What's the point of the level 5 nanoweave armor now?

Not exactly, I'm sure there are many people who unlocked level 5 NW a few days or weeks before it was changed this way.
Actually if I remember right, my new character on Briggs just unlocked it 2 months before this change, also I only play 2 times a week.

If the Archer could be used by more than the Engineer, then rank 5 Nanoweave might be more useful.

Yeaaaaaa weeellll that's what people said about thermals and that didn't get a refund. I don't see this being addressed either.

To be honest when I said I "want my certs refunded", it was just emotional, I didn't think it's possible either. I just want the NW to be changed into something more reasonable, or even removed, I don't mind.

skip to bottom for tldr


I'm not trying to bash on you because this is the infantry equivalent of a bad buff to an item that was commonly used, I'm just pointing out devs can be as unfair as they want, expecting change just because this item doesn't see use in this way doesn't mean it doesn't benefit you (cough cough ******** cough). Even if it is something completely useless like "threat detection" optics on a kobalt harasser, you still bought it so therefore you're going to live with it and it's why people are so hesitant to change now. With the bad patch of CAI making infantry far more tanky against vehicle projectiles, making vehicle gameplay stale without addressing that vehicles have almost no place in the core mechanics of the game people are hesitant to change now because people have been burned before on it.

But slightly off tangent, making a change to make something useful in X way could simply put off more players who now are ****** by X. For example, they could make nano more resistant to base turret fire but then base makers claim that their turrets that they bought when they first came out have been nerfed every single patch to make it more easy for infantry to just walk up to and inside a base where they are supposed to repel them. But then now that your max rank is helpful in that regard now to you, it screws over this other portion of players that are upset that their items are being nerfed even further.

That's not the only problem, if you make it too useful, people simply first pick it even more leading it to be OP in a sense, after all, if literally everyone is using it, when doing X then how isn't it OP because it completely dwarfs the other options. It's why I don't like heavies having 4-5 drums of ammunition on an LMG or why carbines and assault rifles have over 7 clips of them, engineers aren't powerful in the infantry sense because everyone simply has enough ammo to last them until they die or medics revive them 13 times. So no one picks ammo belt and everyone only really needs 1 engie, it's why devs throw so many asp options at them BECAUSE they aren't powerful. It's why everyone else only gets 2-3 and grenades in universal are so weak everyone is allowed to use them. All because ammo belt isn't that viable compared to nanoweave.

You could say thats a stretch "I mean why would anyone run ammo belt in the first place, you just said no one will be able to use their ammo before they die, that's stupid to think that nanoweave wouldn't be better", well that's kind of my point, no one wants to use the other suit slots, they just want to use the best one. Nanoweave helps you use all your ammo before ever needed to consider resupplying (not saying you don't die but it helps you spend your ammo before you do). Devs have decided instead of having a small pool of ammo so that ammo belt and engineers in practical gameplay would be more viable, they want a more sandbox alternative and simply give everyone massive amounts of ammo and one engineer can resupply an entire empire. But the converse being that you make ammo belt more viable because you run out of ammo quickly and makes your nanoweave less viable but that leads me to the last alternative;

Removing nanoweave will never happen. Devs would have to put back 1.7k certs back on the market for every single player that bought it as that, that is the equivalent of a new gun and attachments for every player refunded, a potential 10$+ out of every player that could've been forced to grind that, hundreds of dollars the devs wouldn't make.

The devs have very clearly went the route of direct nerfs instead of rework of the system, it's understandable, no one wants to put in that kind of work for planetside, the conceptual direction they want to take the game is hard to imagine. It's almost like the people asking for these balances want a competitive game over a sandbox shooter and the people complaining about weapons that belong in a sandbox shooter are being unfairly nerfed and never refunded, but then competitive weapons are never really countered and therefore not actually competitive, then they're conceptually countered in this X situation in which it's unreasonable to expect X to happen in a sandbox shooter but then they add more sandbox elements like construction that aren't competitive at all. It's almost like they never really pick a side and it shows, hard.

tl;dr
Buffing, modifying or changing the system around nanoweave is too much of a hassle for them, it will never happen because that's what their cashcows use.

It's kind of like they release foxes(nanodplayers) into the wild with chickens(non-nano/newplayers) and wonder why chickens are dying out, so they just defang the foxes that killed the chickens, but that doesn't ******* help because you just have dead foxes everywhere and then buzzards (new top tier suit) shows up and kills all the chickens(that don't have it) and the defanged foxes(That were ****** and now ******** on the ones that brought them there) so it's easier to simply have a lot of carnivores in an environment in which their primary meal(Chickens) is dwindling(Because they don't want to grind out the items they want to fight them). BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T SPELL OUT ANYTHING DOES IT.

Nooooooo. That was complete mayhem

I totally get how someone could be angry from this because, when I started, I spent 30 certs on a scope for my primary, like 100 or 200 on the advanced forward grip, however much it was, then I spent maybe ~200-300 on abilties to upgrade slight. Then I spent 1700 as you for mentioned to upgrade said nanoweave, which at the time seemed hard to farm because well I was new and I didn't have revive grenades or upgraded rez tool or any of the other things that just grant me certs so simply and easily now. When the change happened the game effectively turned 80% of my certs up to that date into something completely not useful, then I stopped playing almost immediately after acquiring it but faced the struggle of playing against people who had it maxed while achieving it (so I never got any real benefit from the 1000 I put in). I can imagine if i'd played more and I bet some people did excactly this, maxed out lvl 5 nanoweave on 3-4 characters before they bought a gun or did anything else. Basically TLR people did get punished for doing the smart thing.

If they changed the nanoweave so it was like composite armour like vehicals and that last upgrade gave 1% extra reduction over R4 (this is in my opinion what they should have done), then people would have still been relatively happy they spent their certs on it, it would of been absolutely fine as 16/17/18/19/20% (though still a cert grind) but people would have had their flexibility between having that 4% optimisation or new playstyle choices. Still retrospectively still probably for the better that you don't have to grind it overall so I would consider it an improvement. Or just given the refund, some BR 120 players won't even own everything in the game just because you handed out enough for 1 extra weapon + a few attachments on it.