Let me balance this game

[RKTnoob]

Sniper is OP, a skilled sniper can outfrag anyone. and even more so on inters. But snipers love their OP weapon, they'll ~never vote for a re balance of it.
Snipers have headshots, fastest combo (on par with akimbo ffs), gibs for points and no spread at all.

SMG is better than the AR, due to several factors in this version. It can hold it's own in an inter and wreaks havoc in a pub.
SMG has a lot of bullets, so you can shoot and shoot and shoot, and spend less time reloading. Due to it's speed, if you miss a bullet, you can still come out ahead most times, while if you miss a bullet with the AR you're in trouble. The only bad thing about it is the spread on longer ranges...if maps were encouraged to have long ranges, and they aren't. You can also rifle sprint with the smg to an extent. SMG is a weapon that even noobs can utilize well.

AR is okay, but bit worse than smg, tho it is marginally better in inters than pubs.
AR suffers a bit in pubs, with a lot of players around, as you need to reload a lot, while you can take your time on inters, as you'll spend more time out of combat than in it. It can be good on longer ranges, but that's just a few spots on some maps and depot. Rifle sprinting is a plus.

Shotgun is only good in pubs, it's a weapon where you need to get up close and personal most of the time, and pubs offer this in large amounts, a 2v2 inter will not let you play good shotgun.
Shotgun has gibs, that's good for points, and you can shoot it at medium range with some good results. Comboing it with a pistol has some potential, but I rarely saw anyone doing it.

Carbine is a joke, it has almost nothing going for it. It's actually faster to frag a 100/100 opponent with a pistol than the carbine. No gibs, no headshot, no nothing except long ranges, and those aren't plentiful on official maps. You can kill steal on pubs, and it can do that pretty well on douze and arena maps.

This is just an opinion, and people play differently, some play defense, some rush, some snipe etc. and this modifies the relative value of the weapon in question. Let's also not forget that some maps are better suited to some weapons.

As for weapon balance, it's my opinion that the sniper is OP, AR slightly UP and carbine sucks major balls. Soloing pistol is maybe a joke, but the pistol has the same damage as the AR, which makes it heavily OP. Removing helmets on inters is just lame, better to have longer spawn times for them, else mappers might just place more armors.
As a last note akimbo is currently under powered, I saw and fragged akimbo wielding players with the SMG and sniper, Their clip is too small, and the damage should be a tad more serious. If they miss a few bullets, they're in serious trouble against a skilled player.

[ExodusS]

EDIT: @Vanquish
^But AC isn't meant to be a competitive game at start, I mean by this, the competitive part of the game almost killed itself with the exploit of the open-source, then sent the fault to devs who did not ballance well the weapons and did not dedicated their work to the competition scene. The competition community must changes it's behavior before it reborns or it will be a complete fail one more time. Don't accept exploits, scripts or anything, and fight it instead of accepting/ignoring this issue, this goes to you, Larry, Jason and everyone who played a role in the competition scene's suicide.

I agree with the second part.

[Felix-The-Ghost]

I think I've said this before but I really feel AC needs to introduce weapon dependent draw/put away time and have weight to having a certain primary even if it only affects speed a little. I don't think a sniper should move as quickly as an smg user. Combat pistol presumably would be the lightest and easiest to handle giving more reasons to introduce it to the game.

[Orynge]

I don't think we should introduce mechanics just so we can introduce more weapons. Personally, I feel like the SMG already has enough of an advantage over the sniper (if the sniper misses their shot, they are screwed).

[RKTnoob]

If a sniper misses its shot, it switches to pistol, shoots one or two bullets and then looks for cover before taking out the sniper to frag you. Good players will do this, you can shoot a sniper bullet and switch to pistol in a blink, 200ms is the switch time, so, if you get hit by the pistol you must frag the sniper before it reaches cover, else you're in trouble. I don't think it's that much of a problem if you mis a sniper shot, tho it's better to hit it ofc. Sniper has way too much dmg, it just removes you from life permanently if you're only a bit under full health.

You can attack a smg or an ar user with 80 hp, and you still have a chance to do something. As it stands, sniper instead of being a long range support weapon, good for headshots with enough skill, and pretty useless on attack is a powerhouse if one uses it well.

Different walk speeds and different switch times would make the game more interesting. If you're using the sniper, switching to a pistol, grenade or knife shouldn't make you faster tho, you still have the weight of your sniper on your back carrying it.

Maybe it would be fun if the sucky carbine stayed sucky but got a bayonet on it, so you can poke people long range with the right click ^^

[1Cap]

use carbine in the same way you use sniper... change its sound to another better one.
now you have a very powerful and nice weapon!

*What is the game has balanced weapons ? Quake? PB? Nah ...
Changing weapons is changing the game.
We need to adapt the old maps, it is a priority ...

[Jason]

ahahaha /exoduss/ it would only be like the third competitive scene me and larry have killed, this isn't even our greatest work you know.

r.i.p left 4 dead 2008-2010

[PhaNtom]

^ Where did this come from?

[ofir640]

Maybe it would be fun if the sucky carbine stayed sucky but got a bayonet on it, so you can poke people long range with the right click ^^

Great Idea. It will give Carbine new life...

[*H1TM4N*]

Great Idea. It will give Carbine new life...

+1

[Waffles]

this is why we cant have nice things

[RKTnoob]

Back on topic:
Why not change the ar so it shoots slower yet more powerful?(also reduce the clip then)

Why not make the sniper do less damage, but increase the swap speed of the pistol, so it doesn't get too sucky? It still has headshots, but it shouldn't outfrag dedicated attack weapons like the ar and the smg.

Why not make the Carbine have piercing bullets, so it's possible to to shoot through opponents, give it less dmg but more speed and increase dmg on headshots?

Why not increase the speed of the shotgun, give it more pellets but less dmg per one?

Talking about swap speeds, knife should be much quicker to draw.

[ofir640]

In my opinion, SMG is too powerful, comparing to the AR: Large magazine, faster reloading. the spread don't really count (most of AC battles are in close places).

Downgrade SMG damage is essential.

On the other hand, I think that SMG, AR & Carbine should do more damage (let say x2 for AR and x1.5 for SMG and Carbine) if the bullet hit the head (not Sniper headshot... just more damage)

[Luc@s]

WHen i play clan matches/watch them on this versio, i see people playing with AR, SMG and sniper at once. DIversity of gameplay is here. I use the carbine a lot, its really strong. People do not play intensively as they used to and they take longer to adapt to a new a balance, so they tend to refuse anything new. To be honest, i dont think we're going to find a "perfect" balance, because as DrauL said its also about choosing what you want thegame to be like, its a matter of opinion, and thats why rofl isnot being honest when he says he want something objectively "balanced".
In my opinion, the game in its current state (as far s the weapon balance is concerned), is fun, because you can play every weapon, and it allows different kinds of players to enjoy it.
I understand that the loss of an overpowered, easy to learn weapon like the AR is hard to accept for some but please get over it. I dont want AC to have 1 OP weapon that you have to use in competitive games (0 fun if its not the kind of weapon you like, and *that* was ruining the experience of a lot of players, but you never cared at this time)

[DES|Anderson]

F1 for Luc@s comment, I cant remember a time when so many different weapons were used in games.

It doesn't have to be perfect just fun!

[ExodusS]

I understand that the loss of an overpowered, easy to learn weapon like the AR is hard to accept for some but please get over it. I dont want AC to have 1 OP weapon that you have to use in competitive games (0 fun if its not the kind of weapon you like, and *that* was ruining the experience of a lot of players, but you never cared at this time)

burn

[Vanquish]

• I want lower time to kill
  
• I want lower spread and somewhat lower recoil
  
• I want every weapon to have a real place in the game
  
• I want a more gentle learning curve to encourage new competitive players
  

I don't see what ^this^ has to do with Larry liking the AR in 1.1. As Cemer said, it seems to be more of a personal vendetta against him and/or people not trusting him rather than people actually being opposed to his ideas.
Also, he's still winning the poll. :D

[Foo]

It doesn't have to be perfect just fun!

the moment the devs started making decisions according to this was the day the game died.

[Roflcopter]

WHen i play clan matches/watch them on this versio, i see people playing with AR, SMG and sniper at once. DIversity of gameplay is here. I use the carbine a lot, its really strong. People do not play intensively as they used to and they take longer to adapt to a new a balance, so they tend to refuse anything new. To be honest, i dont think we're going to find a "perfect" balance, In my opinion, the game in its current state (as far s the weapon balance is concerned), is fun, because you can play every weapon, and it allows different kinds of players to enjoy it.
I understand that the loss of an overpowered, easy to learn weapon like the AR is hard to accept for some but please get over it. I dont want AC to have 1 OP weapon that you have to use in competitive games (0 fun if its not the kind of weapon you like, and *that* was ruining the experience of a lot of players, but you never cared at this time)because as DrauL said its also about choosing what you want thegame to be like, its a matter of opinion, and thats why rofl isnot being honest when he says he want something objectively "balanced".

Where did I say balance was completely objective? That said there are obviously good objective measures of balance. One that you point at is variety of weapon use, which has increased and that's good, but it's not the only thing that matters.

I understand that the loss of an overpowered, easy to learn weapon like the AR is hard to accept for some but please get over it. I dont want AC to have 1 OP weapon that you have to use in competitive games (0 fun if its not the kind of weapon you like, and *that* was ruining the experience of a lot of players, but you never cared at this time)

Your comment is really just a covert insult.
I have specifically said I want to further increase the variety of weapons played.

[Nightmare]

@ the most recent competition, B} Leagues: Season 2.
Nobody touched a Shotgun or Carbine.
SMG was easily the most used weapon.

[Honor]

I played carabine/sniper vs SKT and i wasn't alone to do this.
And you can't speak about B} League season 2 because no one played it

[ExodusS]

I played carabine/sniper vs SKT and i wasn't alone to do this.

Was it playable? If it was, I'd say SMG/AR/Carabine/Sniper are both "balanced", not perfectly but trying to do it better would be a risk. For the Shotgun, it's just a non-polyvalent weapon that explains why it's not taken that much in matches.

inb4 all ex rC come and complain

[Nightmare]

Same results from 'Season 1' as well, though.
Except Harrek? pulled a shotty out in the finals iirc, after having the match wrapped up.

[Honor]

Was it playable?

No, you can't play sniper/ carabine vs high ping

For me every weapons are playable. Shotty is still overpowered and carabine is potentially the best weapon if well played.

[*H1TM4N*]

It doesn't have to be perfect just fun!

Perfect comment. AC is not perfect, but give us a lot fun.

[Roflcopter]

I realised I never answered Ronald_Reagan's questions.

Why is it bad that the time to kill takes longer? Doesn't that force you to change your playing style some?

Longer kill times

• lessen the reward for awareness in clan matches
  
• lessen the reward for reaction time
  
• makes kills frustrating
  
• increase the reward for aim
  
• make fights more predictable
  

Awareness is extremely important in competitive games. Games without it become boring and just about out fragging opponents.

It also does some negative things to gameplay that I can't as easily justify.

I aim to increase the reward for aim and make fights more predictable by lowering spread which will have a far more drastic effect on these two issues than kill times.

[ExodusS]

You are really focusing the changes on the competition scene, but it looks like, those days, only or almost only the public scene is active. You can say those changes are going to save (and I hightly doubt) or provide the clan matches and the competitions, but the changes are really subjectivelly good for you, weapons have never been so powerfull than today, the power increased way more than the armor did with the introduction of the helmets and the new armour system, and you want to lower the killing time even more.
It seems that you did not play some public games since a while too, because all I could see was Shotguns, AR's and a few Carabines, the weapons that are underpowered in your opinion are the most played. I was playing Carabine and it was reliable, even if I needed the SMG to score (less powerfull in most of the situations, but more powerfull on flagging situations, rushing, killing low hp people), I also tested the Sniper and I found it easy to farm a good score/ratio without 'hard camping', but bad to make your team win.
Also, I don't want to see any single change from you because of this kind of shit you used to spread and this average behavior I only could fully agree with:

problems for mys arrived when jason and larry teached to @cid how to win a game and al mys were forced to play accordingly to this gamestyle. This is the reason why i left MyS.

You can not ask like that in a thread that you want and deserve the power to force people to play the game how you think the game is supposed to be played and enjoyed the most, especially when it's only for a small amount of people that doesn't even represent 10% of the total players, same people who self destructed their own competition scene through a script/cheat/exploit war.

To finish, I think, instead of changing everything that is already done, we should focus on some small fixes that don't requier a lot of work such as a non-resetable spread on the SMG/AR, fixing the 'hax-jump' script exploit (I said script), or deleting helmets when the mastermode = 2...

[stef]

Dear Roflcopter,

"Let me balance this game"

the last one, who said that, nearly ruined the game by trying that, but go on...

"This is unlikely to get anywhere,"

yep, obviously

"but frankly the balance is rubbish"

thx

"I know how to balance this game properly."

but you can't tell how, right now?

"Currently time to kill is massive and this allows players with bad reaction time and awareness to do better. Some weapon are completely useless."

I bet, SrPER$IAN facepalmed, when he realised, that he totally forgot to include a 'Missing team (weapon balance)'. How could he miss that...

"That's what I would like to do if the devs are willing for fairly radical changes."

the game barely survived the last several years of messing with the weapon balance, so, sure, we'll throw that all away in a heartbeat

"The problem I can see is that everyone has an opinion"

no shit, really?

"and frankly most come from a biased position."

it's good, that you noticed that, because with that argument, you can silence anyone who's not agreeing with you

"I need to be able to do the whole thing instead of balancing by arguing and then making some compromise."

great: so, there will be no need for testing - we can release it immediately? since it would of course work as promised?

"Sure fun is particularly important, but also so is the learning curve, fairness and competition."

Sounds great! But I'm not sure, what this thread is supposed to be. Do you expect, that we blindly agree to switch out the core of the game to whatever you can come up with?

Go ahead. Post your solution. But, I'm afraid, there /will/ be a discussion...

[DamDam]

"and frankly most come from a biased position."

it's good, that you noticed that, because with that argument, you can silence anyone who's not agreeing with you

Nah, larry's not the kind of guy to do that, is he? :) [/sarcasm]

It's not irrelevant, don't you think someone with seven years experience of playing games at a high level could help us get the weapon balance right?

What ? 7 years of high level playing what? L4D & AC ? woooh. Back only 2-3 years ago, there was very few tactical points about this game, it was all about who has the better aim. Nobody really thought about the game, and do you consider playing AC at its "high level" anything relevant as for how to balance a game ? I mean, it's just AC...

inb4 all ex rC come and complain

hi, what do we have to complain about ? :)

Don't accept exploits, scripts or anything, and fight it instead of accepting/ignoring this issue, this goes to you, Larry, Jason and everyone who played a role in the competition scene's suicide.

WTF, this has nothing to do with the end of the competitive scene. Those scripts/exploits only pissed some of you who were butthurt that we managed to use the code smartly to get more useful infos in game that you didn't have.
The competitive scene died because the game did not evolve fast enough and none of the suggestions were taken in account. Lots complained, many threatened to leave, most of us ended up leaving.

EDIT to Vanquish response : Left4Dead pro, never heard of any Larry being pro at this game. All I remember is larry bragging and reminding all the time that "back when I was a pro at L4D things were like this and that. Back in legacy I was blah blah"
No proof, no solid elements only him saying he played L4D. I could say I was a decently skilled player in AssaultCube in 4 years nobody would give a shit and it would mean absolutely nothing nor would it make my points/arguments more relevant...

[Vanquish]

What ? 7 years of high level playing. Back only 2-3 years ago, there was very few tactical points about this game, it was all about who has the better aim. Nobody really thought about the game, and do you consider playing AC at its "high level" anything relevant as for how to balance a game ? I mean, it's just AC...

Notice how I said "games", not AC. Don't you remember that Larry was a pro L4D player? :-)


EDIT: As a semi-unrelated addendum, I'd just like to point out that while the use of scripts may be frowned upon by people like ExodusS (not flaming him for having an opinion), it's certainly not the reason why the game or "competition" died. It was because the gameplay became stagnant and people were unwilling to listen to the vocal community and make a change. The result was that about half of competitive AC players decided to call it quits, and half of the competitive players that remained (myself included) went inactive or migrated to other games.
And in case someone such as ExodusS is wrongly trying to attribute blame to myself or rC for using scripts (only script I used was Larry's bullet script in 1.1 - which 90% of competitive players were also using), I'd like to point out that scripts and other exploits existed in AssaultCube before I'd even heard about the game. Brightskins, transparent sniper scopes and plenty more advantages were in use in 1.04 and, even though I wasn't around to personally know, I'm given to understand that the game was more popular than ever at that time. Why? BECAUSE OF THE GAMEPLAY.
I would like to see the ability to script some things removed (you can even write an autoshooter and use it with the default client which is bs), but don't remove the ability to script altogether as hurting productive creativity is a bad thing. And please don't try and make out as though scripts are the reason why nobody plays AssaultCube anymore. You know the reason.

EDIT 2: Larry still winning the poll \o/