The Assault Rifle Discussion

[Xris]

i believe when you create a game, it is hosted on a UT server and not the actual hosts pc, like some other games. can we get clarification on this, i read it on a dif post

[InvisibleMan999]

2. Contrary to what you've been arguing, a spy under fire from the Uzi has considerably less time to react than a spy under fire from the rifle.

Really? I find that hard to believe. The rifle kills in one shot. That by definition means you don't get to react once you've been hit. To make matters worse, it's one shot at long range.

I mean I don't care that the rilfe happens to be ineffective at autofire the autofire part isn't even the cheap part of it. People complain because of the one shot lag snipes that happen, or the special abilities sniping gives you to take out objectives like disarming that one bomb in Missile Strike from above. And don't tell me how that takes a ton of hand-eye coordination and should be rewarded because it really doesn't.

What I really don't like about the uzi is point #2: you can't do anything to really neutralize it. The shotgun has a long reload, which gives you time to shock the merc and get away. You can't do this to the uzi because the high frequency of bullets prevents you from aiming, even when there isn't any lag. You can try throwing smoke, but they have mask. You can try throwing a flashbang, but they have MT. You're basically stuck trying to run away from a virtual tractor beam. I really don't think you can use your experiences on the Xbox in regards to this because it is nearly impossible to keep your crosshairs focused on a moving spy with an analog stick. It is not impossible to do this with a mouse.

It's not remarkably hard to aim the uzi on the xbox. A console controller lacks quick motions, so for instance doing a fast 360 is impossible. But as far as standard aiming you can lead a target pretty much just as well wtih an analog stick once you get used to it. It's actually a fine device for doing standard aiming, it just can't do quick turning well. I've played on xbox and PC and really I don't find the uzi being a remarkably different experience.

As far as neutralizing the uzi, I don't find it that difficult. There's no way to completely shut it down, but it's not an extremely specialized weapon, so that's not really a concern. The uzi is a slow killer. If you're running away from the merc who is using an uzi doing dives and rolls, chances are, you'll get away. You may be down to half health or something, but you're going to escape. at long-ranges, as you said, the best the uzi can do is shoot you and disrupt your hacking. It's not going to kill you. So again, you just pull back or taze the merc at long range and resume hacking. Worst that happens is he gets untazed and shoots you again for minor damage.

The uzi is the average all-around gun, and as such it has few weaknesses but no real glaring strengths. I guess the main thing is that you really don't have to do muhc to counter it, because it has no strengths you specifically need to worry about, unlike the rifle or shotgun. I guess the best counter to the uzi is healing yourself, because as long as you're at full life and don't let yourself get caught stationary at close range in a rape position, you'll generally be fine. The uzi just isn't that effective at medium range. It chews away at you, but you won't get killed unless you were weak to begin wtih. Hell most of the time you can run away in a straight line and be okay. Even if he's emptying the clip right at you, most of the shots will go around due to the burst fire inaccuracy. You'll get clipped a bit, but you won't get killed in the second or two it takes to disengage. The uzi is by far the least deadly weapon of the three. It deals constant reliable damage, but it's very unlikely to insta-gib like the rifle or shotty can.

If anything, I've found that the rifle is the hardest thing to counter, because there's really not much you can do against a merc shooting you at long range aside from get in a twitch duel with him where you try to SS to his head or chaff him before he shoots you in the head. That's generally a bad idea. You can run away, but then he can also hit you at long range too, so unlike the uzi you don't have the long-range buffer that helps you escape.

I guess you can try to aggro a rifle user, that seems about the best bet, but it's not like that's anywhere near reliable either.

The rifle takes significantly more skill than the uzi to use. First, if you're aiming at the head, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. You hit and kill the spy, or you miss and the spy gets away with no damage to him. Second, hitting the head is a lot harder than hitting the spy anywhere on the body. Third, there is the tactical element of locating spots on the map that give you the widest amount of sniping options.

I don't really see how "takes slightly more skill to use" is sufficient reason for making the weapon overpowered.

Really, the rifle seems similar to the shotty,  in that it's an insta-gib weapon, only, unlike the shotty, it seriously doesn't have any glaring weaknesses. Instead of draw backs, it has an awkward control with a steep learning curve, which is sufficient protection against a newbie using it against you, but does you little good when you're looking to counter a pro player.

Don't confuse learning curve with a means of balance.

Lastly, you can hit both bombs from the catwalks in Missile with the Rifle AND the Uzi.

Maybe if you get a lucky shot, but it never seems to actually disarm the bombs for me. Basically, you end up emptying your whole clip and praying. It's by no means reliable.

Though personally I feel like the ability to snipe bombs should be removed. You should need to be at close range to take one out and should have to manually remove it. It'd lead to a lot less cheapness. 

[Spekkio]

Really? I find that hard to believe. The rifle kills in one shot. That by definition means you don't get to react once you've been hit. To make matters worse, it's one shot at long range.

Except that, for the third time, there is a delay between pressing the sniper button and being able to fire the gun. And going into scope makes a "click" noise that the spies can hear quite clearly. In other words, you can react to the rifle before the other person even fires a shot. It's not that difficult.

The uzi is the average all-around gun, and as such it has few weaknesses but no real glaring strengths.

The uzi has plenty of glaring strengths, mainly through it's insane full-auto capabilities paired with its pinpoint accuracy. The uzi is plenty effective at close and medium range, and healthpacks aren't always just around the corner.

If anything, I've found that the rifle is the hardest thing to counter, because there's really not much you can do against a merc shooting you at long range aside from get in a twitch duel with him where you try to SS to his head or chaff him before he shoots you in the head.

Or bind flashbang to quick use 1 and press left click. Gee, that was difficult.

I don't really see how "takes slightly more skill to use" is sufficient reason for making the weapon overpowered.

But the rifle isn't overpowered, that's the point. The way you act, you would think that the spies die through headshots 75% of the time. That's simply not the case at all. There really is no evidence that headshots are so prevalent that the rifle can be considered overpowered. On top of that, the spies have 2 gadgets that can disable the scope entirely, and you'd be quite silly to waste your mask by sitting in a smoke cloud with the scope on. You hear the little "click" of a merc going into snipe, you drop a flash or you move. It's really quite simple.

Really, the rifle seems similar to the shotty,  in that it's an insta-gib weapon, only, unlike the shotty, it seriously doesn't have any glaring weaknesses.

I would consider the scope delay, low ROF, below average full-auto functionality, and the inability to work through chaff and flash grenades glaring weaknesses.

Can you disable the shotty from shooting through the use of two different gadgets? Didn't think so.

I would go so far as to say that if funny punches weren't in the game, a rifle user would be a sitting duck against a competent aggro team. This is another reason I'd rather have one, well-rounded weapon like the PT rifle -- there is no way to know how your opponents are going to play before the game starts. Guess wrong, and you're fucked.

Maybe if you get a lucky shot, but it never seems to actually disarm the bombs for me.

Then you need to learn to aim. Disarming the bombs with uzi full auto is easier than scoping it, and it's certainly easier than being forced to use full-auto with the rifle because the spy is aggroing you in a sad attempt to prevent you from disarming the bomb.

Though personally I feel like the ability to snipe bombs should be removed. You should need to be at close range to take one out and should have to manually remove it. It'd lead to a lot less cheapness. 

How is that cheap??? That's like saying you have to be within X distance to shoot a bomb out with the uzi. That's stupid.

[InvisibleMan999]

Really? I find that hard to believe. The rifle kills in one shot. That by definition means you don't get to react once you've been hit. To make matters worse, it's one shot at long range.

Except that, for the third time, there is a delay between pressing the sniper button and being able to fire the gun. And going into scope makes a "click" noise that the spies can hear quite clearly. In other words, you can react to the rifle before the other person even fires a shot. It's not that difficult.

This must be an EAX thing, since I don't hear it very easily on xbox, except at close range, and back on PC I didn't hear it well either.

It'll be interesting if they take out EAX superhearing from the game, since I think then you may start to see some of the problem I'm pointing out a bit better. Right now, we're almost playing two different games, because you get advance warning from frags, snipes and so forth that I don't get.

The uzi has plenty of glaring strengths, mainly through it's insane full-auto capabilities paired with its pinpoint accuracy. The uzi is plenty effective at close and medium range, and healthpacks aren't always just around the corner.

I'd hardly call the uzi pinpoint accuracy. That's a gross exaggeration. I mean try shooting it across pirates or something, you will only graze the spy for minor damage even if the crosshair is right on his body and he's hardly moving.

Or bind flashbang to quick use 1 and press left click. Gee, that was difficult.

Can't you just turn on MT while in zoom?

Can you disable the shotty from shooting through the use of two different gadgets? Didn't think so.

No, but you can disable the shotty by just being farther away than a few meters.

I would go so far as to say that if funny punches weren't in the game, a rifle user would be a sitting duck against a competent aggro team. This is another reason I'd rather have one, well-rounded weapon like the PT rifle -- there is no way to know how your opponents are going to play before the game starts. Guess wrong, and you're fucked.

Yeah, possibly. I guess I don't really aggro enough (it's never been my style), so I'm not used to just going straight up aggro on someone. But the fact that aggro doesn't completely dominate rifle users generally leads me to believe that a rifle user can compensate for the weakness against aggro at close range.

It's also why I can sort of agree with a well-rounded weapon, but I don't feel it should be the PT rifle, I feel it should be the uzi. That's the very definition of a rounded weapon. Then I feel it'd be better to throw on attachments to it (in the form of gadgets) for specialized uses.

But that's a moot point since it's already been stated that PS will have 3 weapons. 

The question is how to balance them.

As you said, it's probably not a good idea to have over-specialized weapons. Which probably means we should move the weapons closer to 3 general purpose weapons.

Likely this means making the shotgun better at medium range, nerfing the rifle sniping ability a bit, but making its full-auto better. Possibly there may be some slight tweaks to the uzi.

One thing I felt would be kind of interesting is to make it so the uzi shots lose damage over distance more so than the rifle. Keeping the rifle as a better long range weapon, even on autofire.

The difficult balance is actually at close range, making the rifle weak against aggro but not too weak. The thing is that you can afford to have an uzi that can't snipe, and you're not screwed, but if you can't stop an aggro team, then that weapon is pretty much useless.

Though before extensive balance changes it's probably better off just to see how the game plays with less lag, no superhearing, fixed funny punching and so forth.

[Farley4Fan]

Except that, for the third time, there is a delay between pressing the sniper button and being able to fire the gun. And going into scope makes a "click" noise that the spies can hear quite clearly. In other words, you can react to the rifle before the other person even fires a shot. It's not that difficult.

In all my years of playing CT on xbox, I haven't heard that noise that much.  Except at close range, and sniping isn't that common at close range.  Must be an EAX sound.

[Spekkio]

It'll be interesting if they take out EAX superhearing from the game, since I think then you may start to see some of the problem I'm pointing out a bit better. Right now, we're almost playing two different games, because you get advance warning from frags, snipes and so forth that I don't get.

The game is going to be on the PC, which means people are going to have sound cards.

The question is, which sounds are supposed to be there, and which aren't?

I'd hardly call the uzi pinpoint accuracy. That's a gross exaggeration. I mean try shooting it across pirates or something, you will only graze the spy for minor damage even if the crosshair is right on his body and he's hardly moving.

It has pinpoint accuracy. The reason you don't do much damage is because...

One thing I felt would be kind of interesting is to make it so the uzi shots lose damage over distance more so than the rifle. Keeping the rifle as a better long range weapon, even on autofire.

This is already true in CT.

Can't you just turn on MT while in zoom?

Doesn't matter. Flashbangs still take you out of snipe mode, and the time to zoom out---> zoom in and re-aim is enough time for the spy to either get away or shock the merc. No offense, but between these last 3 statements, it's difficult to have a discussion about weapon balance when you don't even know the game mechanics.

No, but you can disable the shotty by just being farther away than a few meters.

Which is a poor weapon design for this type of gameplay. The fact that the shotgun doesn't hit anything beyond X distance says nothing about whether the rifle is overpowered, underpowered, or balanced. The point I was making was simply that the rifle's most valuable asset, the scope, can be disabled through use of the spy's gadgets. This, along with its low ROF, is what balances out the fact that it does the same damage from anywhere on the map when zoomed. On top of that, this dynamic is missing from the other weapons, which makes them much less interesting to use and play against.

It's also why I can sort of agree with a well-rounded weapon, but I don't feel it should be the PT rifle, I feel it should be the uzi. That's the very definition of a rounded weapon.

But the uzi is a specialty weapon. It specializes in full-auto, and can rape people at close and medium range.

Likely this means making the shotgun better at medium range, nerfing the rifle sniping ability a bit, but making its full-auto better. Possibly there may be some slight tweaks to the uzi.

If you do this, then the uzi and rifle start to overlap, and we're back to consolidating the amount of weapons the merc can have.

[MR.Mic]

The sniper rifle has that click sound and an animation of the merc bringing the rifle up to his face.

If you get caught off guard with a shot to the face, then it's your own fault.

[Westfall]

The sniper rifle has that click sound and an animation of the merc bringing the rifle up to his face.

If you get caught off guard with a shot to the face, then it's your own fault.

QFT

Everything Spekkio is saying here is really....accurate. Invisible, you have your points too, but Spekkio's advance is dead on. I really have nothing further to add.

[InvisibleMan999]

Doesn't matter. Flashbangs still take you out of snipe mode, and the time to zoom out---> zoom in and re-aim is enough time for the spy to either get away or shock the merc. No offense, but between these last 3 statements, it's difficult to have a discussion about weapon balance when you don't even know the game mechanics.

This I didn't know.

I never really use flash, since I don't aggro, so I'm not too familiar with what they do, aside from when they're used on me. And I don't often snipe so I was unaware they worked regardless of having MT on or not.

But anyway, we can argue about what we feel is "cheap", and probably not get anywhere as far as this discussion is concerned.

The real question is: what are we going to do about it?

The shotgun obviously needs some kind of fix (at least we can agree on that).

If you do this, then the uzi and rifle start to overlap, and we're back to consolidating the amount of weapons the merc can have.

This is true, but we apparently need some overlap if you can only carry one weapon.

If you want weapon choice to reflect playstyle.

One weapon + attachments: You've got one all around weapon, good at medium range. And you throw on a shotgun attachment or scope on it to improve its effectiveness at either close or long range. The attachments provide enough new mechanics that they feel like different guns.

Multiple Weapons: The weapons are highly specialized, but you can either carry more than one (perhaps extra weapons are gadgets) or you can swap out your gun at an ammo box. In any case, you're going to want the proper gun for the proper job. Sniping is more powerful, but the rifle is weaker at close range than it is now. The shotgun remains the uber specialized thing it was and the uzi probably loses a little bit as far as long range combat goes.

Similar guns: You've got 3 guns with a specialty, but the roles aren't writ in stone. Every gun is built for general purpose use, only some guns are better at certain tasks than others, but the differences aren't extreme. This would be more similar to something like rainbow 6, where you don't see huge mechanical differences between taking an MP5 or taking an M-16. They feel similar with only slight differences that differentiate them.

Really, it's probably got to be one of those choices if we're going to balance things out.

[Farley4Fan]

I'd prefer the similar guns choice then.  So far we've got the Assault Rifle (the MTAR).  Which is good for medium to long range combat.  The MP5 or the p90 would be the best choices for the uzi replacement, good for close to medium range combat.  As for close range only weapon, a desert eagle would be tight  ;D  Even though it's not totally the mercenary style and there wouldn't be any room for a launcher.  The only close range combat weapon I can think of that would work is a shotgun, even though it isn't too similar in looks to the other guns.

My preferences:
Assault Rifle - MTAR
Uzi - P90 or MP5
Shotgun - See picture below, I have no idea what it is but it looks like an awesome shotgun to have in this game

[Westfall]

nay of swapping guns at ammo box. nay to multiple weapons.

Don't you think the grenade launcher takes the place of "One weapon + attachments"? Really, it could take that shotty add-on's slot.

Rifle does not have to be touched.

[goodkebab]

I actually prefer shotty on maps that force close encounters with spies.  Of all weapons, the player must compromise the most when choosing shotty.

I do deny any advantage with lag.  ALL weapons suck on high ping,  and its because spies are not physically where  you see them even when you KNOW the bullets should hit,  they do not.

I dont know if this was explained,   but when spies get hit by bullets they go through an animation that prevents them from doing anything else.  This is the "uzi lag" everyone complains about. 

[Gawain]

folks, listen to spekkio. the pt rifle was perfect, a one weapon system actually offers more depth. i don't get why the devs are so fixed on a 3 weapon system when there are so much strong arguments for the pt rifle. plz overthink this, in my eyes it's total bullshit to try to balance 3 weapons when 1 weapon does the job in a way better way for gameplay dynamics and balance. heck, there's mr.mic and seefoo on the devcrew, what's their opinion on this??

[Overstatement]

I thought spekkio had changed his position. He did talk a lot about how to change the guns instead of getting rid of them in his long post.

[Gawain]

i think he'd still prefer a one weapon solution eg the pt rifle, but has accomodated to the opinion of the majority. i still wonder what mr.mic and seefoo think about this topic...