Balance Pass Post 2: Nanoweave and Related Features

It's official. The long range snipers in this game are now engineers with AV turrets. Plus they can snipe infantry AND tanks at 400+ meters.

This has to be the worst way of balancing the Nanoweave, I know I have a post with two options that reduce incoming damage by a percent but they were an alternative option something new that could pull people away from nano. Atm the max infantry render range is about 300m, its a little further out with scopes. However this causes another issue infiltrator past the 300m can still fire in on targets and their model will not be rendered at all. On servers where big battles occur that render range can drop as far as 20m yet the infiltrator while scope in can still see further then that still allowing to pick off players that can not render them as they could be sitting 60m where as their targets can only render out to 20m due to zone pop. (How you know they rendered you but you not rendering them; is when their model is not rendered in the kill window after your death.)

Now we have people saying 150m is the current conceived max kill range on One shot head shot kills this will cause more trouble as there are three tiers of sniper rifles, thus high end sniper rifles would be no better then the lower tier ones.

How the devs should go about fixing sniper rifles, is not by adjusting nano, or head shot multiplier, but adjusting the damage drop off on all sniper rifles. At the moment the drop off starts far to soon, and this applies to all weapons not just the sniper rifles. T1 Bolt action rifles should have their damage drop off start at 40 meters and stop at 140, T2 should be 50 to 60 start and 150 to 160 stop were the T3 should be 80 to 90 start and stop at 180-190 firing while having a suppressor attached should adjust down the values. Atm even a T1 bolt action can one shot a nanoweave 5 by head shot, and the T3 ones can do that at an even greater range.

Sounds pretty knee jerk/half *****. Unless the reduction to small arms fire is huge, nanoweave will be pretty useless compared to other options that reduce things that would otherwise fully kill you immediately (flak). And just range capping OHK for snipers without giving them a tell is a bandaid, players won't feel less annoyed about instant death from an enemy 100 meters away than they do at 300.

This is pretty funny:

So all that boils down to...it should not be a poor gameplay experience anymore...as long as the sniper is in front of you, and within 150 meters, and you see him shoot. Otherwise there is zero change in attitude on the person getting shot. You don't exactly see that someone actually performed a sweet 500 meter snipe on you in the killboard, just that you randomly died to some guy in a catsuit you never saw.

Edit: Also the real hilarity here is that this is a real nerf to good snipers. You know all 6 of them.

Have to see if I can get more HS's with the Nix at 300m

I don't even use Nanoweave. I almost always use Flack.

These changes are dumb and are being forced on the community by a small number of crying infiltrators who want their one shot kill.

snipers can't OHK from past 150 meters?
nanoweave doesn't effect headshots?

Indirect Battle rifle buff!!!!!

Whoo!!!

Good thing they are refounding our certs so we can just ignore their balancing alltogether by going for flakarmour as our standard loadouts. Its not like we already did this because of those damn UGBLs and the consistent nade spam indoors that makes nanoweave less than optimal.

At any rate infiltrators are a dying breed. The hilarity that they actually consider 150 meters as a hardcap when vehicles shell infantry at double the range is quite silly. You'd kill more as a heavy assault spamming the phoenix at its maximum 300 range. The cool thing is that while doing this you could potentially be invincible to counter sniping.

You know. Now that I think of it. Weren't snipers a potential answer to large clusters of Lock on abusing infantry standing out in the open locking down vehicles? Oh wait they aren't even remotely useful at all. Ty for telling all snipers to roll smg's, a reflex bolt action, or go home.

Wake up, this NW nerf isn't just for sniper, it's for the entire game balance. That suit armor is just soo good at everything it became the new default health balance. Problem is, the game was never balance for it initially which create this nightmare to balance against any explosive and every older bullet weaponry.

It's much simpler, and better, to go back to the root of the problem, change nanoweave and continue from there

Hey, this sounds exactly like composite armor on Harasser... Too good on everything. Become new default with game not balance around it.

You are dumb if you believe the NW change is just for sniper...

I have no issue switching classes and playing the normal CQC meat grinder. But that is not what I want to be doing all the time, hence why we have multiple play styles to cater people with. The game puts an emphasis on creating new tactics and ways to play and defeat your enemy "free to play your way" etc, so I don't feel that "forcing" people into doing something and cutting out different play styles is necessarily a good thing.

For me personally, long range sniping was a good way to relax after an action filled alert or outfit ops. But just because I'm relaxing, doesn't mean I don't want to be effective...

Wow. Sometimes I wonder if you even play your own game. Are you planning to fix the damage scaling on VS weapons so that whole no bullet drop is actually a drawback? Cause 150m sniper rifles is a joke if EVERY VS gun has no drop until 200m.

Nerfing explosive damage what????

Most explosive weapons are already borderline useless as it is. What are you doing soe

If you don't want to die to explosions, wear flack armor.

Yes and no.

It means that you will now have a pretty decent reason to pull flak if you are out in the open. Likewise, vehicles should gain some effectiveness against infantry, unless they take the explosive nerf too far.

As a sniper myself, I dun like how headshots are going to be handled now. I felt nanoweave 2 was a bit too low of a rank to stop headshots sure, maybe nanoweave 4-5. Still, now there is nothing to counter my one shot kill potential? Seems pretty cheesy to me. If you are going to keep it like this, I'd say at least make the one shot kill on headshot potential only avalable from say, 70-80 meters or less. 150 is still way too much in my opinion.

Yeah, they did say AV Mana turrets would be brought up in this post, and it's nowhere to be seen.

I'm not in agreement that this is a bad thing overall, but I agree with this entirely. Ridiculous HE spam also coincided very nicely with the sundy crash era and was extremely frustrating at times. AOE should be damn near removed entirely, with lockons becoming a rare thing indeed as well.

Honestly though, just double everybody's health and shields.

Why have flak armour ?

Isn't the whole point of being able to equip flak armour to protect yourself from Explosions ? The whole point in trying to get the two to work in tandem is that you SHOULD take a crap tonne of damage if you are using NW ..

If you start nerfing dmg to much then you get to the point people will still just be using NW ..

Agreed with both your opinion on the 150m limit as well as your suggestion.

@SOE: Im not sure why you believe snipers need a headshot rage limiter when this game features combined arms. Snipers who can't headshot from 150+ meters away should be rewarded the kill. Snipers already have several seamless limiters in the game already. The fact that a mass majority of all capture points are located in doors or behind some type of cover is one. The fact that this is a combined arms game is another one.

It would be great to hear a reply from SOE on this because this limitation doesn't make any sense to me.

Rest of the changes sound good.

First, I did said I was waiting for more info on Tier of sniper.

Second, There is no infantry meatgrinder at 100-150m as none of the non-sniper weapon are effective as said range so everything you said fell apart.

Nothing stop you from killing people at long range. You'll just need 2 bullets if you want to "relax." Are you saying it is too hard too much effort dependant? Poor you.

Actually, what so different from that balance post and right now? Because you already need 2 bullet to kill any NW2 over such range.

Every bolt action weapon have drop. Every bolt action weapon have the exact same stats. Semi-auto sniper are irrelevant for most fighting.

Please don't talk of thing you have no idea of. It's pretty annoying and frustrating for everybody.

Why Not just get rid of it all together. If you really think about it people will still only have Nanoweave or Flak. It does not open up the option for the other "useless" armor option there are out there. Yeah I am sure there are a few light assaults with adreniline pump and a few heavy kits with an extra rocket or two, but I am willing to bet the majority of players will still only go for Nanoweave or Flak because the bonus does not out weigh the bonus of other options like more ammo, rockets, grenades, shield regen. I'd be willing to bet the amount of people who use these are under 10% and this might bump up a little in the short run after this Nanoweave nerf, but not by much I bet.

I play my engie with a fully certed out Utility Pouch and when I get into a fight I immediately "feel" the difference when taking damage. Changing it so it adds a passive DR will not change the fact that I'd just use it to drop my deployables and go back to nanoweave or flak. I honestly think you should just ditch any DR other than the heavy shields and this would make balance in the future easier to sort out. As it stands now if you are developing and balancing things with Nanoweave in mind you are admiting that a majority of people use it over the options. Its the curse of every MMO though everyone will go with what is OP making all other options a waste of code. I think just scraping nanoweave as an option would make better use of some good suit options that no one uses because there is one all powerful option that no one wants to give up.

I like what you are trying to do, but to be fair to snipers (whom I hate) this range should be at least 200~300m. It does take skill to pull off a shot from that far and they should be awarded. Besides to peg a headshot on someone at 300m they'd need to standing still and they'd deserve it at that point.

Silly, just silly. Like I said this just seems to be an admission that almost everyone uses nanoweave because there is no reason not to. I wont continue my rant from above. All I'll say on this is that be careful in nerfing explosions you don't want to inadvertently make flak the new nanoweave and have people just shrugging off tank rounds, grenades and C4 explosions.