That's an interesting claim. Let's explore it a bit further. Assume for the sake of argument that the post-Foxfour GA Assault is the #1 killer of CA Assaults. If this assumption were true, could we claim that a relationship does not exist between the CA Assault and the GA Assault?


If the Rail Rifle and Assault Rail Rifle have unmanageable recoil, how is it that they outsold all other Light Weapons prior to Foxfour? Is it the position of CPM, CCP or Aeon Amadi that CA Assaults can not make use of their racial weaponry on account of unmanageable recoil?

Hit up Kirk. Or Breakin.

Below are two videos, intended for your education and knowledge, of Hotfix FoxFour changes to the Gallente and Caldari Assault roles. As you all probably know by now, the Gallente Assault received a RoF bonus to Assault Rifles while the Caldari Assault received a reduction to Rail Rifle kick/dispersion.

Compare the clips in these videos at your leisure as they have been provided. Feel free to comment with your thoughts.

Fact
For months following the Rail Rifle's introduction, it dominated both down range and from the hip in close quarters. Some time later, Rattati increased the hipfire kick of this long-range weapon to make it less effective in close quarters. To this day, the weapon remains more popular than any other Light Weapon (source, source screenshot).

Question
Should the long-range Rail Rifle excel in close quarters?


Kirk and Breakin are not presently asserting questionable claims or openly proposing moar (potentially harmful) Assault buffs.

E-mail 'em, or hit me up about this at a later time, in a different thread.

What is wrong with challenging questionable claims and potentially harmful changes when and where they are being asserted and proposed?

Right right. Thinking that we may need to increase the reduction to kick for the Cal Assault. We'll see what happens.

Because I know where this leads and I simply don't have the patience or energy for it right this second in a thread that was mostly about some videos to show the comparisons of current bonuses. Sorry.

Scrutiny needn't necessarily lead to bickering. There's a possibility that through challenging questionable claims, we might find better overall, mutual understanding. Consider the following examples:

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Questionable Claim: [Video] Gal Assault Bonus - Less Control

Challenge: Recoil builds the longer fire is sustained; initial AR recoil is negligible. Would the same "lack of control" demonstrated in the video be observed with pulse fire?

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Questionable Claim: [Video] Cal Assault Bonus - Negligible benefit in ADS

Challenge: While this very well may be the case, is it safe to claim "negligible benefit" without comparative pewpewing at actual targets at varying ranges?

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Questionable Claim: CA Assault and GA Assault have nothing to do with one another.

Challenge: Is it safe to claim that the population and performance of one has no affect whatsoever on the population and performance of the other?

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Questionable Claim: Sniper Rifles have 'Snap Back' so the amount of recoil is basically just a placebo effect ... they could have so much recoil that it points skyward and it wouldn't really matter.

Challenge: Assume two snipers are pewpewing at a moving target downrange. One wields a tactical sniper rifle with zero recoil. The other wields a tactical sniper rifle that points skyward after each shot. Which sniper has a higher likelihood of placing back-to-back shots on target? Assuming perfect accuracy, which of the two snipers would be first to empty his magazine on target?

Right right. Thinking that we may need to increase the reduction to kick for the Cal Assault. We'll see what happens.

Technically all weapons have snap-back so pulse firing will always result in an optimal experience. Assault Rifles, for instance, had a video in which a player was using a modded controller to pulse-fire at the same RoF as it would be if he had just held down the trigger. The result was no difference in RoF, but the weapon never received muzzle climb, and stayed on target. You can try this out with any weapon in the game, just hold down the trigger, be wary of where you were aiming before you started firing, and watch where the reticle goes whenever you let go of the trigger.

1. With Sniper Rifles, the snap-back and recoil are based on fire-rate. The Tactical Sniper Rifle, having a much faster fire rate, returns to it's prior position faster than the vanilla sniper rifle and therefore can land shots in rapid succession. If we homogenized the vanilla sniper rifle's RoF with the Tactical's, you'd see similar performance. The snap-back is something I really hate in Dust 514 because it is easy to abuse and makes recoil fundamentally useless unless you just like holding down the trigger. However, because of this, might as well just assume that all players pulse-fire their weapons. with that assumption the rail rifle becomes an outlier due to the fact that it must be charged up first, and therefore is much more difficult to pulse fire and remain accurate.

2. I understand the desire to keep it as a long-range weapon. With the consideration that the charge-up prevents pulse-firing to some extent, the only way to allow the Cal Assault to fire accurately long enough to make kills is to reduce the recoil and allow them to fire on targets long enough to apply lethal damage application. That's the basis for the recoil reduction.

1. I think I understand what you're saying now. The "recenter speeds" of Sniper Rifles are derived from their respective fire intervals. I didn't realize that; thanks for the info. Still, I wonder if less recoil might help Tac SR performance; seems like it'd be easier to "re-aquire" moving targets if they remained in frame.

2. I don't know that I can agree with this one. The RR and ARR were killing quite nicely long before Foxfour came around. As a frequent user of these weapons, I don't believe it a fair characterization to suggest that their users have experienced difficulty applying lethal damage. These are really good guns, Aeon, and their popularity has persisted even through nerfs. I personally think it'd be a bad move balance-wise to make them better from the hip, even if that benefit were limited to a single frame.

Technically all weapons have snap-back so pulse firing will always result in an optimal experience. Assault Rifles, for instance, had a video in which a player was using a modded controller to pulse-fire at the same RoF as it would be if he had just held down the trigger. The result was no difference in RoF, but the weapon never received muzzle climb, and stayed on target. You can try this out with any weapon in the game, just hold down the trigger, be wary of where you were aiming before you started firing, and watch where the reticle goes whenever you let go of the trigger.

With Sniper Rifles, the snap-back and recoil are based on fire-rate. The Tactical Sniper Rifle, having a much faster fire rate, returns to it's prior position faster than the vanilla sniper rifle and therefore can land shots in rapid succession. If we homogenized the vanilla sniper rifle's RoF with the Tactical's, you'd see similar performance.

The snap-back is something I really hate in Dust 514 because it is easy to abuse and makes recoil fundamentally useless unless you just like holding down the trigger. However, because of this, might as well just assume that all players pulse-fire their weapons. with that assumption the rail rifle becomes an outlier due to the fact that it must be charged up first, and therefore is much more difficult to pulse fire and remain accurate.

I understand the desire to keep it as a long-range weapon. With the consideration that the charge-up prevents pulse-firing to some extent, the only way to allow the Cal Assault to fire accurately long enough to make kills is to reduce the recoil and allow them to fire on targets long enough to apply lethal damage application. That's the basis for the recoil reduction.

I hadn't thought of that but now that you mention it I've already experienced what your talking about. The ARR before had such long range that you could fire it outside of other rifles' range and so the inability to tap/burst it for accuracy didn't matter. But now it's in the same neighborhood as more accurate rifles that can keep snapping back and restarting kick/spread growth. I didn't know what UPness I was feeling but I think that was it.

A Cal Assault with ARR against Amarr Assault with ASCR will get facer@ped now because the Cal Ass has to engage in basically the same range as ASCR, but the Amarr can tap/burst while the Caldari has to hold the button down while kick/spread builds up (the bonus seeming to have negligible affect on this).

My early impression is that the ARR is garbage now, and the RR isn't at all better hipfiring. The latter is mitigated somewhat by the SCR being nerf hammered. That is, the SCR has a similar handicap as the RR now, though it's balanced between hipfire and ADS more on SCR. As for the ARR though, the TAR, CR, and ASCR are all better options in its range. More damage and more accuracy from all of them.

Looks to me like TAR, CR, and ASCR will dominate the meta for a while. (Range still rules in Dust.) ARR and SCR have suddenly gone the way of the dodo.

Looks to me like TAR, CR, and ASCR will dominate the meta for a while. (Range still rules in Dust.) ARR and SCR have suddenly gone the way of the dodo.

It seems like you haven't gone against a GK.O with a breach yet .

That AR was always my favorite but now seeing it on a Gal assault , it totally turns me off how OP it is .

Maybe the developers need to start conversing with the community about how to and what needs balancing and stop looking at the numbers and listening to whom ever they have been listening to because things sound good until implemented and then unnecessary back tracking is involved to change the changes causing more time and effort .

If we can put the bias aside and have constructive discussions , I believe that would change the environment and the nature of the game , perhaps bringing things more in line without the constant nerf and buff cycle .

People always want to bring up numbers and graphs but that doesn't translate to what happens on the ground for the most part and it seems like the developers always seem to backtrack to clean up what was changed for what was supposedly to be the better .

Yes you will see a lot of TAC AR's and Breaches in the kill feed for sure .

I edited my post, and I would happily make some if I had the hardware to do so. It's somewhat upsetting that you respond to people pointing out a flaw with your method or otherwise critiquing you so poorly aeon.

Fact
For months following the Rail Rifle's introduction, it dominated both down range and from the hip in close quarters. Some time later, Rattati increased the hipfire kick of this long-range weapon to make it less effective in close quarters. To this day, the weapon remains more popular than any other Light Weapon (source, source screenshot).

Question
Should the long-range Rail Rifle excel in close quarters?


Kirk and Breakin are not presently asserting questionable claims or openly proposing moar (potentially harmful) Assault buffs.

I don't see any sources backing up the supposed fact that the RR dominated close quarters.

Oh, OK. They must've nerfed its hipfire for no reason. Oopsies. Carry on.

I upset so I want to change the subject.

PS: How 'bout that GalLogi permascan? Great work there, Zatara. Maybe when it's fixed down the road, we can point back to now and claim that it wasn't really a problem.

You presumed his intentions instead of asking.

He responded poorly to your incorrect assessment of his response.

Both of you could have prevented the unpleasantness, but in reality...You 'started' it by misunderstanding him and then choosing after that to criticize him because of it.

Yeah, it's not disingenuous at all to respond to constructive feedback with: "Hey if you have a problem with my method, go drop a bunch of money on hardware and learn a skillset you may not currently possess, otherwise just shut up and don't give any feedback regardless of my stated desire for it I really only just post these videos so people can kiss my butt about them" (sorry, I'm ascribing motive here and that's wrong, I guess we'll just have to guess what aeon wants because of the mixed messages he sends), maybe we're just supposed to fellate lord aeon amadi any time he condescends from his cloud of being-way-too-busy-to-respond-to-constructive-feedback-in-a-reasonable-manner to 'consult' with (aka ignore) us plebians.

Yep, I totally started it by expecting to have my points considered on their merit alone, I forgot that I'd be talking to the ever unreasonable aeon amadi.

Thank you for leaping in to white knight for the damsel in distress that is Aeon, long after the initial argument was ended in a semi-reasonable manner Zatara, it becomes increasingly clear that Aeon needs others to do his arguing for him.

I guess we'll just have to guess what aeon wants because of the mixed messages he sends