I was leading a small squad for a while today and I noticed one my squaddies was an NSO. We fought against TR and VS both at different times and at the same time. There were NSOs on all three factions. At the same time. Fighting each other. Another NSO said in yell chat that he could re-log to become TR instead, but chose to remain with the NC. Does it not defeat the purpose if players can stay as whatever faction they joined even as populations inevitably balance out and become over-populated? It's not helping the problem. In fact, it's going against what the NSOs were literally created for.
Can't really go DC'ing robot players when their faction stops being lowest pop. Overall, the combination of NSOPs plus Koltyr for others seems to be generating better balanced populations on the EU servers.
I don't know how possible it would be from a coding perspective, but there wouldn't really need to be constant D/Cing if every so often the game checks pops and upon redeploying/respawning the game says "hey, you're faction X now." As with the OP, I have only seen NSOs act counter-intuitively randomly joining factions who are already doing fine.
Using your logic we should also kick most of the NC players when they have stayed in an alert for a long time already because they overpop and it needs to be balanced. NO! Of course you can't just kick any kind of player and make them lose their progress in an alert, squad, comrades and everything, this would be just stupid. It's already bad enough that if we crash during an alert that we would have been winning, we may get thrown to another losing faction.
The point isn't to win, or to stay on a random faction. The point is to even out populations and that is all. Leaving NSOs on the now-overpoping faction literally defies the sole reason they exist. If they don't want to change teams on an alert tough luck. They knew what they were getting into and there aren't many things for an NSO to unlock in the first place, unless you like hundreds of basic implant packs or single-use boosters.
We don't get any awards for a alert. (Just ISO and certs some times) Also by your logic if NSO are only in the game to balance out populations, then we should have all weapons and equipment unlocked. So all we have to do is work on implants.
Well, that kind of just invalidates the entire counter-argument against forcing faction-changes. Stand to gain nothing but what I would assume almost all NSOs would be swimming in, given the lack of things to cert after a point. Hell, I spent a couple thousand certs just yesterday because I was getting too close to the cert cap on a character with more guns than I even have the time to play with. Not my logic, actually. Sorry chief, I don't make the rules. But furthermore allowing faction specific weapons would just make NSOs pointless again. Anyone can make a character on each faction if they want ES equipment coupled with playing the underdog. NSOs are meant to be adaptive to pop and are not. I suggest fixing the glaring issue so that they might actually serve a purpose to be something other than restricted loadouts with semi-random teammates. Also personally anyway I just collect ISO-4 like a room collects dust: With a casual indifference to a natural phenomena occurring automatically. And this is with a character that has actually useful things to waste certs on and not an NSO. Implants don't go very deep, just get lucky with a few the player wants and then the rest might as well be void.
Sorry, I meant just the NS stuff. It be cool if one minute if you had a NSO in your squad and in the next minute he drops out of it, changed faction, color, markings, then starts killing your teammates. I get the feeling you don't like to play round with "fun loadouts". Not trying to make fun of you anything. Doing crazy, off the wall stuff with loadouts and Implants is one of my favorite things.
Oh, I see. Personally think that would be a good idea. This, very much so. I do. Just not really with implants as most of them are just useless or are overshadowed by other ones. I like playing around with stupid weapons and such as much as the next guy, but nothing will ever get me to swap out Catlike and Battle Hardened is just too good and too nice of a quality of life implant to pass on actual combat playstyles.
You should try out rank 5 Aerial Combatant and Nightmareb on a light Assault. Use Ambusher Jump Jets and a one hit kill melee weapon. It's a lot of fun to jump in one group of enemy's, jump over to other group and then come back. All the while cloaked.
I believe you somehow think that just because someone is NSO means they aren't allowed to have fun like the rest in the game. They do go to the underpoped factions but no one can see the future and predict that the underpop suddenly becomes overpop. Kicking players for simply logging in or changing continent and having no control over which faction they join and throwing them in another faction is just plain ridicilous. I bet you wouldn't like it if you were happily playing in a squad with friends or your outfit, 10 minutes of an alert remaining and you are about to win and then suddenly you get kicked to the loosing faction, lost all your alert progress, squad and your friends are your enemy now.
Some people enjoy playing the underpop. Again, that's kinda the whole point of NSOs. Woudn't be kicking, just changing spawns to the other faction and swapping friendly fire around. Assuming that's possible from a coding perspective, anyway. I actually wouldn't mind shooting some of the idiots I have to play with. I also already have many friends from different factions and actively do kill them. Furthermore, robot outfits solves that, and as Moggram says NSOs don't really care about alerts. NSOs aren't supposed to be their own faction. They are meant to swap sides and kill former allies and stay on the faction that needs the bodies the most.
Bump! Just logged off. Why? Because I was fighting robots as the 10% global underpopped faction. Also because there was no allies at all around in the three possible places to fight and I'm already tired of 3-1 odds. Point being, why can I play the severely undermanned faction and be fighting against the players supposed to balanced out the pop? Please fix this, or just let me just join the winning side too.
