Spooky - Fine Tuning Update v54498 - 11/02/2016

(spookify) #1

Here are my first Impressions of the February Fine Tuning aka a nice balance update.

I will first start out with game performance. I play almost exclusively on US East servers and my ping ranges from 30 to 60. I also try to stick to Min Level 10 servers. I popped on a few servers yesterday thinking they would be crisp and lag.warp free and I was 100% wrong. I got a rubber-banding feel while switching weapons, I got rubber bullets and warping or glitching players. In a nut shell the server still feel like junk.

Side Note: Can we please get more 6v6 Min Level 10 servers? The 7v7 is just to much…

Onto the balance which might have been effect by the horrible servers.

Rhino - Tweaks were done to his minigun spin time and even with Nitros the spin time is noticeable slower. The max spread reduction doesn’t come close to compensating for what feels to be 500ms longer to spin up then the previous update. (Shelving Rhino for now)

All other merc tweaks I have no problem with and will just get used to them.

GUNS

Scoping - The first thing I noticed in this new update is there is a Red Hue in my sniper scope? Is this a bug? Its very annoying. I didnt really notice the scope sway very much due to server lag.

K121 - This gun feels good but is there something up with the sound or recoil animation? Something seems funky with it. Can mow down 3 enemys and it feels like luck or spray and pray…

Dreiss AR - This gun is super annoying!!! Pop Pop Dead… That and the Grandeur are turning into the most annoying guns up close. Almost more so then Shotguns. Seems like Kills speed in this game is ramping up significantly with the D-AR, Grandeur, shotguns, REVIVR, BR-16 and Stark-AR.

Going against a good Redeye with the PDP was also stupid annoying…

Blishlok - Feels pretty good but with laggy servers its hard to tell.

Hockfir - Land the first 50 bullets and then people wall spam or glitch out so tracking turns impossible. It felt like there is a mouse delay and odd/glitchy merc animation yesterday. Not cool when you are tracking heads on these light little mercs.

Conclusion:
To recap there are a few things I am very much against: Mini Gun Spin Time and how the TTK is getting quicker and quicker with certain guns. I would rather see the D-AR pop 3 heads on a light merc and have more control and or a slighty faster ROF.

Lastly these past 2 weeks of server input lag have been very annoying. The game is still playable but when you know there is this lag it makes it much less fun to test. Basically to compensate this I have been going splash damage mercs like Fragger, Proxy, stoker to spam explosions.

(N8o) #2

I recently picked up Kira w/ Stark AR, and I gotta say…

100 kills is not an issue anymore to achieve.

(Amerika) #3

[quote=“N8o;148622”]I recently picked up Kira w/ Stark AR, and I gotta say…

100 kills is not an issue anymore to achieve.[/quote]

130-140 kills in a long match, no problem.

Also, the K121 has always felt like you get lucky with it when you get multi-kills yet it’s so consistently able to do that. It’s just the way it’s always been and now it’s even a bit better…and I always considered it the best gun in the game up until the last few months where I believe the Stark is the best.

I don’t know why Rhino was nerfed. I saw the numbers SD posted but without them posting exactly the formula they used and the types of numbers they used beyond “top SW and ranked results” it’s hard to know if those numbers are even valid. And after seeing the differences in the guns I am not sure they used truncated means when viewing their weapon statistics (chopping off the top 10-15% and the bottom 10-15% due to amazing players gravitating towards what they think is the best which artificially inflates an average).

I put in time with the GR last night and it felt good overall. Still somewhat of a risk on smaller mercs in CQC that are strafing properly but pretty solid overall.

(FalC_16) #4

[quote=“N8o;148622”]I recently picked up Kira w/ Stark AR, and I gotta say…

100 kills is not an issue anymore to achieve.[/quote]

not sure if serious.

Stark has been nerfed way too much in my opinion. It was one of the best guns in the game, but now it’s very …average.

Bullet spread and v - recoil increased by 10 % is simply too much.

shitstorm incoming xD

(Amerika) #5

I played with it last night and didn’t notice the changes at all. The 10% vertical recoil is a non-issue since, if you were using it properly, you always pulled down slightly with it anyway while firing at anything from medium range or beyond. 10% isn’t much of an adjustment here. And the spread change really wasn’t much because the spread was already a small amount anyway so a 10% change to a tiny amount is a tiny change. I still get 3 burst headshots from the same distances.

The only change I really notices was putting down Vassili players. They can now survive a 3burst to the head where before they insta-died.

(N8o) #6

[quote=“FalC_16;148653”][quote=“N8o;148622”]I recently picked up Kira w/ Stark AR, and I gotta say…

100 kills is not an issue anymore to achieve.[/quote]

not sure if serious.

Stark has been nerfed way too much in my opinion. It was one of the best guns in the game, but now it’s very …average.

Bullet spread and v - recoil increased by 10 % is simply too much.

shitstorm incoming xD[/quote]

Give me a second. Will edit this post once I gather all my screenshots.

Not quite 100, I guess I don’t screen shot 100+ as much as I used to. Anways, enjoy (I went overboard with the marker in the last one, forgive me. I am on 58 hours of no sleep).

(Amerika) #7

Yup. I have a video that pretty much was my entire night with the Stark. Business as usual despite the changes. I did have a couple of 110+ kill SW matches when I was doing some SW missions as well but I rarely upload those since SW pubs are so cheesy with the timer. Off-topic but I still hate the fact that you can easily tell your opponents spawn time since they are synced with your own. It just kills SW pubs for me.

So, IMO based off of my experience last night, the Stark is just fine. I’m going to test out the Dreiss and MK46 pretty heavily this weekend. I think the MK46 is going to be a beast now with the reload time being reduced by as much as it was.

(pumpkinmeerkat) #8

Stark is still great :slight_smile: Close and medium range I didn’t notice any difference. I was a little worried after reading the notes but since the spread was already so low I guess a 10% increase isn’t much. I don’t have much playtime with the Dreiss but it seems very powerful at the moment as well.

(doxjq) #9

@Amerika I found the same thing with the Stark. I barely notice the changes at all tbh. There was maybe a couple of shots where someone was running perfectly sideways to me while jumping and the clipping was a little bit off but 99% of the time it was pretty much void. The Stark is still great.

Also what you said re: Rhino is bang on. I was going to make a lengthy post about this last night but never got around to it. I’m honestly really concerned with how the devs come up with these nerfs and buffs, because if it’s based purely on that program they made (the one that shows them all the pathway/kill statistics from each game, what is that again?) and statistics on paper then they are seriously going the wrong way about it.

Stats don’t show everything you need to know. They are the black and white facts but have nothing but face value. What they don’t show is the underlying reasons behind why these certain stand out stats are coming up and what is influencing them. There’s usually more involved than meets the eye. The only real way to grasp what needs to change is to ask the community before making the changes as well as referring to their statistics. Again, if they’re simply looking at numbers on a page and saying “ok this needs to change because this is overpowered” then they’re going to develop a seriously broken game.

(Amerika) #10

@Rancid They call it ECHO. I have found a few flaws in their other data sources (and reported them) and that alone doesn’t give me confidence that they are presenting the numbers correctly to themselves. They might believe the numbers to be valid but there could be flaws in how they present them which could be driving some of these decisions. The gun statistics and the merc statistics really drive that home for me because they simply look wrong in some cases (and I was right in the past when some other numbers didn’t look correct…so I’m not paranoid).

It would be nice if they had full transparency on the methodology used when getting these types of numbers. There isn’t anything that could be exploited through giving the community that knowledge and they can only gain more insight into their own processes by crowd-sourcing a bit of experience from the community.

They might be perfectly valid numbers though. But I won’t know unless their entire methodology behind obtaining them and presenting them becomes transparent. Sadly, not very many companies would be willing to do this for multiple reasons :frowning:

(doxjq) #11

Totally agree, and that is more or less exactly what I was meaning. I haven’t seen any figures myself but I sure would like to. There’s just too many influential things that happen in game that will never show up in statistics because as we learn the way people play we stop doing certain things and taking certain pathways/routes just on the principal of precaution, not because they are happening frequently, so on a piece of paper nothing will show up. It might show people avoid a certain area, but it won’t give you an insight as to why they are avoiding it or what thought process the player is going through to make them avoid it etc.

So they really REALLY need to get some feedback from another source. A community based poll would be the best thing I reckon, like they did a while ago - I forget what that was even for. They even displayed the results for us all to see. The one where they asked us about loadouts and future events and things of that nature. They really should do one based on game modes, map balance, merc balance, specific weapons etc. It would be as interesting for them as it would be for us, to see if the data they are receiving from ECHO relates to how the community is feeling.

(FalC_16) #12

try hipfire the Stark now long range. I’m telling you it’s no longer viable without using that horrid scope. THAT my friend is the biggest nerf for it.

BR16 still performs well even long range when hip firing.

(SiegeFace) #13

RIP UltimoCatibou0 February 2nd 2016 - February 13th 2016

[quote=“FalC_16;148653”][quote=“N8o;148622”]I recently picked up Kira w/ Stark AR, and I gotta say…

100 kills is not an issue anymore to achieve.[/quote]

not sure if serious.

Stark has been nerfed way too much in my opinion. It was one of the best guns in the game, but now it’s very …average.

Bullet spread and v - recoil increased by 10 % is simply too much.

shitstorm incoming xD[/quote]

Stark is my bae. The first weapon I truly fell in love with when I started playing DB when arty was on free rotation, and I really cant tell its been nerfed, still shreking everything with it like there is no tommorow, unless the delay between shots thing bugs out and I can’t fire but when working normally its fine.

(CCP115) #14

I used the BR on Fragger for the first time in a while, and I gotta say it’s pretty damn ok.

Stark must be even better.

(doxjq) #15

[quote=“CCP115;149167”]
Stark must be even better.[/quote]

The BR-16 is great, but my personal opinion is that it is map dependant. The Stark is great and the scope is handy but tbh the BR-16 is just as good. Depends how much you scope really. I prefer the BR-16 on smaller enclosed maps (underground for example) where the bigger clip comes in handy.

(SnakekillerX) #16

I also play on US East and haven’t noticed any lag related issues or rubber banding at all.
In fact I’ve always found the ping time and stability of the servers to be rather good. If there is any play warping it is usually due to that player’s connection. It would be nice if they showed packet loss along with ping, as ping does not tell the whole story.