User blog comment:Luperza/Brasil, PlanetSide 2 and Things/@comment-99.113.65.22-20131023191841

Big Concerns of NC Players:

The biggest concern is with harassers. Their speed makes them difficult to hit with anything other than an Annihilator, and even then the Annihilator can have trouble acquiring them. They have the ability to travel virtually anywhere, using turbo to get anti-tank weapons to places where tanks simply can't go. An engineer sitting in the rumble seat can repair the harasser while it is moving, and at a faster rate than the nanite auto-repair system; which is a game breaking mechanic. All this makes it incredibly powerful as anti-infantry and anti-vehicle.

Next biggest concern is NC MAX vs. MAX. Because of an over-emphasis on shotgun weapons, the NC MAX is only really useful inside buildings or biolabs. Even in these close quarter environments, the shotgun weapons the NC uses are at a disadvantage when they're used on enemy MAX's. When the shotguns were balanced, the result disproportionately hurt the NC, because of that over-emphasis on shotgun weapons. Suggestions to fix this may be to buff NC Scatter MAX so that they perform their limited role very well; or to add a new weapons that can engage MAX's at the same distance that they can currently engage the NC MAX. Maybe you can mount a Gauss SAW on each arm.

Third:  Empire Specific Harasser weapons. I can't tell if the TR weapons are too good (Vulcan and Marauder Harrassers are common) or if the NC and VS options are bad (Halbred and Fury Harrassers seem more common among these factions.)  The Enforcer is very difficult to aim because of the small crosshair, while the Enforcer modified is utterly ineffective at anti-infantry. In any event, there seems to be a problem with the way these weapons are balanced.

Fourth: NC Infantry weapons. The NC are proud of having hard hitting weapons, but it seems like we have a hard time keeping bullets on target. High recoil, combined with low rate of fire, make the NC weapons very unforgiving, in that every miss penalizes you much more than comparable VS and TR weapons. This is frustrating to all NC, but it especially frustrates new players. It is harder to retain new players when they find starting weapons of other factions easier to use.

Finally: Population Imbalance. This is last on my list; because I honestly think that looking at the aspects above will do a lot to send players to the faction they identify with; instead of one where they think they'll have a better advantage. That being said, there may need to be some fixes to prevent "Fourth Faction" or those that switch factions to take advantage of alerts. One mechanic might be to prevent players from switching factions during alerts.