being disingenuous or just had a mega brainfart, but yeah, there's nowhere near 50% es vehicles in this game - not even close to a 5th. Besides, who cares how many es vehicles there are, they should all be es! Makes no sense to have a hovering mbt when the rest of your ground vehicles are just basic stuff every faction has access to. Why's the bastion, supposedly one of the most important vehicles not unique? You'd think a faction would make the fleet carrier a powerful display; an ambassador per say of it's might/technology....yet they look the same across factions. If you're cool with that then whatever, but there's already plenty designs out there for each vehicle to look unique across factions, and with all the work they can put in for Oshur and construction sites, etc....a few quality of life improvements through bug fixes and es redesigns of stuff we use everyday would make the game seem a lot better.
