Akbolto: A design issue

[DarkFlameZealot]

The current stats for Akbolto Prime are-

Rate of Fire: 7.00/s

Magazine: 40

Trigger: Semi-auto

 

See the issue already? 40 rounds to spit out at your enemies at the push of 40 buttons. At a fire rate that pretty much nobody has the finger capacity to do for about 4-5 seconds at a consistent dps rating. Granted, the Telos Akbolto has 30 rounds and a higher fire rate of 10/s, but still, the 10rps is quite too much for a human finger to tap consistently for 3 seconds without dropping dps output. All of this leads to a design issue that has been in the game for way too long and only matters now because every other 'bolto' weapon has been trash.

 

The high clip size and rate of fire while sporting a low 32 base damage (before Hornet strike), make it to where using the weapon in a semi-auto fashion limits the actual damage it can do. No weapon in any game should require a macro to be efficient and useful, but this one takes the cake, and a very very big cake at that. Using a macro that simply presses the left mouse button (or whatever you use) down then releases it with no delay/inset macro delays for the program (Razer synapse in my case) will allow Akbolto Prime to reach its current 11.20/s dps as long as you're firing. This is nowhere near as pathetic as clicking your mouse that much will do for you.

 

To make a comparison, take the Attica or Zhuge, even the Boltor. They all fire the same type of shot, bolts/arrows, essentially comparing a crossbow (Attica) to a nailgun (Boltor/bolto, etc). Both can be automatic and semi-automatic, but both are still useful either way depending on the situation. Akbolto Prime and the other bolto series weapons are, sadly, not up to this same level of usefulness despite the Akbolto Prime having some of the best stats for a secondary (high crit and multiplier with status). This is all due to it having such a massive clip and being semi-auto.

 

Is it too much to ask for an automatic weapon requirement/burst firing requirement for weapons that exceed 20 or even 15 magazine? Again, no weapon deserves to be shelved just because you need a macro to bring out its full potential. Hell, just look at the amount of macros generated just for the original Telos Boltace. Absurd right? But the end point was that it was still extremely powerful even without a macro. Macros should only be a lazy way to get around working a problem out: having a setup for parkour (sprint->jump->aim glide/roll->jump again) is optional but still available to anyone who knows how to make basic macros. If anything, the Akbolto Prime should have gained a much higher increase in damage for a slightly lower fire rate or even a lower clip due to its quick reload. The overall implementation of the bolto-series of weapons is poor, explaining why nobody uses them, excluding Boltor Prime, which now is quite decent even after the nerfs.

 

TL:DR- The game should not make weapons weaker than player/human usage can make them. No weapon should have to require a macro to be at maximum dps/usefulness as macros are supposed to be lazy ways around clicking and not a method for making a weapon not trash. Akbolto/Bolto pistols are just the beginning, and I hope we don't see more of this. It's poor quality and bad design that should have been fixed a long time ago.

[Hoangviet1996]

Bind the fire button to the mouse wheel and u are good to go.

[Kimimoto]

1 minute ago, Hoangviet1996 said:

Bind the fire button to the mouse wheel and u are good to go.

OR! Give us an alt fire toggle between Semi-Auto and Auto

[DarkFlameZealot]

2 minutes ago, Hoangviet1996 said:

Bind the fire button to the mouse wheel and u are good to go.

Grats, basically a macro, which brings us to Brakk. Another lovely weapon with a crazy high fire rate but semi-auto that forces you to use a 'macro' for it to be useful.

[Dreddeth]

Make a secondary binding of your fire key to the mouse wheel, so you can click LMB for single shots and roll the wheel up or down in the practically never where you'd need to utilize the full fire rate in the case of the Akbolto Prime. Macros unnecessary.

Maybe it's just that month of Clicker Hero I played way back when, but I've never really needed to do the mouse wheel trick to get spammy on a semi-auto myself.

Also, I don't understand why full-auto or burst would be desirable on a weapon simply because it has a magazine capacity of X or greater. High capacity magazines aren't just for automatics; they prolong up-time on any weapon, directly and near-exclusively increasing sustained DPS as opposed to the increase in burst DPS conferred by an increase in fire rate or damage (which also increases sustained DPS), both which can also affect ammo economy. This is kind of important because it's not always possible to further reduce reload time, which is pretty much the only other way of increasing sustained DPS, and ammo economy is a significant factor in game difficulty.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Dreddeth
Cleaned up messy wording

[RagingGrizzly]

Never really had problems with high fire-rate semi-auto weapons. I used to play COD4 a lot, and they basically had no fire cap, and I usually hit that (nonexistent) fire cap cuz I was so fast. Never really had a problem with them, but I guess there are people that do, and there is solutions to this, like binds or some such.

[DarkFlameZealot]

6 minutes ago, PUR3K1LL3R said:

Never really had problems with high fire-rate semi-auto weapons. I used to play COD4 a lot, and they basically had no fire cap, and I usually hit that (nonexistent) fire cap cuz I was so fast. Never really had a problem with them, but I guess there are people that do, and there is solutions to this, like binds or some such.

I played Osu! so my hands are kinda dead at this point for spam-clicking super fast. I just don't see the point in having a weapon with such low base damage (even with crits) to have to be semi-auto when it needs max RoF to even be worth using over something like Akstiletto Prime, Aklex Prime, Euphona Prime, etc.

[taiiat]

Bindings does give the capability to help mitigate for those which don't feel comfortable with high Rate of Fire Weapons.
i don't really mind as i've been using computers for decades and clicking a lot is totally natural for me, personally. but that's a different matter.

btw non-Automatic Weapons are hard limited to 10 Shots per Second to prevent people abusing them.
and because of this difference, Weapons with a high-ish Rate of Fire to start with can't simultaneously be Semi-Auto and Auto, because Auto would just shoot way faster than Semi-Auto.
you then have to either have the native Rate of Fire be somewhat low, or Semi-Auto has to have different Stats to make it better in some way instead of being pointless as Auto would be a direct upgrade.

[YUNoJump]

Some weapons are designed like that specifically in multiple games, so that you have to choose the balance between fire rate and accuracy yourself. Many semi-auto pistols (in-game) have recoil that would make very rapid firing feel like putting a shake-weight on your crosshair, that is to say the crosshair would be moving too fast to make accurate shots due to recoil.

Basically, if a weapon fires faster than you can click, it just means that you can fire whenever you want, but you have to be able to line up your shots correctly. You might notice that the average recoil per shot on a semi-auto gun is also much higher than on an automatic gun. Just treat the fire rate number as a formality, and see the gun as having PRACTICALLY unlimited fire rate, as it fires as fast as you can aim.

[RagingGrizzly]

16 minutes ago, DarkFlameZealot said:

I played Osu! so my hands are kinda dead at this point for spam-clicking super fast. I just don't see the point in having a weapon with such low base damage (even with crits) to have to be semi-auto when it needs max RoF to even be worth using over something like Akstiletto Prime, Aklex Prime, Euphona Prime, etc.

Then you can feel free not to use semi-auto weapons at that point, and even then, if the fire-rate is faster than you can use it, then you can just use the weapon at your own pace. Most enemies don't take much shots to kill anyway.

[DarkFlameZealot]

1 minute ago, PUR3K1LL3R said:

Then you can feel free not to use semi-auto weapons at that point, and even then, if the fire-rate is faster than you can use it, then you can just use the weapon at your own pace. Most enemies don't take much shots to kill anyway.

Sadly, I'm MR24 and have nothing better to do than raids, sorties and forma weapons on Hydron with a bit of Eidolon hunting inbetween. This means I'm not wasting my time fighting lvl 40-50s, I'm trying to push to 300+ cause hell knows there's really no endgame here like there is with a Prestige Raid/Raid Lair in Destiny 2. I'll use a macro to abuse the game all I want at this point, but it doesn't fix the underlying issues that many people don't care to bother discussing due to either elitism or simply using meta weapons (Akstiletto, Pox, Aklex, Euphona, etc)

[kyori]

Bind the fire button to mouse wheel? Then what about those with only 3 buttons on their mouse, won't they have issue when a weapon need to use the 3rd button alt-fire?

Who is the idiot who suggest that? lol

[rapt0rman]

31 minutes ago, kyori said:

Bind the fire button to mouse wheel? Then what about those with only 3 buttons on their mouse, won't they have issue when a weapon need to use the 3rd button alt-fire?

Who is the idiot who suggest that? lol

They're suggesting binding to mouse wheel scroll, not mouse wheel click. Scrolling with your mouse wheel activates multiple "clicks" faster then it's physically possible to click manually.

Edited December 19, 2017 by rapt0rman

[Shajirr]

Everyone who defends this design decision is objectively WRONG.

There is no point arguing it. It is a very bad idea to have a high firerate semi-auto gun, and kinda disrespectful to the players. You are not going to utilise the full DPS of the gun when it is needed unless you either have a macros, use scrollwheel to fire, or destroy your finger by trying to click 10 times per second. NONE of this should be required, and the gun should either be full auto, or have a switch between semi- and full auto modes.

The gun is balanced for max firerate! Which is not achievable by normal means. It is not balanced for you clicking even 2-3 times per second, your DPS will be S#&$ in this case. So, what this implies is that the devs are fine with you either having S#&$ dps OR @(*()$ up your hand clickspamming, if you don't know about the tricks mentioned here, and many players don't know about them.

I personally just ignore anything semi-auto only which has firerate more than 2, never liked the scrollwheel method and I have enough macroses already, I don't need to write yet another one to fit each gun the devs decided to F*** up.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Shajirr

[YUNoJump]

25 minutes ago, Shajirr said:

Everyone who defends this design decision is objectively WRONG.

I think you need to take a better look at what objective means.

26 minutes ago, Shajirr said:

I personally just ignore anything semi-auto only which has firerate more than 2, never liked the scrollwheel method and I have enough macroses already, I don't need to write yet another one to fit each gun the devs decided to F*** up.

The Aklex Prime takes offense at your statement of its inferiority.

[Shajirr]

15 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

I think you need to take a better look at what objective means.

Ok, well, maybe its not the most fitting word here, so, undeniably wrong should be better I guess

Yeah I don't use Aklex (Prime), however with 2.66 RoF, without firerate mods it is still usable. With firerate modes nope.
And we have far bigger offenders in the semi-auto category.

 

 

[EvilChaosKnight]

Yea, weapons like AkBolto have always been a problem in this regard. Same goes to Latron series and a few other weapons.

Tbh, I don't even understand the purpose of having "semi-auto" trigger type in games AT ALL. We have set fire rate for everything and damage values balanced around that, so unless there a need for charge up (which is a separate trigger type altogether anyway) I don't see the point of it even existing. The only reason which I can even think of, it's if you take into account conspiracy theories about DE secretly collaborating with mouse manufacturers and/or arthrosis and arthritis clinic of course. I guess...

Old arena shooters don't have it, GTA series don't have it, Overwatch doesn't have it and so on (the last 2 also reload your gun for you if you put it away btw without the need for "mods" btw). It also adds nothing to the game but IRL strain on your hardware and hand joints and muscles.

Edited December 19, 2017 by EvilChaosKnight

[Azamagon]

10 hours ago, Kimimoto said:

OR! Give us an alt fire toggle between Semi-Auto and Duplex

Fixed that for you ;)

[dynamicburst]

I just want to throw my two cents in about this design issue. It was pretty disappointing to find out during a mission that this was a semi trigger weapon with no alternative trigger type. Now before anyone recommends mouse wheel. Mouse wheel is a joke. Tried it and got 3-5 fast rounds every scroll and I would have to scroll slowly because the faster I scrolled, fewer bolts were actually being shot. There are plenty of players on YouTube able to utilize the Akbolto Prime's max fire rate with the help of programs like razer synapse but if you don't have a razer device then your options are A) bind to mouse wheel, which works for some and others not as well (like myself), B) bind to a key you're comfortable spamming other than your main fire, or C) attempt to click 7 times in a second and fail every. single. time. I hope this issue with the trigger type is addressed because as the weapon currently stands it's not fun to use. 

Edited December 24, 2017 by dynamicburst
typo

[Mewvg2]

They could allow us to toggle to automatic that's say... 75% of the fire rate of the semi-auto. Quality of life change that shouldn't be too broken (even though it's PvE and most of the game is built on OP stuff but w/e).

[hiroy_raind]

I kinda wish there would be a mod that decreases fire rate but increases damage/crit. It would be great for this kind of weapons.