Unbalanced weapons

[Fungwu]

It seems to me as Project Reality goes from patch to patch, and the developers tweak the various weapons it has been a constant problem that in each iteration of the game one or two weapons are overpowered and unbalanced.

Way back when in .7 the hot weapon to have was the marksman rifle. It had one enormous advantage: Once you figured out the bullet drop for the range you were shooting at you could hit your target every time, frequently in the head if he was standing still. Although other weapons were not so useless that you could just recklessly roam the battle and slaughter people, marksman could frequently get scores like 20-1 in terms of kills to deaths. Basically the marksman rifle was so good, compared to other weapons, that every time you played you had to join a squad and grab one.


In .8 every weapon was effectively nerfed. The marksman rifle and everything else was made less accurate and generally slower to use. However there were jeeps. Jeeps had a few advantages, they were highly resistant to small arms fire, and the .50 cal they mounted was both accurate, full auto, and could kill in one shot, hit detection willing. In .7 there were jeeps, and they were just as powerful but light at rockets were both plentiful, and accurate. In addition there were powerful marksman rifles everywhere to pick off jeep gunners. In .8 the jeeps' natural predators were all defanged. Marksman rifles were made nearly useless, and light at rockets were reduced in number by 40% as well as being made dramatically slower and less accurate. The result, for me personally atleast, was that I purposely built Fire bases all over the map for the sole purpose that they would spawn lots of jeeps, which I could then use to run over and shoot the other team, who would be quite overpowered due to their weak and inaccurate weapons. In good terrain it was possible to use jeeps to achieve 10-1 kills.

Perhaps because of my, and others merciless jeep spam, in .85 jeeps were made much rarer, vodnicks and nanjings removed altogether and humvees and land rovers no longer spawn at firebases. However before long a ray of light shone: Scoped lmgs accurate in any stance. Truly the gods of PR have never smiled so completely upon one weapon system. The best LMG is the M249 and it has the following advantages: It is better than any weapon at close range. It is better than any weapon at medium range. Saving the sniper rifle, it is better than any weapon at long range. It has a bigger clip than anything else. It can be used in any stance. Unbelievably it is also spawnable. What makes the m249 a better weapon than say a rifle? If you aim a m249 at a target, and shoot, the bullets hit where you are aiming. If you use a rifle, or grenade launcher, or anything else and aim at a target the bullets don't hit where you are aiming.

Lets take a little example: You have a target at 300m and you are armed with a acog m16. First you must go prone for 5 seconds, then you shoot one accurate bullet, probably hitting. Next you must wait 2 seconds (more?) for your next accurate shot, by this time your target is running away. If you are perfect you can kill him with the next shot making your engagement time 7 seconds. But he could potentially take 3 bullets which would make a perfect engagement more like 9 seconds. And if you are not perfect and actually miss than it spirals out from there. If you have a saw you go prone behind something for 8 seconds. You pop up and take 1.5 seconds and center a perfect shot and you kill him in either the first burst, or in the next one or two, maybe 1 or 2 more seconds. So compared to rifleman who is exposed for 7-9 seconds ideally and likely much more. You are exposed for 2.5-4 seconds. If you are shooting at more than one guy this difference quickly snowballs.

But a m249 is not only the best at 300m. It is also the best at 30m. At 30m the average rifle bullet will exit the barrel at a 45 degree angle if you are standing. It is simply impossible to hit a guy 2-3 times when your bullets are leaving the barrel of your gun at oblique angles while his have the miraculous ability to fly straight. With such advantages whole new horizons of slaughter are opened, 30,40, even 50 and 60 kills to 1 death are possible. In short there are two modes of playing PR as of the latest patch. SAW gunner, or target practice.

I am not really complaining. I am glad that the developers have seen fit to make at least one weapon actually good. However it seems to get boring every patch, having to take the same kits every match because only one or two are good and everything else is weak and inaccurate. So I have this suggestion: When you point a gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher etc. at a target, and aim at it, why not have the bullets just hit and kill it? The reason that SAWs, and jeeps, and marksman rifles had such a huge advantage over everything else is that they were accurate, and everything else just misses.

PR is an ecosystem. If you make one thing weak, everything else becomes comparatively stronger. How much more so if you make one thing much stronger and everything else much weaker. To achieve balance there are two solutions. Make everything weak and inaccurate, or make everything powerful and accurate. Personally I would strongly prefer the later.

[Cassius]

And the SAW was even nerfed after the scope was added. I dont agree with the saw being as accurate as you make it to be. In engagements where both sides are entrenched and you can see only part of the head a marksman scores more kills while the saw shoots all over the place. It happened to me on jabal in the city, by the time the marksman had 5 kills I was still at 0.

IRL it does not happen that you point at something and hit, at least not beyond a certain range. A trained marine should be able to aim and hit quickly at 30m though. Making everything strong and accurate the way you prefer would result in firefights where one gets like 10 kills out of one clip.

That is not all that realistic, but then again, irl at least trained soldiers keep up a lead of wall to keep the enemy from moving, having less than 1 kill per clip.

[google]

Originally Posted by Cassius

And the SAW was even nerfed after the scope was added. I dont agree with the saw being as accurate as you make it to be. In engagements where both sides are entrenched and you can see only part of the head a marksman scores more kills while the saw shoots all over the place. It happened to me on jabal in the city, by the time the marksman had 5 kills I was still at 0.

What game have you been playing? I personally preferred prevoius firefights (.7, .75 era) as it didn't include the over-powered MG. I see 2 distinct problems.

1. The rifles are ridiculously innacurate. In, 50-100m engagements, the rifle tends to be ridiculously innacurate if you wait 2 seconds. You can't afford to wait a full 4 seconds due to the fast-paced nature of the situation. The auto-rifle, however, doesn't have to wait the full 8 seconds because the bf2 cone of fire is rather retarted and can't simulate weapon sway or muzzle climb. With the high rate of fire, he can be certain that one bullet will go to the center of his screen. It is this reason that auto-rifles can also prone-dive and noobtube their way through most situations. Despite the fact that a rifleman has thought everything through and has the upper hand on a hostile auto-rifle, he can still easily lose because the auto-rifle can abuse the engine with ease. This brings me to my second point.

2. I think the DEVs made an error when they gave the deployed mode the ability to be used while crouching and standing. In a game like RO/DH, the cover system is done beautifully and MGs can be powerful enough with out being able to abuse the engine. In PR however, the auto-rifle never actually need to deploy his weapon on anything. This leads to the infamously annoying jack in the box (which seems to be the biggest exploit of this weapon). He can sit behind cover with perfect accuracy, and pop up when he wants to take some shots but quickly go back down when someone notices him. Accuracy is not an issue to him.

But why even use realistic cover for MGs (walls, sandbags, etc.)? One can simply stand behind a hill and jack in the box with uber accuracy. Even if a rifleman has located the position of an enemy auto-rifleman jack in the box, he can't properly cover that hostile MG because either his rifle is too innacurate or he doesn't have the twitch to keep up with the auto-rifle's pinky finger speed.

In no way can the DEVs every hope to simulate realistic firefights in this game. They have tried to and it simply didn't work. We are still stuck with BF2 and due to so many other reasons, this is not, and never will be, a milsim. Overpowering anything in a game is never a good idea.

[[R-DEV]Outlawz7]

Well, the intention was to have SAWs control the battle as they should, but on one side you don't want them to be nerfed as then every rifleman will be able to pick them off on spot and make them worthless, then again an uber-rambo kit is in no one's interest except the guy sporting the kit.

[[R-CON]Tim270]

Have to agree, all the saw's have done is crate more camping while not really creating a more 'tactical' gameplay in that people should take more cover. Saw needs way more deviation when firing...

No I have not fired a saw, but I have played this mod long enough to know that gameplay comes a hell of a long way before realism should.

[503]

The best thing IMO is for the assault rifles to be more accurate and the SAW to have more recoil.

I was killed by SAW that went insta-prone and deployed with scope less than 20 meters away from me, and he didn't get hit once, even when I saw him first, and shot him at least 5 times semi-automatic crouched, with a G3 iron sight.

As google had said, the SAW does not need to worry about accuracy.

[[R-CON]Tim270]

And the weapon becomes more accurate as you fire, while suppressing which is insane.

[ankyle62]

Originally Posted by 503

The best thing IMO is for the assault rifles to be more accurate and the SAW to have more recoil.

I was killed by SAW that went insta-prone and deployed with scope less than 20 meters away from me, and he didn't get hit once, even when I saw him first, and shot him at least 5 times semi-automatic crouched, with a G3 iron sight.

As google had said, the SAW does not need to worry about accuracy.

well you have to consider how many rounds he can throw at you compared to what ypu can return. shooting a saw in a good prone position will be accurate.

i think the problem is how long it takes for people with scopes to bring up their scope and engage the enemy. it should be much quicker.

[[R-DEV]bosco]

2008 called, they want their thread back...

[Fungwu]

My theory is that the game would be better if all weapons were reasonably powerful, not just a few.

Here are some specific suggestions:

Bring back bullet drop and have it for all weapons. Previous versions of PR had bullet drop, I thought it was nice. It accomplished something of what deviation in later versions has tried to. It takes a while, especially at long range to get just how much above the target you have to aim, but once you have it figured out you can start plinking away. So, it gives your target some time to run away and find cover, but it is a more subtle effect than having your bullets come out of the barrel sideways.

5.56 ACOG rifles: The developers decided to give nearly every soldier a scoped, and in real life at least, accurate weapon. My thought is that the 5.56 should be just a great all round weapon. Very accurate at close and medium ranges, accurate enough to be dangerous at long ranges. A light recoil so rapid fire is achievable and bursts are accurate enough to put 2 rounds into a target at 100-200m.

In game terms make shooting while moving(with sights up that is) accurate to about 50m. Make shooting while standing for 0 seconds accurate enough to hit a target 75% if you aim center mass at 100m. Miniumm deviation achieved after 2 seconds, and accurate enough to hit a targets head at 200m with a 25% chance of hit while standing.

Have accuracy while prone good enough to hit a standing target 75% of the time at 250m after 2 seconds. There is deviation the increases after hitting WASD. There is also deviation for moving the mouse. Make the maximum for this low, but make it about 2.5seconds to hit minimum. Therefore if you hold the scope totally stationary over the target make it accurate for 25% chance of a headshot at 300m and for generally hitting things at 500m.

Remove deviation added after firing a shot, the current recoil is fine.

Remember you will also have to factor in bullet drop so even though the gun itself is accurate it won't be totally point and shoot.

Probably make 3 hits to the arms/legs kill, 5 hits to body armor, the main disadvantage of 5.56 is that it is weak, especially at long ranges. I don't know if you can set a bullets power based on the range of the target.

So this would make the basic rifle man very dangerous to anybody. The SAW is already dangerous enough, but other weapons can be made realistically deadly as well. More powerful grenade launchers with less deviation and faster sight in and reload times. Marksman rifles accurate out to 600-800m and also dangerous up close. Perhaps 1 shot kills to the torso for 7.62x51mm weapons. etc.

I think the game becomes better if the weapons are deadlier, because it requires a higher level of thinking to defeat the enemy. Right now the deciding factor is if you are holding a saw, or he is. If he isn't you can just stick your head up anywhere, walk around corners without thinking, if you get shot at, just go prone, wait 4 seconds and then pop up and kill him with your SAW.