Please everyone...

Just ignore this guy.

Don't even bother posting in this thread, just let it die.

No.

I probably disagree with his analysis (didn't ever really read it)...but the numbers are interesting.

It would be cool to get a bigger sample...multiple games maybe. and broken down by game.

He just likes OPness. He has one in his mouth.

1.) SMG's in my opinion are overpowered (especially the proto version) HOWEVER this weapon has missed out on the nerf hammer because it's an under used weapon. It doesn't get reallllyyy good until you have the ishukone assault SMG with proficiency 4 or 5 so most people aren't willing to make that kind of investment. But that thing is literally the breach rifle on steroids. (in that it has the same range as the breach AR) but it shoots out FAR more bullets. Especially now with the range buffs to every gun. Seriously..... that thing is sooooo good and nobody besides me and some other vets have actually specced into them.

2.) The flaylock pistol IS OP, HOWEVER it is also a niche weapon. Some people don't like it because of a three round clip, others don't like it because it can do damage back, but nobody can deny that three of those rounds at your feet will kill you. I mean..... 200 splash damage??? really?? ffs man! It does better then actual missile launchers :/ and the real problem is with minmatar assaults running around with dual proto flaylocks! that coupled with the fact that weapon swap speed was increased makes it so that the flaylock pistol is practically a better version of the mass driver. Only it costs the same as a sidearm..... (isk/fitting wise).

3.) The fact that both of these weapons are above Scrambler rifles speak wonders. Sure! They have less kills in four matches then some of the more established and prominent guns in game, but at the end of the day that doesn't change them from being OP or Not OP. I mean..... the scrambler rifle is the answer to shield tanking, yet assault rifles are used more, and that's simply because its the most familiar weapon people see when coming into this game. Therefore people prefer them, therefore they are more common, therefore other weapons are less common, therefore people can get upset if they die from weapons there not used to dying from.

What would have been far more interesting is to post up the amount of instances each player in all four matches carried their specific weapons. There could have been 5 flaylock users in each match, but if only 1 or 2 of them got any kills that's all were seeing right now.

And even if it turns out there isn't that many users to specific guns, that too does not prove its balanced. Back in closed beta Tanks = god mode. CCP made them incredibly hard to kill so as to test out how people would react. They were the most overpowered thing this game has ever had. (imagine a tank that could tank 13 standard forge gun shots before its shields were gone). HOWEVER not everyone used them! In fact, its pretty easy to say only a majority of people specced into tanks at that time. I mean if there was 4 tanks per match that build, there was still 12 other people who didn't use them. The fact of the matter issssss

Preference > Weapon effectiveness

People will play more with what they enjoy rather then what is better at killing. This does not mean OP weapons like the Flaylock pistol don't exist, it just means that most people prefer not to use a gun as gimmicky as that.

All i'm gonna say is... I hope CCP knows now not to balance weapons by their use in public matches, and instead by their use in organized corp matches (see planetary conquest).

This doesn't represent "OP ness" it represents weapon preference.

No it's because the AR is the go to weapon in any shooter.

It's because it's a general use weapon. It is the most flexible. It is also the first weapon noobs go to usually. When something kills fine and you already have it then why go to a different weapon?

Just because many people use a weapon does not mean it's OP. This is coming from a SCR user BTW.
(Also I didn't say it was UP)

You can't possible consider this scientific, accurate, or even logical to follow.
If anything, this is everything that is wrong with popular science today.

Numbers from one match is inconclusive data.
Numbers from one match, without some kind of way for us to verify whether your numbers are honest is VERY inconclusive data.
Even if you provided totals and/or averages, from YOUR matches, that data is not conclusive enough to determine whether something is OP or not. Or if a particular weapon is "dominating the game" as a whole.

Your logic is totally biased, and flawed. You take a fragment of (allegedly) unbiased data, and assume it somehow proves your own interpretation. Talk about confirmation bias!
Because someone likes apples, does that mean that hate oranges? Gimme a break...

This is all your "data" says:
"THESE are the kills done with THESE weapons, in THIS match, according to the viewpoint of THIS player."
Period.
From that data, you can draw conclusions about weapons and stats for THAT match.

If you want to raise questions about weapon balances and domination, as a serious player study, you need to get other players in on it. Arrange something much bigger. At least with a dozen or two people, and try for them to get the average of at least 100 matches.

12-24 people doing 100 matches each = 1200-2400 matches.
Dust averages what? About 3000-5000 people every day? 2400 matches times 32 players each match will have about 76000 players run through it. That means that every Dust player online at that point will participate in a match where someone from your study is involved, at LEAST once.

Tally up your data, then present it, and don't make broad, sweeping assumptions based on your data.
Just say, "This is the data that we gather across X many matches, using X many people, under X circumstances." or say, "The data says, weapon X has these many kills."
Data like THAT can be presented to the community and CCP, and they can run the needed formulae to make adjustments IF they say fit, and if the playerbase desires it.

If you're as scienfically-minded as you front yourself to be, why can't you resist the urge to interpret data too deeply?

For any given statistic, you should always get the largest number of tries possible. I think 10 games should be a minimum. Next, skirmish matches are entirely different from ambush and domination matches. I know this because in ambush you don't see as many snipers as you see in skirmish. In skirmish, my LAV doesn't get as many kills as when I use it in ambush. Ambush OMS is what I recommend because it's longer than regular ambush, and there are installations as well.

-XOXO

Nevermind.

-XOXO

I understand.
I'm not trying to be overly critical.
But you can't argue against emotion using logic.

You gotta get on the same page as people emotionally, before they even START trying to listen to reason.

It's like, "idgaf what you're reasoning is. i hate your guts!" You know? lol

Actually it does not mean its OP, nothing should be done in regards to the AR as its been nerfed enough to where its balanced now. Your thinking about as open minded as a fruit fly right now, and im not going to argue the point any further. What ive said already is more then reason enough to undermine your claim, and I think a majority of the people who play this game, along with devs too, agree with me on this topic.

Guns are not OP because of player preference. They are OP because of how over effective they are for the people that do use them.

You can't make that statement in a game where there is no ability to respec.

Why does everyone pick ARs? Because its the only gun that works in most situations, and its the most familiar to people coming from other games.

This game is extremely punishing for not putting points into ARs... you need around 2 million SP into ARs before you can even consider yourself competitive... thats months and months of SP for some people.

You can't expect most people to do anything else... it does not mean the weapon is OP or that ARs are killing diversity, it means this overly punishing SP system is kill diversity.

None of these metrics mean anything in a system where you are not allowed to change what weapons you can use, and in any sort of competitive play, you need Proficiency 3 minimum before you are even relevant.

Now... enter into PC... where its much more competitive and people will use whatever OP FOTM they can if it means the win... You wanna know what that most common combination of weapons is in PC?

Flaylock pistols and fused locus grenades. Both of which are being used because they are overpowered.

I'm shocked that the generalist weapon is being used the most in a game that forces you to spend months to change your playstyle.

Nerf ARs. Do whatever you want with the AR. Skilled players are still going to destroy with it, and they're going to destroy those using it. Most weapons are fairly OP in their own way, AR just shows more because people like to play it safe when they aren't allowed to change their mind.

Assault Rifles are the go to weapon in many if not all shooters.

Sorry bro.

Adapt.

Or cry.

Unless you go and get an actually decent sample size, this data is completely useless.

Wepons that are used more are not op,they are just used more...That is some twisted way to try to (prove) that the flaylock is not OP.This sure show how people get attached to their precious op guns and are willing to do anything to keep it as it is;)

Over used =/= over powered
Sorry you are not a winner, please try again

General purpose weapons will likely always have the most kills.

Balance is lacking when a weapon, ANY weapon, can't fulfill it's role (plasma cannon, laser rifle). OR, supplants the role of another weapon of a particular niche(Uprising 1.0 Tactical AR).

It's very delicate, guys.
Don't hammer on the OP. His data may not be sound, but his point is still valid.

What is your definition of op?

Somebody help me find the dev only topic that shows things that are reported. (flaylock, glitches, etc.)

Please excuse my insolence but i have to ask what part specifically constitues the the difinition of the term OP? You dance around quite a lot in this thread i have a hard time condensing the actual definition you propose out of it.

What are the specific qualities of an an item that is is OP?

Data is not the plural of anecdote.

Hold on. An overpowered item is overpowered? That's a tautology. OP is the term i'm looking for, it cannot be part of its own definition.

I just did something similar, but I didn't break it down exactly like you did. I did not record kills that I could not connect the weapon with, and I watched my sister play a forge gunner and she is one mean forge gun sniper. Watched her play 4 domination matches. I put turrets and ramming under vehicle, and explosion as grenades and remote. During the fist match I was positive that flaylocks were going to dominate as they did outgunned ARs after recording the first game but then the numbers changed fast for the other three matches.

AR--115
MD--24
Shotgun--1
HMG--14
Scram R--7
Scram P--3
Sniper--95
Swarm--5
Laser--1
PC -- 0
Subs--20
NK -- 0
Flaylock--20
Forge Gun--20
Vehicle--36
Instalations--19
Explosion--18
OB --17
Melee--2

There isn't enough data compiled here in order to generate statistics with relatively low error.

I might have judged too quick there, mea culpa.

So i take it this is the proposed definition:

"More desireable, thus more people use it, thus it hurts diversity."

Let me know if this is incorrect while i think about it.

What does OP stand for? OverPowered

It does not mean OverUsed


please stop posting

So much bad logic, I really hope CCP doesn't listen to a word you're saying buster. No offense.

So to put it in abstract terms: If X is beeing used more widely than others, that is always due to it beeing more desireable than others. Since something that is more desireable than others is OP, it follows that X is OP.

I can't seem to fit the "squeezing out diversity" part into this bit in a logically sound manner. Maybe you can help me with this.

Now, the underlined part is what i find interesting as, if i translated your definition so far correctly, one has to assume this to be true in order for your definition to be valid. Is that so?

I'll withhold further comments until we clarified this so i don't argue against a strawman.

lol at your data to prove OPness taken from random pub matches. How about taking data from competitive enviroments such as planetary conquest where most teams are running almost a full squad of Duel Wield Core Flaylock pistols every match which are able to 3 shot all infantry (even the dreaded caladari logi with it's 700 shields.).

The gun is a boob tube, the average player might struggle with the weapon because they aim for the chest or are unable to lead shots, however give the gun to an above average player and they will become godlike.

okay... so just comparing anti infantry light weapons... (im omitting plasma cannon cause its unclear what the design intent of that weapon was)

We have

Assault Rifle
Scrambler Rifle
Laser Rifle
Mass Driver
Sniper Rifle
Shotguns

Now... the mass driver is a niche weapon... its usage will vary a lot... you just can't compare it. Its a projectile weapon, and it doesn't suit the playstyle of most players. Weapon usage for this should have little to do with weapon balance.

Sniper rifles are niche weapons... in any sort of competitive setting you usually only see 1-2 snipers per team. The only time that numbers skews is when you take your numbers from skirmish, where redline sniping is very prevalent, given there is little incentive to win. (oh look how skewed your sniper rifle data is!)

Shotguns are suffering hit detection issues, but are still a CQC niche weapon. You can't expect to see a lot of usage of this, and that's okay. Some people will want to use this, but it probably wont fit the playstyle of many players, not enough to warrant skilling into it.

Now... we're left with Laser Rifles, Scrambler Rifles, and Assault Rifles.

First off, there is only one variant of the laser rifle, and its also a very niche weapon given its lowered CQC efficacy. So you can't expect to see equal usage of this weapon either. Its also suffering from its poorly placed iron sights when 1.0 dropped.

Okay so now we're down to two racial of variants of... you guessed it... assault rifles.

The only information you can truly get from this 'test' you are doing is that Assault Rifles are preferred to scrambler rifles. Is this because assault rifles are more powerful than scrambler rifles? It might, and an analysis and use of each weapon will tell you scramblers need a buff.

Also, assault rifles have four variants, while scramblers are unfinished, with only two variants. So it cannot come as that much of a surprise that ARs are preferred.

Finally.. you see how high sniper kills are? That's from redline sniping. Its a condition that arises from public matching, where the desire to win is less than the desire for a high kdr, Imbalanced public matchmaking results in one team being pushed completely to the redline by another team, and common issue in skirmish and dom.

So my final conclusion on your data? Public matches cannot be used to determine weapon balance due to a variety of factors, poor matchmaking, a wide variety of skill levels (both personal and in game via SP), and an overall lack of desire to win for many players, causes more impact on weapon usage than anything else.

You must look at matches where teams are in full communication, and squads are preformed and tactics planned based on weapon balance and the types of maps being played on. You're data is flawed, if anything take the data from OMS, where you aren't suffering from bias that is cause by the use of 'redline mechanics' and you have the highest percentage of skilled players, with high enough SP to have actually spec'd into more than one weapon.

You cannot balance weapons at the lowest denominator of players. doing so invites disaster such as the flaylock. Most PC corps have a policy against publicly posting our PC matches for 2 reasons: 1) the might give away team tactics, strategic placement of uplinks and positions. 2) We do not wish to cause harm to our opponents reputation.

But if 10 times as many people are using the AR, and it gets 10x as many kills.. that makes it OP?

What if people just prefer the assault rifle?

Also... you are completely wrong... it has nothing to do with 'who experiences what'. Its the fact that you want to balance off competitive play, not the random derping of people in public matches.

Assault rifles have been in the game since it's inception, and with the permenent nature of skill point allocation it's not suprising that the majority of beta vets chose to spec into the known entity. This means that the vast majority of scrambler rifle users are either newer player to the game, or alts with less SP the a vets main. Both would be accurates reasons for the SR recieving less kills than the AR. Furthermore AR also has 2 varients of Officer weapons, the Balac (Which is an absolute beast), and the Krins (Which is more accurate and has a larger clip than the duvolle). Loosing access to these weapons is another reason why top end players with a focus on end game content (planetary conquest) would opt to go with the AR over the SR, whereas the SR does not have any officer varients.

Shotguns have a hit detection issue. Many direct shots often go unregistered with the gun, and for a shotgun it doesn't have a very large spread. This makes it an incredibly hard weapon to use in post 1.2 gameplay where strafe speeds make scouts look like a dragon ball Z episode and heavies look like an NFL wide receiver running suicides.

The mass driver came into uprising heavily nerfed, and has sense been buffed. It's use increased for a while until it was discovered that the Flaylock was a superior weapon with more than half of the CPU/PG cost.

The Flaylock is a better weapon at CQC than the shotgun currently, and as a grenade launcher style weapon it easily beats out the MD especially when being duel weilded.

Most good players use Assault rifles, and thus put up much more impressive numbers with it. Shotguns are borked thanks to hit detection and scouts being in a crap spot. Also you can't expect a shotgun to get as many kills as an assault rifle because you have no projection with a shotgun. If you aren't moving, you aren't killing.

ARs have reach and can pick off those stragglers as they try to run away.

Your "data" avoids a dizzying number of factors in an attempt to legitimize your QQ as constructive feedback.

Yes the assault rifle is defo the best LW to use.. hands down. It will stay that way until the Scrambler Rifle, Combat Rifle, Rail Rifle, and Laser rifle are all balanced and have all of the variants (officer included) CCP intends to add.

ARs are preferred simply because they are the most complete (and well balanced) automatic firing weapon (most people's preferred playstyle).

Those 5 weapons, will, and should represent probably 70% of the kills in most matches when they are balanced. As they are the infantry vs infantry weapons you should expect to see in the battle field normally.

So yes... ARs are better than LRs and ScRs, I'll agree with that sentiment no problem. That's an issue with lack of weapon content more than anything.

However... it still doesn't address the fact that core flaylocks are too powerful. The metrics may not be showing it yet in pub matches, but thats due to the slow nature of the skill point system in this game. Regardless, they are far too powerful for what they do.. they completely invalidate both shotguns and mass drivers, and need to be changed.

And its always the same story... std flaylocks suck, adv flaylocks arent too shabby, and core flaylocks are lol. You've seen the posts, same as me. There is only one factor that really changes with those.. blast radius. Its need to be normalized, for the sake of balance.

It would be more interesting if you did this for 20 or so games and gave us an average of each weapons usage. I know it would be a lot of work, but it would prove your point better.

easily fakable

Thank God zdub and deluxe came in here to talk some sense into this guy. Most likely it won't matter what you say to him though. Over 40+ corps participate in pc, assuming that each has a about 25 that participate (most have a wider pool but lets just round down) that's about a 1000+ people playing. There are many many people playing PC, and zbroadway's and other's posts concerning it's use in PC demonstrates that when competition rears it's head, the OP flaylock is a weapon of choice. Sadly sir, most of what you post, while time consuming to read, is worthless and unsound. I wish you well.

P.S. How many kills/warppoints do you have? Have you broken 1,000,000 wp's?

Starcraft 2 and LoL are probably the most balanced pvp games in the world, with most competitive scenes, and the most money at stake in tournaments.

I think CCP could learn a thing or two from them.. you know how they balance their game? Purely from tournament and professional play. Even though that represents the tiniest fraction of their player base. Seriously, the player base percentage they balance around is probably around 0.1% - 0.01%.

They are doing it the right way, balancing around competitive play, not around derping in pub matches no matter how affected the pub matches are by it.. it then becomes the point of 'get gud son'.

However, you are right in some instances. if something is OP in pubs and not used at all in PC matches... it warrants observation as well.

case in point: LAVs.

Few people murder taxi in PC matches, but its rampant in pubs.. okay it probably needs to be tweaked a little.

I'm not screaming for FPs to get run into the ground, however their CQC efficacy is ridiculous at the moment. This isn't as noticeable in pubs because people don't play objectives in pubs like they do in PC. You need to see both sides of the equation in this instance.

FPs cannot be left in their current state, they are ruining PC. You may not seeing this in pubs when 90% of people are either AFK or redline sniping, but it doesn't change the point.

PC may only be a small percentage of this game, but its equally, if not more, important than public matches.

As we've already said. Most of us can't or won't divulge that information. However CCP should have it all from their data mining, and they are the only ones that need to see it really.

Um...I counted 40+ corps in PC can you dispute that? Can you dispute that any of these corps have less than 16 players? Can you prove anything really with the small pool of unsound data you're using to draw conclusions? Care to answer my questions regarding your total wp's? Than it sounds like that's a wrap...

You misunderstand. I like what you are doing. I will probably post a list myself next weekend. Did you sit though a whole game just watching the kill feed, or is there a more efficient way of getting the numbers?

That doesn't disprove your assertion that a very small portion of them players play PC, and thus also dilutes any remaining efficacy vs zdubs post concerning starcraft.

Keep trying yo. I know you won't change, because being wrong is difficult and it's the internet. But just chill dude. Wp's? how many? I'm betting in the 250k range.

i'm curious does anyone actually think a larger pool of games would net results where the AR isn't still on top?

I do agree a larger pool should be used for a better analysis but I don't suspect the top 6 weapons to be much different.....except for turrets no idea how that got up on the list.

Where are you getting 100 players maximum? Data? Or are you just pulling that out of your ass?

Where are you getting 1000 players maximum? Data? Or are you just pulling that out of your ass based on my lowballed guestimation?

WP's indicate time spent playing. I just wonder if you forum warrior more than playing...

Welp I have just pictures or video from the matches I've played. I would guess just from the matches vs si and gac I've seen upwards of 100 different people playing. If you were to count just the number I've played with and against the number would be close to 500 different characters. This is playing about 30-40 different corps (some who don't even own PC districts like subdreddit/pro) I'm guessing closer to one 2 tenths of dust during US primetime are participating in pc matches, and that during the day you could still have about 300+ people participating daily.

1 mil sp? Wanna edit that? If you've been playing since closed bete then that char would have at least 5 mil sp if you never played it. I have alts with 5 mill that I began in april and only capped 3 times.

I sure hope so dammit, PC should be a huge factor IMO in balancing. Honestly I think kill feeds are also only showing what landed the final blow, not what all went into the kill or what people were running. For example. When I played pc vs Outer Heaven recently, people would rush me with fused and core flaylock, unload everything, then bust out there ar and finish me off. Kill feed says Duvolle....but the story wasn't so simple.

In short, this pistol will become more popular as people get more SP to spend on it. Just because its more common for an AR to be in a match then other weapons does not mean its OP. And even then you have to take into consideration that there are Four variants of the AR, each of which behaves completely differently then another

And just to top all of this off...... four games worth of data is hardly enough to accurately judge a weapons level of preference in a game. Especially in a game as diverse as this. And to top it off the data isn't even specific. Theres no mention as to weather nor not someone was actually holding the gun, and the skills each of the people had specced into, or the average K/d Of each person who got a kill with specific guns. Theres just too little data to make one broad "AR's are OP because....." claim. God this argument is stupid.

actually the data is not accurate since it depends on how you approach the battlefield with your playstyle. while those on the frontlines may have been killed by what the data said, stealthy minjas like me dont go on the frontlines and hence we get killed alot less by an ar. i actually got killed by flaylocks than most weapons because when i tried to shank then from behind, they backpedal just out of convenience and one shot me with the flaylock

Here you go Buster, I was able to get permission to post some metrics.

Total kills from 4 games (took me two hours to put this all together, I have 8 games total so I'll try to add more in a few days).

Heavy Machine Gun 175
Assault Rifle 157
Shotgun 98
Flaylock Pistol 98
Fused Locus Grenades 79
Tank Turrets/Installations 43
Core/M1 Locus 33
Remote Explosives 33
Precision Strike 33
Sniper Rifle 30
Mass Driver 18
Melee 17
Forge Gun 15
Submachine Gun 15
Scrambler Rifle 15
'Cavity' M2 Contact 14
Nova Knives 6
Dropship 5
LAV 2
AV Grenade 1
Flux Grenade 1

All you can glean from this is that PC is a completely different style of play, and balance changes need to be made with PC in mind as well.

Btw, these games were all before the triple SP week, FP numbers are up considerably since then with the influx of SP.

I'm curious, why should everything be built around PC? So that it can serve the elitists better?

How many people are playing this game casually? How many play in ambush, oms, dom, squirmish the majority of the time? Where is the majority of customers that this game needs to stay alive?

My point is that if everything is balanced regarding the elitist endgame, you will never have the population pool that you need to make PC interesting in the first place because ppl will quit before reaching that stage.

I don't think you understand what i'm saying at all. Its not 'building the game around elitists'. But understand that PC is a major part of this game, despite the relatively low participation of players.

More importantly, its the fact that PC represents a battle where all players are coordinated and tactics are preplanned. This is actually competitive play, unlike most public matches. It is much better to balance weapons based off their usage in competitive play and not their usage in public matches which suffer from poor matchmaking among other things.

Changes need to be made with both game modes in mind. In PC you almost never see murder taxi'ing but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be fixed.

In pubs you don't see the same FP/FLG problems as you do in PC, but it also needs to be fixed.

Nerfing murder taxis wont do anything to PC, but it will help pubs alot.
Nerfing FLGs and FPs wont do a ton of impact to pubs, but will help PC matches a lot.

You see where i'm going here?

Im pretty sure thats all anyone is asking. normalize the blast radius and maybe a touch less splash damage.

You only played 4 matches. Log data from 30 matches if you want better representative results. A sample size of four matches is not representative of all dust matches. Unfortunately, without a record of data the results can be easily manipulated in this case so it may be difficult to trust.

I can see you compiled alot of data. good job, but i would like to know how many dropsuits were using AR compared to the other weapons. If there were 2 ARs for every sniper rifle, then yes you will see a significant difference(x2). Was this also used in your data?

You just haven't caught on to the next FOTM yet.

I'll give you a hint: Its a LW that shoots explosive projectiles

It's not.
It talks about flaylocks and whether or not they're OP, among other things. That's hardly relevant.