Weaponbalance

[faust]

In order the maintain a great gaming experience, we have to always question the game balance.

What do you guys think? What weapon is overpowered? What is underpowered? What should we change?

[Plankie]

The xbow is the new überweapon of doom o.O

[Blue]

plankie said:

The xbow is the new überweapon of doom o.O

I don´t think so. It´s slow and won´t let you kill stuff fast enough. At least that´s what I experienced last night.

In general I think stuff is fine as it is right now. The HS may still be a little bit overpowered, but that´s only until Sirens start to show up. Or you start to miss when the jumping things show up and can´t reload fast enough to get the stalkers. Or sirens AND jumpies AND Fleshpounds show up.
In general I´m satisfied.

[unrealdirektor]

I still buy the winchy, even though thanks to the headshot-not-lethalshot factor it got uber-underpowered. At least I deactivate their "special skills". Other than that.... It's a waste of money, unless the dmg to headshots is fixed. I need 2 shots to finish off a cloth...

[faust]

Yeah I'm seriously concerned about the crossbow right now, too, tbh.

[Alex]

Well Faust - here's my thoughts

Did some more playing and I have decided to go back on my prior statement about the 2.1 Winchester being too overpowered.

It's not-
But it needs to be changed somewhat.

The whole premise of the weapon is a gun for snipers, right? So why can I peg zombies outside of ironsight mode and rattle off 10 bullets without aiming for even a second, doing the exact same damage as someone who took the time to aim? It doesnt work

Here's the fix:

When in Ironsight mode you've got your 160-180 damage Slugger. It'll fire slowly, and your movement speed will be reduced when you're aiming, but it can obviously whup some ass, if you look where you're shooting.

When out of ironsight mode, you move at regular speed, and your firerate is restored to the old "Wild west repeater shooting", but your damage drops to something like 100-120, and obviously you can't see preceisely where you're hitting.

This encourages people to use it only as a sniper weapon, but gives it abit of flexibility.

ATM, it just feels "wrong" when I can stand there are blow away like 4 bloats in a row without any effort, using a weapon that doesn't feel like it should be doing that kind of damage. Using it like that and being rewarded with those kind of results makes the deagle seem pathetic - and the bullpup along with it

THATS what ticked me off. I've got no beef with it being powerful if you take the time to use it as it was intended to be used , but using it as a close range fighting weapon should feel Underpowered, and clunky. That's the whole IDEA

[Alex]

Regarding the Xbow - I think it's really pretty insanely powerful atm

I fired a single arrow through the body of like 3 bloats and sent them flying....

Again, like the winchester you ramped up the raw damage of a SNIPING weapon and ended up with a weapon that feels more like a miniature arrow firing doomsday device.

The whole idea with the Winch / Cross was to reward players who like to play from the back, and call their shots rather than getting messy.

When I was using the Crossbow I didn't feel like I really had to aim for the head at all, I just held down the mouse button and watched the mayhem unfold.

That's not a good thing.

I would suggest a possible increase on the headshot multiplier for the Crossbow bolt, and a TINY buff to the damage (from the 2.0 vanilla) but otherwise, ramp the damage on the bolts right back to where they were.

The way to make the crossbow better is to increase the leniance of the headshots a little bit. I am a skilled shot, and I was having ALOT of trouble nailing headshots with it - online. On my own listen server, things were abit easier, but because of inevitable lag, things have to be simplified abit for dedicated server players.

Hopefully with those fixes, we'll have a damned effective sniping tool.

Oh, and im sure you know about the Raise / Lower anims not player when entering and exiting scope. Put a 0.5 second delay on that, so that they can be shown

[evildoctorian]

I think that headshots should be made more effective overall. I havn't played 2.1 yet, but in 2.0 I remember them doing pretty much the same damage as body shots, but disabling abilities.

[faust]

Alex, I think that this is a very good idea. The Sniperweapons are a real challenge for balance in my eyes, since they are either totally underpowered or totally overpowered. The thought with the Winchester, making it more lethal when using ironsights and not when using it like that is a really good idea in my eyes. I would go a step further and make the ironsight only as lethal for targets on long range. Like when they enter a certain radius the damage becomes less lethal, even when in ironsight. I think that would definately mark this weapon as a long-range priority weapon. Right now, it indeed is some kind of a shotgun just with better aim and more range.

About the crossbow, I'd agree with you. I thought that all the effort on this thing was basically useless since I found it useless itself as a weapon. Plus, I wanted an alternative to the hunting shotgun so that people who specialised in long-range weapons wouldn't be punished for that decision whereas the short-range shotgun freaks always got the big-ass gun in the end.

I saw this balancing problem with the crossbow throughout the patch-progress and always tried to find a valid compromise. But as I said earlier, that compromise might not lie within the damage of sniperrifles. Basically just toning it down to his initial damage would give the superweapon feel away and I totally agree with that. Whereas, nobody would buy this thing and a prize higher than the winchester would be in no way justified. Hell that weapon is difficult :/

My question would be: Do you want the Hunting shotgun be the ONLY weapon that people spare money for?

Otherwise, what you said about the headshot-damage, that might be a way to do it, but raising the occurence of headshots would give us the same problem with an overpowered weapon again (plus the increasing of headshots sounds like a grave coding issue to me, but well...). It is really a tough problem. What I would suggest would be toning down the damage to the initial (Which is 80hp) raising the headshotdamage to 5x(400 enough to kill a bloat) or even 6x(480 enough to kill a gorefast, basically what a HS is capable of) PLUS adding a nailing function to the bolts, depending on the mass of the enemies. Clots would be pushed back pretty much by a shot of this and bigger creatures would be thrown back less. This way, this weapon would have its use outside of the damage thing in helping to keep enemies at a distance.

[uwasawaya]

Not a bad idea... I'd be more inclined to agree if they pulled their weight... the only problem is, the Crossbow is more expensive then the HS... and the HS is still a far superior weapon on everything in the game with the exception of Sirens. You're paying an assload of money for that Crossbow, and it doesn't have the ammo to kill, even overpowered, a fourth of the wave you're fighting. Maybe the damage in scope could be launched through the roof, by make the player immobile while using it.

It's amazing, and really strong... but I think maybe a cut down of normal damage, kicking up of headshot damage, increase the bolts, slow the player and make it a bit cheaper. Just a bit. Hell, it doesn't need to go through enemies... it can just wreck the shit out of what it hits. Give it 50 bolts and have it kill everything up to Gorefasts with one shot (head, anyway).

I like the proposed Winchester changes though.

[Seras Victoria]

I do think a winch should have enough damage to kill a clot with one headshot. Right now it feels a bit weird still, as you said it will be pretty hard to use and players should be rewarded for it. All the suggestions so far only seem to weaken it. Scoped fire+headshot should be an instant kill to at least clots.

[tronicmind]

in short

winchester like alex suggest it.
if you aim, slow pace down, more damage.
if you shoot from the hip damage like 2.0.

crossbow damage slightly up but the nail-pushback idea is great. it a new funktion!
if its really possible to delay a zombie-mob from advancing toward you by stopping or even pushing back enemies you can buy time for the others to take down the threat.
armed with crossbow you are only a supporter but a loved one:)

if the coding of pushback is to hard let the arrows stun the zeds. for a second or so. the same way they are stunned by melee weapons.

[zearoth]

I think the Winchester is quite alright as it is, but I don't have anything against what Alex said. Heck, I usually change to another weapon when enemies get close anyway.

Have to second what tronicmind stated about the Xbow. With the gigantic number of enemies I have witnessed, any trick capable of slowing the horde would be great. Tone down the damage a bit, add more ammo and reduce the weight and I think it would be just fine. Maybe cut down on the price, as this is the most expensive weapon second to the LAW.

On expensive weapons... The Hunting Shotgun is perfectly balanced now from my point of view, it has the power to blow through anything, but is limited on ammo, so players should be getting a second weapon to deal with isolated and weaker foes.

[Abyx]

The winchester does have enough damage to kill a clot in one hit, Lara. It's just very hard to score a headshot due to the animations and how fast they move, even with iron sights. I'm not an excellent shot, I'm a quick shot. That's why I always take 2 shots to kill a clot, because I focus on killing them as fast as I can.

The crossbow is pretty fine to me, but the thing is. The sights are COMPLETELY off. It's like a little to the bottom right or something.

[Blue]

The knockback-thing is a fine idea. Weight should be calculated, though (Bloat only steps back a bit, while a Clot should be making somewhat of a jump back).

The thing about the crossbow was mentioned one post above this. I´ve got the feeling, too, that something is odd/off when firing through scope-mode with the crossbow. That´s basically what I meant when I said it was not too overpowered. That and I somehow couldn´t kill off as much as the rest of you seems to have done .

Anyway, where was I ? Right, the crossbow being able to kill stuff with a headshot. See, the thing about headshots right now is that you can pop the head off of a Clot with one single shot out of the 9mm and he doesn´t die. Same for bloats. Why should they die then when their head is blown off by a high-powered crossbow bolt ?