More Flavor To Weapons

[Robsbot]

Weapons of all types are starting to feel too samey with the addition of more and more of them. With the addition of damage 2.0 DE has the chance to really give each weapon and each class of weapon a really unique feel. Each weapon type could easily be broken into three categories of damage:

 

High Physical: High innate physical damage stats scaling well from elemental and +%damage mods
High Crit: High base crit allows +%crit mods to make damage scale well

High Status: Large status rates would allow +%status mods to make weapons into status effect inflicting monsters

 

This alone would allow for great diversity of builds against weapon classes. Imagine three shotguns all with the exact same fire rate, clip, etc. except they differ in those three areas. Each would play relatively different! However, we could break those categories down even further:

 

High Accuracy, High Fire Rate, and High Damage.

 

So now imagine again you have three shotguns. One is like the boar with a large amount of pellets, large spread, and high fire rate. It also has a high chance to inflict status effects. You could build this to lay out curtains of gas clouds or storms of lightning. A second shotgun is like the Hek has high accuracy and a high crit rate making it great for potentially one shotting heavy enemies even at medium range. The third shotgun is a good all around shotgun, semi-auto, with high base damage but not as much accuracy and a lower fire rate. Good for killing red shirts at a steady, regular pace.

 

Each of the three guns has its place and can fit a play style very differently. Each one could even have variants that perform differently. An accurate shotgun could have high crit for burst, high damage for DPS, and high status for applying corrosion at a distance. Each one would feel familiar but fill different roles and play styles. We could even break these categories up thematically.

 

Grineer: Specialize in AOE and hail of fire approaches to weaponry. These would generally be inaccurate but be able to lay down lots of fire or cover large areas with their shots. Just point in the general direction of something trying to kill you and yank the trigger. A Grineer sniper should be like the SVD from the COD series, their shotgun should be a high capacity street sweeper, and their assault rifles and heavy machine guns should have the highest fire rate in class.

 

Corpus: Specialize in high accuracy weapons, some with a drawback of having to be charged or wound up to use and have projectile flight times. While their guns may not lay raw fire you can make sure you'll take out what you're pointing at. A Corpus sniper should be like the Lanka, their shotgun should be similar to the Hek, and their assault rifles and heavy machine guns should work pretty much like they do now with perfect accuracy but a travel time.

 

Infested: I'm not really a fan of the idea of infested weaponry really, but I'm sure DE could do something here. It seems like they specialize in status effects and elemental weapons so I guess that's a start. 

 

Tenno: Tenno weapons should be the best of the best. Not literally, as all weapons should be balanced, but they should pack a solid punch. Their shotgun should be like the Tigris (only balanced to have best in class per shot damage and more pellets with a well rounded damage type not that slashing BS so it feels like a two shot hand cannon), their sniper is the Vectis (no changes, that thing feels perfect), and their assault rifles and heavy machine guns should be decently accurate and hit like a bus. 

 

Generic: Of course you should absolutely have generic weapons like the Braton (which is technically still a Tenno weapon I do believe) who have more balanced stats. Let them be a bit more flexible for players who don't want the more niche weapons.

 

With a dearth of weapons from FPS games over the years to take inspiration from and now a great damage 2.0 system in place I'm really curious as to why DE seems to have trouble balancing their weapons. Players make spreadsheets in hours that show the huge glaring issues between weapons, why can DE not do the same? Why do all your weapons feel the same?

 

DE you have all the systems in place to really have a great set of diverse, balanced weapons out there. There's no excuse for three shotguns, the Boar Prime, Hek, and Sobek all having roughly the same stats crit and status wise. There's no excuse for the state of the Tigris, a gun that is designed to damage Infested and large health pools having only 2 shots against the swarmiest enemies in the game. Make the Boar an elemental spewing high pellet, high spread, status inflicting monster. Make the Hek an accurate crit based mid ranged focused heavy killer. Make the Sobek a high damage steady dps machine. Make the Tigris the best in class for dumping two high damage shots but make it have high recovery time. I could continue with more examples but the point is this: Diversify your weapons!

 

You have all the systems in place with this damage 2.0 system to really have one of the best weapon systems in gaming history (in my opinion of course). Use it.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Robsbot