Why so many players on NC side?

When a new player first starts up Planetside 2 the game does such a poor job of informing him about the different factions that it basically comes down to picking your favourite color and in most cases that would be blue...

A new player has generally no concept of the current balance changes or fad in the game before he has played it for some time.
So unless you are talking about the flavour of the month players, OP this, OP that is just BS.

Yeah, and the NC overpopulates 6 out of the total 9 of them
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmUavphHXmIxdFhHUzJfN1VYalRnWS0xMnBUdTJpM1E&gid=22

Also I've never understood the whole "hardmode" argument; since when does having "hard hitting, long lasting" as a faction's trait classify as "hardmode"?

NC is good guys and has happy music. Terran is like.... China. Vanu is wacky.

I play TR and I don't really understand why people claim that NC is OP. The problem is not the weapons or vehicles but the population balance. Instead of crying for nerfs or buffs ask SOE to implement something that would encourage people to join and play on underpopulated factions.

I prefer nerfs because that means less people will play NC (which is the overpopulated faction) due to being nerfed, instead of getting a tiny bit more exp and still continuing to be outnumbered and farmed by a zerg.

Players like you are the reason i would never join VS if i was a new player.
You spend more time crying than fighting.

Faction balance is one thing.. many people simply don't like the appeareance of VS, some love it to a lesser degree. Mostly players learned the game now and many started a new player after they learned the advantages of the various factions.

As an example i also would leave VS if i hadn't invested so many certs in my girl. The main advantage "agility" of the faction is simply more and more useless and every new weapon increases that problem. In the end .. biggest damage is the importants thing. You die so fast in the moment that you need to hit like a truck on your own .. that's why more and more player join NC and with quite some exp. in handling recoildi guess i caould ignore that feature of NC meanwhile.

Also VS stop whining on forums to nerf everything, VS still have arguably most of the best equipment still with TR, nothing to do with equipment.

Players like you make me happy that I play TR/VS.
Because people like you flock to the flavor of the month.

And if you've ever seen the stats, TR/VS are leading in personal skill, the NC are rock bottom of the skill pillar, they are like plankton for whales.

Atm TR>NC=VS.
Slightly, nothing to whine about.
I would give a buff to VS (their max mostly) to help countering the low population problem, and thats it.

Everything else is whining...

Dude... i was NC in PS1, i am NC in PS2, basically i have been NC for ten years.
Flavour of the month my ***, stop babbling.
You are embarassing for your faction.

Do you even play the same game?

The reaver is pretty much strictly worse than the other ESFs.

Why it has to be tiny amount of XP? If SOE wanted they could give massive XP boost to underpopulated factions that would be removed as soon as balance is regained. I personally would give 10% XP for each population % below 33% based on server population. For example, if server population was 40% NC, 32% TR and 28% VS then TR players would get 10% more XP and VS would get 50% more.

Glad to see you quoted a spreadsheet that used active characters.
I've made a few NC alts now and again and consistently been the underdog bar a couple servers. Thanks for showing me some hard facts though. ^_^

The hardmode argument probably stems from the fact that we were stuck with the crappy SE Indar WG from beta/launch all the way up until the first rotation. That and the pre-flinch update infantry gameplay really favoured high RoF weaponry.
Vehicles and MAX suits are a whole other discussion.
Anyways, its mostly outdated and only applies to certain aspects of the game, like ESFs. Most other faction diversity and gameplay has been pretty normalised and is basically a 3-team arcade shoot-em-up. ;[

Oh and on topic: NC apparently appeals to higher skill players as their weapons are less spammy/spray'n'pray and have higher upfront damage. Gotta say I love the AC-X11 regardless of it's miniscule damage advantage and baby magazines. ^_^

double.

When it comes with high recoil, small magazines, and low rates of fire that reduce the DPS output of the hard hitting weapons to parity or sub-parity with the far easier to use bullet hoses.

Our weapons are actually harder to use, they are very good just require more skill, with TR/VS weapons it's much easier to shoot and pray, NC requires more skill as they are like old school weapons, hit hard but require you to be skillful.

Because NC is "Space 'Merica!"

As part of the Waterson NC, Waterson VS is pretty cool now, I remember back round launch though when VS were overpowered and every server had a VS pop domination, the VS players were horrid, cowardly, and vapid. Then mags got nerfed (and not even that hard to be honest) and a lot of them jumped ship. Those that remained, they are enemies worthy of respect. I salute you Waterson VS, and then I shoot you, because lets face it, your not whereing the same colors I am, so you must die.

Though waterson at least has enouph population to max out an alerted contenent, which means on that continent all populations are tiney.



to the OP, there is an obvious cycle, NC has spent a long time with the lowest pop, while VS the highest, and then it went to TR, and now its on NC, its not likely to last to long. On waterson at least TR tends to have equal pop as NC, bit more late at night.

The funny thing is I joined Waterson when the NC had only like 25% pop because I wanted a challenge. 4 months later, now we're the biggest faction. I almost feel like we've been watered down - it used to be that if I was in a squad, most of the time I could count on them all being very competant and some of them were probably badasses. Now those guys have been scattered here and there amongst the hordes of "meh". Not exactly sure where all these people came from, but I blame 4th faction. It was with NC in beta, then with TR, then with VS, now it's with NC again.