Discussion point: Infantry Weapon Overhaul

Hi.

As some of you know, my plan was to totally overhaul infantry weapons for when the shotguns were added. There are 2 main aspects to this, and I'd like to discuss whether one of them is absolutely necessary.

So, point #1. Right now, we use a high spread low recoil based system. That is, the longer you fire, the wider the weapon spread gets. However, the recoil pretty much moves to a certain position and holds there. I've always felt this method had a fairly low skill ceiling. Take on the other hand, a low spread high recoil based system, and you'll have more complex spread patterns to master, but mastering it will allow you to really get more out of the weapons. It would really raise the skill ceiling, but potentially open up the skill gap far more than it is now, which might not actually be a desirable thing.

Point #2 however, is far less contentious. I just want the weapons to be more varied between the 2 sides. Right now, Pistol 1s, Smg1s, Smg2s, Mortar, RPG, HMG, Scout rifle and every grenade is identical across both teams. I'm not saying everything has to be different, but as far as the Pistols and SMGs go at the very least, I'm sure there's some better differentiation to be had there. On top of that, even the Assault Rifles of both teams are fairly straight forward, so I feel like there's more differences to be had there. Potentially, we could be talking about making something like the BEAR a burst rifle, the NFHR a long range 3 pellet rifle or someshit. Anything just make things a little more varied, add more stuff to master and just generally make the weapons a lot more interesting.

So yeah, tl;dr, I'm not entirely sure how far I should go with this. Making the weapons different between the 2 teams could be done relatively easy without actually changing much as far as recoil and spread goes. It's more than likely a 1-2 hour job with 4-5 tests to streamline the changes into something balanced. Once we start trying to construct spread patterns and recoil pulls, things suddenly become a lot more complicated. We start talking about 10 times the workload, so I want to be really sure that's the direction worth taking before we start heading down that road.

The last thing to keep in mind is that the weapons are actually pretty balanced right now. Neither team really has an infantry weapon advantage like they have in the past. No one single weapon is shining out above everything else, so we're in a good place right now. There's a lot to be said for "not fixing what isn't broken", but it's also worth keeping in mind that "balance does not equal fun". If we start creating differences between the teams, things will become a little imbalanced and it could take a while to reach where we are now. If we start dicking with spread patterns then it could take a LONG time to reach balance again, but we could be in a much better place for it.

So yeah, I'd just like people's thoughts. I'm anticipating that the vast majority of people are going to take the easy option in saying "make differences between the teams but leave the spread patterns as they are". That's an easy option and it is the one I'm leaning to, but the idea of making the weapons a lot more interesting to try and master is something that I've thought about for a long time. It'd be something where you could really work on improving every single time you played the game, and could end up really rewarding from that perspective.

 

Is this really necessary?

There's nothing that jumps out at me as a bad idea above, but I just don't hear players going, "gee the rifles need to be changed." or "my high skill level doesn't give me enough of an advantage."

Likewise, I do occasionally hear people bitching about the typical pain points: shotty, pistol2, melee, etc. However that isn't even that often.

There's a lot of shit that people bitch about, but the rifles aren't one of them.

 

Never thought about how this might affect stacking.

More reason to randomly determine a player's team /canofworms

 

The differentiation is far easier than the other one, and it wouldn't be as difficult to balance as changing the weapon spread.

And like you, I've definitely got hooked on accurate weapons with much more substantial kick, which is what I was really aiming to head towards.

 

Is it going to be fake kick or real kick? I think scout rifle has fake kick (it just shakes your screen while the aim is still dead on).

 

I dunno, I never really bother to master spray patterns, just tend to keep myself to tap/burst fire, at least with rifles. Empires though is a completely different beast, and not really similar to CS types weapons but more like more fun shooters maybe like tf2. It's never really felt like it's supposed to be too realistic to me, since the way the health bar works negates a lot of CS type play and the land as well as map cover, vehicles, factoring running across a map in (i.e. if you got picked off as fast as in cs on Empires, you would be annoyed as hell), etc.

I feel like there maybe does need some differentiation, especially the BEAR/BEHR feel half-and-halved at times, neither one exactly complete compared to the other. In many ways it's similar to the smg's, where there are only a few variables and one gun gets some and the other gets the rest. I don't really like that feeling to be honest, but I'm not really sure what can be done since smg1 in most places replaces a long-range sort of carbine weapon and smg2 is supposed to act more like a submachine gun.

I'd actually really like to see smg1 turned into a proper carbine and smg2 into a real submach, with good rof, good recoil and good moving accuracy for smg2, compared to good accuracy, good damage and low rof for smg1.

It sort of irks me that the NF scout rifle model would have been perfect for the role, albeit without the scope and with a clip rather than bolt action.

Anyway, don't forget about nf's old smg3 in this overhaul. It's a good weapon and could really use a comeback - perhaps not as an engy weapon but maybe somewhere in there.

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I'm way out of practice with Empires weapons, but I do feel like the BEHR and NFAR work good as counterparts. NFAR always used to be a weapon that would spray death in front of it, but not be so great at range (though clearly useful), and the BEHR model with the drum magazine and all feels like the same. They might be good counters for the shotty, too.

With the NFHR...I always liked it. High damage, low rof, great accuracy. It feels good but you're in trouble up close (unless you rock). What I kinda don't like is that NFAR at least looks like it's more effective in most situations and I feel like that's due to the immense recoil the NFHR gets while moving - from the first shot, even. When moving the NFHR has full inaccuracy from the get go, which is sort of a bad idea.

In comparison, the NFAR has everything you'd want from a rifle - adaptability, accuracy, great movement accuracy, a large clip... It's taking up 80% of the niche, imo.

In many ways the BEAR doesn't suffer as much as the NFHR, since although its movement fire is also insane, it can hit things 5 metres away in a short spray, making it not as useless in close quarters (though almost).

I feel like with some of our weapons we need to bring parts of them close together, and differentiate them through other means. I know the scoped rifle was more or less absorbed into the NFHR and BEAR, them having insane accuracy at standstill, but it's all a little out of whack.

I think you need to find out what you really want to do with each class as well. Ask yourself how much of a difference it would make to regular riflemen play if you removed the BEAR and NFAR. Is the scout still going to have a choice between the scoped rifle, smgs and shotgun? Or are the smgs going, and will you be able to do more with them since they would belong to one class?

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The last thing I would say is to think about the destabilising effect the pistol has on weapon balance. How much do you need an smg1 if you have a pistol? Not much. Not much at all. It messes with the other classes similarly, though the Shot Pistol and Tundra Falcon add more unique usefulness that doesn't hinder.

I think as you're going about it, you need to also ask yourself which classes need a pistol and which could do away with it. Not because I want the pistol removed, but because you need to understand the true usefulness behind the weapon.

For instance (I know this is getting long but...), if I removed all the weapons that were unneeded it would look something like this:

Engineer - SMG
The engineer doesn't really need a pistol. If you amalgamated the two smgs into one, it would be effective enough without a sidearm, and the sidearm is only really useful for reloading.

Rifleman - Pistols/RIFLE/HMG
The rifleman needs only one rifle - the BEHR or NFAR. It needs pistols to demonstrate its infantry combat dominance, and the HMG because that fills a niche all on its own.

Grenadier - Pistol/RPG-Mortar
The grenadier needs a pistol for range and rof.

Scout - Pistol/Scoped Rifle or Pistol/Shotgun
The scout needs a pistol because of its low rof or low accuracy weapons.

I say this not to be controversial, but because this is how it is. More weapons were added to diversify the weapons, but usually they take from an existing pool in order to create them. It's all very well to say the AK is different from the M4a1, but the amount of subtle variation in cs doesn't exist in Empires or WHOLE LOT of other shooters. It's a more realistic stance on weapons that we don't have to follow simply because it's not a hyper realistic game. We don't have the same world, even.

So my point is, try to see the weapons in an ultra simplistic light before you do this overhaul. Not in reference to each other but their use in the game and see which niches haven't been covered. As you said, weapons are balanced now, so you have the time to do this.

Might make another post on my take on weapon values. What would be really useful is if people who actually know about infantry combat post on how it is, and what the real usefulness of weapons are in-game. What they use, how often and so on.

 

I like the weapons how they currently are actually, atleast on the NF side. With the exception of the fucking shotty pistol of course.

 

Shotty is love.
Shotty is life.

 

Bring back BECAR pl0x, it actually fits the brenodi empire instead of having an assault rifle no one uses.

Asymetric-izise the two sides by making NF weapons deal more damage, but with higher recoil and lower rate of fire, and BE weapons deal moderate damage with lower recoil and higher rate of fire. Like NC and TR respectively from Planetside.

 

Pretty much this.
Everytime we had something diffrent, it turned out to be really op.
Burst carbine thats perfectly accurate in an age of derpa herpa shooting?
Burst pistol same deal that has dps outta ass? Check.

Same shit is happening now with be p2, as its ability to instakill anyone with a hs from a mile away is total bollocks.
Shotty isnt much better mind you, back when, it was *kinda* balanced by the fact that you were screwed you didnt get a kill, but with interruptions and meele being ridiculous now, its just plain unffuny to play against.

NfHr seems like the nly weapon that is plain bad now. Turning it into semi sniper doesnt really accomplish much as that it just bounces between being great and shit with no middle ground. Not helping is the fact that nfar can do much the same with tap fire.

There is also that fact that empires has really weird metagame. You cant stand still or youll die. You absolutely need cover, so thats why there are walls. Mobility is insanely important. Having weapons that only ever work when absolutely immobile will never work.

For me, you shouldnt do any balancing before you decide what do to with sights. Currently, they havent been viable since 2.12, where they confered a nice acc bonus. First of all, not a single damn gun has its sight aligned. Second, most of them, nf especially, hurt your aim because of their crap design. We have some models going around? Why not ask Flashe to remake weapons? I love ironsights in games, but , TBH, I wouldnt mind some holographic sights or someshit. Also, remove the fucking -80% speed penalty for the reasons I stated earlier.
They other way is to get rid of sights altogether, as they server little purpose and smgs/pistols dont have any anyway.
Only after you deal with that can you start doing anything more advanced.

 

infantry battling is the best part of the game. why would you want to make it like vehicle battles, which, albeit fun, feel unbalanced every version

also they're not pistol1, smg1, and 2 anymore. its PISTOL X, SMG XMG53, and SMG FAG69 as of the new version
COOL FUCKING NAMES HUH

 

Why don't you just make some weapons high kick low spread and others low spread high kick, there's no reason not to have variation since both factions have multiple weapons for each class.

 

Zoom has a point, even though I know they're bollox, I still try to use them when I'm a rifleman. The best thing would be to fix them, maybe speed up the anims a bit more so they're more of a snap-to, and then add some interesting modifiers to them. I do think some of them ought to be changed, too, since they're just obstructive as feck.

 

Yes, I forgot to mention the fact that it takes ages to set them up.

 

Perhaps they need a melee cancel like reload just got?

 

Sacrificing mobility is one of the two reasons why I NEVER uses ironsight, the other reason is I don't feel it's making the weapon more accurate, due to model issues. Ironsight is just shit.

If we switch to high recoil system, that would probably close the gap between regular players and new players, I doubt most regular players can accommodate to the change.

Different weapons means more balancing issues, I don't think we are up for that.

BEAR only has 1/2 ammo of BEHR, that's virtually the only reason why I don't use it, despite the accuracy difference.
NFHR is virtually crippled without ironsight.

I switches between SMG1 and SMG2 for different scenarios, but SMG2 is a little OP at close combat, the burst damage is too strong.

As for Shotty...Trickster, why?