I have... kind of (Destiny)

by someotherguy, Hertfordshire, England, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, 21:26 (3510 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by someotherguy, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, 22:11

I was in the process of quantifying everything, starting from the White Weapons up, when I realised that patches and updates were going to make the workload constant and never-ending, so I kind of stopped after I figured out the base systems and rules that everything else follows.

Which means 3 things:

• If you ever want to know about pre-TDB White, Green or Blue weapons, I'm your man.
  
  
• I know some really weird things. For example, did you know that Auto Rifles and Scout Rifles all have the same delay between firing their final round and beginning the reload animation (0.4 seconds), but Sniper Rifles have a differing delay based on their rate of fire (higher RoF = shorter delay)? LMGs also have differing delays, but they are seemingly arbitrary (or possibly based on the physical model of the weapon. As in, what the gun looks like. Maybe?), while all Pulse Rifles have a delay of 0.53 seconds except the Psi Umbra II-A, which is 1 frame longer... because reasons?
  
  Also weird - did you know that the BTRD-345 is not just a high-stability Legendary LMG, but is also a pre-HoW Green LMG (I think it was the one available from the Vanguard Armoury pre-order bonus)? It wasn't very good.
  
  
• On the bright side, it means I also know how some of the less transparent mechanics work - did you know that, in general, 2 points of reload speed equates to 1 frame of reload animation? So a gun with 50 reload speed only reloads 0.166666 recurring seconds (5 frames at 30 fps) faster than a gun with 40 reload speed? Handcannons don't follow this rule though, because Handcannons are cool and don't play by the rules.
  
  More useful for general play - it is always, always more efficient to reload your shotgun back to maximum ammo before firing (assuming you sprint-cancel the annoying animation) than it is to load a single shell, fire, reload a single shell, fire, etc. Though of course, efficiency is fine and dandy but if it means the difference bwteen life and death, screw efficientcy and cancel the reload animation to shoot that nasty minotaur in the head-parts.
  

Sadly it also means that I'd need to start over if you wanted that level of specificity for new guns. That wouldn't be that hard, as there seem to be far fewer Legendaries than there are Rares, but honestly I feel like it would be overkill. It does lead me to one decision that would have to be made though - Because of the differing stats of each Legendary avilable, it would be far easier to talk about each archetype, but far more comprehensive to talk about each weapon on an individual basis.

For example, for a Swarm Archetype LMG I would usually say to stack Stability with Feeding Frenzy and increased magazine size. But the BTRD-345 already has great stability, so that would be a waste.

Similarly, the Dead Orbit Scout Rifle is inferior to the Crucible playlist's Shadow Scout Rifle. They benefit from a similar roll, but you could potentially do something slightly different with the Shadow because it has inherently superior stats.

Thoughts?