OTW 8/17 Balance changes

[Gateron 267]

10 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Do i bother typing up why these N-TEC changes are bad now or later.

Downvote me more. You know deep down inside I am right.

Are you Russian by any chance?

[vsb 6171]

9 hours ago, GhosT said:

I think rifling is a bit too extreme for ARs and upwards.

this

i havent actually played with them yet, and i realize its just the first round of what looks to be a long test run, but the obeya/obir getting a combined 17m of range is pretty insane imo - even with the rof drawback

[Frosi 722]

16 minutes ago, Genobee said:

I may as well play devils advocate for a moment here. It puts a serious hurt on weapons designed to be used in.. well.. everything in it's effective range to sometimes, a very substantial extent. Everything is what it excels at currently. It isn't the absolute king of course, but you can't deny that it's shadow looms over a swath of weapons. There is very, very good reason that it's one of the most common guns.

Technically a range reduction coupled with a slight tweak to the RoF would prevent it from being the end-all-be-all. Other guns would finally get a chance to get a chance to shine a bit more. Wouldn't the test changes resolve the issue without nuking the N-TEC from orbit? It would certainly feel better then tossing it's accuracy in the trash. Inaccurate guns typically feel awful in games unless they are designed with it from the start with a very specific goal in mind.

I'd rather they at least investigate the current idea before moving on to other changes. 

I mean it's really not hard to use the N-tec in CQC, all you need to do really is hold LMB, control the very low recoil and track the target. I don't want the N-tec to become bad but it is by far the most used weapon in the game due to its versatility. You already see top 3-4 man teams on Citadel run nothing but 3 N-tecs and 1 HVR/OBIR simply because it does everything you need in the game. I don't want its tap firing to become slower or less accurate but simply make it less of a CQC laserbeam because imo that's really whats making the gun so versatile.

[Softdeath 22]

1 hour ago, MattScott said:

Hi everyone,

Since Tobii managed to discover LO_Beastie's build notes, I'm going to unhide this now. We initially had to hide it, because there was a possibility of changes.
However these changes are live on OTW now.

Thanks,
Matt

Hi Matt, about the Nerf to ARs, then S1-FA Frenzy is already much weaker than FAR and ntec since it is a 7 stk, please consider reading my post about buffing the S1-FA Frenzy to be competitive with its brothers. Thanks. 

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

23 minutes ago, Topre said:

Are you Russian by any chance?

Na. Why you ask?

[Shyloid 24]

2 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

But I was the one that told him about it and made him get off the couch.  I even posted and screened before him. Tobii always getting the praise, what is this bs. Pfft.

*Pat Pat* 

2 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

But I was the one that told him about it and made him get off the couch.  I even posted and screened before him. Tobii always getting the praise, what is this bs. Pfft.

*Pat Pat*  God damn, I'm mentally challenged when it comes to forums posts...
  Edited August 18, 2018 by Shyloid

[Unclean 45]

Less nerf, more buff pls

Just bring irrelevant weapons up to meta standards instead of turning us all into bullet sponges

[Hexerin 1140]

24 minutes ago, Unclean said:

Less nerf, more buff pls
Just bring irrelevant weapons up to meta standards instead of turning us all into bullet sponges

A slightly higher baseline TTK across the board would do this game good.

[Unclean 45]

Just now, Hexerin said:

27 minutes ago, Unclean said:

Less nerf, more buff pls
Just bring irrelevant weapons up to meta standards instead of turning us all into bullet sponges

A slightly higher baseline TTK across the board would do this game good.

Perfect TTK is hardly ever hit because of rng spread and recoil.. even weapons that have perfect bloom recovery hardly ever reach perfect ttk because it's long enough to allow a player to run 10 feet to cover for enough time for CA2/3 to kick in

I'm not saying we need lower ttk than we already have, but making irrelevant guns on par with the ones that are used more often will only help in variation in missions

[MaxHeadR 23]

11 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Say what you will about LO, they are clearly not afraid of change.
Testing this is gonna be fun, so lets all get on OTW to do our part.
Remember, if you dont join in the testing, YOU DONT GET TO COMPLAIN!

Anyhoo, if anyone sees me on, HMU.
Im happy to volunteer for data gathering ie: letting you kill me.

You don't tell anyone, if they can complain or not. You're a forum poster like everyone here, you don't have any authority, to tell others what they can and cannot do. smh

2 hours ago, Frosi said:

2 hours ago, Genobee said:

I may as well play devils advocate for a moment here. It puts a serious hurt on weapons designed to be used in.. well.. everything in it's effective range to sometimes, a very substantial extent. Everything is what it excels at currently. It isn't the absolute king of course, but you can't deny that it's shadow looms over a swath of weapons. There is very, very good reason that it's one of the most common guns.

Technically a range reduction coupled with a slight tweak to the RoF would prevent it from being the end-all-be-all. Other guns would finally get a chance to get a chance to shine a bit more. Wouldn't the test changes resolve the issue without nuking the N-TEC from orbit? It would certainly feel better then tossing it's accuracy in the trash. Inaccurate guns typically feel awful in games unless they are designed with it from the start with a very specific goal in mind.

I'd rather they at least investigate the current idea before moving on to other changes. 

I mean it's really not hard to use the N-tec in CQC, all you need to do really is hold LMB, control the very low recoil and track the target. I don't want the N-tec to become bad but it is by far the most used weapon in the game due to its versatility. You already see top 3-4 man teams on Citadel run nothing but 3 N-tecs and 1 HVR/OBIR simply because it does everything you need in the game. I don't want its tap firing to become slower or less accurate but simply make it less of a CQC laserbeam because imo that's really whats making the gun so versatile.

The n-tec now seems to fire slower and is pretty bad, when your shot do not reg. The gun is not that con-formative anymore.

[Nitronik 348]

Looking at them on paper -

I'm gonna throw out N-TEC test B due to the accuracy changes. Weapons in APB are inaccurate enough as it is, missing shots because muh rng is annoying as hell.
Jump modifier change should really stick though.

N-TEC test A has a perfect TTK of 0.73, unless my math is off - which honestly isn't all that terrible. Still better than the STAR as well - and given how accurate the NTEC can be with HS3 I don't mind this change too much, but maybe look into reverting the weird bloom curve?

I'd like to see the STAR 556 get a mag size increase to 35 from 32 for the same reasons as the NTEC nerf - namely making blue mod choice more enticing.

Given the nature of the STAR I reckon more ammo would also help out newbies and veterans alike, seeing as it lends itself well to spamming
You'd get a 4-round increase with EM3 and a 2 round increase with mag pull 3 compared to live values

AND KEEP IN MIND - if you're nerfing the N-TEC , you really should take a look at the FAR as well. The weapon was designed to basically be the best of both worlds between the STAR and NTEC, with the latter being potentially nerfed we may have the new king be a not widely available weapon (though I'm not sure people would be too keen on that 24 round mag size)

Edited August 18, 2018 by Nitronik

[Lord Cashpoint 269]

1 hour ago, Nitronik said:

Looking at them on paper -

I'm gonna throw out N-TEC test B due to the accuracy changes. Weapons in APB are inaccurate enough as it is, missing shots because muh rng is annoying as hell.
Jump modifier change should really stick though.

N-TEC test A has a perfect TTK of 0.73, unless my math is off - which honestly isn't all that terrible. Still better than the STAR as well - and given how accurate the NTEC can be with HS3 I don't mind this change too much, but maybe look into reverting the weird bloom curve?
 

Yeah I would rather take a longer TTK over less accuracy for the N-tec - Especially if we're going to be bringing back the old OCA ttk (Not sure that it was overshadowed by EVERY SMG, Little Orbit seems to forget the M-1922 exists, the OCA was still probably one of the best SMGs before the buff). We don't really need another Assault Rifle which has a low TTK but meh long range accuracy, we already have ATAC and Raptor.

Also please don't just nerf the N-tec without thinking about the Ursus.

Coming back to this: I honestly am very set against the range changes to ARs - These changes won't suddenly makes LMGs useful, and Rifles don't really have an issue competing with ARs at long range to begin with. Edited August 18, 2018 by Lord Cashpoint

[Nitronik 348]

4 minutes ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Also please don't just nerf the N-tec without thinking about the Ursus.

Forgot about this one. The Ursus is even more annoying than the NTEC at range, packing quite the punch up close as well

[TheJellyGoo 343]

6 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

But I was the one that told him about it and made him get off the couch.  I even posted and screened before him. Tobii always getting the praise, what is this bs. Pfft.

Why should any of you get praise for leaking information that they themselves didn't deem fit for release?
You're misunderstanding Matts tone and are lucky to not have your rights on the board revoked. 

I like the general sound of those changes, especially the range and ttk nerfs towards ntec sound promising.
Only thing that looks over the top is the CSG ttk increase.

Also that part about OCA... who wrote that? Doesn't sound like someone from LO who just recently "joined the game".
Feel like those are someone else words.

[Shini 251]

3 minutes ago, TheJellyGoo said:

Also that part about OCA... who wrote that? Doesn't sound like someone from LO who just recently "joined the game".
Feel like those are someone else words.

hmmmm

[foolish ninja 59]

Good changes overall, but i would add something else:
-The Strife could need a slight fire rate buff
-Ntec having less accuracy while in non-marksman-mode could put him back to its supposed range (crouch and standing)
-IR sounds a bit weird now. The IR in live version is pretty balanced imo. Maybe a slight buff to the fire rate reduction would be appreciated, but overall its great. My suggestion would be 3m-5m-7m range and 5%-8%-12% fire rate reduction.

Great work LO, keep it up!

[Pedroxin 107]

Can you add 2 rounds to the cap-40 while you're at it? , it won't do anything and isn't noticeable but sure helps people with OCD (like me :|). 
 

[SandyBitch 31]

Just to add my 2 cent:

"ich versteh nur noch bahnhof" to give it an accurate translation and the meaning of it "?????????????????????????"

also, i hope, the weapon balances aint getting worse and worse, good luck on the tweaks, dear LO.

[DouglasFalcon 125]

B NTEC is imo a great step in the right direction. The nerf is not perfect yet but I'm really happy to see that LO has acknowledged NTEC's most unfair aspects that make it so versatile. I think the nerf right now is a bit too harsh: despite me hating the weapon immensely, I still think that it's a meta defining weapon and therefore should still stay in top 5 best weapons in the game (otherwise plenty of crybabies will start complaining on forum).
but this is just me theorycrafting, I haven't played OTW yet.

Reverting the OCA buff is a great idea too, as it brings back the nice balanced meta SMGs had before it.

IR3 on paper seems fine now and I'm glad you guys listened to our suggestions in the forums, I feel like our opinion matters now!

Pretty ok with shotguns overall changes, altho I think Strife is still very gimmicky but I can understand how hard it is to balance it. Again we're just testing so even if you kinda break it don't worry you can always revert to being almost shit! Be creative

As for range variations to both ARs and some Rifles I'm still uncertain. Some weapons didn't need nerfs or buff to their range and you will probably have to revert some of them, but I appreciate the attempt to make IR3 more stable innthe meta. Plus we're on OTW so there's no danger if some weapon sucks or becomes broken:)

[Lato 188]

OCA was perfectly fine before any buff, CAP40 is the one that needs a fix because it's terrible right now

[Uke 101]

21 hours ago, Tobii said:

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. 

Say what? You should increase the accuracy of all the weapons if you want any competetive scene in this game, not make it worse. And do you have any plans on fixing the crosshair?

[Kiida 455]

2 hours ago, Lato said:

OCA was perfectly fine before any buff

This. It wasn't as underpowered as claimed, being more reliable than PMG, with the Whisper having more versatility with killing potential up to 30-40m. The OCA was possibly the most balanced SMG in the game and given an unnecessary buff.

[fastach 2]

21 hours ago, Tobii said:

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. 

Just tried both districts and Test B is a winner for me with NTEC, but the mag. size is meh.. you should leave it at 32.

21 hours ago, Tobii said:

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. 

Live version of CJ is way better than this one.

21 hours ago, 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. 

Test A district is a winner for me.  Edited August 18, 2018 by fastach

[Spheri 66]

Now this is something I can get behind.
Nerf NTEC but also nerf OCA. Seeing variety in guns really makes matches more interesting, and frankly I'm tired of playing against the same weapons all the time. 
Also very hilarious that people immediately think NTEC nerfs are bad when they're just trying things out.
Now that really makes me think.

[Spaghettio 7]

8 hours ago, Kiida said:

11 hours ago, Lato said:

OCA was perfectly fine before any buff

This. It wasn't as underpowered as claimed, being more reliable than PMG, with the Whisper having more versatility with killing potential up to 30-40m. The OCA was possibly the most balanced SMG in the game and given an unnecessary buff.

Indeed but i suspect due to the shotgun buffs it will probably be less relevant
it could use some tweaks to maybe accuracy perhaps maybe in conjunction with a damage drop off nerf aswell

regardless it is still unique and has its place in the game