Heinrich Jagerblitzen
D3LTA FORC3
Orion Empire
309
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Posted - 2013.05.15 05:29:00 -
[1] - Quote
There's a few things going on here.
First of all, the Flaylock as we played it at Fanfest was ridiculous. No need to aim (except for at turrets/LAV's, which it carved down pretty nice if you unloaded all your ammo), just point in the general vicinity of someones feet and watch them go *poof* and die. I have zero doubt that if this was how it felt upon release, there would be a whole mess of threads screaming "noobtoob". The bottom line is that no one really enjoys a weapon that takes no skill to use, they're incredibly unpopular amongst the hardcore competitive types (who's opinion I favor, as I don't see much value in watering down Dust to suit the masses - if CCP can make this commercially viable without compromise than great).
This is what led to our recommendation that the Flaylock's splash be nerfed, so that it was a weapon that relied on direct hits more than splash. The reason for this is that the mass driver was almost completely outclassed by the flaylock in our playtesting, it stomped all over the mass driver's role because the mass driver couldn't kill much with its splash, the Flaylock could.
-THAT BEING SAID- The general performance, hit detection, and aiming controls were light years better at Fanfest that what we have here today, which seems to be simply because the game is running on the internet and not a LAN. This would lead one to believe that CCP went and nerfed the flaylock's splash damage and/or radius, which combined with the lower "real-world" performance resulted in an unsatisfying weapon to use.
The problem with this theory is that CCP has insisted (despite all of the changes in the way the game feels) that no changes were made* between the build we played and Fanfest, and what was deployed on Tranquility, including the performance of the flaylock pistol. When it comes to all of the perceived differences, apparently all we're dealing with here is "because of internet".
And who knows, maybe weapons DO need to be rebalanced (buffed) to compensate for the way the game plays over the internet, but I guess that depends on how long it'll take CCP to optimize the game's performance under realistic conditions. I think we'd all prefer they just put more time into getting the hit detection to the point where its razor-sharp before anything else.
I wish this added some clarity to the debate, but it doesn't. Clarity is in short supply these days. Those of us on the CPM are trying our best to get to the bottom of this stuff as much as you guys are.
*Other than the ones listed in the announcements made in the interim between Uprising's deployment and today |