wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 14:37:32 GMT -5
4) On PvP: I have been playing more regular PvPs in the recent weeks, and I have to say that I grow to like it better, especially game modes like Skirmish and Elimination. Destiny PvP's intrinsic flaws (lag, too many 1 shot "power" weapon/abilities, etc) are less annoying while the tactical aspect of the game is more interesting. I will respectively disagree. I think the lag stuff surfaces more often when you games become centered on closer 1 v 1 battles. I noticed it more, the whole lag and 30 FPS stuff. When one encounter matters, you tend to notice smaller differences. You toss 12 people into jumbled game of control, ...the lag gets hidden a bit better. Same deal with the supers and stuff. Let's talk about this less contentious topic first. Skirmish and Elimination game modes are 3 v 3, I expect that the much fewer number of players in the game improve the lag situation significantly. In general, (I believe, from a common sense point of view, not because I know anything about netcode in gaming) the number of players in a single game session is one of the dominant factor of lag management. We observed that in CoD, where 9v9 Ground War can be more laggy than 6v6 game modes.
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 27, 2015 14:52:11 GMT -5
if that's true what you said, that would make perfect sense.
The CoD is a good example.
Here is where I am coming from, is that sometimes you notice the lag more...if it's just one person you are up against. Let me give you an example. I used to play the UFC game in the past. It was hit or miss. If the lag was against you, with one opponent, you felt helpless. What can you do? You only had one opponent. He was the only person you were against. Sometimes, with 6, 8, 9 opponent, there can be a some people you feel are on the same level, some you feel behind.
ps..I don't find this really contentious. Lag is something that is always going on in these games.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 15:00:00 GMT -5
Regarding "grinded" weapons are being nerfed: 1) I don't believe that Bungie's main intention on weapon tuning is to make players to grind more. The primary goal is to keep things balanced with each other; If you disagree with this first point, and believe that Bungie's intention is to make old weapons obsolete so players have to keep playing, so they can hide the game's weakness on lack of content, then we can agree to disagree. No need read further to the latter points below. 2) Let's say Bungie is "good natured" and is genuinely trying to rebalance the weapons. I failed to see how it is an "insult" to nerf some of the clearly OP weapons in the past: GHorn / Fatebringer / Ice Breaker / Black Hammer in PvE, Thorn / TLW / Shotty-with-god-rolls / RL-with-proximity-detonation in PvP. If these don't get nerfed, there is really no reason to use anything else, unless making everything OP (That activity already exists: it is called "Patrol" ). How would the activity designers make their strikes / raids / etc. interesting if everything can be killed easily, like a Raid boss named Crota can be single handedly beaten by a guardian armed with GHorn? Note that I am not saying that Bungie should not focus on improving the quality of content. But I AM saying that weapon balance is an important part of it; 3) On having to "grind" weapons through progression and reforge At least for me this is not a big deal, as a) Bungie did listen to the community's feedback from TDB and made positive changes on i) no longer require exotic to be re-upgraded, and ii) give HoW weapons/gears top stats even before any progress is made on upgrade tree; b) I believe that the OP weapons you already grinded will still be usable, they are just no longer godsend. Whether that's true or not we SHOULD wait until post patch to comment or criticize. c) We need to burn our resources somehow, buying new weapons and reforge existing weapons are interesting enough (debatable) ways to do that;
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 27, 2015 15:03:22 GMT -5
The only reason fusion rifles and auto rifles aren't very good is because they were overnerfed and shotguns got a huge buff. Once upon a day AR's ruled PvP and shotguns sucked everywhere but PvP. They didn't just make everything inequal and leave it forever. They tweak the weapon balance here and there. But they don't do it very often.
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 27, 2015 15:05:30 GMT -5
I think their point is that if only a few weapons are getting used all the time that is an indication that the other weapons probably don't perform well by comparison and they want to promote more diverse weapon usage. But you can interpret it however you want. You can't be 'adding more content' by screwing around with weapon structure. Making players do some endless dog chasing it's tail thing, spending dozens of hours a month re-rolling a new set of weapons so they can feel like they have the best guns. That's not how you add additional gaming content. That's just wrong on every level. And as far as players using the same guns? Here's the deal. You can't program that out of the game. There's no point in trying to continually make players re-roll stuff, just for the sake of re-rolling. No matter how much Bungie tries to balance things, with a day of doing it, people on Reddit will be making entire pages devoted to "WHAT GUN IS BEST!!!"...and then most all of the more dedicated players will follow like sheep re-rolling and using said guns. Bingo, everyone using the same guns. Look at this board for an example. Did ANYONE on here personally test any of the shotguns, to determine which is best? Nope. We all did what Reddit told us, and then started using the PartyCrasher, Matator combinations. (I don't mean that in an insulting way. It's time consuming to test things) Unless you make every gun a clone of each other, the only outcome is most everyone using the same guns. That's how it works in these games.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 15:14:32 GMT -5
I think their point is that if only a few weapons are getting used all the time that is an indication that the other weapons probably don't perform well by comparison and they want to promote more diverse weapon usage. But you can interpret it however you want. You can't be 'adding more content' by screwing around with weapon structure. Making players do some endless dog chasing it's tail thing, spending dozens of hours a month re-rolling a new set of weapons so they can feel like they have the best guns. That's not how you add additional gaming content. That's just wrong on every level. And as far as players using the same guns? Here's the deal. You can't program that out of the game. There's no point in trying to continually make players re-roll stuff, just for the sake of re-rolling. No matter how much Bungie tries to balance things, with a day of doing it, people on Reddit will be making entire pages devoted to "WHAT GUN IS BEST!!!"...and then most all of the more dedicated players will follow like sheep re-rolling and using said guns. Bingo, everyone using the same guns. Look at this board for an example. Did ANYONE on here personally test any of the shotguns, to determine which is best? Nope. We all did what Reddit told us, and then started using the PartyCrasher, Matator combinations. (I don't mean that in an insulting way. It's time consuming to test things) Unless you make every gun a clone of each other, the only outcome is most everyone using the same guns. That's how it works in these games. I commented on the re-rolling in the post I just made and I'll do it again here in case it is missed, especially the highlighted part:
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 27, 2015 15:18:16 GMT -5
Witty, on what you said # a, that's nice Bungie made some corrections to the process. That's commendable. But that doesn't mean they should be immune from criticism when they are appearing to be going right back to the grinding well. Please remember. The ONLY reason Bungie made those said changes you mentioned, is because people like me complained to them. # c, I don't believe making us re-roll what is the new favorite of the month, is good use of your customer's time. If that's how you need to get them to keep playing, you will lose your base. # c, I touch on that below.... Regarding "grinded" weapons are being nerfed: 1) I don't believe that Bungie's main intention on weapon tuning is to make players to grind more. The primary goal is to keep things balanced with each other; If you disagree with this first point, and believe that Bungie's intention is to make old weapons obsolete so players have to keep playing, so they can hide the game's weakness on lack of content, then we can agree to disagree. No need read further to the latter points below. I don't believe Bungie is doing it deliberately. I don't even think they have bad intentions with doing it. What I believe is that this might be the easiest way to address the "7 min Nightfall" problem, so they are heading in this direction by necessity, hoping they don't piss off to many players who have to re-roll. I'll take a stab at this. One, it's a bit of an insult because many of those weapons may not need to be nerfed. The nerf is pretty systemwide. I fail to see really any true 'OP' weapons other than the GHorn, Thorn, and maybe FateBringer. The rest? Word of Crota? Shotguns? Launchers? There's very little OP going on. And if that's the case, the real jist of the move is to just tank as many weapons as possible being used by people, so as to make the PvE content harder. All weapons gets nerfed, bosses get more difficult. Ask yourself Witty, how is that helping weapon balance? All that's doing is arbitrarily shifting the balance of power to a few new weapons that now will have to be re-rolled, with more time and effort. Why should I have to bare the time burden to fix, what is essentially a PvE misjudgment by Bungie? Don't nerf 60% of the weapons, just make the bosses and PvE environment better. Furthermore, What's OP about the IB or BH? Nothing. The gun isn't inherently OP, it's the CHEESING ENVIRONMENT that makes those guns OP. Take the BH. The only time that gun is OP, is when you get a DUMB boss that just stands there, allowing you to shoot from a safe (cheese) distance, with endless head shots. Remove the cheese, the gun then requires a good bit of skill to use. IceBreaker? Same deal. Not OP. The gun shoots dog ass slow. The only time this gun becomes OP is when you have TIME to CHEESE from a distance, just putting in endless slow recharging bullets into a dumb boss. Again, remove the cheese, the OP goes away. How can bungie not see this? And what does Bungie do? They don't get it. They simply make the Ice Breaker shoot slower to address what people say is 'OP'ness. Takes a good gun, and makes it worse by shooting slower. Nothing changes, other than a person now just cheeses for 4 minutes rather than 3. Fix anything? No.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 27, 2015 15:42:44 GMT -5
I think it's a matter of perspective. What Bungie perceives to be the problem is not necessarily the same thing you do. So you don't like their solutions.
Personally most of the weapon changes sound like legitimate tweaks to me. I also agree that only a few weapons are truly OP, but that doesn't mean the balance has been perfect either. So we'll try a new round of tweaks and see what happens. So what. That has happened before, and it will happen again. In fact, it never really will stop until the game is dead. At least unless Bungie decides to stop supporting the older weapons all together and let them become obsolete in favor of newer gear. In which case each iteration of weapon tweaks would come with each new generation of weapons.
Eliminating cheese isn't such a simple thing to do in this game. It's a product of the mechanics, AI, and level design it-self. Honestly I think the only way to really get around it would be to have larger arenas, and better boss fights. Although, according to Bungie we are getting some more dynamic bosses so, who knows. I guess we really don't know anything until TTK.
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 27, 2015 16:16:50 GMT -5
You said "So what?"
Beg to differ.
Some of us spent a lot of hours grinding motes, so we could re-roll shotguns, LMG's, snipers, and other guns, to get God-Rolls, so we could have the best weapons in the game. I find that a bit shitty on Bungie's part, to just arbitrarily shift all the best guns around in the gun, to another set of guns, so we have to go redo the whole process again. That's time wasting. Spend hours leveling up your PartyCrasher+! !!! Oops, now go do it again for another gun. Then another. Come on, what difference does it make?
if you feel this is essential to what is a good game (let along this type of game), I don't know what else to say to you.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 16:32:35 GMT -5
Now we are getting to the finer point of debates.
We already agreed on that weapon balancing is a good idea in general, and for most part Bungie is "good natured". These are the main points I am trying to get across.
Any detailed changes on weapon turning is subject to debate. I am going to defer that until I experienced the after-tuning state. Maybe I have big problems on some changes, but I won't know until I try, for example:
1) Is Black Hammer really useless after nerf, just because no magic mag refill? At this point, I consider it almost zero impact because I am going to address this change by hoarding green ammo; 2) Will Word of Crota become much less usable after the nerf? Won't know until I try it. The main concern I have on the weapon is the mag size reduction: if it is 12 -> 11, I am not worried. If it is 12 -> 9 I will agree it is much less usable.
Did the weapons get a sweeping nerf in general? I personally suspect that is the case, but again hard to say until we play the game post-patch because AutoR buff, PulseR mag increase, FusionR adjustment etc can be significant buffs.
On reforging (again):
a) weapon tuning does not mean the existing weapons will suddenly become useless; b) I was worried about motes for rerolling, but turns out it is not be a big deal. In just a few weeks, without seriously trying, I went from 0 to 300, with 400 coins that can be converted into motes if necessary. I actually think that I would enjoy the reforge aspect of the game on the new batch of weapons that are more distinctive from each other.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 27, 2015 16:34:54 GMT -5
Did you really believe the best guns in the game would always be the best guns? It's going to change, it was always going to change. Every expansion for the game has drastically altered the balance in one way or another, and many of the patches have done so as well. What makes this time special? Reforging? Why, Bungie never promised to stop tweaking things just because we could reforge things. Hell if anything it's more dynamic. Different perks are better, but instead of having to totally change out your weapons in many cases you can just reforge them again.
Sure it was a big time investment, but the Thorn bounty can be too. That's not gonna stop them nerfing Thorn. And getting a GHorn can be an even bigger investment grinding over and over and over again for that RNG chance at it.
Thing is, there is no end state to this game. There never will be until the game is completely dead. Just like there is no permanently perfect deck in Hearthstone. Eventually things will change. You adapt, or quit.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 16:39:00 GMT -5
Did you really believe the best guns in the game would always be the best guns? It's going to change, it was always going to change. Every expansion for the game has drastically altered the balance in one way or another, and many of the patches have done so as well. What makes this time special? Reforging? Why, Bungie never promised to stop tweaking things just because we could reforge things. Hell if anything it's more dynamic. Different perks are better, but instead of having to totally change out your weapons in many cases you can just reforge them again. Sure it was a big time investment, but the Thorn bounty can be too. That's not gonna stop them nerfing Thorn. And getting a GHorn can be an even bigger investment grinding over and over and over again for that RNG chance at it. That's what iw5000 don't like about the game: keep having players chase the "best" weapons. On this point I think we have to settle on "agree to disagree", because it is a strong personal preference. I am on the opposite side of the spectrum: love to have new weapons to play with. So I can see my bias of favoring Bungie's decisions of nerfing some of the old weapons. I still believe that Bungie does not have a hidden agenda to "phase out" the old weapons for the purpose of creating an "illusion" that there are "lots" of things to do in Destiny. Otherwise they would not have done the following: 1) removed the need to re-upgrade exotic weapons; 2) let us ascend the old weapons/gears to max stats; 3) simplify the upgrade tree by removing the "damage boost" nodes from weapons and "defense boot" nodes from armors.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 27, 2015 16:51:46 GMT -5
I just don't see how there is any other option for this style of game. This is not Borderlands. It's about as close to an MMO as you can get without really pulling the trigger on being one, and it's clearly meant to be a constantly evolving and changing game. Bungie does have some "finished" version of the game they are working towards. It will never be finished... until it's dead. If they did at some point announce that the game was finally finished and didn't need anything else it would kill the game. Hell several times a year we get a big fat injection of new weapons. Granted, the HoW weapons didn't shake things up very much, but then people complained that they were mostly not any better than the weapons they already had.
Bungie has to walk the line between letting us use stuff we've earned and love, and bringing in fresh blood, because failing on either case is bad for them. But like you said, it comes down to personal preference. So there is no magic sweet spot. Still, though... The game either continues to change, or it dies. It cannot sit still.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 27, 2015 17:21:49 GMT -5
The counter point is that Bungie should focus on "harder" stuff: more activities, better replayability of activities, better PvP, etc. Not the "easy" way out by introducing endless grind of new weapons to keep things fresh. I would like to have both, while iw5000 wants the weapon lineup to be stabilized and have Bungie refocus the resources for latter into former, although I do agree that the former is a lot more important than latter. The main area that we disagree is that I think that the Destiny's playability need both, like two sides of the same coin: 1) we need new loot (with weapons being the most interesting kind) as reasons to play the content, otherwise they exhaust too quickly. If I still want to play an activity, but my friends already squeezed all the desirable loot out of that activity, I will have a hard time playing it by myself; 2) we need content that these new loot can make a significant difference, otherwise there is not much point on chasing after them; Collectors like me are the exception . We have this urge of getting everything no matter how crappy they are...
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 27, 2015 21:13:51 GMT -5
You two are missing my point,
I don't mind change nor new weapons coming out that make old weapons unusable. I agree, that can be part of the fun of the game.
What i dislike is just arbitrarily swapping 'what's best', on what appears to be a crusade NOT to balance guns, but to make the PvE be tougher.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 28, 2015 1:03:23 GMT -5
You two are missing my point, I don't mind change nor new weapons coming out that make old weapons unusable. I agree, that can be part of the fun of the game. What i dislike is just arbitrarily swapping 'what's best', on what appears to be a crusade NOT to balance guns, but to make the PvE be tougher. I think we can pause the debates here for the moment. We can disagree on several points here: "arbitrary", "not" to balance guns, and whether the proposed changes are mainly intended as a crusadw to make PvE "tougher", but short of actually playing with the new changes I don't think I have enough facts to back up my arguments, however strong I feel about them. One thing I do like to point out is if you contrast this tuning to the last major one, you will notice that many of the nerfs are on the last major buffs (shotty in PvE, hand cannon ammo), and the buffs are on the major nerfs (AR, FusionR), totally in line with what a weapon balancing evolution should be like. So my general belief is still that the tuning is well intended with balance as the primary goal, not conspiracy with hidden agenda. I expect the results to be that the OP weapons are no longer godsend, but remain powerful enough within the intended usage. Still just an opinion though, not something I will bet money on until I get a chance to experience the post-tuning world myself.
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wings
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Post by wings on Jul 28, 2015 4:15:23 GMT -5
You two are missing my point, I don't mind change nor new weapons coming out that make old weapons unusable. I agree, that can be part of the fun of the game. What i dislike is just arbitrarily swapping 'what's best', on what appears to be a crusade NOT to balance guns, but to make the PvE be tougher. Tougher as in more tedious rather than mechanically challenging? That's been the case for ages with the modifiers for the Weekly Heroic and Nightfalls. The tank in Cerberus Vae III will just become tedious especially if Grounded is on. How else are you going to fight a tank in this game besides sniping it? Call in an airstrike from the local air force? At least they could use your ship for that I guess. And they continued adding tediousness to the game with the removal of burns against Skolas. There is nothing wrong with void burn if you want to single out solar burn for overly benefiting Gjallarhorn users but then Gjallarhorn users will benefit from no burn because of Wolfpack rounds and there is no (significant) damage penalty using the launcher against targets that have arc and void shields. 1) we need new loot (with weapons being the most interesting kind) as reasons to play the content, otherwise they exhaust too quickly. If I still want to play an activity, but my friends already squeezed all the desirable loot out of that activity, I will have a hard time playing it by myself; 2) we need content that these new loot can make a significant difference, otherwise there is not much point on chasing after them; Collectors like me are the exception . We have this urge of getting everything no matter how crappy they are... I still play the Vault of Glass because I enjoy playing it and I will play Crota's End if one of my friends is Swordbearing as he wants practice and my firepower for rocket duty might be needed. I still played Borderlands 2 when I had everything I wanted as this meant I could then actually spend time with different builds and weapons to see how they performed and enjoy the game rather than monotonous farming. I'm one of few players to get perfect stats for Bandit elemental MIRV grenade mods in all elements (they are the sole manufacturer of elemental MIRVs, excluding Torgue as this is explosive only) - purple quality gear that is harder to find than higher rarity weapons. Guess what? I still played on as I could do a Bandit allegiance run on Krieg because every other character would suck with Bandit gear. Destiny can have more gear easily but I suspect PvP hinders the creativity a significantly. Imagine a rocket launcher that fired its rockets in a high parabolic arc like mortars? Homing grenades that track targets as soon as you release them? A fully automatic sniper rifle with a 30 round magazine? A shotgun that fires 17 arc pellets in the shape of a tornado that travels to around 15m? Also, Guardians' melee attacks suck. Brawler is nowhere near as powerful as it is for enemies with Lightswitch and perhaps builds should be created so that melee can stack damage output to make it a viable strategy. After all, melee is competing against Supers and grenades for buffing cooldown purposes and it might make the bayonet on the end of Red Death have a functional use. Then I'd have a reason to invest in armour with Strength buffs. Also, I don't get why Bungie care for weapons feeling the same. I mean Grim Citizen, Shadow Price and the Vanquisher VIII are all the same guns but they rename them for what exactly? To give the impression they are different guns or something?
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 28, 2015 7:15:11 GMT -5
You two are missing my point, I don't mind change nor new weapons coming out that make old weapons unusable. I agree, that can be part of the fun of the game. What i dislike is just arbitrarily swapping 'what's best', on what appears to be a crusade NOT to balance guns, but to make the PvE be tougher. I think we can pause the debates here for the moment. We can disagree on several points here: "arbitrary", "not" to balance guns, and whether the proposed changes are mainly intended as a crusadw to make PvE "tougher", but short of actually playing with the new changes I don't think I have enough facts to back up my arguments, however strong I feel about them. One thing I do like to point out is if you contrast this tuning to the last major one, you will notice that many of the nerfs are on the last major buffs (shotty in PvE, hand cannon ammo), and the buffs are on the major nerfs (AR, FusionR), totally in line with what a weapon balancing evolution should be like. So my general belief is still that the tuning is well intended with balance as the primary goal, not conspiracy with hidden agenda. I expect the results to be that the OP weapons are no longer godsend, but remain powerful enough within the intended usage. Still just an opinion though, not something I will bet money on until I get a chance to experience the post-tuning world myself. In no shape, manner or form am I calling this a conspiracy. In fact, I said above I don't believe Bungie has any evil intent behind this. To me, it seems like it's just a case where they were caught off guard a bit by how easy some of these 365 weapons are destroying stuff. That coupled with the already existing OP guns like the Ghorn. Since this past DLC drop, I've seen a ton of sub 10 minute NF's, (one as low as 7 min), Omingul go down in under 10 seconds multiple times, things like Crota just being embarrassingly wiped out, and even some of the PoE being done kind of easily now. So my only thoughts were that their intentions are good...it's just the intentions are misdirected. I truly don't believe there is a gun balance crisis, and that what Bungie is trying to do with this is PRIMARILY buff up the PvE environment. That's all. And what you said could be true Witty too. The might be a second agenda to try and swing the pendulum the other way to AR's and Fusions....but I fail to see how nerfing shotties, handguns, pulse's, and launchers is the best way, to puff up an AR. Why not just give the AR a little a boost? Done. Boost one weapon class, don't nerf five of 'em. THAT is why I think this a PvE issue, not gun balance primary. And again, the sniper class didn't need a nerf, things like the BH and IB. That's just nuts. There's not one bit of OP with those in PvP, and in PvE, as I stated before, it's marginal. And I don't really need to see how it works once done. The intent has already been declared. We can discuss that.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Jul 28, 2015 8:52:31 GMT -5
I think this discussion needs a refocusing and reevaluation the terms "best" and "useless"
My unascended TDYK is neither of those, yet it still kills 95% of the mobs in the game quite nicely, tyvm.
Those who take "_____ is the bestpony" threads on reddit are exceptions to the rule. None of my PoE/QW weapons are the perfect rerolled (in fact, i've only rerolled one 10 times for the lolz) and yet I still kick ass in PoE (albeit not 35)
Whether my icebreaker regens ammo in 5/8/15 seconds post update will matter then it won't. I'll adjust. Just like when I got my SUROS after the nerf; for such an anointed POS that reddit deemed it, it was just fine... Same thing with the Mythocast.
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 28, 2015 9:07:25 GMT -5
I think this discussion needs a refocusing and reevaluation the terms "best" and "useless" My unascended TDYK is neither of those, yet it still kills 95% of the mobs in the game quite nicely, tyvm. Those who take "_____ is the bestpony" threads on reddit are exceptions to the rule. None of my PoE/QW weapons are the perfect rerolled (in fact, i've only rerolled one 10 times for the lolz) and yet I still kick ass in PoE (albeit not 35) Whether my icebreaker regens ammo in 5/8/15 seconds post update will matter then it won't. I'll adjust. Just like when I got my SUROS after the nerf; for such an anointed POS that reddit deemed it, it was just fine... Same thing with the Mythocast. Right. I actually agree with you. So the question is, why are we nerfing 80% of the guns in the game, to address some issues with AR's? Just bump up the AR's. Done. And you are also right on your second point, people who play the game will just adjust. Use the next best gun. Correct. My only counter-point to that 'adjusting' isn't the point here. The point is respecting your customer. Come on... many of us just spent 20 plus hours re-rolling shotties, snipers and launchers. For the love of god, let us at least use this stuff more than a few months. And worse yet, please don't render all this stuff irrelevant, just for the sake of fixing the PvE. Like you said, the gun balance isn't bad now. This move right now, just feels like the same dumb thing they did with the Dark Below DLC, where they forced everyone to re-level all their exotics, simply for the sake of grinding.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 28, 2015 9:38:33 GMT -5
All the nerfs I read about seemed to be directly tied to perks, weapon classes, or specific weapons that seem to be legitimately overperforming outside their intended niche by some margin or another. The net result will cut out some of the fastest ways to complete some activities, which will increase the average time to complete, but I don't know that it will affect the median.
I can certainly see where you're drawing your conclusions from, but personally I think if anything that's a fringe effect. If Bungie really wants to make activities take longer there are much easier ways of going about it than tweaking the weapons. Yes I know you believe that everything coming out of Bungie is there to hide some other ulterior motive. I just don't buy it. I think if Bungie really wanted to make it take longer to do things they wouldn't have to be so shy about it that they would have to hide it in some weapon's tweak. They could just say, "hey... our data says these 7 minute Nightfalls are out of control so we're rejiggering some stuff. Expect nightfalls and other activities to present a better challenge for our Guardians. Huzzah, excelsior and go be legend and stuff!". (Note: Clearly not actually what Bungie would say, but I can't be arsed to write like Bungie. heh)
Even if this potential side effect of the weapon tweaks turns out to be true and fully intentional I still say it's justified.
Also to go back to the earlier points, ever so briefly. It seemed you were opposed to the tweaks on the principle of you didn't want to have to reforge weapons or deal with having to grind for new weapons because the game had changed. So that is what I addressed. It's not like we missed your point, we addressed a point that was brought up. But we've moved on so that's cool.
I don't really think there's much to debate here anyway. Pretty much we just have various people with different points of view on Bungie's motivations for the weapon tweaks.
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Post by iw5000 on Jul 28, 2015 9:53:08 GMT -5
I never said that I believe Bungie's goals here are to make an average nightfall 2.67 minutes longer. Grind us, for the sake of grinding us. Shorter NF's are the symptons of what is a bigger issue.
I said I believe Bungie misjudged just how more powerful these weapons were on the current playlists, are now trying to rebalance the PvE gaming environment. Rebalancing things, via all the guns we use, rather than the doing so INSIDE the actual gaming environment. This is a cheap/easy fix, rather than doing a long term fix.
Example. The Black Hammer is not OP. The gaming environment, cheese world, that is what allows it to be OP. The former is easy to fix, the latter not so much.
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Jul 28, 2015 10:45:58 GMT -5
I guess I'll throw out a few thoughts here. Too much going on to respond individually to some of the points that have been brought up.
1. Somebody is going to have to show me where this huge, sweeping nerf to everything other than ARs is coming from. I've read the patch notes three times and as far as I can tell that giant nerf ball does not exist. There is a massive overreaction going on here. I don't see all that much changing overall based on what I've seen.
2. Regarding those patch notes, from my reading, it looks like the following is happening. ARs get buffed. Good, they're pointless right now. PRs get a slight damage nerf and a mag size buff. Overall not much of a change. SRs get a couple buffs. Cool! HCs get some nerfs. Whatevs, probably deserved since HCs are far and away the best choice for any PvE content. Shotguns get a slight nerf. Fine, they will wreck everything up close anyway, the shot package accuracy reduction might make full auto better for PvP but it's too early to tell. FRs get nerfed again I guess? Don't get that, but I don't use them so whatever. Snipers are left alone except for final round, which needed to be fixed for PvP. MGs aren't mentioned so the assumption is they're not changing. Fine. RLs get a blast radius buff, but prox detonation gets a nerf. Good, prox rockets are too good in PvP vs all other heavy options.
3. If you're concerned that guns you spent countless motes and weapon parts on are suddenly going to become garbage, I think you're overreacting to say the least. Your sniper isn't being affected at all unless you were one of those final rounding scrubs, in which case, good, you're getting what you deserve. Your MG isn't being affected at all. Your RL with prox detonation is still top dog among RLs. Your shotgun may or may not be god-tier anymore, but honestly, that's fine by me. Shotgun range has gotten a bit out of hand anyway. Sorry, but I don't think having to possibly reroll one shotgun is that big of a deal. Nobody used legendary primaries seriously anyway, so I don't think having to potentially reroll those is an issue either.
4. Exotic changes. Hard Light gets a buff. Good, it's useless now. Same with Necrochasm. The Last Word and Thorn both get nerfs. Hard to tell exactly how big those nerfs are at this point, but considering they're the only two primaries used 90+% of the time for PvP, I don't think that's a bad thing. Hawkmoon...XONE bro, don't care. Ice Breaker gets a slower regen rate. Seems pointless, but then again I rarely even use the thing as it is now anyway. NLB gets a buff finally, very good. Black Hammer's white nail perk gets a nerf. I don't really see that changing much as it's still going to be the bullet sponge boss stomper of choice. Lord of Wolves gets a buff. Cool I guess. Gjallarhorn wolfpack rounds are getting nerfed. Come on, everyone saw this coming, and everyone knows it was necessary. It's still most likely going to be the top choice for burning a boss down quickly, just a little less quickly than before. Overall I just don't see anything worth getting that worked up over.
5. This is nothing like TDB exotic releveling. It's barely even comparable. Rerolling a legendary gun or two and turning in 10 or 12 bounties in a couple hours to level it all the way up is nothing compared to the huge amount of regrinding necessary to relevel all the vanilla exotics. Not even close.
6. If anyone thought they'd be using HoW guns for more than a few months...I really have no idea why you thought that. Outside of VoG weapons, almost everyone switched to the new, higher damage TDB weapons when TDB released. Outside of VoG, CE, and a select few TDB weapons worth ascending (i.e. Felwinter's, Jolder's, and a couple snipers), everyone replaced their TDB stuff with HoW guns. Newsflash: When TTK comes out, you're going to be replacing the current best guns with whatever the new TTK best guns are sooner or later. Unless of course those new guns aren't that good (i.e. PoE weapons), in which case your current guns will work just fine. This rebalancing isn't making anything irrelevant that wasn't going to be made irrelevant anyway. To put it another way, did anyone really expect to be using year 1 gear past year 1 in an MMO-style loot-based game? I hope not. That's just not how it works. Do you really want to be using Fatebringer and Gjallarhorn 2, 3, 10 years from now? I don't. I want new, interesting toys to play with.
7. On bullet sponge boss mechanics and so forth. Yes, that needs to go away and some new mechanics need to be added. We all know this. I expect it to happen with TTK, which may just be wishful thinking on my part, but we'll see. If it does happen with TTK though, I think a lot of the concerns about the IB, BH, and Gjally nerfs will fade away very quickly. I'm hoping the rebalancing is just a precursor to those new mechanics being implemented.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 28, 2015 10:55:15 GMT -5
Ahhh... So it's exactly the same as every other patch they have published where they tweaked a few things instead of rebuilding practically the entire game from scratch to address cheese. ;3
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 28, 2015 11:12:23 GMT -5
I never said that I believe Bungie's goals here are to make an average nightfall 2.67 minutes longer. Grind us, for the sake of grinding us. Shorter NF's are the symptons of what is a bigger issue. I said I believe Bungie misjudged just how more powerful these weapons were on the current playlists, are now trying to rebalance the PvE gaming environment. Rebalancing things, via all the guns we use, rather than the doing so INSIDE the actual gaming environment. This is a cheap/easy fix, rather than doing a long term fix. Example. The Black Hammer is not OP. The gaming environment, cheese world, that is what allows it to be OP. The former is easy to fix, the latter not so much. I am not going to argue against having better PvE environment, I agree that it takes precedence over weapon tuning. I do want to point out that I believe that Bungie is working on both. They are a big studio now, they can handle it. As for how much resources that they should spend on weapons (variety, balance, cosmetics, etc), I just want to say that there are a large section of the community (including me) that are gun enthusiasts and we like to have bigger variety and richer customizations, so seeing Bungie spending resources on these aspects are good from our point of view. I also don't consider leveling up and reforging weapons grinding: good places to spend marks/XPs/Motes earned. On Black Hammer: White Nail to me is more important on stun lock the bosses than providing free ammo (which is nice to have but I have been converting my excessive glimmers into green ammo packs and BH is a good reason to use them ) So from the way how I use it, it got a buff , because now it can hold 3 more bullets. I will also feel less badly when I miss a crit shot or take too long to make one, because I am only inconvenienced with a reload.
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wings
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Post by wings on Jul 28, 2015 11:16:22 GMT -5
I think machine guns might have a bigger hit than perhaps some expect because of the reduction to Field Scout but we don't know how much of a reduction that will be, or I don't know anyway. May be Black Hammer will be replaced by Triple Tap sniper rifles. I don't see the value in not having to reload myself but I guess I can still camp special ammo against Urrox when Thralls are killed, and still stun-lock him. It's weird because the most garbage perk, Mulligan, isn't getting buffed so exotics that have this perk are essentially one fewer perk than their other exotic counterparts. Oh and why the hell does No Land Beyond have scope glare when it has no scope anyway? Like, Bungie?!
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 28, 2015 11:33:52 GMT -5
I guess I'll throw out a few thoughts here. Too much going on to respond individually to some of the points that have been brought up. 1. Somebody is going to have to show me where this huge, sweeping nerf to everything other than ARs is coming from. I've read the patch notes three times and as far as I can tell that giant nerf ball does not exist. There is a massive overreaction going on here. I don't see all that much changing overall based on what I've seen. 2. Regarding those patch notes, from my reading, it looks like the following is happening. ARs get buffed. Good, they're pointless right now. PRs get a slight damage nerf and a mag size buff. Overall not much of a change. SRs get a couple buffs. Cool! HCs get some nerfs. Whatevs, probably deserved since HCs are far and away the best choice for any PvE content. Shotguns get a slight nerf. Fine, they will wreck everything up close anyway, the shot package accuracy reduction might make full auto better for PvP but it's too early to tell. FRs get nerfed again I guess? Don't get that, but I don't use them so whatever. Snipers are left alone except for final round, which needed to be fixed for PvP. MGs aren't mentioned so the assumption is they're not changing. Fine. RLs get a blast radius buff, but prox detonation gets a nerf. Good, prox rockets are too good in PvP vs all other heavy options. 3. If you're concerned that guns you spent countless motes and weapon parts on are suddenly going to become garbage, I think you're overreacting to say the least. Your sniper isn't being affected at all unless you were one of those final rounding scrubs, in which case, good, you're getting what you deserve. Your MG isn't being affected at all. Your RL with prox detonation is still top dog among RLs. Your shotgun may or may not be god-tier anymore, but honestly, that's fine by me. Shotgun range has gotten a bit out of hand anyway. Sorry, but I don't think having to possibly reroll one shotgun is that big of a deal. Nobody used legendary primaries seriously anyway, so I don't think having to potentially reroll those is an issue either. 4. Exotic changes. Hard Light gets a buff. Good, it's useless now. Same with Necrochasm. The Last Word and Thorn both get nerfs. Hard to tell exactly how big those nerfs are at this point, but considering they're the only two primaries used 90+% of the time for PvP, I don't think that's a bad thing. Hawkmoon...XONE bro, don't care. Ice Breaker gets a slower regen rate. Seems pointless, but then again I rarely even use the thing as it is now anyway. NLB gets a buff finally, very good. Black Hammer's white nail perk gets a nerf. I don't really see that changing much as it's still going to be the bullet sponge boss stomper of choice. Lord of Wolves gets a buff. Cool I guess. Gjallarhorn wolfpack rounds are getting nerfed. Come on, everyone saw this coming, and everyone knows it was necessary. It's still most likely going to be the top choice for burning a boss down quickly, just a little less quickly than before. Overall I just don't see anything worth getting that worked up over. 5. This is nothing like TDB exotic releveling. It's barely even comparable. Rerolling a legendary gun or two and turning in 10 or 12 bounties in a couple hours to level it all the way up is nothing compared to the huge amount of regrinding necessary to relevel all the vanilla exotics. Not even close. 6. If anyone thought they'd be using HoW guns for more than a few months...I really have no idea why you thought that. Outside of VoG weapons, almost everyone switched to the new, higher damage TDB weapons when TDB released. Outside of VoG, CE, and a select few TDB weapons worth ascending (i.e. Felwinter's, Jolder's, and a couple snipers), everyone replaced their TDB stuff with HoW guns. Newsflash: When TTK comes out, you're going to be replacing the current best guns with whatever the new TTK best guns are sooner or later. Unless of course those new guns aren't that good (i.e. PoE weapons), in which case your current guns will work just fine. This rebalancing isn't making anything irrelevant that wasn't going to be made irrelevant anyway. To put it another way, did anyone really expect to be using year 1 gear past year 1 in an MMO-style loot-based game? I hope not. That's just not how it works. Do you really want to be using Fatebringer and Gjallarhorn 2, 3, 10 years from now? I don't. I want new, interesting toys to play with. 7. On bullet sponge boss mechanics and so forth. Yes, that needs to go away and some new mechanics need to be added. We all know this. I expect it to happen with TTK, which may just be wishful thinking on my part, but we'll see. If it does happen with TTK though, I think a lot of the concerns about the IB, BH, and Gjally nerfs will fade away very quickly. I'm hoping the rebalancing is just a precursor to those new mechanics being implemented. I believe that I am the one who first used the phrase "sweeping nerf". What I mean by it is that if you look at the most popular weapons players have been using in both PvE and PvP, almost all of them got a nerf: HC, Shotty, GHorn, Ice Breaker, Fatebringer, Blackhammer, Hawkmoon, Thorn, TLW, etc. In other words, if you go in with the same "try-hard" loadout you currently have into the post tuning world, you'll feel less powerful overall. IMHO this is a good thing because I am a big fan of variety and I would like to be in a world where everything has a niche. Many players from the community don't like such changes because content will become harder as a result. Some people think that the main reason why Bungie is doing this is to: get players to chase after new weapons and/or reforge existing weapons, to get them play the game more. As a result they can get away from the lack of content problem easier.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 28, 2015 11:35:56 GMT -5
MG's still need more of a niche in the game. One would think they would be ideal for mowing down hordes of enemies, and while they can do some work there it's not that great. Maybe some non damage tweaks could help. More flinch/stagger, more reserve ammo, maybe some suppression behavior... maybe more overpenetration.... perhaps more knock-back. A lot of possibilities there, and you could keep it PvE only.
Of course the only reason they don't get overshadowed in PvP as well as PvE is because you rarely have huge clusters of enemies in PvP and there are no bullet spongy bosses in PvP either.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Jul 28, 2015 11:40:08 GMT -5
(Not that I'm opposed to an asymmetrical PvP mode.) Maybe some sort of keep away with a Relic. Only relic kills count for points and relic holder gets an HP buff, but they also can't drop it, permanently show up on radar, and the entire lobby is against them trying to kill them and take it for themselves. I dunno... tweak it from there. Could be a load of fun.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Jul 28, 2015 11:45:48 GMT -5
IMHO MG in PvE is OK as is because it has its niche. In PvE I use them when huge clusters of enemies is a big concern, like in NF w/Lightswitch. I also prefer Thunderlord over RLs in boss fights like Omnigul, where the fighting space is cramped and I am fearful of blowing myself up (either because I fire into obstacles stupidly, or a teammate suddenly barges into my line of sight.
In PvP MGs are currently overpowered by proximity detonation RLs. Hopefully the tuning can effectively address that.
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