Originally Posted by KingFeraligatr
I have another idea. Make the NC a NPC ONLY faction. We'd get better players that way. NC players are a kind of incompetent retard that words cannot describe. They redefine incompetent players. Or you just gut the faction or make it unslelectable. Anyways, something would have to be done to stop the incompetency that reeks from the NC players.
Edit: It doesn't mean that there aren't cool NC players. They're just terrible players. But most are retarded pricks.
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Here's my take on it.
Well, do realise that the NC was the shotgun empire and any NC's dominance came from being superior in indoor combat. During the last balance patch:
- The Jackhammer tripleshot got nerfed.
- The Lasher got buffed (sure, "nerfed" in comparison to Lasher 2.0
).
- The Sweeper (common pool!) got buffed.
- MCG remained good at all ranges.
Meaning that the NC's HA became relatively weaker against both other HA. Obviously still good enough to fight indoors with, but not as good as it used to be, VS and TR benefitted most from this. Enough reason for some to go play another empire (TR mostly) or quit after enjoying the fights less (being used to close combat pwnage - not going to comment on the amount of spine cause you can still work well enough with it. Just have to work a bit harder which is fine.
).
Outfit wise, NC used to exist primarily from small, mediocre spec ops outfits (who often relied on the indoor superior firepower to get their jobs done) and usualy one major zergfit. The Spec Ops outfits died out relatively fast due to the limited numbers they could field, any loss in players would be felt harder with them. It became even harder for them to compete with other empires when their individual firepower got nerfed and they couldn't handle more players per player with as relative ease in CQC anymore, while obviously not being brought up to par at medium ranges with their HA either.
Worse though, NC also lost its zergfits first. All in all, it lost its outfit coherence and its outfits became less capable of mounting counterstrikes and organisation, as it's harder to coordinate loads of mini outfits often fielding no more than 1-5 players each, than a couple of semi-organised big outfits (like AT and BRTD) with a couple small-medium elite outfits (like DT and TRx).
A few years ago the few elite outfits on NC stopped playing for winning and started playing for farming and "distraction ops" in towers, interlinks and tech plants and really... largely died out or became predictable and less impacting. The elite outfits on TR and VS continued to play both for winning and farming and didn't die out.
Meanwhile, NC command was reduced to irrelevance by the farmfits, countermanding orders aimed to win with calls to simply ignore these calls and come farm a "good fight" (no, they wern't). Morale dropped with that as well and less and less people were available to stop backhacks. With the increased load on fewer people, these people gave up to or simply quit, leaving a handful of people to deal with hacks by the elites from the opposite empire, while the equipment for those elites wasn't nerfed or even improved.
All in all it has left the NC in shambles. So meh. You can complain about the NC players individually, the issue is more the organisation that lacks.
TLDR: Individually the players are just as good, but most don't have sufficient leadership (which is schizofrenic too) or are too splintered over the outfits - if they are in an active outfit - while the elites either don't exist or are reduced to semi-useless farming, the middleground is thinned out. All in all NC can't make a fist, even in spec ops since they relied on indoor pwnage (other empires often had larger outfits to compensate for lacking CQC it seemed: where NC stopped recruiting cause they could handle things, the TR and VS kept actively recruiting. So any balance patch favouring other than NC at CQC would reduce their strength a little bit, possibly enough for low pop situations to become critical and almost toothless).