Delenne Arran
Ivory Hounds
55
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Posted - 2013.08.03 03:14:00 -
[1] - Quote
Buster Friently wrote:Draco Cerberus wrote:I find that with equal levels of skill the guns are balanced. We need to move our focuses from the nerf/buff mode to what we need in game that would improve gameplay not just which gun hits hardest (there will always be BFGs). We need to focus on diversity to preserve an interesting game. Currently, the AR is killing diversity. It's being used to kill nearly as often as 11 of the available 14 weapons in the game combined. This is a huge problem that needs fixed. We are currently playing AR 514, not Dust 514.
Here's my question about that statistic. How many of those are militia ARs? To my knowledge, everybody gets the Assault and Medic starter fits that come with an AR BPO. Obviously, this means new players will be using them, artificially raising the gun's popularity. Slightly less obviously, veterans will also occasionally use Starter FIts if they're farming cash. In additon, since they're the only "free" weapon, people get decent with ARs first and figure "why not spec into it then, since I'm already good with them," further increasing the killcount and gun's popularity. If you really want to "fix" that, before you touch any stats, we'd need to either get more BPOs in our starter box, or change the assault rifle's perception as the "default" gun. The latter is basically impossible because that's just modern day FPS games.
Now, as for the OP:
It's not a one or the other kind of thing. Both buffs and nerfs should be employed when balancing. Weapons or suits that are just flat-out too effective outside their niches need to be nerfed to bring them back down to where they're meant to be, while something that's not doing its job effectively needs to be enough buffed to fulfill its role. In addition, it is possible for a weapon to be too good even in its own intended role. The flaylock was intended to be devastating at close range, and it was, but it wasn't meant to instantly obliterate anything that wandered into its range. Buffing say, another weapon or armor plates would have created more problems than just weakening the flaylock. Not that Armor Plates don't still need a buff regardless.
Both buffing an OP weapon's natural counters and flat out nerfing an OP weapon can be overdone. Personally, I think it's better to overshoot a nerf than overshoot a buff. The former breaks one weapon. The latter breaks anything that weapon is used against. |