It’s so stupid, so janky to maaaybe one tap most mobs with a headshot and then have to shoot a dog thrice with a bolt pistol, or having a poxer tank a bolt to the chest for no apparent reason. It’s idiotic to have the rocket propelled reactive grenades do less damage than a dinky revoler while also having every other drawback imaginable stacked on top.
I love the boltguns for their looks, sounds and animations - they’re iconic 40k after all, but for the love of god would it hurt you to actually make them perform on the “op” side of the spectrum for once? You didn’t seem to mind making plasma be able to cut through the planet’s crust and still come out on the other side dealing damage, so why can’t we apply that same mindset to the boltguns?
Yes. It feels like they’ve been quite wishy washy with cementing a niche with how bolt weapons perform and the methods they have used to limit their power have been detrimental to both their usability and fun.
By lore expectations, at a minimum, bolts should do similar damage to all armour and enemy types due to its armour piercing and delayed exploding shells, have little to no mass cleave due to said explosions and no damage falloff from distance due to its gyrojet nature. The slight AoE it has would also serve to help define its generalist nature.
I think its lack of cleave, minimum range and its relatively smaller ammo pool size would be enough of a downside for a general and high damage profile and allow other weapons that have a similar role maintain their own niche .
EG.:
the Z revolver would keep its accuracy, damage, impact and mass cleave, but have lower armour damage (it’s pretty much mostly rending’s fault currently) and significant impact, cleave and damage falloff over medium range.
Plasma primary still has its damage profile and ability to shoot through thin cover but the massive mass cleave is reserved for charged shots, as well as having a fair amount of damage falloff (less when charged) due to the inherent instability of the magnetic field holding the plasma. Impact also should be almost non-existent, since a blob of plasma has effectively no kinetic energy.
TL;DR: Bolter should be a generalist, high performance option that is restrained by minimal direct cleave and smaller ammo pools, not un-fun things like random drift and recoil.
Devs in this game feel like they have at least two camps and maybe three fighting each other. Back in college, I had a class where my class would do execution on another’s project. Their concept was doofy, and I went to talk to them.
I found the concept wasn’t one any of them liked, it was just the one they could disagree on the least, and they were at the knife and pistol stage of the creative process.
Now, I’m not in the meetings for Fat Shark, but the results suggest something similar.
Considering the ‘flat hierarchy’ and what it usually does to projects, this seems likely.
We’ve got the devs who want the game to be super hard fighting the ones who want a power fantasy, and the devs who want melee focus fighting the ones who want it to not be a VT2 clone.
Increase infected damage modifier to 80%+. Bolter should one-shot poxies, and shouldn’t struggle against dogs. It’s just dumb.
Fix the jitter so it doesn’t feel so bad to use.
These 2 changes would make the weapon way more usable on boss killer Vet and on Zealot.
If they also do something to make Exa Stance and the whole Vet left side suck as much as it does now, it would have something to be used as a “gun” and not just as a boss burst weapon.
BTW the Survivalist change hurt the bolter horrible on Vet (most out of all the weapons) and the ammo increase didn’t help that much. You still run out super quickly and need do be an ammo vacuum.
The boltguns in this game have never felt fun. Even back near launch, when the Bolter was hailed as OP, I couldn’t get into it. The thing is just too clunky, awkward, bouncy, slow, and it doesn’t help that they only include CA-compliant magazines.
It’s also odd that FS puts so much attention and tuning into weapons like revolvers and break action double barrel shotguns and small knives that feel more appropriate to other IPs.
IMO, this is the most sensible view of the situation. I really wish Fatshark would implement along these lines because right now there’s no point in bolt weapons when a stub pistol and plasma gun outclass them so badly
