new gimmick weapons and effects ?

I have seen the latest Dev Stream and in particular the section (roughly around the 30 minutes mark) about new weapons and associated gimmicks: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/318416216?t=00h31m44s

"Reflecting projectiles"- projectiles hitting a solid surface will bounce back at a angle (the guy who presented that was honest enough to admit the first iteration was a kind of failure since projectiles bounced back hitting the shooter and in the current iteration if too many projectiles are fired the game crashes )

"reverse spin-up" - the opposite of the Canis. The weapon starts with an high RoF and then goes "meh" as time goes by. But there is a catch: if you burst then you will always get the high RoF (already imagining people with a gaming mouse busy programming an auto-burst macro to use that weapon at top RoF...)

"variable DPS" - the first X shots of a weapon will inflict different (more I guess) damage and then the damage will change as additional shots are fired. Actually Wrel started to mumble incoherently when he spoke about that so it was kind of difficult to understand the details.

"Fan projectiles" - the bullets will spread more horizontally or vertically depending on how the weapon is used (hip firing or ADS). Another unclear mumbling on that by Wrel (what's wrong with him?)

"Exploding projectiles" - a single projectile will split in several ones

It looks like the game is being dumbed down creating weapons and effects aimed to always do minor damage no matter who is using them (NSX Tengu? NS-45 Pilot? Unstable Ammo?) as opposed to weapons which will do major damage if used properly and punishing misses otherwise.

Diversifying the game by adding varied effects to weapons is dumb, now? Heh. To each his own, I guess.

Dumbed down? What are you taking about? Ps1 has a weapon firing projectiles who stuck the walls and exploded in a bubble of radiations damaging players behind cover and in other rooms. But no one thought this was dumb.

TR also have a rifle firing explosive bullets (Dragoon) and guess what? It sucks. But at least it's unique.

You are talking about the PS1 Spiker. It had such a funny firing animation.

True grenade launcher? Isn't that what this community hate?

To be fair the thing they showed off in the devstream with the splitting projectiles was less a work in progress weapon and more a demo on new weapon mechanics they were working on. In this case it was the ability to have a projectile change into another different projectile when the first projectile expires.

Been suggesting these for years now. Awesome that they are finally working on it. I hope they add things like adding X meters to the projectile's travel distance so it has a high penalty on it's damage degradation after a bounce.

Those Macro's already exist for the burst-variant weapons, so I don't think it'll be too much of an additional problem.

From how I heard it, it'll basically be like the Aphelion. They count how many bullets are fired in a single burst and based on that apply effects. This could be altered damage after X shots, or it could be a special projectile released if you stop firing after X shots (like Aphelion), they also mentioned that it could be based on other things such as magazine. So basically they could assign each bullet in your magazine a different damage type and special ability, and modify that once again based on how many shots you burst in a single go.

Basically a shotgun pattern but with bullets only going horizontally or vertically, depending on how you shoot. Like some kind of magic duckbill for a shotgun or a Tengu-like weapon.

I've been suggesting things like this for a long time as well. Think of for example firing a slow-moving "flak" projectile like the UT version. Then when you press the button the projectile explodes and launches a shotgun-pattern of shells at the enemy.

This could also allow aircraft to throw clusterbomb, or we could have new types of artillery like the UT SPMA (http://unreal.wikia.com/wiki/SPMA). Only unlike the UT SPMA it would be fired by a designator bought at the vehicle so you don't get problems with people not being able to kill the one using the artillery.

Having auraxed the horror of a Tengu, why would you handicap yourself with what is truly a dumbed down weapon in terms of capabilities? All I did it for was the aurax.

actually it is wonderfully refreshing to see weapons that everyone can use,
recently (before these doku weapons) we've only been seeing high skill floor weapons that are terrible for most people but make people who don't need any help even more deadly.

Daimyo, terrible bodyshot dmg, low velocity and big drop makes it a DREADFUL weapon for us mortals,
but allows sniper pros to OHK 3 people in rapid succession before reloading.


Tomoe, low damage and small mag make it terrible for us mortals,
2.5x headshot multiplier make it ridonkulous in the hands of gods.
(sensing a pattern here?)

Yumi was similar, bad for the average joe,
but if you can land consecutive headshots instantly then you become a god with Yumi.

its refreshing seeing something that doesn't suck for mortals and make the gods even more OP.

No the Spiker was a pistol, I was talking about the Radiator

New gimmicks, when done well, do make for fun and interesting weapons. The VS canis is sort of a case of this, as is the NC promise LMG.

But there are some gimmick options that just fall flat. The TR dragoon is an example of this, since its explosive rounds are arguably a down grade, and it's full auto, while cool, offers little practical benefit. Conversely, the VS equivalent, with some of it's gimmick attachments, is still rather decent.

I still do hope, no one side gets the "7 of my 20 rounds have the perk of 1 additional damage-tier" while another gets "all 40 of my 40 rounds have a perk"
Given the first will be reloading constantly, just to have their perk, which only will likely be noticeable on the first target.
While the second, is the entire magazine... vastly improving the capabilities of the weapon, by allowing more out of the perk.

I'm not against new and strange weapon mechanics, but most if not all of these ones seem to be almost inherently disadvantageous.

Ricochet seems pointlessly dangerous and impossible to control. If in a room with lots of allies it would be like firing a Lasher at your friends. Or it could be firing rounds that miss twice in a row, or it could be rather overpowered. Or the weapon might be super weak because in exact situations it would be powerful but worse than a normal gun in all other scenarios.

Reverse spin-up is just counter-intuitive. If the user has to burst to maintain the highest RoF, they would be lowering their RoF... What good is that over another high RoF gun?

Variable DPS, who the hell wants that? What if it's RNG based and the player always rolls low? What if it follows a pattern but the high damage shots miss and the overall DPS becomes lower? Am I the only one who wants consistency in my weapons?

Fan projectiles could be both worthless and amazing, depending on the stats and how the projectiles fan. A horizontal line is a joke and a vertical line could hit the same player 5 times at once. Again, what if the weapon is made to be worse due to the possibility of it being maybe good in super short range while ADSing?

Exploding/splitting bullets? Tengu is reason enough to not want that.

I'd like to see some new interesting mechanics and gimmick weapons but they'd have to be useful.

Oh, and the Pilot? No way! It's exactly what you said you wanted, a skill-cannon with almost instant single-burst headshot kills with few bursts per magazine and hefty recoil with a low RoF. It's a great weapon!

I don't think that's entirely fair. The Daimyo, Pilot, Yumi, Tonto, and Tomoe all heavily punish bad shots, but highly reward good shots. The new SMGs are somewhat middle ground, as headshots aren't as powerful up close, but they allow longer range headshots.

The new BRs are mid/long range beasts if you land your shots.

The Naganita and Tengu are pretty pointless.

The LMGs are pretty noob friendly

The Canis was a fluke, but was fixed.

That's 11/16 new guns focused on medium to high-skill players. While the Daimyo, Tonto, and Tomoe are pure headshot guns.

I have to say that I love that approach. As all guns are new to new players. It's the vets that need shiny new toys.

He means the Maelstrom and Radiator, both in secondary fire mode. The Spiker was the dedicated charged shot pistol.

Not to mention a performance nightmare.

Depending on the strength of the front-loaded DPS this concept has the potential to be incredibly strong, almost overpowered. Most of the time you aren't going to be mag-dumping at your opponents, so the most important damage happens in the first half-second or so of firing. Think a Jackal or Yumi-lite but with no delay.

These properties all feel very Borderlands-ish to me. So do ricochet weapons, for that matter. I'll reserve final judgement until I can see for myself, but my initial thoughts are that features like these do not belong in a PvP environment. Random effects are never fun to be on the receiving end of, and trying to work with (or around them) isn't a pleasant experience either.

The only effect that doesn't appear to be either situational or straight-up RNG is the reverse spin-up mechanic, because it presumably will shoot the same way every time you pull the trigger, with the gateway being burst fire rhythm and recoil.

Can confirm.

I'm not sure why ricochet would be impossible to control. You just use reflection but for bullets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(physics)

What it comes down to, if you fire it at a straight wall while you stand at 90 degree's, the bullet comes back at 90 degree's, IE straight back at your face.
If you fire at the wall from a 45 degree angle, your bullet will glance off and move in a 45 degree angle away from the wall etc.

This allows you to shoot around corners and control where the bullet goes, and with skill you can finish off people behind cover or flush them out if the battle started with them behind cover. It also allows bullets that hit the floor or a wall at a steep angle to still hit a target that would normally be a miss.

Similar to the burst-variant weapons, the actual burst allows for a higher ROF. Good trigger discipline allows you to fire at higher ROF's, and this weapon is said to sport the highest ROF in the game (although considering the framerate issue's I would say fix those first before trying weapons like that).

Think of it like COF. Randomness does not mean it's immediately unskillful. COF in this game grows with more shots, and the skill of knowing at what distances you'll start missing too much and need to settle the COF is key in learning most weapons in the game. This gun that starts with a high ROF and then moves down forces you to make the same decision: stop firing for a moment to regain your high ROF, or keep firing in the hopes you still win despite the lowered DPS. Considering this weapon is an automatic that would restart at high ROF the moment the game registers you've let the fire button go for even 0.00001 second there's practically no punishment but how fast you can release and hold the button again.

It depends on how they enact it. Like the Aphelion, the variable DPS is an addition, rather than a subtraction. After firing for X shots you've charged a free shot, let go for one moment and you fire this special free shot automatically. Any number of variations could be done with this type of bullet managing. The simplest would be your idea of having some high damage bullets and some low damage bullets in one magazine, but it doesn't have to be that simple. For example the first bullet is a tracer round, the second bullet uses an explosive head which deals the same damage in total but some of it partially as explosive damage etc. Each bullet would deal the same damage, but have a different ability.
Other magazines could be based around the ammunition count. For example an assault weapon for an LA: It starts with 50% of it's magazine being a long-range bullet that has low damage degradation and great accuracy, the other 50% is bullets for CQC with a higher starting damage but higher degradation, which fits with the LA trying to fire while closing the distance. The player could perhaps turn the magazine upside-down with a single click of X or B should the player know he's about to fight in a CQC environment so he's not continuously forced to fire 50% of his magazine before he's going to be firing his CQC bullets. Again, just a few idea's that show the immense variety this system could offer without being superfluous or anything.

Because the Tengu was a badly designed gun doesn't mean all exploding/splitting bullets are automatically bad.

I think the reason behind the worry of ricocheting bullets is that we have very little info on it, and there are a lot of gameplay issues that could arise.

For example, how many bounces can a bullet make? If it only bounces once, then you have an excellent corner fighting weapon. If it's ten bounces, you could have a serious issue where interiors become impossible to enter, since it's just a cloud of lead.

There are a lot of valid balance concerns, since how do you get around that corner that is being shot around? Your only real bet would be to smoke them out with explosives, which is not really reliable. Otherwise, you would have to flank them, but that isn't gonna happen in a zerg.

There is a lot of reasonable concern here for game balance.

I don't they would implement it quite like that. According to the OP the designer admitted bullets where just bouncing back and hitting the user, which leads me to believe there is some kind of mandatory angle of ricochet or some such thing to avoid making it a suicide gun. There's also the matter of bullets flying all over the place in a heated fight. No one has perfect accuracy and given the ~30% average that's a lot of rounds not going where they were supposed to in effectively random directions. And how would these bullets interaction with CoF and bloom? Likely wouldn't be able to get exact angles every time.

My concern is that letting off the trigger would result in a net loss of RoF over another high (albeit still lower) RoF gun which just requires that the trigger be held down.

For example, the Lynx has a fire rate of 909 RPM. If the new gun had a fire rate of 950 bursting could potentially result in a lower effective RoF than 909 while requiring more effort. And even then, if the effective RoF was about 930 RPM the difference would be almost entirely unnoticeable. And we know the engine can't handle a gun with a RoF higher than 1000 RPM, so there isn't much room for design.

I never said the weapon would be unskillful, just that it might not offer anything over other guns we already have.

The way I see it, the weapon will almost never be actually better or more useful than a consistent weapon. It doesn't matter how the variability is implemented in my opinion. If it cannot guarantee performance without offering something uniquely beneficial it just couldn't be even so much as a sidegrade to a normal gun, in my opinion.

Tengu is trash. But besides it's awful stats it's essentially a 200/500 gun which rarely if ever deals the full 200 damage per shot. My concern with this sort of weapon is the same. Again, it jut seems like adding this trait to a gun makes it worse.

I think there's just as much concern about the ricocheting bullets as there is of the next Doku Carbines dealing 400 damage a shot at 700+ROF. Sure it's a theoretical possibility, but with the amount of information we have there's no reason to assume the worst.

There's also half a million ways to balance the ricocheting bullets. For example you can use it similar to SPA: It has upsides and downsides. Combining ricocheting bullets with that magazine thing by making every other bullet a normal bullet and the next a bouncing one means only 50% of the magazine will bounce, and you can put penalties on them like lowered max damage range, faster degradation, using a damage tier lower damage after a bounce etc. It would basically be easier to dodge Lashers that are shot around a corner, only everyone gets them and if an enemy shoots around a corner with them you still have the option to retaliate, and depending on the angle at which you stand and shoot it's possible for you to hit them while they don't hit you and vice versa.

I mentioned COF specifically to indicate how randomness can be controlled, as can the bouncing bullets. The current bouncing bullets were admitted to be an accident and they are still refining it (if only to prevent server crashes), so it will change. There might be a minimum angle before the bullets bounce, but there might not be we just don't know yet.

That's the trick isn't it? Letting go just long enough to regain your high ROF but not long enough to get below the ROF of other high ROF weapons. If the gun always goes lower from letting go it doesn't work as a concept, if the gun always does higher unless you are really slow at releasing and holding the trigger again then the weapon is a clear upgrade. The best way to balance it would be to keep it close. If you do a quick release&hold you should be losing one maaaybe two shots but gain some on the higher ROF burst again.

Then look at how the weapon develops. It should have an advantage for your effort, but it shouldn't automatically reward your efforts either. If there's no advantage to holding the trigger with the weapon there's nothing to lose with bursting, which would be an equally bad position as having the weapon be on-par most of the time despite the effort put in.

The Tanto works like this at it's core. You can hold the trigger but it'll ruin your accuracy faster than other weapons, so it's less consistent than other weapons... Unless you burst. Bursting is a consistent form of firing a weapon, as the inconsistencies between shots are too little unless you take your sweet time releasing and holding the button.

Depends on the gun, and how it's used.

For example, if I could get solid-slugs on a shotgun but allow the solid slugs to detonate into a normal shotgun spray, I would use them.
Or how about the underbarrel grenades? I wouldn't mind the option of detonating them into shrapnel before they reach a target.

The Tengu is a bad design because it uses the shotgun pattern from the get-go and doesn't have enough in return to make it worthwhile. Whoop dee doo you hit more often but you'll likely lose almost any fight against a decent opponent unless you surprise them up close? Compare that to weapons where you have more control over how the weapon spreads and when... Great!
Imagine aircraft being able to drop clusterbombs using this sytem (and please don't imagine OHK superbombs like some people do, imagine something that isn't OP or UP). Or a new artillery type like a mortar that uses such ammo. Looking at the video weapons using this could be designed for longer ranges: You fire and after a timespan or when you detonate it the shell will split apart, raining it's pellets down on the enemy. Good skill will help you get it on-target as you lob it and need to lead it onto the enemy. It could be a new Engineer supression tool, or a HA anti-infantry rocketlauncher, or a new type of grenade, a new type of AA flak shell etc.

Might also have a random angle which they bounce at provided it's greater than or equal to X degrees. Like you said we don't know. But I just can't help but feel it'd be like Sabot rounds of the Bishop, where the ammo is effectively just a self-nerf due to the extreme rarity where it has a legitimate use.

I can't say I have faith in our DBG overlords to properly implement such as gun which isn't a clear design failure. As I said they didn't leave themselves with much room for a new highest RoF gun.

True with the Tanto, but it does offer something special: Perfect accuracy for the first shot from the hip. How much of an advantage that is isn't totally relevant right now, just that it does offer something and it does offer that something with a degree of consistency. Sure it blooms like man but the first shot will always be accurate. A gun with an average RoF and let's assume average DPS given 100% despite variability wouldn't necessarily have anything strongly beneficial while likely just not having consistency.

I suppose I could possibly imagine some specific weapon types which could benefit from it, but just a standard old automatic gun I fear would always fail to deal the full load of damage per burst. Even if the gun did more damage per burst than normal guns in the same damage model it wouldn't likely be able to always deliver the extra or even standard damage.

I'm not hoping to see this one regardless of how it's implemented though. I guess a highly-condensed semi-auto blast could be fun though.