While anything and everything can be changed, There's no reason discussions cannot continue.  There isn't any bickering, at least not on my part.  Merely clarifications and attempts to open the eyes of those who still think inside the Tribes box. 

Honestly, I think there needs to be more than just mere weapon tweaks to this game.  greater mobility and increased pace of the micro-level gameplay could offer the solution were looking for and open up the game for weapons that would originally be considered OP.  Maybe not to the point of UT with jetpacks as much as I think Nept would love that.  From what I can tell, most people just don't maneuver in a manner to minimize the chaingun's effectiveness.

Now don't get me wrong I've read this thread through numerous times to make sure I wasn't getting the wrong idea, but from what I've read this is what I can say.

YOU CANNOT NERF WEAPONS ACCORDING TO SKILL LEVEL.

I took my playing experiences and the several posts in here into consideration. Steve Dave now I don't know how many beta games you have tested or checked out but I can almost guarantee you that none of them were fps+z category. Fps+z is an entirely new category and a behemoth to even attempt to create let alone balance. Now from reading your posts I can see that your saying that we need to nerf in order to reduce the skill of those proficient with the chaingun, so that others have a chance. You are completely and entirely wrong. Lets say you are in a standoff and you are 1v1 with the capper, except you come over to the base and get chained out near instantly every time. Is the chaingun OP in this case? Try replacing the references to the chaingun to rocket launcher or grenade launcher. Does that make them OP aswell? It sounds like to me that the main problem in this thread is not whether or not the chaingun is OP but rather should we nerf to compensate for skill. There will always, always, always, always and always be people better than you in any scenario. Whether that person use the chaingun or rocket launcher they will still be better than you. Want to know how to overcome it? you practice. But you already practiced enough you say? Well one of two things could happen, 1) you could continue to practice even more, or 2) you've hit your skill climax. Not everyone has the same limitations, some people are inherently better than others and theres no way to avoid that. And if you say we need to nerf for that, than you are just plain dumb. There will always be weapons that are more rewarding than others while some weapons take more skill to master than others. Its how games work, I can guarantee you in every game you have ever played there is one or two weapons out of the bunch that work notably better than the rest hence making everyone use those only two. Does that make those two weapons OP? People will always use a weapon in the way they want to. Even though the chaingun is intended for chasers, we still use it as a dueling weapon. Theres no way to counter this evolution, it happens. While some weapons may be better for some scenarios, some people may be able to make the weapon work for all scenarios. For example, someone is able to chain you out while you run along the ground in non-linear motion. No this does not mean the weapon is OP, rather the person has adapted the weapon to suit his/her own needs. whether it is practical/effective or not is at the discretion of the user and their ability to use the weapon.

Also I hear all of this theorizing going on in here but wheres the context of it. I can say from many of my playing experiences that the vast majority of the people complaining about the chaingun are not so proficient at it themselves, which leads me to think about their motive for the die-hard chaingun nerf. Now I have been around for ages in this game, not making myself the guru of all things legions, but it has allowed me to form some ideas from my past experiences and play-time. The vast majority of the community is not proficient with the chaingun, you guys talk about the weapon as though you had been through birth with the thing. There is no factual evidence to prove that the chaingun is overpowered or not since it is all opinions which are at the discretion of the user. There will never be a day when people stop crying about whether a weapon is balanced or not since there is no physical standard to judge it on. With the such its our job to do the best we can with what we are given. To be honest the development team, community, and private testers have done a damn good job so far.


A little more clarification for those "tribes vets" out there. Lets make a little connection here shall we? Counter strike has a sniper rifle, oh but so does combat arms. Does that make combat arms counter-strike? Combat arms and Counter-Strike both have similar game play and objective based types of games. Does that make combat arms into counter-strike now? NEIN.
See what I'm getting at? yes tribes and legions both have jetpacks, and yes both games have the same type of weapons. BUT DOES THAT MAKE LEGIONS A TRIBES GAME? get over it. Legions is not tribes nor will ever be tribes. Making references to your game of old is silly and pointless, it won't influence the developers to cater to your demands nor will it help you in any case. If anything it makes you look like some old-timer who still reminisces about their "glory days" in their seldom and wishes to get some respect for it. So please for the love of Marsellus Wallace, stop referring to tribes.

Any and every criticism is encouraged.

I don't think the projectile speed increase would affect close range very much at all, as you just said, the time it takes to reach the target already is very small. When you're chasing, you only need a few good hits to do your job. The mass of bullets in between aren't doing much except to gauge your lead, but if the max speed increased, it will take far fewer to do that. All you have to do is set it to offset the decrease in RoF.

There are a few reasons I mentioned why people use the CG over other weapons and "seeing lots of bullets flying around" wasn't one of them.

You speak with a slight lisp.

And I think you missed a post dave.

No Outlaw, I am not saying we should nerf it to make up for a skill gap.

I'm talking about weapon potential. The only way to gauge that is to see how far people can take it. Right now, people are able to take the CG further than they can take RL/GL/SR due to their apparent advantages and disadvantages.

Practice all you want, but you aren't going to keep all the people on the ground more than they are in the air so that the RL/GL become more effective than the CG.

That's the whole point of my argument. The CG does its job in the air far better than the RL/GL on the ground and SR(in both cases ground/air).

Yeah, so did he. Forget about increasing projectile speed?

CG is always going to be *whined* about truthfully, look at t1 & t2.  If IP is ever introduced this forum is gonna blow up

You say you aren't nerfing to make up for the skill gap, then what is your reason for nerfing it then? Before you respond to this please re-read my post because I'm pretty sure I extensively covered this topic.

Weapon potential you say? But then again you say no to any means of balancing using computerized assisted aiming. so where does that leave us then? oh right, skill. The skill in which people use the weapon determine its potential.

Not to mention you are assuming that you are dueling a marshmallow with a jetpack. You want to be realistic about it? Imagine two players with equal skill level dueling. You will (atleast I would hope) see that the person using the rocket/grenade launcher would win the majority of the time. Why? There are many ways to avoid chaingun fire, hence jumping along the ground and using your jets to change direction so they can't maintain a lead on you. Then what happens? well you land, and the person using rockets/nades pounds you until you go flying up into the air again, whereas the whole process starts over and eventually you land and get splashed to death. Now you say that the chaingunner has the awesome amount of skill to be able to hit you while you are on the ground? Now with that awesome skill level apply it to the rocket/nade user, most likely they will MA you right off the bat, screwing your precious cg stream and aim leaving you at a disadvantage, while they again just screw around with their movement and wait for you to land where you get splashed to death. Now you really act as though none of your ideas have come up before, like you were the first person to think about tinkering with RoF or damage. No. Private testers for an excessive amount of time tinkered with every. single. variable. while trying to balance the chaingun. Personally, I sat with mabel in a server for numerous hours trying out different builds of the chaingun,tweaking variables, dueling, chasing, tweaking variables more, a little more dueling, a little more chasing, then again and again and again and again. Trust me when I say this, we exercised every possible option with the chaingun.

As for your last statement, thats your opinion. Its neither right or wrong, but I will tell you that you should try dueling more people.

edit*
[16:39] <@Mabel> mention that its faster than it is last patch
[16:40] <@Mabel> projectile speed

Yeah, guess I have to say it again. I don't assume a CG only dueler versus a RL/GL only dueler.

Even in that case, you're assuming the RL/GL dueler dodges every chaingun shot and hits every ground shot. You can't kill someone in one shot on the ground (no matter how good you are), but you can kill someone before they get there with the CG.

CG shots on the ground, and MA shots are not the point. I'm not ignoring them, I'm setting them to equal and throwing it out (even though one has more cost than the other but I'm not going into that again).

And do you really think the limited time you spent on each build was enough to bring the weapon to it's potential? I don't think so.

You're also forgetting something else. You nerf it for the top skilled player, you nerf it for the bottom skilled player. And I'm not even really talking about nerfing it, just pushing it more towards the role I think it should be in.

You could always try going the BFH sniper rifle route and say the farther you are from the weapon the more damage it does, then nerf the initial damage a bit. I don't know if I want that done or not, but it would be an effective way of nerfing the “duel” chain and leaving the “chasing” chain as is.

Just a passing thought...

So what, the RoF isn't slow enough, and the projectile speed isn't fast enough still. IMO or course. I haven't had to the privileged to try any of it out.

So I guess that makes a pt more knowledgeable than me in every way.

Battlefield Heroes? Yeah, I like that approach. Thanks for mentioning that. I haven't given it much thought but it should be considered.

Well if you don't assume a cg only dueler, than what are you basing your arguments on? You can't say whether or not the cg will be OP if you aren't using it as in your theory.

And to your second point, nor did I say that he would dodge the chaingun fire. Yes he would take damage but again assuming that the chaingunner has the amount of skill to knock off a decent amount of health while the rocketeer is hopping along the ground is load of skill. And with that amount of skill I would imagine it pretty hard to miss the groundpound on an even playing field, not to mention you aren't taking into effect the overheat of the chaingun either as I'm assuming your talking about the stock chaingun here. Your going to have to stall until your chain gun is usable again but until that time I'm sure you would have hit the ground again giving the rocketeer more than enough time to kill you.

Now assuming you nerf it to the lower tier player, who I would assume by the category name has some pretty crappy aim. Now the chaingun would have a larger cone of fire to cater to their bad accuracy. then the higher tier of players, they can't hit their targets because the bullets aren't going where they want them to since the cone of fire was nerfed to the lower tier's skill liking. So where do we nerf then?

And any nerf beyond this point I can guarantee you will have a detrimental effect on what the weapon was intended for.

As I said, we tried it. Your accuracy would need to be silly in order to chase, and dueling just becomes silly since it takes about a minute to kill anyone, therefore screwing the game.


Regarding the Damage over Distance, we proposed it. We as in PT's cannot say anymore about it due to our NDA. And no don't bug munge about it, he has way more important things to do than to hear cries about balance.

Yeah, taking longer to kill someone would change the gameplay, so it would require the addition of other elements.

And please please, drop the RL/GL only versus CG only conversation. My last post you quoted was just to show why I'm not using that scenario.