Feedback Required [1.9] Weapon behavior & rebalancing

I am trying Abandoned Construction Yard POI to test the new handgun balance. v1.9.1 4013

This is unmodified, as Eleon set it up for single player in Empyrion, medium enemies.

Weapons and defences ought to be up to the challenge the game presents and IMHO after completing the POI core switch with much difficulty and reloading to avoid numerous deaths by gank and to try different weapons and tactics to deal with the threats IMHO many weapons are not useful as they are too nerfed.

It is meant to be a very hard POI, I get that but there are only a few weapons which are viable. Rocket launcher, minigun, T1 sniper.

T1 shotgun in a pinch is still better than T2 vs abomination.

With the exception of the rocket, these are only effective if you go for headshots. It has become so exaggerated that body shots are wasted ammo, do no significant damage and do not slow target much or for long. I think body shots should do more damage and have knockback commensurate with recoil.

IMHO the target response to hits is currently tuned for minigun. No other rapid fire weapon has that kind of magazine size so they are all at a disadvantage in that regard as they dont knockback much and reload takes long enough to kill the avatar. The minigun magazine size is balanced by massive recoil for the minigun but the smaller magazine weapons have all the recoil and not enough damage per magazine which makes them non viable. If you want recoil with small magazine then add damage, make it worth the misses.

The T2 assault shotgun is very poor against abomination and alien scorpion, frequently fails to finish abomination with one magazine, possibly because they dodge about like digital sprites, (because the game now stoops to using the flaws in the engine to make life difficult for the player, inertialess dodging NPCs is one and inability to step up or over uneven floor is another and the hitbox not matching the graphical model for blocks is another negating LOS targeting around corners. I don't think the object of combat should be to annoy players to death with engine glitches.)

Pulse rifle is very weak, like the T2 shotgun, the nerf to per shot damage is too much and the magazine too small for the nerf. Does not perform well against multiple or single targets.

Assault rifle white model in night vision blanks out the ammo count but has acceptable performance for lvl3 tech. Is not viable in this POI's engame. Recoil is too high and damage rate not high enough to be effective here but its better than both SMGs.

Laser SMG feels very underpowered and recoils way too much (0.55 almost the same as minigun), which is the one thing a laser weapon should not do. Not credible IMHO. Plasma has mass, laser does not, everyone knows this. Should not recoil if its a laser, should be plasma if it recoils.

Laser rifle is much better in this regard and damage makes it viable for single targets but not viable for multiple.

SMG is weak even against lone targets. If you can get it to stay on target it takes most of the magazine on headshot to kill an alien scorpion which is not rewarding. It has a recoil (0.7) more than the minigun but has no compensating power or duration and is just too unweildy for the damage it does. Early game assault rifle is better in every regard and even starter pistol is better than SMG. Has too small a damage per magazine to be much use for this POI where you get ganked repeatedly. Double damage per shot and it might be viable.

Hand cannon, has good damage per shot, provides much better value for ammo cost and is useful in one to one situations but for multiple targets in this POI it has too small a magazine. Reload kills so not viable in many situations. T1 sniper beats it every time with, unbelievably, a higher fire rate. Double the fire rate and go mag 12 and this might be useful. 7 is stingy Ebenezer Scrooge balance.

Flamethrower is completely useless against single or massed abomination, when it should shine since you cannot make fuel for it and its a specialised biohazard weapon. Useless. Did I say useless? I meant ... useless, because its ... useless ... completely. It should have very high damage aganst biological targets only, very short range about 4 blocks max and massive AoE damage plus persistent damage residue for say 15 secs so that firing ahead of the target becomes viable and firing at the target causes mounting persisent AoE damage to stick to the target. Should be devastating vs abomination groups but is not.

The switch weapon times feel as clunky as reloads. That's annoying when it gets your avatar killed. I think they should be slicker, maybe even speed up with skill level.

Last but not least, crosshairs are too obscure. Too small too fine and easily lost, I looked for a way to make them more visible and could not find one, they need to be bigger and better marked, too hard to find when firing and get lost in the impact effects.

Honestly I think its been nerfed too much and without considering the extreme challenges which some POIs represent, including story POIs which are comparable to this POI. I would say in a game like this a weapon should make you feel powerful and most of them dont now and are embuggerances not worth an inventory slot. Its too annoying and not satisfying enough. I dont really enjoy this kind of POI if I dont have what I need to tackle it and will either ignore the story or set it on easy to play it if it is going to stay like this.

What this weapons nerf does IMHO is turn medium setting for enemies into hard. Last time I tried hard setting it was way over the top. That needs untangling. I would suggest balancing weapons for medium and make hard less ridiculous, so it is actually playable but still harder than medium, then add an impossible setting if you want that but medium needs to be medium not hard. Also a word to the wise, irritating players is not the same as entertaining them.

That is my 2c and I am sincere, have been playing Empyrion since Scott Manley's YouTube review 2015 seven years ago. I want to see it succeed and have seen it change a lot and am not against change just wanted to let you know how the current changes effect my play experience.

 

I agree,
completely,
with every single thing boolybooly said.

Ground combat sucks. It's annoying and frustrating. It doesn't provide a challenge, but rather provides irritation and a mounting list of reasons to turn the game off. I hate it and no longer have interest in ground combat whatsoever.

The status effects update a while back just made all the usual meds worthless, and every ailment seems to starve the player within a few seconds. Now the enemies which were already damage sponges on top of being poor-responding, glitching through blocks, and embarrassingly inaccurate hitboxes and melee ranges, are given a massive buff because all the main weapons have been made completely useless.

Now, I don't wanna be that guy that just complains without providing a solution, but I ain't gonna go rebalance all the weapons and then make suggestions... so... How about just go cheat off Vermillion's work, or at least look into it to see why so many players prefer his rebalancing in RG. I'm talking strictly the ground game here, as personally I don't play his scenario as I exclusively enjoy the vanilla vehicle balance (which does need work, but that's another topic). So please take it to hold more significance that I'd suggest the above when otherwise I don't touch RG.

 

I agree with boolybooly about Laser SMG, Pulse rifle & Laser Rifle.
Personally I was playing in the hardest difficulty but realized these three weapons cant kill a single bug.
Even after reducing my enemy diffculty (cuz I was tired of dying in one-bite while wearing epic heavy armor) these three weapons still cant cut it. Pentaxid is way too precious to waste it and do less dmg than with the handgun canon.

 

I agree the damage is underwhelming, it takes 4 shots with a t2 shotgun to kill a level3 alienbug02 while hitting it in the face. I tried to use the laser combine on a lev6 commando cyborg and it took 4 clips to take just one down. The weapons just don't scale well. Perhaps if there was a way to upgrade them it would help carry them further. I know they are suppose to be diverse but as is I'm just looking for what can kill something.

 

Well spoken boolybooly!

I completely agree.
I especially agree about the crosshair! - Give us options for crosshair colors/visibility PLEASE! ... Or just 'hardcode' them more visible!? The red color is not ideal... It tends to 'blend' to much.
I would add that the new 'med-kit' sizes and healing amount could use some looking at. The old 250HP size is quite expensive to make. I like that making health kits has become harder though.
Ground combat needs some serious love. Ideally improvements to AI pathing to make enemies move more 'logically' or predictably?... Not glitching into blocks? Make their sound clues make more sense? (so you don't hear enemies on 'unreachable' floors above or below)
- But disregarding that (not easily done i assume) ... The ground combat weapons should make you feel powerful and able to clear a tough POI (medium difficulty) with zero deaths - if you play it well - without spending half your play time reloading and consuming healing items

On the specific weapons:
Especially the nerfing of the T2/Epic shotguns pains me. Used to be my 'go to panic' weapon (perhaps was somewhat overpowered?)... Now - instead of one-shotting things - you don't even 'one-clip' things every time.

 

I think the developers don't actually play their game, because if they did, they would recognize the fact that there are many things broken - weapon balance among them. I am a new player and I find the so-called easy setting rather hard when it takes multiple shots - even clips - to take down a single enemy.

Furthermore, making the upgraded weapons seems pointless. Many do half damage at a higher rate of fire that equals the same damage per second at twice the ammo usage. What is the point of that?

The only weapons I have been using is the heavy sniper rifle for head shots from afar and the shotgun for spiders. However, even the sniper rifle takes a full clip to take down one of those turrets inside story-line POI's. I found three epic shotguns, but they are useless at 55 damage and recoil of 2, vs the shotgun 100 damage and recoil of 2.1. The RoF is pointless if the shots after the first all miss because of the recoil.

I don't like save-scumming, but it is the only way to get through ground combat or the frustration would have made me quit a long time ago.

While you are at it, balance the armors and boosters too, because getting killed by a spider in 5 seconds is not fun!

 

I think another problem with deadly bullet sponge enemies is that the AI increase their stats with levels, players don't.

If the player levels up, all you get is a few points to unlock tech. Your attack, defense, health, resistances etc. stats pretty much stays on level 1. Enemies get stronger as their levels increase, the player stays as weak as s/he was at the start of the game.

So levelling up your character is actually a massive disadvantage. The higher your level, the bigger the handicap against AI enemies.

 

Enemies do not scale with the player level.
That is, if you level up, it does not affect what level enemies you see. The only thing that affects enemy level is planet type and random chance. (Based on the configuration)

If you see level 10 enemies, it's because that planet is a hard planet, or because that POI spawned as level 10, nothing to do with player level.

Leveling up does allow you access to better weapons (granted, only a few are decent from what you can build). For better armor, you need to find it or buy it.

 

I know, I was explaining it in typical RPG terms.

To put it in less convoluted terms: A level 10 NPC do more damage and has more health, a level 10 player do the same damage and has the same health as it was at level 1. NPCs increase stats when they "level up", players don't.

That's why all my planets are set to lowest difficulty to maintain an equal playing field without advantages and handicaps. Everyone stays on level 1. No bullet sponges and combat is more fun for a 1 man army.

 

I agree with all of this. I am not a fan of bullet sponges, it's lazy game dev. I've also noticed that pretty much any weapon with a scope or zoom gets progressively less accurate the higher the zoom level is due to the "jumpy" aiming behavior. This is the exact opposite of the point of a scope!

As far as crosshairs, I would prefer the option to configure crosshairs for weapons in the options. Let us assign crosshairs for each weapon if we want, and have a bunch to choose from. Personally I prefer a single dot crosshair. Maybe I was spoiled by Unreal Tournament 2004 which had some nice crosshair options. Then again UT2k4 is a nearly 20 year old game. You'd think a game that nailed all this stuff almost two decades ago would have set the standards for future FPS games... Apparently not.

 

I feel like weapon balance is bad and it has been from the very start. With but a few exception weapons feel whimpy and especially rifles feel same-y.

Give them more sane stats.
Pulse rifles could all use double the ammo capacity (at least). Lower damage than assault rifles, but higher RoF. That's their schtik.
Shotgun starting with only 5 shells mag? Give them 8 to start, that's a minimum for modern shotguns, don't make humanity regress.
I could go on, but you get the gist I hope.

 

feedback to weapon stats and new child 6 features for wepons.
As many already wrote, hand weapon needed to be reworked. For example SMG there is no reason to use it.

So I reworked almost all weapon for me and now it is more fun to play with.

I took the damage of pistol as base reference for all other weapons. e.g. assault rifle have in real 3-4 time more kinetic engery than pistol rounds. so i changed base damage, ROF, Magazin capacity (which assault rifle today has 20 rounds? we are in the futur 30 should it be at least!) and also recoil .
One big impact that reduce fun to me was Holdtype
HoldType: 15 for Assault and PulseRifle dont fell well i recommed HoldType: 16.
Also ROF of the shotgun are to low, i increased to ~110rpm, is value from real life pumpgun, it feels much better.
After all changes, now it feels much better makes more fun to play without being overpowered, i still dying from time to time.

I also played with new child 6 features, except recoil and movement and running stats all outher have no big impact to my fun level.

I also created a new heavy semi-automatic assault rifle using sniperrounds and the model of the shotgun with reflex sight, i use it for close and mid range combat and works weel against turets.

By the way it would be good to have more weapon model with reflex sight, scopes are often not usefull in close and midrange combat.
It also would be good if weapon would be customized like the armorsuit
e.g. scopes can be replaced by reflex sight, modification that increase magazine capacity but increase weight of recoil or reduce reload time etc.

also weapon weight should have impact to walking and runing speed same speed with minigung or pistol is not logical and this would make the selection of the right weapon for combat more intresting