Why does DBG allows NC's terrible low win rate?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Humoreske, Oct 14, 2017.

  1. adamts01

    Here's my conclusion on how weapons should be balanced. Assume body shots against a heavy with an overshield, nanoweave, and shield capacitor. Too many modifiers mean just a single extra bullet regardless of faction, but that extra bullet means jack **** to TR and not so much to VS.
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  2. adamts01

    I've reached a point to where if you don't switch to your NC alt, you should just stick a tampon in it and admit what you are. TR and VS have been clearly superior since the beginning, and if you need that crutch, then take it and learn the game, but if your'e a vet, then grow a pair and do your part to balance things because the devs clearly can't.
  3. pnkdth



    0.08 seconds difference. Between the SAW and two close range LMGs. Seems pretty damn balanced to me.

    Let's not pretend the NC are lacking in options in carbines/ARs. The Bandit is awesome, the GD-7F is awesome and oddly enough the ACX is pretty awesome in CQC due to it being an easy to control SAW. For ARs you got the Carnage, GR-22s, Reaper. In the mid range carbine/AR department you probably have the best selection... And of course the 167/600 damage model with is great too.

    Also, to reiterate what's been said before. DPS is a very strange way to measure weapons in a FPS. Especially when you have varied recoil patterns and intensity, headshot multipliers and different damage models. For example, a great player is not going to sit on an impossibly high accuracy %. This player is going to have a good enough accuracy % to accommodate a great HSR and that's where alpha damage matters.
    1st shot of 143 -> 286.
    1st shot of 167 -> 334.
    1st shot of 200 -> 400.

    What we're kind of losing track of here though is who's the average planetman? What kind of weapon will a new player find more rewarding? Most players do not burst fire or manage their aim much once they start playing. It is all full auto. I even admit to sometimes forgetting myself even know I *KNOW* if I hold down the mouse button I'm making this worse for myself. This gets magnified when you look at the SAW. It really is a weapon which demands you know how the game works, how weapons behave, and also that you should get 330 certs to have it reach its full potential.

    Why the SAW still hasn't been replaced by the EM6 as the default is a mystery to me. The EM6 has a large mag, gets the player into the standard NC damage model and recoil whereas the SAW is a unique weapon and doesn't even really behave like the other 200DMG weapons.

    Then the next problem, and this the big one, is much of the NC cert lines are super intensive. The NC MAX require A LOT of certs(slugs is almost mandatory without MAX charge), the Vanguard require A LOT of certs(sometimes felt it was balanced on the assumption everyone had a max level shield).

    I mean, NC did amazing during ServerSmash but I honestly think that's because everyone had access to the things which made NC great whereas both the VS/TR both eases the new player into the faction in a smoother way. NC progression definitely is more a cert wall.

    I mean, it is tempting and easy to get into weapons stats but really, if it takes more time to get a newbie NC into the game than the other two factions it is going to show in the long run.
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  4. Lamat

    Alpha damages is great for tanks where you can pop in and out behind a rock, it really doesn't help for most infantry fights which are much more fast paced.

    The only exception might be the NS commissioner and related pistols which all factions get for some reason.
  5. Campagne

    Oh boy. Here we go.

    --The VS have the Serpent, a carbine that is almost completely identical to the GD-7F. The TR have the Lynx, A carbine with a whopping 909 RPM and only one bullet more to kill. No, the NC are on par with the VS at the absolute most.

    --The Cycler is most often called the objectively best AR in the game. The TR also have the TAR, which also shares the exact same damage and RoF.

    --The Railjack is objectively worse than the carbon-copy Longshot until at least 200 meters. No, the Railjack is not the best rifle in the game. Not by a long shot. ( :p )

    --The Jackhammer is terrible. See the recent thread regarding it. The JH isn't even the best shotgun avaliable to the NC for **** sakes. Carbon-copy autos hounslow kick it right out the door, no contest.

    --Aside from the SAW, most low RoF LMGs are basically the same.

    Low RoF weapons are not inherently better than high RoF weapons. One could argue with the bloom, aim penalties for missed shots, and cappy hit detection higher RoFs are generally better.

    No, the NC is not objectively best in Infantry combat.
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  6. Purp

    TL/DR: The differences in weapons are miniscule on paper- I believe the reasons NC underperform are differences in the MBTs, ESFs, color scheme (as Lamat illustrates so well), and philosophy of the empire.

    When I look at the Time to Kill charts on the google spreadsheet and the numbers on Dasanfall.stats I find very little difference in the weapons in overall time to kill... We are talking 1/100th of a second differences. Things like the SAW is at .48 and the Orion is at .48. So the difference to me is how many shots can I get downrange, cone of fire while moving, magazine size, etc. You'd be surprised how close those numbers are too... For example the SAW ADS while moving is .5 and the Orion is .4.
    Then you start thinking about direction of recoil- and to me this is where NC weapons start pulling ahead, as predictable recoil patterns really help in the long run.

    Overall, the weapons are all very close in balance. We are talking 1/10th or a 1/100th of a percentage change in the weapons. That isn't a much. So the reason NC is doing so much worse than the others must be in Empire Specific vehicles (Vanguard and Reaver) and the color scheme (bright yellow and khaki pants) and philosophy of the empire (freedom loving doesn't necessarily promote strict regimented platoons).

    How do you change these fundamental differences to bring back NC? Give them some sort of "perceived" buff. Change the numbers by 1/100th of a percent if you want- it makes no real difference, but the community will thank you and NC will start to see their numbers grow again. Change the colors like Lamat suggests, so the glaring yellow and khaki's aren't a factor. Make all doritos (the IFF indicator) RED for enemies and GREEN for friendlies by default... etc. There are a lot of ways to fix the problem without really changing the already basically balanced game. The Reaver and Vanguard though need a lot of love to make them competitive for noob and mid tier level players....
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  7. Purp

    I also want to say that I believe another problem with the NC is that most of the players perceived the Vanguard shield changes as a NERF instead of a game design adjustment, and that change has caused some switching to other factions.
  8. adamts01

    This community is full of ******* who don't want any sort of challenge. If it's a 1/100 advantage they'll flock to it. The single thing NC has going for it is its MBT being able to 1v1 anything in the game, but in battles that matter, 1v1 doesn't mean ****. It's just embarrassing how terrible Daybreak is at balancing this faction, and it's embarrassing how the vast majority of this community runs away from a challenge.
  9. csvfr

    Are you sure that the numbers on that spreadsheet is correct? Because I think on a heavy with NMG/Adrenaline + Nanoweave the Gauss SAW should use 10 bullets, not 11 as it says, but still use 1.2 seconds. However in those 1.2 seconds the 750/143 model will have dished out 15 bullets, and only need 13 for the kill, which therefore could have been done 0.16 seconds earlier. This is more than 10% of the time spent shooting, more than twice an average ping, and quite a noticeable advantage to have. Quite frankly it is hard to outperform an opponent by that much.
  10. csvfr

    Also, I was of the oppinion that faster ROF / lower alpha was a good thing due to being "more forgiving" as to missed shots

    Its 0.08-0.16 seconds not just between "two guns" but between the best weapon available to the NC heavies and the other factions. That's a pretty damned handicap if you ask me.
  11. Lamat

    I'd like to restate that when I'm talking about problems with NC weapons, i was meaning NC's faction trait weapons. It's true that NC has some competitive weapons in the carbine, AR, and SMG categories, it's just interesting that most of NC's best weapons are the ones that least follow the NC faction traits. It goes to show that NC's traits don't work well in a fast paced FPS, at least the way they are implemented in PS2.

    There are 2 NC guns that I feel get it right, the Bandit and the Cyclone, what NC needs is an LMG in the same vein for the default HA (give it more damage falloff to balance it at range, or whatever else needed) We all know HA is the most used class, we all know the bases encourage CQC, all the default LMGs (all default guns) should be good at the most commom ranges for infantry combat: close

    Other than the LMG, the NC has competitive CQC options. If TR/VS need better midranged options I say give that too them too, but specializing in midrange is not a good trait in this game.
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  12. csvfr

    Okay, let reiterate that I find it as a more robust, informative measure then. Also I don't see why high alpha is more important than ROF when the headshot multiplier is the same for the two weapons. Of course, you would need to score more headshots with the lower damage weapon, but as it has a higher ROF it also has more chances in proportion. With the HSR being equal, so would the results be.

    Let me try to explain with an example. A headshot gives a 2x damage bonus, equivalent to 1 shot, so in a sense you get this shot "for free". If we have a high alpha weapon like the saw requiring 10 bullets to kill, scoring 2 headshots would mean that you only needed to use 8 bullets, and had a HSR of 25%. If we take a purely hypothetical weapon requiring 20 bullets to kill but having double the ROF of the gauss saw, you would only need 4 headshots and make a kill at 16 bullets, which is exactly the same HSR and TTK.
  13. Killer Medic


    Not exactly true...when I'm on a TR alt, I get more TK's done to me on that than NC.
  14. Lamat

    TR is not far behind NC, VS has quite a bit less TKs that either which is surprising considering the Magriders notoriety for TKs.
  15. ElricVIII

    I actually really enjoy the feel of the NC guns even though I'm a Vanu main, but here's the thing: 50% of people are worse than the average player. And most players are playing HA. So the fact that their HAs are less effective is a much larger contributor to overall faction performance.

    Think of it this way: What if NC had a knife that could deal 90% of a player's health in damage? They would be so much more powerful compared to the other faction's knives, but that would have an overall very small effect on the viability of NC players due to the very specialized nature and difficulty of use.

    I think what we are seeing is the fact that HA is the primary offensive soldier and the fact that it lags behind the other factions brings NC down as a whole. Not because it is worse, but because it is more difficult to use effectively and by default, most players are going to be within a standard deviation from average. It's always a good idea to have high-skill, high-reward systems in the game, but they cannot be the default.
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  16. Rydenan

    Why does alpha damage matter?
    The SAW has worse bodyshot TTK, worse headshot TTK, and worse DPS at both minimum and maximum damage range compared to the Orion, CARV, MSWr, etc.
    Alpha damage means nothing.
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  17. Killer Medic


    I definitely was in another game. In PS2, I've focused strictly on healing so I don't worry about k/d
  18. Killer Medic

    And when I logged on...same **** different day on Emerald: continents vs-vs-vs-tr then it became vs-tr-tr-tr...this CAI has just f*cked things up and shown just how short sighted and intellectually challenged Wrel and crew are. Only NC continent I've seen locked today came at 6am est...when game's at it's lowest pop. In other words: there was no VS and TR to work together to share alerts.
  19. ChUnKiFieR

    Talk about incompetent, you can't even convey a proper sentence in English! Public school, aint it great?o_O
  20. Bukoski


    If NC are losing the Tank vs Tank war when in mass numbers and thus unable to push forward as much, maybe they need a new alternative dedicated AT option that excels in mass combat instead of 1v1 situations. Something like this:

    [IMG]

    Image taken from [>>Gallery Link<<]
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