Upcoming Weapon Balance changes

[AgentRick 38]

On 7/29/2018 at 4:51 PM, Gizzly said:

On 7/13/2018 at 7:23 AM, AgentRick said:

I'm hoping this isn't a total nerf to the HVR and its capabilities for CQB. It takes a lot of skill to be able to successfully utilize an HVR when the enemy is up in your face.

Quickswitching and crazy shots like the one below are hopefully what they're looking at removing:
 

I've watched this a solid 20 times, I can't seem to find the skill, just a noob being a noob with a weapon that's not supposed to be able to do that cqc

That's precisely the point I was trying to make. There was no skill involved in that, just a bunch of luck associated with a broken mechanic. As for the noob comment? Don't know who you are, doubt you can do better.

[DouglasFalcon 125]

17 hours ago, Kewlin said:

1. Every primary gun type in the game only has two or three free versions, (not including legendaries, at which point there are 4 free ARs,) which is plenty TBH.

2. The STAR is just as good as the N-TEC, it's just different.

3. The N-TEC has the same damage drop off as every other AR (except the Ursus and LCR, which can shoot further.)

4. The N-TEC has the same magazine capacity and stored ammo as the STAR, and similar kills per magazine to many assault rifles.


IMO the only reason everyone uses the N-TEC is because A] it's the longest range AR beside the Ursus and LCR and B] simply because everyone uses the N-TEC, so everyone thinks the N-TEC must be the best assault rifle. As such, I will definitely agree with you that it's hard for the general population to understand the balance between the ARs without using them themselves, I don't know what the best way would be to solve that though.

dude stop making up things
NTEC is stronger than any other AR, period.

[Szambi 85]

It ain't stronger, it's just more versatile.

[CookiePuss 5373]

9 hours ago, AgentRick said:

That's precisely the point I was trying to make. There was no skill involved in that, just a bunch of luck associated with a broken mechanic. As for the noob comment? Don't know who you are, doubt you can do better.

not a broken mechanic, just really bad opp
like, next level incompetent opp

There are players who can abuse the fuck out of the HVR, but this video is most certainly NOT an example of that, not even close.

[Kewlin 692]

6 hours ago, DouglasFalcon said:

dude stop making up things
NTEC is stronger than any other AR, period.

Sorry that my thousands of hours of playing and researching APB have made me come to a different conclusion than you, but I've never found the post 2015 N-TEC to be OP. It's very good, and it's the best AR in long mid range, but it's not really better than the STAR.

[CookiePuss 5373]

6 hours ago, DouglasFalcon said:

dude stop making up things
NTEC is stronger than any other AR, period.

That sounds like bronze district talk.

[Mavark 0]

On 7/6/2018 at 9:57 PM, IROCkiller said:

I am so excited to see the new Anubis crosshair. Any chance of a sneak peek? : >

 

ALSO COBRA BUFF WOOOO

worth coming back just for that.

[Uqe 17]

shotguns are little bit stupid in OTW right now. 3 shotting edge-hitbox shots at like 25m seems a little ridiculous to me

shotguns are definitely going to be used like 24/7 if this change rolls out untouched

Edited August 1, 2018 by Uqe

[vsb 6170]

2 hours ago, Uqe said:

shotguns are little bit stupid in OTW right now. 3 shotting edge-hitbox shots at like 25m seems a little ridiculous to me

shotguns are definitely going to be used like 24/7 is this change rolls out untouched

we're going back to 2011 meta, break out your rt1 csg's boys

[Shini 251]

Shotgun pretty yikes atm. Range should be toned down or we'll be back to the 2012 Meta boys. 3 CSGS and 1 HVR per team haha.

https://clips.twitch.tv/OutstandingIcyPlumageBloodTrail
https://clips.twitch.tv/RelievedHeadstrongOysterThunBeast
https://clips.twitch.tv/ImpartialFriendlySkirretRitzMitz

They're more consistent yeah but oh my god the range.
 

[Eixo 33]

8 minutes ago, Shini said:

Shotgun pretty yikes atm. Range should be toned down or we'll be back to the 2012 Meta boys. 3 CSGS and 1 HVR per team haha.

https://clips.twitch.tv/OutstandingIcyPlumageBloodTrail
https://clips.twitch.tv/RelievedHeadstrongOysterThunBeast
https://clips.twitch.tv/ImpartialFriendlySkirretRitzMitz

They're more consistent yeah but oh my god the range.
 

Rofl, rip SMGs

[Beastie 177]

Hi, thought I should reply to this thread since I've been the one making the balance changes for the Shotgun (Still getting my forum details set up, hence the Community Administrators tag).

The shotguns are quite a bit overpowered right now, indeed, and we kind of expected it to be that way but wanted to push it into a test environment to make sure before we start nerfing certain aspects of them to compensate. Historically we've been able to tweak consistency of shotguns in one of two ways; increasing the damage or increasing the number of pellets. Increasing damage is dangerous when it goes too high, which the pump action shotguns are kind of pushing, and increasing pellet count can only get us so far until we start to worry about performance implications of that many raycasts at once 

These new changes allow us another way to tweak consistency; by adjusting the point at which the shotgun will be able to kill a player when hitting a certain percentage of its shots. In the A variant of the weapons, we've actually significantly reduced the overkill done by the weapons if you fully meat-shot them. For an example, here's the graph we have for our test changes of the JG, showing damage per pellet hit.

 

What this doesn't cover however is range, which we deliberately didn't change for the first test (it's easier to tweak things if you change a small number of variables at a time). In Live, we currently balance the range of shotguns primarily on pellet spread, then secondarily with the effective range values. Traditionally, the further away you were, the less pellets hit and thus the less damage is done. This isn't as much of a factor with the new mechanics, as smaller numbers of pellets can still consistently do a lot of damage, hence the ridiculous ranges we're seeing.

The first iteration of OTW in the case of shotguns was to see if the intended effect of the mechanic (additional consistency with killing at close range) would go up, and I feel at least that it has to a degree I'm happy with. The next iteration will focus on pulling the shotguns back in cases where they're working outside their intended combat situations, primarily by reducing the range, reducing damage, and/or reducing the effect of the damage per pellet mechanic until it's minimal while still providing the desired benefit.

[Tobii 346]

17 minutes ago, LO_Beastie said:

 

That sounds like a good way to move forward.
 Does this apply to the other weapons as well? I guess you're just waiting for feedback and then change the weapons accordingly?

[Beastie 177]

1 minute ago, Tobii said:

That sounds like a good way to move forward.
 Does this apply to the other weapons as well? I guess you're just waiting for feedback and then change the weapons accordingly?

Indeed Tobii, all of the guns have different stats in Prototype A and Prototype B. I don't expect either weapon set will go through exactly as is for any of the weapons, we're essentially bracketing (https://www.militaryfactory.com/dictionary/military-terms-defined.asp?term_id=786) until we find the right spot.

[tennogrineer 71]

2 minutes ago, LO_Beastie said:

Indeed Tobii, all of the guns have different stats in Prototype A and Prototype B. I don't expect either weapon set will go through exactly as is for any of the weapons, we're essentially bracketing (https://www.militaryfactory.com/dictionary/military-terms-defined.asp?term_id=786) until we find the right spot.

im hoping this means we'll see the right spot in otw (and not be surprised in live)
 

[Tobii 346]

1 minute ago, LO_Beastie said:

Indeed Tobii, all of the guns have different stats in Prototype A and Prototype B. I don't expect either weapon set will go through exactly as is for any of the weapons, we're essentially bracketing (https://www.militaryfactory.com/dictionary/military-terms-defined.asp?term_id=786) until we find the right spot.

Is there any chance you can share something like the above with the other weapon changes? Or is that just something you created to show us?
I, for one, would rather have raw stats for the changes than just getting told that it was slightly tweaked or lowered/upped, etc.

[Beastie 177]

@Tobii I'll ask and see if it's ok to post exact changes now that you've had a chance to play around with the balance changes. Generally we don't reveal anything but generic information prior to players getting access as it colours any feedback we receive (preconceptions can alter perception).

[tennogrineer 71]

2 minutes ago, LO_Beastie said:

@Tobii I'll ask and see if it's ok to post exact changes now that you've had a chance to play around with the balance changes. Generally we don't reveal anything but generic information prior to players getting access as it colours any feedback we receive (preconceptions can alter perception).

well right now all we have is the notes and those very uninformative weapon stat bars in game. most of us would like to see those bars replaced by actual numerical values. way better than telling so-and-so stand somewhere and test time-to-kill, shots-to-kill, then looking at video to determine rate-of-fire, pulling out a calculator to see hard damage, etc.

[Tobii 346]

6 minutes ago, LO_Beastie said:

@Tobii I'll ask and see if it's ok to post exact changes now that you've had a chance to play around with the balance changes. Generally we don't reveal anything but generic information prior to players getting access as it colours any feedback we receive (preconceptions can alter perception).

Seems fair enough.
If you can't then no hard feelings.

I am just having a hard time with some of the guns and don't notice much of a change.
That's why I wouldn't mind seeing how major the changes actually are. Edited August 1, 2018 by Tobii

[holyTyu 10]

7 minutes ago, LO_Beastie said:

@Tobii I'll ask and see if it's ok to post exact changes now that you've had a chance to play around with the balance changes. Generally we don't reveal anything but generic information prior to players getting access as it colours any feedback we receive (preconceptions can alter perception).

Consider that by knowing weapon stats we can faster learn the new way to use weapons, leading to players playing better with them and giving a better feedback.

[Tobii 346]

3 minutes ago, tennogrineer said:

well right now all we have is the notes and those very uninformative weapon stat bars in game. most of us would like to see those bars replaced by actual numerical values. way better than telling so-and-so stand somewhere and test time-to-kill, shots-to-kill, then looking at video to determine rate-of-fire, pulling out a calculator to see hard damage, etc.

That's why we have https://apbvault.net with somewhat up to date stats.

[Senodus 49]

The shotgun change is awesome imo. Just change the damage dropoff to start at around 10m instead of the current 20m. Cobra feels really nice too. 

[TheSxW 47]

PMG Nerf plz ....

[Tobii 346]

@LO_Beastie does the shotgun changes apply to ALL shotguns? Shredder, Ogre, nfas, ETC?
I am a big fan of the Shredder. But it's hard to use cause of the same issues that the CSG/JG have.

[Kempington 295]

Oh lord. The shredder's range now.. that'll be interesting.

@LO_Beastie are there any plans to spin up a financial and waterfront District for these weapon changes on OTW? It's nice to get a general idea of the changes on the guns in Baylan, but I feel proper run throughs would work better in missions. See where the shortcomings are and where the changes benefit the weapons.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Kempington