lol, if it wasn't being used in CQC, why does an exclusive CQC nerf bother you, ADS wasn't touched.

Thanks for posting this and as someone who has not logged into the game in quite some time I am very eager to see more.

That said I'm gonna make fun of you a bit.

First, for the Kills chart... come on man, that axis.

Second, for the K/S chart you may as well be making the lines vibrate with those colors. You have 12 lines and use 4 shades of orange/yellow, 4 shades of blue, 3 shades of black/white, and 1 green. I have to zoom in and constantly check the legend because those blues are so damn similar. The blues are also the ones with the most other lines around them. Maybe distribute those colors a bit better?

Also maybe some grouping? I don't know what it is with you guys but you put things in the most random orders. Grouping colors to types (along with better visibility) would make it much easier to find what I'm looking for. If all the ARs are green I can easily see overall AR performance as well. I'm not saying you need to spend a ton of time on this but maybe have some sort of pattern? I'll skip style critiques for the other charts as I think you get the idea.

Also I know you guys mostly use Google Docs for distributing data but maybe you could try... Google Docs? You may be able to find some successful examples somewhere. It removes a lot of the color variation concern when i can just highlight lines.

Also I love the inclusion of events, however it is hard to determine where the actual "line" is for them. For example Bravo released 10 days before the Expert challenge event, but it is hard to see that fact on the chart.

Which leads me to my next point that you don't need to do all this personally. I just spent a ton of my time working on something based on your data. Clearly you have a community willing to foolishly waste their own time. I've logged in maybe 1 to 2 times in the past half year and I was willing to throw in time. Give us the raw data so anyone digging into the information can have an easier time. I mean the numbers are technically there. I could overlay a grid and get decent estimates pretty quickly. But why make me work for it? Plus it makes things easier with google docs. That said definitely give explanations because yes people are going to fit data to match their own conclusions rather than search for all possible conclusions. I caught myself doing that already. I'm no statistician. I am not even 100% sure if I read the data from the K/S sheet right because of those freaking blues.

As for the data itself, I know ranges were normalized in Bravo so my guess is pre-Bravo Advanced weapon data is way different, but this guy would imply that a lot of action is going on in non-protoland. Even if the data is only Bravo onwards I'd be curious to have a look. I know historically many people who could run proto would not (especially in public matches). I imagine you've looked at the data yourself but I can't help feeling like the representative group for this data can only be a smaller percent of the player population (even if only compared to advanced gear use).

I know in many ways giving us unfiltered data can lead to simple inaccurate statements that start angry mobs (Subdredditors do go on Reddit now and then after all) but then what's the worst that might happen? People getting into a huff over absurd stuff they don't properly understand and complaining on the forums? Oh noooooo....

P.S. Also those yellows. I'm pretty sure I saw this exact picture on the wall in the movie Psycho.

My favorite post of the year

Dunno about the kick on the arr but the standard RR seemed easy to manage for me.

I may be a weirdo though. Don't see the issue.

Great lay down and honestly this is a dialogue I would prefer to have on coms or maybe you can come on to the Biomassed podcast with us one day.

First...the stats seem quite solid, albeit difficult for me to interpret a bit. Note that I think they are factually accuate.

Second...the stats don't always tell a full story and watching FOTM trends is not unlike the stock market. Numbers move based on peoples perceptions and that doesn't always mean the ground truth. It's very risky to balance game play on pure numbers without accounting for the human factor.

RR and CR were heavily invested in post 1.8 due to them being a new weapon and they were over powered in comparison to the PR and SCR in particular. More people using the weapon lead to more kills which drives player perception that the weapon is OP. I remember when the venerable Duovolle AR was being labled "OP" left, right, and center (even by me once or twice) and there was only the SCR to compare it to. The proto AR of today is more powerful than the old "OP" version.

I have no doubt that RR needed to be addressed. My point is that there may be serious design concerns that are making the weapon difficult to balance without fully painting into a corner similar to something like the LR. I do believe that the new amount of recoil is simply too high...it far exceeds any of the other weapons in this regard now. For the RR...higher recoil means more diffculty in applying it's already lowest in class DPS at it's optimal range and that doesn't strike me as a good thing. The problem is that almost anything done to lower perceived or real CQC effectiveness will also directly impact it's ability to engage at long range as well. Also, the recoil clearly feels much to high for the ARR if that is a short / mid-range oriented weapon.

I think my concern is the tools being used to bring the weapon into balance simply will relegate the RR to status of the Flaylock of a few months ago. My bigger concern is that the racial lines are balanced to be equally competitive in the current play environment of Dust.

There is an inherent issue when by default all tactical objectives force you to have the majority of your engagements in CQC range to secure victory and one race is a clear outlier to that design. The concept that Alena offered to you in regards to the ARR does help, however, you need to look across the racial lines in a holistic fashion I think.

I sincerely appreciate the work you are doing and support your efforts on behalf of the community and I'm glad you are letting us all be a small part of the process.

For Ratatti:

I know this Tuesday there will be a rebalance on the Rail Rifle, I believe a hip fire kick value of 1.0 (doubled from where it was before the Balance Hotfix) and charge-up time to 0.5 seconds (which I fully support). Would the Assault Rail Rifle variant have less kick than the standard one, or will it have a different value?

On a related note, the Kaalakiota Rail Rifle damage seems to be at a lowered value than when I last remembered. It used to hover a bit above 54.3(?) I believe, but now it's at 51.7. Was that intended?