...I WANT TO SET PEOPLE ON FIRE AND WATCH THEM JUMP AROUND WHILE THEIR HEALTH BAR IS DROPPING BECAUSE, WELL, THEY'RE ON FIRE. 'nuff said. But obviously this engine's limitations are terrible and there's no possibility to add, something like, "fire animation" on character model.
It also has problems with streams' convergence - they are too thin and can easily miss your target well within 'effective' range. Also, damage is too low even with lockdown. It needs some extra 'oomph' in a form of setting the floor on fire or a damage buff on unshielded enemies.
It feels like they are instant hitscan weapons. They hit things DIRECTLY in front of you, and if you sweep the fire back and forth, the trail does no damage. The actual damage hit is very narrow, meaning you have to be very accurate and despite how it looks, you're actually just shooting thing beams of damage.
They are worthless because all the other MAX anti-infantry weapons can kill the same target 10x faster within the same effective range. HeII, a Light Assault will just giggle as you tickle him with these while he goes airborne and just casually drops C4 on your head. Flamethrower fail. They do look badass though. Definitely one of the cooler designed weapons/animations. Add bleed damage and I could see these things being effective infantry displacement weapons. Or just up the damage so they become on par with the other AI weaps.
With a Flamer with Extended mag in VR, I managed to take of around a third of an NC MAXes health with the entire canister. I think that reflects poorly on the damage dealt.
I feel like I'm shooting a weak laser that is offset toward whichever side you're firing from while only damaging things within 10m of you: This has reached lower than the "purple flashlight" in PS1, and that's saying something. 20 damage per "bullet"? You need to land of these to land onto a non-infiltrator to kill someone, and with the slow rate of fire, they have to be standing still for 8 seconds to not realize what's hitting them, but they will know what is and run away from you. I would expect a damage buff real soon, otherwise this is more of a suppressing tool than anything else.
"Suppression" only works if you take a risk by leaving cover/doing whatever they want to prevent you from doing. A weapon that you can stand it for several seconds with what amounts to visual cover is not suppression. But it's a Test server, so yeh.
they're obviously buggy or incomplete. the flamethrowers we could use in VR when the pts first released did hacksaw level damage vs. maxes and slightly less but still plenty vs. normal infantry, they also didn't have that convergence issue.
Damage of the flamethrowers needs to be increased like 300%. I tried it against infantry & it takes like half a canister WITH extended mags to kill a single player. Not only that but they have to be within 5-8 meters & when it goes live players aren't just going to stand there & take it. They are going to be mobile/running away. Needs a massive damage buff. Also, both flamers don't converge in the center.
It behaves like a laser with limited range. I love how it causes little damage to maxes, that is perfect. Well defined Anti-infantry weapons always make me happy. The thing is, I don't see a lot of point in this, unless it is going to throw actual flames that cause area of effect damage and can spread to infantry, possibly causing burning damage over time or just set a room on fire. Why? Because it's just a bullet hose without bullets, the way it works now. You have to hit right in the reticular for it to work, without bloom damage, if you get inside of the dead zone for the weapon you are fine, which means I can have someone standing right infront of me, with two hot flamethrowers running out both sides of their body, and that infantry unit will be fine. That makes zero sense. This weapon would have been best utilized as a situational weapon if it was like what I explained above, as it is now, it wont be used. Here is what I would do: Instead of point hitting, make it a bloom. That means that away from the central line of the flame, damage tapers off at range. So the weapon fires at a range of 15m, at 5 m, if you are under 1m from the center line of the flame you take full damage, 1-2m you take 1/2 damage, 2-4m you take 1/4 damage, and beyond 4, no damage. When the flame thrower hits the ground it drops what is effectively a 2 second long pain zone, that will damage enemies that walk through it. these zones only last 2 seconds and swiftly disappear. This means that the flamethrower can spray into a room, coat the floor in fire, and even if your not hit, your burned. This would make it work like real flamethrowers worked. This would solve the "Dead zones" surrounding 4,000 deg F flames slewing out of the flamethrowers (Which makes No sense). You wouldn't even have to boost the damage all that much if the weapon behaved like this. A 50% bump in damage would be FINE, if the thing behaved like a Real flamethrower. Yeah, just from 20 to 30 damage, that is It. Because at that point, it will actually cause concern, as something that fills a room with firey death, instead of something that you just have to sidestep and the flames will no longer hurt you. It will actually -have- a psychological effect if it causes Everyone some damage. My recommendation.
