I think the Empire Specific Heavy Weapons Need Reworking.

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Hello.
I would like to talk with you about the Heavy Assault weapon that is Unique to each faction. These are, of course, The TR MCG, The VS Lasher and the NC JackHammer.

As a PS2 player since Beta and someone who did play Planetside 1 for a while, I feel that these weapons are underwhelming and outclassed by other options avaliable to the Heavy Assault. Their use and role on the battlefield is unclear and, more often than not, just not worth using over other options like the CARV or Orion.

Taking a Look at the MCG first... and I mean LOOK! The damn thing looks rediculous. For something that is supposed to be TR's crowning achivement in man portable heavy weaponry we get what looks like the deformed offspring of an actual Minigun and your average Call of duty "T@Ct1c00l" bullet hose. Half of something that makes a weapon is how it looks and feels and if it feels terrible people will think it's terrible. I think we'd see much more use of the MCG if it looked more like "old painless" and sounded like the very guns of hell.

Now on a machanical level it's not so much terible as it is out of place in a game like this. The MCG takes time to wind up to start firing at maximum speed and in PS2 where life and death is decided in a few seconds, this spinup does not pay off for the danger you msut put yourself in. It's horribly innacurate so even if you pre-span the barrel you need to get within shotgun range in order to be fully effective and even then an actual shotgun will invalidate your efforts.

Now lets look at the Jackhammer. I can't say much about the jackhammer as I have not played much in the way on NC on PS2 but i can say I have seen exactly TWO Jackhammers and both times I was typing to my buddies. From what I have heard from my NC buddies the Jackhammer is literally a joke and any other shotgun in the game is a better option. I've heard of people going at Jackhammer uses with KNIVES and winning. I think the status is pretty clear on the Jackhammer, it needs some serious loving. Plus I keep mixing up it's kill icon for other NC rifles... yes, thats right, it's kill icon looks like a rifle.

Now we get to the Lasher which is... actually not too bad, still outclassed by other weapons but at least it has its uses. It's good at killing Max's, shooting round corners and giving surpressing fire.
Looking at it you'd be forgiven for thinking it's an Ursa or any of those other carbon copy guns the VS have. Sure the "cobra fins" are nice but I think the model is still underwhelming. It looks like an SMG with a bulky stock, not what I was expecting in a so called heavy weapon.

Performance wise, it has its situations and its very good in those situations but mostly it's better it's better to carry around the orion with a few certs put into it rather than save up the full 1000 for the lasher. It only ever seems to be good if the enemy is near a wall or standing stock still. Yes the bonus damage to MAX's is nice and the fact that it's as accurate when hip fired and ADS means you can sometimes dodge enemy fire while firing back, but modtly all you get for your efforts is an asist or end up on low HP when you were firing first and it was an Infilitrator who pulled out his pistol

I think the core of the issue is that they tried to have these weapon fucntion like modern shooter weapons and not special heavy weapons, with the iron sights and aiming down them.
First off they all need beefing up. They should all be king of their respective feilds and currently their are not even on par with most other weapon at anything.

The MCG should have the Highest DPS, capable of pouring out sustained heavy fire for long periods of time. Capable of shredding infantry in a stanup fight at mid to close range and giving Max's a run for their money when caught off guard. Instead of aiming down sights you should be allowed to keep it revved up at the cost of movement speed and possibly a penatly to turning. Its should be at accurate at longish mid ranges and a smaller CoF bloom than it has now, perhaps do away with CoF bloom altogether as you're not trying to aim a minigun uising ironsights you should be hip firing the damn thing. We'd need to offset its power and relative accuracy with a longer rev up time and a penalty to keeping it revved up. I think that if done correctly we'd have a downside that a skilled player can manage but another skilled player can counter and thus the MCG is not an instant "I WIN" button.

The Jackhammer needs some serious buffs and possibly a complete rework all together. It should be THE weapon for close range infantry combat, and i think it should include some mechanism to allow a soldier to get close. Perhaps some kind of sheild much like the NC max sheild that allows him to close the gap but gives some warning to the enemy that a dirty great shotgun is coming, you'd better get out the way or prepare to kill him as it's turning off.

The lasher was always an oddball and thus hard figure it's role out. Me personally I think it needs to be reworked and capitalize on it's ablity to damage mutliplue targets that are behind cover. You may try to tell me the lasher is a "Support weapon" to which i have to say "What utter bollocks!" I'm playing heavy assault and i'm using the heavy weapon, my job is to assault locations and shoot things. Not provide covering fire or make sure the team stays alive that's the job of the medic. (As a side note the medic with a smaller weapon that is similar to the current lasher would be very nice indeed) The PS1 lasher would strike targets as it passed them and deal extra damage on a direct hit. A function like this would be excellent if comebined with some kind of altrnate fire like a chain lash grenade.(For those in the dark, the chain lash grenade was something in PS1 that worked like chain lighting spells for <insertfntasysettinghere> and could hit every soldier in a group for a nice amount of damage. Something like a bodyshot from a medium-high calibre sniper rifle. I think that these two COMBINED would make the lasher a great weapon for both direct and indirect assaults and making the lasher good at taking on clusters of enemies as opposed to jsut the singular.

Now I'm no games developer so i cannot give you numbers or figures or say what will and won't be balanced and what i have put here is just fanciful suggestion based on what I think would be fun. Inthe end all I really want is some Imporvements to the ESHW's and would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

I would so love to use my MCG.

It was my first SC purchase and I used it 2 or 3 times before abandoning it and never touching it again.

MCG was designed as a rifle, but shoulnt be like that.
was killed once by a jackhammer whilst reloading stationary... so it definitely needs a buff of some sort
lasher... well good for area denial or killing a bunch of sheep after throwing a concussive into them

I still wholeheartedly believe that the ESHA weapons deserve to have their own identities and be more than afterthoughts when it comes to weapon balance.

As it stands right now, three of the most iconic PS1 weapons are gimmicks at best and out right useless at worst. Yes I've seen the Planetside2stats.net weapons section, yes I've seen that the Jackhammer and to a lesser extent the MCG can get kills (the Lasher however is garbage). However, regardless of how you look at it the Jackhammer is a slightly more accurate, less damaging version of the Mauler S6 limited entirely to HA with an absolutely useless alternate fire and the MCG is a Carv T9 with 50 more RoF and an abysmal TTK due to a completely unwarranted spin up time. I don't even need to mention the Lasher because well, it's the Lasher.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect about these weapons was SOE and the Planetside 2 development team's original stance on weapons with very fast times to kill. A stance that saw both the Jackhammer and the MCG nerfed as a direct result of it and a stance they apparently completely forgot they had taken upon the introduction of the one hit kill shotguns. In light of said one hit kill wonders I see no reason why the MCG, Lasher and the Jackhammer need to languish in mediocrity anymore. A damage and magazine size buff for the Jackhammer would definitely go a long way to restoring it to some of it's former glory (also, a slower RoF and then making it full automatic would make it much closer to the actual Jackhammer then what we have now). The spin up on the MCG has to go no if ands or buts, I personally would like to see some Planetside 1 functionality return to it in the form of it being able to fire X number of rounds before its CoF begins to bloom on top of cutting down the size of it's non ADS standing / moving CoF. The Lasher should be returned to at the very least something similar to Planetside 1's Lasher i.e. No self damage at all, orbs that actually "lash" and most importantly a round speed increase to allow for actual contact of the orb against enemy troops to give it some actual killing power.

These weapons deserve to be actual threats instead of the gimmicky trash they currently are, god knows this game could use more weapons that aren't carbon copies of each other, which in turn are carbon copies of weapons we already have in the real world.

They're severely underrated and look horrible compared to what they could be. Lasher needs buffs, MCG needs an option to keep it spinned up and the Jackhammer needs more ammo.

I have a lot of success with the MCG though, if I operate with a squad. 1v1 it sucks though.

The jackhammer has the best range for any shotgun ive ever seen in my life. I really dont think it needs a buff.

infact, after the recent buff these weapons got, I think they're all just fine! Chaingun is a freaking sniper rifle, the Lasher has a huge blast radius, and then jackhammer can hit infantry from 10m with hipfire.

All I can say is if they remove the self damaging effect of the Lasher, I'll buy it. I mean I'm wearing epic purple spandex armor of nanites ffs!!!

Too fabulous to take the heat?

make Jokehammer have 21 magazine size, reduce the damage, refire rate, and make it only use the 3 burst shot to keep it balance

Good post faction heavy weapons are a joke i really hope SOE does something about that, the TR must have a real chaingun something like PS1 not this pice of ****, i wonder if i could get my money back from SOE for wasting my time with that, it must strike fear into NC,VS hearts when they hear it.

The Jackhammer needs a redesign i get killed by one meybe couple times a week thats it, it should be like PS1 when i hated to fight NC in close quarters because of their Jackhammer it was devastating.

Now the Lasher wow that thing is complete garbage to me it is, every time i see someone using it i just laugh that thing belongs in a night club, going back to PS1 the lasher was the most powerful weapon for VS infantry everybody was using it and it was very dangerous.
So i really hope that SOE listens to the people and gives us the real heavy weapons i am tierd of using the same lmg c;mon SOE take my money or give it back for the current crap MCG, LASHER, JACKHAMMER.

So what happened to this MCG i guess SOE holding it somewhere safe and release it in 6months or more for another 1000certs I JUST WANT MY CHAINGUN

don't mix me in with that effeminate bunch. Purple is the color of royalty and highborn blood lines in some lore and even in real life history. It's bigotry to think purple is the color of gays.

The only reason I've seen given is that bullets actually fired from the barrel and therefore the underslung MCG had issues when firing from cover.

They are not going to buff old weapons that could compete with new weapons. Enjoy Free to play balancing.

Once they make the proposed Esamir type base changes I think 2 of these weapons are going to find a home in the changing close-mid range arena.

When in hell did I say 'gays'? You don't have to be gay to be flamboyant. I'm REALLY freakin tired of that generalization.

For the love of god, don't start a conversation about that.

I'm Vanu i'm currently saving up 1k certs and havn't decided what to get:
Dalton maybe, but i already have the zephyr
Lancer hm would be worth it
Rocketpods lets check what they are after the air revamp
Lasher.... eh... what?
ist like taking a single skyguard instead of a Squad of Burstermaxes

The Jackhammer is actually fine how it is, if you ask me. Model and sound-wise, it's very pleasing to use. Balance-wise, it's weaker than the other shotguns at ideal shotgun range, making it arguably the most balanced of them.

Honestly, I LOVE my Jackhammer, more than any other weapon I've used in the game. It's powerful, but not too powerful. From what I've seen, it's the goldilocks of PS2 weapons.

As for the other two...

The MCG is just an overglorified bullet hose, and looks absolutely horrid, and while the sound isn't exactly displeasing to hear when a teammate is using it (when you have no reason to say "Oh crap"), it could still very much use an overhaul. In my opinion, in it's current state it's nothing more than the TR phrase of "MORE BULLETS" manifested as a weapon.

The Lasher... It's difficult to judge it, really. As a single-use weapon (as in only one heavy using it), it's not TOO great, but is better used to soften up enemies for nearby friendlies. It's more of a weapon for crowd-control than for direct confrontations. Unless the person you're shooting at has his/her aim thrown off by the constant damage. Yeah... I totally have never been victim to that. >_>

As a mass-use weapon (as in half or more of an entire squad using it at the same time), the Lasher is not only devastating to groups of enemies, but is also one of the BIGGEST resource hogs of any weapon. Wait, you think I mean it takes resources to resupply it? No, I'm talking about how it eats up more RAM and processing power than most other projectiles that can be spammed with such intensity.

So, my opinion on the three Empire Specific Heavy Weapons:

MCG: Needs a complete redesign to it's model and mechanics. Improvements to it's sound aren't needed, but would be welcome.

Jackhammer: For the most part fine where it is for a heavy weapon, though that may or may not be due to my bias for how much I've used it. Maybe add a sort of pierce-type ammunition that does less damage per pellet, but can pierce targets to hit multiple enemies. Think something along the lines of how in Left 4 Dead a single shotgun round can shred through multiple heads.

Lasher: A weapon that is just a bit too situational, but somewhat fine where it is from a balance point of view. However, it is in desperate need of toning down of how heavily it impacts computer performance.

One final note: All three of them need some sort of alternate ammunition type to do damage to heavy armor. They are the Empire Specific HEAVY Weapons... Why not add the functionality to actually deal with HEAVY targets? (Obviously would need to do less damage to infantry.)

TL;DR : MCG needs a redesign, Jackhammer is fine, Lasher is fine but eats PC performance like a starving diabetic. All three need some way to damage heavy armor.

Devs scrapped it along with other TR Cycler models you saw in Beta. They scrapped this design for the MCG because you were unable to shoot over cover or walls you were hiding behind in the same way you do now with normal rifles since the bullet trajectory starts off lower than normal weapons.

What we need:

Original art for MCG - and all the issues firing from cover that comes with it.

Original fire-mode for the lasher:


Jackhammer? Honestly with how good other shotguns are, whats the point?