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(PLEASE FULLY READ BEFORE POSTING ANYTHING BECAUSE THIS TEXT IS GOING IN A TIMELINE ORDER OF GAMERSFIRST PAST UPDATES) Hello there Little Orbit, I have been playing APB since Beta and I have seen many weapons getting nerfed over the years and I wanted to share my opinion about it because I think not everyone followed the stream of things when it comes to weapons nerf and buffs. A lot of things I feel like were forgotten since and it is currently affecting how good the gameplay is when it comes to gun fights. First I would like to apologize for my english since it is not my main language. To begin, over the years I seen many patches about adjusting the weapon damage because other players were not satisfied with how fast they would die in certain situations and such. But let's not forget in beta, servers were not divided by threat level (Green, Bronze, Silver, Gold). So of course, yes a lot of the fights could of been rough because the players crying about certain "overpowered" things in the game when facing in reality Gold player threat as we now know. To come to my opinion, I think the game received a lot of nerf that should of not been applied and thought of to start with because now everything seems to be unbalanced and certain weapons are much better than others and players are constantly relying on these to make them go postitive or have a more control on the battlefield simply. But why does everyone is constantly using the same weapons as the others nowadays in 2019? (Ntec, OCA, NFAS, PMG). In the early days in Beta, the Joker SR115 Carbine was one of the most popular weapon because it was a 5 STK (shot-to-kill) weapon which made it one of the best because you have a lot of strafing mobility with it and the ttk was 0.60 seconds. In a 3rd person view game, of course a weapon like this would become very powerful and was considered the NTEC nemesis. Since the the two have almost the same range**. It suffered a nerf later on making it's damage drop from 21% to 19.5% (210 -> 195) per shot making it a 0.75sec ttk which made people a bit more happy about it but I think it is where everything started to go off because more people was taking advantage of this nerf to cry about other guns such as Obeya rifles and FBW pistol and RFP and shotguns later on... **not anymore since the weapon balance in 2013 or 2014 that led to a rework on all damage on weapon range drop off. I will talk about this later in this text. Some months later, we receive a nerf on weapon hard damage (damage dealt to vehicles). Every weapons hard damage is almost nerfed by half making it almost 3x times slower to take down an enemy cars passing by because you also have to reload in most cases because it won't blow up a car in one magazine. It enforce the players to team up and shoot cars togheter of course but in most situation the guy in the car will always come out alive and be rescued by his team coming over (especially in a low pop game, not a lot of people know how to team up to shoot cars). SO GamersFirst later on hit us with a other patch making it so cars have more health than before making it even HARDER for us to blow a freaking car even if its an entire team shooting it (example: 'Nulander Pioneer/Nomad' with Steel Plating 3). This makes ALL the other cars in the game look USELESS compared to the Vans such as Seyio Espacio and Nulander Pioneer/Nomad with their incredible 1600 health points without any mods (Bishada Rapier has 900 health points). This removed a lot of fun for customizations and a lot less people buying kits on Armas Marketplace since the most useful vehicles in-game right now are the vans. Months later, we get hit by a massive nerf on weapons drop-off range. Making it so every weapons deal even less damage over range than before. Making it so weapons like N-TEC 5 cannot dominate at long range over weapons like Obeya CR762 (marksman) and this one dominate over N-HVR 762 (sniper). We understand GamersFirst tried to make a balance update so good players don't dominate everyone over range with weapons such as a N-TEC or even Joker carbine. I think this is where everything started going down the hill very fast for the game because core aspect for gun fights was in fact unbalanced since the range was playing a REALLY BIG part in the early days. First, weapons such as OCA were harder to use against pistols and carbine users since the range is so small. Secondly, the Snipers and Marksman weapons became master of all because the range for them didn't really matter since most long range had their drop off range set at 70m and 90m for snipers. Pistols and shotguns were most used and most fun to watch in youtube clips (Shini CSG shotgun Gameplay). Suddenly everything became so unbalanced since weapons with a lot of range were dominant in every situations. N-HVR staying 2 shot at every range is like being served cake everyday on a silver plate. On the CQC side the FBW pistol and RFP was becoming so powerful because of their damage becoming dominant in medium and close combat since range didn't "matter" anymore. 5 shots to kill for the FBW making it 0.80 sec ttk close his familiar friend the Joker SR115 Carbine now a 6 STK weapon with 0.75sec ttk (0.05 sec difference but the weapon is not so different even for the range & recoil) making it basicly a baby Joker Carbine. Now you start to see a pattern coming up... NERF NERF NERF. The range patch destroyed how the weapons system worked in this game since weapons are getting less unique. Everyone start using the N-HVR with their quickswitch method (shoot from a pistol then switch to NHVR and shoot right away to gain a kill). This ""unique"" thecnique become popular so quick that it actually shows that people are opting for more range on their weapons because they want to get the most of it when it comes to TTK. Almost no penality on range for an ACT 44 or Colby RSA making it the best of the best. But the amount of tears are growing and growing. Many updates later on are applied to APB to nerf pistols like FBW to make it a 6 STK and other weapons such as ACT 44 and RFP to have more bloom. Yet despite all this huge range patch rework that everyone seems to forget the range stays the same...Unchanged. Weapons with more range still dominate. Everyone uses shotguns in CQC for the power output and for long range you already guessed it, N-HVR and Obeya CR762/OBIR. A small choice of weapons are now available to you making the game less unique/rewarding and less explorations to do. Again later on, GamersFirst hit us with a new patch and nerf damage on shotguns from 80% dmg to 63% dmg per shot for CSG shotguns and something similar for JG couterpart. (As I am talking about this we are getting new rework again for shotguns...sigh). Why is the damage always the reason why a weapon is so overpowered and not the global range? Can we just try to look for other possibilities instead of nerfing everything we find too powerful to use against a low level player? I think the range damage ramp is the real reason why everything is so unbalanced and also all the number of nerf that was applied for weapons to make them more "balanced" against other type of weapons when in reality the range is the real reason why everything is going downhill. Why does a weapon have to absolutetly become a pea shooter after it reach its minimal damage range. I think we should stop nerfing weapons to make them slower to kill. I think we should go back to vanilla and make the range back to what it was. Where a OCA could beat a Joker SSR15 Carbine at 40m if you had the aim and where a Obeya CR762 player wasn't affraid of peaking a Sniper to melt them with 5 clear shot at 90m. The skill cieling was way better in Beta! To conclude, I think Little Orbit should really go back to formula which means they should stick with the old damage system and RANGE then they could really start working on what is the problem about weapon balance. Please don't go down the path of nerfing every weapon in the game LO, we already suffered a lot over the years for it. Every "GOOD" player is regening faster than the damage they receive with Clothing Agent 3 and everyone also use a Sceyio Espacio/Nulander Pioneer as a freaking tank. All the same weapons in missions... NTEC, PMG, OBIR.... nothing is fun anymore. PLEASE GO BACK TO VANILLA APB (IN TERM OF WEAPONS DAMAGE & RANGE) and rebuff the hard damage too because vehicles are giving way too much protection now. I probably forgot to mention more update about nerf and weapons but I am getting a headache trying to keep track of everything as I type this super long text full of juicy information for Little Orbit. Oh and don't even let me get started on Grenade spam now but at least they are trying to fix it right now with consumables... BACK TO VANILLA PLEASE! IT AIN'T ANARCHY IF EVERYONE IS RUNNING AROUND WITH NERF GUNS!!! Have a great day!