Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

I've been listening to the new episode (still haven't finished) but I wanted to comment on Jaysyn's point about "normalizing" the weapons. While I usually agree with him on most things, I think he's wrong here. The fact that the assault rifles have their own "feel" and personality is something I love about this game, and dislike about games like Destiny where most of the weapons feel so similar. The end-goal of his proposal is good though. I think a better way to achieve it would be to "normalize" the rifles across the variants (e.g.. all assault variants, all tactical variants, etc. should be closer together). That's a more elegant solution, which preserves the uniqueness and personality of the different racial styles, while improving balance. Of course this necessitates filling in the missing racial variants.

I'm not opposed to normalizing by variant but there are some tough individual instances to figure out. Example...how well do you think Burst Rail Rifle would work? The other factor of that concerns me is that the variations (particularly in range vs DPS) is so wide it convolutes any attempt make a healthy set of all weapons; right now there is pretty much always a small group of weapons out in the cold.

One of my longer term concerns is having strongly defined weapon categories (rifle, specialty LW, SMG, pistol, etc) and at the moment my subjective assessment is that simplifying things a little will help.

To your point about individual feel and personality for weapons - 100% on board with you. My opinion is that we can still achieve that by focusing on aesthetics, smaller impact trade offs, damage profiles, and weapon mechanics and feel in combat and at the same time making all basic infantry weapons more viable in a general sense.

Best PvE idea ever!

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Vell0cet wrote:

Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

I've been listening to the new episode (still haven't finished) but I wanted to comment on Jaysyn's point about "normalizing" the weapons. While I usually agree with him on most things, I think he's wrong here. The fact that the assault rifles have their own "feel" and personality is something I love about this game, and dislike about games like Destiny where most of the weapons feel so similar. The end-goal of his proposal is good though. I think a better way to achieve it would be to "normalize" the rifles across the variants (e.g.. all assault variants, all tactical variants, etc. should be closer together). That's a more elegant solution, which preserves the uniqueness and personality of the different racial styles, while improving balance. Of course this necessitates filling in the missing racial variants.

I'm not opposed to normalizing by variant but there are some tough individual instances to figure out. Example...how well do you think Burst Rail Rifle would work? The other factor of that concerns me is that the variations (particularly in range vs DPS) is so wide it convolutes any attempt make a healthy set of all weapons; right now there is pretty much always a small group of weapons out in the cold.

One of my longer term concerns is having strongly defined weapon categories (rifle, specialty LW, SMG, pistol, etc) and at the moment my subjective assessment is that simplifying things a little will help.

To your point about individual feel and personality for weapons - 100% on board with you. My opinion is that we can still achieve that by focusing on aesthetics, smaller impact trade offs, damage profiles, and weapon mechanics and feel in combat and at the same time making all basic infantry weapons more viable in a general sense.

I guess I don't see what would be so wrong with a Burst Rail Rifle. I would start with the combat rifle (since it's the archetype of the burst weapons) add a modest amount of range to it, give it maybe a 4 round burst, increase dispersion, normalize the DPS with the CR factoring in the charge-up time, subtract a small percent (to counterbalance the range advantage) and it should be a fairly reasonable weapon. Maybe I'm just being naive. You could approach all variants with a similar process and they would all be fairly tightly grouped with each other (at least on paper--obviously these would still need to be tweaked based on actual usage data and player feedback).

"Endless money forms the sinews of War." - Cicero

Skype: jaysyn.larrisen

Twitter: @JaysynLarrisen

Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

I've been listening to the new episode (still haven't finished) but I wanted to comment on Jaysyn's point about "normalizing" the weapons. While I usually agree with him on most things, I think he's wrong here. The fact that the assault rifles have their own "feel" and personality is something I love about this game, and dislike about games like Destiny where most of the weapons feel so similar. The end-goal of his proposal is good though. I think a better way to achieve it would be to "normalize" the rifles across the variants (e.g.. all assault variants, all tactical variants, etc. should be closer together). That's a more elegant solution, which preserves the uniqueness and personality of the different racial styles, while improving balance. Of course this necessitates filling in the missing racial variants.

I'm not opposed to normalizing by variant but there are some tough individual instances to figure out. Example...how well do you think Burst Rail Rifle would work? The other factor of that concerns me is that the variations (particularly in range vs DPS) is so wide it convolutes any attempt make a healthy set of all weapons; right now there is pretty much always a small group of weapons out in the cold.

One of my longer term concerns is having strongly defined weapon categories (rifle, specialty LW, SMG, pistol, etc) and at the moment my subjective assessment is that simplifying things a little will help.

To your point about individual feel and personality for weapons - 100% on board with you. My opinion is that we can still achieve that by focusing on aesthetics, smaller impact trade offs, damage profiles, and weapon mechanics and feel in combat and at the same time making all basic infantry weapons more viable in a general sense.

I guess I don't see what would be so wrong with a Burst Rail Rifle. I would start with the combat rifle (since it's the archetype of the burst weapons) add a modest amount of range to it, give it maybe a 4 round burst, increase dispersion, normalize the DPS with the CR factoring in the charge-up time, subtract a small percent (to counterbalance the range advantage) and it should be a fairly reasonable weapon. Maybe I'm just being naive. You could approach all variants with a similar process and they would all be fairly tightly grouped with each other (at least on paper--obviously these would still need to be tweaked based on actual usage data and player feedback).

Burst rifles operate on the principal of delivering several bursts in quick succession to put down a target. Spool time pretty much kills that.

As an experiment try using a burst AR or CR by NOT trigger spamming. Just hold the trigger back and let the burst cycle naturally. run couple matches that way - no cheating and trigger spamming. Now imagine that same experience but much less responsive and that would give you a burst RR experience.


As an aside - dispersion is a stat that should pretty much go away for the vast majority of weapons.

Best PvE idea ever!

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Vell0cet wrote:

Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

Jaysyn Larrisen wrote:

Vell0cet wrote:

I've been listening to the new episode (still haven't finished) but I wanted to comment on Jaysyn's point about "normalizing" the weapons. While I usually agree with him on most things, I think he's wrong here. The fact that the assault rifles have their own "feel" and personality is something I love about this game, and dislike about games like Destiny where most of the weapons feel so similar. The end-goal of his proposal is good though. I think a better way to achieve it would be to "normalize" the rifles across the variants (e.g.. all assault variants, all tactical variants, etc. should be closer together). That's a more elegant solution, which preserves the uniqueness and personality of the different racial styles, while improving balance. Of course this necessitates filling in the missing racial variants.

I'm not opposed to normalizing by variant but there are some tough individual instances to figure out. Example...how well do you think Burst Rail Rifle would work? The other factor of that concerns me is that the variations (particularly in range vs DPS) is so wide it convolutes any attempt make a healthy set of all weapons; right now there is pretty much always a small group of weapons out in the cold.

One of my longer term concerns is having strongly defined weapon categories (rifle, specialty LW, SMG, pistol, etc) and at the moment my subjective assessment is that simplifying things a little will help.

To your point about individual feel and personality for weapons - 100% on board with you. My opinion is that we can still achieve that by focusing on aesthetics, smaller impact trade offs, damage profiles, and weapon mechanics and feel in combat and at the same time making all basic infantry weapons more viable in a general sense.

I guess I don't see what would be so wrong with a Burst Rail Rifle. I would start with the combat rifle (since it's the archetype of the burst weapons) add a modest amount of range to it, give it maybe a 4 round burst, increase dispersion, normalize the DPS with the CR factoring in the charge-up time, subtract a small percent (to counterbalance the range advantage) and it should be a fairly reasonable weapon. Maybe I'm just being naive. You could approach all variants with a similar process and they would all be fairly tightly grouped with each other (at least on paper--obviously these would still need to be tweaked based on actual usage data and player feedback).

Burst rifles operate on the principal of delivering several bursts in quick succession to put down a target. Spool time pretty much kills that.

As an experiment try using a burst AR or CR by NOT trigger spamming. Just hold the trigger back and let the burst cycle naturally. run couple matches that way - no cheating and trigger spamming. Now imagine that same experience but much less responsive and that would give you a burst RR experience.


As an aside - dispersion is a stat that should pretty much go away for the vast majority of weapons.

What you're describing isn't what I was proposing. Because the DPS would still be normalized between the burst RR and the CR (including the charge time), then each burst would hit a lot harder. It would be closer to the fusion rifle from Destiny.

I'm going to use VERY fake numbers just to make the math a bit easier. So for argument's sake let's say that the CR does 300 DPS and can pulse 2 bursts per second. That means each burst is doing 150 damage (or about 50 damage per round). Let's say the spool-time on the burst RR is 0.5 secs, and the time to fire it's 4-round burst is also 0.5 seconds (just to make the math simple). Since it will have the same DPS as the CR, that means it will do 300 damage for each 4-round burst, or 75 damage per round. Now because the Burst RR would have a slight range advantage over the CR (maybe 10% more range) then it would have less DPS (maybe 10%). If we subtract 10% from each round we end up with about 67.5 damage per round. Obviously these numbers are way off, but that would give you an idea of how it can be done. That weapon wouldn't be nearly as frustrating to use as the experiment you described.

"Endless money forms the sinews of War." - Cicero

Skype: jaysyn.larrisen

Twitter: @JaysynLarrisen

"Endless money forms the sinews of War." - Cicero

Skype: jaysyn.larrisen

Twitter: @JaysynLarrisen

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Best PvE idea ever!

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Best PvE idea ever!

CPM1 Elect. Thanks for all your support. [email protected] for ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Best PvE idea ever!

Hand/Eye coordination cannot be taught. For everything else there is the Learning Coalition.

Best PvE idea ever!