TAC Reviews...[The] Oppressor Mark II

Date Posted: 25/08/19

Right, before I even begin to talk about this, allow me to explain what the Oppressor Mk II is, and why I want to talk about it. It is a flying motorbike that was introduced into GTA Online last year (2018) with the After Hours DLC. It was apparently based on a futuristic vehicle from the film Looper and has a few things in common with the flying bikes from the Stallone Judge Dredd movie. The bike is fast, agile, can be equipped with homing missiles, countermeasures and a speed boost plus it looks pretty cool too.

Since the Mk II has been brought into the game fans have been bleating about it, some claiming that it ruins the feel of the game, others that people are constantly griefed by players using it. There are those of are demanding it be deleted from the game and those who argue that it is the ultimate tool for the grinder.

Numerous YouTubers that I watch had voiced opinions about the vehicle, some supporting it, others condemning it, and I have taken to commenting on some of their videos. However, whilst my opinions sometimes get Likes from other viewers, none of these YouTubers have ever addressed the points that I want to talk about.

It seemed that my opinions might never be heard...until I remembered that I have my own website and a loyal fan-base that regularly tune in to read my articles. I can therefore finally get my opinions about this bike out into the world-wide-web where they will undoubtedly get noticed.

Now, the more astute of you out there may have noticed that in the last few weeks I have not had much new to talk about and that is because I have been playing a lot of GTA Online. Using the techniques I have discussed at length and refined during my time with the game I am now knocking on the door of $30,000,000. I have gotten to the point where I can easily make a million dollars in an hour to two. I simply resupply my bunker, which takes two hours and twenty minutes to produce $210,000 of stock. During those two hours I source and sell Import/Export vehicles for $80,000 every twenty minutes or so. Do Paige’s Client jobs intermixed with the VIP work netting me $150,000 every half an hour on their own...total that up and if I can be bothered to have a good grinding session I make money almost faster than I can spend it.

I have continued to buy things when they are on sale plus recently Rockstar partnered with Amazon Prime Twitch and if players linked their Rockstar Social Club to their Twitch Prime Account they received free stuff in game plus ridiculous discounts on some of the most expensive stuff in the game. I bought an $8,000,000 luxury yacht for $1,200,000 the other week for no other reason than because it was a bargain.

Now as much as I would like to do additional GTA Online articles there was a reason that I stopped doing them. I felt that I was beginning to repeat myself so figured it was time to move on to discuss something else. Therefore this is not another article on GTA Online, think of it as a spin-off article, as it is not talking about the game itself rather one specific aspect of it.

So let’s talk about the Oppressor Mk II...

I have to be honest that when these bikes first came out I thought that they were a royal pain in the arse. In the past jets had been the weapons of choice for griefers, but they could be taken down relatively easily with the Terrorbyte’s weapons or explosive rounds from a Sniper Rifle Mk II. But once players realised how easy it was to fly in, attack and fly again, the Oppressor Mk II effectively made almost all other vehicles obsolete.

The main advantage of it over most, if not all other vehicles, was the fact that it could be spawned from the Interaction Menu. All CEOs or MCs had to do was hit a few buttons and the vehicle would be spawned in front of them. In one of my articles I wrote about a guy who killed me, as I killed him, and somehow he was able to spawn his Oppressor Mk II but my mechanic was busy so couldn’t deliver mine. It was only later that I realised that he must have simply spawned his from the Interaction Menu thus negating the need to use the mechanic.  

Griefers love it because they can attack remorselessly with it, it is limited to a 20 missile capacity, but if it is destroyed, they call Mors Mutual Insurance to get it replaced, respawn it and go back on the offensive. The missiles may be limited but they are powerful enough to take down most vehicles in the game. If the missiles run out, players just request it again from the Interaction Menu, and it respawns with a new compliment of missiles.

I think the main reason that so many people have got a chub-on for it is because there is really not effective vehicle or weapon that can counter it. Jets could be shot down by Explosive rounds, so a player in a fighter jet could no longer rule a lobby. The Oppressor Mk II is so agile and fast that it is incredibly difficult to shoot one down, unless you are on one too, and even then chances are you’ll shoot one another down, both call Mors Mutual, and both immediately call another one in from the Interaction Menu. Vehicles like the Vigilante have incredibly accurate missiles that almost never miss, the problem with that vehicle being that it can’t take a single missile without being destroyed. So once again if you are in the Vigilante and try to engage an Oppressor Mk II, you’ll probably both end up blown up, at which point they can spawn their vehicle quickly, you’d have to get the mechanic to deliver yours...something that doesn’t always happen.

So I get it, I get why so many people hate these vehicles and think they are ruining the game, however, what I find annoying is that the people that are complaining are just focussing on the latest tool of the griefers.

Before the Oppressor Mk II, there was the Oppressor, a motorbike with a boost, rockets and was capable of gliding. People used to attack other players using it. Before that, it was people in jets, before that people in armoured and/or weaponised vehicles, before that, you get the idea...the point is that players would find a way to grief others using only a pushbike if that was all that was available to them.

It isn’t the vehicle it is the person using it.

I have been in lobbies before and see the all-to familiar sight of an Oppressor Mk II icon on the map heading in my direction when I’m doing a resupply mission or something thinking that they are about to attack, and more often than not they do, but sometimes players are just doing their own thing. I actually had a player on a Mk II shoot down two helicopters chasing me whilst I was doing a resupply mission before rocketing away and leaving me to finish delivering the tank I had suspended from a cargobob helicopter at the time. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Another time I saw a MK II racing towards a lower level player doing a Nightclub sale, I was poised to race over there and defend the seller if the other player started to attack him, but the MK II’s rider flew past and continued on his way.

The twats have given the rest of us a bad name

Personally I think that the Oppressor Mk II is the perfect vehicle for grinding, because there is basically nowhere that it cannot go. If you are doing crate missions for your warehouse, it makes short work of going back and forth to pick up creates. Even the mission that is at sea is no problem because the supplies float and you don’t need to get off the bike to pick them up so hover over it, pick it up, deliver it...rinse, lather, repeat.

There isn’t a business in the game that the Oppressor Mk II is unsuitable to help with, and because everything can be launched from the Terrorbyte where the Mk II is automatically repaired and its missile compliment is replaced. So do a mission, return to the Terrorbyte for another, repair the Mk II whilst your there, before hightailing it off to complete another free mode activity for yet more easy cash.  

Thing is I have a dozen other vehicles that are fast, fun to get around in and are weaponised, so why do I keep coming back to the Oppressor Mk II??

The answer is simple: unlike any other vehicle I use in the game when I am on the Oppressor Mk II my avatar’s health bar always returns to full. Apparently this is because I have an MC Clubhouse and the Mk II is classified as a bike. As I use it a lot it is my “favourite bike” which means that I get a damage boost and full health regeneration when using it.

That is the reason I use it more than any other vehicle.

If I’m in the Vigilante, the Scramjet, a supercar, or literally any other vehicle if I get injured my health will only go back to halfway. If I’m on the Oppressor Mk II it returns to full. Why would I make things harder for myself by using other vehicles which only restore half my health bar when I can use one that replenishes the whole thing??

This is the point that no YouTuber seems to talk about.

If there were other vehicles in the game that allowed your health to regenerate to max, even if it was a “favourite car” that you needed to use more than any other then it would give players a reason to use something else.

As it is I can get into a fire fight with dozens of NPCs, scrape though by the skin of my teeth, hop on to the Oppressor Mk II to race away either allowing my health to fully return on my way back to the Terrorbyte or to a business if I’m resupplying. I sometimes perch on a rooftop, safe away from attackers on the ground just to allow my health to max out once again.

If Rockstar expanded on the Import/Export business and allowed you to run a vehicle based gang which in turn allowed you to have more vehicle focussed missions, and to have a favoured car like the Deluxo for example, which also gave you the ability to full heal then perhaps people wouldn’t use the Mk II so much.

I know I wouldn’t.

But as it stands the Oppressor Mk II is the ultimate tool for the grinder and I would not be happy if they were removed from the game. I have become dependent on it because it is how I can quickly and easily amass more money to add to the growing amount that I have thus far acquired.

On a slight side note, what would fix all vehicles in this game would be if their auto-lock on wouldn’t target other players. If it was only NPCs they could easily engage, the grinders could still grind, but the griefing would dramatically reduce as it is a real ball-ache trying to hit a player when not using the auto-lock.

On a second side note, I thought it would be cool if you could add an auto-defence system to the Avenger, Terrorbyte and Mobile Operations Centre, but they could only be used defensively, if someone fires on you then the targets system will fire at them. The yachts have a defensive system so such a thing already exists in the game. Bombs are disabled on the Avenger so it wouldn’t become the new passive popping, attacking someone just so they’d fire at the vehicle only to get ruined by the auto-aim. Switch it on if you don’t want interference from other players and can engage NPCs without needing to manually aim the guns when you really want to either be behind the wheel or in the cockpit trying to get to your destination.

Rockstar have tweaked Passive Mode recently and changed the Daily Objectives so there is much less Player Vs Player requirements to complete them which is a positive step to try and reduce the griefing that happens in most Public Lobbies.

As far as the Oppressor Mk II goes, I maintain that it is not the vehicle it is the people that use it, personally I use it to grind, and it is great for that purpose.

By the way...if you guys liked my GTA Online articles and would like me to return to writing about the new updates that are coming out, then send me a message on Twitter or something and I’ll consider writing more articles for the new DLCs coming out.