OTW 8/17 Balance changes

[CookiePuss 5382]

14 minutes ago, finaljustice said:

bloom control has become the primary benefit of IR.

IR still increases range as its primary benefit.
IR1 by 5% + 1m
IR2 by 10% + 2m
IR3 by 15% + 3m

That means ARs will now go from 45m to 54.75m
Carbine from 35m to 43.25m
Obir and Obey from 60m to 72m
Even the OCA goes from 30m to 37.5m (not that you'd put IR3 on an OCA)

[finaljustice 8]

Remove the range bonus completely and I bet more people would still use it more than HB

Nobody is putting IR on obeya or obir anymore, or any semi auto rifle for that matter.

Edited August 19, 2018 by finaljustice

[Hexerin 1142]

23 minutes ago, finaljustice said:

Nobody is putting IR on ... obir anymore,

Makes it really, really easy to see who the bad players are. The Improved Rifling "nerf" is actually a significant buff for the OBIR, as the way it interacts with the burst tightens the grouping. Meanwhile, it doesn't really affect the fire interval in any relevant way, which effectively negates the "downside" Improved Rifling has.

[mojical 160]

59 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Carbine from 35m to 43.25m

On the topic of the Carbine, isn't it obvious that it is in a truly bad spot at the moment? It's tied for range (35m) with the PMG which has no bloom (due to recovery between shots), higher kills per mag, lower TTK, ability to equip Cooling Jacket without downsides up to level 2, lower shots to kill, and is fully automatic? 

The only two upsides the Carbine has are higher initial accuracy (which gets negated by bloom after 2-3 quick shots anyway) or its somewhat usable markmanship mode, which is made worse by its incredibly slow marksmanship strafing speed.

This strafing speed makes no sense for a weapon which is designed to be light and mobile, even weapons which are 100% hipfire based have sensible strafing speeds. I'm not asking for something ridiculous like the VBR, but 275cm/s to match the ATAC would be a good starting point. 

Also, if OSCARs become able to use CJ3 to reduce their burst intervals, there's yet one less reason to play the SR15/STAC. 

Even though a return to 5 shot carbine would probably be too much, I think a fire rate upgrade to make stock Carbine match CJ3, and decreased bloom recovery time to compensate for its effects on accuracy would be a fair change. This should be a high effort high reward weapon, and barely being able to match submachines at best just doesn't cut it for it. 

I know the Carbine doesn't have much to do with the changes this thread is about, but being deliberately left out of the +5 range increase is just salt in the wound, since there clearly are weapons in the assault rifle category that compete with carbines, just like is the case with marksman rifles. Edited August 20, 2018 by Lyfeld

[vsb 6174]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

Makes it really, really easy to see who the bad players are. The Improved Rifling "nerf" is actually a significant buff for the OBIR, as the way it interacts with the burst tightens the grouping. Meanwhile, it doesn't really affect the fire interval in any relevant way, which effectively negates the "downside" Improved Rifling has.

improved rifling affects the time between bursts, the obir with ir3 currently has a ttk around 1.41s

it doesnt affect the bullets fired within each burst

  Edited August 20, 2018 by BXNNXD
math

[finaljustice 8]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

Makes it really, really easy to see who the bad players are. The Improved Rifling "nerf" is actually a significant buff for the OBIR, as the way it interacts with the burst tightens the grouping. Meanwhile, it doesn't really affect the fire interval in any relevant way, which effectively negates the "downside" Improved Rifling has.

So it gives both the range bonus and the handling bonus to some guns. My point is separate these two bonuses to different mods, and make HB relevant in the process - because thats was what HB was supposed to do in the first place.

I think we can all agree that the lower rof is good in some ways and bad in other ways. When it's good, you get the bonus of extra range as well, when it's bad, you're not going to use it just for the extra range. It just doesn't make sense as a "downside" and should be separated from the extra range. It's also already more popular than HB - which has the longer ttk downside implemented poorly. Edited August 20, 2018 by finaljustice

[Hexerin 1142]

1 hour ago, BXNNXD said:

improved rifling affects the time between bursts, the obir with ir3 currently has a ttk around 1.41s
it doesnt affect the bullets fired within each burst

Never said anything about it effecting the rate at which the bullets fire off within the burst. I simply pointed out that the mod tightens the burst grouping.

[vsb 6174]

24 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Never said anything about it effecting the rate at which the bullets fire off within the burst. I simply pointed out that the mod tightens the burst grouping.

if it doesnt affect the bullets within each burst then there should be no affect on the burst grouping

[CookiePuss 5382]

2 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Makes it really, really easy to see who the bad players are. The Improved Rifling "nerf" is actually a significant buff for the OBIR, as the way it interacts with the burst tightens the grouping. Meanwhile, it doesn't really affect the fire interval in any relevant way, which effectively negates the "downside" Improved Rifling has.

I don't think you've been keeping up with the changes to Improved Rifling.

[Keshi 436]

i think the perfect solution for the ntec...is to DELETE the ntec. can't complain about a gun that's not there no more.

[Hexerin 1142]

50 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

if it doesnt affect the bullets within each burst then there should be no affect on the burst grouping

You're implying that fire rate is the only thing that can affect the grouping.

[vsb 6174]

1 minute ago, Hexerin said:

You're implying that fire rate is the only thing that can affect the grouping.

im implying that the only thing that improved rifling affects is the rof and the range, neither of which would affect burst fire the way you claim

[gogol 53]

what the heck are you guys trying to do im so confused

[Noob_Guardian 418]

3 hours ago, Lyfeld said:

On the topic of the Carbine, isn't it obvious that it is in a truly bad spot at the moment? It's tied for range (35m) with the PMG which has no bloom (due to recovery between shots), higher kills per mag, lower TTK, ability to equip Cooling Jacket without downsides up to level 2, lower shots to kill, and is fully automatic? 

The only two upsides the Carbine has are higher initial accuracy (which gets negated by bloom after 2-3 quick shots anyway) or its somewhat usable markmanship mode, which is made worse by its incredibly slow marksmanship strafing speed.

This strafing speed makes no sense for a weapon which is designed to be light and mobile, even weapons which are 100% hipfire based have sensible strafing speeds. I'm not asking for something ridiculous like the VBR, but 275cm/s to match the ATAC would be a good starting point. 

Also, if OSCARs become able to use CJ3 to reduce their burst intervals, there's yet one less reason to play the SR15/STAC. 

Even though a return to 5 shot carbine would probably be too much, I think a fire rate upgrade to make stock Carbine match CJ3, and decreased bloom recovery time to compensate for its effects on accuracy would be a fair change. This should be a high effort high reward weapon, and barely being able to match submachines at best just doesn't cut it for it. 

I know the Carbine doesn't have much to do with the changes this thread is about, but being deliberately left out of the +5 range increase is just salt in the wound, since there clearly are weapons in the assault rifle category that compete with carbines, just like is the case with marksman rifles.

Carbine is fine as is imo, most people don't "strafe" it like an atac, they hold sprint and do janky hitbox/character movement (as it always has been). Before it didn't matter so much because sprintshooting was a broken af thing that allowed people to get hard to hit. Increasing its effectiveness would be a straight up buff with no downsides to a weapon that doesn't "need" a change and would likely put it back into, "broke" category depending on how strong the changes are. Currently is already is a high effort high reward weapon, and it does fine against smg's past their 0-15m dominance rance. It isn't meant to be a mid ranged weapon, and hence no buff, Carbine is meant to by a hybrid rifle for between mid and cqc. It's got a range of 40m plays best at 15-30m, and needs no buff to match that of AR's "45m" because that's not meant to be there. AR's got a nerf because of impeding on mid-long range rifles. No weapon out of marksman can very effectively hit at 45m, there's no need to put carbine into that so it can.

Most people moved from carbine because all the "edgelords" left or switched to n-tec (which is getting reworked).

When I use Oscar, and i always use cj on it, since it still decreases the max RoF regardless, it still fires faster with cj.

 

[Darkzero3802 613]

On 8/17/2018 at 1:55 PM, Tobii said:

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.

 

Its about dam time this buff was removed

[CookiePuss 5382]

1 minute ago, Darkzero3802 said:

On 8/17/2018 at 12:55 PM, Tobii said:

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.

 

Its about dam time this buff was removed

"pull back the buff, not remove it entirely"

[Darkzero3802 613]

As long as its balanced thats fine by me

[Dopefish 248]

@LO_Beastie, the Improved Rifling changes seems really good, and the absolute increase (as opposed to just having percentage increase) makes sure the low range weapons gets an appropriate effect, while also making sure it doesn't become too effective for ranged weapons.

NTEC Test A, together with the jumping accuracy from Test B, and coupled with a slightly faster bloom increase seems like it would be good to test out. I don't think accuracy decrease would be a good change, since it wouldn't do much against its CQC effectiveness, might make it too random on range, and alter the feel of the weapon.

Can't provide much comments on the shotgun changes without seeing them in action, but increasing the TTK of the CSG to differentiate it from the JG seems like a good idea, although 0.8 seems like it might be a bit excessive and I'd suggest trying 0.75 instead.

OCA Test B is the best out of the two options, as I've never felt the OCA really were overshadowed by other SMGs in the past.

Can't say for sure how an across the board change of ranges would impact things, but I think it's a good change to test. Might consider altering the hit marker indicator to reflect the amount of damage you're doing at range, to make it easier for players to understand the mechanics (especially for weapons with non-linear drop-offs). Could either change the thickness or transparency of the damage marker depending on the max/min damage, or alter the marker altogether.

Would also be good to use Open Conflict districts on the normal servers for testing, rather than OTW, as not as many players participate in the testing otherwise, and non-US players gets kind of a high latency which skews their experience a bit. Alternatively announcing times for testing on OTW, sort of stress testing for weapons.

All in all, I'm happy seeing the game getting some well needed balance updates, and that LO aren't afraid of getting their hands dirty, despite how vocal a part of the community can be. For me personally, the attempt to balance the mods is the one thing who have gotten me most excited about the current changes, so I hope you'll keep it up.

[TheJellyGoo 343]

8 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Makes it really, really easy to see who the bad players are. The Improved Rifling "nerf" is actually a significant buff for the OBIR, as the way it interacts with the burst tightens the grouping. Meanwhile, it doesn't really affect the fire interval in any relevant way, which effectively negates the "downside" Improved Rifling has.

 

5 hours ago, Hexerin said:

6 hours ago, BXNNXD said:

if it doesnt affect the bullets within each burst then there should be no affect on the burst grouping

You're implying that fire rate is the only thing that can affect the grouping.

Care to elaborate what you mean in your initial statement? Seems like I'm a bad player since I have no clue what you're trying to get to or how IR interacts with the bursts grouping.
Are you perhaps confusing IR with old CJ or what else does IR change that it affects the grouping? 

[LilyV3 323]

N-tec B sounds interetsing.

IR changes seem to be interesting too, may work much better and helps keeping guns in their roles.

Needs some actualy testing to see how it turns out.

[SacheM 17]

N-tec test B good but dont change N-tec magazine 32 best.
Atac need nerf maybe more recoil (horzintal)
R-2 Harbinger need buff less recoil
Norseman series need buff more dmg for low ttk(0.70) 
Bishada need buff more acceleration and grip
Fix jericho and bishada rear wheel bug
Thanks.
 

[Keshi 436]

2 hours ago, SacheM said:

N-tec test B good but dont change N-tec magazine 32 best.
Atac need nerf maybe more recoil (horzintal)
R-2 Harbinger need buff less recoil
Norseman series need buff more dmg for low ttk(0.70) 
Bishada need buff more acceleration and grip
Fix jericho and bishada rear wheel bug
Thanks.
 

that bishada jericho bug was in since the beginning..not sure if its a bug or a feature lol

[vsb 6174]

friendly reminder that the bishada wheel “bug” is entirely realistic 

[Acornie 490]

N-tec seems fine on B, I'm just worried about it possibly putting the f2p player without HS3 in a worse position

As long as I know the devs are thinking about the stock version and not just the balance of a 3-slot decked out one I'm fine with it

[ShadesofGrey 10]

On 8/19/2018 at 5:57 AM, Revoluzzer said:

I'd like to see both N-Tec variants rolled into one, but with its original accuracy-behaviour given back.
The ammo-nerf seems uncalled for. The STAR has the same number of potential kills per mag. Giving both the same damage per bullet is more logical, imo.
Really, as far as I'm concerned, the STAR and N-Tec should only differ in their accuracy-behaviour. STAR allowing low recoil, sustained fire with gradual accuracy degradation from very high initial accuracy; N-Tec allowing relatively precise individual shots, but high recoil, rapid degradation under sustained fire (none of that curves-behaviour, mind you).

The OCA should just be reverted to its original state. It was a great baseline for other SMGs to derive from.

Agree, Agree, and NOPE.

If you change the OCA back to it's original state, it will recover all bloom from each shot, before the next shot. That's adding on CJ3 and Reflex Sight 3.

(February 2014 OCA+PMG changes. "OCA series – Recovery Per Second: 6 -> 5.15 (Allows the negative to Cooling Jacket to have an effect, otherwise has no effect on weapon handling at all)." and "PMG series – Recovery Per Second: 10 -> 7.2 (Allows the negative to Cooling Jacket to have an effect, otherwise has no effect on weapon handling at all).")

I would however like to see CJ3, and RS3 actually do something positive on SMGs again.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it should be changed back to it's original state. There was a reason the OCA was one of the first 3 weapons I purchased.