Worldwide NC pop skyrocketed after PU02

My point wasn't about where or when NC can use their MAX. It was that the amount of time you've spent in it is a tiny amount so you've probably done just enough to get a good 'wow the grass sure of greener over here' feeling but little more. I've not said the TR MAX is op or without its issues, but the NC version is definitely not the godmode you seem to think it is.

I didn't say it's a god mode. I said it's the best MAX. Understand the difference.

Also i see a little controversy here. You keep telling me that i can't compare NC stuff since i don't have much time playing NC. May i ask how much time you've spent on your TR? With MAX and Reaver in particular...

It's not that you can't compare, my point is that you need to use things for more than a couple of hours to see both the positives and negatives. Now sure I could go and grab a TR Max play for three hours and come back here and say omg its so OP blah blah blah, but compared to someone who has used it for months and seen both the upsides and the downsides on a daily basis my opinion wouldn't be worth much would it?

I'm simply saying playing 3 hours with an NC Max then throwing around statements like:

is a little premature. How many hours in both? Guessing some days you absolutely destroy people in your TR Max, on other days you don't do as well or different outfits are better at countering you. That's what I'm talking about and something you can't experience in just 3 hours random gameplay.

To get back on topic however, even if the things you say are so great about the NC really are that good, they're no different than they were prior to this patch so I really doubt that any kind of population shift is down to those things. More likely a combination of people returning to the game with the patch + holidays combination and idiot fourth factioners looking at the patch notes, seeing their OP toys being nerfed and trying NC for a bit, that will soon pass.

So the 4th faction found a new favourite toy, why would anyone care?


It was quite obvious that something like this would happen, that once balance changes were in place people would gravitate towards the new FotM faction again. TR and VS were heads and shoulders above NC in pop numbers for months and the NC players pleaded (repeatedly) for a mechanic that would fix or at least ease the 4th faction effect. To no avail, all we got in response was "L2P".


So, yeah... We kinda told you so. Sorry. Your turn to L2P/cry on deaf ears. Merry christmas.

Obviously MGP has little clue what he's talking about. 3 hrs in an NC MAX (likely all inside a biolab) and 82+ hrs in a TR MAX with far better SPM. I would love for him to prove me wrong though.

I'm not yet ready to make any proclamations on NC populations, certainly things seem very fluid and are fluctuating a lot on many servers. Alerts can really skew the in-game UI population levels per server and per continent. Continuing to monitor.

As for individual situational observations. NC MAX's are super effective at throwing VS MAX crashes back out of biolabs (And yeesh the most recent example of that VS were throwing 40, maybe 50 MAX's at the biolab), I'm considering how to better deal with that and have one potential solution I need to discuss with the outfit.

Tank warfare, it's really nice to see pitched tank battles happening again now that the Harasser isn't ridiculous. Vanguards are a LOT more numerous and man those shields are NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASTY, I'm having to use every trick in the book to take them on and usually resort to going 'hull down' with an AP Lightning configuration (That's where the bulk of the hull is behind a hill or rock outcrop so they have to try and hit the turret whilst my AP rounds are arced over the cover). I'm growing concerned that the shield *MAY* be too good an ability but haven't drawn a conclusion yet.

Moving away from empire specific balance. I do definately have concerns about Liberator performance, I'm seeing Liberators pull off super duper kill streaks and are very difficult to bring down with a Skyguard (Such that I'll open up on a Liberator and it has enough time to just turn around and kill me even though I've arguably surprised it), I've started resorting to pulling an ESF and staying at as max range as possible to just harass them from long range and flee should an enemy ESF respond because ground based AA tends to be pretty useless against Liberators.
Medium term, I'm expecting people who were abusing pre-nerf Harassers to transition to using/abusing Liberators and players will need to adapt to this problem for the time being pulling more air swarms of their own to counter this particular threat.

Glad someone said it.

I've not had a chance to play since the patch, given I'm spending some time in the land of phone-internet-only, but I've been keeping an eye on how stuff is going. The NC have had a rough deal for a while, and having people constantly saying "oh, but you're underpopped and lose all the time because you've just got crappy leaders and no skill lol" has been tiring at best and downright obnoxious at worst.

If those very same people are now either complaining about NC being OP or doing the 4th faction slide over to NC now there even a hint of actual balance... well... lets say they're unlikely to find much love from their new comrades in blue... Particularly after the honeymoon phase has worn off.

My Hacksaw MAX can easily prove you wrong. And by the way, how many hours YOU have on your TR? Oh, let me guess, zero?

Connery NC has always been higher than usual, same went for Helios before merging with Connery. However it seems VS is the flavor on Mattherson, part of why I quit playing my VS on that server, can't really deal with the airhead teammates, NC on Mattherson rarely goes above 31% whenever I play lately, the populatio flip flops between TR and VS, infact yesterday I watched the bar go from 38% TR to 37% VS (server pop) in a matter of minutes, there wasn't even an alert going on either, I thought it was a little weird.

The devs balance things based on statistics, not based on the opinion of a bunch of forumsiders, it may feel OP to you, but in the grand scheme of things its performing like the others or maybe worse then the others like the vanguard

Still looking for the post where i've said that NC MAX is OP. Will you help me out?

My bad, i am to used of seeing people using the OP words, but the point is that it feels to you that it is the best max, but if it havent got another nerf already, it means that it is probably balanced with the other maxes, sadly sony releases very few stats to the public, the last they released where the MBT stats, if you want to check them out here is a link http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1sszqq/interesting_data_about_current_mbt_balance/

LOL Nc best max...still laughing op is delusional just look at his post history hehe
Anyway on mattherson nc is getting its *** kicked as per usual so I see no influx of nc players. Mainly because if you look at the numbers worldwide there isn't any.

I like NC weapons. I like low RoF high damage guns, as I can only control them but nothing else. Even though I play mainly as a TR, I am enjoying the NC alt that I've made. I wish TR had such weapons. They're lethal man...

What weapons, tr have copies that are even better than nc equivalents, tmg 50 is a copy of the gauss saw s but is more accurate.
What nc weapons are actually better than the copies available to tr and vs in your opinion?
Take a look at higby's numbers all of the weapons that are most used by nc,tr and vs by br100's are fast firing. Every class and every category. Not one nc type weapon is used even close to as much as all the fast firing vs/tr weapons even by nc br 100's.
The devs own numbers show how horrible low rof weapons are in any base or tower (90% of the games real play) so what exactly does low rof get u?
Better at 70 metres maybe? where 5% of the actual gameplay happens, this whining is a joke.

Just because they didn't record it doesn't mean it didn't happen (it's like the world actually DID exist before you were born, even though you don't remember it!).

That other similar data site shows it quite clearly.


So lets recap, the TR had a good 7-10% world population advantage for most of 2013 (the NC currently have ~3%).
There's still plenty of servers (like Miller) where the TR still have the highest % pop regularly and the highest daily total pop.
And you're bitterly complaining because Miller TR isn't 100% the most populated faction all the time anymore and it hurts!

Well you seemingly play NC when Miller NC has the highest population (18 hours NC vs 39 days TR)...... which has been for about 5% of 2013 (as opposed to TR with about 80%).

I'm still looking for where the NC was actually buffed in PU02, can you help me out?

Once again. Sirisan shows NC as most popular faction worldwide all through 2013. I'll ask you again to stop posting false information. You're making a fool of yourself.

Gotta stop you there, when I looked at the in-game population levels, server wide & continent wide on a daily basis over the course of months, there were long periods where TR consistently had the highest server wide population levels during server local prime-time. I've had concerns about these stats before, that they're tracking daily log ins instead of actual moment to moment population levels and it's simply that a lot more NC log in, but the majority of them stay logged in for shorter lengths of time than TR do, or something (Perhaps as NC/VS log out sooner due to frustration or the cycle of the moon or whatever other weird things affect human nature).

Statistics can lie, be misleading and/or misinterpreted. TR might have a population advantage of 3-5% in the afternoon 5PM to 9PM then it tilts towards Vanu 1-3% 9PM to midnight or do other weird random things. An outfit 30 members strong might decide to do an event where they go play on a different empire on a different server and that could (Depending on time of day, etc.) skew a population a bit, track that out over larger trends of people who decide to log in on Thursday but would rather play Skyrim the next day and things can get funky.