I dunno where to put this or how to properly frame it but one of my fears with a game like this is there’s a tendency to normalize out all the sharp edges and interesting mechanics over time.
For example: The bolter has a terrible clunky draw time. This makes the weapon have some nice drawbacks to its power. Right now its not as powerful as it should be though. I think its limb and body damage should be the same value (for example). Whereas plasma just doesn’t hit lims. This would allow limb-kills more consistently on bolter and would buff the weapon to make it stronger. The weapon needs a bit more umph agasint some targets and an ADS fix. But the right choice here is to buff its power, not make it more usable. I fear it will simply be made ‘more usable’ instead. Thus making the weapon feel less interesting, creating less room for skilled play.
This did, in fact, happen with the Thunder Hammer. As much as the Thammer was hard to use before with its self stun, rather than buff the weapon against key targets and make its costs have rewards, the weapon has consistently been normalized. Special attacks can be fairly easily spammed with the twice reduced self-stun time.
Chain and Force weapons have self-disabling assassination attacks. Attacks that feel good, fluffy, and have a high skill floor to use in combat. This skill floor is a draw to players like myself who want to do something risky with good rewards as payoff. With practice I have taken an ability that was largely lamblasted in the early days as too risky for high tier play and can now use it sequentially against large numbers of elites. Fighting groups of crushers with it, for example. Will this attack be normalized out? Perhaps they will allow us to cancel this high-risk-high-reward attack at any time! Wouldn’t want anything difficult to get in the way of an easy time.
Drawbacks give weapons character. Please don’t erase them all in the interests of some noisey complainers (I do not have anyone in particular in mind) who want everything to be as easy to use and powerful as a combat axe. Don’t make every weapon as simple as that. Leave in your complexity and drawbacks, its where the game actually shines the brightest. Don’t become Warframe. I quit that game because the combat is mindless. Thanks for reading my TedX presentation on weapon character.
Seems a bit extreme to make a new thread to specifically ask for the baseline of the thunder hammer to not be raised out of fear of “ereasing unique qualities”
Nothing wrong with that, obviously.
You know my stance on that front.
Just to make this clear right out of the gate; I believe that, truthfully.
I will however say that it’s funny to me that you would make this thread to specifically ask for this request after I asked for what you’re afraid of here
I would prefer the bolter have a long draw time where you can still shoot right after swapping, just really inaccurately. Like actual spray-and-pray accuracy until you can properly ADS, which I’m fine with taking a second or two. In fact, shooting right after drawing could make ADSing for accurate shots take longer than if you didn’t. Weapons should feel distinct but also fun to use, and there’s a lot of room for creativity here beyond “big damage means everything is slow” (which I’m not saying is the main point of your post).
I do agree that avoiding homogenizing weapons should be a key point in weapon design. I’m just not married to bolter draw time specifically.
Same with “Armor type weakness”. What didn’t disappear with balance changes just doesn’t matter due to rending/brittleness highly available everywhere. It makes every weapon feel too samey.
I definitely was just thinking of an aggregation of various ideas i’ve heard and not of any one person but I was concerned someone might feel like I was targeting them if I didn’t mention explicitally that I wasn’t lol. I’m an ideas person not a people person by nature. It has its ups and downs.
Did you? I’ll have to find that post so I can argue with you about it
I get where you’re coming from. I like specialist weapons. That being said…the push to normalize is a product of most of this game’s gameplay loop, which is based on pairing with randoms. Thankfully, this is now much easier to work around, since you can see people’s weapons and work around that to specialize, but stuff is still going to be focused less on being good at one thing and more at being able to fight decently in every situation.
This applies even beyond weapons imo - half the reason people are so annoyed at the vet skill tree is it lacks space to branch out and grab non-specialized talents to cover gaps in your build.
Weapons having such strong personalities, created through unique mechanical differences like you’ve pointed out, really gives this game depth and life. As balance patches keep rolling out, I feel enticed to try weapons I hadn’t really considered before. And these tangible, playstyle-defining intricacies are a real treat.
This is my favorite part, because I just still can not click with these weapons. But the nod to the skill floor there feels so true.
Let’s see the highlight reel! Someone do one for parry too!
I am not someone to take offense but I wont lie, my instinctive reaction was to feel talked to when you mentioned the thunderhammer baseline.
Not exactly to be accurate but I did advocate for the baseline of the thunderhammer to be increased to two zombies per swing to make it better against hordes but not to change the role of the weapon.
That being said…the push to normalize is a product of most of this game’s gameplay loop, which is based on pairing with randoms.
Let the PUGs PUG! There will () be a difficulty so tough that it will require the tightest squad of highly-specialized operatives working at maximum efficiency. Or so I hope!
I agree but the thing is you have TWO weapons. So one can make up for the other if you’re pugging. Which I do. This is a good design IMO and makes some weapons come alive in varried kit. Like Thammer and Shotgun/Flamer or Grenade Gauntlet and Bullybutcher Cleaver. the more things get normalized into paste the less fun it is. You’re just equipping skinned kill stick 1 vs skinned kill stick 2 and there’s no game there. Warfrme quickly became “press ult to win” and has never really stopped being that. Warframe powers are all derivations (usually) of kill everything in the area and the guns are just derivations of kill everything in a line or kill everything in an aoe. I’m oversimplifying of course but its a far cry from what I started playing where movement tech like wall running and dashing and actually doing melee combos was important.
It’s more on the principle and quite frankly I must agree with @Reginald here.
Every nerf and buff so far has more and more streamlined the weapons to be closer to each other.
A few patches made them more unique again, but those changes were promptly critisized.
Not everything must be perfectly balanced with each other and many players making demands or wishes fail to account for numerous factors when it comes to balancing.
A good one to mention is overall ammo economy or reload and wield time.
Many players just compare raw damage numbers and fire rate and call it a day. And it doesn’t do the whole roster justice.
Oh, I agree. I’m just pointing out the kind of thing that drives it. Heck, PS and lasgun was the single most common vet build until the overhaul made autoguns competitive, just because it was so well-rounded.
I personally never touch autoguns because they lack the 40k ‘feel’ and I prefer to specialize rather than just have Standard FPS Gun.
i hate nerfs, its the devs way to shut out any semblance of fun, but as much as i hate those i couldn’t agree more with you
in a warhammer game normal swords, knifes, solid projectile weaponery and lasguns has no business outperforming the hi tech stuff
when this game was in beta i loved it because they nailed eveyrthing (but chain weapons, those had a rocky start)
the low tech weapons were meant to be played at the lower levels, but did little to no damage in higher levels, the original concept was to unlock more powerfull weaponery as you progressed into the game as a player
this original concept is gone, now with the right build shovels can best power swords at horde clearing, this is just unacceptable
finding a meme build to run in high levels keeps getting harder and harder, if they buff shotguns there would be none left (funny because shotguns are meant to be better than most weapons that outperform them in the current patch)
Sadest thing I have heard all day tbh.
But even if we account for that design paradigm being lost there can still be some semblance of balance and character as I have proposed many times. More powerful weapons can just be stronger while having obvious drawbacks in usability or flexbility. Like the thammer is a great version of this where its horde clear is bad so its elite clear can be good. Yaknow, if the hammer was good instead of trash.
definitely agree, i like when weapons have specializations. The problem is right now the balance of the specialized weapons has been pretty poor where some are just flat out worse than the weapons that can do it all. They need to buff the any certain weapon’s specialized use into the extreme to counter act that they cant do it all. Biggest example thats been a hot topic is the fact that thunder hammer kinda sucks at horde clear, it Definitely should be one shotting the priority targets with its charged state to make up for it in comparison to the indyCrusher that can beat down the big targets really effectively while also having amazing horde clear
Agreed. The Crucis needs to be something that turns elites and ogryns into paste in exchange for not doing jack (beyond maybe emergency crowd control on the heavies) to hordes.
Though with how Fatshark massacred horde sizes to let Xbox hardware work with stuff, I don’t think we’ll be seeing that any time soon.
) be a difficulty so tough that it will require the tightest squad of highly-specialized operatives working at maximum efficiency. Or so I hope!