My Two Cents on the Current Situation with Gun Balance

[Weeb TheEpicGuyV2 269]

Today I would like to present to you all my opinion on the current situation revolving around the gun balance we have right now.

 

I'll get straight to the point: LO should redefine & reaffirm weapons and the roles they are intended to fulfil. Start from scratch essentially. "But why?" you ask? I shall now explain. APB has been running for a really long time now as we all know, during which ownership has changed hands 2 times (I will not be including Unit Games as they are irrelevant to this discussion). Realtimes Worlds, GamersFirst & Little Orbit each had a vision for APB that they would strive towards while running the game. As each new company would acquire APB, they would bring along their own unique ideology with which they would tweak the game accordingly. The issue with this is that ideologies from previous companies are still in place and when you add a new ideology on top of them, you inevitably will get a clash of ideologies. Think of it akin to a 3-layered cake. You make the bottom layer on day X, the middle layer a week from then, the top layer 2 month later from day X and the filling/icing/toppings etc 3 days from day X. When you put them all together you will get an end product that can be recognised as a cake but if you were to taste it, odds are it would taste awful (yes no one would make a cake like this but it's to help portray the concept).

 

We can observe one instance of ideologies colliding within gun balance. RTW's vision of the game was slow paced with guns taking around a second to kill someone. G1's vision of the game was more fast paced, reducing the TTK to below a second and in some rare instances close to half a second. Finally, LO's vision for guns is still being established so it's not quite clear yet as to what they envision. If you were to examine the guns in-game closely, you would see elements of G1's and RTW's visions lingering about.

 

Starting gun balance over from scratch would eliminate ideologies and visions clashing with one another in this department. Think back to the multi-layer cake analogy. As stated before, preparing the different parts of the cake on completely different dates will lead to an end product that is unsatisfying to consume, however if you were to prepare and assemble the cake on the same day, you would get an end product pleasant to eat. In starting gun balance over again, LO gain the freedom to lay out their ideology without interference from older ideologies. They don’t have to worry about the possibility of balancing the next gun the community deems op in an never ending cycle, thus ultimately leading to an unenjoyable game. But most importantly, they can go about gun balance with all the cards laid out on the table from the start. They can clearly define what gun does what in respect to guns in its own category as well as in relation to other categories. They don’t need to go around finding niches to fill in and tweaking exisiting guns worrying whether the changes they do makes a gun encroach on another gun’s territory or even into an entirely different category. LO can paint on a brand-new canvas and fill it up with their own art instead of trying to edit a painting finished by a different artist.

 

Of course, starting from scratch has its own issues. The amount of time required to review every gun and decide on stats for them would be significant, there’s a chance we’ll end up right where we started meaning everything would have been in vain, the changes could be so drastic that we would have to learn how to play with guns again, and the list could go on and on. By no means is it a perfect solution and not everyone would agree with it. I'm sure other more optimal solutions exist which I haven't considered, but personally I feel if we wish to see gun balance and weapon diversity one day, it is one of the better options available on the table. At the end of the day LO decides what happens. I'm just another player voicing my opinion which in my eyes looks suitable.

 

That’s all I have to say on the matter. Hopefully it was easy to understand, I hope you enjoyed reading my viewpoint on gun balance and have a nice day.

 

TL;DR – LO should start gun balance from scratch, I have cake on my mind

[TheHidden-Tember 142]

that's a lot of guns to balance though.

[Flaws 1033]

Currently weapon balancing in APB is all over the place, there are weapons that are either nerfed or buffed but in turn they are now completely out of line with the rest in it's class which were once adjusted by G1. Guns that are most talked about are being nerfed but not the others in their respective categories (for example ARs and SMGs). A lot of weapons that are capable of doing what certain other picked out weapons got nerfed for, are being completely overlooked as no one is talking about them and they remain within the game. Starting from scratch would work if the ones adjusting them know the game well but other than that it's just listening to multiple completely different crowds and trying to somehow make everyone happy (which won't happen) while also not knowing much about the game or it's gunplay. That's why I support the idea of high/top tier players only getting to decide how weapons work in the game as it's going to be the most competitive experience. It might not make the more casual players happy but it will attract more competitive gamers to APB in the future which means dedicated players.

 

For example, the OCA was nerfed on it's own without them touching on the PMG and the PMG was already broken when compared to the buffed OCA we had previously. Now, not only is it broken, it completely devastates OCAs. We've not heard a thing about any coming PMG changes however.

 

What I'm saying is that they need to look at entire categories and classes of weapons when balancing. They didn't change around the entire CQC category, they buffed SGs by a lot (which were already broken due to the ability of corner popping) but then nerfed one SMG, while the other prominent SMG remains significantly more efficent and has been topping the SMG section across the board.

 

Another example: the N-TEC had it's max bloom and jumpshoot capabilities nerfed but the FAR still has G1's vision of ARs with it's tight max bloom and jump shoot capabilities similar to that of the pre-nerf N-TEC (which I prefer). If they have a different vision for ARs, they should've also changed the rest.

[Amayii 398]

This thread has been moved to the Game Suggestions section of our forums.

 

~@mayii

[ChristmasElf 15]

There never been need to balance guns, people never undertood how to use them.

And as i said multiple times, enviroment matters for gyns to be more or less useful.

 

All weapons have variants in their role and range works. Lets put an example in pointman guns under 30 meters:

-Very close range: shotguns (there are also variations).

-Close to mid range: oca and variations of it.

-Mid to long range: pmg.

This happens with almost every other gun roles, thats why balance cant be achieved and shouldnt be achieved.

 

Dividing guns in more categories (and this is something no one usually say), there are the guns that work for high ping players like are the ones with fast fire rate, and poor damage. Thats why youll see complaining about weapons not being usefull, its the ping playing against them and the incorrect weapon usage.

 

And so on. Theres much to talk about weapons but this is something varely anyone understand nor even developers and thats why they mess everything non stop. Check your guns and check your enviroment, weapons are not meant to be balanced but work under specific circumstances.

 

Understand that once for all please.

And yes, i am not saying that the new guns they been releasing are not useless.

 

I would extent but i know my advice will go to waste and im on phone.

 

Merged.

 

Understand please, this is the truest thing youll read here and multiple games.

Edited April 6, 2020 by ChristmasElf

[Crusadeer 24]

On 4/6/2020 at 9:10 PM, ChristmasElf said:

Dividing guns in more categories (and this is something no one usually say), there are the guns that work for high ping players like are the ones with fast fire rate, and poor damage. Thats why youll see complaining about weapons not being usefull, its the ping playing against them and the incorrect weapon usage.

 

And so on. Theres much to talk about weapons but this is something varely anyone understand nor even developers and thats why they mess everything non stop. Check your guns and check your enviroment, weapons are not meant to be balanced but work under specific circumstances.

 

Understand that once for all please.

And yes, i am not saying that the new guns they been releasing are not useless.

 

I would extent but i know my advice will go to waste and im on phone.

 

Understand please, this is the truest thing youll read here and multiple games.

azk he is the north american player but the titan he is the french stars.