Hello from Gun Admin & Gun Changes

[paintballdude956]

Hey all,
My name's Ishmael Soul and I'm the new Gun Admin. I've been playing Era for a while (and some people used to think I was good at it), so I hope to bring some real-player experience to the job. Having someone who has and does pk extensively in this spot is pretty valuable, in my opinion.
At the same time, I don't purport to be anything close to perfect. I'm going to make mistakes, and I'm open to input from anyone.
For that reason, I want to be as transparent as possible. That's why I'm going to be doing gun changes in bulk with as much visibility as I can. Every Sunday, I'll make a post on the forums with a link to the gun changes and a brief summary of my reasoning behind them. Then, on Wednesday, I'll actually implement the changes. This gives people a little bit of notice before their favorite gun suddenly changes.

One more comment: I'm not one of those "grumpy oldbies" who wants to make all guns like the old Ak47. I'm not planning on any enormous changes at the moment. I'm making the current Era more balanced.

I'll do my best to be active on the forums now and read input. Another good idea would be to send me in-game mail if you wanna get ahold of me.

First changes will be found here: http://pastebin.com/SiYiuafH

Not listed, but also being implemented: boomerang will no longer be hotkeyable
Remember these don't go into effect until Wednesday

[Supaman771]

Opls.. no odd number clipsizes I'll cry all night.
And the guy using an Ares + a ACR will have major issues if they switch between them. (you get stuck at 1 ammo, unable to fire or 'autoreload' and have to do it manually)

24clip no 25 ty. And maybe make the Ares Rifle use Rifle ammo (it was created after I changed guns to use rifle ammo).

I like the other stuff, cool.

Other ideas;
-Make stun-gun useful, I always liked the idea behind it but it's just completely useless atm.
-Crizen bullets.. holy lord jesus & mary make them look at least marginally acceptable, the bullet image is 10x larger than the actual projectile and it just leaves rainbow streaks floating across your screen.
-Saber, I mentioned it to Zao on like 40 separate occasions but this thing was never finished. There are animations made for various different attacks and effects. It was made blatantly op in base-stats for first release to match the other items since it was 50% complete. Finish it and balance it for the love of god.
-Shotguns, namely AA12. This has been a bit of a issue for awhile, that these weapons just apply so much pressure over an area, that having them automatic or incredibly high damage is just... well op with no consequence. Last I checked the damage was put there to make them effective at destroying doors/objects, not to be main weapons that you can spar with or sit in a corner with for 24 hours a day (IIRC, PBP was once changed to 24 damage purposefully to correct this issue). Do something creative to reduce their impact.. I was thinking about changing the shotgun class (there's a separate join for shotguns and regular guns IIRC) and making the bullet type more realistic. Something along the lines of being 150% damage on doors/objects and 75% on players. This emphasis the strengths they were designed for, without maintaining untouchable prowess in BHPK-like situations.
-Raise the ammo limit. Eclipse gave many reasons in other threads, I'm sure you've seen them. It's just a unnecessary restriction, players still spend the same $ per box weather they load 100 or 1000.
-Idk if this is under your jurisdiction, but correct the exploitable behavior of placing bombs on unavoidable door-link locations.

[Xloria]

Happy to see that I've made the boomerang not usable anymore good stuff

[Kohola_KinG]

Surprised not to see any SG changes considering it's probably the most OP gun on era at the moment. If i missed it then i apologize but this gun must be nerfed.

Also changing a guns dmg from 16>17 or w.e it was makes no difference? I really cannot be bothered to think right now. Correct me if i'm missing something?

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

Surprised not to see any SG changes considering it's probably the most OP gun on era at the moment. If i missed it then i apologize but this gun must be nerfed.

Also changing a guns dmg from 16>17 or w.e it was makes no difference? I really cannot be bothered to think right now. Correct me if i'm missing something?

Sg552 could definitely use some fine tuning, its basically a 21 damage navy.
The drawback is it's supposed to be a bit slower.
But it has a 40 clip and even shorter reload than navy, talk about endless spamming.
And the slower fire rate is actually more effective, it allows you to better control the gun and enables holding D and freely moving.
Add in the unpredictable spread that could dominate anybody with a straight shooting gun should you box back and forth and you get a sparring masterpiece.

If you're giving navy love-taps, this thing could use some.

I also agree with the +1 damage changes, unless you're changing something from like 19>20, 24>25, 21>22 it's not really even noticeable cause it still requires the same # of bullets for the kill. I'm sure there's a sweet spot between 15 and 20 though that could be exploited. Some quick numbering shows 18 to be a great break-point. (from 15) it would be a -1 hit for 150, and -2 for 140hp targets. Other numbers like 16 (0/-1) and 17 (-1/-1) aren't hugely effective changes given normal player HP.

[fowlplay4]

Making the ACR automatic is ridiculous.

[paintballdude956]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Opls.. no odd number clipsizes I'll cry all night.
And the guy using an Ares + a ACR will have major issues if they switch between them. (you get stuck at 1 ammo, unable to fire or 'autoreload' and have to do it manually)

I didn't realize the issues with having 1 ammo. That's a good point. I'll modify the gun stats accordingly.

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Other stuff

This week I was focusing on tier 1, "primary" weapons. I have a lot of those things that you mentioned in mind for upcoming weeks. I don't want to comment on them too much because I don't want to give info before I do changes.

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

Also changing a guns dmg from 16>17 or w.e it was makes no difference? I really cannot be bothered to think right now. Correct me if i'm missing something?

Well, this argument held a lot of weight in old era, where everyone had 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 HP (or x10). Nowadays, people have pretty random hp levels (e.g. I have 131). Though admittedly, the top players mostly have 140.

One damage may not make a huge difference in spars with someone with 140/150 hp, but in a raid where you have a 18 damage gun and your buddy has a 22 damage gun, that's a combined hit of 40 damage. Still, I think you make a good point.

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Sg552 could definitely use some fine tuning, its basically a 21 damage navy.
The drawback is it's supposed to be a bit slower.
But it has a 40 clip and even shorter reload than navy, talk about endless spamming.
And the slower fire rate is actually more effective, it allows you to better control the gun and enables holding D and freely moving.
Add in the unpredictable spread that could dominate anybody with a straight shooting gun should you box back and forth and you get a sparring masterpiece.

I'm going to respectfully disagree. The 552 definitely isn't a 21 damage navy, and you say the reason yourself. You can't wall with the 552, especially with the spread. I'm not saying for sure the 552 doesn't need a love tap or two, but it's not nearly as overpowered as you say it is.

[Fiberwyre_P2P]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

-Shotguns, namely AA12. This has been a bit of a issue for awhile, that these weapons just apply so much pressure over an area, that having them automatic or incredibly high damage is just... well op with no consequence. Last I checked the damage was put there to make them effective at destroying doors/objects, not to be main weapons that you can spar with or sit in a corner with for 24 hours a day (IIRC, PBP was once changed to 24 damage purposefully to correct this issue). Do something creative to reduce their impact.. I was thinking about changing the shotgun class (there's a separate join for shotguns and regular guns IIRC) and making the bullet type more realistic. Something along the lines of being 150% damage on doors/objects and 75% on players. This emphasis the strengths they were designed for, without maintaining untouchable prowess in BHPK-like situations.

I like where your head is at with this one, but wouldn't it make more sense just to keep them at the same damage they're at now, and make the bullet damage decrease with range?
Like up-close = 25 dmg, half a level over = 12 damage, etc.
(I should add, idk if that's an easy feat to accomplish, script-wise.)

[Kohola_KinG]

I have to disagree ish about the SG.

Give it to me and i'll show you how to wall with it. O.o It's the most overpowered gun on the server at the moment, hands down.

[Godzilla]

I like the changes, although I disagree with the random clip sizes you decided to chuck on the weapons you felt were too balanced to nerf otherwise, good start.

[bloodykiller]

The ares rifle is still OP since .3 is the perfect speed for players who like to hold D. It's pro even in the hands of a noob.

The same goes for the ACR. Atleast when it was semi-auto it didn't allow noobs to spam with it.

DR with .3 speed becomes useless. Its stats are like Navy but you can only shoot 16 times before you reload, it's semi-auto and it has almost no spread at all.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Fiberwyre_P2P

I like where your head is at with this one, but wouldn't it make more sense just to keep them at the same damage they're at now, and make the bullet damage decrease with range?
Like up-close = 25 dmg, half a level over = 12 damage, etc.
(I should add, idk if that's an easy feat to accomplish, script-wise.)

I like the idea, same kinda thoughts I had, but I don't think this is even possible to do.

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

I have to disagree ish about the SG.

Yeah, anyone can go look at the stats if they want on this one, how Ish feels about using it really shouldn't matter.
It outclasses a Navy in literally every single category (I'd say .3 RoF is better than .25 for reasons listed before, you can literally hold D and move freely... it's much more noob friendly.)

[Reddy548]

Hey take a look at Glock18? its stupid

[Demisis_P2P]

Don't forget, some guns can have the exact same stats. There's no rule against it.

[Godzilla]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

Don't forget, some guns can have the exact same stats. There's no rule against it.

Especially if equal in the cost situation, some people have preference with the style/look of their gun as it makes them feel more fluent, etc

Example; TG and SG are quite similar, only real notice-able difference (while PKing/Sparing) would be the reload.

Gun Stats for 'Tommy Gun':
Damage: 21
Rate of Fire: .3
Freeze: .05
Reload: .45
Spread: 0.115 (13.17°)
Clipsize: 50

Gun Stats for 'SG552':
Damage: 21
Rate of Fire: 0.3
Freeze: 0.05
Reload: 0.25
Spread: 0.1 (11.45°)
Clipsize: 40

If you were thinking of or going to at some stage nerf these weapons, I would suggest taking away the 1 damage from both, taking away 8 bullets from the SG and a good 12 from the TG (If you're going to scrap the whole bullets actually held in per clip in real life to Graal which it seems you have with Navy and a few others)