Why so many players on NC side?

Please explain how your weapons require you to be skillful. A certed out Gauss Saw is the best/most accurate/hardest hitting LMG in the game, especially at range. You may have had an argument when flinch was still in the game, but now? You either haven't logged on in two months, or are pants on head ********.

Phoenix is the 4th faction

I chose NC after initially thinking I was going to go with the TR. Terran Republic had a nice ring to it and I thought they would be fighting for similar ideals that the NC fight for. (beer, chicken, Freedom) Their 'angry' look was pretty cool too.

The VS appealed too, since I like to build PCs, tune PCs, work on Source Mods, code, and work on machines (mainly trucks and cars) a lot. Its a natural inclination. Then I saw their appearance and said 'heck no'. That and they reminded me of the lil crunchy/squishy guys in Halo for some reason. Purple? Pffft. Thats not intimidating, and not cool either.

But then I read what the NC is fighting for, and chose NC despite the horribad color scheme (mainly construction safety yellow - I know that was the scheme in PS1 but seriously?) There was no question as to what faction I'd choose. NC turned me off at first. New Conglomerate sounds kinda dumb, and then theres the color scheme. But then, FREEDOM.

My kids both chose VS because of their looks I guess. They are both huge Halo fans and the colors are very similar to the overall aesthetics of the series. Both chose VS without even knowing what the other chose. But they also have short attention spans when it comes to gaming - whatever is new and cool is what they want. (since we are relatively poor they dont get it though) The only thing thats managed to keep both of their interests for any decent span of time is Minecraft. (which Ill admit actually looks fun to me too, a 33 year old Construction Inspector)

Anyway, TLDR? I chose NC 'cuz FREEDOM.

Almost every time I log in and go to Indar its even. Esamir and Amerish are where the VS usually lack population due to the overall slightly lower pop. Typically its only ~4% though. Occasionally I've seen VS populations at 6-9% less than the highest faction at that particular time. But that doesnt matter much if you stick together on one or even two of the three continents - 26% population means nothing on Indar if its 33/33/33 there.

So yeah - you got the lowest server population, but its by no means tiny.

NC ideals resonated the strongest to me since PS1. So my choice was allready made before the game even had launched. I dislike the vanu ideals and clothing strongly (purple spandex doesnt look good for me) and I dont like the totalitarian TR.

Now that we aren't affected by flinch as heavily our slower firing weapons fare better, so that might affect some people's decision to come to NC. Also we had the strongest max, not sure if we do anymore though since it was nerfed. Phoenix got some more people interested in NC too. Mostly though I think it's just the 4th faction boosting up the numbers following the flavor of the month weapon whichever faction gets it.

There's also people who join the biggest faction just to win

I joined TR in Planetside 1 because.....I hit ''Join random empire" and it suggested I join TR /shrug.

That or cause' the population was the lowest on the server. I don't like stacking teams.

To add further proof of this, because the NC supporters will no doubt say this is a lie, the spread sheet linked below crunches these very numbers for a few NC, TR and VS LMG. Other weapon types will yield the same results.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AsNlrdBAInjedGJsM0NYSGVrYjdWUWYwWnMyLVAtWWc&output=html

Because TR/VS pop's have dropped because things have been getting balanced and the fly by night 4th factioners have jumped ship ..
While NC players who started with the worst WG, who started with the handicap of flinch etc etc didn't initially join them because they were " OP "
We have retained more player's because hey when you start with crap thing's can only get better .. And now we are picking up the drop outs who joined other faction's for the wrong reasons

personally if i dont mind being on the smallest empire...i go for the empire weapons i like not wich is biggest but everyone has their flavor so if people like the biggest let them be in there then..because its what they prefer.

Terran colors looks great and they have a stronger feeling of unity, discipline soldiers. I picked NC because of the helmet and armor on the loading screen.

Proves what ?
That the Carv has the lowest TTK at both 10m and 125m ?
Or the the TMG - 50 has nearly the exact same stats as the Gauss ?

TR are OP I guess

Oh, the irony.

that i would also like, nc to be brought down to earth, give them weapon spread and slow reload like rest of us...AND ESPECIALLY LOWER XTRA DMG PER BULLET

I played all three when I started. One faction was mostly non-English, one was a bunch of jerks, and the NC squad I was auto-joined to (as all noobs are) was helpful. On TR, it was all complaining. I even got a kill, then got immediately TK'd and later booted from a sunderer mid-transit without a word. On NC, I don't think I killed anyone with the SAW for a while, it's not a smooth starter weapon like the TR one, even if it becomes decent fully certed.

No mystery to me why people prefer NC.

Yes lowest TTK if every bullet hits, but with the large difference in the CoF's VS and TR weapons have a much larger chance to miss with a few bullets. TTK is a misleading stat.

NC weapons have higher vertical recoil, which btw is user controllable. That's it. NC weapons have lower random horizontal recoil, and smaller CoF's due to being higher damage weapons. Having more accurate, higher damage weapons means you need to put less bullets on a target to score a kill. With the terrible hit registration of this game, and massive CoF's of the lower damage weapons, means that less bullets to put into a target is a pretty substantial advantage. Is OP? I can't say, but I'm sure SOE has numbers that can determine this. If by more skillful, you mean you have to deal with RNG less than the other factions, then sure.

What the....a sensible comment that ISN'T based on " duuuur your faction is lame because they aren't my faction duuur" you sure you're on the right forum here sir?

" Large Difference " ? At 10m CoF hardly plays a role .. at 125m I think you are exaggerating a 0.08 difference .

But hey I said before I don't mind if they give the Gauss the same 0.1 CoF of the Carv ... Would at least give the martyrs one less thing to complain about

The crying occurred mostly during the first 2 months of this game, when flinching mechanic was affecting NC players more so than other factions, when VS had their way with their overpowered magriders and it was also back when we didn't have lock-on weapons or camera guided weapons to mitigate magrider mobility. It was also back when NC lacked high speed weapon choices. I think the complaints were valid, back then. Any NC complaining now are just trolls or need to learn to play.

As for why NC is most populated right now, this is a FPS game. Looking at the demographics (American gamers), which do you think would be more attractive to an average American FPS gamer?

NC: Blue color, freedom, marine looking & sounding guns, M1A1 Abrams looking tank, marine looking human models
VS: Purple color, spandex, pew pew pew sounding guns, pew pew pew sounding tanks, alien looking models

I think everybody knows the answer. Oh and there's no need to compare to TR because TR population hasn't dropped or even moved that much, that indicates people who play TR enjoy TR as they should. Red color, republic, marine looking & sounding guns, marine guy's voice over that sounds tough, marine human looking models, etc..