Vanu is Overpowered and this is why - Planetside 2

B-Roll: Roulden

[ZealousVidya]

The biggest factor as to why 'VS is op' is the players/outfits, not the weapons, camo, vehicles.
Mechanically the differences between factions are marginal, often TR/NC have very similar or slightly better uniques.

[EspressoInSpace]

On Emerald Vanu has the ability to drop at least 25% of the faction population on any base because of the large coordinated outfit. That's gonna win you a lot of territory because the Tr/Nc don't wanna deal with the over-pop

[crazedking]

"I have nothing to back that up, but it makes sense logically" lmfao best and brightest vanu

[CombatArmsVRUEICMMO]

I play on Emerald as TR and I think it's just a difference in culture. VS platoons always try to win the alert, while TR and NC will duke it out with 300 players over an empty field. I've noticed TR pulls MAXes less often. For TR platoons there's usually either no platoons open or AODR, meanwhile SKL, VKTZ, and BWAE or PRAE always seem to be online. Also, this may be biased but from my POV it seems TR at least tries to fight VS, NC just attacks TR like 70% of the time even if VS is already winning the alert. I've had many nights where VS and NC didn't trade any bases for 40 minutes straight. Just my 2 cents.

[LadyBaggins]

Bettel is why good players choose VS main over other factions. It's not really OP in terms of stats but it's the best farming weapon. It's fun and feels great to play. It's such an iconic weapon in this game, everyone seems to either love or hate it, that's why it drives so much people to play it imo.

[darktrooper]

you know an empire is OP when they can have 30% pop and win almost all the alerts lol

[TheHuffur]

VS being a infantry focused faction kinda goes hand in hand with VS being underpop on most servers, if you look at stats for the primary vehicle weapons for ESFs and MBTs its a weird and scary picture being drawn.

TR having almost as many unique Banshee users as VS has all their ESF noseguns combined.
NC/TR having almost 40% more unique MBT primary users than VS.

If you ask me its not weird that VS is infantry focused, use vehicles and you can kinda expect to be outnumbered 2 to 1. Also why I think some of the vehicle stats for VS can be above average, far less random/casual users which means the veterans make up a disproportionately large % of total users = inflated stats as they obviously kill a bit more than casual Joe pulling a near stock Vanguard/Prowler to join the vehicle zerg.

Not to mention how obscenely cert expensive the Magrider is to get into a decent combat state compared to Prowler/Vanguard, literally thousands of certs difference so probably a lot of people who dont want to spend that much on the Magrider in the state the game is atm on top of not even being sure if they will like the Magrider but they have to cert it out first in order to test it in combat.

[joewozniak]

its quite clear that vanu on emerald has a more sweaty player base while focused on infantry and "cheese" to win rather than TR and NC have less of those two. In other words, more casual player base/groups that don't take the alerts as seriously. I've been playing all factions on both Connery and Emerald since 2012. It's true how over time the good players gravitate towards the better faction on the server. Normally this happens because that player base is more "objective/win" oriented. You can see this on other servers too.

[testinghydra]

To me it sounds weird when you mention that high skill players migrated over to VS after certain changes. Because then that means they are switching to something that’s easier to play. Sure they’re still good players but if you take away the VS weapons I feel like the stats would even out.

[Muux]

Honestly its just the weapons being really easily accessable to all new players since they have so high accuracy, second factor is actually that you cannot balance a weapon having accuracy vs high fire rate when the game is definetly based on headshots.

[internetuserperson]

Well, the stats are not 100% dependable to draw conclusions, they are way too broad. A prowler can sit on a hill all day farming kills and end up with similar K/D to other MBTs but how much is that helping your faction win alerts? (and in fact, TR mech often does that, at least from my experience) Imo one of the main reasons for VS having an edge is the Magrider. It's true that the Vang is tankier and the Prowler has higher firepower, but the fact that the Magrider is so incredibly mobile/agile makes it survive way longer (and WAY harder to hit) than the other 2 mbts and allows for much more aggressive play overall. Plus you can get some crazy flanks with it that the other factions can't achieve.

The second reason is the guns - low or no downtime (Even without counting the beetle, the orion reloads way faster than saw/t9, for example) and much easier recoil control. Meaning that lower skilled players will be able to hit the body more consistently, and higher skilled players will have an even higher headshot ratio. I do believe that in theory, the NC have the strongest guns (in a world where everyone has perfect aim), but realisticly the playerbase is a mix of all kinds of skill levels.

There are other factors of course, such as player skill, but I don't wanna make this too long.

Just my 2 c

[senturian]

I think it's very helpful to add the historical context to this discussion, because this weighting of top-tier players toward Vanu hasn't been the case since launch - and it's easy to track when and how it happened.

The first event that caused a migration of high-tier infantry players toward Vanu was in mid-2013 with the original release of the Zealot Overdrive Engine. At that stage in the game's history, MAX units were much more common everywhere and ZOE existed in a state that most people considered nearly intolerable for about 6 months. A non inconsequential number of the best infantry players switched to Vanu during this period either to use ZOE or avoid having to fight against it.

The second event that caused a migration of high-tier infantry players to Vanu was the addition of the heat mechanic to the Betelgeuse in the autumn of 2014. I am not claiming the Betel is or was overpowered (though I might point out that it is still ubiquitously used after its recent nerf), I am only claiming that what it provides is very enticing for the best infantry players and impossible to get on the other factions. The heat mechanic serves as a force multiplier in some sense: the benefit it provides scales extremely well with user skill, and this enticed more of the best infantry players to the side of purple.

With the notable exception of Recursion (who played mostly TR), this Vanu infantry dominance was mostly cemented by 2015 or 2016, and this kind of thing tends to perpetuate itself. Mostly I'm pushing back against your notion that it's the Sci-Fi flavor that naturally lead to this state; that's not the way it happened, and it wasn't always this way.

TL;DR: Vanu wins because many of the best infantry players switched to Vanu over a few of the years early in the game's life.

[ApolloPS]

Two reasons: Vanu players r nerdy ass gamers who are willing to learn more before quitting.

Vanu players have better outfit structures to teach new players snowballing retention.

[chettonex]

I cant believe that you didnt mentioned any stats about the usage of betelgeuse compared to other faction specific lmg. According to stats sites, the betelgeuse is used 300% more than other faction specific lmgs. This means that for every heavy using a Godsaw or a Butcher there are 4 Vanus using the Betel. This is because heat mechanic is MUCH more than you mention on this video. Being able to partially reload your magazine just by not shooting for a few seconds and having infinite ammo is what makes this weapon the best in game (by a thousand miles).

[nicolasyuri]

I think the thematic of each faction counts a lot on this. NC has a lot more noobs due to the aesthetics. they look like the good guys, they're blue, they're the faction we see most in the trailer, they have a military vibe, so they have more appeal to the new player. I'm a VS player but my first character ever was in NC faction.

[hedgehog]

I don't think the camo factor is deniable, Vanu are just way harder to see and I have a lot of deaths to Vanu where I didn't notice them, but would have with any other faction. It's just a simple case of them being the darkest faction overall so they are much harder to notice and they don't have any accents that really off set that. You just don't notice this if you only play on low settings.

[DatHuski]

I play all factions (INC NSO) on Emerald, splitting my time between the three (technically four, but I'm not counting NSO) and I always try to get the platoon game going or join one in progress, one thing I've noticed during my time is VS seem a lot more coordinated on alerts, people actually go for the gaining of territory not just the big shooty bangbang fight, many times I've helped swing alerts by going north or south when everyone else is duking middle lane and being able to get 1 zone form warpgating the faction with 6 people and 1 decent sundy or spawn beacon.

The weapons are interesting, as I don't look too deep into stats (I live on the assumption that ROF beats all) I go for whatever has the highest rate of putting ow towards the thing I want removed, and to me just from my playing perspective, the VS weapons feel better overall, not sure as to why specifically but they just, gel with me better.

I also run the same idea of what character to play:

Emerald off peak: TR (they can only win this time it seems) or NSO (because robots)
Emerald on peak: NC/VS (obviously)

TL;DR: to me playing all factions on one server as infantry, VS just feels the best to play for that gameplay and playstyle.

[TrolliPoilli]

I played TR on emerald as my main for a long time, and I have to say I had to switch to VS recently because the NC literally just attack TR no matter what during an alert even if the VS are winning. It’s extremely annoying.

[urosprodic]

Lets be real it sjust because every new player picks vanu and there is simply more of them.

[big_daddy_d]

Oh but vs guns having huge bullets and no damage falloff is not a contributing factor strange isn't it