notHunky

I mean it's still there, it's just random people in the district can no longer hunt you down and you can't go on rampages anymore. Also if it's really that much of an issue, all you have to do is pay a bribe to a contact to get your notoriety level down between missions before you get a bounty on your head.

God forbid anyone have their huge killstreaks interrupted once every few missions as a form of balance whenever they're curbstomping their enemies! Like whenever it happened to me I never got bothered by it because it usually meant I'm doing really good and sometimes go on a rampage when half the district starts chasing me. Also it was a fun distraction to try to get to a bounty before anyone else while waiting for a mission. Either way I digress. When I first started the game many years back, I wanted my character to roleplay a bounty hunter but sadly that's not really possible anymore. Maybe instead it would be a nice addition to bring back bounties in the form of a randomized world event where NPCs occasionally spawn as targets on the map for both factions district wide?

Somehow they're going to have to create separate instances from the normal district because turning people invisible/intangible won't stop them from pushing around cars being driven by NPCs. If they do go with instanced missions, I hope they add things for people to do in the normal district outside of missions. There should be much more stuff to do than just ramraiding/witnessing.

You're being pedantic and know full well what they mean. He's talking about the kind of people who go out of their own way to consistently get matched against inexperienced low ranking players by dethreating to feel better about themselves (we're talking about blatant rank 255 golds in bronze district levels of cringe). We don't mean the people getting matched up against inexperienced players due to the absolutely garbage matchmaking system in silver districts. If you are one of those people who does intentionally dethreat to curbstomp inexperienced players, then you're breaking the code of conduct and actively contributing to the reasons of why this game has a low/dying population and why I can't get my friends to play this game.

Do those ridiculous people with OSCARs who never go below a 15 to 1 KD ratio count?

Did I miss a different weapon patch, because I thought the last one buffed Ntec by making the bloom smaller in full auto? Or at least the last time I used it, I was killing pretty easily at short ranges even with the OCA 626 buff.

The PIG was a cheap gimmick which was easily abused and everyone knows it. What needs to happen now is the other LTL options need to be made viable. The CCG needs more ammo and to remove that atrocious muzzle smoke which completely obscures what you’re shooting at, and the NL9 needs the same accuracy + fire rate as the Corsair. Edit: although I think it would be fair to increase the reload speed of the PIG in its current state and increasing the range to 15 meters.

I'm still in the middle of testing some weapons so I'll only comment on the one's which I have the most experience with or which stand out the most. N-TEC 7 URSUS: I thought the changes would have been too much, but honestly they didn't hit this weapon as hard as I thought. This weapon is still a good option and people still complain when I use it. Overall I think it's in a good place where it's competitive but not overpowered like it was before. OCA-EW 626: It definitely packs a punch now, but it's hard for me to gauge the overall effectiveness of this weapon within it's specified role due to changes made to the SR15 and NTEC-5. I will go into more details on those weapons which will be marked with three stars ***. OCA Whisper: Seems more fair now without the 50m effective range. Obeya CAP40: This smg is much more reliable now, thanks for the changes. ATAC: The nerf didn't affect this weapon nearly as much as I thought it would but due to it's niche role in being a hybrid between an assault rifle and an SMG, I don't think decreasing the range/accuracy any further would be the best solution. It's a very easy weapon to use, so maybe a VERY slight decrease in fire rate would be a good option? Maybe just enough to increase the TTK to 0.735 instead of 0.700 ***N-TEC 5: I'm not even using mobility sling and this thing is way too effective up close. I shouldn't be consistently deleting SMG users in CQC. The change to maximum bloom needs to be reverted because right now I can straight up spray and pray with similar or better accuracy than a PMG. OBIR: The nerf on ammo was a bit too much. Could we please set the reserve ammo to 180? Everything else is fine. N-HVR Scout: I stand by my previous statement of saying this change makes the NHVR 762 not worth using. People can still jumpshot with this weapon, and it's far easier to use in a sniper battle. I've been able to miss several consecutive shots and still land the kill on the 2nd hit, and it feels a bit cheesy because the scout is supposed to be a skill based weapon which grants mobility and situational awareness in exchange for punishing inaccurate shots. ***Joker SR-15: Dear lord this thing is an absolute monster at the moment, and not in a good way. The weapon is so strong, there is no reason for me to even equip my OCA 626 because the SR15 is a straight upgrade to it. It has better accuracy, better mobility/dodging (due to warping), less shots to kill, better effective range, better hipfire accuracy, and virtually the same TTK as an OCA if you have the timing right. Also people can equip cooling jacket 3 on this weapon with barely any penalty due to the bloom recovery buff. The majority of my matches yesterday were all carbine users who were wiping the floor with everyone, and it was the complete opposite of fun. One of the few matches I won that day was only after equipping my own default SR15 with no mod slots. With that weapon I was able to consistently wipe the opposite team in a 2vs2 match where the opposition was gold and their weapons consisted of an Ursus and an NHVR 762 (which are not bad weapons especially in the area we fought in where there were rooftops and open spaces surrounded by cover). Multiple times when I wiped them, my team mate was busy doing the objective and it was more like a 2vs1 situation. I didn't think this small change to accuracy/bloom would bring this thing up to a similar status as the OSCAR but it did, and that's not a good thing since the OSCAR can do the job of like 3 different gun categories in the game and outperform all of them. PLEASE, keep the extra ammo but revert the changes to bloom per shot on the SR15. I cannot stress enough how utterly game breaking these two weapons currently are in the meta. The SR15 didn't need an accuracy buff, the OSCAR just needs a nerf to accuracy and bloom recovery. Colby RSA: I tried so hard to make this weapon work, but it just doesn't in it's current state. In fact I think it's worse off than it was before, and the ACT44 golden marksman completely outclasses this weapon, despite the nerfs to the ACT44 as a whole. The changes on the RSA are self defeating. Why would you increase bloom recovery if you can't make use of it due to the weapon's fire rate being nerfed? Keep the bloom recovery, but please revert all other changes. PIG: If we're going to eliminate cheap gimmicks (which I think we absolutely should in the case of the PIG), then the rest of the LTL arsenal needs to be brought up to date. The Stabba CCG is severely lacking in ammo and the muzzle flash/smoke effect has completely obscured my target and gotten me killed on more than one occasion, the TG-8 needs a slight decrease in time to stun/TTS, and the NL9 needs to have the same accuracy + fire rate as the Corsair.

I can't speak for anyone else since I've seen a lot of max ranks tryharding in bronze lately, but getting gold means I literally cannot progress my enforcer character if all my contacts are in Waterfront and the only instance with players is a bronze district. If everything wasn't locked behind rank 195, I would just play silver district and fight club. At least when I see low level opposition, I try using difficult or underpowered weapons, reduce my rate of fire so they have more time to shoot back, or just straight up switch to using Oblivion + R2 Harbinger combo; unlike some of my team members who will happily roflstomp over everyone with an OSCAR and go full ham regardless.

I'll still wait and see how it plays out but going by how this works on paper, I think you guys may have tried to change a little too much at once with certain weapons. I'm hoping this will be seen as constructive instead of just adding onto the dogpile of hate any weapon changes get. First I just want to establish some credentials to sort of steelman my point of view and what my experiences have been. I tend to like using weapons more for fun and enjoyment/challenge now rather than sticking to the meta, so I have plenty of experience with using the more unconventional weapons in this game. Roughly around 7 years I've been consistently gold (because I know everyone is going to complain about ranks), but I've since moved down to silver rank and played a lot more with the forgotten weapons of this game because constantly playing against the same people with same top tier meta weapons was not fun at all. It constantly forced me to throw away 75% of my arsenal in favor of a few specialized loadouts, and to use janky metagaming tactics to basically cheese my way through several matches. It became very toxic very quickly. With that out of the way, onto the weapon changes. N-TEC 7 Ursus: This is one of the go to guns I switch to when the opposition is tryharding. It definitely needed a nerf, but I think giving it the same marksman accuracy while moving as a scoped Ntec may be a little much. Totally fine with the bloom nerfs though since the thing felt like a CR762 which requires less effort (within it's effective range). OCA-EW 626: Buff is fine and brings it up as a competitor to the PMG before it got nerfed in this balance pass (will address that later). OCA-EW 626 Whisper: Changes seem ok but I'm uncertain if it will be overshadowed by the regular OCA due to that gun now having a better max bloom and bloom recovery. Need to test it out. Colby PMG: Another weapon I used to switch to when people either tryhard or start rubber-banding all over the place due to the janky movement caused by carbine/oscar users. The weapon probably did need a bit of a nerf, but not much. Individually those nerfs sound good, but all together I think it will end up overshooting the goal causing the OCA to be the new meta SMG. Specifically I think the nerf to standing accuracy + accuracy while crouched is a bit much since you're already reducing the effective range by a good amount on a weapon which wasn't too accurate to begin with. My main problem with the PMG was how the weapon had a habit of throwing lucky RNG shots which could absolutely destroy people from like 45 meters away despite the weapon clearly intending to be an up close heavy hitting spray and pray type SMG. To distinguish itself from the PMG, I feel the OCA is going in a good direction by being a slightly more consistent bullet hose which achieves accuracy through volume of fire at ranges the PMG may be hit or miss; so the PMG now has more of a risk vs reward kind of playstyle which encourages aggressive close quarters engagements. Obeya CAP40 Sergeant: I used this weapon a good amount but it seemed to suffer from too much compromising between the PMG and OCA. The time to kill is certainly serviceable, but the poor accuracy/high bloom would constantly get me killed in situations I would otherwise have won by simply using an OCA or PMG. The accuracy and bloom buffs were much needed, and I think the weapon will be in a good place now. FAR: Can't really comment because I don't have enough experience with the weapon. Atac: I used to use this weapon a lot before the much unneeded buff which made this thing an annoying all range powerhouse requiring zero skill. For a while I stopped using it until it got toned down a bit before this new balance patch came out. Honestly I don't think the way it was before this current patch was problematic, but more that it's previous reputation as an overpowered nightmare left a lasting psychological impact on the playerbase to still fear it. Overall I was able to counter it by using guns which outrange it, or just get up in their face with a shotgun/SMG. I think the Maximum bloom nerf is going to be felt way harder than the range decrease. Maybe it would be a good idea to start with a range decrease, and then maybe increase the bloom if it's still too powerful? I mean the thing pretty much goes to maximum bloom immediately after you fire the first 1 or 2 bullets. Maybe in the next balance patch, the gun should bloom less per shot to give a more gradual decrease in accuracy as you're holding down the trigger? N-tec 5: RIFLE IS FINE (this is a meme I'm not trying to yell at anyone lol). My only concern is the NTEC was already pretty decent within point blank ranges which I found to be annoyingly consistent against SMG users. If they get close enough to the point where bloom no longer matters much, the NTEC can still output more DPS than an OCA which is kind of broken IMO. According to what I'm seeing at least, the minimum TTK of an NTEC is 0.7 while the changes to the OCA put it at 0.768. Even adjusted to cooling jacket III, the OCA will only go down to a 0.714 TTK (if I didn't screw up the math). Colby SNR 850: The reasons for implementing the increase to equip time is such a rare situation which basically has no practical applications outside of fightclub, that I really don't see a need for this. You already need to be close to within shotgun ranges just to hit anyone with this pistol, so anyone running a shotgun + SNR has a huge vulnerability to anyone with a rifle or even some SMGs whenever the SNR user has to move to an objective/ in the open. At most the equip time should just be increased to the default of other pistols. There's no reason for this weapon to take longer than an RFP-9 to pull out. OBIR: Seems fair, but I think the ammo nerf may be a little much. Maybe bring it to 180 instead? PIG: *Standing ovation*. Although to offset that, I'd probably increase the range from 10m to 15m. Also the stamina damage on Perc grenades is still too high. On LTL weapons as a whole, I think the NL9 shotgun needs to be more consistent like the Corsair. I've used both and the Corsair is so much better than the NL9 for simply being more accurate and having a faster rate of fire. The accuracy and fire rate of those two weapons should probably match since the Corsair is straight up an NL9 using lethal ammunition. The Stabba CCG I think is okay but could use more ammo and a different "muzzle flash" effect because the smoke completely obscures what your shooting at half the time unless you intentionally turn off particle effects. Scout: I don't think this needed a change. The difference between the Scout and the N-HVR762 is the Scout requires better aim to balance the fact it has much better mobility, and not having to hardscope for maximum damage increases situational awareness. There's basically no reason I'd take an N-HVR762 over the Scout now. N-HVR 762: Honestly this is probably the one change I'm completely indifferent to because I doubt it will really have any affect on gameplay. Compared to how cheap the N-HVR used to be, I'm more or less okay with how the weapon is now since hardscoping is basically a requirement now and quickswitching is basically dead. S1-NA Manic: Basically a better ATAC except with better consistency while hipfiring. Yeah I think decreasing accuracy a bit was a good call. I don't think the slight damage nerf will have too much of an impact due to the high fire rate on top of already being a fairly accurate weapon. SR-15: I think this buff is ok but it's still nowhere close to the level of an OSCAR which seems to be the stated goal of this tweak. SR-15 used to be another go to gun I used against tryhards due to it's versatility and janky movement mechanics; until I switched to the OSCAR which straight up feels dirty to use. I will say the OSCAR does require skill and good tracking to use, but once someone masters that weapon it's absolutely the most frustrating thing to fight against. In practice the gun has way better overall accuracy than the SR15, virtually no bloom, is competitive with SMGs within their preferred ranges due to SEVERELY janky server-side movement in some cases which makes tracking nearly impossible during a firefight, and it’s movement speed while aiming down the sight is fast like using an ATAC. Also the burst fire + movement speed is pretty good for corner popping like an OBIR. I know in text form it’s a bit hard to visualize, but playing against this weapon is like trying to kill a shotgunner who can consistently kill you anytime, anywhere, at any range below an NTEC-5, with virtually no weaknesses or hard counters to exploit. That's unless you’re hiding behind a corner and they just happen to run directly into the barrel of your shotgun (not likely). The amount of team wipes I’ve seen from one guy with an OSCAR is so stupid that half the time I just feel like backing out of matches if there’s a gold ranked max level enemy wielding one. I’ve legitimately had more fun trying to kill speed hackers than trying to kill certain OSCAR users because speed hackers at least sometimes don’t have a good understanding of how the game works which at least gives you a chance to sometimes kill them. Also speed hackers at least have an explainable reason as to why their movement is janky and all over the place and I don’t feel like I’m getting constantly screwed over by the netcode when fighting them. Sorry for that long rant. ACT44: I’m okay with the range nerf, but the new equip time is way too long and will disproportionately harm the “Last Stand” variant of the weapon which already has a long equip time due to the preset mobility sling. RSA: The better bloom recovery was a good start, but I don’t quite follow the logic behind the nerfs. The fire rate of this weapon is already painfully slow compared to anything that isn't an N-HVR, and reducing accuracy while moving + aiming like a scoped NTEC will only exacerbate the issue. You already move at a snail’s pace to begin with while aiming down the sights, and this isn’t a big heavy gun like the DMR which has strengths to offset its lack of speed and mobility (like the hard damage and unique damage over distance). ISSR-B: I could be bit biased on this particular weapon but I love how not many people have figured out how strong this weapon really is. It’s also modeled after one of my favorite firearms. I agree with the change and think this should do a good amount of hard damage since the real thing is designed to fire armor piercing rounds. Colby M-1922: This doesn’t need an ammo buff, it needs way less recoil. Like probably a 50% reduction in recoil. The Curse from the Pack of Revelations is straight up better despite having the same amount of shots to kill and a higher TTK because you can actually hit what you’re aiming at. R-2 Harbinger: I think someone already said this was going to get another look at. IMO this weapon would be much more serviceable if the movement speed while aiming was increased to the same amount as the ACT44, and the maximum bloom was reduced just a little bit. I think it’s a good idea for this weapon to have some element of risk/reward where you can take a gamble and try getting aggressive up close with at least some chance of success if you aim down the sights while fanning the hammer. That would make it fit the role of a gunslinger’s weapon much better. SBSR Variants: I don’t see the point of nerfing these considering how difficult they are to use already. Jump shooting changes: Fair enough

Better yet, why don't we make fightclub have it's own teams like they did with RIOT or certain event districts? That way teams can be autobalanced instead of 5 crims getting rolled on by 16 enforcers? Of course after the engine update and stuff is done. You could spin it as 2 companies warring with each other and paying hired guns from both sides to collect combat data or something for their R&D department.

I'm pretty sure the ATAC already got a decent nerf and now serves the role of "close to midrange weapon" like it's supposed to. Besides most of the true gold players will either outrange you with Ntecs/Obeyas while keeping their distance, or dance around you up close by hipfiring with anything else since Atacs generally require aiming down the sights unless within hugging distance. Only people with good tracking and low latency (AKA not me) are going to kill reliably with an ATAC at closer ranges against anyone above silver. Honestly the SR15 does the same job better and is free.

Probably controversial but I think it would be nice if the game became more like GTA online in the way it handles separating missions and open world districts. By that I mean the normal missions we already play would have it's own instances separate from the open world districts. Also open world districts would have more public events and activities which anyone could participate in like expanding upon how raiding works and random world events as a way to generate money and resources outside of the normal matchmaking missions. Idk maybe it's just me but running missions nonstop just feels monotonous and sometimes frustrating especially when you get the same people every few matches. There's a few places where map balance and spawns are absolutely horrendous, but I think threat segregation is a bigger issue which compounds the poor matchmaking. I'd rather have more different match-ups where different people of various skill levels face each other on both teams (example 1 gold 2 silver and 1 bronze on each team, but different names fighting each other for most missions), rather than the current system where the same groups of max level golds keep getting matched up with each other for every single mission, with the occasional occurrence of unfair teams where 3 golds + 1 silver are matched up against a team of 3 silvers and one gold.

Honestly for both sides of the argument, all I can say is git gud. I've never had a problem with car detonators outside of fight club. If all you did was spam cars bombs at the enemy, then lol too bad you can't cheese it anymore. Conversely if you're a hyper aggressive smg/shotgun user, then maybe think twice before chasing after people around a vehicle equipped with explosives 3 or just blow it up first? It's not that hard.

I'm kind of in a weird place on this one. Some weapons definitely need to be tweaked but I feel like gameplay mechanics (and some bugs) have a much larger impact on balance issues. For example: certain missions are built horribly one sided, the spawning system (spawn me 200 meters away from the objective while the enemies spawn within 30 meters of it), people being able to run with items or the VIP by pushing things at max speed with a vegas 4x4 when clearly you're not supposed to be able to go that fast, a bunch of map exploits which allow you to place items/objectives into inaccessible areas (like inside of a wall), rooftop/high areas where there is only one single point of entry, sometimes being able to see enemy names through map geometry, etc...