Nerf Nerf Nerf! How About No?

[CheckYourSix]

I made this post in the thread I started, but still relevant to the people following this thread that don't seem to understand the scope of weapons and mods in this game as well as the math behind many of them.

 

 

The main reason the SG was OP compared to other weapons was the damage types really in my opinion. It was the only weapon you can get Magnetic, Corrosive, and Blast all on one weapon. That gives you great damage versus shields with Magnetic and no damage resistance to anything with the other two typs and usually bonus damage. Which means the SG was able to hit harder with no resistances by any unit in the game. No other gun really can do that at all.

 

On top of that, it's a secondary which tend to have higher base stats than primaries because they tend to be shorter range. Which is strange because secondary mods add far more damage than primary mods. For those that don't seem to remember, here is the comparison of damage for mods.

 

Hornet Strike 220% damage >> Serration 165% damage

Barrel Diffusion 120% multishot >> Split Chamber 90% multishot

Lethal Torrent 60% multishot and 60% fire rate >> well nothing on the primary side

 

Those 3 mods alone on any seconday boost secondary weapon DPS far above any primary weapon regardless of base stats. So what are the major differences?

 

Primaries tend to be more accurate at longer ranges and more effective at longer ranges on average in most gun to gun comparisons. This lets somes primaries make use of Heavy Caliber mod to eek out a bit more damage at the cost of that better accuracy they inherently have on average over secondaries.

 

That is all well and good unless you have a 100% accurate beam weapon secondary. Then the accuracy comparison between primaries and secondaries don't matter.

 

So SG was a 100% accurate weapon with the inherent high base damage that most secondaries enjoy over primaries along with the better dps mods for secondaries. On top of that with magnetic as the base damage type, it allows for a triple damage type combination of Magnetic, Corrosive, and Blast which has virtually zero damage falloff for that damage type combination. The main draw back to the weapon was only the limited range, which most good players, even most mediocre players, could easily compensate for.

 

That basically put the SG as unarguably one of the best, if not the best, weapon in the game. Fair enough that this brings the weapon into the spotlight for potential changes.

 

DE then has 3 things they can possibly do as a response.

 

1) Nothing. DE could have left it as a best in slot item in the game. Which makes players tend to gravitate to the best in slot item over time and leads to lesser build diversity. The merits of which are debatable but are what they are.

 

2) Buff other weapons to the level of SG's usefullness and effectiveness. This brings back diversity as now there are other options for players to pick that are as effective. The problem would be the fact of how many weapons to buff, and how big of a buff for each weapon is required to expand the pool of effective weapons competing for best in slot status. This is a bit more complex and thus has more room for error in terms of over buffing unintentionally a different weapon. Which then makes people cry out that the new over buffed OP weapon really should be left alone and other weapons brought up. This leads to power creep in a game. Again power creep is neither good nor bad, but a design decision that should be calculated when adding content of any sort to the game.

 

3) Nerf the weapon down. Nerfing the weapon to be on par with other weapons in the game also increases the build diversity of a game like this by making there potentially be more than 1 best in slot item. The major drawbacks for this approach is over-nerfing the item which leads to still a potentially small pool of diverse equally compelling items to use as the new over nerfed item is no longer a compelling item to be used. It also now can make content that was previously hard but doable now out of reach of a larger portion of the player base if there are no other items that could effectively fill the previous slot of the item as it was before nerfed.

 

That is basically was DE could have done and DE chose option 3 as we all now. The problem now is determining if the nerf was a good nerf or an over nerf. My math and game play experience, as well as what I can tell to be the majority of the player base, feel the nerf was too much. The weapon now doesn't even compete with any other high tier weapons out there to be a competitive end game item usable against the hardest of content.

 

There were plenty of potential ways to nerf the SG, and the one picked by DE is in my opinion, along with many others, to be the worst of the possible nerfs that could have been done to it.

[NocturneOfSolace]

This again?

 

Yes, you cannot use the Synoid Gammacor as a continuos Death Ray anymore. Tip, learn to conserve your ammo. If you get into real problems, use AMMO MUTATION or AMMO RESTORES.

 

God forbid, a weapon having a major downside that doesn't make it a no-brainer to use efficiently.

God forbid they have a weapon that forces you to use ammo mutation, which shouldn't be the case, because it's not a weapon like akzani or the vipers

 

I like how they did not even touch its ridiculous damage and only shut down how much you can use it and yet people are still salty about it.

There are tons of weapons that do tons of damage, what's your point? Oh right, you don't have one

The Synoid was a deathray of doom, it's true, and it was also far too ammo efficient, it's also true, so yes it needed a nerf, but now it's been nerfed into the ground due to the whining and crying of everyone, so good job, you've ruined the fun of everyone else.

 

Edited March 24, 2015 by NocturneOfSolace

[DarthyPoo]

This again?

 

Yes, you cannot use the Synoid Gammacor as a continuos Death Ray anymore. Tip, learn to conserve your ammo. If you get into real problems, use AMMO MUTATION or AMMO RESTORES.

 

God forbid, a weapon having a major downside that doesn't make it a no-brainer to use efficiently.

I have hundreds of Ammo Restores, bout time i have something to use the 900k nano spores on.

[-skimmer-]

Every single person was using because it was the most optimal weapon to use. It made every single other weapon obsolete. Hell, it made every single enemy obsolete because they posed no threat to the player. This is a textbook problem where nerfing is an optimal solution

Edited March 25, 2015 by -skimmer-

[MechaTails]

Nerf! Nerf! Nerf!

 

Yeah baby, you're playin' my jamz!

 

Nerf! Nerf! Nerf!

[FloraGreen]

Well if you really want my opinion some people paid money for those weapons like plat to trade it. What is the likeability they will do something like that again? I also think everyone would think its unethical if people paid money to mod something then go about and nerf to the point the money they used and the time they used to max out that weapon goes to the trash.

This have been my point too.

I sure hope that DE lose a lot of money on this, they really need to learn the lesson the hard way when it comes to gamedesign. 

[Finedaible]

This has been a very sour update. Sure, we got a neat new Warframe (who's abilities have the comparable range of an Orthos Prime with maxed Reach) but having my favorite and most enjoyed weapons rendered useless after so many hours of gameplay, forma, and potatoes just makes me wonder if i'm wasting my time here. I even tested the Synoid Gammacor extensively using a Max ammo mutation mod and while it does start out good, it becomes utterly useless after 30 minutes of survival without external means of a damage boost (this was with corrosive projection, mind you).