Weapon Balance

[Frosi 722]

1 minute ago, Nagletz said:

Oh yeah, it's just a part of a changes, sure we have to wait few more months to see these weapon changes which require... Just. Few. Simple. Logical. Decisions!

WHY?

A few simple, logical, descisions that have to be ran through every possible real scenario, weapon matchup and many other things when there's 18 other guns that were recieving major changes this patch. Rather do them in batches and focus on certain things rather than do 50 guns at once and have awful results.

[vsb 6171]

1 minute ago, Frosi said:

A few simple, logical, descisions that have to be ran through every possible real scenario, weapon matchup and many other things when there's 18 other guns that were recieving major changes this patch. Rather do them in batches and focus on certain things rather than do 50 guns at once and have awful results.

i think he's mostly questioning the order of the changes, which is a fair question imo

 

why are the guns no one uses not getting meaningful balance to change that first?

[Nagletz 218]

5 minutes ago, Frosi said:

A few simple, logical, descisions that have to be ran through every possible real scenario, weapon matchup and many other things when there's 18 other guns that were recieving major changes this patch. Rather do them in batches and focus on certain things rather than do 50 guns at once and have awful results.

Just buff some shit guns to OP state (like pmg/atac now) and see what happens. Shock therapy works more often than you think. 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nagletz

[Frosi 722]

2 minutes ago, 404 said:

i think he's mostly questioning the order of the changes, which is a fair question imo

 

why are the guns no one uses not getting meaningful balance to change that first?

Because to increase a weapons power you want to have a proper baseline of whats a balanced gun, bringing down the meta guns slightly allows you to find this point of balance easier than having to experiment with underused guns.

 

1 minute ago, Nagletz said:

Just buff some shit guns to OP state (like pmg/atac now) and see what happens. Shock therapy works more often than I think. 

Sure you could do that if you are extremely comfortable in the fact that you can react to these changes, not to mention that shock therapy, especially if its on an armas only gun could lead to a huge shit storm that will cause a decent amount of damage even if fixed after a week. Not to mention that guns like the NFAS for example were buffed to extremes and it took the community months to catch on to that at which point, the damage will be severe for those that saw it coming.

[Selali 1003]

Weapon balance is a tricky beast at the best of times but that being said, its going to take a few iterations to get the game in the state that we want for weapon balance. It is impossible to change all the weapons at once, as this would give us way too many things that we need to test. Even in testing these 18 changes, some minor, some major, it took over a dozen playests over the course of about a 15 individual patches after testing.

Frosi is right when he says:

24 minutes ago, 404 said:

i think he's mostly questioning the order of the changes, which is a fair question imo

 

why are the guns no one uses not getting meaningful balance to change that first?

18 minutes ago, Frosi said:

Because to increase a weapons power you want to have a proper baseline of whats a balanced gun, bringing down the meta guns slightly allows you to find this point of balance easier than having to experiment with underused guns.

The goal is to establish a baseline "Meta" with as few outliers as we can, then we can look at buffing the weapons that are unused or very underpowered. We are going to aim to give every weapon some ability to compete but with a game that has the number of guns that APB does, its going to take time, many iterations and time to let things settle after every patch.

I understand the want to make a quick judgement on the changes that were made but please test them out in game before forming your final opinion. Even if you disagree with the changes on paper, see if you still disagree with them after trying them in game. After that point, come back to the forums and help provide constructive feedback. While getting your opinion out about how you either love or hate a change we made is important, even more important is the reason WHY you hate or love that change. Without that feedback, its hard to form an opinion on how best to proceed  other than seeing what players are using after a few weeks of playtime with the new changes.

[Iazer 204]

R-2 Harbinger: 25 -> 28 (Buff)

 

Would still rather this thing be more like a Colby RSA than a weird ACT 44, RSA hybrid that isn't usable at all in any situation

[xHenryman90x 129]

5 hours ago, Leefekyn said:

Like the PIG changes, can I recommend stun grenades get nerfed to 850 stun damage as well?

You like to get your patootie handed to you or are you sweaty pro? Stun grenades are fine right now, throwing them effectively to further distances is pain in the patootie due to terrible trajectory, that's the downside despite being able to stun enemy with a one nade.

[redzero35 15]

I like a lot of the changes here but here are my main concerns.

-It is already very hard to compete with SMG's and shotties at close range when you use an Assault Rifle, I feel like this change might make it even harder, and AR's will lose their identity of being the middle ground between SMG's and Snipers, where they aren't exceptional at either feel but they're okay with it.

-Ursus might just become kinda trash and not worth getting, I might be wrong but I think it's gonna feel like a generic AR now, it's accuracy and stuff was the whole point of it.

-Heavy HVR is fine, but Scout should be left as it was, 55 and 0.6 equip time. The whole reason to use this sniper was for some nice jumpshots, which were pretty hard to pull off, now I'm kinda worried we won't have time to pull off a shot before the AR/SMG/LMG deleting our HP disintegrates us into oblivion.

 

-Assault Rifle jumpshotting wasn't that easy to pull off and risky, and I feel like nerfing it essentially removes a fun aspect of the game with it's fast paced fights and high mobility. Specially the way maps are designed with movement, in fact now it feels like AR's will be punished hard for movement, while SMG's and shotties will be hoppin' around like it's nothing (I say this as a shotgun/smg main)

 

I appreciate you trying to balance things out LO, and your efforts to fix this game. And while feedback is great I think you shoudn't fully base your opinions on feedback, because at the end of the day this is a pvp game, and a lot of people who give feedback might just be upset from losing and blaming a gun for it, rather than adapting and changing their mindset to improve as a player.

much love

Edit: made a few typos

the way maps are designed with movement taken into consideration**

 

And while listening to feedback is great**

 

Merged.

 

-
Second edit: there is another thing that confuses me, and I might be wrong on this I rarely but ever used atac felt like it was too strong, but I don't think it had that much range at all, it was reliant on hs3/ir3 for range and was still not very good, easily outranged by other ARs

- 
And I wanted to add one more thing,

***Do consider nerfing the effective range of stun nades, right now every other enforcer is running stun opgl, stun nades, and OCA nano. I tried it myself and it was stupid how easily it was to stun people even if they were a great distance away from the blast. 

[PoshDoll 93]

2 hours ago, 404 said:

the c2 has never been trash people just thought so after it got nerfed from op status

 

might actually be one of the better balancing acts g1 ever did tbh, nerfing an op gun but only to the point that its decent and not worthless

 

2 hours ago, HardStyler3 said:

the troublemaker is many things but not trash at all its still really strong actually.

 

i am so glad that all the people here complaining about stuff they have no idea about have no say whatsoever in any balancing.

i mean some weapons were hard nerfed because they were too op and sold tons and now they have no solid use in their niche because there are better options to tryhard with. there is no single instance where i would pick the trouble maker instead of the aces rifle, cap40 or even s1-na manic other than when i want to chill in asylum. trouble maker just sucks at range, hella rng focused in cqc thanks to the very quick bloom build-up. i think it could use a little faster bloom recovery to do its job at the same level as its contestants.

i love the style of russian weapons, especially the ots-14 groza and that's why i bought the trouble maker well after the nerfs but wish it were somewhat reliable.

Edited September 12, 2020 by PoshDoll

[Cr0 328]

Looks good! Let's see how it feels to play with.

 

After the hard damage ISSR-B nerf I tried explaining why it was over nerfed slightly and that it should still do some damage against vehicles, just not as much as before.

Those who replied from SPCT said Nope... you're wrong, patch is fine.

The very next weapon patch buffs hard damage slightly, stating: "the ISSR-B should still be able to pose some threat to vehicles".

That sounds familiar.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Cr0

[vsb 6171]

Just now, PoshDoll said:

there is no single instance where i would pick the trouble maker instead of the aces rifle, cap40 or even s1-na manic

i'd 100% choose the troublemaker over the aces rifle and the cap40 for cqc, the manic comes out slightly better because you can mod it tho

 

i do agree that a lot of "problematic" weapons have been nuked into oblivion rather than being properly toned down to balance

 

 

[SkittyM 287]

I do wanna point out regarding the reserve ammo changes that those were not intended to affect balance but was actually clean up from Reloaded due to the fact most of these guns were based on other guns (FAR based on the STAR/N-TEC 5, SBSR based on DMR, etc) and due to the changes to those guns, the reserve ammo pool resulted in half mags for the final mag in reserve.  Not really something people run into i guess but it was something that was reviewed and changed to keep that element inline with other guns.

 

TL;DR: 4 or 5 reserve mags is better and more logical than 4.7 or 5.3 reserve mags.  Will likely be adjusted accordingly when/if we revisit these guns "Eventually".

Edited September 12, 2020 by SkittyM

[KnifuWaifu 499]

I am so confused over all these changes so many to read, and not a great deal of pictures - this is going to take a while. 

 

But my knee-jerk reaction is OBIR nerf? OBIR nerf?!

 

And nerfing the SNR is just cruel and unusual.

[BlatMan 712]

Weapons:

OCA: Good.

OCA 'Whisper': Unnecessary nerf.

PMG:  Unnecessary nerf. Buffing the OCA meant the PMG has competition. It did not need a change.

CAP40: Good.

FAR: Unnecessary nerf.

ATAC: Unnecessary nerf.

N-TEC: Remove the bloom curve instead.

SNR: Unnecessary nerf.

OBIR: Unnecessary nerf.

PIG: Good.

N-HVR 243: Unnecessary changes.

N-HVR 762: Good.

Manic: Any one of those changes would have been good enough, not all of them.

Joker Carbine: Good.

ACT 44: Unnecessary nerf.

Colby RSA: Unnecessary nerf. It only needed the buff.

N-ISSR-B: Good.

 

Jump Shooting:

All pointless changes.

 

Ammo Capacity:

The increased capacity on all weapons is good. The nerfs for the other weapons were unnecessary.

 

So basically, a few good buffs, and a ton of nerfs that were not needed. Did you ask the green district for help making these changes?

[Motorola 107]

lol LO fire everyone on SPCT seriously they are the worst players on the whole game dont listen to them about what needs to be changed ur just going to make everyone uninstall lmao!!!!

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Motorola

[ArtDeco 55]

PMG got nerfed and HVR got nerfed, now I can sleep a little.

[notHunky 32]

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

[Nagletz 218]

How about to make a test district for these changes? You did this before with shotguns and ntec, but now changing entire meta arsenal instantly, not that I'm really concerned, but there is way to many nerfs  (and it makes me sad, ruining some non-op weapons, again)

IMO you could start with buffing mentioned bad guns, and then take care of the rest...

[dr0zone 15]

I don't play apb much anymore, but I'm worried that many of the game balance changes are motivated by trying to patch exploitative (or "gamey") strategies rather than fix usability, losing sight of the big picture.  e.g. Pig+perc is gone, JG+snub is gone.  I'm not convinced these are well thought-out changes.  It's more like the emotionally disturbed bronze lashing out at society for getting out-skilled by deleting necessary parts of the game.

[HNY- 23]

5 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

Weapons:

OCA 'Whisper': Unnecessary nerf.

PMG:  Unnecessary nerf. Buffing the OCA meant the PMG has competition. It did not need a change.

ATAC: uNnEcEsSaRy nErF.

N-TEC: Remove the bloom curve instead.

SNR: Unnecessary nerf.

OBIR: Unnecessary nerf.

N-HVR 243: Unnecessary changes.

N-HVR 762: Good.

Manic: Any one of those changes would have been good enough, not all of them.

 

Jump Shooting:

All pointless changes.

 

Sir, I just found out that your point of view towards weapon balancing is "aimless". both literally and figuratively.

[Todesklinge 143]

All changea sounds very good!

It takes time to test and rebalance.

 

But the N/HVR is not good.

 

 

 

It is more important to fix the Character Mods!

All green mods need a huge buff.

Clotting Agent an huge nerf!

[Weaboos 89]

Quite a few good changes but nerfs to ACT44 are unnecessary. The gun (non armas variant) was pretty bad anyways with how bad the accuracy is and was barely used. If anything it should get an accuracy buff now...

[Mistweaver 18]

all reskins like ffa r&d , dart, bolt will be nerfed too ?

[thelinux 51]

Oh dear this is going to be huge. Can't wait to see how this plays.

 

• LOVE the HVR damage nerf / Scout damage buff - this is what I've been suggesting for years
• Love the carbine buff, but we'll see if it really competes with the current OSCAR.
• Love the ATAC nerf
• Love the CAP40 Buff (I hope you also considered the 2 slot one, not just the legendary)
• Thanks for fixing JG-Snubbing
• The bolt timer might make for a better balance but I fear it may make long range weapons a lot more boring to play with
• You nerfed the Ursus and buffed the N-TEC... I'd be surprised if this ends well
• I'm missing a COBR-A buff 

 

It's always super risky to revamp pretty much the entire weapon balance, but oh well, at least some change, after all the game can't play much worse than it plays now.

 

[AxeTurboAgresor 268]

So much unnecessary nerfs.

No engine upgrade will save this if gunplay is so frustrating.

I will stick to my favorite gun (if I ever manage to come back) and hope it wont be touched by you.