Weapon Balance: Rifle Problem + Solution

[ballist1c]

Like it or not, the rifle in vanilla 1.3.1 RE is OP, and this is beecause of the massive splash damage, caused by a large explode value. This enables a tactic that is both incredibly annoying and frustratingly effective. A player who does it a lot, for example, is MelvinSour. The tactic simply is to double-jump repeatedly and shoot downwards at your opponent.
While this may not sound so bad, in reality the down player cannot score the massive amount of splash that the jumping player is getting, and it gives a huge advantage.

My solution, then, after a ton of testing, is two tweaks:

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rifleexplode1 16

This will cut the splash in half, and eliminate any silly tactics. People will actually have to aim AT the person, instead of shooting at the floor.

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rifledamage1 38
rifledamage2 175

A slight increase in primary damage (+6) should compensate for the severe change, but not overcompensate either.
Secondary damage is increased to get more people to scope the rifle in non-insta modes.

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rifleadd 3
riflemax 3

rifleadelay1 1000


A smaller clip (3) and longer time between primary shots (+250 milliseconds) will force players to make every shot count.

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riflerdelay 1500

For those who shoot 3 times, and cannot land a hit, I suggest decreasing reload time slightly ( -250 milliseconds).
This change is optional as it might make the reload animation look a bit wierd.

Feedback welcome ^^

[Rabidbutton]

Thank you for bringing this up Ballistic, I don't usually get frustrated with this sort of thing but this one caught me by surprise, it is difficult to shoot someone that is constantly jumping up and down, so that combined with being constantly bombarded with explosions that almost never miss and deal a tremendous amount of damage seems pretty over powered to me, plus it discourages people from using the rifle scope...

[quintux_v]

A player who does it a lot, for example, is MelvinSour. The tactic simply is to double-jump repeatedly and shoot downwards at your opponent.

I happen to do that a lot as well, I agree that it's probably overused. Plus it's like a quick-reloadable rocket blast.

EDIT: was just on a server now, and there was Melvin, using it to win every round of a duel deathmatch. I've got a video as well.

[qreeves]

I've tried different things in the past, but only got complaints from those faithful to the rifle (it is the instagib weapon too, so people tend to get very picky about it), and have modified this topic into a poll. If the vote passes, I will implement the suggested settings in SVN. The poll will end in ten days.

[Evropi]

I agree it is OP but only due to its splash, though I'd rather see the splash cut by a quarter and damage remain the same. Increasing the damage would make it far more OP than it is now. 'Compensating' would, in my opinion, make the rifle overpowered. But reducing the splash would definitely bring it to a logical level.

And consider that by the time you shoot a player with a rifle, they have already lost quite a bit of health if there's, well, more than one player in the game. But if you cut it by half, it would be very hard to hit people at all. I think ballist1c's solution is a bit extreme and that cutting splash by a quarter (or a third) would be a nicer 'third way' between the two extremes. Good on you for raising this point, though.

NOTE: I only really use the rifle in instagib and I'm usually the one feeling its effects rather than using it (though I do use from time to time, on maps like Canals), so I'm (generally) unbiased.

[Dratz-_C]

Hi folks,
I like the capability to do meaningful splash damage. It changes my strategy from shooting dead on the player. Other than dead on shooting, I snipe. All of these feel to me like the 3 legs that hold up the table that is the shock rifle. Marginalize one of them and I am not sure that it would stand, at least not for me. For the rifle to get worse other weapons would have to get better to make up the difference so that people will still enjoy playing. As for what particularly might be done to the other weapons I have little idea...because I still like the shock rifle the way it is now. We will see what everyone says over the next 10 days.
Cheers

[ballist1c]

@Dratz:

First off it is not the shock rifle, it is the sniper rifle.
"MEANINGFUL" splash damage? You are thinking of the wrong weapon. A rifle is meant for long range shots; we already have the shotgun for your flak needs and the plasma for your splash damage needs. We have given the rifle capabilities that other weapons should have, and THAT is why it is unbalanced. You SHOULD be shooting at the player with a sniper rifle, that is backwards thinking my friend.

And you obviously have not played against MelvinSour in duel mode, else you would know how INCREDIBLY frustrating the jumping tactic is when used against you instead of for you.

Anyone else, I HIGHLY suggest you try out these variables ingame before posting and voting.

[ballist1c]

As mentioned by Rabid, too, the explosions from splash have pretty big hitpush as well. Those make it twice as hard to land a shot, and deal twice as much damage.
Fighting back is near impossible, as you have none of the splash the other player has, and you will be dead in under 3 seconds anyway.

Bear in mind that the rifle is SUPPOSED to be our long range weapon; currently it is used for medium-to-short range most of the time. This means two things:

1) our system is horribly unbalanced, as we have no long range
2) that the plasma is practically useless, as it is the original short-range splash weapon
3) The flamer is less use, as you cannot catch fire when you are not close to the ground.

[Dratz-_C]

Hi ballist1c,
I just called it the shock rifle because of the "Player has been lasershocked" obit message. Do you think that there may be ways to improve the versatility of the other weapons rather than or before stripping the rifle? I think the smg got better and more interesting with the burst secondary fire. What about allowing someone to charge the flamer by holding mouse 1 and then 2 so that you can charge your entire canister if you want and then release mouse 2. While you hold mouse 1 the flamer stays charged either release mouse 1 and have your canister made available for primary fire without needing to reload or press mouse 2 again. If you choose to press mouse 2 a hemisphere of heat fires at the enemy player powered in proportionate in size and power with the amount of your magazine you charge and expend. Alternatively the flamer might multiply the effects of fire 1 and fire 2. What if a player could spread some flames with secondary fire and then rekindle the trail/s of flames spread from secondary fire with primary fire. The combination would be greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe we can we brainstorm some ideas for the other weapons. There is more than than one way to skin a cat but if there is only one cat we might want to think of the best way to skin it first.
Cheers

[Architect]

lol, i have a feeling it isnt overpowered but something else...........

[bonifarz]

I am not perfectly sure about this, but the explosion radii and hitpush values are reduced when using the insta mutator, so if you discuss about this here, be sure you are talking about the same variant of the rifle. Another thing that comes to my mind with abusive splash is to raise the self damage.

[ballist1c]

@Dratz:

Those are some good ideas, but do not talk about them here; please start a brainstorm topic if you wish, and do not derail this one please.


@Bonifarz:

We are talking about the primary fire of the deathmatch rifle, not the instagib variation.
Raising self-damage woulkd not work, because the player would not be on the ground to get the self-damage from the splash.

[Sniper-Goth]

How about rising the Spread of the weapon?
Then the player would have less chance of hitting the target in close range, because the rifle is meant to be used in long range.

[arand]

I'm repeating myself, but in my opinion the problem with the rifle is that it's too versatile, it's effective at long range AND effective at close range, I would like to see weapons like the sword, shotgun and flamer being distinctly better than the rifle at close range, something which I don't think is the case at the moment.

I've had the idea that maybe slowing down the rate of fire for the rifle might be worth testing, i.e. lowering the clip size to, say 3 (currently it's 5). This would make the rifle have more frequent periods of vulnerability, and presumably be less viable in cramped situations compared to weapons with large clips.

I'm not sure how this would affect the long-range aspect of the rifle though, it might make it too slow and promote more careful aiming and campyness, or maybe not, until tested it's all speculation.

I'm presuming the instagib version could remain unchanged.

[Mr. Chaos]

I wouldn't bother posting if I didn't consider this important, but the Rifle is too good in non-insta settings. Literally, if anyone else brings one in an arena, if you don't have one in your load-out you are at a definite disadvantage.

[Dratz-_C]

Hey folks,
It seems to me that the issue here is that the rifle should be good from far away rather than close, not that it should not do effective splash damage at range. What about ramping the splash damage from the rifle so that it does less damage when close but the present amount of damage when farther away?; and/or perhaps changing the size of the splash to be small when close and the present size when farther away. These characteristics could be explained away by talking about the focus of the laserbeam.
Cheers

[Mr. Chaos]

Hey folks,
It seems to me that the issue here is that the rifle should be good from far away rather than close, not that it should not do effective splash damage at range. What about ramping the splash damage from the rifle so that it does less damage when close but the present amount of damage when farther away?; and/or perhaps changing the size of the splash to be small when close and the present size when farther away. These characteristics could be explained away by talking about the focus of the laserbeam.
Cheers

The issue is the damage the primary fire splash does. Firing at an enemy in a general area and only needing 3-4 splash hits to kill them is silly, especially considering that it's still easy to do this kind of damage while mobile. Making the primary fire do more damage farther only encourages primary fire sniping, which would be it's own problem.

I don't completely agree with Ballistics increase on the damage, but I'd have to see how the total changes proposed play out.

[quintux_v]

damage the primary fire splash does

it's not just the splash - I don't know how many times I've actually hit someone in midair dead-on with the rifle and then killed them with just the next blast.

I'm liking what Dratz has said, the rifle should have damage increase with distance from the target. I don't think splash should increase, however. A high splash value at close up would cause a lot of recoil damage as well.

EDIT: was just on the frogteam server now, it was a team-arena-deathmatch and EVERY F***ING PERSON playing was doing it! Thankfully it got changed to an insta match.

[greaserpirate]

I think the poll should be more specific about what kind of changes we'd like to see in the rifle: "Just decrease splash, leave everything else alone" "Cut splash in half (or more) and increase damage," and "other modifcation."

I'm more on the side of drastically cutting the splash and increasing damage. Like many players, I'm a huge fan of the insta rifle. It feels so good to use the primary because it takes skill to land a hit, but when you do, it's an insta-kill, and it's really satisfying. Now I'm not saying the rifle should be one-shot-one-kill(except headshots) by any means, but I would like to see the rifle actually be more like a rifle: powerful but hard to use. Ballistic's original suggestion, 16 splash and 40 damage, sounds perfect to me.

I'm fine with the splash being decreased and nothing else, though. However, I do not want the rifle primary to get nerfed by any other factors.

[ballist1c]

I'm fine with the splash being decreased and nothing else, though. However, I do not want the rifle primary to get nerfed by any other factors.

I have tested repeatedly, and these were the most balanced settings I could find. Trust me
The increase in damage compensates for the lack of damage when you are not firing at the ground. Note it is a VERY TINY increase in damage.
I suggest we go through with this change, which will make it better, and then we will perfect it from there.

damage the primary fire splash does

it's not just the splash - I don't know how many times I've actually hit someone in midair dead-on with the rifle and then killed them with just the next blast.

I agree; I have hit someone 4 or 5 times mid-air, and it is not until I hit them on the ground that they are actually dead!

EDIT: was just on the frogteam server now, it was a team-arena-deathmatch and EVERY F***ING PERSON playing was doing it! Thankfully it got changed to an insta match.

Haha, me too a bit ago! Now you know how freaking annoying it is (I was not doing it)

[ZeroKnight]

I brought this point up a long time ago...though the the thought didn't garner much interest. Glad to see it revived and that many feel the same about this. I very strongly agree with arand here:

I'm repeating myself, but in my opinion the problem with the rifle is that it's too versatile, it's effective at long range AND effective at close range, I would like to see weapons like the sword, shotgun and flamer being distinctly better than the rifle at close range, something which I don't think is the case at the moment.

The rifle is practically a counter-all weapon in RE right now. You can snipe at ranges that others can't easily see you, and you can blast those charging at you in close range by spamming double jump (many players do this, btw...not just this "MelvinSour"; it's not a niche case). My opinion has always been that the splash radius of the rifle is simply too large, and that reducing it would greatly cut down on its versatility. However, as I myself have also played with this to great extent, I felt that cutting the radius in half was just too much, so (like Evropi hypothesized), I roughly quartered the splash radius. I also realized the high hitpush issue that ballistic and Rabid mentioned here, so I had brought that down a bit as well; not just to match the smaller splash radius, but to make it closer inside the actual splash of the rifle so one does not push a target without damaging them.

I've read some other ideas in this thread that I like, and change my thinking in how to balance the rifle, however I'm going back and forth. I really think we need to pin down what exactly is making the rifle unbalanced. Is it the large splash radius, or is it the fact that it even has a splash at all? Can we fix it by reducing the splash radius, or getting rid of it entirely? Does the fact that splash exists at all detract from the purpose of a rifle being a long-range weapon? I'm on the fence between two solutions:

1. Make the rifle more like a "real" rifle and have high damage, small clip-size, low rate of fire and no splash, requiring some actual accuracy to use well.
2. A compromise between the above and the current implementation: Reduce splash by some factor, but increase (or not) the damage done by the primary fire.

Whatever changes are agreed upon, they should produce the end result of limiting (or even eliminating) the rifle's close-range effectiveness while at the same time promoting long-range use and requiring the user to be accurate when shooting. Emphasis should be placed on accuracy and long range, and that being in close proximity to others and missing their shots leaves them quite vulnerable due to the low rate of fire and small clip-size of the rifle.


Thoughts about Solution 1
Personally, I don't like how versatile the rifle is. It's a slow-firing, small clip-sized weapon with a scope and high damage...that sounds like a sniper rifle to me; a long range weapon, not a close-range one. The only thing that doesn't fit the bill is the splash damage the primary fire does...sure it's weaker than the secondary fire (pro-tip: the secondary damage is much higher than primary; you just have to be accurate. Scary I know!), but the huge splash radius and moderate damage that it does makes it just as useful of a weapon in close ranges, and one could argue that it's too useful. I strongly feel that a rifle should be limited to long range, especially if it has a powerful scope (which the laser rifle does), and that this long-range limitation should be supplemented by high damage per shot, with things like small clip-size and a low rate of fire to help further balance out the weapon.

The Red Eclipse rifle already meets this criteria with it's secondary fire as it is stronger, but with a slower rate of fire than its primary fire. The only thing that kills the rifle's long-range usage is that its primary fire has splash, which solely makes it a viable choice in a close-range situation; a situation that a rifle should normally be quite ineffective. Close range weapons like the sword, smg and shotgun should dominate a rifle user if they are in close proximity, whereas the rifle user should be able to dominate everyone if they can stay fire away from everyone else. Sadly, with the rifle's splash, the former is very difficult and unlikely while the latter simultaneously remains possible.

Regarding this point, I think the key things that we can do are:

• Eliminate rifle splash entirely
• Increase overall damage, primary fire included
• Possibly reduce the rate of fire even more, even if slightly

Thoughts about Solution 2
I understand that Red Eclipse is a fast-paced game, and that the splash feature of the rifle helps compensate for that by making it easier to land a hit with a weapon that has such a low rate of fire, but I feel like that this has been taken to too much of an extreme and again, makes the rifle far too versatile and (I hate to say it and sound whiny) a little bit overpowered. As a counter to my first solution, I feel that completely eliminating the splash could force the rifle into a niche group of people who have excellent twitch-accuracy, and severely trim the number of players who actually use the rifle. Maybe that's a good thing, and maybe it's not so good. There are plenty of ridiculously accurate riflemen/snipers in online games who have no problem pulling off long-range shots with ease and perfect accuracy, but I wonder if the fast-paced nature of Red Eclipse could make sniping a little too difficult, even for those good at it.

Perhaps we could indeed balance out the rifle while keeping its unique splash feature. I saw some different ideas that I like, such as reducing the clip-size to 3, and reducing the size of the splash as the distance between you and what you hit increases. Reducing the radius of the splash is something that I feel any final solution should have, no matter what, however I wonder whether or not we should supplement that with increased damage as well, to bring out the high damage and accuracy traits of the rifle.

For this solution, I personally feel that this could be done well with a mixture of all these ideas from arand, ballistic, Evropi, Rabid and myself and do something like the following:

• Reduce splash damage by about 1/2 or 1/3
• Increase the damage of the primary fire to reward accurate shooters
• Reduce clip size to 3, or decrease rate of fire

Misc Thoughts and Ramblings
To go off on a tangent here, Team Fortress 2 comes to mind. In my opinion, it's somewhat fast paced and chaotic with lots of things going on at once, and there are plenty of fast-moving characters like the Scout, Medic and Pyro, yet plenty of Sniper players pull off some amazing shots seemingly with ease, so I have to argue again that a rifle should take skill to fully use its high damage to full potential.

I also wonder it would be worthwhile to remove the differences between primary and secondary, and make them the same, except for the fact that you can zoom in. Doing so would greatly supplement my first solution, while also fulfilling the emphasis I feel the rifle should have. To elaborate, rifle secondary is different from primary in that it has a slower rate of fire, higher damage, no splash, and a significantly faster projectile speed. I just felt that it would be interesting to give these differences to primary fire, and have no difference in secondary fire save for the scope. The only negative I see with this is that it would make the rifle a little bland as far as an alternate ability.

Interestingly enough...not many realize it, but I modified the rifle vars on the WazuClan servers several months ago, and they have remained that way even now. They're a bit dated, and the ideas I've read in this thread make me want to tweak them even more, but those vars are currently:

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sv_rifleexplode1    23    // roughly quarters the splash radius
sv_riflepusharea    1.0  // reduces the push area to match the new splash radius and not push the player if they don't sustain damage

Sorry for the long and most likely unorganized and sloppy ramblings (I'm very bad at putting what's in my head into writing), but this topic is something I've been passionate about for a while, and never got much attention when I brought it up in the past. Please, let's keep the ideas going, because together we can find a solution everyone is happy with :) Don't stop brainstorming! I don't care if you hate all my ideas...say so! It just means that there's a better solution that a majority can accept.

[Blindman]

arent we really talking about default settings here? the primary reason I like this game is due to the variables and how easy they are to change. I think a lot of its up to the preferance of the clan and or admin running the servers myself, that being said , i do think it is overpowered on splash at least.

[riidom]

Most maps have not enough rifles anyway (assuming everyone wants one), so making it less attractive would also help to make the arena-modifier not so much feel like a must.
I'm not sure if we need much more ideas, imo the splash is the main problem. Take it away, or reduce th radius by 50% (or reduce even more) is my favourited first-aid here. The splash damage itself is already kinda low, reducing it even more would render it useless. Increasing the primary damage on direct hits is not necessary imo, the rifle should still be good enough after this nerfing.
I found dratz-c's idea interesting, giving it a minimum range. 0m -> 0% damage, linear growing to 5m -> 100%. Makes it easy to raid a sniper with shotgun or sword. A good sniper might be able to land a zoomed shot on short distance to still produce considerable damage, but this is hard to do, especially if your zoom is adjusted to long range.

To summarize my opinion: Splash away completely, alternatively radius reducement to at least half of original or less.
Maybe the most popular servers can cooperate here and change the rifle settings, and give it a quick note in server description, smth like (RIFLETEST) or so.. Based on tests with splash (and push) radius changements only, there can be further discussion if things like clip size, reload time, damage adjustments, minimum range etc. are needed.

[Blindman]

to be fair, i had noticed this before it became an issue here, shooting at the ground with a rifle in front of someone has generally been more effective that tryin a straight on shot, all melvin did was perfect it really, or exploit it if you want to call it that.

[quintux_v]

all melvin did was perfect it really, or exploit it if you want to call it that.

To the point where he's using it to win every match in an arena-duel deathmatch and that other players are forced to use the same tactic to even have a chance against him.

Personally, I used to use a mix of sword/shotgun along with the rifle for my arena matches just because that was a good balance of short and long range attacks. However, now I changed it to sword/shotgun and smg/plasma just because I didn't want to look like another user of this technique. When, literally, maybe 12 out of 16 players in a server are using this technique, it's at the absolute point of ridiculousness.

A mix of what ZeroKnight and Dratz (as restated by Riidom) have each proposed could be possible: reduce the splash and reduce damage based on closeness to the target - a shot from far away does more damage. The secondary would stay the same in splash, but should get a slight damage boost from the distance damage. In general, any changes should promote long-distance usage of the rifle.