[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;521537]Actually when it comes to balancing burst fire weapons alongside fully automatic weapons its a much deeper problem then simply damage and recoil.
The reason for this is that you aim them in very different ways.
With a fully automatic weapon you track the enemy.
With a bust weapon you move to the enemy.
These may seem like two things that are very similar yet the physical and mental mechanics are very different.
Example…
When using a burst weapon your goal is to move the crosshair to the enemy player and press the fire button.
So how do we do this?
1, we locate a target on the screen.
2, we confirm target,
3, we register the players location.
3.1 (optional / skill based) we predict player movement to location.
4, we move the mouse so crosshair is at the location.
5, we fire.
From confirming the target to firing your weapon there is a small amount of time… around 100ms on average… Firing the weapon to getting all 3 bullets out is 180ms again… Even a enemy moving at full speed has a high percentage change of eating all 3 bullets providing you pulled the trigger at center mass. Instantly after the shot has been made you start the process again. Providing you can move you crosshair to where you choose to move your crosshair your per bullet accuracy will be much higher and overall it has a much lower skill requirement.
This is basically the reason why people hit more rails in quake then they do LG and Machine Gun.
Changing damage and recoil would allow you to get it down to “balanced” for certain skill groups however you risk the whole weapon class becoming underpowered to a large proportion of the player base in doing so.
My suggestion is really simple… increase the time between each of the bullets in a burst and reduce the time between bursts… Even a small change here will reduce the likelihood of hitting all 3 bullets on a moving target drastically while keeping the feel of the weapon in place by requiring SOME of the skill associated with the tracking style of aim. As little as a 16-32ms gap added between each bullet should bring back inline with the current weapons.[/QUOTE]
So like an arty fire rate?
With slightly less then arty damage?
I think this would make the gun a lot better but the timing, damage and recoil will need to be right.
IMO:
The 3 shot burst should be “around” (Little faster) an arty fire rate but the first 3 shots should not have a huge recoil. The kick/recoil at the end of the first burst should make you readjust your aim or in the least make you pull down. After a certain time the recoil will reset if you wait between burst but there should be something so you cant spam 3 or 4 bursts without taking action.
On a side note: I have gotten a lot of feedback from new players that were in this latest stress test. The are concerned about consistent kills; the sort of 3 HS kills mentality that was in ET. The not knowing when a person is going to die is very odd in this game and leaves and empty feeling. A ton of those games if you aim in on you know the millisecond that someone is going to die. DB is sort of getting there but with the wild HP swings and speed and guns its very hard to tell.
I have said it before this is a killing game… Anything with spawn times and re-spawns is a killing game. People will pick the most OP mercs and guns to achieve victory. If you can not kill you can not win. Perfect example is 3 fraggers and 2 aura’s on Defense at a bottleneck. With my team being terrible I could not break through this and was full held.
