Update Flechette?

Leave it as it is
Total votes: 2 (33%)
Nerf secondary only
Total votes: 1 (17%)
Nerf secondary and buff primary
Total votes: 1 (17%)
Buff primary only
Total votes: 2 (33%)
Total votes: 6

Balance Flechette

1
I'm tired with balls spam. Repeater was nerfed for Siege by decreasing it's splash radius from 128 to 80, and Flechette was not. Flechette has 2 balls that are bouncing and yet it's splash is 128. Reduce it to 80. It would also make abusing corpses less faggy.

We could also buff primary. It is pretty useless now. I would double/triple amount of shards and make them do 2x/3x less damage.

Re: Balance Flechette

2
I do not think alt golan spam is that strong. Most of the time it ends up hitting no one, and just forces enemy to mind their step, but I can at least see why someone would be annoyed by this. However, reducing the radius would just make it even more difficult to land direct golan hits on people, and the weapon is already punishing enough with rng projectile pattern.

I suppose if something really had to be done to make alt golan spam less "efficient", you could decrease the damage the balls deal every time they bounce off a surface. Thus direct hits would be still strong, it wouldn't impact destructible objectives (with the exception of vent cheesing station 2 on cargo), and random balls all over the ground would be less threatening.

Primary golan fire is not useless, and has never been. In CTF, it deals pretty significant damage, and is easy to land, due to the insane mobility strafe-jumping brings to the game. In siege it's hard to land, because combat usually happens farther away, and it takes a while to advance.

Increasing the number of shards would just make primary fire spammy, and require less skill, never mind the reduced damage. If we wanted to buff primary golan fire so badly, just get rid of the rng spray pattern it has. But honestly, that might end up making it overpowered.

Re: Balance Flechette

3
Onasi wrote: I do not think alt golan spam is that strong. Most of the time it ends up hitting no one, and just forces enemy to mind their step, but I can at least see why someone would be annoyed by this. However, reducing the radius would just make it even more difficult to land direct golan hits on people, and the weapon is already punishing enough with rng projectile pattern.

I suppose if something really had to be done to make alt golan spam less "efficient", you could decrease the damage the balls deal every time they bounce off a surface. Thus direct hits would be still strong, it wouldn't impact destructible objectives (with the exception of vent cheesing station 2 on cargo), and random balls all over the ground would be less threatening.
How does splash radius reduction makes it harder to hit someone directly?
Onasi wrote: Primary golan fire is not useless, and has never been. In CTF, it deals pretty significant damage, and is easy to land, due to the insane mobility strafe-jumping brings to the game. In siege it's hard to land, because combat usually happens farther away, and it takes a while to advance.

Increasing the number of shards would just make primary fire spammy, and require less skill, never mind the reduced damage. If we wanted to buff primary golan fire so badly, just get rid of the rng spray pattern it has. But honestly, that might end up making it overpowered.
Who cares about CTF here? It is super hard to use it in Siege. It is almost never used.

Re: Balance Flechette

4
Grab wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 11:33 am How does splash radius reduction makes it harder to hit someone directly?
Hm you did say splash radius. I stand corrected, it does not affect direct hits. I suppose it could be then reduced, if that is what everyone wants; though I would still just leave it alone.

Grab wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 11:33 am Who cares about CTF here? It is super hard to use it in Siege. It is almost never used.
The fact that it is useful in CTF highlights that there is nothing wrong with primary fire itself, it's just hard to properly use in siege. Sort of how bowcaster and E11 are laughable in CTF, but are pretty useful in siege. Primary golan fire is rarely used in siege because it has an insane rng spread, thus you need to get close to use it, and there are simply better weapons available for close range. It has nothing to do with having too few shards: increasing the amount of shards you fire would just sort of counter the rng spread.

Re: Balance Flechette

5
Onasi wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:23 pm
Grab wrote: Sat Dec 15, 2018 11:33 am Who cares about CTF here? It is super hard to use it in Siege. It is almost never used.
The fact that it is useful in CTF highlights that there is nothing wrong with primary fire itself, it's just hard to properly use in siege. Sort of how bowcaster and E11 are laughable in CTF, but are pretty useful in siege. Primary golan fire is rarely used in siege because it has an insane rng spread, thus you need to get close to use it, and there are simply better weapons available for close range. It has nothing to do with having too few shards: increasing the amount of shards you fire would just sort of counter the rng spread.
This is bad argument. Siege is different to other gametypes and needs/deserves some weapon changes. I don't care if we reduce RNG or double shards, it needs some changes. IMO it should shoot more shards, shooting 5 shards is just stupid.

Re: Balance Flechette

7
Onasi, Sith, and I tested some experimental settings.

1. The first thing we tested was a completely non-random pattern, as in the competitive TF2 image. However, this posed some issues because at some distances you were better off aiming to the side of people than directly at them, which is stupid. Distance of engagement should be the main variable in shotgun combat, not aiming off-center to cheese the spread pattern. This is an inherent fault of the competitive TF2 system, and I believe the reason why it is not really used in any other games. Weapons in JKA have RNG in general, and it doesn't really make sense to remove it from shotgun entirely, since it is by definition the most random weapon. The alternative would be increasing the number of pellets and decreasing damage, but (1) that might lag the server to be constantly creating that many entities, especially if multiple people are shooting, and (2) might give some people FPS lag and visual distractions due to shittons of things flying around. It also furthermore really starts to deviate more and more from the base weapon design, and shotgun design in general. Shotguns just fundamentally aren't about completely coating every molecule of air with little pellets.

2. However, the second one we tested seemed pretty good. It preserves the same overall spread amount as basejka, but reduces the potential for RNG to completely fuck or reward you.

Here's how the base jka system works:
Let "r" be a randomly-generated number between 0 and 4, inclusive.
Shot 1: dead center
Shot 2: up-and-down axis ±= r, side-to-side axis ±= r
Shot 3: up-and-down axis ±= r, side-to-side axis ±= r
Shot 4: up-and-down axis ±= r, side-to-side axis ±= r
Shot 5: up-and-down axis ±= r, side-to-side axis ±= r
The complete randomness allows for crazy possibilities like 4 shots going off to one corner, or all the shots going in a horizontal or diagonal line. This is not how shotguns work lol. I read up on shotgun spreads for other video games and I'm pretty sure JKA is the only one with this much randomness. There is RNG in other games, but it is generally controlled or mitigated in some way, e.g. randomly selecting from a pool of pre-defined spreads.

Here's how the new system we tested works:
Let "r" be a randomly-generated number between 0 and 4, inclusive.
Shot 1: dead center
Shot 2: up-and-down axis += r, side-to-side axis += r
Shot 3: up-and-down axis += r, side-to-side axis -= r
Shot 4: up-and-down axis -= r, side-to-side axis += r
Shot 5: up-and-down axis -= r, side-to-side axis -= r

This means that each pellet (besides the first) must stay in its own quadrant. This makes the spread feel more consistent, i.e. you won't get fucked by horrendous RNG where you are leading a target moving right and you have 4 pellets go left of him. And you won't be rewarded for insanely lucky RNG where you are leading a target and you have 4 pellets that fire in front of him. Spreads tested generally look much more similar to shotgun spreads in the majority of FPS games.

Some casual testing of shots on moving targets showed that both systems had basically the same average total damage done, but the base system had a higher standard deviation. On the base system, we would have some runs where a fuckton of damage was done and some runs where very little damage was done. On the second system, generally the runs tended to be closer to the average, with fewer outliers. Overall it felt much better to fire without being a hard buff, and it is the most faithful to base gameplay of any alternative proposed. Onasi and Sith agreed that this was good to leave enabled ATM, so it is.

Re: Balance Flechette

8
The alternative would be increasing the number of pellets and decreasing damage, but (1) that might lag the server to be constantly creating that many entities, especially if multiple people are shooting, and (2) might give some people FPS lag and visual distractions due to shittons of things flying around.
Not true. I increased number of flechettes to 20 on TDM and I didn't notice any FPS problems or lags. 9 flechettes instead of 5 is not big change.
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