OTW Balance Changes

[Beastie 177]

Hi Everyone.

Below are what we've changed in the current version of OTW. One of our main goals with this balance pass is to try and get weapons focused more within their intended ranges. Shotguns are currently a bit overtuned and dominate close up (where as previously they were rarely used in favour of SMGs due to their relative inconsistency).  Likewise Assault Rifles (particularly the NTEC, but also in general) tend to push a bit too much into the range of Rifles, making Rifles for the most part seen less often than other categories. A lot of the changes here are somewhat experimental, and in this case we expect a fair few of them to be reverted entirely, but it's worth playtesting them to see if they're viable. We should also point out not to expect any of these changes to go live at any point soon, we want to do a lot of testing on these over the course of the next couple of weeks, and only release ones we are sure are ready.

This new forum section should be used as a space to provide feedback on these changes.

Assault Rifles
In general. The standard-ranged ARs have received a 5m effective range reduction across the board. Combined with an increase in the range of rifles, this allows rifles (and LMGs, to an extent) to shine at longer ranges where previously most players would just take an NTEC. Min Damage Range stays the same, so you'll see a more gradual falloff of weapon performance over distance. This also promotes taking Rifling if you want to increase your range (more on this in a bit), at the cost of reducing your TTK at close range. This affects the following: AR-97, ATAC, COBR-A, FAR, Raptor, S1-FA, STAR.

NTEC
The NTEC is a fairly difficult challenge to tweak, as it's by far the most popular weapon in APB and thus any changes will affect near our entire playerbase, but it does need some changes. There are two effective ways we can go about this without drastically changing the feel of the weapon, so we're investigating both simultaneously and we can compare side by side.

Test A - Increase the fire-interval of the NTEC very slightly (from 0.14 to 0.145), adjusting accuracy stats so the accuracy over shots stays the same. This helps increase the perfect TTK slightly so it's closer to its contemporaries. At the same time we also reduce the Magazine capacity a little, to 30. It has a very high Kill to Magazine capacity as it is (and a relatively fast reload), so reducing this helps in a few ways: It makes missing slightly less forgiving, it makes the choice of blue mod more interesting, and gives players another comparison marker when choosing to use the weapon over the STAR (which now has more ammo than it).

Test B - Reduce the effective accuracy of the NTEC, making it a little worse in terms of pinpoint effectiveness than other ARs, giving space for weapons like the ISSR, LCR and AR97 to get a look in. This reduces the base accuracy of the weapon to 28cms at 10m (from 24) and the Marksmanship modifier to 40% (from 35%). It also decreases jumping accuracy to 18 (from 12) to see if we can reduce jumping spray at close ranges a little. Minimum accuracy is 'improved' to stay the same as in live (since it's a multiplier on base accuracy). With this test, we also reduced ammo in the weapon to 28.

Note: The Scoped variant is unchanged in testing. If we actually make any changes to the NTEC, those changes will carry over.

Rifles
In the same vein, we've increased the effective range of non-carbine Rifles by 5m, giving them a bit more oomph at ranges where they'd previously fall off. This affects the following:, FFA, CR-762, OBIR, SBSR. This is also important as a lot of rifles were relying on Rifling to make them valid for long distance engagements, and we're moving Rifling to be more of a trade-off than it was.

Shotguns
The range-reduction we made at the beginning of the week on Live for Shotguns was a stop-gap solution to help reduce the problem while we look at further reducing the power of shotguns. Their now very consistent kill-rates at close range allows us to change them in other areas to reduce their power while still making them the best choice at point-blank. We can also start dropping the effect of the pellet bonus damage in some cases where it's resulting in the weapons being too effective.

Strife Test A - Effective Damage increased to 903, 2-shot pellet count improved to 8 from 9 (Reduces Pellet Scale to 0.926 from 0.933). 

CSG Test A - 2-shot pellet count reduced to 15 (from 13) (Damage 64 from 70, Scale 0.935 from 0.9). Fire Rate down to 0.8 (from 0.68). Effective Range changed to 1000/1750 (from 750/1750). This gives the CSG a little bit of its range back, but requires better accuracy, and takes longer to kill, helping distinguish it more from the JG.

JG Test A - 2-shot pellet count reduced to 7 (from 6) (Damage 100 from 140, Scale 0.897 from 0.82).
Shredder - Increased fire interval to 0.42 (from 0.37). This is a revert of a buff from the previous patch. We buffed it in a number of ways, this one was maybe a step too far.

OCA
The OCA fire-rate buff a few years ago was a bit over the top, but it did need something at the time to make it viable (it was overshadowed at the time by every other SMG other than the Norsemen). As such, we want to pull back the buff, but not remove it entirely.
Test A - 0.95 fire interval (from 0.92).
Test B - 0.98 fire interval (from 0.92, very close to its old 0.1 fire rate).

Rifling
We reduced the effectiveness of Rifling on live while we made some mechanical changes behind the scenes to be able to change it on a percentage basis, and this is the first test of this. Rifling (the OTW test variant) now increases range by 5,10,15%, followed by an absolute increase of 1, 2, 3 metres. This means it works better on longer range weapons, but at least has some effect on close range weapons (where the absolute increase has more of an effect). On average, Rifling 3 increases Shotguns by 4.5m, SMGs by 7.5, Carbines by 8.25, ARs by 10.5 (9.75 in prototype), Rifles by 10.5 (11.25 in prototype), LMGs by 13.5 and Snipers by 16.5 (essentially removing max range for them).

Cooling Jacket
We're also testing to see if adding the Cooling Jacket effect to Burst Interval as well makes sense. It provides an interesting counter-option to rifling for burst weapons, though notably right now Cooling Jacket is essentially all benefit for Burst weapons and no downside, so that'll need some thought before we go further with anything in this area.

Financial Weapon Prototype
For the purposes of making testing easier, we're running some slightly different rules on the Financial testing districts. The big difference you'll see immediately that everyone is PvP unlocked at all times, allowing you to easier test weapons in various circumstances. You can run missions in there as well, but be aware that players outside of your mission will be able to interfere. It's also essentially an open conflict district, to avoid any matchmaking issues with low player counts.

[Snubnose 644]

CJ3 on OCA doesn't have a downside anymore... the accuracy stays the same. (usually it should decrease the longer you fire)

[V2050 31]

An Open Conflict district... while I think it's an excellent opportunity for testing, I am also very pessimistic about this being a prime opportunity for those who are not about testing stuff at all.

[AAMSS 18]

On 8/17/2018 at 4:40 PM, LO_Beastie said:

Rifling 3 increases Shotguns by 4.5m, SMGs by 7.5, Carbines by 8.25, ARs by 10.5 (9.75 in prototype), Rifles by 10.5 (11.25 in prototype), LMGs by 13.5 and Snipers by 16.5 (essentially removing max range for them).

 

Does this mean that each weapon type will have and different fire rate reduction while using IR3? 

[Hexerin 1142]

On 8/18/2018 at 7:34 PM, AAMSS said:

Does this mean that each weapon type will have and different fire rate reduction while using IR3? 

In what universe would that make any sense? Not to mention how much extra workload that puts on the devs for no actual gain.

[AAMSS 18]

6 hours ago, Hexerin said:

In what universe would that make any sense? Not to mention how much extra workload that puts on the devs for no actual gain.

In our universe that would make sense, if you can increase the effective range that the mod provides depending on each weapon type .. you can also change the rate of fire reduction for each weapon type too ,  the WORKLOAD here.... is calculations, that will take long time to have a conclusion which might not be constant.
and about " the workload for no actual gain ".. the DEVS started it and even without my "question", it's still a workload, and no hardwork will be done for nothing. 

BTW i wasn't suggesting, i was asking.
  Edited September 2, 2018 by AAMSS

[Hexerin 1142]

8 hours ago, AAMSS said:

if you can increase the effective range that the mod provides depending on each weapon type ..

They aren't doing that though.

[puppydemon20 0]

Hard to test these when no one is really in the testing environment, but I'm excited to see if and how the rifling and cooling jackets changes affect the game. I'm sure the Oscar might see a bit more use with CJ if it gets a buff from it.
The Assualt Rifle changes look pretty significant, but I think in-game, if you don't know that they were changed, might throw you off, either by having a surprisingly less lethal feel at range or more lethal feel. I worry that standard ranged ARs might not feel as useful having such a reduced range, but that's what testing is for :D. 
I think the Shotgun changes will be very good, since shotguns seem pretty favorable in a lot of situations right now.
The OCA changes, I'm not sure what would be better at the moment, but I'm thinking you guys might want to just try Test A on the current version anyways and see if it needs changed more or not, based on community reactions.
The Rifle changes probably are a bit unnecessary in my opinion since the Obeya CR-762 was already really good at killing at max range, but should be a pretty good buff for burst types. I'm sure rifling will be unwelcome to burst weapons, but amazing on single-fire.

Overall, I'm really excited to see most of these changes reach the current version of APB, I'm sure a lot of them will help make weapon and mod choice more important. I just wish I could actually test these before they reach current, since not enough people actually play APB in general for me to test the weapons in the test servers. Hopefully once these changes and the engine upgrade go through, the game will pick up some more.

[Noob_Guardian 418]

On 8/17/2018 at 11:41 PM, Snubnose said:

CJ3 on OCA doesn't have a downside anymore... the accuracy stays the same. (usually it should decrease the longer you fire)

actually the original OCA had no downside with CJ3, imo that's fine as is honestly, it was dumb to add such a downside in the first place.

[Snubnose 644]

3 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

On 8/18/2018 at 5:41 AM, Snubnose said:

CJ3 on OCA doesn't have a downside anymore... the accuracy stays the same. (usually it should decrease the longer you fire)

actually the original OCA had no downside with CJ3, imo that's fine as is honestly, it was dumb to add such a downside in the first place.

every mod has a downside (or atleast should have)... you get higher TTK, but lose accuracy over time, how's that dumb? it's called balancing.

[kiugelis 0]

Why add more damidge to the strife its already the highest damidge doing weapon. Its too slow to be used normaly and it has no range it needs either range or fire faster, because now with ir3 and even without it, its horrible. Other shotguns are in theyr own place now on test A, theyr perfect, ntec its best on test B. Pls fix strife ;(

Edited September 7, 2018 by kiugelis