Let's talk PvP Weapon Balance (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, June 20, 2016, 18:28 (3020 days ago)

Cruel and Cody got into an interesting discussion in the "it's not over" thread, and rather than trying to show up late to that party and also attempt to derail the conversation, I figured this deserved its own topic.

PvP weapon balance. This is a beast with two heads right now. On the one hand, the weapon balance since the last patch is the best it's ever been. Most primaries are about the same as most other primaries. Most secondaries are about the same as most other secondaries. And most heavies are about the same as most other heavies. On the other hand, the balance is frustratingly awful. Primary weapons are outclassed at every turn by secondary weapons.

And here's the issue: To make primaries balanced, Bungie has steadily nerfed the best performing weapons to bring them more in line with the worst performing ones. This means that your average TTK with primary weapons is in the 2-3 second range, which is an eternity. I know some guns are theoretically a 1.33 TTK, but that's a fantasyland that only Luminosity and RealKrafty will actually be able to visit. For the rest of us mere mortals, TTK is higher.

Conversely, secondary weapons are OHK machines. As soon as you pull the trigger, the enemy dies. That means that in the vast majority of situations where a primary weapon is up against a secondary weapon, the secondary weapon will win.

Bungie has tried to address this by making secondary weapon ammo more scarce. It has not had the proper effect. Same with heavy ammo. Now, when one team is winning the map control game, they are flush with rare ammo and are able to kill the enemy team with OHKs all day. The other team, stuffed down into a corner, has really very little hope of coming back since they simply cannot compete with all of the OHK options.

Personally, I think a couple of changes should be made:

- Players start matches with no special ammo whatsoever.
- Special ammo replenishes on the old 30 second timer. none of this wait 1:30 from the start nonsense.
- Special ammo is only partially lost when changing weapons. Ideally, you only lose the ammo that is loaded into your gun at the time of the switch. I'll explain below.
- If a player using a special weapon or heavy weapon is killed by a player using a primary, then a matching ammo brick is dropped.

That last one is the big one. It gives players who are getting stuffed into a corner a chance to punch their way out. It also prevents someone from grabbing a rocket launcher, blasting an entire team, and then getting 40 more rockets from all of their dropped bricks.

There are also some weird special case weapons that need addressing, and I've got a solution for that as well:
- With Invective, the ammo needs to be chanced to regen directly to the tube of the shotgun instead of to the reserve. This is actually a nerf to the gun, as it prevents stockpiling of reserve ammo.
- If the special ammo weapon changeover rule is applied as I've described, neither invective nor ice breaker will be usable to fuel other weapons.
- Sidearms can be made to behave similarly to how they work now by doubling their magazine sizes and filling the mags on respawn without otherwise adjusting reserve ammunition.

Up until this point, the changes I've suggested are just to resolve special weapon and heavy weapon ammo scarcity and abuse. But the real problem is primary weapon impotency. So let's look at that now:

Secondary weapons are generally identically lethal on their first shot. Fusion Rifles differ somewhat, but also are not generally regarded as top tier PvP weapons. Shotguns focus on range above all else, and Snipers focus on aim assist to help with hitting a clean headshot. Other stats such as recoil pattern, reload speed, and so forth are far less impactful on these weapons than on primary weapons.

As such, a primary weapon is double-weak compared to a secondary: Not only does it take longer to kill, but it also suffers from recoil and magazine size issues in ways that secondary weapons simply don't. What can address this?

- First, ADS aiming needs to be fixed. The camera bounce should exactly match the bloom pattern of hipfire, and all bullets should always go where the reticle is pointed. There should be no hidden bloom effect that could possibly result in "phantom" bullets. All shot adjustment should be visibly communicated in the camera and reticle bounce while ADS.

- Second, I think all primary weapons should ADS more quickly than they currently do. It makes no sense that someone can quickscope with a sniper but can't quickburst a pulse rifle.

Mitigating these additional weaknesses of primary weapons should, I think, allow them to be more competitive without actually changing their damage outputs in a potentially gamebreaking way.

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Thoughts?