Patch notes: 12-09-2015 updated

[fpsdredd]

Black Ops 3:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackops3/comments/3sozdm/weapon_edits_for_331820/

[bmac39]

Wow, such a big weapon balancing patch! They patched so many weapons, and especially ones that needed to be buffed desperately!

[LeGitBeeSting]

So apparently SH thought the Tac-19 was in more need of a buff than the S-12.

[cashmoves]

Jan 27, 2015 12:43:54 GMT -5 LeGitBeeSting said:

So apparently SH thought the Tac-19 was in more need of a buff than the S-12.

duh. the tac-19 is a weapon that on occasion kills people. the S-12 is a fully automatic weapon that on occasion kills people. can't argue their logic.

[lllRL]

Jan 27, 2015 12:26:05 GMT -5 bmac39 said:

Wow, such a big weapon balancing patch! They patched so many weapons, and especially ones that needed to be buffed desperately!

Lol, apparently all three burst weapons, the Mk14 and the SN6 are just fine already

Anyone know what the max damage range was increased to on the HBR? I hope it got its old 3hk range back... no point using it over the ASM1 or AK otherwise. Though, going off SH's previous weapon "balancing" moves, it was probably buffed to just 10m.

[hamburglar86]

I did some testing on the tac-19 with gung ho and though I don't have anything quantitative, the spread while sprinting is still qualitatively "way too much to justify a point in the pick 13 system".

I'm curious to know what the max damage range was increased to.

[asasa]

Jan 27, 2015 12:26:05 GMT -5 bmac39 said:

Wow, such a big weapon balancing patch! They patched so many weapons, and especially ones that needed to be buffed desperately!

Seriously. Hbr buff? Wtf...

Emp buff focused on something that wasn't a problem. No much needed asm/bal nerfs.

No amr9 buff? You can tell from this last patch, these devs haven't the slightest clue how to balance.

[Megaqwerty]

The EPM buff is a joke.

[strokedem]

Sounds like alot of folks at sledgehammer and company wasted alot of time with this "gun balancing patch". I cant comprehend anything sledgehammer does.

[asasa]

Jan 27, 2015 13:07:04 GMT -5 Megaqwerty said:

The EPM buff is a joke.

I just realized it's called the EPM3, not the EMP3. Derp.

[Megaqwerty]

Jan 27, 2015 13:07:22 GMT -5 strokedem said:

I cant comprehend anything sledgehammer does.

Smoke weed every day?

[fpsdredd]

The EPM3 might be a monster now, will have to see once it hits PS4

[LeGitBeeSting]

The question is did the separate consoles get different patches or did SH just mess up on patch notes?

[zimpoo]

Jan 27, 2015 12:56:27 GMT -5 hamburglar86 said:

I did some testing on the tac-19 with gung ho and though I don't have anything quantitative, the spread while sprinting is still qualitatively "way too much to justify a point in the pick 13 system".

Oh dammit, I had hope for a minute there.
Gung-ho on shotguns isn't just wasting a point it's suicide.

[Judge_St3vo]

The weapon balance update is certainly underwhelming

I've played some MP and tested the HBR, AE4, & Tac19 in the firing range.

HBR: 3hk range feels like before the patch that nerfed the range to the HBR and BAL.

AE4: has almost no recoil -- 100% accuracy at farthest distance (27m) at #8 in the firing range. Base version overheats in 16 shots. I still do not think it's a great weapon for core because it shoots so slow.

Tac-19: The increased range is noticeable, especially while ADSing. I second that the alleged "reduced" spread with gung-ho is laughable. The spread is still massive.

[Ironforce92]

S-12 rampage. Glad that i didn't sell the 360 yet.

[Will]

Looks like they aren't done.

[ktownlegend]

Still no news about earning weapon variants?

[I Am Hollywood5]

The fact that they still haven't even touched the AMR9 in any of these patches yet is truly hilarious to me. I legitimately have never used a worse SMG in any COD game, ever. The AE4 and HBR (excluding Insanity) were pretty suck-ish, but they were certainly a lot better than the AMR9.

RoF is about the dumbest thing to buff on the S-12. It doesn't need to shoot faster. It needs to deal more fucking damage for fuck's sake. A shotgun should never need 8 hitmarks, not even a full-auto one.

And how in the blithering hell is reduced recoil going to help the MK14? For the love of all that is holy, just give it a 2HK and nerf some other property of the gun! At least one of the variants!

There is absolutely no logic in SHG's decisions.

[lllRL]

Jan 27, 2015 14:37:30 GMT -5 Judge_St3vo said:

The weapon balance update is certainly underwhelming

I've played some MP and tested the HBR, AE4, & Tac19 in the firing range.

HBR: 3hk range feels like before the patch that nerfed the range to the HBR and BAL.

AE4: has almost no recoil -- 100% accuracy at farthest distance (27m) at #8 in the firing range. Base version overheats in 16 shots. I still do not think it's a great weapon for core because it shoots so slow.

Tac-19: The increased range is noticeable, especially while ADSing. I second that the alleged "reduced" spread with gung-ho is laughable. The spread is still massive.

I'm glad about the HBRa3; it was my most used weapon before the nerf that made the AK the only really viable AR choice IMO (ignoring variants, and the only decent AR variant I have is the Steel Bite). The HBR was outclassed by the Bal due to a higher overall fire rate, cleaner irons and a faster reload... and the Bal was outclassed by the AK past 5m. I still think the Bal nerf was over the top though; it only really needed a recoil nerf to reduce its long range consistency, and then you'd have a shorter range option balanced against the mid range HBR and long range AK.

I don't think the AE4 needed less recoil; what it needs is a fire rate buff to *some* of its variants, because that's its only real disadvantage if you ignore "magazine" capacity. As far as I recall from the variant spreadsheet, they're all stuck at 500rpm, and none of them get a min damage buff to 34, so TTK is pretty poor at all ranges.

I'm glad about the Tac-19 because a pumpy should be getting reliable 1hks out to at least 10m IMO, and the Bulldog currently feels more reliable out to that range. I didn't even rate the Tac-12 compared with MW3's pumpies and yet it looks OP compared to the Tac-19. I can't really comment on the S12 because I dislike fully auto shotguns lol

[lllRL]

Jan 27, 2015 15:47:43 GMT -5 I Am Hollywood5 said:

The fact that they still haven't even touched the AMR9 in any of these patches yet is truly hilarious to me. I legitimately have never used a worse SMG in any COD game, ever. The AE4 and HBR (excluding Insanity) were pretty suck-ish, but they were certainly a lot better than the AMR9.

RoF is about the dumbest thing to buff on the S-12. It doesn't need to shoot faster. It needs to deal more fucking damage for fuck's sake. A shotgun should never need 8 hitmarks, not even a full-auto one.

And how in the blithering hell is reduced recoil going to help the MK14? For the love of all that is holy, just give it a 2HK and nerf some other property of the gun! At least one of the variants!

There is absolutely no logic in SHG's decisions.

The AMR9 is probably the worst primary I've ever seen. There is literally zero logic is giving the only burst SMG the worst TTK at almost every range. Ooh it can be given a grenade launcher attachment? Great!

[thegentleman]

The funniest thing to me about all of this is that they want my money for DLC. It's like a little kid trying to get dessert before they eat their vegetables or a C student begging desperately for extra credit.

How about you fine-tune the game you've got so that it can compete with the standards set by previous games before you try to add onto it with bells and whistles? I was really excited about the "big balancing pass," but what a joke this is. Off the top of my hand, they have 12 different guns that beg for a reason to exist in the game.

And as for "overcorrecting?" Give me a break. Giving the ASM1 the buff they did in the last patch made it the lowest recoil SMG, the highest damage SMG, and the largest magazine SMG. They overcorrected the living shit out of that gun by any objective measure. If they gave the SN6 and AMR-9 literally ZERO recoil like the Pytaek and kept all of the other stats equal, there would still be people who'd run the ASM-1.

For all of the innovation provided by the exos, in terms of their networking and gun balance, this really is feeling like "baby's first Call of Duty" to me. Can't someone from Treyarch or IW plan a goddamn field trip to their offices and help them understand their own stupid game?

[lllRL]

Jan 27, 2015 16:23:11 GMT -5 thegentleman said:

The funniest thing to me about all of this is that they want my money for DLC. It's like a little kid trying to get dessert before they eat their vegetables or a C student begging desperately for extra credit.

If they gave the SN6 and AMR-9 literally ZERO recoil like the Pytaek and kept all of the other stats equal, there would still be people who'd run the ASM-1.

And, unfortunately, many will still hand over their money before SH have completed the game (because let's face it, it is incomplete) so they're golden. They'll get paid regardless, and those of us that are aware of these issues suffer as a result

The SN6 currently has the lowest range and the lowest overall TTK (speed up on first 4 rounds fired is frame rate dependent) due to <900rpm and 4-6hk, and all because it's supposed to have the "best in-class accuracy" It doesn't; it's easily the least precise SMG considering its underwhelming fire rate. To justify those stats it needs at least Peacekeeper levels of precision.

Assuming the foregrip works in the same way as Ghosts' grip (-10% viewkick, no change to centerspeed), the SN6 is a low viewkick/low centerspeed (SCAR-L type) weapon because the grip, and +x accuracy variants (again, -x viewkick), have little effect on its precision. I tortured myself by running the SN6 in sweaty lobbies to unlock the Magistrate marksman challenge variant for the "+1 accuracy" and there is almost zero difference. Sledgehammer could have been sneaky, as they were giving the Bal a faster fire rate *sound*, and called the SN6 "low recoil" because in a sense it would have been true... but they derped and said "highest accuracy", which is a flat out lie. Fail. I want the option to attach three foregrips to it lol

[thegentleman]

Another point: it's the community that's going to have to slave away in order to figure out WHAT, exactly, was changed beyond ridiculously vague notes like "decreased recoil." We're not dummies. Did you lower viewkick? Increase centerspeed? By what percent? Same goes with "max damage range buff." By how many units, exactly? This is really what we want to quantify, at least here.

I mean, for this forum presumably being one of the better places for discussion and being pretty level-headed in the CoD community, it's somewhat annoying what utter lack of transparency there is in what they actually tune. We're going to find out. Someone's going to test it. Why not just tell us?

In any case, I sincerely hope that some of these modifications aren't like the M1216 "buff" from BOII. That is, so minor it might as well not have even happened, but doing something allows them to say, "Hey, community! We modified the guns because we care!" And then letting the placebo effect run wild from there. I mean, shit, this latest patch wasn't even live for a whole 3 hours before dudes on reddit were swearing up and down that the SN6 now had a 3-hit-kill range, or that they noticed that the bulldog was "way more powerful" than it was before.

[krapeh]

Weapons That Needs to be Buffed (Statwise): AMR9, S12, MK14, EPM3, SN6, Atlas-45, PDW, and ARX-160.

Any objections?

Weapons not mentioned are usable in some way.

[banana]

Bulldog, tac 19 again, and sniper ads time

[asasa]

Jan 28, 2015 7:03:58 GMT -5 krapeh said:

Weapons That Needs to be Buffed (Statwise): AMR9, S12, MK14, EPM3, SN6, Atlas-45, PDW, and ARX-160.

Any objections?

Weapons not mentioned are usable in some way.

I dun really think the atlas45 is bad, and the pdw seems good too. The burst pistol is worst, except it's ok akimbo

It's more a flaw of the pick 13 than it is secondaries bring bad. Give us pick 100!

[lllRL]

Jan 28, 2015 6:08:19 GMT -5 thegentleman said:

Another point: it's the community that's going to have to slave away in order to figure out WHAT, exactly, was changed beyond ridiculously vague notes like "decreased recoil." We're not dummies. Did you lower viewkick? Increase centerspeed? By what percent? Same goes with "max damage range buff." By how many units, exactly? This is really what we want to quantify, at least here.

I mean, for this forum presumably being one of the better places for discussion and being pretty level-headed in the CoD community, it's somewhat annoying what utter lack of transparency there is in what they actually tune. We're going to find out. Someone's going to test it. Why not just tell us?

I just don't see why they can't provide us with straight up stats from the start, even if it's in a dark corner of the official forums or something. Sure, a Marvel4-style spreadsheet might be a bit too complex for the average casual player... but what's wrong with a Symthic-style chart? Keep the ever-incorrect stat bars in-game for those who don't really care too much, and give the rest of us a bit more detail. I don't know about everyone else here but I like knowing what strengths and weaknesses my favourite weapons have, so that I can take more care in building the "right" class for certain situations.

[oTradeMark]

Jan 28, 2015 11:07:11 GMT -5 Mousey said:

A more lighthearted but perhaps a bit naive take on that is that CoD banks a lot on being something to play with friends. Theres some value in players having their own opinions on the guns, trying them out, and talking with their friends about them.

I used to play Path of Exile a lot; and in that, it was common for the developers to release major patched, but also keep certain things in the notes vague like "released X new unique items" or "added Y new vendor recipes," because it encouraged the community to work together to try and discover all the new shit. It was honestly pretty fun. Hiding gunstats kind of does the same thing but on a smaller scale, with little timmy telling his friend billy that you arent pro unless you can do intervention quickscopes. It gets people playing the game more and discussing it with their friends more.

A more modern advantage, which probably wasnt the original intention, but I assume is helpful for them now, is that the advent of youtube heros drives up hype. Giving them fuel to work with nets them a little kickback in game/dlc sales, id imagine.

or they're just fucking stubborn assholes

[thegentleman]

I can see the logic of that to some degree, Mousey.

I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed Unity. There, when you upgrade your swords or flintlocks or what have you, you do get a vague stat bar showing the damage in relative terms to what you have already. I don't know how many units of damage it actually does or how many units of health a soldier is coded to have. In terms of that, it's information overload. As a player, I don't really need this information to have a good experience or enjoy the game. Same reason that in single player AW, I never really thought much about the stats of the guns I was using. They all pretty much killed bad dudes in one or two hits, so I used whatever I liked.

For something as nail-biting and competitive as playing CoD online, however, the game shifts. The very design and core of the game is often to best your opponent by what can come down to shaving milliseconds off of your killing and reaction times. There, just in the same way that stats matter in a lot of competitive sports, stats matter here. At least they do to me and most on this board. And it's a fun aspect of the game.

I'd also counter that it's not something that is really amenable to testing. Basically, we can get rough ideas of the shots-to-kill at different ranges, but since at least Modern Warfare 3 it seems like it's come down to having Marvel crack the game code. And I am supremely grateful that year after year, he's done it, but that seems remarkably strange to me that so much of the competitive playerbase (a demographic they're trying to build through this eSports focus, mind you) is beholden to one person to supply them with the information they need to make "pre-game" strategic decision making vis a vis their loadout.