Why is Vanu Significantly Underpop?

No one will point out that there's barely any difference in the population 90% of the time?
There's one server where the population is only lower during the lowest times, the others do show that the Vanu is lower during prime-time, but often not by a large margin. While there are some very nasty outliers, I think on average the Vanu might have a difference of 1 to 3% at maximum.

But it's probably because the Vanu players feel oh so hurt. Vanu has been the top alert winner for the longest times, with sometimes the TR taking that place and the NC being the sad puppies far behind since day 1. Now a change has happened to one LMG type, which happened to include the Vanu standard LMG and aurax LMG but not the NC and TR, and suddenly "all nerfs are Vanu nerf".

Seriously, if the playerbase could stop making every change a bad thing that only hurts themselves the game would prosper much better rather than this cesspit of people feeling sorry for themselves.

<Insert grass-is-greener picture here>

Whatcha smokin', brah? TR have either equivalent or better DPS. How can their burst DPS then be less than vanu's? Especially if you yourself acknowledge the benefit of higher RoF/Magsize: less penalty for missing shots.

You lost all credibility there mate. Lasher has the slowest TTK of all heavy automatics even with direct hits. It's a 5 shot to kill, with the lowest RoF of all automatic weapons a heavy could use. And splash makes it a 14 shot to kill against non-flak infantry. You do realise that in the time it takes for you to kill a normal infantry with splash damage alone, he can kill you ~5 times (3 if you take shield in consideration).
And pls, don't tell me you can go toe to toe with a max. NC max even. Man you are so funny. Any LMG with direct hits is going to out-DPS your Lasher against every target except shielded NC max and dudes just behind cover. Did you know that to kill an NC max (non-flak), you would need 134 splash hits (<1m). That's 24 seconds of continuous fire, only possible if you take extended mags. That is not a worthwhile activity. And pls don't tell me to come with 4 Lashers to suppress a door. Pls.

Yes, magriders will. They will also miss their shots if you bump into them with a flash, cuz somehow that makes the entire chassis spin.
Anyways, Deimos, ghost and Nyx have carbon copies on TR and NC. The CME is a downgraded NS-11A. The Corvus is a love or hate weapon. It's got bad DPS but superior control. Serpent is the only one worth mentioning here, imo. And even then it's basically a GD-7F with weirder recoil and less velocity.

Must be papa's voice, because Vanus are simply bootilicious.

Yeah that's right. **** you, you high-rof weapon user! Long live low-rof masterrace D:<

That doesn't make sense for Cobalt though. I play all 3 factions on Cobalt and NC is by far the worst to play as outfit/squad. And yet NC have most of the pop usually. They're not winning alerts, but they zerging. TR is slightly better of if you don't get stuck in a zergRuss fest. VS seems to have the most cooperation as far as I can tell.

Except Vanu struggles to have close to 30% pop prime time on Cobalt. It's been a while since I saw vanu NOT having the least pop outside of midnight ghostcapping. During the afternoons and primetime here, vanu have underpop per default.
Usually, ~30% on the busy continent and 15-25% on the 'empty' continent.

Yeah, know why VS wins alerts on Cobalt? Because the empty continent usually only has one fight 48+ NC/TR. And then VS ghostcap with 1-12 everywhere. No TR/NC bothers to defend because the big fight is much more fun and much more rewarding. So even though VS are winning these alerts, they have the least fun and the least action in doing so. Sometimes I even just go to the TR/NC fight to bother them because there is literally nothing else to do on that continent.

As for the busy continents: VS usually don't win those. Not during prime time. How is VS supposed to win when they have 20% land, 3 major lanes, each fight 48+ vs 48+... BUT each fight has 60-70% enemy? VS simply doesn't have the pop to win unless TR and NC decide to butt**** each other majorly.

But please, keep that head deep in the sand.

Could it just be that Purple is an atrocious color and laser weapons only impress children?
NC for LIFE!

First off having 50 more players in these days is significant in today's game. The alerts turn into pick on the low pop and this game only really matters at primetime anymore. The alerts have always been a very horrible way to judge the factions. There are too many variables that can make the alert winner. Mainly when one faction decides they have lost the alert and to mainly go fight one of the two others.

When the population was at a higher threshold it was much much harder to zerg bases and win, kinda like the super OP VS once upon a time. Namely the alerts stayed close for the most part with some last minute ditch efforts to struggle for a victory. The greatest thing I ever saw was the TR hotdrop 8 full Galaxy's onto Andvari Barracks to stop the VS alert winning machine. Which at that time TR was always the low pop but not so low that it made gameplay almost to the point of annoying. This isn't a whine thread but a general concern for the game as a whole, if they drop more population on most servers whats the point of a three way faction battle game?

Might as well just turn this into pop capped 2 way instances.

Well I find that pop value being way off and way more than 50 player difference. Pulled from Fisu http://ps2.fisu.pw/population/?world=17 . You see several days off 100 to 200+ player difference between the VS and the top pop, and during most nights during prime time on Emerald Both NC and TR will push most of their pop down VS lanes and have only squad of squad fights on the NC, TR border.

As for people saying about VS command insulting the zerg, it wasn't always that way. Back during the game release we used command and people responded, and attempt to move to save the base. Now it's either gets no response or the same 30 players responding to try and keep us in the fight. With less and less people not responding to commands "requests" and only wanting to "farm" kills leaves those commanders quite angry with the state of the player base.

Emerald is just kind lame lately regarding prime time pops.

It's always TR and NC 36% or more and the VS 28% or less. If there's 1000 people playing during prime time that means there's 80 more TR and 80 more NC than VS.

That is a lot and it typically means the NC and TR can Zerg a base almost uncontested across at least one continent.

If we're talking about Emerald, I suspect it largely has to do with the presence of strong outfits on NC and TR and a relative lack of such on the VS. Case in point, when I log on my non-VS alts on Emerald, there will be a substantial number of open squads listed for joining whereas on VS there's going to be maybe eight.

Other than that, they're a little less conventional than the other two sides with a promise of only having average weapons overall rather than having slower and heavier weapons or faster and lighter weapons. Combine that with the way that the MAXes aren't as spectacular as the other factions' and the faction-specific weapons are a bit weak and you have a recipe for low player interest.

Initially, the Lancer and Lasher were both a bit on the OP side, and the PPA on a harasser could simply destroy gobs of infantry at extreme range with little effort. Nowadays, however, the weapons have a clear disposition towards having a distinct advantage at very long range and most of the combat in PS2 takes place at very close range, so almost all of the potential is often lost entirely.

Nope. It *is* a fashion crime.

I haven't looked at all the infantry weapons, just picked out a few comparable weapons ans saw this trend. I went crazy in-depth with ESF though, and the Scythe is right in the middle with it's guns and TR has considerably lower dps than the Reaver. But then you have the Prowler which is opposite. So it's definitely not a universal rule.

When I said "I consider it", did it pass over your head that it implies it's my opinion? The Lasher is the best, to me. Is that more clear?

Just because you can't figure it out, and you suck at it, and it happens to match me, doesn't mean it's a bad weapon, or an OP one.

Also, you're giving me stuff that's on paper, real fighting throws away what you have on paper REAL quick.

You're taking TTK from an absolute perfect matchup of essentially Gods. That they don't miss a single shot. Not the case in a real fight, which you should know as a BR 114.

One thing for example that I don't do, is ads unless I'm using suppression fire. So what happens is when I'm fighting them, I hit, constantly. I hit them in the torso, in the legs, the explosion hurts them when it hits the ground, all while I'm going left and right quickly, while they miss alot of *****, and often in my experience, barely move because they ads, which lets me land more hits.

It's even funnier for me when I use it at long ranges because I often get them to run and hide first, but because of the explosion, I can still often hit them while they're behind cover.

And yes, you can go toe to toe with a Max, just use your brain. A little thought, and you can take on Maxes. It's not always easy, but you can do it. Especially with an NC Max, because if they shield themselves, now you can outrun them even more, and while firing away.

So in short, git gud, or stop complaining. You don't do well with it, then fine, but don't complain to me and whine about how bad it is, just because you can't work with the gun.

And I'll be more clear. To ME, the Lasher is the absolute best infantry weapon in the game. I absolutely love the gun. There is no gun other than perhaps the NC Saw that fits me anywhere near as well as the Lasher. The only times I don't use it is when I'm doing directives.

Outfit/guild leaders ain't fools, they do the math before committing themselves and their people's time into the faction/game they chose. Emerald had a zerg outfit called AOD on NC when NC was OP and now a TR alt named AODR, but they never bothered with making a VS branch. You can't expect any leader/gamer to stay or return to play a handicapped game/faction for prolonged period of time, especially not the vets who have witnessed nerfs in the name of "population balance" targeting only VS.

AOD started on TR, after some drama (from what I heard) they broke into AODR(TR AOD), they made AODC(NC), and they made AODS(VS). The VS branch didn't go anywhere I guess and folded into Dapp.

joke: "it seems that spandex are out this season. whats in this season is red Kevlar"
i really have no idea tbh i think it has something to do with the guns or what other elite players are doing anyone remember when recursion went to emerald on TR for a summer break they really ****** up the pop there. everyone swapped to TR cause they didn't want to be in the cross hairs of those guys -shutters- that was terrible time to be NC or VS for that matter.

On Cobalt VS has been notably low the last few days - with 4-8% lower peak population numbers than TR or NC.

VS usually do quite well on alerts, after all they never have to wait in a queue to get to the alert continent. BUT they haven't won any prime time alerts on Cobalt at all for a few days.

Population does ebb and flow - although that difference doesn't sound much, it makes a significant difference to the gameplay.

VS being the jack of all trades (as most people consider them) is not appealing to many people. Fashion/looks aside, gamers are specific kind of people who will go the path of least resistance - be it a lot of bullets or biggest punch. Add to it rather... special kind of ESF and MBT and no no-bullet-drop/spandex/infinite ammo will make up for it for most people.

Personally, I picked VS because my friend who reccomended this game to me said so and so far I am enjoying it but being in the underpop (not underpowered IMO) faction is not fun sometimes, especially if I want to have some good, casual fun for an hour or two. After reading above posts I think Cobalt is not that bad fo VS population wise but last 2 weeks been rather hard. Anyway, I am playing this game for about 8 months so it's hard for me to speak about the past (nerfs/population).

VS population dropped when they removed the .75 movement mod ADADAD spam on their guns. Up until that point they were the official MLP-Pro," look at me on DasAnfal site" faction.

This. Vanu is ugly. The only good pretty thing about vanu is the funny death sounds. Male: Uaargh. Female: Ah?!

I'm afraid that's just your wishful thinking... It has been rare to see VS having enough pop in prime time against our pushes for years.

You are becoming part of the reason that new players don't like staying in this game. A newcomer would only see you as the "vermin" and the toxicity of community.

TR has some of the best looking military uniforms and helmets that you can buy with SC, and NC has been getting some good ones too, especially the ones that covers the bright yellow with more blue. As for VS, well, I think they just don't have any dedicated designer anymore nowadays.

Smells like alot of bitterness and personal opinions but hey that's what this thread was kinda for. From my stance every faction has had its saltiness, I find it funny to pin it to specifically one of them though.

And that is how? This is a problem that existed in that past, not today. That's what I'm talking about.

We had a complete right, and still today to attack the pre-nerf Vanu community because they were a parasite. Nearly everything that has been nerfed in the VS were seriously problems that the pre-nerf VS community adamantly refused to accept as problems. The PPAs, the higher ADS speeds on their lmgs, the ZOE, over and over again.

This was a constant problem, not simple toxicity. Seems more like you're just trying to dismiss a very long time problem this game had.