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.

Yes, these are all considerations. Which is why I don't claim that the AR is OP because of a small difference in kills. It's a huge difference in kills. Also, the shotgun, and MD have been in as long as I've been playing, yet their use is miniscule. yes, they are more of a niche weapon, as has been pointed out, but AR kills are literally 100 times more than shotgun kills in pub matches. That is not a balanced AR.

The other niche is the grenade launcher which was formerly filled by the mass driver, however the flaylock pistol is more accurate and does more damage while costing half the CPU and a grand total of 1-2 PG. The Flaylock pistol is completely superior to it's mass driver brother. I would also like to point out that the Flaylock Pistol currently dominates the AR until you hit the range where the flaylocks missle blows up in the air which is around 60m.

Overpowered, means that the weapon is a problem.

See, every weapon is overpowered in it's niche, so the fact that someone kills you with it, or they do well with it, or even that you always die to it, doesn't make a weapon OP.

What makes a weapon OP is that it's a problem, specifically a problem for diversity by encouraging people to use that weapon over other weapons because it's "EZ" mode. Therefore, OP does mean overused - precisely. Overused relative to the other weapons.

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's easier if you AFK

Maybe so. All I'm saying is that this is not borne out by evidence in pub matches, where nearly all players reside, yet.

Again, I don't want to play Flaylock 514 any more than AR 514, but right now, it's all AR all the time.

Imagine you are me for a second, and that CCP come to the forums and say "We have a super secret lab of monkeys that are trained to be perfect FPS users. They represent the very best in FPS ownage and only play for keeps. These monkeys have shown that weapon X is way too powerful (or not shown that weapon Y is way too powerful) So we're going to nerf/buff accordingly"

The forums would explode. Players would rightly point out that this lab filled with Master FPS players doesn't represent the "live" game, and that balancing should occur with regards to the "live" game.

That's basically my point regarding PC vs pubs. I can understand, and even empathize with you, if Flaylocks truly are such a problem there, but that isn't the game that the vast majority of players are actually playing - yet, and maybe never.

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?

Let's see the numbers that back up the usage profiles that are being mentioned for PC. Until that happens, it's just talk son.

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.

Let's see the numbers that back up the usage profiles that are being mentioned for PC. Until that happens, it's just talk son.

They have the advantage of a large player base to do this. I don't think Dust has this advantage, and won't if some balance isn't brought to pubs - before PC.

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...

Well, the combined data is for 850 kills total.

Yeah, that's still light, but it's still important.

And no, not any conclusion is erroneous. This is the best data we have to date. Anytime anyone wants to pony up some data instead of just talk, I'm all ears (or eyes as the case may be).

This includes PC.

I will still say though, while I understand where you guys are coming from with regard to balancing for skill, you must also balance the actual game, which, right now, isn't PC. As much as you guys think you're important, you don't represent anything other than a tiny portion of the playerbase, no matter how skilled you may be.

What most people are playing, and what most people will continue to be playing is the game for which I have provided some stats.

We sure can balance that other game as well, but it just isn't as important.


Just wait until we have PVE and 10 times as many people play that game

That's not a usage profile. Also, Dust in general is running right now at something like 5 or 6k players concurrent at maximum. That's vastly more than 1k players total.

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?