The weapon handling is bland. I know a significant segment of the current fanbase wants it to feel bland but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s bland and that fact isn’t balanced with strong movement element. Possibly behind movement responsiveness, weapon feedback is the first and most basic feedback a FPS will give to the player. It’s going to be how the game is most immediately judged. Does it feel powerful and satisfying to shoot a thing with a thing?
A projectile weapon has a lot of advantages. You can throw out a projectile and it takes skill or experience to lead a target such that your shot connects. There’s inherent satisfaction in landing that shot. A low RoF high damage hitscan weapon takes skill and timing to land a shot. There’s inherent an gameplay value (high damage) and satisfaction in landing that shot, too. A high RoF hitscan weapon pretty much does damage over time at the center of the crosshair. This needs some combination of powerful audiovisual or gameplay feed back, challenging handling and/or a difficult moving target. Extraction NEEDS at least one of those for the gunplay to feel satisfying.
Weapon feedback and handling breaks down in a couple ways:
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[li]Shots per kill. How many bullets does it take to kill a thing? In ETQW, the main difference between a lacerator and an assault rifle is that the former feels like each shot does damage while the latter feels like it deals damage over time. Based on audiovisual feedback, automatics in Extraction feel like an ET:QW assault rifle* but with even more bullets.[/li]
[li]Time per kill. How quickly does a weapon kill a thing? Well, I’m going to skip over this one because it’s so gameplay focused. Not to be too obvious but this is very separate from the first point.[/li]
[li]Does it change a thing in anyway? This can be terrain deformation such as splintering away cover, causing stagger animations or applying physical knock back on enemies. I’m assuming the Splash Damage won’t do the first two for tech reasons and is probably too conservative to even use the last, even on shotguns and explosives. I could be happily mistaken, however.[/li]
[li]Does a gun recoil when it fires? A laser emits cute little photons. A gun conventionally uses a small explosive to move an object down wind carrying enough force to do damage. There is very little recoil on Extraction’s automatic weapons. These are more like constant stream lasers that have finally been made potent enough in miniaturized form to kill a human after short sustained exposure. They don’t convey much feeling. Please consider exponentially increasing recoil over firing time if you feel you must pander to your current player base as much as you are with low recoils. Also, most of the recoil that does exist, manifests in sights or optics where it conveniently pushes the target into the weapon barrel and sight models. [/li]
Recoil on slow firing weapons glides aim up gently after each shot. These weapons gracefully ease a projectile out of the well oiled gun. They don’t explode upward. These weapons should kick up with a strong initial velocity that slows over time.
[li]Does the weapon look and sound cool when you shoot it? These are pretty much all contemporary-ish small arms so there’s only so far you can go. They are decent. There’s no shiny plasma bursts or particle beams. Some of the sounds don’t convey as much power or aren’t as crisp as I would like but I don’t want to get into specifics with this point, particularly as some seem to be repeated sfx, unintentionally.[/li]
[li]Does it look like the gunshot damages a thing? Is there gore or debris being emitted from the site of impact? I can’t tell because I play on low settings and don’t see much. Maybe it’s awesome and makes up for a lot…[/li][/ul]
*As an aside, the ETQW AR felt like an unreliable toy gun because of weak SFX that played at inconsistent intervals
sorry for possible spelling errors 
So they can make some coin.
