Marine Rifle
karandras
Join Date: 2010-04-09 Member: 71231Members
Join Date: 2010-04-09 Member: 71231Members
Hello everyone,
I'm sure it has already been discussed but i really do feel that the marine Rifle is far too precise in its bullet spread. It's basically far too accurate which makes it hard to track and hit fast moving aliens like the lerk. The rifle will literally hit exactly where the centre of the crosshair is pointing regardless of how far away you are.
I think it needs to be more like the NS1 LMG to be more effective at the faster moving aliens. Something that is still accurate at a decent range but also has some bullet spread to it.
Does anyone else find this to be the case with the rifle?
I'm sure it has already been discussed but i really do feel that the marine Rifle is far too precise in its bullet spread. It's basically far too accurate which makes it hard to track and hit fast moving aliens like the lerk. The rifle will literally hit exactly where the centre of the crosshair is pointing regardless of how far away you are.
I think it needs to be more like the NS1 LMG to be more effective at the faster moving aliens. Something that is still accurate at a decent range but also has some bullet spread to it.
Does anyone else find this to be the case with the rifle?
Comments
Currenlty as it stands the AR is a frustrating piece of weaponary to work with. In the eyes of a newbie, the weapon chews up all 50 so quickly, that player is usually forced to reload or switch weapons during engaugment. Half the time the fault lies in the players ability to shoot and track, however rembering that most people are average at video games it's important to consider that the rate of fire is slightly overkill. Most 'average/newb' players will miss roughly 70-80% of all their bullets in a clip. Typically this isn't the fault of the the player, it's just the weapon spits out so many bullets and they never think twice about releasing the trigger.
An easy fix is to look at an overhaul of the values for the AR to rebalance the gun for having a slower rate of fire. First lower the total amount of bullets to 40, then slow the rate of fire down so that it equals the same amount of seconds to empty a clip. Finally up the damage of each bullet so that the exact amount of damage is left per clip. This will hopefully help players better manage ammo due to the slower rate of fire and higher damaging shell. The lower rate of fire balances out any change that the upped damage would give.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
:D I've made a point about this before, a simple change to slowing down the fire rate would make the weapon more manageable for new players.
I dont just stand there and rinse off an entire clip in the 2 seconds it takes to empty itself. I find aiming in NS fairly straight forward. I just find the whole tracking of fast moving targets in ns2 and actually hitting them extremely awkward with the rifle.
The thing I do notice from the transition is that there seems to be no "gap" gun. The LMG feels about the same power and even more accurate as in NS1, although late in a game it's nothing more than a glorified pea-shooter. There's no HMG at the moment in the game (Exo's supposed to have some sort of his own?) and you're left with:
- Shotgun. Which for my generally low FPS is nigh useless except at melee range, where I obviously don't want things. Fades will smack me in one or two hits and a decent skulk will just roll around like mad. I'd argue the shotgun could use a "slug" alt-fire which effectively could work like a weaker, less spread-out single shot, which would actually reflect the crosshair used. Wouldn't make sense for it to have the full damage - it'd just make it a sniper rifle.
- Grenade Launcher - which leaves you without any other combat effective weapon for close range. The pistol feels weaker than NS1 - I used to snipe the everlasting crap out of skulks with it. It's good for taking out structures and laying down suppresive AoE, but leaves you exposed close range. It SHOULD (keyword - should) entice people to teamplay and cover the grenadier, but in pubs the tendency is I see is two-three GLs and nobody covering. I'll label that under "player stupidity" rather than a design flaw.
- Flamethrower - mixed feelings on this. Feels awesome to use, but I question its effectiveness on targets. I think it costs way too much for the actual damage it does on most aliens, effective on structures though. The dot portion for me has felt useless thus far.
Overall, my feeling on weapons seems to be like the marines are missing certain tools. The shotgun feels too inneffective overall (it feels to me as if it's only good for point-blank shots - and that's something I really, REALLY don't want to do). The fact that the welder replaces the (in my opinion) weak axe just makes matters worse - I get that you're supposed to not have many counters in melee range as a marine, but I honestly feel like I don't have enough alternatives as a marine. I always carry that welder because you never know when you're going to need it - either to reweld other marines, power nodes, repairing structures, whatever.
TL;DR version - LMG feels like a pea-shooter in late game and no other weapon seems to take up its "general assault weapon" role in late game. It's far easier for even a skilled marine to die and lose an expensive piece of hardware than it is for a skilled fade/lerk to die. These two particular alien classes can just buzz off at a moment's notice if they need to. Marines need jetpacks to get something close to that kind of mobility.