Weapon Feedback

Fixious

Test Lead
While no new weapons were introduced, some of them were tweaked. The Blaster now has a DOT effect for instance, and the sniper has been changed. Discuss how you feel the weapons interact with the new content in 1.40 so far.
 

Jaymyster

Member
Personally I'm going to ignore all and any feedback coming for the first week.

Get used to the changes, especially on the sniper rifle. Remeber how annoying and hard skiing was when you've never done it before?

...Yeah.

The difference is here is that the LR has been nerfed in a number of ways; quite honestly, I can say it's undergone a bigger change than any one weapon has in a single patch I think ever. There's less damage, the obvious charge time, your targets know they're being targeted now, and it still drains your jet (which shouldn't happen if you're already waiting for the damn charge anyway imo). So a number of minuses with no pluses, for a change that the community didn't unanimously ask for (unlike the mortar back in the day). Personally, (like most others) I simply want the charge time to be no more like pilot said; but I won't let that take away from the notion that the LR needs to be de-nerfed regardless.

Remember, this is the only effective mid-air weapon past 150m. So the changes made to this weapon are likely to effect the game of legions far more than any other.

I strongly hope you guys can come to the realization that this was a bit of an over-nerf. Otherwise, the LR has begun its dust collecting marathon.
 

WildFire

Warrior of Linux
I personally think the weapon damage nerf was too great and the charge up time too long. Cappers really don't need that much time to react to one shot. Make it easy for cappers with boost as well shesh.
 

stefygraff

Private Tester
Sniper better than ever, no instakill when you get to the enemy base on Nivosus! The nerf was needed! Anyway sniper has no place in fast paced games(T;A example) If you want to snipe, please orientate to games like CoD please! Bolt better than sniper by 1000 times!
Laser rifle always splitted the community into two sides, and im absolutley sure that the majority will decide the best for the game, not just leave such a bad wapon i such a fast paced game where you dont have to just point and click from 500 m and ruin a good caproute. More discuss over this after 1 week, when you snipa lovers will get used to the changes
 

MJ1284

Member
Anyway sniper has no place in fast paced games(T;A example) If you want to snipe, please orientate to games like CoD please!

Have fun chasing that one rabbiting flag carrier who refuses to cap (and conveniently stops on high hill to regen back to full health now and then) and forces the game to drag on. Might as well ditch that chaingun because "autos and hitscan haz no place in fast paced games hurr durr, they're too ee-zay to use".
 

Piggeh

Puzzlemaster
Here are my personal thoughts on the changes to the sniper rifle.

The LR, in its current state on the live servers, is OP. It's quite easy to use as it's point and shoot and does up to 53% damage on an OR. The issue for most cappers was that there was no feasible way to dodge the LR. Now I still believe that cappers need to stop flying in perfect arcs (seriously, even a slight juke to the left or right will throw off a sniper's aim). Nevertheless, the damage output on the LR was too much and you could basically two hit most cappers.

The current changes include a charge up, decreased damage output, and a visible beam. While I feel that everyone (including me) needs to get used to the charge up, all of the changes coupled with boost, shield, dodge, and warp core will make it exceedingly difficult to stop great cappers. One of the reasons such a nerf was required was to prevent duel sniping from being OP. I suggested this before in PT, but no one really commented on it there, so I'll suggest it again.

I honestly think that the current hitscan mechanic simply requires a damage nerf, a longer reload time, and some changes to how the range works on the sniper. Here is the proposed change. If you were to graph damage output over range, it would look sort of like y=-x^2, except the vertex of this parabola would be more of a plateau. Essentially, from very close and very far range, the sniper rifle would do limited damage. Only past 120M or so would it actually do decent damage (and the normal falloff range would still exist). Cappers would still be forced to dodge (there should be some skill in that) but they would not be utterly slaughtered like they are now. They would be able to usevarious cores and stay alive much longer than they have in the past.

These are just my two cents - I would love to hear some rational critique of them.
 

Jaymyster

Member
I honestly think that the current hitscan mechanic simply requires a damage nerf, a longer reload time, and some changes to how the range works on the sniper. Here is the proposed change. If you were to graph damage output over range, it would look sort of like y=-x^2, except the vertex of this parabola would be more of a plateau. Essentially, from very close and very far range, the sniper rifle would do limited damage. Only past 120M or so would it actually do decent damage (and the normal falloff range would still exist). Cappers would still be forced to dodge (there should be some skill in that) but they would not be utterly slaughtered like they are now. They would be able to usevarious cores and stay alive much longer than they have in the past.

You get Jaymyster's seal of approval. I personally like this idea. This doesn't rule out the possibility that there are other ideas that would still satisfy legions gameplay, but at the same time I don't want to start a thread of overconfident, schitty LR suggestions that will only further confuse the devs' choice.
 

SNAKEOPS

Member
You get Jaymyster's seal of approval. I personally like this idea. This doesn't out-rule that there aren't ideas that would still satisfy legions gameplay, but at the same time I don't want to start a thread of overconfident, schitty LR suggestions that will only further confuse the devs' choice.

Exactly, the weapon needs rebalancing, not much of a nerf. Make it more effective in real sniper situations and less effective in dueling situations. And people keep crying LR is OP, of course it will be in good hands like shaska or RisingSun. But, give a noob LR and RL, he'll be more effective spamming RL.

And the only people I see doing well with LR in dueling situations is shaska and RisingSun, everyone else gets killed if they try to snipe in duels. I honestly feel like they're judging LR when the only players that change the tide of games with it are people like the ones I mentioned before. They change the tide of game either way, without LR or with it.
 

Xtreme

shaska's bff
stefy your IQ was halved overnight??

but it's funny that people are saying snipe is overpowered. Of course I agree but there is also some exaggeration which can lead to poor choices. It is important that players distinguish between broke ideas and cases where given players are just more skilled (or not skilled/aware). Many people use the example of playing offense on nivo, but in qualifying snipe as overpowered they fail to recognize that offense without distract is bound to fail (just that they will die on stand or after short-lived OD). So really the question you must ask yourself is if it is so much more insanely overpowered if you die as you approach the base?

Another example so we can talk more seriously: imagine if I was dueling vs 2 ppl, and they were both shooting rockets at me. If I am killed immediately before I can do anything, does it mean rockets are overpowered? Would the presence of a teammate make a difference in this?

It would be the same logic with cg etc. Dunno but there are things to think about before you say something absolute. Although simply 10% decrease in dmg could solve sniper problems, what piggeh has suggested sounds quite interesting ! :)
 

Armageddon

Teapot
I think piggeh's idea is about the best i've heard from the countless LR threads and discussions on the LR. I really don't have an opinion on the use of the LR because i rarely use it, but from a victims stand point the current LR wouldn't be so horrible if 75% of a teams D wasn't using it. When you have 3-5 snipers on Frost it becomes a pain in the ass, i think in situations like that the new sniper is close to perfect but those situations are not always there. We need a nice medium between the current LR and the new LR.
 

SeymourGore

Flatulent Cherub
Yar, liking Piggeh's suggestion (which I must've glossed over or forgotten about in the PT section). I'd also be up for it receiving a name change too, from 'Laser Rifle' to 'Laser Carbine' (or just Carbine) to further define it as a mid range and not extremely long ranged weapon.

Or would you guys like to see the weapon separated into two different weapons? One similar to the live laser rifle with it hitscan properties, albeit with nerfing with something along the lines Piggeh suggested and a longer ranged weapon with similar drawbacks as the current test laser rifle but with higher damage capabilities at longer ranges?

Or perhaps a weapon that combines the two mechanics? A low damage, but hitscan-esque shot when the fire button is pressed, but can also be charged by holding down the fire button resulting in a more powerful shot (but with the 'beam' qualities).

Anyhow, keep the feedback coming, it's easy to get 'tunnel vision' in closed testing, so Seymour's always happy when public test comes around so the vision can be broadened with more input and ideas!
 

WildFire

Warrior of Linux
Or perhaps a weapon that combines the two mechanics? A low damage, but hitscan-esque shot when the fire button is pressed, but can also be charged by holding down the fire button resulting in a more powerful shot (but with the 'beam' qualities).

This. Helps the sniper gain some finishing power at close ranges while still managing to take cappers out.
 

MJ1284

Member
Or perhaps a weapon that combines the two mechanics? A low damage, but hitscan-esque shot when the fire button is pressed, but can also be charged by holding down the fire button resulting in a more powerful shot

This sounds very similar to T:A's BXT rifle (and perhaps that's why they're not banned in T:A comp scene), only difference is that instead of holding fire button you had to be in scope to "wind up" each shot, longer you scoped -> more damage your shot does. I think this solution worked very nicely in T:A (yeah yeah Marksman update made Sentinels *dancing* annoying to deal with, but that's beside the point), you couldn't spam your shots and you had to leave your flank exposed because of your "tunnel vision". You could still jet normally while scoping if you wanted, but because of wind up time it'd still be more gimmicky trick than effective way of sniping.

Other T:A sniper rifles, Phase Rifle and SAP 20, work more like current (prior 1.40 patch at least) Laser Rifle: You can fire from hip but your shots will drain nearly all of your energy (making jetting challenging). While arguably more versatile you couldn't escape flanking enemies right after shooting if you were standing on flat surface (T:A doesn't have downjat though) and duel sniping is ill advised as you don't have splash weapons besides (max 2) grenades, not to mention the long-ish pause between each shot due to reload + energy recharge. If you REALLY want to keep the old LR in the game you could probably tweak them in a manner that LR draws energy from reactors like turrets do (this would set a cap on how many snipers one team can effectively have in the field). If reactor goes down LR stops working for everyone on the team, deployable reactors would feed energy to nearby LRs with drastically slower rate than main reactor (this would practically solve potential O Sniping issues as sniper can't keep firing without nearby reactor -> reactors are commonly placed near base assets).

Sniper class needs to be strong but not too strong in longer ranges and very fragile in close combat, therefore I think Seymour's suggestion should be implemented in Test Server alongside the current LR for comparison. After a month or so you can have a vote which LR should be implemented in official patch.
 

pilot

New Member
I'd endorse any of the latter ideas as viable solutions to having sniper weapons in the game while maintaining balanced gameplay and proportionality with respect to the effectiveness of all other weapons and armor classes.

Any of those solutions are more democratic than zeroing in on the LR and crippling its interface (distracting laser beam obscuring sight) and usability (hold it down indefinitely, release to fire).

We hold down enough buttons simultaneously as it is (jet, forward-side, up-down, zoom, weapon-change, throw nade/flag, activate core). Making a weapon irritating to use is a sure way to alienate players more than balance gameplay. “Get used to it or play something else” does not sound like it is in the best interests of the community as a whole, especially when constructive feedback is encouraged. Neither can one realistically expect to ‘get used to’ something that’s been hampered by design, and that’s made to behave unlike every other weapon in the game.

Practically every other FPS and FPSZ manages to accommodate a true sniper weapon, and even stronger variations as well, like the Railgun or Instagib. It is safe to say many enjoy the variability in tactics made possible by different weapons. So much was made possible already, and surely a true sniper rifle, carbine, or instant-beam weapon can find a place too using the great suggestion provided so far.
 

Maxter

Member
I'd like to see two variants of the sniper. One as a charge-up, visible beam high damage weapon(I'm thinking it should be able to do around 70% damage to a Raider), and another as a insta-hit, no charge up/visible beam, but doing around 40% damage to an Outrider. I suggest the name Stinger(because it stings) for the second variant.

I've played against snipers a number of times, but I rarely felt they're overpowered. They might seem annoying when you're in a public game and all the "pros" decide to go sniping from their base bridge, but that's just in a public game. Everyone should remember we add limit to the sniper numbers, if it's an organised game.

It's as Piggeh says, the Capper needs to move. If you're a Capper and you got sniped the first time you tried to cap, one would expect you to be wary of the sniper and move carefully the second time(like sticking close to the ground and moving around in the air), not whine about it. The only time I speak out against snipers is when they hog all the kills in the pubs and pat their own backs for getting the points with a hitscan weapon in 30 -50 ping.

In any case, I don't really have much to add on the subject of sniper other than that.

About the Blaster Rifle; Thank you for actually doing it. I love the weapon. For my playstyle of hit, hide and run, it's a wonderful complement. It's a weapon just there to annoy the hell out of an enemy. I even love the fact that the DoT ignores Shield Core. Just amazing.
 
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