-= Hitscan weapons, tactics, and suggestions =-

Discuss Nexuiz gameplay here.

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  • 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 :wink: )

    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.
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  • torus wrote:(...) 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.
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Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:13 pm

  • 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.
    :]

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Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:41 pm

  • 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.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 1:45 am

  • 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.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 3:18 am

  • 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...
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 3:46 am

  • 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.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:00 am

  • Mr.Carlyle wrote: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.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 1:51 pm

  • Mr.Carlyle wrote: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! :P), 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 :x). 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 :shock: !

    Ok, sorry for yet another rant about this stuff, i'm over with it ;)
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:19 pm

  • Dave wrote: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 :o Because it used to have that. IIRC LH removed it because it was supposed to spawn impact sound anyways... Can a dev confirm?
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 3:34 pm

  • Well, since the 2.5 second reload has been rejected by absolutely everybody, what about the other nex balancing suggestion-

    A "covenant sniper" type weapon Allow 2 quick shots with a very quick reload (.5 seconds), but a third quick shot would over-heat it, then 2.5 Seconds to fire the gun after overheating. However you could fire every 1.5 seconds and never overheat the gun.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 3:54 pm

  • torus wrote:Well, since the 2.5 second reload has been rejected by absolutely everybody, what about the other nex balancing suggestion-


    Told you it would have a negative impact :P

    torus wrote:A "covenant sniper" type weapon Allow 2 quick shots with a very quick reload (.5 seconds), but a third quick shot would over-heat it, then 2.5 Seconds to fire the gun after overheating. However you could fire every 1.5 seconds and never overheat the gun.


    As far as the nex goes it doesn't need to be change, only so that you cannot possibly fire after 1.5 sec past. Overall, it's a great weapon. Also, I think overheating is not Nexuiz style, that would maybe slow down the gameplay and all, and it's more "realist-ish" kinda function, which Nexuiz isn't based on IMO :P
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 4:31 pm

  • The hard thing is to balance Nexuiz guns to "CTF open maps" and "1on1 closed small maps". It's probably impossible... so we must find a middle ground.
    OR have different weapon settings in different gamemodes/maps.. which I am against :/
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 4:49 pm

  • I definitely agree that it is up to mappers to intelligently place weapons around the map- throwing every weapon in there is not always necessary.
    It is my personal opinion that Nexuiz would benefit fromo being slightly slower. Instead of being a mindless kill frenzy, it would require a tad more tactics to win— I'm thinking UT style, not FEAR. Well, I'm going to play the game either way, its just amusing that noone else shares my sentiments.
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Tue Aug 28, 2007 5:57 pm

  • Well, i have to agree with the CTF stuff (Especially with Carlyle that the maps are probably the biggest problem)...i always wanted more playable ctf maps, i don't mind the fun maps but it puts me off CTF when you have 4 people shooting you with the machinegun...and as someone already said, chucking every weapon into the map.

    Can't remember who mentioned fortress resurrection or mikectf2...both great maps..there not stupid, and it means players have to actually apply the weapons to the map..you can actually get to the enemies base without being mowed down 9/10 times. not just MG MG or NEX NEX all the time like on most maps, same with runningmanctf..even though it is quite small, it's a good map cause of the multiple routes and versatile gameplay and weapons on the map., although it is difficult to get the flag at times :)
    :]

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Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:19 pm

  • I totally agree about MikeCTF2. That map is one of the best (the best for ctf imo).
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Sun Sep 02, 2007 12:19 pm

  • The Nex (without the exploit) is good and balanced as is! Please don't change it anymore! But I totally agree with the comments on the mg's secondary fire, it's quite annoying on some maps.
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Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:20 am

  • MisterMeister wrote:The Nex (without the exploit) is good and balanced as is! Please don't change it anymore! But I totally agree with the comments on the mg's secondary fire, it's quite annoying on some maps.


    I also think the nex is fine the way it is, because there is a short (1 second) delay between shots, and if you miss by a millimeter, then you miss completetly (unlike the rocket launcher, where you can just detonate it with 2nd fire.) Every fps needs a sniper, and snipers are powerful.

    The MG, I think, is fine. It's not really overpowered, because each shot isn't that powerful. I realize that new players may be discouraged, but we were all once new players. No matter what game it is, you get owned a lot as a newbie.

    All the weapons are fine, except they get a bit old after a while.
    ~ Vanquish ~
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Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:12 pm

  • Vanquish wrote:
    MisterMeister wrote:T
    The MG, I think, is fine. It's not really overpowered, because each shot isn't that powerful. I realize that new players may be discouraged, but we were all once new players. No matter what game it is, you get owned a lot as a newbie.

    All the weapons are fine, except they get a bit old after a while.


    I wouldn't consider myself a newbie...
    My problem with the MG is that it stops people in mid-air (wtf?) and the secondary fire IS very powerful.
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Wed Nov 28, 2007 11:28 pm

  • Does it really stop people mid-air? I've never really noticed this. That is bad, I mean, realistically, the bullets would go through you =P
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Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:32 am

  • Vanquish wrote:Does it really stop people mid-air? I've never really noticed this. That is bad, I mean, realistically, the bullets would go through you =P


    Yes, you can hold someone in air with MG. And about "Realistic" in games ... holding 8 weapons with 200 rockets ammo is unrealistic, even for rambo! :D

    Torus wrote: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.


    Please not. The nexgun is very balanced imo. It does a lot dmg, it is very strong on long range and useful on mid/shortrange with good aiming BUT Mortar or MG are way better then the nexgun on mid/shortrange, except you do the crazy 3x hit in a row. But that doesnt happen to often against mortar spam ...

    I agree with the point, that the delay should not be reseted by switching weapons.

    Torus wrote:]
    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.


    Well, I dont know what to change on MG but I always feel like its a very overpowered gun, too. Useable from short to longrange with very strong dmg. Especially in CTF when 3 defenders shoot with MG at you ... pretty much impossible to stay alive 2 seconds when they hit 20% of their shots.
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Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:56 am

  • I can't possibly be bothered to read this entire thread, but whatever Carlyle said in reply is probably my position as well, plus the term isn't "rail-bitch," it's "Darth Rail Bitch." STFU, YMMV, ROFL, etc.
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Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:03 pm

  • mg is over-powered, said it time and time again..
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Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:51 pm

  • MG roxX
    IRC quote:
    [kojn] I've been coming a bit more recently
    [kojn] she took it the dirty way
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Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:28 pm

  • GreEn`mArine wrote:MG roxX


    go away.
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Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:33 pm

  • I think if the MG push was gone and the strafe speed was a bit faster it would make all the difference. We also really need Newtonian physics or better antilag code (when I'm strafing/turning and using the crylink/MG it's pretty much unusable). Maybe this is just me, please tell me if I'm wrong. The lightweight weapons (crylink, MG, shotgun) are too weak in general.

    Overall, I think the ideas behind each weapon are good, but they really need some tweaking.
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Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:47 am

  • I don't understand why everyone says the shotgun is weak, it's got to be one of the strongest weapon, in close combat you can kill an enemy with armor in like 2 shots using secondary. It's fine for ctf but for dm/tdm I'd say it's too strong and breaks gameplay. I think it's wrong that in a duel you can easily kill a player who is in control when you just respawned because it hits instantly, you should have to use you head and get a weapon and armor before attacking.

    IMO having all weapons perfectly balanced to be equally effective doesn't make good gameplay. If you feel the weapon you got is too weak, then avoid your enemy until you got a good one. The only change I would make in Nexuiz about weapons, is weaken the shotgun. MG can be annoying but it depends on the map, so this is the mappers fault for putting it in huge and flat open spaces where you can't hide from bullets. There's a MG on most duel maps too and I've never heard anyone complain about it. This only happens on ctf, where all the big maps are.
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Mon Dec 10, 2007 7:11 pm

  • I can half agree, but mappers seem to just throw EVERY weapon onto ctf maps...i'd like to see more proper testing to comment on the gameplay (weapons being used e.t.c) within the maps before final relases, like you say all the open maps everyone grabs the MG...and, well we know what happens.
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Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:16 am

  • How about a mutator to allow only select weapons from a list? Either the admin sets it up, or players vote on which weapons to allow.
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