There'll be tweaks to weapon stats in the next release. Theres a bunch of testing we got to do for them first...

Almost everything on this mutator will be configurable. Basic stuff can be configured in a menu and for more intelligent users and admins, much more will be available direct in the ini file...

You mean even the weapon stats will be tweakable?

Ack.

Configurable weapons are not a good way to deal with balance.

Of course not, because your idea of balance must dominate, god forbid people tweak for their own preference.

No, because weapon balance should be decided by the devs for everyone to use, not as something everyone can do their own thing with. As they say, everyone has a different idea on balance, resulting in servers with radically different configurations, fracturing and dividing the BW fanbase.

And the devs have already decided what balance to use, that happened months ago.

Well what the devs decided wasn't even close to balanced (no offense intended, mind you).

While configurable weapons would certainly be easier, a consensus on balance would be better. Hell, I wouldn't mind if we had configurable weapons, but I would really prefer it if the weapons were already balanced by default.

Here is an idea; make weapons configurable only for Instant Action, if that sort of limit is "codably" possible.

I guess it would also be useful to have two preset weapon stat configurations: "Balanced" for us competitive types, and "Classic" for the Instant Action guys.

Hmm, presets, that's not a bad idea. The devs could add new hardcoded presets in patches if people aren't happy with neither Classic nor Balanced.

how more things the player can choose, the better. I love to be able to customize everything I want. But there should always be a Default button... for me messing it up...

That works for me.

here we have problems:

a couple guys think it's a little off balance, and the majority are fine with it..

make those few happy, and screw up the rest.. altenatively, add hundreds of options, and spend weeks making configurable weapons pages and the like..

or.. we could do it how we think is best...

back to loadout though, it'll almost certainly be improved in the future

Just do it the way you guys seem to do it, it always seems to work out in the end

Not for everyone, but if the majority is happy then there is little you can do...

And as it stands, it seems the majority is quite happy.

You determine what's a majority by what you see on these forums. For instance, my entire clan agrees that the weapons are very much imbalanced and should be fixed, but you don't see them around since the responsibility of complaining about them has mostly fallen to me. Representative democracy at work.

Plus, we are very much interested in hosting a BW tournament, but crippling balance problems prevent us from doing so.

But understand, you can't assume your entire clan isn't the majority, i don't see that many people whining about balance except you Bak and your clan it seems, and maybe some other guys who want a tad bit of balancing but can live with it as it stands.

And for the tournament, just do it for God's sake, just play it for fun, its not like it'll be for money, even if it is, BW (the weapons mod) as i remember was intended to fun and awesome, you guys seem not to remember that. Just host your tourni, live with the fact that your ass gets blasted apart more times than not and just enjoy fragging your friends and clanmates.

Their silence implies complacence. It's probable more people aren't complaining about the imbalance because they're either lazy or don't care enough to complain. They're not huge fans of the mod and will just move on and play another game.

I agree that most are probably fine with the guns as they are, but that doesn't mean that balancing the weapons will necessarily screw up the game for them. They won't come running and screaming here if the AM67 or dual Fifty-9s suddenly require a lot more skill to wield. Gameplay will not suffer as a result of balance. It can only get better.



Sure it's fun and awesome, but I enjoy it a lot more when it gets competitive and competition suffers greatly with the weapons are as unbalanced as they are. Modifying weapon spawns and removing some of the bigger offenders was simple enough, but the smaller and more subtle imbalances are harder to deal with, like with the M353 and M925 machine guns, or the shotguns and pistols (minus the AM67 and M290). The flamethrower and G5 are both too strong for their own good, but if I remove them, what would I put in the Rocket Launcher weapon spawn? The BX-5 and FP9 are both overpowered, but they have no suitable replacement in the weapon lists. The submachine guns and machine pistols are insane when dual-wielded and too strong to be starting weapons, but I don't think anyone will use them otherwise.

To get a serious tournament going, we'd have to ban half the weapons from the game to get a decently balanced weapon set, or else modify the weapons ourselves, and nobody wants to play a game like that.

As things are, some weapons are better than a lot of things than others, and that's just wrong from a gameplay point. Every gun should have a purpose. Every weapon should fit a particular play-style. But no weapon should dominate over all others. There should not be one weapon that you must have at all times in order to not lose the game.

Also, please don't put superweapons' default weapon swaps with the normal UT weapons. The Minigun and Lightning gun are way too strong to replace the UT Minigun and Link gun.

Whatever. All i have to say is that you spend WAY to much time pondering over all of this.

Is all this really different from all your weapon ideas? The only difference is that I'm focusing on the current weapons instead of thinking of new ones.

The majority you reference are casual players. They're not going to be "screwed over" by anything, because casual players are by their definition much less affected by balance changes, if at all, than people who are competitively minded.

We're only trying to make things fairer. No offense, but you (the developers as a whole) don't appear to play your mod competitively and / or playtest for balance. Even the vision of professional balance teams is flawed in places (Dawn of War anyone?) and since it's the responsibility of a balance team to take the raw vision of the developers and mould it into a fair game for everyone - and you don't appear to have a dedicated balance team - I don't think it's unfair for us to question the balance of what is essentially the raw "vision" aspect of the mod, which appears to have undergone little dedicated balance testing.

@Mr.Uglypants: Stop. Just stop. Tournaments aren't fun with pathetic balance. In a tournament, you play to win, and as such everyone will use the most overpowered strategy they can to try to win, should it exist, and I don't see where the fun is in everyone going around with the most overpowered weapons they can (As this would be loadout TAM).

100% agreed, Azarael.

Please add the 24 of my clan mates to the complaining side. They'd flood this forum over if they knew English.

I'm almost sure devs themselves don't play BW in any competitive way I might think of.

Balance issues do not cease to exist because they are ignored or disguised as extra features (like the godless AM67)

I'm also wondering, how many actual BW players did the devs ever interview on balance? If they only browse this forum because of the high internet costs out there in Africa, by no means we are the majority. They might do as they please, but as of now, BW has a hard time pretending to be a fair and competitive mod for it actually isn't one. However, should the mod become balanced, it could kick UT3's ass (if we also get a couple of energy guns and an extra assault rifle)

in any competitive way!!! massive offenses from you guys brushed aside..

we will decide whats balanced.. we will decide how we want our game to be played.. we do as much as we can, to what we reckon is balance.. we play LAN games.. and all seems fine, save for a couple slight things like the AM67, D49, SRS and HVC.. a few others may be a little weak, or overpowered..

i just don't see this massive imbalance issues that a clan or 2 are talking about.. BW is about fun, and if it aint, we might as well not make it.. all we can do, is make it how we think it will be most fun..

in the end, i hate that face that it's in UT.. and thats why we are going to be moving it over into TC / Game format.. i expect, that everything will work alot more like how we want it to..

excuse any rapmpagin on my part, we've just lost all our work of the past month, patch is lost, and will take longer, and other stuff like 100 textures for a map, weapon designs, feature trackers, DC's c++ code, and other stuff.. i'm a little edgy.. apologies..

but in the end, our intention was to please as many people as we can, and of course we realise that people out there ain't gonna like some stuff.. i just hope you can hang on until we manage to get our patch out, and then our TC.. in which ever game it may be in.. once UT's horrible player movement, maps and overall gameplay style are flattened, it leaves us room to really hammer the important things in a game...

ShadowBlade wrote:
...and all seems fine, save for a couple slight things like the AM67, D49, SRS and HVC.. a few others may be a little weak, or overpowered...

Mwahahaha! Me laughing under the table. A dev (yes, I said A DEV!) has just admitted that all seems fine SAVE FOR A COUPLE OF SLIGHT THINGS LIKE THE AM67, D49, SRS AND HVC, AND A FEW OTHERS THE MIGHT USE A LITTLE TWEAK OR BE OVERPOWERED! The AM67 conspiracy just went belly up!

This response of the most respected and honourable Sir ShadowBlade vividly reminds me of O.Henry's stories: "...and the Jersey snipes that come and peck at us, masquerading under the name and denomination of mosquitoes..." (c)

These things he's just mentioned (AM67, D49, SRS and HVC, and the mystical 'few others') are actually what breaks the balance. It's more than enough to spoil the deal. Of course, the rest of the guns, namely about fifty percent, are balanced all right. You have my word here.

As a former game developer and concept writer (no boasting intended) I can assure you all: there's no such thing as a slight balance issue, it's just a term to mask the two kinds of balance issues that actually exist: the big ones and the even bigger ones. Your slight AM67 issue turned mad the whole of my clan as HVC did. If you are able to see the issues but are not willing to fix them, you are sure not playing BW in any competitive way, for if you cared for competitiveness you'd care for balance, simple as that and no actual offense is meant.

You have to have a full server (16 vs. 16) to test the balance, something in the back of my neck tells me RS never did such tests. The testers should be people unaware of the mod development, just some casual shooter players familiar with games like UT and the rest of the kind. It's quite clear that RS is happy with their lame balance because they're the ones who made the weapons; if I invented a square wheel bicycle I'd be also happy with it and who knows, maybe I'd be doing better with it then guys riding regular bicycles or even win a bicycle race or something. But unfortunately the rest of the world wouldn't appreciate my invention because of the balance issues...

It's time for RS to decide whether they're making a mod for themselves or for the gaming public all around the world (to save the time of complainers - if they're making a mod for themselves, I see no reason for further complaints because the whole deal is actually not about us at all, BW isn't meant to be a public tournament mod)

Sorry to hear that SB. I hope it wasn't too bad of a lose.

I'll agree the AM76 is a bit too powerful myself, the HVC needs to remove the throw-around effect, but the rest are perfect. If you can't shoot down a G5 or stay away from a RX220, you deserve to die. Well, I happen to only play against bots, so I do notice the problems with the '67 but that's already known. But at least it's beter than the imbalance I do see more often.... 1 vs 16 (8 SHinRyuus and 8 KouRyuus) XD

It sucks you guys lost everything SB, I hope you can recover it....

I apologise for your loss and wish you the best in recovering it.

That said... @OCAdam: if you play ONLY against bots, please don't bother to comment on balance. Bots are not an indication of the strategies, skills and potentials of real players, and were you to come onto the forum of any RTS (for example) with a balance issue section, and comment on balance issues while only having played against the AI, you'd get laughed out of the forum. And for the love of all that's unholy, please don't use the ridiculous mantra "if you can't dodge *insert utterly overpowered weapon here*, you deserve to die." It's a demeaning, weak phrase with no actual explained support behind it, commonly used by people who'd prefer the game to be unbalanced so that they may continue to exploit imbalance to make up for their lack of skill. If that's your one-phrase answer to the balance concerns of multiple people (who also happen to put in a lot of work in actually EXPLAINING themselves, see Kaboodles' thread), then I don't know what you're playing at to be honest.

@Baklajan: You win the thread with that post.

And a side note: I know it's about fun, but what isn't fun is when you can be up against an unfair advantage just because you use a loadout that has less potential than the other player's. I don't use overpowered weapons because I feel cheap using them, and I end up having no fun when some tit loads for example, X3 knife (throw ignores armour, lmfao), dual-AM67 (flash, massive damage lolz), BX-5 mine (should be locked outside of vehicle gametypes, ez-mode weapon) and the M290 (the one-shot-kill bane of TAM). Sure, I *could* do the same thing, but then I end up being as bad as he is for the players on his team who don't happen to be abusing overpowered stuff.

I do play against my bro a lot too. I've set my own version of the Minigun so bots would use it like a human player would use it, if not just a tad better. But that's off subject. I have noticed the AM67 problems with power, but the G5 is easy to dodge outta the way. If you're in open ground area, just shoot the thing down. Preferably using an M50 or such. If you are indoors, just run to a hallway and get cover there. Obviously don't just hide right behind a wall, else the player just will aim it to the ground after the wall. I do say I don't like how the SRS is, but thats just how I hate the insane recoil on it. It's a sucky weapon for either use for it sinc that recoil is way too much. Short range you have to make sure you're not point blank, but medium and long range it will just recoil its way off target.

When you go to fight the HVC, which I simply turn off, here's one way to avoid it: simply go and keep away as long as possible. If not, well, spray and pray. I'll admit the HVC does get annoying after a while, but that's what the M353 is good for, getting outta the thing. I did have one time that actually felt like playing against a human player with a Mr. Smith once. He got me offguard and grabbed me with it, but I got lucky with how I had a ton of health and armor at the moment (and was getting more to max everything out), so he just ran outta ammo or the thing overcharged. I ended up killing him while he tried to cool the thing down, simply by using my dual RS8s I had at the moment equipped.

The idea is that the G5 is dodgeable, so DODGE it. I can understand to not dodge something like the RX220 in close quarters, but that's a more of a 'if you can't find water, outta luck dude' kinda thing. A G5 though, is dodgeable, so dodge it (either by shooting or running depending on the situation. Another good idea is to kill the G5er while they guide it to you, sending their aim way off and make them have the missile just miss. If they got it on lockon mode, then just aim for the missile. And find head cover. But the only area I could accept a death in with a G5 mortar is by the idea that you only have pistols or something equally sucky at fast shooting and large clips. I will go one more step though: the only guns I want changed around are the ones DC and SB are changing for the patch. That being mainly the SRS, AM67, and HVC. And the auto aim thingy isn't that great, you still miss a lot, especially if you are trying to run from the group of enemies. I doubt you'd try to use the dual aim feature while just standing still and crouching when you've got guys trying to kill you. Only way I can see to do that is to snipe with the AM67s. Which I did myself once, but that was funny.

Just another five cents from me. I neither want to be annoying nor am I engaging myself into propaganda of my own threads... but just look. Balancing doesn't always mean nerfing. We can keep Lightning Gun as well as almost any type of heavy weapon balanced without having to cut its damage or fire rate. There's a way to balance ultra heavy weapons just by changing the way they're distributed on the battlefield: LINKY! (reply #37964, all written in yellow letters, please be patient for the whole page to load, then you'll be transferred to that post automatically)

Also I see no need to eliminate LG's throw-around ability, and there's already a (mostly) approved concept of a better LG which puts up some serious skill requirements to its user, though staying nearly as deadly as before: LINKY!

A more generalized idea - there are two distinctive groups of forum members here:

1. Those who don't want heavy guns nerfed.
2. Those who want heavy guns balanced.

But I don't see anybody whose only ultimate cause is to make RS cut some of the heavy guns' stats. So if we just change the game rules applying to the heavy weaponry, both groups will be happy and there's no actual reason for nerfing heavy guns at all. G5 stats is a tricky matter due to the specifics of the weapon, so making it an 'artifact' along with LG and Minigun will probably yield better results in regard of balance than trying to horseshoe all the heavy guns into some speculative framework of balance expressed in numbers and statistics. LG, G5, Minigun are fine as they are; but the way they're distributed on the battlefield is certainly NOT.

The above mentioned way of fixing the things up, however, seems silly for smaller guns like AM67 and the rest... Just some few guns that look like they might want a tweak or two, they spoil all the fun. Cutting the damage of AM67 by 30% and giving it a much stronger recoil might seem a small matter, however the impact on balance will be as huge as no one can image.

I don't understand why people keep quarreling over things when a compromise is available, and RS just pretend to be watching and crunching on their pop corn...

P.S. Data losses... RS have my condolences here. I suffered from this crap twice and no backup is able to save anybody, because the hard disk always fails when there's a lot of information on it that you haven't backed up...