MM8BDM v5 - Weapon Tuning (Leaf Shield)

[LlamaHombre]

Hello everyone, sorry it took so long to get this up.

By now most of you should be familiar with this thread. We on the team have gotten some great advice from this thread over v5's development and as we approach our final screenings there exists a need to turn our primary focus to weapon balance and retooling. So as a result, we'll be turning to the community once again for their thoughts on how we could make some of the more overwhelming or underwhelming weapons fit in alongside the rest of the game.

Note that the format and rules for this thread are pretty much those of the aforementioned v5 maps thread, meaning that analysis and suggestion are going to give your opinion more weight than vague observation. Something I'd like to try for this thread however is an attempt to globalize discussion towards a given topic for periods of time, and try to cycle through a list of weapons suggested by the community. For example, our first subject will be Atomic Fire. Until we've heard enough to draw a conclusion for action or a consensus in a different direction, discussion should mainly be directed towards the fate of Atomic Fire for v5. That said, I'd like to request that following posts you list any weapons that you would like for discussion to turn to next. If a weapon has a cause, then it'll be next in queue and so on. Hopefully this will give us the productivity we got from the v5 maps thread while also providing some closure to complaints that the thread was too open-ended. If this works, chances are it'll become the staple for things in the future. We'll see.

But for now, let's focus on Atomic Fire. We're looking forward to some discussion, and we'll hopefully be ready to chime in here and there as decisions are made.

Table of Contents:

(click to show/hide)

Atomic Fire [Completed] - Page 1
Search Snake [Tweaking] - Page 4
Pharaoh Shot [Tweaking] - Page 7
Leaf Shield [Discussing] - Page 10

[Thunderono]

Atomic Fire's actually pretty tricky.  Without OHKO potential, you basically remove the weapon from the game, but with it, it's a total piece of shit.  I'm going to tentatively say I think the OHKO should stay in, but at dramatic costs to its current viability.

First off, an ammo consumption nerf would be required.  If you whiff your giant ripping OHKO, you need to work to get a full charge back.  The second two are interchangeable; either give it a range limit, or, as the option I'd prefer, delay the actual shot when the charge is released.  You could possibly add a visual indicator to the weapon being fired as well, so that somebody caught could have warning.  I think the delay helps in the way that twitch shots would no longer happen (or at least happen far less than before), and the visual indicator would give an observant opponent time to dodge the attack.  I understand it's a little hacky and it'd take some doing to increase clarity to the user on when the shot will actually come out, but in its current state it's nigh unstoppable and I feel like this is the best way to cut down on random deaths to an unforeseeable atomic fire shot.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'd like to see Silver Tomahawk on the plate next.

[MusashiAA]

My ideas and recollections on Atomic Fire and potential changes:

-Makes a lot of noise when charging, with no penalty to holding the charge...other than making yourself very easy to spot and literally a walking target of higher priority, which I'd assume was the intended penalty, but this has proven to be a non-issue in offensive play (which is to say the only kind of play in 8BDM DM IMO). Many things have been suggested towards penalizing the hold charge already over the years, none of which I can recall specifically. Maybe take a hint from the original Atomic Fire from MM2, and lose the charge if you're damaged while charging: that way, there's a bigger penalty in holding the charge and letting your position be known to nearby enemies.

-Huge destructive power on that full charge ripper shot. It travels so far without its power decaying over time, too. Maybe put a range limit to the full charge shot a-la Mega Man X5's Gaea Armor full charge shot? Trade off tremendous power with a medium range projectile.

-50 damage on that medium charge shot, and 12 damage on the small one. They're actually both ok, small one being a stronger Mega Buster, and mid charge being essentially following the 2HKO standard for all charge weapons except Homing Sniper and the MM8 busters, despite being super restrictive with only having 5 mid charge shots.

-The weapon itself, as it is, captures the essence of the original weapon pretty straightforward, and doesn't merit a big revamp, else this essence might be lost: the only problems arise with the lack of a real, perceivable tradeoff to forever holding it.

I wanna bring Scorch Wheel into discussion: you only get 4 shots of it, but the range that wheel projectile can cover is beyond ridiculous, it's bigger than it lends itself to be, which makes it harder to dodge unless you perceive it as an actual huge barrage of constant spawning explosions.

[Knux]

As it stands, Atomic Fire's main point is to charge it up to maximum, build pressure on players and unleash a OHKO on their faces. Powerful weapons such as Astro Crush and Hard Knuckle have their drawbacks, such as standing still and suffering knockback respectively. In the case of Atomic Fire, all you need to do is get away, charge it up then look for a victim. From a Deathmatch perspective, it depends on the map. Like say, a map such as MM1CUT has an overall small layout so the risk of players getting too far ahead of you in frags or getting killed before you even charge up to two levels is a lot higher. However, in MM5DAR it's a pretty damn good strategy to charge it up when it's less crowded, then look for victims. The fact that it can rip means that if it's shot down a crowded hallway, it could mean more than one ezpz kill. Whether they land said shot or not, players can potentially continue along their merry way and charge up another shot to try and score a strike down the alley again.

While this has been Atomic Fire since v1a, and I'm used to the way it works, I have to agree that it's not practical. Therefore, I have a couple of suggestions. The idea is to keep the "build pressure, unleash huge damage" theme the weapon has going, but looking at it from a different perspective.

A. Damaging Afterimages - when Atomic lvl3 is shot, it is a one-hit projectile whose impact does pretty high damage but doesn't OHKO. However, the afterimages that trail behind said shot can "rip" a bit farther (maybe 128 - 192 units?) after the projectile has hit, causing damage akin to Laser Buster but much less damaging. With this method, you can still OHKO a player if the shot and most of the afterimages connect, and potentially get others damaged with the afterimages. As a bonus, these Atomic afterimages could rip through walls to give the weapon more utility, but this isn't really needed.

B. Distance Power Decrease - when Atomic lvl3 is shot, it works as it does now. However, at mid-range, it becomes a lvl2 shot. At long range, it continues on as a lvl1 shot. You can still get OHKOs on players, but you need to earn it by getting somewhat close or with prediction around corners. No need to fear a stray lvl3 shot anymore, though. If you hear Atomic Fire being charged at maximum, chances are you're within OHKO range.

As for weapons to discuss next, please let it be Noise Crush. I already made a suggestion about it here.

[fortegigasgospel]

Honestly I'm gonna say an idea that comes to mind for a nerf to Atomic Fire while keeping it similar and not too drastic of a nerf would be to have the middle of the shot more powerful and the outside of the shot weaker while actually making the projectile a tad bit bigger (found out a full charge AF is actually MUCH smaller then it looks).
While sure the shot is getting slightly larger it makes it more likely to hit terrain, and grazing blows won't deal all that much damage while a direct hit will still kill you. Meanwhile you could effectively use this as a means to actually make the entire shot weaker, if it consists of about lets say 5 shots tightly packed together (2 weak (15) on each side, 2 mid (30) on each side, and a strong (50) in the middle), the total damage between all the shots could still equal OHKO. Alternatively each section of the shot could deal the same amount of damage (30). In both methods being hit by only half of the shot won't kill you but leave a nasty scar (95 for the prior, 90 for the later) while a direct hit of the entire shot will still end it all.

As for a weapon to look into, I half wanna say to look into Star Crash, I don't recall if it is still considered a problem, if it isn't forget I mentioned it.
Edit: Actually yea, Star Crash, I thought of a way to make it feel more accurate, less "I get in range of this and you die," while not nerfing it too hard, and as well as fixing part of the problem with Scorch Wheel mentioned by Musashi.

[Orange juice :l]

I disagree with the idea that atomic fire should grow weaker over distance. The idea of intentionally sniping people with such a slow shot is unlikely, and frankly the one in a million idea of someone getting absolutely DE_STROYED from across the map because they weren't paying attention or turned the corner at the worst time is humorous enough to merit leaving it in.

On the other hand, a huge amount of Atomic Fire's power comes from the "Atomic Bullfight", wherein you simply rush your opponent down until you're in booty-touching range and can promptly OHKO them with solid accuracy due to the large hitbox. While the noise mitigates this somewhat and getting in buckshot range is never a safe idea, you've got so much frontloaded damage (100 could be considered a lot) that you can often either take your shot and get a quick kill before being damaged down or bail out if it goes sour, denying the opponent the ability to chase by threatening with an instakill.

To this end I would suggest one of two things:
1. Lost charge upon damage threshold.
If you get too up close and personal, you're gonna pay for it. With this change, you have to take your shot ASAP instead of taking your time to line it up. This threshold would be something around 15 damage so that any serious shot will cost you the charge but simply taking environmental/AoE damage might not immediately lose it.
2. Wind-up speed.
This will give victims a chance to dodge out of the way while still punishing them for getting into booty-eviscerating range. Leading shots will still be possible when the overall distance/time evens out at a middling range and its top speed will be slightly higher to compensate.

[Mendez]

I'm really liking the idea that Musashi had about making the player lose their charge if they take damage since it gives the opponent a reason to fight back instead of running away like a coward. That way, it can synnergize well with the idea that you're making a lot of noise and drawing attention to yourself, so you need to be stealthy with your positioning or else you're going to get punished.
Personally, I'd reduce the projectile speed for the fully-charged shot since that's what makes it so annoying to dodge. I'm fine with a big hitbox, and I'm fine with lots of damage, since that's what gives Atomic Fire its identity. What I'm not fine with is that you can't really avoid the shot if you're less than 192 pixels away, on account of how quickly that shot can travel. If it's a big powerful blast, there's gotta be some weight to the blast. It can't zoom at you and give you almost no time to react. Make it like the quad laser and you'll have me sold.

[MusashiAA]

I actually looked at the hitboxes too, and was surprised that the shots are far smaller than what the projectile graphics are, pretty much up to par with the Mega Buster's pellets. Now, I didn't suggest a bigger hitbox because of two reasons:

1.- A bigger hitbox means its easier to land.
2.- A bigger hitbox means its harder to fire next to walls/in small corridors.

The second reason far outweighting the first one, as way too big projectiles tend to get in the way of odd and uneven map geometry far too often and get eaten, which you don't want when trying to use Atomic Fire: it doesn't lend itself too well in practice for this case.

[Gumballtoid]

My biggest problem with the weapon is just how accessible it is. On maps like MM1CUT, it's right there, dead center, up for grabs. That's something that should be considered, I feel.

[Max]

so the weapon's really really instakill powerful
so it has a large charge time to remedy that and be close to the game

but that's overpowered because you can just hold it forever run around and then blast someones face off
so make the charge fizzle out if you dont shoot it within a while, keep the buildup payoff but nerf the op easy option
e z

[NemZ]

How about switching it up so that it's speed, size and damage scale up with distance traveled, with charge levels determining the size of the scaling factor?  Make something that actually wants to be used for sniping.

[Hallan Parva]

hi brief thoughts
I agree with most of the points brought up earlier, I'm just formatting them


Atomic Fire - Level 2 Incinerator

uncharged > Level 1 charge time decreased
Level 1 > Level 2 charge time increased
at Level 1, a "Durability" meter is displayed over the ammo bar
Durability decreases with damage taken; zero Durability breaks the charge (restarting after a short delay, if Fire is held)
Durability starts at X (15? 20?), and increases by X when Level 2 is reached

Aside from the obvious problem of the full charge, another gripe I have is just how short the window of the half-charge currently is. It takes about 4 seconds to get to half-charge, but only about a second and a half before a full charge is reached. This window is so short, that without the distinct charge sound, I'm sure most players would have forgotten it was even there. I'm all for seeing weapons being used in different ways (the uncharged firing rate and ammo buffs were a godsend), and if the midcharge was more viable, I feel like the tactic of "hide until Atomic is ready" wouldn't be so prevalent if the Atomic Fire user had something to work with. Conversely, this also helps with the suggested balancing point of losing the charge; not only would the opponent be encouraged to chase down the Atomic Fire user and force their charge to fizzle out, but the Atomic Fire user would also feel encouraged to release the charge early, possibly dealing some damage with the half-charge instead of gambling on the OHKO.

But that's just a theory.



As for "problem children", my focus turns not to a dominant or overpowering weapon, but one that is far too weak and situational to even be considered viable, despite its popular nickname: Search Snake.

[Gumballtoid]

If it were up to me, I would just remove the OHKO from the full charge, instead making it stupidly powerful. That way, if you don't finish a dude off with the 90-ish-damage charged shot, you can pepper them with the uncharged bits and finish them off that way.

I don't like the idea of "durability" simply because I don't like the idea of the weapon being needlessly complex -- Mirror Buster still confuses the heck out of me.

[BiscuitSlash]

I can't quite remember how Atomic Fire is with getting it's ammo back from weapon energy capsules. I think it's the same as most weapons? If so it might be worth considering lowering the amount of ammo you get from said capsules, as that will discourage people from relying solely on Atomic Fire.

A big problem the weapon has is simply its accessibility. It's an OHKO weapon that just requires a bit of time to get ready, which you can easily do during the moments where you're not in action. Gotta make it appear less frequently, and less reachable in maps that have Atomic Fire.

I also like the idea of losing charge upon getting hit. If losing all the weapon charge is too extreme, then losing some charge would work. The ideas of slowing the projectile slightly and adding a mild delay to the attack also sound good, as OHKO attacks in a game like this mustn't be easy to pull off, which is one of the issues this weapon has.

Not entirely sure about the next weapon I'd like to see discussed, but I do feel like Search Snake is a little too limited in use.

[Thunderono]

I actually really like the idea of charge loss on damage.  It helps an alert player stop the madness without completely destroying the viability of the weapon for an attacker.  Twitch shots would still exist, unfortunately, but it would help more in the long run to have a definite counterplay to an enemy wielding Atomic Fire.