Noob_Guardian

unless the enemy is so close to the corner peaking to where you legit cannot aim on him with a sniper at the corner, and have to aim "Beside" the body and off the "red reticle" to hit (which actually happens) cornerpeaking isn't much an issue. Considering you put yourself into a position with no cover... against someone with 95% cover. Increased accuracy shouldn't save you from bad gameplay tactics like that. We have cars, mobile cover, explosives, "randomized" spawns, multiple entrances into almost every location, grenades, and lots of peak points depending on where for snipers, and walls for calculated opgl nades. Heck, even brick n car det can work wonders lol

Those reticles look way off, i just went in game and looked at out of mm and in mm accuracy firing and not firing for max bloom to compare and none of the gun's (STAR, NTEC, FAR) reticles look close to those images being shown. Are those prenerf? NTEC images? Mods on the weapons? (Maybe they look off cause my screen size ingame in comparison to the picture, that's my only guess) I did however notice that if your camera is zoomed out more, your reticle shows less accuracy while jumping out of MM than if zoomed in. Dunno, probably 5 years. Not that you can prove me wrong anyways.

4718* actually, I stopped trying to play "competitively" for the most part ages ago when my clan fell apart the second time while I had to take a break due to training. I've been solo queuing since with better computer upgrades, that doesn't mean i don't bother winning for the team, I just don't focus on winning as much as I focus on individual actions and trying to have fun. Like ramping right, flanking, or sneaking an objective, maybe setting up my enemies team via distraction for my teamates if I'm not using them as litteral bait. Besides you can't "play competitively" in pugs, it doesn't work lol. It's better to just do whatever and play and try to have fun and try something new than it is to get aggravated by trying too hard and failing because of lack of team coordination. As i've said a lot of times, most players in Jericho don't give me any issues when I play against them, only a small handful of players actually can. When I do bother against them, it's generally only to pull a 1.0+ k/d rather than a win. You can't "play competitively" with solo que and no team coordination. Losing happens, you can't "win" them all, you'll lose because of civilians, civi cars, other players, and a billion other reasons. Yes, I do sometimes do runescape, or scroll through facebook and eat while playing, I've had times where I've chatted in /g or /t for several matches in a row and texted people mid match while playing, while still pulling 16/8 k/d and mvp while doing so using "underpowered weapons" against premades. Hell, i went like 9/2 earlier with NTEC and HB3 w/ snubnose and 8 balls (lel) against 2near max rank golds and a higher rank silver (170+) just to be a meme. Just because I prefer to play casually doesn't mean I'm a bad player. It just means I don't put all my focus on winning or using "meta" and running around in a vegas/pio with carspawn and armor lol. Nor does it mean I don't know how to use most weapons.

Nerfing the ntec twice in 7 years didn't drastically lower the skill cieling (how is supposedly making a weapon "harder" as so many people claim "lowering the skill ceiling?), removing jump shooting didn't do it because that was a glitch and broken beyond belief. Have cover? Cool now i jump aaand you die (how's that competitive?). Nerfing the so called "high skill ceiling qsing" (yes people did call it high skill to qs back then), and buffing a few weaker weapons and nerfing overtuned ones surely won't zerg the games skill ceiling. Don't pretend that APB had/has a high skill ceiling. Firing an NTEC at .19 intervals isn't a difficult feat. Jump scout and QSing weren't hard, CSG prenerf wasn't hard. Firing an obeya or obir isn't hard. Most weapons aren't "hard" or even "high skill" unless they actually suck, like the ODIN's, the OSCP, the Harbinger, ltl, ISSR-a, and current Tommy gun. The holy trinity aren't hard, oscar and carbine aren't hard. I can't say that I know any weapon that isn't an actual trash tier weapon that can be "high skill" But i guess that's because actually using them takes more effort and more skill than "meta". Lol, i spent like 2-3k on the game, own most weapons char bound and can use pretty much all of them effectively (except like, ISSR-A because i havn't really bothered with it), because I get bored using a single weapon 24/7 and have to switch it up every few matches. Have 3 primary weapon roles max (including pistols/grenades ofc) and the rest at 15. Do I qualify? Those "crutches" wouldn't even be an issue if people played around them properly. Playing competitive shouldn't mean playing stupid (like sitting in the open on a road). Besides, if people are so competitive what's the issue with "crutch" weapons or tactics like car pushing? If competitive players are so good why are they an issue? They shouldn't be. I don't have issues with atacs, jgs, medusas, nfas's or hvrs. But then again, I pay attention to every enemy location that I can and the timing it takes from point A to B for them, and me, as well as weapon ranges of each person. I "may" only die to carbomb once or twice a match. Once because I push into the vehicle like a dummy, the next time because I wasn't watching my radar while on the road. You'd be hard pressed to have me die consistently to a car bomb, or any explosive that isn't a volcano (while im getting point)

You "used" to see almost no pmgs at all. Then it got buffed and you used to see so many it was overbearing. Yes you saw OCAs, yes "sometimes" you saw just as many in a district, however most of the time PMG was used more. PMG didn't gain "holytrinity" status by being equal to OCA lol.

I have never claimed to be completely sportsmanlike. Though I do never say gg unless the losing team does, when it came to weapon usage or tactics, if the enemy or his teammate did it (at any point), it was fair game. Use ntec with HB or QS at any point? Congrats, I won't feel bad about giving you your own medicine. Keep calling me a hypocrite if it makes you feel better, but you know damn well that HB and qsing was used extensively even by high ranking clans and players back then. I don't feel bad about calling for their nerf/removal while using it. You clearly missed me using NTEC without out it then. You know, before I maxed my rifleman level and switched over to pointman, maxed that and now am leveling the other 3 remaining. But that's nothing new since you've never actually grouped with me and only played in the same team, like.. once or twice a year lol. I don't need to grasp at straws, there's been little change in the forums since then, aside from fewer overall posts. I don't need to play victim when you started namecalling first and calling others "bad players". /shrug, don't need to play victim at that point.

No, I've had an issue with NTEC, not because another weapon got nerfed. I felt it needed nerfed for a while, they touched HB and I thought that would have fixed the issue with it, but it didn't. What weapon did they nerf to make NTEC an issue? It certainly wasn't the obeya,obir, or star, the only 3 weapons that in some form "somewhat" competed against the NTEC. Obeya got nerfed, but that wasn't why I had issues with NTEC either, even after it got buffed sooo. State of the forums? Have you been on forums consistently since 2012? lol The state of the forums is actually normal atm, if not slow. Believe it or not lol. True, dethreaters are an issue for new players, i've been saying that for years, and all my suggestions for it fell on deaf ears /shrug Dunno, probably for the same reason so called competitive players care, if the game isn't balanced it isn't fun. If weapons like the C-9 ran rampant there's a problem and not fun, and isn't "competitive", just like if there's too many weapons like Odin series. Casual players want most weapons to be viable, even if they aren't meta. If something is too powerful in the meta, and buffing a non-meta weapon to that power level would litterally destroy balance, the only other option is to tone the meta weapon down slightly while buffing the non-meta. The primary point of casuals wanting balance is to make the game more "fun" and have a larger choice of weapons rather than what was called "the holy trinity" for an obvious reason. If they were really that good they'd be able to accurately discuss weapon niches, ranges, and where one is strong, if one is too strong and where (if at all), and where the weapon is weak in comparison to other weapons within the same role and niche. I didnt state the ATAC got buffed, I said it got nerfed within a month. I said to someone else that I didn't know that they buffed they atac. But please twist words lol. Oh yes, I abused it, just like the majority of the playerbase. Ooooh im such a bad guy...

I didn't want it to be identical to the star, and quite frankly the general idea was to maintain that both AR's STAR and NTEC, being F2P, one being better in CQC - mid, the other "mid". The STAR used to have a much slower bloom recovery (was is 2.5?or 3.0?) when I originally suggested the bloom reduction to 4.0. The reason for the 4.0 would be tune it down a little in midrange for obeya/obir/snipers at 50-60m or so to do a little better. Though I will concede that 4.25 or so may be a better stat for the suggestion, rather than 4.0. I'm fine with PMG having higher damage, i don't believe that it's very overbuffed. As I said, i wouldn't mind tweaking the crouch accuracy, or range on it slightly, however any other changes I wouldn't know about because I don't want to break it and make it useless, as it was buffed along a fine line. Most suggestions i've made directly to weapons, were generally "minor", 0.05ttk increases, or minor accuracy buffs, or ttk reductions. Though recently I had suggested "iterative" buff changes where one was minor, and if it wasn't good enough, try "this" stat change instead, mostly so that hey this didn't fix it but it made the weapon "stronger" they could then tweak it a little more hopefully without it breaking it. I can't really say i see "far more" pmgs, i do not often see OCA's, and i see a lot more PMGs than OCAs generally. In the past they had been roughly equal, leaning towards PMG for edgelords and OCAs for most other people, but there had been a much larger pop, and OCA was still considered "good". I'm still confused as to why, the OCA still maintaining its accuracy buff, but not TTK reduction, is considered "trash" by some??? Like, OCA is still good guys, lol.

even then its a 4s ttk lol

How dare filthy casuals have an opinion or say on anything. What if I told you, proper weapon balance makes the game more enjoyable for casual players? Not that it matters to you. How dare player experience be enjoyable for most players. I enjoy elitist attitudes, because in most games i've played they get consistently proven wrong, and still think that they matter more than normal players.

If you fire the NTEC at ~.19 or 1.14ttk interval you will fire the ntec with perfect accuracy at range (that'll never happen without a macro). My issue with it for the longest time was bloom recovery and TTK. I wanted it to be at 4.0 rather than the current 5.0 for recovery, and a ttk of .75 same as star. I thought that would balance it. CQC came up because that's what "others" and suggested, and what LO had went with, though a direct TTK change similar to star would have done the trick. I myself didn't really care for LOs CQC nerfs, but figured that if they'll never touch the bloom recovery, and settled for welp, i guess the cqc changes are "enough". The weapon is supposed to be effective midrange. Midrange weapons like the obir, obeya, and ntec have similar ttks at range when you account for human error. However, in comparison to other AR's, there's a reason why NTEC outshines them drastically because of bloom recovery. Star and far have 3.5, obeya has 2.27, NTEC has 5.0. I personally had little complaint about the CQC aspect of the NTEC, though I did find jumpshooting somewhat dumb with it and it could do well against other cqc weapons, i didn't find it too overpowering in cqc otherwise. I would have been happy with a jump shooting nerf along with reduced bloom recovery. But again, that didn't happen, so I settled with what they did, though I did say I didn't feel it was the right way to go about it initially. I just shut up about it and figured i might as well be happy they bothered to do anything. PMG was forgotten in the sense that almost no one used it because they all switched to NTEC. They also stopped mentioning it in nerf threads despite what used to be almost monthly threads on it. PMG was overbuffed in 2013. I know that, I used to use it prebuff. I even suggested on forums that it get buffed because the OCA was in a much better state (believe it or not i did want the original PMG buffed and never called to nerf the oca until they unnecessarily buffed it, in which i said revert it back to prebuff). After the buff it became too strong so i primarily used OCA instead and stuck with it and shotguns. It's not hard to struggle against a PMG, PMG has higher damage in comparison to the OCA. Most of the time I get tagged 2-3 hits with a pmg, think i can peak 5cm from the corner to finish a kill and die before i can blink because god knows why lol. OCA doesn't do that, the damage scales less harsh from OCA so even thinking of peaking is safer. "Plenty of people still use OCA" but go anywhere and you'll see far more PMGs, again, it got overbuffed. I don't want it hard nerfed, even if it's used a little more than OCA afterwords i'd be fine, however I feel they overbuffed it initially, and have stuck by that since 2013. Tap its range, crouch accuracy, or something slightly. pmg perc used to be the big thing several years ago as well, so nothing really changed on that end. Same ol' same ol'

You're right, people totally don't freak out after getting hit by a 65-85% shotgun blast, or 550 from scout. *eyeroll*

HVR ghostshots ring a bell ^,.,^

I still see a lot of ntecs, though there are fewer than there used to be, and other weapons have popped up. For a while there you'd end up going against full teams of 3-4 ntecs. You know, because it's balanced and all They'll jump on anyone and anything they know supported reworking/nerfing the NTEC. Even when the change was necessary, because they can't imagine that a weapon that overperformed most other weapons in the same niche was actually imbalanced. You seem to have the wrong idea consistently. I didn't like jump shooting, however I never called for jump shooting to be nerfed, in fact, while they were suggesting the said change in forums, I literally said I didn't think it was a good idea. (However, I won't complain about no longer getting corner jumped by a full auto spray either) So sorry not sorry. The "bloom feature" was from G1 years ago, and it didn't really even touch the problem that the ntec had anyways. As I stated a billion times and you haven't gotten through your head, I wanted the bloom recovery nerfed to 4.0. But at the point of the nerf I was happy about any change happening. Though G1's bloom change did make it a little more inconsistent, the weapon is consistent if you fire within the right tempo/rof. Keep calling it RNG if it makes you feel better. If you weren't firing it wrong it wouldn't be blooming so bad. And if g1's rework (it was litterally called a rework) hurt the weapon so much, it sure as hell wouldn't of been the number 1 AR afterwords for years. You mean the community that died because the cheaters, glitches, trash players, griefers, trolls, broken weapons, and tryhards scared away? Let me guess, I'm the "real" problem is because NTEC got nerfed. Keep calling me delusional, it's clear that you really are clueless. Nerfing the NTEC was intentional to make it so that OTHER MIDRANGE WEAPONS would be used MORE OFTEN. The literal point was to nerf it so other midrange weapons could shine a little bit more. The OBEYA, OBIR, and such really don't need a buff (though obir could use its range back) NTEC is still being used. I've still ran into teams with 2-3 of them in a group of 4, and I've played almost daily. Keep complaining and thinking that the NTEC was gutted. It wasn't. Is it good at cqc anymore? No, but that's the tradeoff of being good at midrange. It's not the "Jack of all trades" star. I've seen a number of more obeyas than obirs. Even seen a few FARs as well. I still see plenty of NTECs, as for Shotguns and PMGs? Imagine that, two weapons that used to be heavily used until shotgun nerf, and PMG got forgotten because NTEC became overused. (I can't imagine why anyone would use NTEC over PMG if the NTEC was balanced hmmm....) Yes, some people moved to the "pmg", you know, the CQC weapon that a ton of people have been calling a nerf for since it got overbuffed in 2013. But hey, best complain about the ntec nerf because NTEC kept it in check right? You think that it was balanced? You play the same game I did right? No of course you did, you just didn't care. You wanted your meta gun that was good at everything with no downsides. If you bothered to open your eyes you'd have realized the problems the NTEC's state was causing. But instead you'd rather complain about players having more midrange "options" than just ntec.

Gun seems fine. They nerfed the cqc capabilities on it but left midrange intact, it's still heavily used but you see more obeyas, obirs, and fars/stars now than you used to. Which was the intent of the change anyways, so i have no real issue with it.

Don't get me wrong, they literally are, but it's always fun to use them. The accuracy overtime one is the best one imo, and it's always fun to fire at people crossing the street and watching it get more accurate until they die lol. Even prefiring a corner then popping works with it which is hilarious. But yeah 14stk and .8ttk isn't very great for their accuracy. I mean, that's your opinion, which is fine, though I disagree. We really don't need smg's made more accurate to "combat corner camping". For their accuracy sub 15m they are fine as is. Making them that accurate would be worse off in many situations with cover, from corners, to crouched cover, because you just "fire at the tiny hitbox" and hitting extremely accurately at full auto. Taking out corner campers and playing cover right i get can be difficult (though i generally don't have issues with it), however cqc weapons shouldn't be reworked just to combat corners. There's a reason why you have grenades, and multiple ways into an objective, along with explosive weapons. If you're having issues try new tactics.

A while back G1 or LO had made it so that /who was essentially useless due to a minority of players using it to hunt down? certain players to grief them. I used to use it to find player names i knew but didn't have on friends list to group, and see who i could expect as opposition. I'd like at least some functionality of /who back as in its current state it feels useless. My suggestion is that once you tick the "searchable in district" UI button, that you then remain searchable via /who even when you relog/disconnect. That way you do not have to constantly recheck it. This would allow players to check it if they want to be searchable at all times until they manually uncheck the box.

We know you try your best at whatever you do. Even if it gets ignored.

They had changed the STK on the atac, i'm almost positive of that. I'm not aware of other changes they had done to the atac though, but that's likely because such changes flew under my radar. Still, they buffed the atac several times? interesting...

I said weapons that were "too powerful" "versatile" or "powercreeped". I didnt just say powercreeped. Most new weapons G1 added were either A. Overpowered or B. Underpowered most weren't "balanced". I wasn't saying the ATAC necessarily was part of powercreep. Only that it had been nerfed after creation.

i meant the C-2 "troublemaker", i get the numbers mixed up. my bad Merged. The issue with that is then it becomes much more effective at range as well. Look at the one odin series smg which gains accuracy on fire. It goes from "maybe" a decent 15m kill, then just melts people at 30-40m. This isn't bad in the ODIN case, as it's got both a high ttk and high stk and doing so is balanced for it (and that one is my favorit odin smg). But with other smg's that would be much more of an issue, imagine making the accuracy of the PMG better (*throws up a little*). Making the OCA be even more accurate (After they already buffed its accuracy once with the TTK) to the suggested level, would cause a balance issue. If it's that much of an issue, using an fbw or .45 would be a better option if pushing a corner, but most times, rushing a corner leaner is a death sentence to begin even using a rifle or pistol. Hence why you generally grenade corners, or go for a flank/corner where an enemy "isn't" and ambush whoever's doing the rotation there. It'd be honestly dumb if SMG's could easily and accurately kill someone who's got "5 inches" of body out of a corner while leaning. Less bloom on NTEC would mean that it can kill you *faster* at 50m. Most guns are balanced by using the bloom and the recovery to inflate the ttk with the accuracy. As such reducing bloom, ALSO reduces said ttk, which is intentionally made to be an approximate length for certain distances. That could become an issue on a number of weapons, like the ntec, other weapons like the star, it may not be so much of one. But I don't believe that's a good idea. Atac was nerfed within a month or so of it being released. I personally didn't think it was "too powerful" but it had been nerfed by a 1stk, im not sure of any other changes that happened to it.

I'm not saying the NTEC was powercreeped, the NTEC would fall under "too versatile". Powercreeped would have been like C-9, ATAC, Nano, and a few others that got nerfed after they came out. Ah, okay makes sense. Yeah the initial statement kinda sounded like you "wanted" powercreep and im like whuuuut bruh. I don't want weapons being completely overnerfed. Most of the changes i've ever suggested for nerfing have been minor changes, i don't want to see weapons go from like... NTEC power level to ODIN series powerlevel. (That would be BAD)

They weren't moving in the right direction though? Most of the weapons that needed and got nerfed were far too effective in comparison to literally "every" weapon within their role, and at the same time the problem weapons took over other weapons which should have had a clear advantage over it within their niches. Mechanics from these weapons also broke them more than necessary. Sprint shooting borked the game's player location determining system, so that you would be firing on someone, and not hit them because they weren't actually there. Jump shooting to pixel shoot someone at 80+m crouched behind cover. the list goes on... Powercreep should be limited at all times. Powercreep is not something good. A lot of games end up powercreeping and it messes up the game balance extremely bad, and every "new" weapon just gets stronger and stronger until it forces PTW. The objective of balance is to reduce powercreep, and maintain a good balance across the board, so that players have "options" not "must haves". That there is the problem that people have with nerfing these weapons that are too powerful, too versatile, or powercreeped. APB's design team has stated multiple times already, that they intend to have players have viable options, NOT must haves. If this means nerfing NTEC, or reducing the intial buff on the PMG, and doing things like removing jump shooting, so be it. Not every weapon should be a laser, and not every weapon should at all times hit its min ttk. Fire most weapons full auto in rl and you'd have worse recoil and worse accuracy than what your make believe "APB bloom and recoil" indicate.

Many of the weapons needed changed sooner, it's just as you know, G1 was lazy and didn't make changes quickly. It took 2 years AFTER it was discovered the jumpshot accuracy was a bug in the weapons code, for the scout before they fixed it. They took 4+years to fix simple locations and make them easier to break. They left other weapons completely underpowered for 4-5+years. Do you reaaally think that "it's been this way 9 years" means it shouldn't be changed? We get it, you hate change. Merged. Weapons in APB shouldn't be pinpoint accurate. While I can somewhat understand your aggravation, there's literally zero reason to have every weapon be lasers. RNG can be aggravating at times, however most times i've encountered where "omg i should have gotten that kill he's in my reticule", was because bad server performance not because "omg rng". APB isn't COD or CSGO or other games. As such it's game mechanics don't revolve around "spray with near pinpoint accuracy". Sounds like the PMG just kept missing you and didn't have you in his reticule, not rng. Those "more accurate than other meta" weapons tended to be overpowered in some fashion or another, whether it be because qsing, jumpshooting, sprint shooting, accuracy, or damage. Might I suggest that you try to get better rather than relying on a weapon to carry you? I don't know what game you played back before car surf and car spawners. However I was still heavily spawn pushed back then, mostly it was specific clans like RAOV charging spawns and hunting them down til your team spawned up to 500m from the objective but it was pretty common back then. Such tactics only became easier because of car spawners and torch. The only way to counter such tactics is to double team the pusher, or to destroy the vehicle. Another method is to get into a building before you're seen or choose a better spawn if possible. This "issue" isn't going to go away until the players doing so either quit playing, or people adapt to punish such tactics to the point where it's not worth it. Your choice. How then would people know if they are using a weapon wrong? If you don't brick wall them and the weapon remains effective, then there's litterally no reason not to use the weapon "outside" of its niche at all times.

True, and car spawners make this issue much worse. WTF is german fortress? However that balcony has been needing fixed forever by simon. Those areas could be fixed like TENG had been easily, hopefully we see that sometime. G1 had done it a little, but they ended up hosing additional changes because the difficulty it feels like. (They fixed the place by bloodroses in fin, and made a car spawner disappear for ages) Teams only ever stick to 2v1 and 3v1 because it means they can easily kill people with minimal losses. It has nothing to do with negating RNG, as it does "taking out an enemy quickly". I've never charged 2v1 or 3v1 at someone thinking "oh crap gotta stop my teamate from dying due to RNG." No, it's "there's an enemy here take him out". Weapon accuracy is fine, stop trying to full auto weapons like they're lasers and it won't be an issue. APB FORCES you to burst and tap fire at range. It does so for a reason, and whining about it because you can't figure that reason out is dumb. You're not meant to hit the min ttk for rifles at their max damage distance. Maybe it wouldn't have been nerfed if it was actually balanced and fun to play *against*. People seem to forget that aspect of balance as well. You can claim somethings balanced all day, but if no one likes playing against it, and feel they have to use it as well just to compete and do "decent" then it's not as balanced as you claim. Oh no, how dare the meta not be what it's been for 7+years, how boring. The weapon balance is pretty good aside from a the small list of problem weapons that have always either been too powerful upon release, buffed too much, or completely under powered on release. Here on Jericho we still see lots of different weapons, pmg is still used over the OCA most cases by certain people, however OCA's still exist, there's still a number of other weapons being used. If you're salty about that car play, might i suggest not sitting on the roads? Or concs? or you know, any other explosive method that doesn't mean being dumb and letting enemies rush you? If APB is about "competition" and "competing" then why not compete and find new ways to "compete" against your servers "stale" meta? Rather than just choosing to die by standing on the road all day. NTEC is still so called "competitive" and it's still used a lot on Jericho, i've seen a handful of more stars and fars as well, as well as obeyas. Most weapons as newbie and F2P still have the same strengths and weaknesses. If it's not working now it's not because they nerfed the "ntec". The "NTEC" didn't keep PMGs in check, and if it did and is why the PMG was used much less, then wouldn't you agree that it was too effective in cqc and the reason SMGs and shotguns were used "less"? (FAR isn't just armas and JT, however it was locked behind an event, same as those other SMG rifles) We went from "HVR NTEC PMG CARBINE" to "HVR PMG NTEC CARBINE" hmm..... i don't actually see a "meta" change, however other weapons are being used more. I see no change in people charging with vehicles though, aside from what carspawns have created with it. It's always the same people car pushing anyways. Merged. APB's weapon system is made so that you can hit the TTK in cqc fairly easily, however they inflate the TTK at ranges intentionally. Rather than having lasers where every AR has 1-1.2TTK, they have it so that they can TTK at .7 in cqc, and when you fire at range, the bloom recovery and recoil makes it closer to 1.0-1.2s. This is intentional so that you can have faster cqc fights, but ranged fights last longer. This is to balance distanced firing as well so that rifles with TTKs of .8-1.2, and snipers have a TTK of .9 (ISSRB CQC sniper capabilities), with an average of ~1.4 (oblivion/ISSR) to 1.75 (HVR) can compete fairly well against each other 50m, without getting lasered at .7s by AR's. There are RNG moments because "omg recoil" and "oh no, i bloomed too much". While you can't really do anything except try to control recoil, the bloom is ones own fault. Can it be frustrating at times? Absolutely, however, that also falls on you to properly handle your weapon and adjust your aim as you fire. I think you have the idea of "niche" wrong as well. A weapon with a 50m range for example, doesn't mean that its "niche" is the "full" 50m. Look at the OCA, its 30m range, but a 0-15/20m "niche" where it's most effective. A weapon's "niche" is not fully defined by the total range the weapon has, it's defined by the accuracy, handling, ttk, and bloom/bloom recovery of the weapon. The star has a more 0-35m niche with decent tap/burst past that to 50m. The NTEC has a ~5/10-60m niche. The HVR has about 20m-100m niche where it's capable but it's best closer to 60-85 more outside the midrange where NTEC/STAR can be issues for it if it doesn't have cover. JG has a niche of 5m but full damage up to 10m ATAC has a niche of 0-25/30m or so, 40m full damage The niche is defined by the "effective range" not the "total range". The "effective" range would be where it's most effective at with all factors considered. As such weapons in APB have both an "effective range" and "overall range". Niches are then defined within the effective range via weapon handling, and "overall range" simply means where full damage "drops off". A lot of people don't understand weapon functionality within these "niches" and try to go the whole way with it, or claim weapons that are effective from the entire 0-Xm range are "balanced" (they aren't). This is why APB weapon balance is complex and difficult as well. Buffing a single weapon in one niche, can impede it into other weapon niches where it should not be effective. As such any weapon "buffs" HAVE to be handled much more carefully than weapon nerfs. However, nerfs must be handled in a way that it makes the weapon less effective in the intended ranges where they don't want it to be as effective, while maintaining its effectiveness in the range niche they want it to be in. You can somewhat see this in the NTEC nerf, where they nerfed its full auto and CQC, but left it's midrange capabilities intact, and when G1 buffed the STAR's bloom recovery, maintaining it's cqc-lowermid range effectiveness, while making it able to fire into the further "40-57m" distance easier as well, or the Cobra buff where they reduced the TTK and adjusted bloom/recovery so that the weapon can full auto in cqc, but is pretty good at bursting up to 30-40m, but has difficulties at 50m. There tends to be more thought into weapon balance than just "nerf this and make it useless", or "buff this completely". The changes tend to be geared towards where they want it to be effective, and with about what TTK within those ranges do they feel is balanced. Hence why you fire an ntec at 50m and it takes 1.0-1.3s to kill, while using the obeya at 50m, also takes up to 1.0-1.3s to kill. Despite the NTEC having .7ttk and obeya having .8 ttk. But cqc obeya can fairly easily hit a .9 or so, while ntec can be at .7. NTEC is meant to be more cqc to mid, while obeya can be more effective than ntec past 50m up to 100m, it comes with a much higher ttk at those further ranges, so that snipers have a chance. Hopefully this makes sense.