How the low TTK neuters possible weapon variety

[gunshooter]

So I decided to get back into making Youtube gaming videos with horrible voiceovers (i'm not very good at them, as you can see) and what better way to do it than with videos about PS2. I'm going to be making a video series about the choices made during development and how they make a lot of the changes that people ask for just not possible without some large sweeping changes.


Obviously i'm no game designer but it doesn't take one to see the problems that SOE got themselves into with some of the decisions they made, like the battlefield-esque TTK/gameplay and the lack of any meaningful limitations on vehicle and aircraft spawning, just for some examples, and these are the types of things i'll be talking about, rather than things that people on the forums generally complain about, such as VS/TR vs NC weapons and the effectiveness of Anti-Air, which are things that can be fixed with numbers tweaks rather than any kind of extensive redesign.

Next video will be about where the core vehicle design failed and how what we were stuck with have could be improved without a ground-up redesign.

Some people on the official forums have some misconceptions about what I meant by "weapon variety," so i'm cut+pasting my replies to them here in case anyone doesn't understand:

Originally Posted by softgrip, post: 1014233, member: 92285

GD-7F - the full auto pull goes up and left. Makes a huge difference. You have to learn the bullet spread.

Kind of like 80% of other carbines which have the exact same recoil pattern (sometimes to the right instead of left, though.) A different recoil pattern doesn't magically make a weapon "unique." It just changes which way you drag your mouse when firing full auto. Variety would be something truly unique, such as the MCG or Lasher if they didn't need to be kept useless for the sake of game balance.

Originally Posted by Koadster, post: 1014234, member: 42761

BF3 has a similair low TTK, and each of its 70+ weapons all feel unique..

Havent tested alot of other faction guns but TR, you can tell difference between the T1 vs TRV vs SABR13 vs TAR, Carv vs TMG50 vs MSW-R. The differences arent as profound as BF3s weapon variety but its there.

Again, the difference in "feeling" in weapons in this game is nothing compared to many other games.

This game has 3 important differences on automatic weapons:

1: Recoil sways to the left

2: Recoil sways to the right

3: Recoil goes straight up

Taking a fully automatic weapon, tweaking some numbers values (rof, cone of fire, damage, velocity etc) and then tacking on one of 3 set recoil patterns is not variety. At their core, the recoil is the only thing that changes how a weapon actually feels. Aside from that, they all play the exact same way.

For example, take a recent addition to the game, the TR Jaguar carbine. This gun is the Lynx Carbine with recoil that goes upwards instead of rightwards, some minor numbers tweaks that no one will ever notice, and 50RPM. The choice between these 2 guns is simply "Do you prefer your recoil go up or to the right" because nothing else is of any consequence at all.

Other people havent picked up on it because people do feel variety. I always hear on outfit chat people comparing guns and telling eachother how different guns preform differently.

Different guns performing differently has nothing to do with variety. Minor stat differences and a choice out of the 3 recoil patterns isn't variety. Variety is an entirely different type of weapon, which this game doesn't have for the reasons I outlined in this video - while its predecessor, by most accounts, did.