Now, as we all know, one of our main priorities at the moment is getting the core weapon set balanced. Unfortunately, I don't think my machine's gonna run UT4 so I have decided instead to (hopefully) contribute to finding a solution for it by using a stop-gap solution in the way of the already existing and excellently made mutator for UT2004 called TweakTool.
If anyone's paid attention at all to any of my UT2004 threads, they'll know I absolutely adore this mutator as it allows you to customize most every gameplay aspect of the base UT2004 game. I will be using it now to find a good weapon balance for UT4. Now, I realize that UT2004 and UT4 are not the same game and, as such this solution is not a perfect one at all. For example, in UT2004, I cannot change the fact that the Link Gun secondary does not "lock onto" an enemy. So I cannot balance for that. Or the fact that the Bio Rifle bounces players around (wat) in UT2004 when you hit them with it directly.
However, I still think I can hopefully contribute some ideas to weapon balance that may not have already been thought of through my implementation of TweakTool.
Now, I am using no double jumps. Base UT2004 movement speed. However, I am using 65% air control instead of 35%. And also, I've disabled falling damage. I never ever liked it... Felt like it's always limited my movement needlessly. The last things I'll note here is that I changed the Health Pack strength from 25 to 50.
Now... This weapon balance list I'm about to go into now is LONG. If the first few paragraphs of this topic weren't any indication that is. XP I'm going to post a screenshot of my TweakTool weapon config window now so you guys can easily see in one compact view all the nitty gritty details of everything I'm running.
https://i.imgur.com/NhTQe0D.png
Alright. On to the first weapons then!
Translocator & Shield Gun
I'm grouping these two together because I honestly didn't spend that much time with them as compared to the other weapons. The Translocator I made to be the standard UT Translocator. The Shield Gun's damage is probably pretty OP'd. The range I'll probably nerf back to 100. The thing is though, I actually wanted this weapon to be useful instead of it always getting chucked in the corner for something, anything else most all of the time or maybe used once to block the occasional long range precision weapon fire. So I kind of overcompensated.
Assault Rifle
The AR in UT2004 has always been kind of the laughing stock of all the weapons. Inaccurate, puny, and the grenades don't even kill a fresh spawned player with a direct hit which makes people not even bother with the grenades at all. No. Definitely needed a buff. I'm actually really happy with how it plays now. It can now definitely hold its own against the other weapons decently enough but not too much as to never have to search and use anything else. Further, the grenade has been buffed and its primary use is now to see if you can land that sweet direct hit which you'll now be rewarded for with a frag on an unarmored player or if anything, a nice chunk of damage which you can then finish them off with some primary. (wish I could take out dual-wielding it now actually as it makes the weapon really OP)
Bio Rifle
I had a lot of trouble with this one as in UT2004, as mentioned above, the primary bounces players around with a direct hit which makes them harder to hit and it's just really annoying. However, even then, I was still able to make it at least somewhat viable by giving it a careful buff. However, it's still not for every situation and it's the best I can do with it in UT2004.
Shock Rifle
Now this may be one of the most controversial changes I've made to the weapons in here. What I did was make it a 3 shot kill on a fresh spawned player and boosted its firerate. I also buffed the secondary to have a slightly larger blast radius and do more damage, and finally, I think I buffed the combo damage some, turning it into kind of an any-situation weapon if you're skilled enough. I feel the faster weaker fire rate makes it feel more satisfying and more like a rifle than a sniper rifle which role is of course is supposed to go to the sniper weapons. The secondary buff is also to make it more useful instead of just always using it exclusively to initiate a shock combo.
Link Gun
Primary fire got a buff in speed and damage as it was almost as bad as the AR in UT2004. Secondary has also been buffed a little bit. But again, since the lock-on for the beam isn't present in UT2004 really, I can't really balance for that so, the beam is now nice and powerful. Besides that, not much to say here at all. Feels nice and balanced now.
Minigun
This one was tricky since at first, I felt like the AR and Minigun would overlap too much. But I finally managed to get the Minigun to play nice. For one, the primary and secondary has been buffed but the inaccuracy has been increased to make the weapon much less useful at long ranges. Neither can you use the secondary to snipe either as while that has more accuracy to it, it's hardly better and is mainly there to conserve ammo at close ranges. Definitely a weapon you pick up now if you just want to mindlessly mow things down. But not too mindlessly or else you're going to get owned of course.
Flak Cannon
Primary has its speed buffed and power increased per shard but is now rather inaccurate and, compared to the other weapons, has kind of a slow fire rate. Much more shotgunny. Secondary has been buffed and now sends flak out pretty speedily. Much faster than primary flak anyway. Feels much more like a meaty mortar round. The inaccuracy of the primary though may still yet need to be increased even more though.
Rocket Launcher
I had some trouble balancing this one just right as well. The past version I was going to go with at first had a more powerful rocket but I also buffed the speed too much and it got too OP'd so I went back to work on it some more. In the end, I ended up with kind of the classic FPS rocket launcher. If I needed to describe it in two words, it would definitely be slow and nasty. Slow enough to be dodged adequately for sure but if you don't, you're going to get a nice chunk of health blown off you at the very least and a direct hit is a sure death sentence unless you've got some decent armor on you. Actually, among all the newly balanced weapons here, this is my fave. It feels balanced and super satisfying now. It's an effing rocket launcher and you use it to blow stuff up good.
Lightning Gun
The Lightning Gun was an obvious choice as a stand-in for the UT4 Sniper Rifle. What I ended up with after balancing to play well with the other buffed weapons was a faster firing 2-shot-kill weapon. However, something's telling me that the faster fire-rate for pro level play will be too OP'd and will need to be nerfed. Further, I discovered a kind of cheap close-range combo with the gun. Basically, since the first shot will nail almost all of someone's health, you just switch to your AR after the first hit and kill them instantly. However, this of course only works for short ranges and with the many short range, fast kill time weapons that there are now, it's kind of hard for me to justify nerfing it.
Sniper Rifle
So, you'll notice that I've also changed the SR. Since I already balanced the LG for regular play, I thought it would be fun to make the sniper a truly nasty sniper weapon. Although the weapon has a very slow fire rate, it will punch a big hole through all but the most armored players, making a hit with it very satisfying and rewarding yet pretty punishing if you do miss with such a powerful weapon, and it will take out vehicles rather nicely. (Made sure to remove that really annoying smoke that appears whenever you fire it too.)
-
And that's about it. The AVRiL is insanely powerful because I thought it pretty darn ridiculous that such a huge slow missile as that had trouble taking out grounded players. However, now it... Uh... Might be way too OP'd against vehicles. ^^; I wasn't really focusing on balancing it though. The GL is nicely balanced though and I felt the Redeemer/Ion Painter was perfect the way it was besides perhaps it needed the ammo capacity for just one more missile, UT99 style.
You might notice though that the total ammo counts on most all the guns have been decreased. This was to make ammo more valuable and also to encourage players to use different weapons instead of the same one of course. And there you go. That's my weapon balance contribution. If anything, I HIGHLY advise everyone to, if they have a copy of UT2004 installed on their computer, put in my weapon settings and see how this all actually plays. I'm personally rather satisfied with it. But make sure to let me know of ALL criticism you have with this.
Alright then, I'm out.
If anyone's paid attention at all to any of my UT2004 threads, they'll know I absolutely adore this mutator as it allows you to customize most every gameplay aspect of the base UT2004 game. I will be using it now to find a good weapon balance for UT4. Now, I realize that UT2004 and UT4 are not the same game and, as such this solution is not a perfect one at all. For example, in UT2004, I cannot change the fact that the Link Gun secondary does not "lock onto" an enemy. So I cannot balance for that. Or the fact that the Bio Rifle bounces players around (wat) in UT2004 when you hit them with it directly.
However, I still think I can hopefully contribute some ideas to weapon balance that may not have already been thought of through my implementation of TweakTool.
Now, I am using no double jumps. Base UT2004 movement speed. However, I am using 65% air control instead of 35%. And also, I've disabled falling damage. I never ever liked it... Felt like it's always limited my movement needlessly. The last things I'll note here is that I changed the Health Pack strength from 25 to 50.
Now... This weapon balance list I'm about to go into now is LONG. If the first few paragraphs of this topic weren't any indication that is. XP I'm going to post a screenshot of my TweakTool weapon config window now so you guys can easily see in one compact view all the nitty gritty details of everything I'm running.
https://i.imgur.com/NhTQe0D.png
Alright. On to the first weapons then!
Translocator & Shield Gun
I'm grouping these two together because I honestly didn't spend that much time with them as compared to the other weapons. The Translocator I made to be the standard UT Translocator. The Shield Gun's damage is probably pretty OP'd. The range I'll probably nerf back to 100. The thing is though, I actually wanted this weapon to be useful instead of it always getting chucked in the corner for something, anything else most all of the time or maybe used once to block the occasional long range precision weapon fire. So I kind of overcompensated.
Assault Rifle
The AR in UT2004 has always been kind of the laughing stock of all the weapons. Inaccurate, puny, and the grenades don't even kill a fresh spawned player with a direct hit which makes people not even bother with the grenades at all. No. Definitely needed a buff. I'm actually really happy with how it plays now. It can now definitely hold its own against the other weapons decently enough but not too much as to never have to search and use anything else. Further, the grenade has been buffed and its primary use is now to see if you can land that sweet direct hit which you'll now be rewarded for with a frag on an unarmored player or if anything, a nice chunk of damage which you can then finish them off with some primary. (wish I could take out dual-wielding it now actually as it makes the weapon really OP)
Bio Rifle
I had a lot of trouble with this one as in UT2004, as mentioned above, the primary bounces players around with a direct hit which makes them harder to hit and it's just really annoying. However, even then, I was still able to make it at least somewhat viable by giving it a careful buff. However, it's still not for every situation and it's the best I can do with it in UT2004.
Shock Rifle
Now this may be one of the most controversial changes I've made to the weapons in here. What I did was make it a 3 shot kill on a fresh spawned player and boosted its firerate. I also buffed the secondary to have a slightly larger blast radius and do more damage, and finally, I think I buffed the combo damage some, turning it into kind of an any-situation weapon if you're skilled enough. I feel the faster weaker fire rate makes it feel more satisfying and more like a rifle than a sniper rifle which role is of course is supposed to go to the sniper weapons. The secondary buff is also to make it more useful instead of just always using it exclusively to initiate a shock combo.
Link Gun
Primary fire got a buff in speed and damage as it was almost as bad as the AR in UT2004. Secondary has also been buffed a little bit. But again, since the lock-on for the beam isn't present in UT2004 really, I can't really balance for that so, the beam is now nice and powerful. Besides that, not much to say here at all. Feels nice and balanced now.
Minigun
This one was tricky since at first, I felt like the AR and Minigun would overlap too much. But I finally managed to get the Minigun to play nice. For one, the primary and secondary has been buffed but the inaccuracy has been increased to make the weapon much less useful at long ranges. Neither can you use the secondary to snipe either as while that has more accuracy to it, it's hardly better and is mainly there to conserve ammo at close ranges. Definitely a weapon you pick up now if you just want to mindlessly mow things down. But not too mindlessly or else you're going to get owned of course.
Flak Cannon
Primary has its speed buffed and power increased per shard but is now rather inaccurate and, compared to the other weapons, has kind of a slow fire rate. Much more shotgunny. Secondary has been buffed and now sends flak out pretty speedily. Much faster than primary flak anyway. Feels much more like a meaty mortar round. The inaccuracy of the primary though may still yet need to be increased even more though.
Rocket Launcher
I had some trouble balancing this one just right as well. The past version I was going to go with at first had a more powerful rocket but I also buffed the speed too much and it got too OP'd so I went back to work on it some more. In the end, I ended up with kind of the classic FPS rocket launcher. If I needed to describe it in two words, it would definitely be slow and nasty. Slow enough to be dodged adequately for sure but if you don't, you're going to get a nice chunk of health blown off you at the very least and a direct hit is a sure death sentence unless you've got some decent armor on you. Actually, among all the newly balanced weapons here, this is my fave. It feels balanced and super satisfying now. It's an effing rocket launcher and you use it to blow stuff up good.
Lightning Gun
The Lightning Gun was an obvious choice as a stand-in for the UT4 Sniper Rifle. What I ended up with after balancing to play well with the other buffed weapons was a faster firing 2-shot-kill weapon. However, something's telling me that the faster fire-rate for pro level play will be too OP'd and will need to be nerfed. Further, I discovered a kind of cheap close-range combo with the gun. Basically, since the first shot will nail almost all of someone's health, you just switch to your AR after the first hit and kill them instantly. However, this of course only works for short ranges and with the many short range, fast kill time weapons that there are now, it's kind of hard for me to justify nerfing it.
Sniper Rifle
So, you'll notice that I've also changed the SR. Since I already balanced the LG for regular play, I thought it would be fun to make the sniper a truly nasty sniper weapon. Although the weapon has a very slow fire rate, it will punch a big hole through all but the most armored players, making a hit with it very satisfying and rewarding yet pretty punishing if you do miss with such a powerful weapon, and it will take out vehicles rather nicely. (Made sure to remove that really annoying smoke that appears whenever you fire it too.)
-
And that's about it. The AVRiL is insanely powerful because I thought it pretty darn ridiculous that such a huge slow missile as that had trouble taking out grounded players. However, now it... Uh... Might be way too OP'd against vehicles. ^^; I wasn't really focusing on balancing it though. The GL is nicely balanced though and I felt the Redeemer/Ion Painter was perfect the way it was besides perhaps it needed the ammo capacity for just one more missile, UT99 style.
You might notice though that the total ammo counts on most all the guns have been decreased. This was to make ammo more valuable and also to encourage players to use different weapons instead of the same one of course. And there you go. That's my weapon balance contribution. If anything, I HIGHLY advise everyone to, if they have a copy of UT2004 installed on their computer, put in my weapon settings and see how this all actually plays. I'm personally rather satisfied with it. But make sure to let me know of ALL criticism you have with this.
Alright then, I'm out.
