A neutral's view on .75 ADS

Well, the test server implementation of LMG changes (which included the removal of .75 ADS, if i'm remembering correctly) did hit live for a few days starting on the 4th of September. They were later fixed on the 9th (I think, they didn't document the accidental implementation, nor the removal of the extra stuff - basically, the majority of Test got patched to live for ~3 days. There was even a new game mode available when redeploying on Indar.) The changes included a few buffs to account for the loss of .75 ADS on the affected weapons, making them closer to the same stats as the other factions' counterparts (Although the Orion was still directly inferior to the MSW-R)

Here's how it affected stats. The stat is KPU (Kills per Unique) which makes it more tolerable of huge population gains. (Kills per Unique = If an individual scores a kill with a given weapon on a given day, they count towards the overall stats. If they just lug a weapon around, but score no kills - they don't count)



Performance increased sharply, more then it typically does on weekends, This is, of course, all theory, and the changes only gave us a few days worth of data to play look at (during a new weapon-release patch, no less) so don't give this too much weight. From what I see, however, the removal of .75 ADS and buffs to make things equal to other factions made performance shoot through the roof.

I can guarantee you they wont get the same numbers if you swap them, since the BG has the heat mechanic which is actually arguably a bit OP.

comparing it to the started LMGs is a bit disingenuous, since they arent exactly even geared for the same jobs.thats why people compare them to weapons like the msw-r and anchor, since they are all the same class. if you argument is that its too good for starter weapon you might have something, but as a weapon on its own its really not over preforming.

Higher movement speed benefits CQC the most by definition: at closer ranges the opponent will need to adjust his aim more; adjusting more means more room for error and compensation. .75ads is essentially a non-issue at 40m.

The Orion is OP in relative terms, and i wouldn't say it is compared to the MSW-R or the Anchor. But OP compared to the likes of the LSW, the Flare, the TMG, EM1, EM6, Polaris, etc... definitely so. What's OP is Betelgeuse, not Orion, because LMGs balance revolves more around magazine size than other categories, and Betelgeuse completely throws that away.

In my opinion HA is bad, not because of the overshield but due to how poorly LMGs are balanced considering the overshield's existence, even the weaker ones, though not to the same degree. And i'm not saying that because i want them to play medic.As to why the engineer doesn't get ARs it's an easy question to answer: the devs wanted to give a combat edge of sorts to medic: infiltrators and LAs flank, engies make use of their tricks (mines&turrets), HAs have virtually double HP, medics don't have anything but ARs. That's your reason right there.
Also just look up the total kills within carbines/ARs, apart from the default, where do you see the kind of gap observed between the better CQC-capable LMGs and the rest? Nowhere, with the primary reason for that being that CQC-capable LMGs basically come free of charge in accuracy/control compared to the all-rounders/long-range LMGs, a situation which doesn't happen among AR&carbines.

I'll also add that people might also be tired of listening to how "ORION IS OP" for the -nth time. Who knows, and why would you even care? It's not like the devs have shown any particular incline to balancing the game around the official boards rants, at least in the last year and a half (didn't play PS2 before).

As long as the servers have high ping players and slow update speeds, ads .75 LMG's with dancing HA's will be a problem. If you had local servers with ping limits, it would not be that big of a deal. Any one with a brain and has played online games for a while know what's going on. Why do you think everyone one dances while shooting? No LMG needs or should have .75 ads even if its a made up "faction diversity. " IMO

I'm still waiting to die to Aadadadad spam because of .75 myself. Instead I normally look for the actual reason I died like positioning, thinking I had the drop on a heavy when I didn't, weapon selection, my own accuracy and head shot rate and such. But I'm sure .75 ads is a culprit outside any of those factors!

So basically if they did the changes so many of the .75 haters wanted, we would probably have ended up with more complaining and whining about the LMGs being too powerful for some reason or another and that removing that wasn't a magic balance bullet?

I don't see too many posts about NC or TR HA's being a pain to track and kill when doing the dance. It's an issue.

That's my guess, yeah.

Here's overall KPU for each of the CQB LMGs.

• Orion: 12.32

• MSW-R: 18.17

• Anchor: 24.11

For higher battleranks (76-100, below), the difference is still very significant, so it's not just a matter of low battlerank players dragging down it's stats.

• Orion:16.29

• MSW-R: 21.63

• Anchor: 25.26

Removing .75 ADS from the Orion, and tuning it to match it's direct competitors, the Anchor and MSW-R, would require a significant buff to a number of other stats. If the Orion started performing on-par with the NC / TR versions, the whining-magnitude would increase significantly.

IF a fix is needed, simply removing .75 ADS and rebalancing isn't a full fix. I posted a suggestion on where to start in another thread, if that's the route Daybreak decides it wants to go, it's a bit of a longer read, and I already pasted most of it on page 1 of this thread.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/lmg-stats-balance-rework-ideas.233578/

if you compare it to like guns from the other two factions? so the fact that it costs certs (an extremely easy product to earn in this game) makes it op, you people change your story and how this weapon is op every single day.

The cost of a weapon dictates its performance, its why the butcher and Godsaw outperform the Carv and Gauss Saw while being essentially identical weapons, simply because the more the weapon costs means the more experienced players will use it. Swap the BG with the Orion and the Orion's stats would increase simply because the only ones using it are experienced LMG users, its why the MSW has better kill stats despite being almost identical to the Orion, because its simply used by people who want to excel with the HA.

At this point just remove 0.75 ads from Orion. Buff another stat so that it matches the competing ESLMGs to match. Watch everyone cry that it is even more OP and ask for the return of 0.75 ADS.

As far as BG goes -- how many shots can it fire before overheat? Ie. How many shots can it fire before you have to stop firing? How many shots can the TR and NC directive LMGs fire before they have to reload? Ie. How many shots can they fire before you have to stop firing?

I think people are confused on what 'magazine size' means....

You say things based on opinions, which hold no weight in this conversation based on facts.

Don't worry, all the vets are aware that the TTK in this game is just a little too short to make "tactical" squad play a thing. You join a platoon and you have some guy screaming to flank this and that and do all sorts of tom clancy's planetside armchair general maneuvers, and the fact of the matter is, none of that matters.

This game is about zerging and simply throwing yourself at the opposition, if there was room for tactical gameplay the way generators and bases are setup would allow small squads to do more harm. However the most harm an organized squad can do is what we already see.

A small zerg of ESFs, liberators, sunderers, harassers.... or you know how they all get on a hill with flak, AA, and AV launchers?

Thats about all you can do. This call of duty gunplay isn't designed for squad play, and it would be fine if the bases were designed with more bottlenecks and less teleporting and jump pads.

As people say the TTK is already pretty high, and I disagree, but even if we were to fix that by simply making locations easier to hold out in with smaller numbers, this would make the game more appealing.

Because currently the only place a small number of people can hold out in successfully is the spawn room.

in easyer words: make the pulsar lsw the default VS lmg and the BG a LSW with heat.

Hell I still can't figure out how there is people who think moving 50% faster than your opponent in an fps is not a big deal. strafing speed is a factor in the game balance, everything in PS2 just screams that. There are guns that have faster ADS moving speed/blooms which makes them more/less suitable for moving while ADS firing, guns with different hipfire cones of fire and hipfire blooms, or ability to equip or not adv laser sights, which makes them more or less suitable for hipfiring.

and why the hell would you want to hipfire?

>>INCREASED MOVEMENT SPEED<<

If there would be no accuracy difference between hipfire and ADS then why the heck would you ever ADS? just to lose movement speed? that's why 0.75% guns have pretty much always something lacking, Orion and BG being the only exceptions in the LMG weapon class.

no please.
Lasher uses overall good hipfire performance (AoE aiming for the feet and tight hipfire CoF) to be able to ADADAD and nerf enemy's dps to pretty much what it has.
Chaingun has no CoF/bloom variations when standing still or moving, which makes standing still while firing absolutely no-sense.

Adding momentum or dead times during ADAD would nerf all those guns that use movement to compensate for their lack of dps.

Increased movement is too much for Orion and BG since they already share the top damage profile available to LMGs. Once they are given enough accuracy/whatever buffs to be sidegrades to MSW-R / Anchor they simply won't need increased mobility anymore.

so the solutions IMHO are:
- Reduce damage of Orion/BG (and increase accuracy) to make them sidegrades of NS LMGs and keep 0.75%
- Decrease Orion/BG accuracy, keep dps and movement speed (basically make them sidegrades of NS LMGs with more dps and less accuracy)
- Increase accuracy of Orion/BG to make them sidegrades of MSW-R / Anchor, and remove 0.75% (which seems what the devs want to do)

I'm all for boicotting NS weaponry and I'd really like to see real empire specific mechanics added to the game, but I won't sacrifice game balance for it and Hell I surely won't have my main weapons (lasher and chaingun) nerfed because of silly balance to vanu broken sh*t. right now the overall less accuracy of Orion/BG is simply not big enough to be compensated with 50% more movement speed while ADS, which also give an advantage when entering cover while under fire or when following targets from a semi-covered position.

With adjustments to the LSW, that's fine with me in terms of the actual weapon. My concern is this: If a player owns the LSW (And obviously the Orion.) - the Orion is removed as default, and the LSW is now default - they have lost a purchase, and have to rebuy something they previously owned - this is unacceptable. If it's a direct swap (The LSW is already owned, so by extension, they also own the Orion once the exchange is made) That is no real solution, as a ton of players already have it, solving nothing (The idea is to get orions off the field, after all.) - A new gun solves all the issues, in that players still get a viable replacement for the Orion in the form of the new gun, and no one owns it already upon release.

As for the BG - The way the heat mechanic works is the aspect that's overpowered. To be able to "reload" while performing any action (swapping weapons for pistol use, using heal items, firing rockets, etc) bypasses the reload mechanic completely. For a durable, close-quarters oriented class, this gives them a tremendous advantage in overall combat. Firing can resume while cooling down, which further exacerbates the issue. No one else can bypass this limitation - the LSW would be nearly as OP. Heat mechanics are tricky to balance - it either sucks, and is generally reviled by it's user base (Phaseshift), or it's amazing, and boosts performance through the roof (Betelgeuse)

Really, I say come up with a new mechanic for it that can be used elsewhere. Heck, a slight shield recharge on scoring a hit seems like it wouldn't be too OP, provided that the recharge isn't all that large. (This is just an example, but the idea is to grant it an ability / bonus that doesn't decide combat every other firefight, but is still quite useful in general without being a gimmick. )

yeah its a bit sad that the changes were only around for so long as they mean so little after a patch as so many stats drastically change just after a patch do to high usage/neglect and population increase after that patch in particular heavy assaults would have been simply more popular do to new MBT and harasser weapons so there was a massive increase in vehicle usage and as a side effect huge increase lmg usage.

First you can say this. It should be tested. Over the last 3 years I've read countless times "If devs do THIS then THAT will happen" and in the end it was just all ********.
Second, it's a fact that strafe movement in this game is total crap. Just because the old Wolfenstein 3d in 1994 was like that it doesn't mean it's good for us in 2015.
Third, all this 0.75 ******** will suddenly end for all weapon and maybe people would suddely open their eyes about the Orion.
Forth: our gun fights will definitely look less ridicolous. Have you ever seen a US marine in combat dancing ADADADA?
Fifth: they already added encoded acceleration to aircraft, they could change this for infantry very quickly.
Sith: the VS trait of mobility would be affected, as one could still keep max speed while ADS.

Perhaps, but as the stat I posted the screenshot of is KPU. Here's Uniques again, and KPU to go with it - same days, same guns.

Uniques:



KPU:



As you can see from the above, the KPU jumped significantly more then the number of Uniques did. Population density increasing does indeed mean there are more targets, and thus more kills, but the Orion's performance jumped by leaps and bounds in comparison to the total number of people using it.

As someone that initially cautioned against removing .75 ADS due to balance issues with VS LMGs specifically...

If VS LMGs loose .75 ADS speed, and are buffed to be roughly equal to it's counterparts (MSW-R / Anchor) in the TR / NC, and performance is boosted by the amount it appears, balance will be even worse off then it is now. (Seriously, hop on the Test Server and try it out, the Orion is insane. VS Heavies would obliterate more then they do now, by a significant margin. )

This is why I now advocate replacing the Orion with something more in line with the CARV / Gauss saw, and re-implementing the Orion in a state similar to the Anchor / MSW-R, then lowering the price of all 3 CQB LMGs to ~250-300 certs, for the sake of fairness. If the Orion looses .75 ADS speed in favor of being rebalanced to a state similar to it's counterparts, and remains default... VS heavies will get a massive performance boost.

Well radarX has made it clear, nothing is going to happen with LMG's any time soon, but never found out why tbh?