My personal opinion that is overwhelmingly backed by how people actually play.
Actually not at all, show me an example please.
Well, there is this game called Darktide I play and pretty much every single person in it runs the same few weapons in it which are all low ammo high power weapons.
If you aare speaking about the bolter, it doesnt have low ammo at all. Especially for veterans that can almost double it and regenerate it giving them the facto almost infinite ammo.
I think you are confusing less ammo with low ammo.
Itâs not just the bolter, itâs a couple things like bolter, flamethrower, tan recon las etc. You pretty much see the same half a dozen weapons on every character once you go into malice + difficulties, because people focus their builds on being able to spike their firepower along with the gameâs difficulty.
All this weapons are not some powerful but once in a while use.
I disagree with flamethrower being overpowered, it has very big weaknesses and from heresy+ is much less dominant.
But bolter and recon las ARE overperforming and all this weapons evrybody uses them because they can use them constantly throuh all the run.
They are reliable, not situational.
To cut a long story short, I just wouldnât want my options to be limited like that.
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Most people completely ignore 90% o the weapons in the game and mostly seem to be worried about not being able to fill both slots with the most overpowered thing.
What was bad about it? You were fighting other people, not a dice.
With a lot of grind you could unlock increasingly more powerful gear. Armour, halo, better weapons, attachments etc. It all looked great on paper, looked great in the menu, until you tried to create a loadout. Take for example the best armor, which was ârelicâ level (i dont remember the naming anymore, apologies). Equipping that meant that you had to sacrifice your weapon/armour attachments, downgrade them, potentially downgrade the weapon itself, unequip grenades etc just to fit into the quota. You went into a shooting game with your ability to shoot gimped. Player skill was not making up for it. In the end people ended up never equipping a halo or the best armour, instead used the points for best weapons and attachments (you still ended up very tight) to not be at an impossible disadvantage.
So no, points for equipment is a terrible, terrible idea. Just as terrible as the guy who suggested in the early days of Spacehulk Deathwing that corridors should be one man wide, two terminators shouldnt fit side by side because the tabletop game is âone unit one laneâ. There is lore/authenticity and then there is game balance. The latter should always take precedence.
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And they are, but in a different way than youâre thinking. I donât have the same problem with seeing the same guns every game and even if I did, I donât really care that much because it doesnât impact the fun I have playing. No oneâs mentioned what gun anyone else has besides one game yesterday when someone asked what gun the other person was using out of curiousity because they were owning with it and it was an Agripinaa Infantry Autogun.
Autoguns are a spot between Bolters and Lasguns in terms of range, ammo and armor pen. They hit armored enemies harder than Lasguns but worse than bolters, but they have better range and a nicer targeter.
I myself prefer the semi-auto Kantrael Infantry Lasgun (crazy blessings on this one) as my Veteran gun of choice, the holographic targeter makes headshotting enemies so very easy, itâs great at taking out specials and ranged enemies like Scab Shooters and Dreg Stalkers. If I need to kill Crushers (which is basically the only heavily armored enemy you canât just shoot a different part of), I bring out my melee weapon after killing the trash around it, their attacks are so easy to dodge.
It depends on the stats of the gun you get too, Iâve tried a good portion of the guns out of curiousity and generally felt myself going back to the Infantry Lasgun. The Lucius Helbore Lasgun is really good at just popping heads of specials with a single charge attack BUT the bayonet is worthless and the sight sucks, not to mention in close quarters, itâs impossible to charge any attacks. The Columnus Braced Autogun absolutely shreds hordes at range and still does good armor damage, just murdering armored ragers and maulers⌠but you canât hit anything long range. The Accatran Recon Lasgun again does well against trash, but sucks against armor and again, the sight sucks compared to the Kantrael.
Itâs all about how it feels, if all you use is the meta stuff, you wonât not what you like using. You can do other things with guns too, you donât need a Plasma Gun to kill Maulers, just shoot their chest, they have weaker armor there. And Against Brawlers or Crushers, most of the time youâll have a Psyker who can blow their brain up.
For melee weapons, I liked using the axe because it one-hits trash and can blow through armored enemies. Though I use the Power Sword now because I didnât really have trouble with armored enemies anymore and thatâs good against hordes. Being limited to what stuff you can use together is just less fun. At the very end of the day, itâs a PvE game, itâs alright to just use what feels fun.
And not only game balance, thereâs how fun it is too. It might feel nice to be true to the tabletop because on the tabletop, you were all the terminators playing. When youâre not the only person playing, being the only one who can be in front sucks. The same in this, trying new things can be fun and if the game forces you to use a melee weapon you hate just so you can use a ranged weapon you like, thatâs just gonna make it less fun.
What if you canât use a weapon you like because it has been âbalancedâ by just giving it a heap of ammo you can die with instead of the ability to deal meaningful amounts of damage?
Thatâs not the only balancing tool they use as thereâs more to weapon differences than just the boilerplate front numbers. Ammo is one part of it, the most highly damaging weapons will have limited reserves as well as limited magazines and will have to reload more often. Do you have a specific weapon in mind that you think was âonly balanced by having a lot of ammoâ?
Smaller weapons are easier to keep out of harmâs reach with in close combat, you get more dodges with bigger distance and quicker, cheaper sprinting.
For the most part, guns arenât really made for âI might die here scenariosâ and if they are, theyâre sacraficing a lot of range that leaves you unable to do other things. Flamers are great and all but if youâre against a sniper, youâve got nothing as a Preacher.
Pretty much all the lasguns with the exception of the Mk VII Recon are basically not really used right now in higher difficulties because they lack the armor penetration and DPS to deal with a lot of enemies that you would simply delete if you used a bolter.
Autoguns are weird, ammo seems to be one of their biggest weaknesses but they donât really deliver despite it being so scarce. Revolvers are in a similar boat, they just have very little ammo and it seems like they were at one point intended to be a low grade secondary weapon.
Psyker staves are in my opinion heavily taxed for their theoretically infinite ammo. They have some of the worst DPS and anti armor capability in the game. They do have a role because they have superb horde clearing capability, but they donât make you feel like youâre the artillery on the team, because there are too many targets you are simply weak against as a psyker. Ironically Elites, which you are supposedly specialized in destroying are some of the hardest (or at least slowest) things to kill with a Psyker when you get into high difficulties.
I do think they made quelling peril a little too fast. It was too slow in the close beta, but now itâs so quick that quelling peril is often less of a hassle than reloading a gun, and that has some obvious ramifications on the amount of power that charged abilities can be allowed to have. It would be nice to have a little more of a sense that overusing psychic powers has consequences but they are very powerful when you do.
I think there is some circumstantial evidence in the game to suggest that in the original design of the game every archetype had a completely unique weapon lineup like the Ogryn does.
For example, the Psyker outfit on the store comes with a skin for a staff and a laser pistol, which to me implies that Force Weapon/Pistol was once the intended loadout of Psykers, and staves were a melee weapon that had a psyker power built in at some point (They have an actual full melee move set on their special button). At some point I think they changed it to make staves a ranged weapon, and stepped back from the idea that pistols are Psyker weapons.
All the promo material of the game also shows zealots as wielding autoguns. I think at one point Autoguns were simply meant to be worse guns wielded by a class that has very powerful melee options but lacks ranged options.
When they changed the game to have almost all human scale weapons freely equipable I think they kind of broke a system that they had already figured out that largely resembled the kind of thing Iâm talking about here, where classes had a selection of weapons that were tailored to offset their other slot. At least to me that explains why there is such a large number of weapons in the game that are neither iconic 40k weapons nor particularly desirable.
There is weird stuff in this game, for example:
Three different Combat Axes.
Three different Tactical Axes.
Three different Devil Claw swords.
Three different Maccabian Sabers.
Three different Turtolsky Heavy Swords.
Three different Cleavers.
One Power Sword.
One Force Sword.
One Chainsword.
One Eviscerator.
One Thunderhammer.
One Slab Shield
Whatâs up with that? Why make multiple versions of all the weird generic weapons that nobody really cares about but only a single version of the iconic 40k equipment everyone wants to use? The only way that makes sense is if at some point during development those weapons were meant to be limited somehow, like you had to earn the right to use them through character specialization.
Ironically, one of the main reasons everyone hates the store so much is because itâs always full of goddamn axes and devilâs claws. What chance to do you have of getting a decent thunder hammer in all that noise?
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Havenât really played much of Damnation difficulty (5), but have played a good amount of Heresy (4) with my Sharpshooter. Donât quite remember everyone using the same guns, though I was using that Infantry Lasgun for it and performed pretty well. It has lots of ammo to deal with all the ranged spam and for the most part, you donât really need armor pen against most specials and non-specials.
Thatâs somewhat fair, but thatâs not exactly an ammo thing, they have a heat system to make up for it, the Peril quelling seems pretty fine to be honest, if youâre BBing (Iâve only really played 1-3 difficulty, not leveled up Psyker fully yet), you only need to not be 100% when starting cast to not pop (and you can ult while blowing up to cancel it). So a tiny vent to 99% and a BB lets you do it fine. With BB you can hit through Bulwark shields and wear down armored enemies pretty easily too, as well as having the benefit of killing retreating enemies (Trappers, Hounds, Bombers) while theyâre in cover. Or prep one for them coming around a corner (though that doesnât feel quite as smooth as it should, clicking too quickly can cancel the charge).
Iâm not sure why only the âgenericâ weapons have multiple versions, but the reasons the others do is variation in how the weapons work and act. Adjusted movesets and statlines. I donât even really like the Force Sword on the Psyker, I use the Maccabian Saber more.
I wonât defend the store, itâs awful, but I also donât think the solution is to cap item builds. I do agree with some of the things in this post and what you said in that post is right too. If rerolling does work like that itâd suck. Clearly the game isnât totally finished, but I donât think itâs in the worst spot possible. Iâve played like 100 hours already and itâs been pretty fun, I miss leaderboards for joking around with my friends with, but itâs far from being a bad game where you canât try anything too.
There is literaly only one enemy in the entire game that is covered in carapace armor that is impenetrable to most ranged weapons, and is super dumb and slow, very easy to counter in melee. Carapace armor damage is hardly a priority. People donât pick bolter and recon las because they are super good to one enmy type, they pick it because they can take care of evry enemy.
While other weapons may be more balanced and have some weaknesses.
So the solution you offer is just limit to one overpowered thing? Sure that will solve the problem⌠meta gets even tighter.
Some weapons need some improvement in the damage side but a lot are alredy fine, you can easly one clip most of elite and specials with most of the autogans at medium range, if you increase their ammo capacity by one clip for example translate in amount of elites you can kill per resupply, increase clip size translates in increase burst dps that can be very useful in every situation. Some las guns are very accurate and precise making them eccellent for getting specials from distance or pesky enemies behind cover. From the arguments you are makig feels like you never played a shooter game before.
Yea, it is one way solve the problem that wouldnât require trying to make everything equally powerful. The issue is not that powerful things exist, the issue is that they exist inside of a set of choices where they are clearly the best, which makes other choices obsolete.
A narrow meta is when people can simply pick all of the best things at the same time. Making people choose which powerful thing they prefer to have creates more variety because different people will choose different things.
By your logic people will always choose the most powerful weapon in one slot and the best option in power that points remaining give you. With this metod you are just making more limit to possible combination of weapons, reducing chance of diversity.
The main problem with this system has been already pointed out, but I will add to it by saying you need to consider two massively problematic balancing choices that add into the problem.
Playing with a full group of friends on comms? Okay, no problems here, people discuss who will be focusing on X enemy type while someone handles Y and the other two take care of the hordes. They kit their loadouts based on this, and as such, now have a diverse selection of equipment so they can fight everything as a team.
Playing with a team of randoms? 3 Veterans in the lobby, everyone kitted out to fight only armoured enemies and a Psyker who can deal with Elites, so no one can properly fight the horde. Hm. Suddenly the system isnât exactly nice since the run is practically already done for, especially on the higher difficulties.
The Boltgun + Power Sword are noob baits, Power Sword is of course broken to all hel, but the Boltgun after a hundred plus hours of playing, isnât as awesome as one might think once they really look at the weapon. Sure, it is your âdelete this one thingâ weapon as well as âI need to really thin this horde down a bit.â but it canât do both at the same time in many cases, and being even remotely suppressed sees you waste tons of ammo as you need to still hit. Thunder Hammer is currently not as good as the Eviscerator unless you can coordinate due to hit registration. The Recon Lasgun is an issue, and something Iâd like to see addressed as well a little bit, however, I personally have never seen the reason of nerfing things as the first choice when you could very easily buff the weaker weapons to be more worth it.
There is also the fact that certain weapons are significantly overlooked because of skill issues. For example, the Assassin Axe is an absolute monster for the Zealot, if you know how to fight with it, making it almost outright a better choice over the Eviscerator and the Thunder Hammer which both have a flaw built into them.
The other thing to note is that the game right now is an absolute mess in general, a mixture of decisions bordering on Tzeentch-levels of madness to class balance that outright favours the Veteran in almost every possible circumstance. Itâs why right now I wouldnât be hyper focused on focusing on nerfing things or adding such a system into the game. What needs to be done first is give us the other half of the game we were initially promised, then go over the weaker stuff and bring it up to snuff and then we can see about the balance within the game.
As of now, when you move past Difficulties 1-2 to 3+, the thing limiting you the most is not your level but your weapons themselves. 3+ is a nightmare to do as a low level if you donât have the Boltgun as the Veteran for example, but the moment you do, even if you are only level 8 or 10, will let you run through it with the same challenge you had doing difficulty 2 at level 1. Since the game starts throwing heavily armoured enemies and Bulwarks with 270 degree impenetrable shield at you as commonly as Poxwalkers from level 3 onwards, you NEED those somewhat overpowered weapons if you want to do runs with randoms.
I donât agree at all. If the game actually acknowledges that a choice you personally enjoy is suboptimal and gives you something else to complensate you are free to make choices that would otherwise simply be bad.
But you can already do that? The only thing youâd be changing is limiting peopleâs ability to go wild with their choices. It is not going to stop the most powerful stuff being brought in as people have pointed out, much like it never has in the tabletop you used as the example. All it means is that the people who are there to simply have fun are the ones suffering due to the actions of a handful of people who need to be optimal and a team that doesnât do proper balancing.
All youâd be seeing for example is Veterans probably bringing the Power Swords and like Laspistols because of how overpowered the Power Sword is as the Power Field will let them tackle everything with little to no problems while the pistol allows them to take out the annoying stuff like basic grunt shooters.