Yet Another Buzlok Tracer-Round Suggestion

[Paradoxbomb]

Yep, another one of those.

 

Anyway, I'm still running around shooting things up with the Buzlok, and while it's tracer round feature is definitely interesting and has it's uses, I feel what's holding it back from being truly fantastic (other than that 10 ammo cost) is:

 

-Single target, despite the mob nature of enemies, makes it feel overly situational

-The zooming in and out makes it a bit disorienting to use at times (at least for me)

-If you hit a wall by accident, you have to waste another ten ammo to hit a target or shoot the wall for 30 seconds

 

So how can this be improved while still keeping the whole tracer round concept mostly intact? My suggestion would be:

 

1) Make the tracer an alt-fire button. Not so much because I care about zooming in with this gun (although that could be an unintended bonus) but because I believe right-clicking should switch the gun between it's normal bullet ammo and a type of marker-dart ammo*.

 

*Edit: Right-clicking could also simply fire the darts rather than switch ammo types

 

2) While in marker-dart mode, you can fire as many darts at as many enemies as you want, with a fire rate on par to the Tysis. Darts still have travel time and deal no damage, but only cost 2-5 ammo a shot, can mark as many enemies as you're willing to shoot, and will no longer cause bullets to seek out walls/surfaces hit through misfire. Also note that with punch-through, a single dart will be able to pierce and highlight each enemy it passes through.

 

3) All enemies shot with a tracer dart will have some indication that they've been marked (be it a glow, highlight, reticule symbol, etc.). When you switch back to bullet-mode and unleash hell, the bullets will seek out targets as normal, starting with whichever one is closest to you.

 

Bonus) While it may not be entirely necessary, something that would be interesting to see would be if marking a target increased that enemy's chance to take critical damage or suffer a status proc (similar to the Mutalist Quanta and how it's bubbles enhance your damage/crit chance). This would add further incentive to mark targets over gunning them down outright.

 

 

Thoughts? (Hopefully this exact idea hasn't been suggested already)

 

 

EDIT: Some balancing changes made based on feedback

Edited September 28, 2014 by Paradoxbomb

[Vykhram]

1) Make the tracer an alt-fire button. Not so much because I care about zooming in with this gun (although that could be an unintended bonus) but because I believe right-clicking should switch the gun between it's normal bullet ammo and a type of marker-dart ammo.

 

2) While in marker-dart mode, you can fire as many darts at as many enemies as you want, with a fire rate on par to the Tysis. Darts still have travel time and deal no damage, but only cost 2 ammo a shot (.1), can mark as many enemies as you're willing to shoot (.2), and will no longer cause bullets to seek out walls/surfaces hit through misfire. Also note that with punch-through, a single dart will be able to pierce and highlight each enemy it passes through. (.3)

 

3) All enemies shot with a tracer dart will have some indication that they've been marked (be it a glow, highlight, reticule symbol, etc.). When you switch back to bullet-mode and unleash hell, the bullets will hit all marked targets consecutively, bouncing from one target to the nearest one until all of them have been hit, after which they will dissipate.

 

1) Would be nice, but i don't wanna use right click to switch between fire mods. i would like other button... Personally, i have a mouse with 5 buttons, 2 of them can be used by the thumb, but i know that not everyone has the same mouse that i do... so any button will do so i can change it to any of those buttons. (Could be difficult for some people, i know)

 

2) .1 I would love that the rounds used in the tracer requires 5 and not 10, but 2 is way low. Just. 5.

    .2 About the enemies, with 4-5 max marks is enough to mark the important targets, like the Heavy Units and some regular units. But no, not every target in the room/map, would be a huge desbalance.

    .3 If the tracer deals 0dmg, then why would be able to punch-through?, think about that one.

 

3) Just... no. Again, would make desbalance and way too powerful. I like the idea of hitting the marked targets, but no the bouncing idea. The shots would be able to follow the closest target until he's dead and then follow to the next target. Remmber, max of 5 targets at the same time, its enough for you to take down the big fellas.

Edited September 28, 2014 by Vykhram

[7grims]

All good weapons must have disadvantages, or else the game would be extremely unbalanced, and all weapons would be rock stars.

Crit weapons, usually have low physical damage.

High physical damage weapons use projectiles as bullets.

Element weapons are usually short range.

etc

 

I would also like to shoot freely wile in zoom with the buzlock, but I do get why DE made it that way, the weapon is powerful as it is.

[Paradoxbomb]

1) Would be nice, but i don't wanna use right click to switch between fire mods. i would like other button... Personally, i have a mouse with 5 buttons, 2 of them can be used by the thumb, but i know that not everyone has the same mouse that i do... so any button will do so i can change it to any of those buttons. (Could be difficult for some people, i know)

 

2) .1 I would love that the rounds used in the tracer requires 5 and not 10, but 2 is way low. Just. 5.

    .2 About the enemies, with 4-5 max marks is enough to mark the important targets, like the Heavy Units and some regular units. But no, not every target in the room/map, would be a huge desbalance.

    .3 If the tracer deals 0dmg, then why would be able to punch-through?, think about that one.

 

3) Just... no. Again, would make desbalance and way too powerful. I like the idea of hitting the marked targets, but no the bouncing idea. The shots would be able to follow the closest target until he's dead and then follow to the next target. Remmber, max of 5 targets at the same time, its enough for you to take down the big fellas.

 

1) I suppose that would just be my personal preference, either having alt-fire switch the aim mode or just making alt-fire shoot the darts could work.

 

2) a & b. The reason for having the tracer round ammo be so low and not having a limit cap suggested is due to the fact that you have to keep in mind that in the time that it takes to mark more than 5 enemies, they could potentially have all been killed by your allies, meaning that marking up a whole room of enemies, while theoretically OP, would just be silly and impractical. Not to mention you have to account for the fact that the player may miss some shots. As for ammo, I was think anywhere from 2-5 ammo so that's up to majority vote, but again, accounting for missed shots.

 

c. Video game logic.

 

3) While it is important to remember that the bullets could still be impeded by terrain, I can see your point, and the bouncing may not be necessary (it would look pretty cool though). Mainly the point is to just be able to mark more than one target.

[Pazgabear]

In the key configuration menu, there's a key binding for a secondary fire and another one for aiming, i'm guessing DE is working on something there