-= Hitscan weapons, tactics, and suggestions =-

[torus]

I think that the Nex is altogether way too powerful. No game should have a fast, hitscan, one hit kill, zoomable (in most cases) weapon. A hitscan sniper is OK, and one hit kill is OK, but it should be slower than any other weapon.

I'm sure this will be hated, but I think that the Covenant sniper rifle in Halo actually solved this very well. It is a powerful weapon, but is relatively slow, and if fired more than twice in succession, it has a damage penalty and a wait time (it "overheats").

Right now, aside from the MG which I will address in a moment, it is the most unbalanced weapon in the game. A person with good hand eye coordination can repeatedly pick off person after person from a distance without putting himself in danger (I'm looking at you Abaddon )

The machine gun suffers from some of the same problems. On open maps, such as Succer Socks or Greatwall, the machine gun is often used as a rapid fire sniper rifle. It's secondary fire is much faster than the nex, almost as accurate, a clip of ammo has hundreds of rounds, and it is impossible to dodge (being a hitscan gun). Not to mention that the machine gun inexplicably stops people in mid air, a severe hindrance to movement. The machine gun is fine in close quarters, albeit a bit too powerful imo, but anywhere else it is absurd.

Not only is this discouraging, it is irritating and puts off new players- yes, one of my friends tried out Nexuiz, and gave it up because he was repeatedly pwned by a particularly skilled rail-bitch.

Not to mention that veterans with a knowledge of the console and configs can set up keybinds and scripts which effectively eliminate the only things that might put a Nex user at a disadvantage, the reload time, and the time it takes to zoom.

I do understand that this is not Halo or F.E.A.R, and people dont expect actual team tactics to be used- it usually comes down to who has the faster reflexes/who is on more amphetamines. And a lot of people like it this way.

However, I think the game could be drastically improved with the following changes, which would make the game more accessible to newcomers (especially ones coming from other games), allow people to expand their skillset, and offer more intelligent gameplay:

For the Nex-

• Make it more powerful, but have a 2.5- 3 second delay in between the shots, and eliminate the "feature" where the delay can be reset by switching weapons. That is just stupid.

• Alternatively, allow for quick successive shots, but make more than 2 quick shots in a row incur a damage penalty (maybe 30 hp), and a longer wait time.

For the MG

• The primary fire is Ok, not too accurate. It could be improved however if it "overheated" after say 150 full auto rounds, and a 3 second penalty would be implemented before it would be usable again.

• The secondary fire is absurd. IMO, it should be marginally more accurate than the primary fire, and no more powerful per round, but be a "burst" attack, where say 15 rounds would be shot off in a very short time per shot, but there would be a longer wait time in between.

You might say- "but Torus, the shotgun already has a burst secondary fire"

• Well, that could be easily replaced with a shotgun fire mode similar to the primary fire, but take longer to reload (like the current secondary does), and simply be more powerful. Who ever heard of a burst shotgun anyway?

• Remove the "push" effect of the MG. It is just unnecessary, and really doesnt make sense.


Basically all the other weapons are perfect and awesome in my opinion. The mortar takes serious skill and even tactics with the secondary fire, the hagar is just badass and also is has the "fire round corners" thing, the electro is really unique and possibly my fav weapon, and the RL is just fine IMO.

Thanks for reading this if you did, I wanted to get these gripes off my back. Please discuss- and if you feel this should really be in the other thread about the Nex, please merge it- I thought there were some other related things that needed to be brought up, but I didn't want to hijack the other one.

[ai]

(...) Who ever heard of a burst shotgun anyway? (...)

There actually are burst shotguns. They usually fire all the shots in the mag (usually 7-8) in a row of just a few sec.

But other than that. I too think that the MG's secondary is a bit too powerful, kinda like a alternate sniper rifle but faster (note I said 'kinda'). As on open maps it's deadly, while on smaller maps (like Slimepit, Toxic) it actually works good as you can run away and hide around corners.

About the nex I don't know, of course I want to wait 1.5 sec before it fires again. But making it even slower and more powerful I think would be bad (I kinda think it will have bad impact on people). As I also see Nex like a railgun, which is better than having a powerful slow sniper rifle (that takes me to UT2004). Before actually changing the Nex lets see how it works with the refire rate at a constant 1.5 sec IMO.

[k0jak]

3 second wait?

i'd rather slit my wrists then play with that delay..it would be almost pointless using the weapon..even if it was one shot kill, i kind of prefer a higher reload rate 1.5 sec and one shot kill. then 1.5 sec and still not making it one shot kill, either one or the other, or don't change it at all. I don't want 1.5 sec fire, and then not one shot kill, the nex isn't the biggest problem, it's the other weapons.

why so much emphasis on the nex anyway?

the biggest problem i see is the MG as already stated, it's just ridiculous, it's put on nearly every CTF map...and nearly every other map, it's secondary is absurd i said about this a load of times though, it's way way way overpowered.

Electro is an all out assault cannon now, i'm surprised people don't use it as much but play a good player like bundy and he'll just murder you quicker then he can with the mortar, the primary fire..just hold and aim and you don't even have to be that accurate to cause massive amounts of damage now, it was great as it was before the change as used as an defensive weapon, perhaps the primary yes should have been changed slightly for damage...but not this ridiculous refire rate it really spoilt it.

shotgun..is still overpowered primary, but it's not as annoying as the others, still very bad though.

These are the main problems i see with these weapons, RL isn't as bad when you have the settings green used to allow it easier to move on the ground.

[torus]

Well, 2.5 seconds seems reasonable. But it should be a sniper rifle, not a semi-auto phaser beam. People often use it to snipe, but many don't- they use it just like the mg or the shotgun, just it kills every time.
A sniper rifle is an intelligent, campers weapon- I don't say that in a negative way. Right now, the nex is analogous to the golden gun in 007- the difference is that it is very easy to obtain on most maps, and it has a zoom.

I guessed that the veterans of the game would hate my suggestion- and it would slow down gameplay a bit- but is that a bad thing? I dont think so. You can have the flexibility of movement and skill of aim with more balanced weapons.

For those of you with consistent pinpoint accuracy on the fly with the nex now would still be devastating with it. The only difference is that people would have a way of countering your attack if they aren't as competent with that weapon. That is the whole point of weapon balancing.

[Ares]

I believe the MOST overbalanced weapons are the Rocket Launcher and the Nex, the MG is only about as effective as the Crylink and Electro... at least in my hands.

The Shotgun needs to be tuned up a bit.

[Mr.Carlyle]

I'm sorry, but you're crazy if you want a 2.5 second wait on the nex, that's just asinine. As for all this talk about changing weapons...its not the weapons fault, its the mappers. They shouldn't make huge open maps where those weapons can be abused. If they do, then don't included those weapons. Simple as that.

I'm so tired of people bitching about these weapons. I don't see a real problem. When I was learning the game Dresk used to pwn me day after day for hours on end. He used the nex switch technique and did I bitch? Did I post? Hell no, and do you want to know why...because I knew that I could do the same thing. Everyone in the game can do everything you're sitting here bitching about.

Now I know most will say of course I'm disagreeing I'm using doing what torus is speaking about, yes I am, but increasing the time for rates of fire and not making weapons accurate will only degrade the current speed of the game. Besides, who the hell wants to play a game where your aim doesn't matter? CS anyone? Please don't let Nexuiz turn into that...

[:)]

Indeed, this game is about speed and power. This shouldn't change.
One thing I would suggest is an impact sound for the machinegun. It is difficult to hear where the fire is coming from; a problem mostly on non-linear maps.

[Altobe]

I'm sorry, but you're crazy if you want a 2.5 second wait on the nex, that's just asinine. As for all this talk about changing weapons...its not the weapons fault, its the mappers. They shouldn't make huge open maps where those weapons can be abused. If they do, then don't included those weapons. Simple as that.

I'm so tired of people bitching about these weapons. I don't see a real problem. When I was learning the game Dresk used to pwn me day after day for hours on end. He used the nex switch technique and did I bitch? Did I post? Hell no, and do you want to know why...because I knew that I could do the same thing. Everyone in the game can do everything you're sitting here bitching about.

Now I know most will say of course I'm disagreeing I'm using doing what torus is speaking about, yes I am, but increasing the time for rates of fire and not making weapons accurate will only degrade the current speed of the game. Besides, who the hell wants to play a game where your aim doesn't matter? CS anyone? Please don't let Nexuiz turn into that...

Mr Carlyle, you have a real way with words, I couldn't agree more.

[s3cc0]

I'm sorry, but you're crazy if you want a 2.5 second wait on the nex, that's just asinine. As for all this talk about changing weapons...its not the weapons fault, its the mappers. They shouldn't make huge open maps where those weapons can be abused. If they do, then don't included those weapons. Simple as that.

I'm so tired of people bitching about these weapons. I don't see a real problem. When I was learning the game Dresk used to pwn me day after day for hours on end. He used the nex switch technique and did I bitch? Did I post? Hell no, and do you want to know why...because I knew that I could do the same thing. Everyone in the game can do everything you're sitting here bitching about.

Now I know most will say of course I'm disagreeing I'm using doing what torus is speaking about, yes I am, but increasing the time for rates of fire and not making weapons accurate will only degrade the current speed of the game. Besides, who the hell wants to play a game where your aim doesn't matter? CS anyone? Please don't let Nexuiz turn into that...

Personally, the reason i bitch about the nex switch thing is not because i'm getting pwned by players who use it (man, i'm used to that! ), but because it's detrimental to the gameplay (i.e. less fun).
One of the strenghts of Nexuiz imo, is the way the "comboability" of many weapons can be put to good use in creative ways. Among all weapons the Nex is undoubtly the most straightforward: point, click, win, repeat if necessary. Not that it doesn't require skill, but the more profitable its gets to use that exclusively, the duller gameplay becomes, imho.
Btw, from what i've seen of Dresk (admittedly just a single demo of him playing, i guess, pretty casually), he seemed to make great use of combos, especially a laserjump-nex-RL-nex combo which was absolutely brilliant and is very far from the simplemided railwhoring abuse the nex "exploit" encourages.
Regarding the "don't whine about it, just learn to do the same" point, i think it's a weak argument that could be used to justify any kind of shit, ultimately even cheating In any case, i hope i made it clear that i whine about it precisely because i don't want to do the same (which i've learned to do anyway, actually)
On the other hand, i absolutely agree with you about overpowered weapons (the MG especially) being mostly the mappers' fault. Indeed i hardly play CTF because the trend in mapping seems to heavily favour space platforms or other kinds of very open sniper-friendly maps (whiich are bad not only gameplay-wise, that's subjectve, but performance-wise as well ). I'd really love to see more fortress-style CTF maps like fortress resurrection or mike-ctf

Oh, and the idea of raising the Nex's reload to 2.5 seconds is just !

Ok, sorry for yet another rant about this stuff, i'm over with it

[morfar]

One thing I would suggest is an impact sound for the machinegun. It is difficult to hear where the fire is coming from; a problem mostly on non-linear maps.

If it's true there is no impact sound on MG anymore it must be fixed asap Because it used to have that. IIRC LH removed it because it was supposed to spawn impact sound anyways... Can a dev confirm?