It’s about visceral combat. Yes physics means that it should feel like turning a flashlight on and off but realism isn’t always fun. Compare gunplay in Mass Effect 1 with Mass Effect 2.
In ME1 there were no reloads and, iirc, no recoil. Guns felt about as satisfying to use as water pistols or laser pointers.
So in ME2 they gave them recoil and you had to reload them (the mags were styled as heat sinks) with all the loud clacking and slapping sound effects to go with that.
They make a joke about this in some vendor chatter:
“I wish they still made roleplaying games like they used to. These days it’s all ‘big choices’ and ‘visceral combat.’ I miss those old games where you had to remember to drink water, and it took you five hours real time to fly somewhere!”
Las weapons would realistically have recoil… if you can call the approximate force of a butterfly landing on a tree branch “recoil”, that is.
I do think that the Infantry Lasguns should have recoil simply to make them feel more balanced and satisfying. However, their current level of recoil is too high and just serves to make them feel miserable to use.
On ballistic weapons, the movement of the projectile and gases exiting the weapon during firing causes an equal but opposite movement of the weapon, which constitutes the recoil. However, there is no such physical force that applies when you fire with a laser.
This is light.
That’s exactly why I asked if it is lore accurate (or even if it is in the lore). Something is weird to see such weapon to have a recoil.
They apparently tried it without recoil and it ‘didn’t feel great’. Screen shake = more power fantasy or something. Considering they also described this weapon as ‘the ultimate headhunter’ I’m pretty surprised they didn’t at least lower it.
Light carries momentum, and momentum is conserved, so anything that emits light experiences recoil, and anything that absorbs/reflects light is “pushed” accordingly. It is just nowhere near as noticeable compared to the recoil of ballistic firearms.
I’m not sure. I think it’s to make them “feel right” but the Recon Lasguns prove that Lasguns can have negligible recoil and still feel great to use. The Infantry Lasguns have wayyy too much recoil, to a point of annoyance rather than badassery.
More precision by removing the ridiculous amounts of sway would help. So would stopping the flip-flopping on what exactly they are supposed to be. If they are supposed to be a high-precision weapon that focuses on headshots, then reward them as such. Give them crazy-high weakspot damage that can down anything that isn’t a full health rager, mutant, mauler, or orygn in one headshot and a rager or mutant in two headshots or one critical headshot. If they are supposed to be a general-purpose weapon then move their damage away from weakpoints and into the base damage so that body shots don’t feel like you’re tickling the target instead of using a weapon that can blow a fist-sized hole in a steel plate on its lowest setting.
Of course this just highlights a big issue that seems to plague Darktide’s ranged weapons as a whole. Weakpoint damage. Everything is balanced around being able to hit a small portion of the enemy that may or may not be where the game shows it and if it is in the right spot you still have to completely avoid the twiggy arms that somehow can stop bullets, lasers, and rocket propelled 20mm grenades while taking less damage than a meat-packed torso. Hence why the original volleyfire was so nice. It gave a straight up damage increase, which resulted in a lot of weapons that would otherwise were relegated to “head shot or bust” being able to actually kill in a reasonable amount of time
Then again I’m not surprised. Obesetuna’s resident twits and their assorted shills have made their desires clear. They wanted Darktide to be Vermintide 3: Melee in Outer Space. They probably got the license to 40k before even anyone asked “hey isn’t 40k the version set in a future where guns are actually the preferred weapon?” Then realized that if they went the whole melee-only route GW might just opt to induct them into the very exclusive club of companies who had a license from them and got it revoked.
Darktide is only the unique and interesting game because of it’s hybrid melee nature. And the nature of 40k means that melee is often emphasized and important, and has no bearing on the lasgun balance discussion.
Even the Graia vigilant infantry gun feels mediocre, and that one does not even get a scope unless you use a mod.
Like, i can get the gun to kinda work how i want it to work, but it requires a specific build which i dont enjoy playing, and its like, yeah i could use this gun for variety, but i might as well put on a build i like to play and use something else.
The recoil of these guns are insane, and they suffer the worst from suppression than any weapon to the point of becoming unusable. Why the hell do light beams even have recoil anyways. They could definitely all have their fire rate increased by a decent margin as well. Every time I come back to them and try and give them a second chance the conclusion is always the same, they’re bad. I like the las pistol though, despite it not having much love, it is at least usable, with the full auto mod at least.
it’s not recoil, it’s that the gun has terrible accuracy in general if you’re not aiming it because it’s not designed to be hipfired. gun has a wide damn cone when you fire with it to begin with and it recovers accuracy SLOW if you’re not sighting in.
this ain’t even a flaw, it’s a midrage semiauto rifle, you’re supposed to be sighting in before you fire, not trusting to hipfire like everyone does in autoguns and the recon lasguns. it’s good at the role it’s for, just good luck finding a way to fill that role in the average group at malice or higher.
yes i’m blaming the other players, and i’m right to do so. the worst thing that an happen to anyone playing vet is seeing a zealot on the team. ruins almost build that’s not shout and grenade spamming.
Its recoil only serves to annoy by exacerbating its relatively poor accuracy, regardless of whether you’re firing from the hip or not.
Delusional take. For example, the Mk IIb can’t even hit ANYTHING let alone headshots reliably because its recoil has your reflex sight bouncing all over the damn place.
It’s really not. It WAS prior to the Class Overhaul.
Jakal’s just doing his usual thing. Everything is the fault of “the community” or other players, without exception
Regarding recoil, lightest iteration and heaviest iterations have enough recoil such that they don’t have enough time to re-zero while using ADS, meaning you either have to slow down your rate of fire, or your aim starts to wander.
The more I play with the Infantry Lasgun, the more the issue to me is range its useful at. When you go all in on talents to ensure you can pretty much always oneshot crit headshot targets like Dreg Gunners and Ragers, you’re giving up two other things. Typically rending/brittleness, meaning your ability to hurt Carapace practically nonexistent. The other thing is close range damage. When built out well, it can really put out hurt at range, but the Infantry Lasgun is absolute dogshit at close ranges, its damage fall off is tremendous, dropping off between a third and a half of your damage output, leaving a huge gap between “long” range and melee range in your ability to hurt things, which is unfortunately where the bulk of Darktide gameplay takes place.
Don’t forget dodging discussion about any and all of the actually important stuff!
Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean! It just bounces all over the place unless you, like, fire it at 1/3 of its allocated RPM… which just isn’t plausible on Damnation+. You NEED to fire them as fast as you possibly can to achieve any sufficient level of DPS, and that’s not even considering how the Mk IX/MG XII has straight-up inferior DPS to the other two Marks.
Yeah. Infantry Lasguns are supposed to be versatile, but they’re currently hyperspecialised.
They tried to force these bizarre niches for weapons at launch. The recon has been slowly worked into a usable weapon, despite its intial purpose being equivalent to a flamethrower.
Now we just need to remove the other insane niches they forced on other weapons. And for the Infantry Lasgun; the multipurpose, standard issue rifle: its “long range headshots”.
… In a horde melee 'tide game?
@FatsharkStrawHat I really don’t think that headshots should be an expected form of play, they should instead be treated as they are in other games: Bonus damage awarded for skill, on all weapons. Not something that is required, to use a specific weapon type.
I should note that some weapons are obviously better suited to precision fire, but it shouldn’t be a required form of play in this particular game, I think.
Sure, but the point was really about the range issues.
Not being an anti-crusher weapon in and of itself is fine. The problem is more that an ILG that can potentially one shot headshot a Dreg Rager or Scab gunner at optimal range, may require as many as 10 body shots if you find yourself at close range and unable to take careful aimed shots. That’s a huge swing in damage output dependent on distance and shot placement. There’s a few maps where that range can be really well put to use, but most don’t really feature areas where it’s super useful (especially if you’re not trying to agro stuff).
Meanwhile other weapons that can deal with Crushers (or at least can be made to deal with them) can still reach out to those longer ranges to deal with targets pretty well most of the time, while also being dramatically more effective at most engagement ranges. An Infantry IAG that may need 3-5 shots (which fire much faster than the ILGs) to kill a Dreg Rager at close ranges with headshots and will only need maybe 7-10 body shots at long range to kill the same target, meaning it’s only reducing its damage output by 2x outside its optimal range and shot placement, not reducing it by almost 10x as with the ILG. At the same time, that IAG can be much better built out to deal with Crushers as well by investing in Rending/Brittleness in ways that the ILG generally can’t if it wants to be optimized for long range headshotting.
TL;DR Not being an anti-crusher weapon and trading armor pen capability for range is fine. The problem is the drop-off in close range effectiveness or non-optimal target placement is stupendous relative to other weapons that can deal with Crushers while also being able to still reach out effectively to most targets at a distance.
