DMR:
> …One suggests that we should reduce the power of the DMR, and the other suggests that alternate weapons should be bumped up to balance out the sandbox. Both things being said, there can be a middle ground. Looking at the DMR, we currently feel that the kill time should remain unchanged, as the weapon has become a clear favorite amongst the community due to its reliability and consistency.
So disappointing to hear that currently no nerf will be given to the DMR. Especially, before any tweaks (which should be minor) are made to the other precision loadout weapons.
Leaving the kill time unchanged is okay, but your joking if you think that the DMR is a clear favorite amongst the community for any reason other than it’s the most effective primary weapon. It doesn’t have any drawbacks and sports the biggest advantage with it’s incredible aim assist range. That’s why it’s a favorite, duh.
The DMR’s range needs to be reduced, period. Map movement and position jockeying is suffering on the bigger maps and big team games due to it. I suggest reducing it to the same range as the Light Rifle when zoomed-in, which still affords it an advantage over the BR, Carbine, and unzoomed LR. It also could receive an additional minor nerf-ish tweak on top of this, but the range reduction is the most crucial to improving gameplay on the bigger maps and big team games.
The other notable nerf direction would be to reduce it’s Rate of Fire ensuring it has an honest disadvantage against the other primaries in their ranges, but nothing too severe. Though, this alters its’ TTK, which you didn’t fancy.
Regardless to which of these nerfs are chosen it probably could use some additional minor tweaks to help better balance it amongst the other precision primaries, such as increasing the reload time, reducing the magazine clip, and/or decreasing its bullet magnetism.
BR:
> Right now, we feel that the mid-range role of this weapon is undermined by the strength of the DMR. To combat this, we are looking at decreasing the kill time for the Battle Rifle through various tweaks. This means testing a “4-shot BR” (currently, the Battle Rifle takes 5 bursts to kill) with a reduced rate of fire, though these changes are not final.
With a proper nerf to the DMR, I think the BR just needs to ensure that it’s Time to Kill is theoretically better than the DMR within it’s effective range, but not grossly better. I’d prefer it kept its current 13 shots, but 12 is okay to.
LR:
> At this time, we have adjusted the Light Rifle’s range at which the reticle turns red to match the DMR.
NO!!!
God no! This is a joke, right? This is a terrible, Terrible, TERRIBLE idea! What in the hell are you thinking 343i? So incredibly disappointing to hear about this change. I have faith that you guys will continue to improve the game, but this is not improvement, this is just stupid.
It’s bad enough having the DMR as a deterrent to map movement and position jockeying, but now you want to add a legit 4-shot kill weapon to the mix too. You’re out of your minds if you got the impression from the forums that this is what the majority of the community that speaks out wants.
The LR should maintain it’s current zoomed-in range and it should maintain it’s noticeable TTK advantage over all the other precision primaries when used in its zoomed-in state, while having the biggest TTK disadvantage when used unscoped. Basically, it’s perfectly fine as is. It’s just very overshadowed by the current DMR, but a proper nerf to that weapon should ensure that the LR is a very viable longer range option.
All I can say is, thank god this is not a final decision, otherwise I would stop playing any big team games or playlists that included big or medium-big maps… or perhaps I’ll just quit out at the last second every time one shows up as my way of saying FU to the weapon balance decision you foolishly went with.
CC:
> The Carbine has been adjusted to take one less shot to kill, bringing it to a 7-shot kill. This change was applied because we felt that players who used this weapon and took the time to become skilled with it were not rewarded due to the weapon’s kill time.
Not a bad fix for the Carbine, but the fire rate cap might need to be adjusted to ensure its theoretical fastest TTK isn’t significantly better then the BR. My fear is that players who can rapidly spam it at its max RoF will cause it to be overpowered. I believe the weapon only really needed a bigger magazine clip, because it had a pretty fast TTK already. It was just held back due to it’s very limited ammunition per it’s required expenditure for kills.
Autos:
> The above tweaks have also led to the need to adjust the automatic weapons, which would likely be beaten at even the closest of ranges if tuning ended with the above changes. As a result, the Assault Rifle, Suppressor and Storm Rifle have all received a slight damage buff along with an auto-aim decrease that requires players to be more accurate than they would have previously.
The loadout Autos should just be moved into the secondary category. Then they wouldn’t really need to be adjusted much, if at all.
Personally, I’d like to see the Autos and the Magnum be the only secondary options with a beefed-up pre-nerfed Boltshot and a buffed Plasma Pistol turned into power weapons or map pick-ups, but keeping them as secondaries is okay too with a few additional minor nerfing tweaks.
If the PP was removed from the loadouts, it could mean that the turrets wouldn’t necessarily need any kind of significant buff since not everyone would have a Plasma Pistol and the Wheelman Tactical Package might require some tweaking to. Also, adjustments to the vehicles to allow ballistics to be a bit more effective in damaging them, but offset that a bit by giving them a bit more health in return, so that a team can’t just easily take down a vehicle with a slight amount of concentrated fire, like in Reach.
If not that then allow me to direct you to some excellent ideas and reasoning put forth by MADMAN Redux for a more ideal, but labor intensive change that improves the Autos as Primaries.