And yet again long range weapons are the dominant force in Dust 514, as we can see from the killfeed in this event the bolt pistol is the common weapon because range is > DPS currently, and yes the bolt pistol is amazing at CQC. Previously, we would also see the rail rifle very commonly in the killfeed, along with its neighbor the aCR and CR (but people want their event xp). But I dont think we should nerf the rail rifle, or CR, along with the bolt pistol or anything yet again. We need to figure out what is making them so powerful, even after so many nerfs.
Fortunately we, as well as CCP, know what is making it OP. They are to good at long range and to good at CQC. There are two solutions to this problem, we can increase the DPS gap between long range and short range weapons, or decrease the range gap between long range and short range weapons.
Currently the DPS difference between a RR and a AR is 11%, while the range gap is about 47%. As we all know Range > DPS because of how wide that gap is, the difference in DPS between the two is rather insignificant in many scenarios. But the DPS disadvantage of a long ranged weapon can be mitigated very easily, you can get the first shot, you can strafe like there are ants up your bum, or you could just fit a damage mod and increase the gap even further. But a short ranged weapon cannot mitigate for its short range, there are no mods, there is no skill involved to mitigate for it; simply put past its optimal range the damage drop off is so steep that just a mere 10M out you lose a significant portion of your damage, this cannot be compensated for at all.
You can imagine the DPS range gap like so
|--DPS--|
|----------Range-----------|
All ranges are in OPTIMAL meters, effective range is a terrible way to balance weapons, because short range weapons are useless past optimal range.
My suggestion is that we either bring up the weapons range as a formula of 1% DPS = 1.5M, which brings the AR to 54M, aCR to 60M, aSCR to 65M and RR and aRR stay up at 73M. This gives a CONSISTENT and linear correlation to the DPS/Range formula.
My other suggestion would be bring up the DPS to make up for the range gap, which would be 0.66% dps per M range.
AR= 479.2 - 40
aCR=452.8 - 50
aSCR=439.6 - 55
aRR=400 - 70
These are some graphs on the subject, as you can see the left graph has almost no linear correlation, while the right graph has a smooth linear correlation. The DPS figures above (0.66/1M) would essentially look the same as the range buff graph.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X9OdTavuT11a-Xy9N1utRreU1EkBk06dxPJQ8uKlI0o/edit?usp=sharingOn the matter of the bolt pistol, the bolt pistol is a very good gun. It is not that it is imbalanced but there is to much emphasis in DPS. DPS is not stronger than range, it just isnt. So the gap needs to be smaller. The only reason the Ion Pistol still doesn't suck is because the second buff it recieved reduced the DPS/Range gap which allows for the weapon to be competitive even if its shorter ranged.