NSO Operatives (the Robots)

So I have a fairly general question as it relates to NSO characters? What's the actual point? A person pays a subscription per month in order to access the line but it's not even competitive compared to the standard free classes:

Guns - Arguably the best to offer is the NSM2. Accurate, 143 damage, but still slower than the other faction starting guns. Most of the elite reward guns are garbage (as in the Sesshin). The Kuwa is ok, but it's much like the Yumi, and has a short spin-up time which means bullets are coming at you before you can put them on them. It's not really a forward assault weapon, more of a surprise/flank weapon
- ROF v.s. Muzzle velocity: a lot of people look at the muzzle velocity, which is nice, but the primary stat that should payed attention to is ROF (the trade off being bullet damage). NSO, with the exception of an elite reward gun, all have less than 750 ROF, except 1 gun, the Tomoe. All other factions have some 750 ROF weapons, if not greater ROFs. Obviously this puts the NSO at a disadvantage

MAX - until recently, the NSO didn't have a MAX equivalent. Now there is one, but there's a catch. It's heat based, has a slow ROF, has a fire arc like the Pounder. It also isn't capable of any AA defense. On the plus side, they are great for hallways, good against other MAX units, can damage all vehicles, and do an AOE splash.

MBT - no option, there isn't one

ESF - no option, there isn't one

Guild Wars - because you need to pay a subscription to access the class, Robot Outfits really aren't a thing, and in no way can compete against other outfits (including all the aforementioned reasons). In addition, as a "Merc" you are sent out to the faction that needs you the most, BUT, your same outfit people can possibly end up on the other factions, so basically, you can rarely ever practice group cohesion like you would if you were in a standard faction outfit.

So going back to my original question; with significant drawbacks compared to the other standard (free to play) factions, why do you have to pay a subscription for a substandard option?....other than the "cool" factor...

I feel that the NSO faction is not working as intended. Even worse people exploit them.

They were ment to be a way to help with population balance. Players play for the lowest pop empire at the time they log in. Problem here is that population can swing rapidly as other continents lock or unlock. After the swing the NSO that logged in continue to fight for a faction that does not need them. Even worse is when people exploit by going to a cont with a low pop of the empire they wish to play, forming a squad, then transfering to the cont they would otherwise be play the lower pop faction. You end up with the NSO further contributing to imbalance instead of helping to mitigate it.

I always took the sub only thing as it was intended to pull from more serious (and hopefully more experienced)players. Yes anyone can sub but it is much more likely that you won't have a total noob running a NSO. This goes into the NSO being a force mutiplier for the lower pop faction. An injection of at least moderately skilled bodies into the most needed empire would help even things out.

Problem is the NSO spawn system is exploited to eliminate almost all the potential benefits. What you are left with is playing a character with bland, uninteresting NS weapons and much fewer upgrade options to spend certs on.

The only way I can see to help it is to force NS to shuffle empires as the pop changes. It would suck more for running a group but it would actually fit the role of the NSO much better.

Anyone else pissed the NSO's get the most faction specific gear?


Lol us peasents get to use basic NS stuff that has nothing to do with our faction traits, but the NS faction actually gets nicely worked exclusive stuff.

Much like construction, it's a system which is solid conceptually, but was implemented in an incomplete fashion without a clear vision of how it would develop into the future meta. Fixing it is a tall order, particularly with the implementation of Escalation, since the devs apparently felt it necessary to take a "Um, yeah, let's just ignore that for now." approach toward NSO.

Every NSO player is a paying customer. Virtually every NSO player is a repeat paying customer. And now NSO players have been blatantly denied access to major new features.

Long term, this needs to be addressed to keep the entire faction relevant. Near term, NSO players deserve some bones to be thrown their way. Here's a couple ideas, off the top of my head, I think could be realistically implemented without a massive amount of dev resources:

• Allow NSO players in an NSO-lead squad to continent warp as a group. It's unreasonably hard to get a group of NSO outfit mates together in the same place, which is of course critical for any sense of community. This would be a small, simple step toward mitigating that issue.
• An NS tank has already been developed: Give NSO the Colossus! With Bastions in the sky, I now see little justification for denying NSO players access to something that could actually make other players just a little bit jealous. NSO was billed as a way to turn the tides for the under-pop'd faction; give them a tool to do just that.
• Add a consumable to spawn a stock, basic loadout, ESF. With ESFs popping out of Bastions like candy out of a piñata, it feels to me like the groundwork has been laid for something like this. There's currently a critical role NSO players are incapable of assisting with; this would go a long way toward helping to address that.

In my opinion NSOs already get too much unique equipment, they don't need more special weapons and they certainly don't need their own MBT or ESF.

Not only is most of their stuff completely locked behind a mandatory continuous paywall, any "significant" advantages the platform or weapons would offer to NSOs over normal players would be Pay2Win. The fact that there already exists a MAX which serves its own unique purpose already weighs heavily on the line.

Unique equipment is not necessarily "better", or "equivalent" equipment. Yes, there is a lot of "unique" equipment, but most all of it is substandard to the average Faction equipment. All NSO weapons can be used by any faction, with the exception of Directive Achieved weapons, but all/any factions weapons cannot be used by NSO

Let's say we don't get an ESF, or a MBT, or any kind of AA deterrence for the MAX. How about allowing NSO to use ALL faction weapons while they are playing on any faction? How would that be any different from a person running into a standard "enemy" on the other faction? Seems like a fair compromise, especially since the NSO is supposed to be an extra body/Mercenary

It doesn't have to be inherently better to be functionally better. If it serves a function better than another weapon it may be unfair given the paywall.

Personally I'd rather just have all NSO weapons and equipment made available like regular NS stuff and have the NSOs gain access to whatever equipment the faction they're supporting has. Using a faction's own weapons against them is still not something a non-member can do.

The only unique thing that is actually "better" and I use big air quotes here, is the NSO max abilites, namely the bubble shield. It actually provides a unique form of gameplay being able to shield your freindlys as you enter a room. The other ability, suicide bomb, became useless once the free MAX alerts went away.

Everything else the NSO have are either carbon copies (Repair gun, medal, class abilites) or worse (weapon selection, lack of certain vehicles). Even that funny hover bike has a dog-**** gun that if you die to you should feel ashamed.

As above, things don't necessarily have to always be objectively better to be situationally better.

The NSOs also have a fancy new sniper rifle, the SR-200 which is in many ways better than the EST4 rifles. Additionally they all the directive-variant NSX guns, including an automatic 200 damage pistol...

All this stuff should be made for NSOs but should also be available to the factions as well. What they don't need is special equipment or vehicles like a new NSO-specific MBT or ESF. If we get new commmonpool stuff that's good, but the moment it gets locked behind a paywall there is a significant issue.

the most embarrassing thing about NSO is the "Nest Launcher" for Javelin,
1000 certs and i'd rather have a candy gun on my vehicle.
it is beyond trash, the most useless junk in the game!

i only had membership for a month, and during that time i kept trying to get a kill with nest launcher, JUST ONE.
nope...words cant express how utterly USELESS Nest Launcher is.

I've actually had surprisingly good results with the Nest launcher myself; using the agility chassis for the jump ability and floating around nearby friendly vehicles, rush in and unload them all on the rear armor. It's got a long reload rate sure but if all the micromissiles hit it seems like it does fairly good damage for a homing weapon to me.

It handles really strangely that's for sure, the missiles are so slow and the lockon is so fiddly. It seems almost bugged against harassers too, like the missiles deliberately home wrong, often seems like they're not aiming for the harrasser itself even when the thing is stationary, more like they're aiming for a space about 2m behind it. Strange. Still, many a lightning has fallen to my Nests.

I think they're cool and do a good job at what they're supposed to do. I was instantly baffled that they were a paid-only feature. The pop-balance factor and inability to join more established faction-outfits make it perfectly suited for F2P soloers. That's the only thing I REALLY think would make sense as a change on them for now.

I don't like the idea of them as an omni-soldier that gets access to all faction equipment. It really invalidates idea of factions at all.

The directive pistol is just a worse NS-15 pilot which everyone can buy and use.
The sniper rifle is just a weird one that's closer to the "normal" types of sniper rifle than it is the "good" CQC ones.

So again, the only thing they have that is even situationally better is the MAX bubble shield.

No. Different =/= better or worse. There are instances where it may be better or worse than a standard Pilot, which means there are instances in which content that is paywalled offers an advantage.

It's almost a flat upgrade. It's also got a 4x sight for CQC as well, which again isn't an option for all of the other """normal""" rifles.

The damage is subpar, it wouldn't even be comparable with a fury flash if we reduced the reload by half.
I too went for the tactic of landing rear shots, but the missiles that actually hit
(due to crappy spread crappy velocity and crappy homing)
Just don't do very much damage at all, and then you're dead meat during the two year reload.

Even if you somehow survived the multiple reloads, it is the slowest AV weapon in the game,
Freaking GORGONS kill vehicles faster than this thing, and gorgons are junk at AV.

And it's crazy that this thing has stayed in this state for so long, a cert trap for anyone stupid enough (like me)
Who didn't stop to wonder why we NEVER see any NSO chars using it.
All it would take is for DBG to fiddle with the reload until it kills vehicles in a similar amount of time to fury flash.
But NSO are just another abandoned project like implants and ASP.

The NSOs exists to offer those already full on the game to stay with it and fill up the low pop faction. There is a world of difference between exclusive content and paywalls, and calling this P2W/a paywall makes both terms completely meaningless. I can achieve whatever I want in the game without them (and with better results) which means they are neither P2W or a paywall.

I mean, if they're just a watered down lukewarm flat beer type of faction, then who in their right mind would want to use them? Much less pay for them. Making everything perfectly symmetrical and 100% equal outcome is going to turn this entire game into a bland experience with the personality and emotional impact of a piece of wood.

But haven't people complained for years that fury flashes kill vehicles way too quickly? The javelin has the same rumble seat, if you increase Nest damage output to rival the fury then you'll have exactly the same issue but on a faster more agile harder to hit vehicle. I know the cloak is a big part of the flash problem but the javelin has no problem getting around and surprising things.

nope, javelin rumble seat doesn't allow them to face forwards, only backwards,
so if the nest launcher is shooting you, the dude in the rumble seat is facing away.

also as you pointed out, javelin has no cloak so its just a piece of paper waiting to get shot by a single round from any tank or rocket launcher.

Guess you knew this was coming.

A paywall is when substantial content is locked to the consumer until they have made a payment. (And in some cases such as this one, continue those payments.) NSOs and all their weapons, vehicles, abilities, and equipment whether current or future is completely inaccessible to all players who do not maintain a membership. This is objectively a paywall.

Exclusive content is often something with a limited-time offer or limited nature, such as the FB-variant sidearms. (Despite the fact they went on sale at some point...) They were initially free even, though obviously this isn't a requirement to be exclusive.

Pay2Win is when a player can make real-world payments to gain an advantage over another player which cannot be obtained through gameplay, though some people will make the argument that payments which accelerate time requirements also constitute as such.

Regardless, being able to do well with dog**** guns doesn't mean anything. If a weapon or other piece of equipment offers some advantage which makes it better whether as a niche or in general but is withheld by a monetary payment it's Pay2Win. Note the significance of this is irrelevant to the offence.

I do not view the NSO as substantial content. They are a nice to have with some unique quirks so I think you're being extremely overdramatic when brining up P2W and paywalls. The F2P model in PS2 is very generous and allows you to do absolutely anything for as long as you want. You do not see any "You've participated in an alert today. To continue playing please pay X amount..."

The underlined part (and the statements which preceded it) makes me wonder if you even understand what makes actual P2W so damaging to a game. Hint; it has something to do with selling objectively better items for money. The clue can be found in "pay to win", i.e. putting down money on something which makes you win.

Unless, of course, you consider the entirety of PS2 (and pretty much every single F2P game in existence) P2W since you can buy weapons for real money which is faster than getting certs. You did, after all, say it there can be no nuance or shades of grey in this matter. Which is why I return to my previous statement that if you go by your definition both the term P2W and paywall become entirely meaningless.

To simplify the point, if everyone is special then no one is, and there is no point in further discussion.