Nope not over powered at all. Even when you do get caught a quick appication of shotgun will get you free of the weilder buy killing them. I have died that way using a LG more times then I care to count. I tend to not kill with the Lgs power but use it to toss targets off cliffs or off drops to do them in. An Lg on a floater map is a nasty nasty thing.

It seems I've opened up quite a can of worms here.

Just to clarify, I'm not complaining about balance because I get reamed online. To the contrary, I usually dominate Deathmatch on our server.

In the case of the AM-67, I'm only complaining because it's just far more effective than the other handguns. It's about the only starting pistol (other than the D49) that can really hold its own against bigger weapons (although I don't think a starting weapon should really be able to do that anyway). The M806 and RS8 are balls compared to this gun, although i do like the RS8's burst fire (bigger mag plz). I just want to see a little more balance in that regard.

For the G5, I just find it a little difficult to avoid. If you dodge too soon, he can easily intercept your landing. If you delay for too long, he might just slam it down a couple of feet away and still mess you up good.

Really, my criteria for "overpowered" and "underpowered" is in its power:difficulty ratio. On one hand, the RS8 is not particularly difficult to use, but it's pretty weak, therefore underpowered. The LIGHTNING GUN requires no skill and is very powerful in that it fully prevents the victing from fighting back. I mean, other guns can mess up your aim when they hit you. This one flings you through the ♥♥♥♥♥ air. Spraying with a full-auto or is an exercise in futility, as your aim is gonna be ♥♥♥♥♥ and you'll barely be able to see with all of the flashing and electrical arcs in your face. A " quick application of shotgun" won't help for the same reason. It's all luck at that point.

From your responses, the only way to fight against a lightning gun is to either:

A. Not get caught. Much easier said than done, I'm afraid, considering it's got freakin' auto-aim. Sure, it's got relatively short range, but not all maps are wide-open spaces. Sometime's you're running down a corridor and you just bump into one. At that point, your only option would be to run like hell and try to get out of range, which would only work if he has slow reaction time or somehow doesn't notice you.

B. Kill him before he can react. Also difficult, as you'd either need lightning reflexes, or your opponent would have to be learning-disabled or something.

C. Carry a flamethrower/lightning gun/high explosive with you at all times. You're liable to kill yourself with a high explosive or the flamethrower, and you're not gonna get very far when fighting lightning with lightning, so to speak, unless you have more health or lightning ammo than the other guy.

D. Be extremely lucky and either never run into one, somehow land a headshot before you die. Oh sure, no problem. Anyone can do that.


And heck, even if he does run out of ammo or overheat, chances are he's in much better shape than you are and has another weapon to finish you off with. Ammo or overheating will not come to play until he's already toasted a couple of hapless victims. What do you say to those guys then? "Don't get caught?"


The flamethrower is in a similar situation. It's very easy to use as the flames provide wide coverage, and severely decrease his visibility. Sure you can toast yourself with it, but my top priority in the game is killing people while not getting killed, not "die while hoping he kills himself too".

Both of these weapons are very spammy and cheap, and yes, that is a problem. Weapons are supposed to be effective at killing, but when some weapons are much more effective than others and as well as easier to use, then balance is thrown out the window and players who have these weapons are given a great advantage over people who don't.


I have updated the OP and added the X3 Combat Knife to the "Too Strong" list.

How many of those knives will miss and give your opponent the opportunity throw back at you...?

Try all of them.

Next to the Skrith Sidearm's secondary fire is the Knife's throw ability in the most useless list. They may be highly accurate, but they are far from being hit-scan weapons, so dodging them is relatively easier compared to a maneuverable/homing rocket.

Extremely simple solution to most balance problems: Change where/when the weapon spawns. Think the lightning gun is the almighty hand of god? Make it spawn on superweapon pickups, alternating with the minigun. Think the grenades are too weak? Make them easier to get ahold of and spam.

I think you get the idea.

Still not very limited ammo, in my opinion. Primary fire mode could have a slower fire rate or the overheat rate could be a bit higher. There's a minor balance issue here, Kaboodles is just exaggerating. I don't think the weapon is really overpowered, you have good chances of getting a bullet through your head before you catch someone with the arc.


You speak the truth, mate When Xavious or someone else says "I like this gun the way it is! Get your hands away from it!" it means they just got used to it, but it doesn't mean the gun is balanced enough. A good player can win a deathmatch even with the lousiest weapon if he knows how to use it, but it's not a reason for the developers to ignore players' feedback and balance suggestions.

My personal suggestions on Lightning gun and Flamethrower: the former can have it ammo pickup reduced, or we might do away with the grabbing effect; gravity guns are cool, but robbing Half-Life 2 to give BW another 'awesome' gun just doesn't sound right; to put it frankly, I like the the lightning arcs much more than the stupid gravity effect. The latter, I mean the flamethrower, could have a heat meter. When the gun overheats, you can't use it. This would help to avoid spamming and make its user think when it's the best moment for pressing the trigger. If you get overheated before you kill your enemy, you have to switch to another weapon and this gives your enemy some moments to kill you.

When you can fling them at a rate of 6 per second, a lot of them are bound to hit. And I don't believe your opponent's first thought at having a knife thrown at him is "Gee, I guess I should throw it back at him". I believe his first thought would be to shoot me in the face with a shotgun.

And really, they're small enough that you're not gonna be able to see them before you can dodge away in time, especially considering their firing rate.

It's far from useless. I don't really consider it overpowered, I just don't think you should be able to hurl them so fast, is all.



And I'm not exaggerating about the LG here. Once I encounterd a guy who was the human equivalent of a Novice level bot. He just walked right up to you and fired away. Naturally, he was an easy target and gotalmost no kills, but when we fired up Loadout and he discovered the Lightning gun, he started racking up major points, ending up 3rd out of 5 or 6. Tell me there isn't something wrong with that.

The LG is overpowered because most of what makes BW challenging does not apply to it. It does not require any sort of aiming to use. Its "accuracy" isn't affected by recoil or movement in any way. It's very easy to use. Now I wouldn't be against this if it weren't also very powerful. Once you grab someone with the arc, they are effectively your bitch until you let them go. If you watch them, you will have nothing to worry about from them until they are dead or you run out of ammo or overheat, at which point you can easily finish them off with another weapon since they're probably low on health at this point. And it's not exactly hard to grab someone with the arc either.

I am not against the idea of a continuous-firing lightning gun. What I do not like is its current implementation. I thought it was the shit when I first picked one up and killed a guy with it. But when I kept killing people and they were unable to effectively fight back, I began to wonder if it was a little too strong. This was confirmed when someone killed me with it a while later, and I was met with the most annoying and infuriating deaths I've ever experienced (aside from that damn AWP in CounterStrike. At least those things require skill, though). Everyone I've met online has agreed that the LG is an overpowered piece of crap. I don't play with bots often, so I don't really know your experiences with the gun, but damn is it horrible when wielded by a human opponent.

One way you could balance the LG more is if you make it overheat much more quickly with the primary arc, but cool down more quickly as well. That way, you can't just continuously and actually have to give the enemy some chance of hitting you.

Oh, and ammo is not as big a drawback as you say. It only starts out with 50, but there are usually 2 ammo packs near the weapon spawn.

About the Knife thing... though you may think that you're throwing all 12 knives in rapid-succession, you only actually throw 1.

I just tried it out, spamming the Special Fire to throw knives... The animation starts, but it gets overridden by the next one, and the next one, and the next, so you don't throw them all in rapid succession. The most you can do is throw 3 under 1 second, and that's it. No exceptions.

Yes it is, I find it seriously wrong that you think new players don't deserve to feel the joys of being in top 3.
But I see your point, don't get me wrong, I just think you are pointing your finger towards the wrong suspect. When a gun appears that is very different in functionality, the solution isn't to ban it from a match or change it, but to change your strategy. I can easily avoid being killed by this gun most of the time by keeping my eyes more open and attentive for any LG-wielders.

If you think the LG is so damn overpowered, why don't you just disable it?

Or ask the server to disable it since you say everyone thinks its overpowered.

And regardless of what you say, the lightning gun does not kill people fast. You have plenty of time to kill whoever grabs you. Do not give me any crap about not being able to aim when they got hold of you. I can aim well enough to kill them. And if you can't kill them when they grab you, then they oughta be entitled to a kill. Plus, if they try to swing you around too fast, they let go of you.

Plus, it's not hard to stay out of range. And if you absolutely can't stay out of range in a small map, that probably means there isn't much room to be swung around, making chances of hitting them quite a bit better.

Plus, everyone seems to be forgetting one major thing. BW is not going to be part of a DeathMatch game all of its life. Balancing weapons works differently in various types of games. You need to remember that.

Simply put the Lightning Gun in the Redeemer class. Thats what I did and It shows up just enough.

Yeah. I'm with Wup. Problem solved without castrating the gun.

Touche'

I also Put the Mini and the Flamer in the Flak Classes and added about 6 other weps and then told it to do random. works good, that way you don't have Mini and Flamer spam.

It's not that I don't think new players should stay in the bottom ranks all the time. I just think that you would need to earn your rank instead of having it practically given to you by the game.

I understand your point about different functionalities, but I think you're asking a little much from the player at this point. You already have to keep watch for standard bad guys, long range snipers, mines and FP9s under every conceivable pickup, the occasional knife-happy stalker (me), and various other dangers. To add "keep watch for spammy weapons" would be a little overwhelming to new players, dont you think?

I'm not complaining because I personally can't deal with them, but because other players can't, and that turns them off the game, and I have less targets to shoot at.



I never said the gun could kill quickly now. In fact, I did mention in my OP that one of the weapon's weaknesses is that its damage rate isn't particularly high.

Also, It's not the swinging around that screws up your aim (although it does make the enemy harder to track). It's the lack of stable ground that would add "chaos" to your gun, as well as the constant damage. Also the blindness and electrical arcs. Hey, if you can manage to consistently kill LG wielders even while being shocked, more power to you.

Also, what difficulty level do you usually play against? I want to see how effective bots are with this thing, as I refuse to believe that they could close distance better than an adrenaline-fueled, frag-hungry human being. Do they even use sprint? Do they constantly dodge-jump towards you to get closer? I wouldn't believe it if you told me. (Although, I've never actually seen a human being do this, as the ones who do usually are skilled enough that they can avoid using the spam weapons and still win. Probably to avoid the whining afterwards if they do well).

Why don't you play online? Humans are much more fun to kill than dumb bots.

Tweaking the weapon spawns would probably make it less common at times, but what about Loadout, where people can specifically choose it and just go wild with the thing? I don't like having to disable weapons since I don't enjoy removing functionality from games, which is why I went here to complain in the first place.


Anyways, aside from all of this Lightning gun talk, do you guys have any comments about other parts of the list? What about silencers? I fully believe decreased damage is rather unrealistic. Or those grenades? I know some people are apparently devastating with the thing, but I just feel the fuse and throw charge-up time is far too long.

Also, to DK, yes I do see the animation thing with the X3. I still feel it's max throwing rate is rather high though, and have actually uncovered a bug in the process of testing it. Will post it in the bug-report thread.

Decreased damage of silencers is very realistic.

I'm playing against Godlike bots and my Bro generally. (He's not too bad at this).

As for playing against real players, I desperately wish I could, but there isn't even high speed internet access available in my area. (I only got a 28.8 kpbs connection)

So you're a loadout player too? I can see your point then, but still, I don't know if it should be tweaked much... the lightning gun is designed to take out many enemies efficiently, and if this is nerfed, it'll be pretty useless when using it against invading armies as planned in PA.

But anyways, onto the other things.

Grenades, they might have a tad long of throwing charge, but I never use it, so I couldn't give a fair view of it. Just switch fire modes to get long throws or short throws.

I think the fuses are just right, if they are much shorter the already hard to use 'nade kicking won't have any use at all.

Well an explanation would be nice. The only way to do that would be to decrease the bullet's muzzle velocity, and the only way to do that is if the silencer itself had rubber wipes to make contact with the bullets, which wouldn't be last very long. This would only be useful when high velocity rounds (faster than the speed of sound) are used in order to eliminate that little sonic boom the bullets make, and the RS8, XK2, and and XRS-10 all seem to use rather low-velocity rounds (none of them are particularly powerful).

I can see this with the SRS900, but then you'd encounter the problem of the breakdown of the rubber wipes making them ineffective after only a few rounds.

Even then, a silenced weapon doesn't really provide too much of an advantage, as they'll still be able to determine the direction they got hit from and they'll still be able to see you. If it counteracted recoil with the added weight and maybe decreased weapon stability, It might actually be useful and not just incredibly stylish and bad-ass.

EDIT: Yikes, that's pretty rough Xavious. I couldn't imagine playing anything on a connection like that

Anyways, I'm not really against the multiple-target thing. I just wish it was easier to defend yourself if caught by that infernal electrical arc.

Ooh, another idea to balance the flamethrower. If a flamethrower-wielder is set on fire somehow, either through his ineptitude or by getting toasted by someone else, his tank should just explode in like seconds. Adds more risk to the weapon (although you'd still be able to toss the thing. Bleh).

I like that idea for the flamer. I kind of would like the option of the fuel tank to just explode instead of flying in the air, but as I already said, that should be optional.

I wanted that from the start, optional would be good, makes both crowds happy.

You've got quite a list there, so I won't touch on everything. Even so, good job for taking the time to post such a well thought out list. Even if I don't agree with you in a couple of places, it's still good to see.

BX5-SM Land Mine:

I certainly agree with you on this. A lot of you might not think it's overpowered, but just wait till you play against a guy who spends the entire game sticking these things in every corner he can find. It's very hard to play the game when you can hardly move without having your torso blown away. I think the solution here is to limit the amount you start with to about one, and have ammo packs give you another one each.

G5 RPG:

The laser sight is about the only problem here, in my opinion. Simply making the missile less manuverable would help a lot I think.

RX22A Flamethrower:

I don't really think this is overpowered. If you compare it to a shotgun, it may be easier to use, but the shotgun can bring a person down far more quickly. It's just pros and cons really

M75-TIC Railgun:

I think the railgun pretty much has to be an instant kill weapon in order to differentiate it from the sniper rifle, and also because it's a railgun. Someone taking a fully charged shot from a railgun and getting back up would be silly. Also, the chargeup time means that if you don't hit the first time, you're quite possibly in a lot of trouble.

HVC Mk9 Lightning Gun:

I think there is a problem here, but it's not quite as bad as you make it out to be. Once again, the lightning gun has rather unimpressive damage compared to shotguns, so often you get blown away before you can finish killing your opponant. It does need some work though.

D49 Revolver:

I'm really not seeing how this is underpowered. I'm pretty sure that a headshot with this thing is an instant kill with 100 health and no armour, and two torso shots finishes almost anyone off. It takes a little more skill to use than some of the other weapons, but if you get good with it there's a definite payoff. It's entirely possible to kill three enemies without needing to reload, perhaps even more.

XK2 Sub-Machinegun:

Try crouching when firing this. It can kill things very, very fast.

R78A1 Sniper Rifle:

I don't think the sniper rifle was ever intended to be used while moving. It's a very powerful gun while crouched and still, which is perfectly fine in my opinion.

Grenades (all of them):

I don't have very much experiance with the incindiary and toxin grenades, but I can say for certain that the pineapple is not underpowered. I find it to be more powerful than most guns actually.

Try playing a loadout game against bots, and using nothing but the pineapple the whole round. Set your special weapon key to "E" or something conveniant, and whenever you see a bot, start "cooking" a grenade so that you try and make it explode next to their head when you throw it. It doesn't take very long to get quite good at this, and the large blast radius of the pineapple leaves you plenty of room for error. With a bit of practice you can blow an enemy apart with a single grenade from well over 20 metres.

Man, the land mine is so easy to destroy now in 2.0, I don't even know why you guys have a hard time dealing with it.

HOW TO DEAL WITH LAND MINES:

-Crouch over it and pick it up (Use key)
-Shoot it with a shotgun (if you don't wanna aim at it)
-Shoot it with a sniper rifle when you see somebody planting it (and give 'em a taste of their own medicine)
-Mine-sweep with a Lightning Gun and/or a Flamer (the two ultimate mine-sweeping weapons)
-Use the Toxin grenade glitch (while the Devs haven't patched it up yet)

I'm aware of all of these things, but they only work if you already know where the mines are. It's quite hard to play a deathmatch when you have to keep checking the floors, walls and ceilings every 3 seconds, and turn every corner crouched. Oh, of course you have to stay crouched when picking up every pickup too. You can keep it up for awhile, but sooner or later you'll forget and turn the wrong corner while standing up, and you're dead.

Just spam the Flamer, then. You know that there's a mine under that Ammo Pack, so disinfect it first before you pick it up. You don't waste ammo that way because, hey, it's an Ammo Pack/Fuel Tank!

Mines on walls are an entirely different story, though. My best suggestion would be to quit being such a wall-hugger and jump around in open spaces more often, even at the risk of being targeted by a G5-spammer. G5's are much less annoying than land mines any day.

But isn't that the whole point of the mine's presence in the mod?
For what would you want a mine if you couldn't hide it, it'd be very useless.

Plus if you want a mine free death match use the swapper and ban em. I however am one of those mine monkeys. Nothing better then getting somebody via a mine or det pack when you are on the far side of the map

I can very easily see how mines can be more of a nuisance than an actual hazard in net play. While me and my bro typically don't intentionally spam areas with mines, sometimes it happens if we get into a mine match.

I'd say an option to limit how many mines a player/team can have out at any given time would work best. That way you can vary the amount dependent on general map size vs. player count, and for those that like it as is, just disable that option.

Believe me, things can get ugly when spamming mines. Having to fire a shot off in any direction so you can take a step forward does not lead to productive gaming.

I do quite like having mines in deathmatches, so I'd rather not have to ban them, and I don't really want to see them nerfed either. The problem is just the amount of mines that a player can put down without much effort. When someone can win a deathmatch without you even seeing them more than five times for the whole round you know something's wrong. I think either something like xavious said, or just reducing the amount of mines a player can carry would do just fine.

Setting a configurable limit of mines per team/player would fix this issue as Xav pointed out.

Interesting read. Must comment.

Im surprised to hear the lightning gun is overpowered, that weapon has very little range.

When fired at distant targets it blocks your view rather than does any damage. In my view it is a electrical counterpart to the flamer. A shotgun kills further.

As for its alternate fire, that takes timing.

Doesnt do a whole lot of damage compared to other weapons either. The minigun can wipe out a powercore in 4 seconds (I timed it from full health). The lighting gun takes forever

Perhaps it comes down the the gametypes you use.

I can see how the lighting gun may seem overpowered in deathmatch as it has a built in aimbot.

But in onslaught an assault rifle would be a better choice, particulary with those raptors flying about

The submachinegun may seem underpowered against quick footed deathmatch players but in invasion it is alot more useful than the G5, hell it kicks more ass than Duke Nukems mighty foot. The dual SMG has to be one of the best anti-brute guns BW has to offer.

I like some of these ideas however. The railgun could use a vulnerability like the flamer. Its unstoppable in a good location.

If it was just possible to accidentally drop the person you're electrocuting, that would balance the LG greatly. If you're firing from up in the air and they overcompensate their dodge, you're free for just long enough to line up a good shot.

There's a pretty heated discussion here, or maybe I think creative discussions are arguments.

Anyways. I DO NOT think at all that the LG is overpowered. I can blow up LG wielders easily. All I do is be sneaky if I hear a LG, get a good range, and pop the guy in the head. I have done this many times, trust me, and those people with the LG are just having too much fun to notice you. Besides, the lightning is obscuring most of the person's view, so why not snipe or sneak behind him?

But I slightly agree about the minigun. If I crouch and use sights, I can kill 3 people with 4-5 bursts.