[2019] The NSO Defector model needs to be bulked up

Something I noticed last night is that in a hectic fight, like a biolab, the NSO defector model is very difficult to tell apart from the other NSO classes at a glance.

This stands in stark contrast to the other 3 faction maxes where there is simply no mistaking them for any other unit.

As to why this is important is another post all together, and something covered very throughly by the Team Fortress 2 team (seriously go fire it up and listen to the dev notes. They say it far better than I ever could) , but even given the proposed lore that these are hacked units doesn’t excuse the fact that they are more easily distinguishable by their Icon than anything else.

So my suggestion is to add changes to the model that give it more visual weight (I’m assuming height isn’t an option here) perhaps bulk up the legs?

You’re seriously considering adding a grenade tossing suicide robot to the game meta. This strikes me as a very close parallel to the disruption game mode from Warframe where regular enemies are reused as suicide bombers. Even with an obvious sound cue, there’s a hud icon and a huge red aura to call out the danger to the player. Even in that environment (which is arguably less hectic than a biolab fight) it’s all necessary to keep track of the threat those enemies pose.

Is it too much to ask then that you make the NSO Max clearly, visually, at-a-glance different from its NSO brethren?

——- Edit for a TL:DR: * this is an issue for everyone on both sides of the fight, because medics can’t heal max units, and opponents need to prioritize their fire in a split second. * no other class/vehicle in the game suffers from this sort of confusion at close range * this sort of visual confusion is unnecessary artificial difficulty that we simply don’t need in game * making the model have more visual ‘weight’ affects nothing game balance-wise.