But see, the whole point is that the standard version is what the Assault variants of all the others are supposed to be copycatting.

The issue is that it's inferior to the copycats, which is contrary to the design of every other weapon.

Your "argument" doesnt make sense.

They are not copycats, they are *improved, specialized versions*.

As such, they SHOULD be better, and the original SHOULD be inferior.


For all its supposed inferiority, though, it doesnt seem to stop me tearing through opponents, with a basic AR in FW.
(and by basic, I mean "meta level 1")

http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/dust/news.control/65468/1/rangeprofiles.jpg

I'd argue that the Assault Rifle and the Assault Scrambler Rifle have the same range difference between optimal and effective, if that's what you mean't. The Assault Combat Rifle -does- have a slightly longer range (6m) and it's honestly the most well balanced as an Assault Variant; having slightly longer range and very slightly less damage BUT it does have reduced resource costs that make it a very good contender. Sacrificing less to get comparable damage and slightly more range.

But this argument falls apart when you compare the Burst Assault Rifle to the Combat Rifle in which the Combat Rifle is better overall. The Burst Assault isn't even a good copy-cat by it's own right, it's just worse off in every way.

So, the question remains: Do we make the Assault Rifle the best 'assault' variant or do we buff the other Plasma Rifle variants to be comparable to what they're trying to emulate?

Just remember the inverse is true as well. All racial assault variants are mildly inferior in some way to the Gallente AR...which is by design.

Gallente baseline is Assault, Caldari - Breach, Minmatar - burst, Amarr - tactical. Non baseline types of weapons from a given race are degraded forms of some other races baseline weapons. (Fully understand that las sentence is a mouthful - sorry)

My point is the other weapons aren't meant to emulate the Assault Rifle...just the racial Assault Variants are.

"In no way should a variant rifle outperform the base rifle of the race it is emulating."

Than why have the DPS values so similar with longer ranges? Assault Scrambler Rifle doesn't even overheat, as much as someone would try to convince you - if you don't believe me grab one and just hold down the trigger; takes -magazines- to overheat it.

Assault Rail Rifle performs as well if not better than the Assault Rifle once it's fully charged

Assault Combat Rifle is arguably better overall because of it's low resource costs; similar damage output and longer range.

Hail AR 514

Well while they have simular DPS they also each have a weakness some are more of a draw back than others.
ARR has a charge up as a weakness
ASR has a overheat as a weakness
ACR has the least damage per mag and is the quickest to empty its mag making reloads more frequent.
Where as the Plasma AR doesnt really have a weakness like that

The problem with all these weapons is the range. Its too ******* long and absolutely pointless for the most part. Getting killed from over 100 meters out by an AR, SCR, etc invalidates a large part of the game due tot he fact of the large damage that can still be done.

In short to medium range these weapons should be stupidly devastating, but beyond 50-60 metres they should be weak. That makes for a more intense set of fights in a more tactical sense. Right now it's blast away and drop people super quick, super easy.

TL;DR Too much damage at range on assault weapons. Kill damage rate massively after 50-60 meters.

Flame away...

Jaysyn Larrisen is correct. Gallente AR is the best at short range, there is no denying that. Using Gallente tech means you will always have a tendency for CQC and shorter ranges and highest dps.

The -variants- are just that. Variations from the base Gal AR. In no way should a variant rifle outperform the base rifle of the race it is emulating.

I feel like there is a good balance between rifles right now.

TTK is too short. Remove AA and the 10% damage buff.

I think the main problem with the current weapons is that the RR is at least 2x better at close range than it should be. If you take that away, the blaster rifle would have a better generalist niche, which is exactly what it should have been in the first place. Good in any situation, but able to be beaten by the weapon that's the best in the situation. You should be able to beat the RR up close and the CR at range, but get taken out in the opposite situations.

It should never have been the godvolle. People got used to that and now think it's UP. It's not, it's just not OP any more.

So could you explain why its not UP? The duvolle has basicly the same DPS than all the other rifles while having less range and at least the CR,ACR,RR and ARR as accurate (or more accurate) as well. So where is the glorious advantage of the Gallente Ar compared to those weapons that should be halfway decent copies of the gallente design?

If, on the other hand, you think it should be a CQC shredder, then it needs a significant range nerf, wider dispersion, and increased DPS like I mentioned in a subsequent post. It becomes a small HMG.


Also: Aeon - I'm interested to hear your thoughts on my proposal about the AR, you know, the one I actually put some thought into, not the one quoted above.

I'm not sure the AR needs a big buff. I'd say just upping the capacity of the AR to 80 would be enough so that it can keep going while any other rifle would need to stop to reload.

The AR's niche is mid-close engagements with shield tankers. It only stands to reason that in an environment where everybody is using mostly armor plates at mid-long range that the AR would turn up short in many encounters. Keep in mind that the CR and the RR have a solid 20% better profile against armor than the AR.

Until the meta shifts back to shields being more useful than armor and damage mods the AR really shouldn't be the best all around weapon.

The AR could use some work with variants to make up for that, but after about 2 years of being the hands down best weapon I don't think it's that big of a deal that the AR is on the back burner. Everything is cyclical. once people start running more shields to protect them from anti-armor weapons like the CR and RR the AR will perform much better.

It's funny, I've gotten to like the CR and thought back to when I first tried the burst AR months ago, which as you noted, is a pretty crappy weapon. CR feels like a proper tactical assault weapon with short controlled bursts.

I think the following is probably one of the easier ways to balance the rifles and give each a niche, as opposed to say, reworking all the Gallente rifles that have been around for a while:

- CR stays the same, more or less. ScR as well. There may be a need for some balance passes but nothing major.

- RR should be less effective close up; there are multiple ways to do that but getting rid of it's absurd hipfire accuracy is a good start. How a rail weapon that generates enough force to fire a projectile that far is able to be fired essentially as accurately as a laser weapon like the SCR without steadying it (i.e., ADS) defies even sci-fi logic.

- AR gets a reduction in effective and perhaps even absolute range, with the optimal starting at very close range. Dispersion/kick gets increased, as does the DPS. It now becomes a murder machine in CQC but is no longer able to pick people off from a distance like the duvolle does now (silly for a blaster weapon).

You now have your rock/paper/scissors + 1. AR is great in CQC. ScR (compared to RR) is the mid-range weapon, and the RR is obviously a killer at long range. Your +1 is the CR, which now becomes the versatile generalist weapon, as I guess maybe a Minmatar rifle should be.

Your copycat weapons should be viewed as pseudo-inferior versions of the original with some tradeoffs to make it do something else than the original:

- Assault ScR is the copycat of the AR, with longer range but lower DPS and the overheat mechanic.
- Tac AR is the copycat of the ScR, shorter range, no charge, but better against armor. Maybe needs another buff somewhere like hipfire or DPS, not sure.
- Burst AR, well, I'm not totally sure what to do about that one, haven't used it like I have the others.

This one. The one you quoted wasn't me!

Amen to that.

If it's going to be a Gallente weapon, make it Gallente. Anyone who gets within range should get wrecked before they even know what's going on.

What do you mean it wasn't you? You said it!

Anyway, now that I know what we're talking about...

I'm against reducing the Rail Rifle's hipfire accuracy as I'm largely under the impression that it won't solve anything but make it worse. If you increase hipfire dispersion than you're making a -better- CQC weapon as there's more room for error; part of the reason the HMG is imbalanced at the moment is because of it's laser-like accuracy but I'm under the impression this will get better after tonight's downtime.

As said before, the only thing the Assault Rifle needs is to have it's range reduced by 5-10m (both optimal and effective), no more, and it's DPS increased. If it still isn't working out as the best CQC choice after that we can **** with the dispersion and what not.

"- Assault ScR is the copycat of the AR, with longer range but lower DPS and the overheat mechanic. "

Overheat isn't a factor because it takes almost two entire magazines to overheat it and that's without skills/being on the amarr assault suit. It's DPS is lower but it's so marginal that it doesn't even matter, so that needs to be changed either on the ASCR or the AR's DPS; either will work, I feel.

"- Tac AR is the copycat of the ScR, shorter range, no charge, but better against armor. Maybe needs another buff somewhere like hipfire or DPS, not sure."

DPS. 'better against armor' isn't a good factor because, as said previously, the difference in efficiency is so minute it can't be considered a good variable with TTK being low. SCR does have overheat but considering someone can fire 20-25 rounds before overheating (more so than the TAR's entire magazine) and the fact that it can charge a shot to do three times the normal damage, it usurps the TAR completely. This would be fine, if the Assault Rifle usurped the rest of the Assault variants; but it's comparable at best.

"- Burst AR, well, I'm not totally sure what to do about that one, haven't used it like I have the others."

Eh, no comment. At least until I find my notes concerning the differences.

Edit: Honest to god, I hate talking specifics because in the end I'm the not the guy who has to balance everything out. That's CCP's job. Just saying that I feel the Assault Rifle should be the best automatic-fire CQC weapon is all my job entails. So take all of this at face value.

You quoted Talos Alomar, not me!

Hardly my ACR beats ARs allthe time hell even the CR does this. Not to mention the RR or ARR their high damage output paired with high hipfire accuracy clearly negletes the spool up time.

TTK is way too short for there to be any significant difference in the efficiency against armor/shields - this is why the Assault Scrambler Rifle, when used against armor, feels like an Assault Rifle. High damage is high damage; you can shave off 20% and it's not going to matter. If the weapon dishes out 500 DPS, that's still 400 DPS going down range, meaning that even the most hardy of suits can only take about three seconds of fire, max.

I've advocated previously that resistances need to be exaggerated. Something like Explosives doing -50/+50% to shields/armor (like the grenades, afterall) and Laser based weaponry doing +50/-50% with the rest going somewhere in between. That's just a rough estimate as I haven't run the numbers but you'd definitely see a lot more "Rock, Paper, Scissors" gameplay than what you're seeing now.

Agreed. Since the AR is already the shortest ranged rifle in the game, all we would need is a buff the make it stronger at closer ranges. The rail rifle is ridiculous. I had was using a gk.0 assault with a Federation Duvolle specialist AR. I got into a close range engagement with a standard rail rifle and dropsuit, an I LOST!!! The rail rifle was better at close range than the Gallentean AR was, and it was standard vs. Prototype too. We need a serious buff somehow to make the AR the best at relatively CQC for a racial rifle

If that was a common occurence there would be an issue. I guarantee you that doesnt happen too much. Was he the only guy that hit you? Did it lag out a bit? How close is close range? Headshots?

Of course it can happen but in no way is any RR better than an AR up close. Certain people might just kicck ass with the RR.

If that was a common occurence there would be an issue. I guarantee you that doesnt happen too much. Was he the only guy that hit you? Did it lag out a bit? How close is close range? Headshots?

Of course it can happen but in no way is any RR better than an AR up close. Certain people might just kicck ass with the RR.

High damage rounds with lower RoF, if you miss a couple shots it gets pretty dicey. Does the ARR put out more DPS than the AR?