I have to dissent here. (Destiny)

by Harmanimus , Sunday, July 30, 2017, 21:40 (2718 days ago) @ Kahzgul

A less extreme, but equally frustrating example: Let's say there's a scout that is in a good place ... so bungie balances the weapon for pvp ... What if they tweak the auto-aim a bit? A pve player will start missing shots in pvp that they *know* would have landed in pve. and so forth.

It's very, very risky to balance a weapon for one arena and not the other. It's is super critical that weapons have identical feel in both places so that the weapons themselves feel "real" to the players ... Now take any two of those sensibilities about the gun and imagine - one is pve, and one is pvp, and you have to hold that concept of the gun in your head at the same time when deciding what gun to take with you. It would be a nightmare.

So we have this nebulous "feel" aspect of weapons that is being addressed here. And from a divided balance standpoint, it is not necessarily required to break that feel while still substantially differentiating the capabilities of the weapon in two spaces. Obviously, it is not rational to change the baseline (fire rate, innate recoil impulse) but I don't think you give players enough credit to understand that they are in two separate spheres of gameplay.

So, depending on what sort of auto-aim you are referring to (bullet magnetism v. reticle magnetism v. ADS snap) how that will interplay with a NPC v. a PC in a game are likely not going to function identically already. How these functions of aim-assist are programmed can vary greatly, but at a root they're going to function in some regard related to some aspect of the entity that is targeted. COD4, for example, had major ADS snap in the campaign, but relied more heavily on bullet/reticle magnetism in multiplayer. I'm not suggesting some extreme tuning, but all aspects of aim-assist can be tuned separately based on PvE or PvP content without ruining the "feel" of a weapon.

To that same extent, and underscoring the PvP shift to team shooting and Kintetic/Energy play, you can tweak damage values of a weapon separately. Period. No question. Don't make your change obtuse, but in balancing a weapon that does 66 per precision hit against something that does 67 per precision hit is the difference between a 4SK or a 3SK against 200 points of health - but the difference between 50 and 66 in a 1v1 is null, but that 66 is much more useful in a team fight if someone is plinking at them with you. Additionally, changing the precision multiplier (which is crazy huge in PvE, I did not make any major note if it was different in PvP) can be done either separately or concurrently, just bring up the baseline damage for non-precision with the one that needs to keep the higher damage. Bungie has already said that numerical values, such as damage, can be tweaked independently.

Alternate suggestions on things that would allow for additional independent tuning: Perks which function differently (as required) within PvE and PvP, mode-oriented perks (as the previously identified additional super generation perk, Raid Specific Perks, the PvP respawn/control point capture perks), separate gear pools. I don't personally like separate gear pools, though I'm at this point not super worried about Vault Space as that is something that has probably been already thought about at Bungie enough times.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that while I would agree there are things in weapons you shouldn't change for the sake of feel across modes (RoF, Magazine size, role and power relative to comparable weapons, ready/aim/reload speeds) there are a lot that you can change within reason that will maintain feel (Per shot damage, precision multipliers, bullet/reticle magnetism and ADS snap, reserve ammunition, flinch) so long as you don't go to some off-base extreme with your changes.

Also, personally, remembering the function of a weapon in PvE v. PvP is no more of a nightmare than having to remember which of the other 40 weapons in my regular rotation work best in which mode. Or against what type of enemy. Or in which crucible mode. Or which map. Whether its good with the current strike modifiers. Or if it is trash in this Raid encounter but amazing in the next one. How many shots from this auto rifle do I need to land on an average Titan v. an average Hunter compared to this hand cannon. Definitely give players more benefit of the doubt on their ability to remember what weapons they like. Because in most cases they are intimately familiar and that shift while mildly irritating would likely not be something hard to remember, let alone a challenge to fix. Unless it is a PvP mode with locked loadouts.