DUST Search - Sticky:[Data Insights] Rifle Balance Update

Jathniel wrote:

Breakin Stuff wrote:

Jathniel wrote:

So what exactly do you have in mind?

put the HMG heavies in a situation where their ideal combat arena is filled with snipers, forge gunners and rail rifles, ideally.

If the HMG sucks ass in CQC this breaks the Heavy > All meta in half and forces people to use heavies to keep people out of the facilities entirely, by using them at entrances as overwatch, locking down open fields, etc, and NOT participating gleefully in the knife-fighting.

If someone's in knife range the heavy should bluntly be dogmeat unless he's LUCKY.

That's a tough one......

I can see pulling this off as a redesign of the HMG to mimic the Breach FG.
- Can't move when firing.
- Super narrow firing cone with hyper-extended range and camera zoom, to put it into the long-range playing field.

As a caveat for this repurposing, I would make it effective against vehicles, triple the mag size/max ammo, and cut heat buildup by 50%.

The Sentinel suits will need to be reworked as well.
I would give Sentinels a pinch of bandwidth and give them an equipment slot, to carry a hive or an uplink. Maybe increase their resistances by 10%, because if they aren't moving, they are going to be absorbing a LOT of fire.

Proper positioning would be critical, to properly transform the Sentinel from a CQC lurker into a living, mobile, turret.

That's quite a change though. I wouldn't expect to hear people backing such a radical transformation for the HMG.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 6 post(s)
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7168	Posted - 2015.02.13 10:41:00 - [1] - Quote What this tells me is that shield suits are still deeply in the minority despite the fact that they are damn good. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7168	Posted - 2015.02.13 10:42:00 - [2] - Quote CCP Rattati wrote: Pagl1u M wrote: We need the kills/spawn ratio of hmg It's too damn high, ranking with top tier rifles. I am working on Hotfix Echo, where the plan is to rein in the range, and nothing else. They are too effective in "rifle" range May I weigh in here? AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7168	Posted - 2015.02.13 11:08:00 - [3] - Quote It's not just the HMG. It's the design philosophy behind the HMG and sentinel is restricting a slow, heavily armored sensor-blind monster to CQC. Why does the HMG overperform? Because CQC dominance means it's expected to function best in an environment that negates most of it's disadvantages. Bluntly the only reason to have something built like a sentinel is if it's expected to be exposed providing supporting fire and needs to be able to take multiple strong hits. I remember the original heavy turn speed penalty. It allowed people to circle tge fatty and use superior mobility to rip said heavy apart. Basically it negated the heavy's CQC role entirely. But it didn't really interfere with the forge gun's lethality at a distance. Why? Because the forge gun is a long-range, open ground weapon. You didn't expect to live if an assault or a scout got too close. So why do I bring it up? Because it could have been a balancing factor to a fire SUPPORT platform. HMG sentinels are at the top because you can too-easily use them as lockdown point defense and heavy assault suits. They are in environments where their mobility issues are a nonfactor and they can casually negate sensor blindness by putting their backs in a corner or having a rep tool behind them. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7173	Posted - 2015.02.13 16:21:00 - [4] - Quote CCP Rattati wrote: Pagl1u M wrote: We need the kills/spawn ratio of hmg It's too damn high, ranking with top tier rifles. I am working on Hotfix Echo, where the plan is to rein in the range, and nothing else. They are too effective in "rifle" range why aren't we looking at reversing the role and making them vulnerable in CQC and deadly at long range? There's only so many more nerf options before the stupid thing gets pushed off a cliff. I'm not trying to be high and mighty or condescending. I'm honestly believing CQC HMGs aren't working, haven't worked as intended since their inception and making them and the Sentinel platform a CQC thing was a bad idea to begin with. We also need to consider that in my experience most HMG engagements and kills happen at 20m or less. Sentinels hug CQC areas like it's their lifeline to force people to fight them on optimal terms for them. Anything inside 20m is chutney, so that's where the hits tend to happen. until you drop the HMG below shotgun optimal these nerfs are going to be a zero-sum effort because a logi and tight spaces will do the work and they will continue racking up kills. It'll also see more fatties resorting to tactics like murder taxis to bypass the range restrictions. Ejecting sentinels from CQC is, in my opinion, the best answer. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7173	Posted - 2015.02.13 16:36:00 - [5] - Quote Lynn Beck wrote: Not sure if on topic, but the RR seriously kicks too much in ADS. Think it about it lore wise too, why would a long range race allow their primary use rifle to kick so damn much, regardless of the technological realities. Honestly it makes the weapon a pain to use on anything other than scouts. Also the ridiculous hipfire kick makes it nauseating to use on a big screen. I honestly wish we could just make it have horrid hipfire accuracy, like the Tac Ar but worse, and have close to 0 kick like most other weapons. RR should have had a sharpshooter skill to reduce recoil, and the calassault should have a charge time reduction. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7177	Posted - 2015.02.13 17:15:00 - [6] - Quote duster 35000 wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: Lynn Beck wrote: Not sure if on topic, but the RR seriously kicks too much in ADS. Think it about it lore wise too, why would a long range race allow their primary use rifle to kick so damn much, regardless of the technological realities. Honestly it makes the weapon a pain to use on anything other than scouts. Also the ridiculous hipfire kick makes it nauseating to use on a big screen. I honestly wish we could just make it have horrid hipfire accuracy, like the Tac Ar but worse, and have close to 0 kick like most other weapons. RR should have had a sharpshooter skill to reduce recoil, and the calassault should have a charge time reduction. Why do people keeping saying that? It's a very [DATA REDACTED], charge time? There are many better ones than a crappy bonus. you can always make the sharpshooter charge time and the suit bonus to kick. Charge time DOES make a pronounced difference in the damage output of the weapon. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7177	Posted - 2015.02.13 17:25:00 - [7] - Quote Ku Shala wrote: do these include weapons with damage mods. can we have the data only for fits without damage mods too? that would actually give an interesting take on it, as would the dropsuits they're primarily being used on. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7177	Posted - 2015.02.13 17:50:00 - [8] - Quote Bright Steel wrote: Breakin, how would the affect CQC? Do you foresee any imbalances after the sentiniels removal from CQC? people will start whining that the galassault is OP. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7181	Posted - 2015.02.13 22:22:00 - [9] - Quote The-Errorist wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: Lynn Beck wrote: Not sure if on topic, but the RR seriously kicks too much in ADS. Think it about it lore wise too, why would a long range race allow their primary use rifle to kick so damn much, regardless of the technological realities. Honestly it makes the weapon a pain to use on anything other than scouts. Also the ridiculous hipfire kick makes it nauseating to use on a big screen. I honestly wish we could just make it have horrid hipfire accuracy, like the Tac Ar but worse, and have close to 0 kick like most other weapons. RR should have had a sharpshooter skill to reduce recoil, and the calassault should have a charge time reduction. Cal assault should have a bonus towards reload speed and recoil reduction and here's the trello card to vote it. duster 35000 wrote: Armor suits don't have a hard counter. scrambler tech kills shield suits very very fast, while using a CR doesn't instakill armor. We need tactical combat & rail rifles. Also to shields need to have a there needs to be a threshold of damage required to start shield recharge pause like there is for vehicles. It should be around 10 damage. There is literally no weapon in the game that will fail to do 10 damage With one bullet. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7184	Posted - 2015.02.14 08:32:00 - [10] - Quote Recoil reduction. Probably wouldn't even take MUCH recoil reduction. AV

Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7184	Posted - 2015.02.14 08:56:00 - [11] - Quote RedPencil wrote: Cat Merc wrote: ASCR is actually an incredibly good rifle without heat. Fastest reload, tight dispersion, arguably best sight of all the Assault variants, excellent range, etc'. It also has a high damage per mag, though I don't remember if the AR caught up or not since the mag damage increase. I really don't know why it doesn't perform. Because modern control + SCR > ASCR Modded controllers are the gaming equivalent of filing down the sear of an AK-47. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7184	Posted - 2015.02.14 09:26:00 - [12] - Quote Let's be honest. You could normalize all the rifles at 500 DPS and the firing mechanics and profiles would change the feel of all of them. With minor tweaking to alpha, RoF, range and such you would get a lot of weapons that feel different and perform different in various situations. I know it's a COD/BF type thing but I haven't seen any other shooter where the same gun can have two different performance profiles based on what it's shooting at. It just isn't done. Every other game treats shields as regenerating armor. Not saying it's the grandest idea but it makes sense given the battle rifles all perform the same function, or at least they are SUPPOSED to. Why woukd you make a plasma rifle that couldn't compete with the rail rifle? From a military/weapons expert perspective that's ass-backward. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7184	Posted - 2015.02.14 10:54:00 - [13] - Quote Any comments on my assessment of the HMG Rattati? AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7184	Posted - 2015.02.14 14:51:00 - [14] - Quote Rather than simply hacking stats off the HMG I would like to see it made more difficult to employ. Honestly using real life examples gives ample methods for bringing the weapon to heel. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7189	Posted - 2015.02.14 16:17:00 - [15] - Quote Nocturnal Soul wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: Rather than simply hacking stats off the HMG I would like to see it made more difficult to employ. Honestly using real life examples gives ample methods for bringing the weapon to heel. Care to.... add more. I have, repeatedly. I'd rather not post my spiel more than once per thread. I hate sounding like a broken record. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7193	Posted - 2015.02.14 18:11:00 - [16] - Quote Fine. This post and this post. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7201	Posted - 2015.02.15 00:45:00 - [17] - Quote Jathniel wrote: So what exactly do you have in mind? put the HMG heavies in a situation where their ideal combat arena is filled with snipers, forge gunners and rail rifles, ideally. If the HMG sucks ass in CQC this breaks the Heavy > All meta in half and forces people to use heavies to keep people out of the facilities entirely, by using them at entrances as overwatch, locking down open fields, etc, and NOT participating gleefully in the knife-fighting. If someone's in knife range the heavy should bluntly be dogmeat unless he's LUCKY. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7204	Posted - 2015.02.15 03:54:00 - [18] - Quote I don't use the TAR because... I never really tried it. The burst AR irritates the hell out of me. I like the scrambler rifles on the amarr assault. the burst CR annoys me the assault variants of everything work well for me except the assault rifle itself I prefer the breach AR and I do well with the vanilla RR assault scrambler just doesn't do damage fast enough even against shield suits to make up for the incoming pain you're gettting in turn strafe dancing absolutely exacerbates the worse traits of your lower performance weapons, inertia would actually solve the problem to keep people from juking back and forth without losing speed, which would allow actual aiming skill to come into play. And if you bring in an autocannon I'm speccing out of the HMG. I would like to play a proper machinegunner, thanks AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7209	Posted - 2015.02.15 09:45:00 - [19] - Quote Jathniel wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: Jathniel wrote: So what exactly do you have in mind? put the HMG heavies in a situation where their ideal combat arena is filled with snipers, forge gunners and rail rifles, ideally. If the HMG sucks ass in CQC this breaks the Heavy > All meta in half and forces people to use heavies to keep people out of the facilities entirely, by using them at entrances as overwatch, locking down open fields, etc, and NOT participating gleefully in the knife-fighting. If someone's in knife range the heavy should bluntly be dogmeat unless he's LUCKY. That's a tough one...... I can see pulling this off as a redesign of the HMG to mimic the Breach FG. - Can't move when firing. - Super narrow firing cone with hyper-extended range and camera zoom, to put it into the long-range playing field. As a caveat for this repurposing, I would make it effective against vehicles, triple the mag size/max ammo, and cut heat buildup by 50%. The Sentinel suits will need to be reworked as well. I would give Sentinels a pinch of bandwidth and give them an equipment slot, to carry a hive or an uplink. Maybe increase their resistances by 10%, because if they aren't moving, they are going to be absorbing a LOT of fire. Proper positioning would be critical, to properly transform the Sentinel from a CQC lurker into a living, mobile, turret. That's quite a change though. I wouldn't expect to hear people backing such a radical transformation for the HMG. movement lockdowwn is a crap mechanic. it puts the nail on the coffin of the breach as a useful standalone weapon. Bandwidth is a no in my opinion under any circumstances, right now we do not needthe current best slayer to gain the ability to throw down hives or uplinks. The suits are bluntly fine. I use the IAFG as area denial. It works extremely well in the poen without adjustment. Trust me, sentinels should have been in the open from the first place because the defenses are for a thing intended to take a lot of fire, and open ground makes up for the fact that your detection radius is inferior in all ways to the mark-1 eyeball. the only thing sentinels lack for open ground work is an open ground weapon that performs poorly in CQC besides the Forge. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7228	Posted - 2015.02.16 18:24:00 - [20] - Quote drop HMG to 2000 RPM, increase range to 40m. puts it at 650 DPS-ish. AV

Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7243	Posted - 2015.02.17 09:22:00 - [21] - Quote Alex-ZX wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: drop HMG to 2000 RPM, increase range to 40m. puts it at 650 DPS-ish. Please do not mess with the hmg. If ccp want to makes autocannons in that way go ahead, but the hmg is good as it is right now. I wouldn't tolerate another nerf, in that weapon. Also that is off topic. Talk about the Tar, ascr n bar. Rattati brought up the HMG needing a nerf. I'm suggesting one because I'd rather have the range than the instamurder. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7246	Posted - 2015.02.17 15:34:00 - [22] - Quote We knew it was coming. You wanna bury your head in the sand and try to stonewall or would you rather help the rest of us figure out how to meet rattati in the middle so ADS doesn't repeat itself? AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7294	Posted - 2015.02.19 09:05:00 - [23] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Does ScR hipfire dispersion need to be increased? The weapon is both highly effective down range and highly effective when spammed from the hip in CQC. Is it unreasonable to ask a long-rang combatant to switch to sidearm for CQC engagements? Bluntly there shouldn't be this much performance variance between battle rifles. They all perform the same function, they are all the mainstay for racial infantry. The fact that one is clearly superior to another is an idiot ball. I'm not saying universal homogeneity of weapons is a grand idea, but the performance of the rifles shouldn't be so wildly varied that one negates the utility of the others. Sidearms are backups for when you are out of ammo, cant afford to reload or using a weapon that is worthless in close like a forge. Battle rifles should be primarily differentiated by profile and firing mechanics with small tweaks to represent variation in racial design. Not one hits hard at 40m but the other gets +75% range advantage. The wild variances should be represented in the support weapons that form the battle tactics around those rifles. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7297	Posted - 2015.02.19 15:33:00 - [24] - Quote Forcing a single shot weapon to perform poorly in close is unnecessary. And if we do it because modded Control sh*tlords then we screw legit players hardcore. My two cents, since I'm not really having a problem with close up scrams. And I'm gravitating to shield suits more and more. Just having more fun with them than I am armor. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7297	Posted - 2015.02.19 15:53:00 - [25] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: Forcing a single shot weapon to perform poorly in close is unnecessary. And if we do it because modded Control sh*tlords then we screw legit players hardcore. My two cents, since I'm not really having a problem with close up scrams. And I'm gravitating to shield suits more and more. Just having more fun with them than I am armor. While the scrambler rifle isn't particularly effective against Heavies, it is obscenely effective against low-HP units and Scouts. Weapon balance must take into account suit variety. breach ARs are also obscenely effective against low HP suits and scouts. I think this is a bad idea, thoroughly. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7358	Posted - 2015.02.23 11:15:00 - [26] - Quote Imp Smash wrote: Logging in for the first time in almost a week (thanks Sony.) The graph is a bit hard to understand for me Rattati. Actually I don't get it at all even though I have read the whole thread. Can you explain it a bit better? I'd really like to know what I am looking at. Edit note: Easier to differentiate colors would also be cool... Unrelated note, why the hell are random people on the forums trying to hijack a thread about rifle balance to argue or propaganda about HMGs among other stuff? So ridiculous...you know who are you are... HMGs are actually a fairly important factor in how rifles are balanced. The problem is no one agrees on how they need to fit in, others claim they are "fine" even though they negate the utility of gallente suicide range weapons. Honestly I think the numbers are distorted by the presence of the HMG in it's current incarnation. Plus Rattati thinks they're still overperforming (and has said as much in this thread) so I would rather offer constructive advice for fixes rather than waiting for a slapdown similar to the ADS one. I feel the longer range weapons are performing better because the CQC weapons are competing with fatties for dominance. Otherwise your point on the HMG is completely valid. AV
Breakin Stuff Goonfeet Special Planetary Emergency Response Group 7360	Posted - 2015.02.23 12:55:00 - [27] - Quote Honestly I tend to agree that if the four rifles were representative of some level of parity it'd be easier to "spiral out" and make the support weapons interlock the pattern. And I'm just as baffled as you are on how to read that graph. All I know is the gallente rifles by and large feel completely outclassed due to impotent ranges and heavy weapon overlap. In my experience a rail rifle or combat rifle will win against a same-tier assault rifle 3/4 times unless the plasma rifle gets the drop on them. Overall in my opinion the combat rifle variants have the best overall feel and ease of use As far as the weapons go overall. It's also (anecdotally I admit) the other weapon that dominates the killfeed overall In my observation. You have similar experiences? The ASCR has been rather subpar ever since about a month after it released when it was hit with the nerf bat rather hard. Using it on a gallente or amarr assault (or God forbid an armor heavy) the overall feel is one of futility. Combining this with the fact that the easy majority of enemy dropsuits tends to be armor tanked means the weapon falls behind due to both rapid overheat and significantly reduced damage from the standard scram. It eats shields at an excellent pace but the damage is too low to do more than **** off a gallente ferro tank. The Rail Rifle is hit or miss for me. It either performs phenomenally well or it's utter trash with no middle ground. When it's the rifle to use it's dominant at long range. I've seen the standard be relatively trashy in CQC but the ARR seems to handle the CQC transition better. Given the abundance of armor suits the rail rifle seems to be more useful especially since most players see no reason to mount it on a caldari or minmatar suit. Overall the scram is either sh*t or it's mounted on a level 3-5 Amarr Assault. The disparity of performance between the scrambler on an Amarr Assault vs. an Amarr Commando is rather saddening to watch. The way the gun is set up there is little to no reason to deploy it on anything but an amarr assault. My two cents. Personally I believe that the firing mechanics and profiles should be what differentiate between the rifles with base stats similar because they are generic battle rifles. The further away we keep the weapons from each other the less they will balance out. Nevermind I believe firmly that until controls and hit detection are fixed we will NEVER see anything resembling true balance and/or parity in DUST. These assessments are too dependent upon "consistent" client performance. But it's been well established that the game performance varies wildlt between different players. AV