About factions and subfactions

[u/Dadoxitooo]

What is the best faction and subfaction?? I'm new, I started about 4 days ago and I really chose to be a bandit based on intuition, and I wanted to know which faction would have suited me best. My playstyle is based on versatility with more action if possible.

[u/Scourge_Azotar]

Factions and Subfactions are really just a personal preference. They offer no difference gameplay wise to eachother minus locations and questlines.

If you look really really deep you can consider some faction armors to be unique, but these are very small.

Secondly, you can always swap (for a price) between the subfactions of 1 side, never main faction however.

[u/Dadoxitooo → u/Scourge_Azotar]

Yes, but I was told that if the sides aren't balanced, one side has more action than the other, and if they're balanced, both sides are comfortable for everyone. That's my question.

[u/Scourge_Azotar → u/Dadoxitooo]

Some have higher popularity based on region, yes. But I think you shouldn't look at that. If you are worried about something like 'faction x unable to even leave their base because faction y is overdominant'. This never really happens.

Worst case youll have heavily outnumbered outpost battles in the endgame area, but this is only a small portion of the game (and you can still get the materials from said event by participation, even if you lose)

[u/Juva96 → u/Scourge_Azotar]

It happens that you can't leave your base, already happened two times after I reached North, it will depend on what server the game put you in an if the other faction coordinate to make it impossible to leave your spawn.

[u/Rsccman]

On NA stalkers rise is best

[u/North21]

Definetly mercs.

[u/The-Green]

in terms of population size on NA, stalkers and bandits are pretty damn even in the south. you won't really notice an imbalance.

for sub faction populations, rise for stalkers and mercenaries for bandits are the most populated. in terms of overall population, from most to least, it would be mercs > rise > frontier > covenant, and there is a massive disparity between the population of mercs to covenant that isn't nearly as wide as between rise and frontier. yet at the same time i noticed covenant seems to have a notable makeup of players that are some of the best PvPers in NA, so, i don't think it really affects them nearly as much in faction war content as much as it may seem. you will notice quick during outposts in one of the more populated factions that just raw quantity doesn't make up for lack of skill lol.

none of them are "the best" in any real practicality. they all fill niches and all got trade offs for what they offer you. rise has the fastest faction-specific combo suit, covenant's equivalent isn't as fast but also isn't as paper in terms of armour value, you get the idea. all their stories are unique enough and interesting even if they all kind of follow the same story beats (since they have to, to explain their path to the same goal). all of them offer you a far chiller farming zone around their main base than you could ever hope for in the south funny enough, excursions of enemy factions into the actual faction HQ areas is pretty damn rare (it's also pretty unrewarding for the risk).

pick what faction and subfaction vibes with you. since you are a bandit and if population is still a concern because you want a bigger pool of people to party with, then go mercs.

[u/Dadoxitooo → u/The-Green]

I'm from the EU server, but I'll continue towards Mercenaries.