VS ESSR: Shade general discussion thread.

And try using a Beamer at 250m, it's stupidly inaccurate. Why doesn't it work you ask? Because YOU ARE USING IT WRONG.

Silencers are for fighting under 50m. If you're further away than 50m, you are a noob and have no idea what you are doing or you have to make a crutch shot to counter snipe. The later should only happy a handful of times a year. In other words, you are a noob and have no idea what you are doing.

Reverse EVERYTHING!

1. Switch it so the heat bar when full = amount you need for a BASR style headshot.
2. You always start out with a fully heated / charged gun.
3. When the gun gets too cold and sad, then no bullets **cough** PLASMA can be fired
4. Gets around cloaking coding charge up limitations.

Just call it a plasma bar, color it teal and you have a rifle that will automatically fire a nice beautiful glob of
hotness at enemy faces. Whoo hoo!

This solves everything!

Possibly...

No more silly "charge up" . The bullet is awesome or it is not so awesome. Possibly giving us an alternative fire mode so we can select our level of awesome from moment to moment. Which I think is probably better then putting oneself in harms way trying to charge the sniper rifle in battle... over and over again. It would be much more snappy and fun! I like fun.

The only thing devs would need to tweak would be the cooldown / recharge times.

Truth be told...this might work.

Then, we could give the actual charge mechanic to the New Conglomerate, increase their projectile velocity considerably, and add in some extra armor damage to give them their first true railgun. They would get an extremely hard hitting bolt-action rifle with armor damaging potential like they want...and a slow rate of fire that matches their sense of style.

I'll have to think on it more while I go make sweet passionate love to the pillow.

Sorry Tene I edited mah post to make it more pretty. Also eeeew, XD TMI

i kinda like it for it's unique mechanics, although I don't play VS

So with your proposition, would we have to hold down the button for semi-auto fire? What if I don't want my first shot to be a BAR shot but semi-auto shots?

Dont see how this could work..

I think they mean have it work like the default TF2 rifle.
Wait and it powers up (while scoped), or fire rapidly for weak shots.

edit: I think that would be much much easier to use, but probably OP if you can sit on a full power charge forever and have infinite ammo.

I doubt that I'm using anything wrong, only because I'm stated that a suppressor changes the mildot compensation by a huge amount. You can (well, I correct: I can) OHK people with a suppressor at 300m and still get an average 50+% accuracy.

WRONG is something else...

You are using it wrong because there is ZERO benefit to using a silencer @ 300m. The gunshot is only audible up to around 80m (maybe less) and the radar will only show a shot fired up to like 75-100m. So in other words, NOBODY can hear and UNSILENCED BASR @ 300m. All you are doing is gimping yourself by throwing on a silencer for that range.

If you wanna **** yourself to show your skill level, you're better off turning the HUD off, turning your settings to ultra, then turning your speakers off.

If you're using a silencer that far away, you are either A) an idiot for gimping yourself on purpose or B) an idiot for not reading the gunshot audibility range and radar detection range in the forums here. Either way, you are STILL USING IT WRONG.

If SOE are not going to change its charging mechanic to this, All I wish for is that they let you hold on to the charge so you can wait for the perfect shot, instead of having the gun fire on its own after like a second of having it fully charged.

I get that SOE is intending for this to be a Semi-Automatic first, a BASR as a bonus ability, and not the other way around, so I'm willing to accept this.

However i would wish for it to cool down faster after a BASR shot, say like 3 seconds (You can have its cooldown time longer if you overheated it by Firing it semi auto). By this you'll only be firing a "BASR" shot every 5-ish seconds, counting the time you have to wait for the gun to cool down, then charge up again. This will make its BASR Mode good, but not better than the Dedicated BASRs.

TLDR:
- 3-ish seconds to cool down after a BASR shot, longer if you overheated it on Semi Auto.
- Make it so you can hold on to the charge as long as you want to so you can wait for the perfect shot.

Cutebeaver said there possibly would have to be a Fire Mode Toggle to switch between BA and SA. However, with that in place, I think this would be an awesome solution. Without the Fire Mode Toggle, I'm not exactly sure how you would choose between the BA and the SA when the rifle is fully charged.

Negative. Please read the entire post. I tried to make it as simple as possible.


The heat bar (Aka Plasma Bar) becomes the "Charge UP mechanic" as well as the limitation for "ammo". Separating the two seem silly to me. You cannot charge the gun anyway if it is overheated, so why is this even separated in the first place? Its a logic error. Only one is necessary. The lancers charge up mechanic was not designed with cloaks limitations in mind. Nor does the lancer have a heat bar to add to the mix. The scope charge mechanic itself is preventing a BASR style shot from being fired immediately from cloak. Granted the latest patch shortened the time it takes to fire a fully charge a shot, but logically if you look at whats happening it makes little sense. The heat mechanic can be recharged while cloaked, which bypasses the need to put ourselves at risk and penalize BASR style usage.

Instead allow the overheat mechanic to become the true "charge up." It is anyway. You either can use the weapon based on its available energy or you cannot. If you wanted to do a BASR shot switch to BASR mode, and ensure you have 100% energy. Simple solution.

Galactica explained it makes no sense a VS Sniper would be running around without a fully charged weapon. No other faction has to chamber/charge their first round before they fire. This solves that issue. At the risk of repeating myself, having a heat bar / charge up mechanic allows you to make your shot as soon as you uncloak. This makes you less likely to get utterly destroyed or counter sniped and be more effective if you had to take a BASR style shot. The current method with the lancer style charge up puts you at risk and punishes us. Since the charge is now a heat/energy bar at the bottom , more conventional types of scopes also be used instead of recycling a lancer scope which is used to hit tanks, not tiny little enemy faces.

The drawback of using The SHADE in BASR mode would be, 200 (ish meter range) as well as the heat/energy bar potentially preventing follow up shots. The Semi-Auto mode would still be the core of the gun. However using the BASR mode would be significantly less punishing and risky then it is now.

By having alternative fire modes it would enable us to switch from Semi-Auto to BASR style shots. On button press is better then constantly holding down for a charge with a lancer style mechanic. You can easily switch between both. Keeping in mind you can only fire a BASR 1 shot at a time when the bar at the bottom is at 100%.

The developers would only need to decide how long it takes to recharge the weapon back to full energy. Other problems the gun has would simply disappear and its clunky mechanics would be less complicated and user friendly. There would be no need to deal with the coding limitations of cloak. Lancers were designed for HA who does not have cloak, and who also has a shield they can use to survive taking fire from enemies. Infiltrators do not. I hope this helped clarify what I meant.

i just got to play with the shade a bit.

my first impression is that there are NO circumstances in which i would use this thing.

the COF is too big off the hip for me to use it as a DMR and i only have 3 shots (and it appears no attachments to rectify that either)
the uncharged shots are too weak for me to do anything but plink at near death targets
the charged shots take too long to charge causing me to lose shots (a medic darting around a sundy anyone?) and the cooldown is far too punishing for the advantage of 'no drop' (which is really hardly a consideration on my paralax anyway. send one shot down range, and i can correct from there. it's NOT hard people)

what i was really hoping for was a weapon that could be a 'jack of all, master of none' rifle where i could use it to defend my self when i was surprised by a LA or use to take out 1-2 enemy on the way to a fight, or alternately, take a well aimed shot to remove an engineer or medic while pushing with my squad. As it is there are precious few weapons for a VS infiltrator who's primary mode of play is designated marksman (imo the ghost/artemis/specter are probably the best options)

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I think the people pointing at the Sentinel from Tribes:Ascend are spot on. For those of you who have not played, the longer you ADS, the more damage the bullet does. It allowed for snap shots (and in tribes, that was enough to interrupt regen), but it was also very capable of killing in one shot with a longer charge time.

this solves the issues we have with refire time, because i think what the devs are trying to prevent is BASR damage with SASR ROF. it also means that the BASR's have a distinct advantage: they can fire quicker after scoping, where the shade needs a few moments to set up. it also has a situational awareness cost, since one needs to stay scoped in so that you are ready to snipe at any one time.

as far as infinite ammo? honestly i find that i rarely run into situations where i need ammo for my primary weapons. i either find a term, a engie's ammo pack, or die before i run out of ammo (the exception being when i'm sitting on a hill with a BASR sniping at a crown farm). honestly i need ammo for my sensor tool more than i need it for my rifles. it's a nice thing, but i would gladly trade it for a more functional weapon system

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while we are on the subject of tribes, i'd also like to offer up the phase rifle as a possible weapon model for the shade, or a future weapon

in T:A the phase rifle's damage was dependent on the amount of energy you had available, which meant that snipers were often left with their feet in the mud in a game about mobility (part of the reason that most of the really good snipers used the sentinel)

adapted to planetside 2. this sniper rifle would be a directed energy beam, that interfaced with the infiltrators shields or cloak (subject to play testing). each shot took a significant amount of energy from the shields/cloak, leaving the infiltrator vulnerable, and unable to immediately place 2 full power shots on target, yet they could place a rapid 'double tap' on a target, if the need arose

another alternate implementation could be that this rifle would lock out the infiltrators cloak completely, not unlike how the stalker cloak prevents the use of a primary weapon. The cloak energy bar would then be an indicator of how charged the next shot is.
I'm not sure how this idea could be adapted to TR/NC, but then again, i'm not sure it needs to be, since they could receive some other empire specific weapon.


TL;DR
I was really hoping that the shade would be a weapon that was passable in all areas of battle so i could use it when playing with a squad and encountered rapidly changing battle spaces. the other infiltrator weapons would excel in their specific areas. As the weapon system stands now, I am sorely dissapointed

*edits for clarity and less wall of text*

Gawd i had to skim through that. I know WHY we don't want to have a charge up shot. I'm a fellow BAR user...anyhow you answered the question, you want the gun to have a selective fire mode, just like selecting burst or semi-auto on the other weapons. That was my question and now it has been answered.

As for if I like your idea, I do and I hope SoE puts it in.

Thanks sorry for the long winded post. I just wanted to explain myself better in case anyone was wondering why I was thinking the way I was thinking. They have to do something. I take comfort in that lol.

I played with it a bit more today.

I do think it overheats too quickly in semi-auto mode, and it has a very low RoF compared to ammo-based semi-auto snipers. A little improvement in both areas would be ideal - infinite ammo is definitely a plus, but it needs to be able to compete against the weapons that will be returning fire.

Your one to talk dude, The Longshot and the Equivalents dominate at range with a silence, took some getting use to, but you could easly make head-shots at 400+m before the Headshot changes. It really shines 200-150m though, close enough you barley have to adjust, yet far enough you get away if they find you.

No, The Whole idea of using a Silence at that Range is flexibility and Stealth. With a Silencer, I can snipe at the guy 300m away, and i can hit the guy 50m away. Not only that, but when I'm sniping from a distance, It keeps your general Position safer when they finally send someone after you.

update on the PTR guys, the charge shot now takes 6 seconds to cool down, up from 5, i was expecting it to be lowered not raised :/

CuteBeaver, if I understand your suggestion entirely, it's for the Shade to be a primarily semi-auto sniper rifle that builds up heat for a single charged shot that goes on cooldown and then must be built up again by semi-auto fire? Or the charged shot only becomes available at 100% charge, in which case you must continue to fire in either semi-auto or charged shots, or risk the charge dropping?

If so, it sounds rather spammy, and pigeon-holes players into a particular playstyle. Not saying it's good or bad, but an issue that might be worth considering.

I have to say, the Tribes: Ascend rifle looks like a dream, and has been my favorite mechanic thus far. It has the flexibility it needs to provide on-demand reliability when the situation arises.