Assault Rifle discussion

Discussion in 'Game Play' started by Empty, Feb 16, 2015.

  1. Empty

    Empty Member

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    Everyones been QQing about the assault rifles, personally I'm happy with them but I've heard a few valid criticisms so I'm opening a thread to discuss them and discuss possible solutions on how to improve them.

    First background, originally the ARs were for all ranged combat, they were accurate on the move and even better stationary, their damage was unmatched and they were pretty much the best weapon in any situation.

    From there, I re-did the scout and turned him into the assault, to do so, the assault needed to be the best close range class, since that's his niche. Originally, the rifles stayed powerful and the scout simply gained resistances to the rifles in order to be powerful at close range.

    What I found was that the rifles were still dominant up close due to their insane accuracy allowing for sprinting riflemen to get 2-3 headshots easily if they were good, on top of that the rifles still had insane damage, and the end result was while riflemen were killing scouts in 4-5 shots, scouts were killing riflemen in a similar number of shots, which made the classes too even. The problem with that is scout is meant to be the strongest close range player, and being even with the rifle up close meant that the rifleman was still the best class at all ranges.

    To fix this, I heavily nerfed rifleman's moving accuracy and damage (but not their falloff, so at long range their damage is the same). This means that riflemen would be most effective when stationary and at long range. A rifleman can win a fight up close if he's already crouching or standing still, but he'll lose if he runs into a room. This received significant hatred from the community, not many people were happy with the changes, and I myself went overboard with the accuracy loss, which coupled with the damage loss made rifleman too useless up close.

    From here I buffed moving accuracy up so you'd be able to hit a target up close, but you're still at a disadvantage if you're moving. Personally, I think these changes are fine and I've been playing a bit of rifleman and having decent success utilising the strategy of crouching and using walls as cover, while avoiding fighting on the move, however people are still unhappy, so I'd like to open up discussion.

    In the current setup, rifles have to be weaker than most other weapons up close, especially scout weapons, but they also have to be the strongest at range by far. The options for doing so are thus:

    How it was:
    High Accuracy
    High Damage
    Problems:
    God weapon at all ranges, upsets the range balance between classes and doesn't slot into our gameplay.

    Solution 1)
    High Accuracy (when moving)
    Low Damage
    Problems:
    Feels like a peashooter, kills take lots of ammo. Good riflemen can easily land headshots which may mitigate the low damage, but makes rifleman too good vs assault. Also slows down TTK significantly which sucks and will hurt rifleman at extreme ranges where even his accurate weapon can't land every shot.

    solution 2) This is the current solution
    Low accuracy (when moving)
    High/Mid Damage
    Problems:
    Close range fights feel luck based, sucks on the move, at longer ranges you can't push forward while shooting which slows down even long ranged fights, pushes rifleman to a heavily defensive class

    solution 3) I don't like this solution
    mid damage
    High accuracy
    Lose accuracy faster
    Problems:
    I think rifles already lose their accuracy quickly so I don't want to nerf it more. I also have no way to make accuracy falloff faster except by stance (if I could, I'd allow rifles to have their first shot highly accurate when moving, but lose accuracy faster if you're moving, but I can't)
    I don't mind riflemen taking potshots while moving forward, but I don't want riflemen able to sprint around corners and gun down assaults all day because that's not the classes role any more.



    I'm open to further discussion and input, but I don't want to keep hearing 'REVERT REVERT REVERT' because the assault rifle is no longer intended to be the best weapon in all scenarios, the rifles are intended to be used at mid and long range, while remaining usable but not powerful up close. I honestly think they work fine at the moment, I even kicked ass on district with them today (and district ranges are very short so I think rifle should be pretty weak on district) and I think I found a pretty good middle ground this patch where rifles are still powerful at long range but aren't great up close.

    Essentially if your complaints boil down to "I can't kill entire squads while sprinting" you need to either switch to assault or start playing rifleman differently.
     
  2. 101010

    101010 Member

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    My opinion =
    Assault took the Rifleman spot and did it great. Assault is a great class now.
    The problem is now Rifleman is kind of useless.

    My idea that I know some will hate is convert Rifleman to siege class
    Give them mortars, seismics, and allow them to see enemy building health.
     
  3. BigTeef

    BigTeef Bootleg Headshot master

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    I want the MG back.
     
  4. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    I haven't had a chance to play after the spread buffs yet.
     
  5. Empty

    Empty Member

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    Why?
    The original MG? Do you want rifleman to have it?
    For what purpose do we need the old MG?
    What role will it fill?
    Why would I take it over the rifles or alternatively why should I take the rifles over it?

    I'm not being sarcastic, these are genuine questions that I have for the original MGs, there's a reason I changed them so wildly and I need justification for why they should ever change back.

    I disagree with useless, rifleman is amazing at range in my opinion, though the smg1 is an interesting comparison. I think the rifles perform better crouching but the smg1 is better standing. As for siege stuff, that's just confusing, why not give that stuff to grenadier?

    I'm kinda interested in giving seismics to another class, there's no real reason to prevent anyone having them (except assault for obvious reasons) giving them to rifleman is an interesting idea since they'll be able to assault bases, take down turrets, and also they'll be able to choose between an anti-infantry, anti-tank or anti-structure weapon. On the other hand, it gives them no functionality related to their core role which is mid to long range infantry killing.

    You shouldn't really post then, but essentially it's halfway between what it was originally, and my huge nerf.
    Roughly the same as an smg1 while moving
     
  6. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    That sounds good on paper, I can tell you this much :p
     
  7. BigTeef

    BigTeef Bootleg Headshot master

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    Yes

    Support fire and its works great with squads who actually use them correctly.

    Because for some reason people bounce around when they take damage, and if you have a weapon that can attack long range with lots of ammo, I assure you would be helping your squad in firefights if you don't camp with it. Because if you get hit by it, you flinch. Thus making the enemy loose their balance and forcing them to re-adjust the reticule. Making it easier for people around you to kill the target. It also filled the role of suppressing fire perfectly.

    The main reason is that it was a fun weapon, and now its gone.
    Thus removing the fun. There was no reason to turn it into a auto shotty for a class that can cloak and already excels in cqc.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  8. Empty

    Empty Member

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    I support fire with a rifle and actually kill people instead of missing them shitloads.

    I don't see how that is in any way different in functionality to a rifle, particularly with the old HMG stats, the HMGs were as powerful as a rifle with 5 times the clip, their downside was that they were innacurate as piss, even when prone it was hard as fuck to hit a target, if your statement about knocking people around was actually a use they had, the HMGs would have been much more accurate and much less damaging, which is false. They functioned primarily as a rifle that was slightly better at midrange due to clipsize, but needed you to be prone and thus it was virtually unused outside of certain areas where you can hold a choke point easily.

    I've tried every avenue of gameplay with the weapons and I'd say the closest thing this game has ever had to a support weapon is the scout rifle since you can take potshots and soften up enemies at vast ranges before they get into combat.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  9. BigTeef

    BigTeef Bootleg Headshot master

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    That's because you actively stopped people from making the gun more accurate because your reasoning was apparently it would make the weapon op if it actually hit something.

    The gun is useless because you wouldn't let people try to do something with it.
    And then it got removed. That isent fair to the gun, the person who modeled it, and the people who liked using it.

    A weapon that can spray over 100 bullets without reload is better than a traditional rifle because it doesnt stop shooting and from memory the reload was slightly longer than a normal reload with a rifle.
    I bet if the accuracy was buffed it would be a decent weapon.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  10. Empty

    Empty Member

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    We've had 5 years of continual balance patches for the HMGs to find a niche in their original state, it never happened.

    Every time it's accuracy was boosted to useful levels, the game slowed down because everyone was using the HMG and proning around, it sucked.

    The problem has always been that people were trying to make them work like rifles which was doomed from the start, a rifle with 5x the clip of a normal rifle needs steep downsides, that's always been either lower damage, lower accuracy, forcing prone usage or draining stamina.

    All of those consequences have been so large that they make the weapon useless, why? Because clipsize does not correlate to combat effectiveness. A rifle is good with a 30 round clip or a 200 round clip against one target. It's very rare you spend all 30 rounds on a single target, so essentially in a 1v1 scenario the clipsize doesn't matter. This means that when the HMG receives nerfs to compensate it's larger clip size, it ends up weaker than the rifle in the 1v1 scenario. Why is this a problem? Being weaker than a rifle in 1v1 means there's no fucking reason to use a HMG because a rifle will beat it most of the time. The only times the extra clip will come in handy are situations which are already heavily in your favour (E.G. shooting a squad from behind) or poor gameplay (very thin chokepoints that large numbers of players must attack from)

    The solution in my eyes is not to try and make the HMG try and do the same job as any other weapon. Instead of trying to make it a fair assault rifle, I made it a completely different weapon. Did it work?
    Maybe.

    Anyway, I've just realised that HMG is completely offtopic.
    You can argue about it in another thread, via PM or steam message, but further discussion here will be deleted.

    This thread is ASSAULT RIFLE discussion. Not rifleman or class layout.
     
  11. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Firstly, there's a bug with the shotgun in that if you hold fire, it reloads and dumps fake shells. Doesn't do anything except basically repeat the animation, but it's a bug nonetheless. Not sure if it's been reported already.

    Okay so this is your problem. I actually haven't used the weapons much, and I do like your approach to balancing them, but this is your problem. No really, hear me out.

    In a game like Empires where you have an anti-tank class, a build/healer class, and two extra classes it's natural to want to split their weapons into close range and long range. But the problem with that is Empires isn't a game where a short-range class is particularly necessary. Though you do often get short range fights, the majority of encounters are at a distance of two barracks lengths or so. Effectively this means that any weapon that's effective at that range and further, is significant more useful than a weapon that's effective there and under.

    Balance it as you like, that's still going to be the case unless you're playing something like glycen, where short/long balance is pretty even.

    Added to that, is that you keep increasing the weapon counts. This means you want each weapon to have a niche all on its own for a class, and that usually means slow firing vs fast firing, long range vs short range, and movement vs no movement. That means each class has a weapon that covers all three of these areas.

    And as well as all that, you have goddamn pistols that screw with the whole system.

    The way to make it work is to focus on your idea of what the class is supposed to be, and take just one weapon and create the perfect profile from that. Take the pistol as a sidearm at the same time, and create both in synergy. If you need to make a variant with the same model, do that. If you want to use our oldass grey models as place holders, do that too. It doesn't matter. The most important thing to do is to create a great primary, and have freedom to change the secondary as you see fit.

    This whole "General pistol for every class" crap actually harms the weapon balance. You want to be able to focus on the primaries and delivering a core gun that people love.

    After you get that right, you can introduce more. But on introducing more, it's important to keep in mind that what you want is to give players a fun experience. Understand that players would rather have one good gun, rather than two that they don't quite like.

    Now I know you might think this is a little bit offensive, as you've done a pretty good job with most of the weapons, but I think this idea has a tendency to get overlooked. We add more guns, more weapons, more armours, and all the time we are giving players less good choices. People become discontent with the state of the game because they can't find that one thing they really enjoy. They have to look at niche this and niche that, when really they just want to take a gun, get used to its feel and understand how it works.

    One more thing. It's almost impossible to make a combat range niche in this game. Mostly because our environments don't support it and are too diverse. As well as the vehicles, turrets, and lack of cover on most maps. That's really not what a class should be based around, and I know we have two classes that feel a bit unnecessary without that distinction, but that's not your fault, basically. Don't try to fill that void with something that is inherently flawed for this game. We can fix those classes in other ways :)
     
  12. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    Remove either assault or rifleman. And then make rifleman or assault best of both worlds.
     
  13. LordDz_2

    LordDz_2 Strange things happens here

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    Or let both classes be good at killing infantry, allowing people to choose the class which fits best to their playstyle.
     
  14. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I'm somewhat in the camp of ddd and I probably need to play a bit more with them, but I do see the obvious differences. I used both the assault class and rifleman, both got the job done at the given distances they were suppose to work at, so I do think that's fine. I don't agree with ikalx as much, it isn't hard to close the gap, especially if you have competent engineers on your team.

    The rifle's themselves, I think there's a slight problem not exactly related to the rifle but to pistol 1. Pistol 1 can fill in long range fights pretty well which is a problem for assault because they now have the option of both long and short. If you nerfed the distance of pistol 1, rifleman would have more use in the long range fight I think. I think it's fine honestly, but again I may need to get into a few more fights for a complete idea.

    I got other opinions on the rest of the weapons, but I'll post them on the 2.6whatever update thread.
     
  15. 101010

    101010 Member

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    But why ?
    Rifles could be given to assault.
    What the classes are -
    Engineer = Support + Anti building
    Assault = Anti infantry
    Rifleman = Anti infantry + Anti vehicle
    Grenadier = Anti vehicle + Anti building

    What they could be
    Engineer = Support
    Assault = Anti infantry
    Grenadier = Anti vehicle
    New class = Anti building


    Before you start thinking of making long range weapons too much better. Remember why they they are bad and why Scout became Assault.
    Also why the scoped rifle was removed for a while.

    Long range weapons = Camping and shitty game play.
     
  16. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I thought it was agreed making roles very class specific kinda sucks, well at least for low pops it does.
     
  17. 101010

    101010 Member

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    If we focus too much on low pop then it kills the game play when we do get some decent sized games going.

    With all the new things waiting to be released. I don't see Empires having to suffer too much longer with a lack of players.(""If they are released right"") Also as is you could check with some of the more active players. Viper is being over run with new people constantly. So the community is growing again.

    Class specific roles are easier for new people. People always say Empires is complicated so simplify little things that might make it easier for new people.

    - I kind of wish Candles would hop in on this topic as I know he has some changes to skill and class system waiting to be pushed out. Kind of wondering
    what they are.
     
  18. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    While I haven't worked with it, my interpretation of the incoming skill system is one where skills may be permanently bought for the duration of the match for varying costs. In addition, numerous things will shake up as far as infantry classes go.

    My interpretation is that these outstanding features are all tied to the gui update in the "master" code branch. So the update may be a rather large one. In addition, I would expect numerous bugs compared to our current release.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  19. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    You may be right, I think I spent 60% of my playtime under 20 total players so I tend to think in those terms. Still, with such a spread you end up wanting 25% of each class. Everyone will have to pull their weight a bit more, unlike now where a couple of really good players can carry a bad team. Might not be so bad, might be pretty frustrating.
     
  20. LordDz_2

    LordDz_2 Strange things happens here

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    Because this is a FPS/RTS, not just RTS. It's a FPS where you encounter infantry, therefore it has to be possible for all classes to kill infantry, otherwise it's going to be a shitty gameplay for those that doesn't pick the anti-infantry class.
     

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