JavaScript is required to use Bungie.net

Forums

originally posted in: Are auto rifles now useless in PVP?
Edited by fender19: 2/27/2015 12:50:54 AM
16
Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.
English

Posting in language:

 

Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • well said sir. your post should be marked as the answer.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • Edited by MostafaFawaz: 3/2/2015 4:24:21 PM
    I mostly like this post because its exactly what I want PvP to be like. When the game first came out, I used thorn in the crucible. It would still tear people apart and you're right, it should be penalized for missing shots and you felt it. You had to play a more conservative HC game and it wasn't a bad thing. What I do think, is it needed a faster reload with 6 shots. It got a faster reload and mag increase which was too far. I think many people were disappointed it was only a crucible gun pre buff. After the buff, its now a good pve gun and king of crucible and skirmish. Hawkmoon on the other hand, is a hard topic to talk about. People who do not have it always feel like they are always being 2 shot by hawkmoon. In order to judge the gun you have to use it. And when you finally use it you understand that's not an all too common thing. Not only do you have to get 2 headshots in a row, but one has to contain the lucky bullet. That translates into 2-3 2 shot kills in a game for me where I get 20 kills. Many damaged people get 2 shot by hawkmoon who do not have full health because 2 headshots does 188/200 health. This is the biggest strength of the gun in my opinion. It's a HIGH damage gun with a LOW fire rate.(as far as legendary and exotic hand cannons go)

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • Great response. Unlike many of the posts here, it's articulate and well thought out. I agree with everything you said here. I think the update really does a good job with balancing the weapons. I'm a hand cannon user and I completely understand and agree with the thinking behind the nerfs. I was using my Thorn as a sniper rifle, and often beating people who were using actual sniper rifles. That's clearly not right and I'm glad they fixed it. I think TLW should have an even greater drop off in accuracy at medium to long range, considering how deadly it is up close. Hawkmoon still eludes me, so I can't comment on it. I think scout rifles work the way they are supposed to, but I think they should all stagger the opponent more than they do. MIDA does this beautifully, but the other ones are lacking. Pulse rifles now have a purpose. They are in between hand cannons and scout rifles in range and penalty to missed shots. Red Death is wicked good now. The Stranger's Rifle is the new Suros. Auto rifles have always been easy mode. When I felt my game was a little off, I'd pop on my Suros and guarantee me twenty plus kills. They now work like they should. Good up close and rewards less for precision. I would love to see some of the high ROF guns work more like SMGs in that they hit hard at short range, but drop off considerably at medium to long range. Hard Light would be perfect for this archetype.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • Thanks! I'm not sure about the stagger on scout rifles. The problem I see is that it is sort of artificially deciding the battle if one gun automatically knocks the other off target. I have never liked flinch mechanics in shooters. I would prefer to see more elegant solutions in the map design and player mobility to resolve some of those issues. For example, if auto rifles were much more accurate from the hip and could be fired relatively accurately while jumping the auto rifles users would be able to beat precision users by tricking them into missing with smart jumps and slides. At the same time, precision users would still have the advantage if they get their hits in and show their talent. I feel like scout rifles just need more maps with long sightlines. The DPS is fine, and in PvE they're great, the crucible maps just don't have many spaces where they really have an advantage.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • Edited by bantad87: 6/6/2015 11:17:03 AM
    I agreed w/ most of your post, but I have to disagree with your assessment of Scouts vs HC. Normally, I would agree that scout rifles are completely fine - they reward a skilled hand in close-mid range, and murder most weapons (including snipers) at long ranges; but I also feel that handcannons are fantastic long-range weapons. For the most part, Thorn can still wreck a good sniper at long range because of the incredible stagger it produces (I have a Prudence II w/ unflinching and a Thorn shot will send my reticle flying), and the high damage/minimal range drop off. Scouts are intended to be THE long range primary weapon, but I rarely see them used on even mid-long range maps; I still see Thorn shots blasting across the map. With that said, I think the problem is handcannons, not scout rifles. Hand cannon range drop off needs to be hurt - because even though they're a "close-ranged" precision weapon, they still fill the role of long-range weapons just as effectively as many scout rifles do. Scouts and snipers should be the premiere ranged weapons, hand cannons should be the premiere short-mid range primaries; but hand cannons just do everything right now. It's really frustrating to be two shot by a Thorn from across a map, when even high impact Scouts require 3-4 head shots. TL;DR - Scout rifles should have a better TTK at long-range compared to hand cannons, but many hand cannons still outperform scouts even at long range. Increase range drop off on hand cannons so they are not effective all-range weapons.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • I think you may have misinterpreted my point; I don't think scout rifles ARE too powerful, I think they WOULD BE too powerful if they had the stagger modifier that the previous poster suggested. Further tinkering with range drop offs and TTK at specific ranges is basically the kind of narrow thinking that turns it into a contest of 'who has what' rather than 'who did what'. Scout rifles would have more of a niche if there were more maps with reasonably long sightlines like shores of time, where scout rifles tend to do a lot better. The problem is really that the maps aren't designed for scout rifles to be useful.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • TL;DR

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • It's only 9 paragraphs. That's like, 1 typed page. Complicated issues can't be reduced down to glib 1 liners.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • And or, hear me out, I don't remember what we were talking about... I'm assuming you wrote to much.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • too* Now I'm starting to understand why you couldn't be bothered to read it.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • I was pooping. No worries on this end :)

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • [quote]Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.[/quote]

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • [quote]Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.[/quote]

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • [quote]Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.[/quote]

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • [quote]Honestly, I think everybody is falling back on a conservative fallacy to complain about things changing. Look at the goals for weapon usage patterns, and consider the company's history and design philosophy. Halo's competitive balance revolved around the battle rifle, a weapon that rewarded tracking and precision (3 body shots, 1 headshot to finish). When used properly it beat out the assault rifle, but when used improperly (5-6 hits) the assault rifle/SMG/whatever became competitive with its time to kill, while being much easier to use. In Destiny things are obviously different, but we expect the same philosophy to apply to archetypes. Handcannons should generally have the best time to kill, because if you miss you increase time to kill significantly. The best players should be using them. Pulse rifles should be somewhere in between, easier to use for tracking and less punishing when you miss, but still relying on precision damage to beat auto rifles and compete with handcannons. Overall, theoretical TTK should be: handcannons < scout rifles < pulse rifles < auto rifles, with ease of use following the opposite trajectory, and increased range favoring scout rifles over handcannons and pulse rifles over auto rifles. Because advantages depend on range and operator performance, and some are easier to use than others, you have a really great system where understanding of the advantages helps you set up the right confrontation, and skilled execution is rewarded, while unskilled execution is punished. A good player can manipulate situations to suit his loadout. Overall, the best players will generally choose a precision weapon, because their execution is perfect. Realistically, auto rifles should be the worst in terms of potential time to kill, while pulse rifles really should be the most flexible. Handcannons should be the best, but with miss-and-you're dead consequences. Exotics change that formula up. The guns are supposed to look and feel overpowered, but not break the game, and to challenge your play style with their strengths and their idiosyncrasies. In other words, they're supposed to provide advantages in certain situations, but also have drawbacks to balance that out and introduce some gamesmanship into the equation. Unfortunately, balancing the basic archetypes previously discussed against these further differentiated niches becomes very difficult, and while 80% of them are fine, another 20% are out of balance with everything else. In the context of the nerfs, there are a couple relevant weapons to discuss, and not necessarily in a particular order. Suros Regime, then, is first. 1.0 Suros simply didn't have drawbacks. At any range it was ridiculously deadly. It rewarded tracking or precision. It simply had the best stats and a perk that just increased damage even further and could arbitrarily induce life-saving health regeneration. The first auto rifle nerf was necessary, because Suros best time to kill did not match up with the difficulty of achieving that time to kill. The same was basically true of the vanquisher and the shadow price; they worked far too well relative to how easy it was to maximize their effectiveness. TLW followed a similar trajectory. TLW has always been top tier for one on one fights. It had a ridiculous RoF, and was reasonably accurate. You could spam the heck out of it at short or medium range and outgun anybody. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to hit straight headshots with, and the 8 rounds mag meant you couldn't miss too much, but overall the time to kill was still unbeatable out to long range, and it could compensate for poor accuracy with spamminess and still have a very good TTK. This nerf has made TLW more reasonable, with a major advantage preserved at close range, but much more inaccuracy at medium range. It can still be used effectively, but you have to pace out your shots to the range you're at, and you can't spam without risking a miss and having to reload, which will get you killed. This is better overall, and better accomplishes the goals Bungie laid out for the weapon. Thorn follows a different trajectory. Thorn started out pretty good. After all, it could always 2 hit. However, people were upset that it was so hard to make it work the way that they wanted it to. It makes sense; up against TLW, Suros and the Mythoclast 1.0 versions it was difficult to use, punished failure, and even at its best could still lose to the others. It then got buffed, and became overpowered. Thorn needs 2-3 hits max, has a high RoF, is accurate, stable, and generally doesn't have drawbacks. More importantly, however, its competitors have been taken down several notches. The current Thorn might have fit with 1.0 Suros and the mythoclast, but with the current weapons it's broken. Thorn's 2 hit kill should have a commensurate penalty for missing; frankly, I think they had it right in the first place when it had a smaller mag (miss too many times and you are screwed) and lower stability (operator really needs to be on point to re-aim second shot). It would still be deadly in the hands of a capable operator, but it would punish the unworthy and create more opportunities for a talented other-weapon user to force the Thorn user into making a mistake, and capitalize on it. I am an avid Thorn user myself, but I'll go ahead and say that this thing probably needs a nerf. Last, I'm going to address Red Death. It's now a very flexible weapon, with a pretty quick 2 hit kill within short-medium range, and a very consistent 3 hit at most combat ranges. I'd say that it's now top tier. With perfect accuracy it is just barely beat out by handcannons in time to kill, but it can't do it at quite the same variable range because of the stability. The fact that it went from a novelty to a top tier weapon so abruptly is striking, but I would argue that it actually fits the intended usage pattern better than ever. It's supposed to be flexible and relatively easy to use, but hard to master, and the Time to Kill increase (2 bursts with headshots, 4 with body shots) actually reflects your mastery. It should get beat out by handcannons, but only when they're on top of their game. If a handcannon user misses, they should be ready to get killed by the 2nd or 3rd burst, because that's the price of using the handcannon - you miss and you're dead. Anyway, the moral of the story is this: overall, I think balance is actually improving and moving toward a better theoretical model that has reasonable risk/reward relationships for all of its weapons. Not all weapons should be equal. It's not interesting when the time to kill is the same for every weapon and the only variable is operator accuracy; situational advantages and risky but rewarding usage patterns actually increase the degree to which the game focuses on planning and strategy, which is ultimately better for competitiveness. If Thorn (and I guess hawkmoon, I'm xbox) get a more reasonable nerf, I would say Red Death should be calibrated a bit so it's a consistent 3 hit kill. However, as it stands, I think Red Death is doing what it should be doing. Auto rifles might have been hit a little bit too hard, but I think it still makes sense that they be at the bottom of the totem pole. There SHOULDN'T be a reason for any top players on destinytracker to use an auto rifle over a precision weapon, because top players are the kind of people who strategize and maneuver well to leverage their narrow advantage.[/quote]

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

  • Agreed. If you don't have that paper/rock/scissors balance then why would you ever stop using one weapon type. Each weapon should excel in a certain environment.

    Posting in language:

     

    Play nice. Take a minute to review our Code of Conduct before submitting your post. Cancel Edit Create Fireteam Post

You are not allowed to view this content.
;
preload icon
preload icon
preload icon