Yes, sorry... this is a bit of a whinge from a TR perspective and only infantry related... but can someone please explain exactly what the faction weapon traits are meant to be? From what I can make out:- NC get weapon power, like ridiculously powerful weapons, offset by low rate of fire. VS get no bullet drop on most weapons and a high degree of accuracy, offset by a higher round power drop off TR get bullets and a higher ROF, offset by low weapon power and not actually that accurate. The reality of this is that TR are at a major disadvantage here as the power of NC weapons can shred at any range, and no amount of extra bullets can save a TR soldier from an NC soldier with tidy aim. Effective DPS is higher for the NC soldier. The accuracy of Vanu weapons combined with its reasonable (and sometimes better) ROF means that more of the rounds count. Vanu also get two splash damage LMGs. The higher projectile power drop off often doesn't matter in most situations apart from very long range, which is when everyone starts switching to battle, scout and sniper rifles. I am seeing too many weapons on VS and NC that have similar traits to TR weapons. You have the NC GD-7F with 845 RPM and 143 damage within 10m and the Vanu get the VX6-7 which has the same stats at 10m. Where is the TR carbine that does 845 RPM and 143 damage within 10m? There are other examples but I am not going through the whole weapon list now. As for Aurax'd LMGs, the NC get splash damage for the Godsaw, and the Vanu do not have to reload... wait... I thought TR were the ones who got the dakka not the Vanu... and the butcher gives you a bigger bullet drum. How to fix this... The simple fix is either to nerf VS 10m weapon power to maybe 135 and to nerf NC weapons with 200 damage 10m power to perhaps 175 damage (still generous I think) and the 167 weapons down to 155... or... Give the TR weapons a buff from 143 to perhaps 155. This would be the preferred method. The one outlier here would be the HC1 Cougar, leave that as is but the TMG-50 should have a buff on its ROF. An outfit mate played both VS and NC one day and instantly found that they were getting better KDs. Oh well... here comes the flak!
So long time TR player here and previously a "Vanu are OP" crapPoster. I know exactly how you feel trust me, but here is the thing about TR. TR have the highest skill curve in the game when it comes to their weapons. They are by far the hardest to use because they come with the most draw backs. Where as NC and Vanu come with the least. I know its hard to believe but, everyone of the base weapons actually have the same TTK, speaking for LMGs for example, all have .48 TTK. The thing is though, its a lot eaiser to control the Gussaw, because a lot of the fighting is going to be up close which the gaussaw does great at. TR weaponry becaomes really freaking scary once you get good with them, because since their weapons are high ROF and lower damage, it makes them more forgiving if you miss, where as missing with a NC weapon is much more pushing since its a slower rate of fire. Vanu on the other hand just sit in the middle and because of that, they end up being the easiest to play with since their wapons are by far the most forgiving. Its not that NC, and Vanu weapons are far stronger then TR, its that TR weapons are the hardest to use. Because of that difficulty curve of their weapons, over all TR ends up performing worse overall. But then the problem becomes, how do you balance for the masses with out skewing the high end? Because if daybreak balanced TR weapons by making them jsut as forgiving as the other factions, by either damage increase, reduced cone of fire, or something like that, it would massivly tip the high end. The only way i see them fixing this, is basically reduce the damage of all TR weapons, but increase their RoF with out increasing their bloom, recoil, or anything like that. That way you make the weapons more forgiving to use. With that all said, im personally in the camp of making the TMG50 either a 200 damage weapon or making it a 600 RPM and Giving the watchman a better recoil pattern that makes it usable outside of like 10m.
The NC are about high damage. They have sole access to the 200/~500 damage model and tend to have higher damage in other fields, such as the Vanguard's cannons and the Railjack rifle. The TR are about spewing lead. They have the highest rates of fire across the board and almost always have larger magazines than the competition. This can be observed in weapons like the Lynx with a damage model of 125/909 and a 40-round magazine, as well as in the Prowler's double-barrelled main cannon. The VS are a little bit weird. There doesn't really seem to be a genuine consensus on what their traits are supposed to be. They tend to focus on versatility and accuracy. This can be seen on most of their weapons lacking projectile gravity. They frequently get special traits to complement their "personality" in their equipment as well. I would agree that there is room for improvement, but I can't agree with your premise. In reality the inverse tends to be more true: The game inherently favours higher RoFs over lower RoFs, which results in higher and lower practical DPSes. This is through damage reductions and their impact on bullets to kill, the innate inaccuracy of almost all weapons with higher damage resulting in worse accuracy per shot, punctuated recoil patterns, and the unfortunate fact that not every shot that hits will deal damage. The netcode can't really handle the game like it should. The VS' weapons usually aren't notably more accurate. Some are, but most are the same as the other factions' respective equipment of the same damage tier. I would encourage you to go through the factions' weapons a little more closely. There are a good few that are nearly or literately identical across factions. The NC & VS have a 143/845, yes. But the TR have the 125/909, the bigger badder version which exemplifies their traits even stronger. Likewise, the TR & VS have multiple 167s across the board, while the NC has the 200s on top of it. The NC don't get splash damage. The GODSAW has an alternate firemode capable of damaging heavy armour at the cost of damage per shot. The AV mode has a splash effect, but the AoE is non-existent to the point where it is literally not possible to damage a target with the splash and not the bullet as well. It deals a base of 125 damage. The VS' Betelgeuse can only fire a maximum of 50 shots in rapid succession before overheated and preventing fire. If handled correctly the magazine is effectively infinite, but does not allow for TR-levels of dakka. The Butcher has a RoF boost and an extended magazine built-in. This follows the trait to the T. The biggest thing I have to say about your ideas would be this: What is the justification? For what reason are the respective nerfs or buffs necessary? There isn't any reasoning provided for why this should be done and it's clear you're not considering potential consequences of it. Nerfing the NC's 200 damage weapons down to 175 would have literally no impact on shots to kill or TTK until the damage dropped below 167, which would never happen on a few of them. Only damage resistance of some kind would impact this, but these weapons are already universally more susceptible to damage reductions, with the differences being either insignificant or entirely negatable. I don't mean to be rude, but it's clear you don't understand the mechanics and numbers behind the balance of the weapons. Furthermore, there is more to a weapon than its damage and rate of fire. I'd recommend using some of these weapons yourself for a longer period of time. Not only will it help you understand their strengths an weaknesses, it will help you combat them effectively as well. *Sh!tposting continues*
Also long time TR player that has dabbled in all factions (ASP 80 TR, ASP ~20 NC, BR ~60 VS, all engineer mains, shocking I know) here. I think you have it somewhat backwards. TR weapons have the lowest skill floor but also lowest skill ceiling. High rate of fire makes missing shots very forgiving but the penalty we as TR get for the high ROF is high horizontal recoil which can not be compensated for and is a huge skill limiter. So our weapons are easy to pick up but hit a roadblock sooner than the other factions. NC is the complete opposite with newbies punished hard by difficult handling and missing with low ROF but a skilled NC can triple dink someone from across the map. Vanu kinda get the best of both worlds with NC's controllability and TR's firerate. Obviously not as good at either as the others but still.
Pardon the double post, forumside is wonky on mobile and won't let me edit the previous one. You can brute force a good NC heavy by drowning them in firepower. Watchman with headshots or my personal favorite the Cycler TRV work wonders. But generally speaking, yeah, 1v1's against an equally skilled NC is usually game over. Especially at range where the rebs' weapons are steady and ours shake like broken washing machines. As for VS, the small magazine is absolutely noticeable. Unless we're talking about LMGs that for some reason all have equal magazine size, the extra 10 rounds we as TR get are extremely useful. Most of this game is heavy assaults. On TR I find I can kill a heavy and still have enough juice in the magazine for another kill or two. This barely happened when I played Vanu though. Also I know that Lasher does splash damage but what is the 2nd Vanu weapon that splashes? As for TR's 143/845 carbine, it's the Kindred. As strange as it may seem, a spooled up Kindred has the same time-to-kill as the 143/845's, around 0.43 seconds. It's also the fastest killing automatic in the game with headshots. Why the devs gave us a 167 damage equivalent instead of a copypasta 143/845 with some Republic Flavor (40 rnd magazine with longer reload times and also extra horizontal shake because TR ecksdee) sprinkled on it is ******* beyond me. Still, it's a very solid weapon despite not being TR-esque.
This post is so wrong on so many levels. For example: The NC have higher damage per bullet models, but their functional DPS isn't higher. A CQC LMG on the NC will have close to the same DPS as a "low damage" CQC LMG on the TR, the same for mid-range or long-range LMG's. I've done calculations based on DPS and the Bloom Per Second (BPS) to see how much accuracy each shot loses the player, and these are usually near enough identical as well (for the handful of LMG's I did these calculations for). So you are left with the fact that NC is punished more for each miss, and take longer to recover between each miss as it takes longer to fire the next shot. And here you are suggesting to cut off a lot of damage from these weapons because...? There's also the problem of damage falloff: 125 loses 25 damage as it's damage falls off. 143 loses 31 damage 167 loses 42 damage<--- The most common NC LMG and Carbine, 4 out of 8 NC LMG's are this damage model and 6 out of 9 NC Carbines 200 loses 33 damage (if you are talking Carbines then suddenly it loses 57 damage while other Carbine damage models lose the same damage total). So the NC overall has the highest damage falloff on 50% of it's LMG arsenal and on 67% of it's Carbine arsenal. Not exactly the thing to write home about as the "powerhouse" if all you do is lose that power more.
''This post is so wrong on so many levels.'' No **** lol. It was written by a QQ ****** who has no clue what they are talking about and just happened to get butt hurt because died in an FPS. In general things aren't that bad with regard to diversity. They could always be fleshed out more (insert years of the same post here) but equally could be much worse. Quit crying about an ancient game and get on with whatever little time it has left on the shelf. TR has no issue winning anything. Try putting in as much effort to aiming as talking out your ***.
Just to clarify, I am not new to the game. I have been playing it on and off for 5 years and I am level 87 TR Cobalt. I also have a much lower level NC account on Miller. @Khloros Thanks for the input, and where I agree about the weapons being harder to use, even mastering them still leaves you at a disadvantage against an NC or VS that has mastered the equivalent weapon. The only TR weapon that i find freakingly scary once mastered is the kindred, but that can suffer in a CQC fight. @Campagne Again, thanks for the input and not just sperging out. Correction noted on the Godsaw, however, it does still have splash damage as I have been hit by said damage. Not as much a the lasher or lacerta, but it is still there. The problem when talking about time to kill is that it does not always translate unless every bullet counts in that statistic. So a Gauss Saw you can fire in small bursts to compensate for the effect of the high bloom and those bursts are enough to kill a player whereas you cannot do that with TR weapons. There is in fact nothing you can do to compensate the use of TR weapons apart from the Kindred and the Cougar. @The Shady Engineer The Lacerta does splash damage. I didn't consider the Kindred as being the equivalent because of the 167 damage. The high bullet capacity is fair point when taking on multiple enemies, but that also comes with an extremely long reload time and it is also dependent on getting good effect on target. The VS bullet capacity, yes I can see how that matters, but in 1 on 1s... you are still disadvantaged as TR. @Demigan Thanks for the input. The damage fall off still leaves the NC with more powerful weapons meaning less bullets for effect on target. Combined with the punishment a player can received, this can make all the difference. Don't forget the horizontal shake from TR weapons as well which means that less bullets will hit the target. It's one thing talking about DPS in raw numbers, but it is another when talking about effective DPS on target. Again, the bloom can be countered by better gun control. TR don't get that. To say that the post is "wrong on so many levels" is wrong within itself. You should try TR weapons. I've used NC weapons and they are far easier. @WinterAero Do you have anything constructive to say or are you just going to sperg ad hominem?
Faction traits are a bit flaky in this game. Generally, NC has the most damage per bullet, TR has the highest rate of fire and VS has the tightest uniforms most weird stuff. Except for all the exceptions, of course. Overall, the only traits that are truly "unique" for each faction are the 200 damage primaries for NC, the 900+ RPM primaries for TR, and a bunch of mostly gimmick-y stuff for the VS. Everywhere else there is overlap. Most of the "best" weapons in the game end up being pretty similar to each other across all factions with most people eschewing the unique equipment for weapons that are less situational. As far as accuracy/recoil/control/etc. are concerned I think you're really overstating the differences at play here. As one example: here are the recoil and bloom stats for the three starter LMGs (SAW, Orion, CARV). Without cheating, which is which? Weapons of a similar type between factions are going to have similar effective ranges. An Anchor user and an MSW-R user will have a pretty fair fight at any range, for example. Combine this with the fact that the TTK is effectively the same between factions for weapons of a given type and things are a lot more balanced than you think. If I had my way I would have each faction be way more unique, just for the novelty and because asymmetric balance is more interesting, but alas.
Had a bit more of a think and if the damage buff/nerf is not to the liking, why not just get rid of horizontal shake for all factions, or make it the same across all factions.
I don't agree. TTK can be calculated with assumed misses as well. The issue with DPS is that it doesn't translate to an understandable value. Guns don't fire like a continuous laser and instead have punctuated shots with set intervals. DPS can be useful but in my opinion TTK is better for this. I don't understand why you say this. The SAW's bloom and moving CoF are both awful, and the SAW will have less accuracy after any number of shots with equal damage output. I.E. the SAW can fire a burst of three rounds and have less accuracy than a Carv firing four. I'd be fine with that, but it would obviously have to be on a weapon-by-weapon basis. At that point there may not even be a real difference.
I agree, but that would require plannign from the beginnign and devs who immediately intervene once they see an item over- ot underperform. Because balancing asymetrically is way more difficult, so it requires much more work and attention.
@ Campagne Where are those SAW and Carv comparison numbers from? There is another problem though which is not taken into account which is the actual network packets being sent client to server. So a higher damage output has an advantage due to the netcode and this is something that cannot be changed. Higher ROF weapons require more packets to be sent out from the client and there is more of a potential for packet loss in transit. That against the harder hitting lower ROF weapons is a disadvantage as once that higher damage packet is registered, that is it and the damage is done. So the 2 of those shots that land from the SAW will registerer but effectively only two shots from Carv out of 3 that landed register. There are so many variables it is too much of a mess, hence the need to re-balance the game's weapons. I might just have to start using the Tengu haha! I have no issue with factions being unique and I welcome it, but ultimately I don't think ROF as a faction trait is one that should be used due to the netcode, especially when that trait is essentially null and voided by the other factions having high ROF weapons. Rather than ROF being a trait, maybe the faction specific traits should have been (pick your faction for the trait):- HIgher accuracy Higher power Higher projectile speed No or little recoil No or little bullet drop Larger mag sizes combined with higher reload speed All factions could then make use of those higher ROF weapons which would incur more bloom or reduced bullet power.
The numbers can be calculated using this formula: [y = i + xb], where y = final CoF, i = starting CoF, x = consecutive shots fired, and b = bloom per shot. This gives the final size of the weapon's cone after any given number of shots, good for determining both sustained fire accuracy and burst accuracy. Helpful to know how long a gun can burst for before it becomes too inaccurate. Given the formula, three shots from a strafing SAW gives a final cone of 0.61 and four shots from a Carv gives a final cone of 0.6. The difference may be small, but it grows linearly with every shot. Starting with 3 & 4 shots respectively, increasing each value by one shot increases the differences in cones from 0.01 to 0.03, then 0.03 to 0.05, then 0.05 to 0.07, then 0.07 to 0.09, et cetera. This results in notably larger cones with automatic fire. High-damage accuracy-demanding weapons have less accuracy and are required to burst much more frequently and at sooner intervals than high-RoF weapons. With netcode, I'm not really sure damage impacts the probability of packet loss or not. I've never seen anything to suggest it one way or another. Regardless, high-damage low-RoF guns losing even a single bullet has often larger impacts on TTK and general effectiveness than two bullets from the inverse. It simply takes more time and effort to recover from the loss of one strong bullet than two weaker ones. You probably want to rethink that idea. I'd be cool with just giving everyone a variety of RoFs instead of making one faction high RoFs. Hell, I'd even be fine with NC letting go of their inverse trait and having more room to breathe. But these traits you've suggested come with balance concerns of their own: Higher accuracy directly equates to more powerful weapons. Accuracy is king. Higher power is literally just intentionally making something overpowered. Higher projectile velocity is already (supposed to be) an NC trait. Ease of use also directly equates to more powerful weapons. The most overpowered things the game has ever seen are weapons which are very easy to use. In order to make them balanced they'd have to be weak in other regards, otherwise they'll be stupidly overpowered as they've been in past history. Thus, they'd likely just be underpowered instead. No projectile gravity is already a VS trait. Larger magazines and longer reloads is already a TR trait. I dunno man, it seems like every idea's been thought of already and missed the mark for one reason or another. Anything more than aesthetic differences isn't going to be a simple task.
Since you seem to have trouble grasping the concept a dumbed down version.: We have two weapons, one has 10 damage and 10 RPM and the other has 5 damage and 20 RPM. The fact that one does twice the damage per shot is irrelevant as they have the same DPS and will generally kill in the same time, although the weapon with higher RPM will be less punished by misses. Now damage falloff sets in. The first weapon falls off to 6 damage and the second weapon falls to 4 damage. As you may notice if you do the calculation (assuming you are capable of that) the "high damage" weapon is now worse than the "low damage" weapon due to the RPM advantage it has. Now since you bring it up, its one thing to talk about effective DPS which you just handwave with "horizontal recoil" without showing us that its indeed as big a problem as you proclaim (that_one_kane already showed you that wasnt as big as you claim), but what we should really be talking about is the actual performance these weapons get. You already claimed that the NC and VS variants would always trump the TR version of similar weapons. Use Voidwell to prove that, I'm not going to disprove your false claims for you since you'll just ignore it and brush it aside as you've already done.
Not get rid off, but make it more similar to vertical recoil: relatively predictable but not perfectly so. Fortunately this isnt true. The game works with a latency system. It deliberately does not send a data packet for each movement but collects it and sends it in a single packet. This is why you can experience the dreaded 3 or 4 shot kills on yourself: it actually took more shots to kill you but because the first shots happened just after the previous packet was send, you didnt see those shots play out on your screen as you PC couldnt predict it. So no, there's no magical cutoff point where a high ROF weapon starts losing packets causing less damage. Also if there's a 20% chance of each packet being lost, both the high ROF and low ROF weapon will still lose the same amount of shots overall. Since each individual shot is more important to a low-ROF weapon it means that again those weapons are more punished for this. Also if your hypothesis was true, than sniping in any game could result in package loss at the wrong moment, causing the entire shot to fail. Considering the average accuracy of most players and the ROF of the high-RPM weapons you would have to notice package loss once every +/-5 shots or something (because on a 40 magazine size carbine that would mean 8 lost shots so every +/-5th shot with a sniper should get the same result. Doesnt really happen that often does it?
Ultimately, I'm just gonna let this go and agree to disagree, because things I posted are now being mis-quoted. For instance, I never said that damage impacts the probability of packet loss and I never said that there was a "magical" number where packet loss is incurred, as packet loss can happen at any time. No point defending things I did not say. I've been accused of being dismissive, but I could throw that back and say that other people are being just as dismissive, when I actually conceded certain points. You cannot get away from the things that are happening within netcode, and it is there. I wish I could have put it more elegantly than I did an explained it better as my outfit mate did last night when we were discussing it, but the disadvantage is there. You cannot just rely on the raw numbers plugged into a games variables when there are other factors to take into consideration. The whole point of this was to say that the faction traits need to be looked at again, and I still believe they do, but I guess they never will be. Okay, I'm done.
Valiant effort OP. I get what your saying. o7 Unfortunately there's about 5 years of suggestions/ideas buried deep within these knowledgeable forums. There's nothing that hasn't been said or thought of already killer. If you want the ears of the Devs go on the toilet licking Network called "twatter", that's where those neckbeards reside.
