Well, first off I think it’s the devil. It essentially punishes those of us that can control recoil or display disciplined trigger control (burst/tap firing).
Apparently random bullet deviation (RBD) is Dice’s solution to make SMGs/LMGs less effective outside of their intended range. Problem is Matimi0 reports that RBD is also present in semi-autos and I think the whole system is the wrong way to go about weapon balance.
What I propose instead of RBD is to have a sharp drop off in bullet damage for SmGs. This will make them far less effective outside of short and the low side of medium range.
Requiring 7,8,9, or even 10 hits to kill at a decent distance will discourage players from even attempting to engage enemies outside an SMGs effective range, thus achieving balance to the wicked close range fire power they possess without resorting to RBD.
For LMGs the principal is the same, but push the effective range out a bit further than SMG range. For semi-autos, continue the trend, making them capable at the far end of medium range but not a viable way to out-snipe recons at extended range.
This seems like a no brainer to me. RBD takes so much skill out of the game. Sharp Damage drop off allows for marksman and disciplined shooters to shine, while also restricting weapons to their intended ranges.
As far as I know this is the first title that has RBD on such a widespread scale. They did fine without in past games, so I see no reason why the series wouldn’t retain it’s popularity without it now.
"Dice removed random bullet spread ! Preorder cancelled " said no one, ever.
If anything, I’d agree with the damage drop off for SMGs to replace RNG bullets but with LMGs thats a little different. They are meant to perform at range, so I’d say simply reduce the cone of spread for RNG bullets. They are meant to be fired from cover or prone and the new mechanics added to the movement system make it so much easier to do this along with the improved bipod.
I could live with this. When firing from a prone position or with a bipod deployed in a window for example, LMGs should shoot incredibly accurately to promote people to use them in this particular way.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, all BF games used deviation as balancing factor. I know most of them did. It’s nowhere near as detrimental as people make it out to be - bullets don’t start making 90° bends once they leave the barrel.
It doesn’t punish weapon control either. It punishes bad decision making and poor positioning. You’re not missing because the game is “random”. You’re missing because you’re simply too far away, enough that deviation becomes an issue. Deviation is the only way to put hard limits on weapons’ range, especially high DPS weapons, and still have a consistent game. Mind you, if recoil were the only thing between you and perfect accuracy, all you’d have to do is master the recoil of whatever weapons has the highest DPS and done, you have the best weapon in the game.
While good weapon control is nice to have, it’s such a basic thing in a FPS game that using it as cornerstone of skill is silly. Moving your mouse in the opposition direction of recoil is more a matter of muscle memory than skill per se. You don’t really need to think about what you’re doing. Deviation, on the other hand, forces you to think about when to shoot, the best playstyle for your weapon of choice, puts more emphasis on map knowledge and controlling your firefights. It forces tactical thinking and more careful weapon/setup/playstyle choice. Deviation doesn’t remove skill of the game, it shift the focus from mechanical skill to actual intelectual skill.
About your proposition, it’s worse than deviation by a country mile. Such low damage at long range means your bullets lose power so sharply that you’ll never know how many shots you need to kill at any range. Droping from 5BTK to 10BTK like that equals losing 2 or so damage per meter. The game would become incredibly inconsistent and frustrating, and would reward neither weapon control nor smart positioning.
You don’t even know how SMGs and LMGs work in BF1 do you?
They work like they did in BC2 were the more you hold down the trigger the more accurate it becomes with a steep damage drop off with a little less for the lmgs side (buts lmgs will be very effective sense bipods are much better). Tap fireing like BF3 and BF4 to make the LMGs accurate will not work any more. Hell useing then like that will cause even less inaccuracy do to 1st bullet recoil.
Not only does this solve the random spray issue it solve the class role (suplort is used for suppresion with bipods for increased effectiveness and lmgs are super effective in close range which is the way it should be for assaults in BF1).
With LMGs aside this is probably the battlefoeld with the lest amount of bullet randomness if you use the weapons properly.
I’ve been saying this at every BF game release since BF2142. Random deviation is STUPID. Guns should always shoot where they are aiming. If you want to prevent laser accurate guns you add MORE RECOIL that affects where the weapon is pointing. You don’t randomly push bullets sideways as they leave the barrel of the gun which is what random deviation does.
If a gun didn’t shoot where it was aimed it would be garbage and would be thrown away and replaced. But people are perfectly OK with this in BF games which makes no sense to me.
And before you say it is not possible to only use recoil, other games have done it and it worked for them so your argument is invalid.
No matter the recoil a good player will always be able to counter it. The reason why random deviation is there is to prevent weapons being used at a range in which they shouldn’t be able to.
The reason for the nerfs to the ARs and the LMGs in BF4. Both had no spray at all and LMGs where basiclly extended mag ARs at the beggining.
While they do have a sharp drop off in BF1 the SMGs will slope lower the further away it gets, while it doesn’t dip unexpectingly like in hardline it will at range have the same effect.
RBD is junk. Bullets should never come out of the barrel in a random pattern. I’m really good at tap firing in BF4 with the AWS. I can kill people from a good distance off. If RBD was prevalent in BF4 like it is in these early stages of BF1, tap firing would be a lot less effective.
A steep damage penalty for stepping outside your chosen weapons range is the most honest way to enfore balance.
How does random spread correlate to higher skill? If anything skill should be related to controlling the recoil pattern and having good trigger control, not being at the mercy of random bullet spread.
From what I understand SMG damage drop off ends at around 35ish meters. A range that’s pretty average for a battlefield fight. So on top of bullet deviation encouraging Assault to get close they also have damage drop off to take into consideration. Which is fine, SMGs should dominate close range but be next to useless at medium and long. I suppose this is there to encourage assault to actually assault objectives rather than camping way back with medbags. DMRs on the other hand should be very accurate and precise at all ranges but at long range they should have a severe damage drop off, this is how they seem to work but the deviation seems a bit high for them in my opinion. LMGs the random bullet deviation is removed by sustained fire. I suppose that’s a mechanic to encourage support players to use their bipod and attack from cover rather than trying to run in rambo style.
random spread itself doesnt but most of those games have massive spread AFTER the first shot or a certain number of shots.
See: CS (yes, i know its technically a recoil pattern, but you cant actually see it so short of memorizing mouse movements that even most pros dont bother memorizing in detail, for all intent’s and purposes it’s random spread for the vast majority of players.)
Everything he said can be accomplished with damage drop off alone. There’s literally no need for random deviation.
A semi-auto rifle, something that hinges on user accuracy, is really badly affected by RBD.
LMGs having a bit of deviation that tightens up substantially when bi-poded I could live with, just to drive home the notion of using them while stationary and with the bipod deployed is the way to achieve maximum effectiveness.