Early Access version 40.2

[Sophodot]

I agree that Ions aren’t perfect even now, but I think they are “good enough” to be able to move on to something else. Even if Galbatorix gets all of his suggestions approved and implemented into the game until he runs out of criticisms on weapon balance, there might still be a large gap between the most used weapon and the second most used weapon.

In the end, all of my tables or his tables aren’t worth a damn, they’re a sludge of numbers very few players will be bothered to read and understand. If you make all the numbers equal, you have a game that’s balanced only on paper.

@InterAction_studios

other considerations such as volley spread, projectile speed, heat generation, need (or not) for precise aiming, max. effective distance-to-target, piercing capability, etc.

^ It’s more difficult to quantify all these with numbers and how they are reflected in real gameplay than plain DPS.

Utensil Poker needs to stop being a litmus test on whether a weapon is good or bad, but time and time again, people compare everything else with it. Right now, ask 5 random CIU players what’s the best weapon and 4 of them will say Utensil Poker, while the 5th will say Plasma Rifle or Vulcan Chaingun. I think the ultimate goal of weapon “balancing” is to get 5 different answers in a survey like that.

This is why I argued in favor of automatic weapon balancing when the opportunity presented itself.

@Sophodot

The way I imagined it would work is:
– At the end of every day, the game makes a ranking of the most/least used weapons
– Then increases the damage of the least used weapon by 1% and decreases the damage of the most used weapon by 1%.

It would be good to bring the weapons to the point where they perform similar to one another, but Automatic Balancing would probably serve its purpose even if it was implemented right now. I know I’ll get yelled at:

@1galbatorix1

I will say this again, because it seems that not everyone undestands. Popularity is not a measure of effectiveness and it will never be. Such system will never work because of that simple reason. This is not a coincidence that such simple solution is NEVER used in video games.

But I, too, will say it again. With weapons that are only balanced on paper and never touched again, favored and unfavored weapons will still emerge nonetheless. Players who have already purchased Utensil Poker have no reason to move away from it if the only thing you do is buff the other weapons until they nearly match its DPS.

In the end, I think the weapons having equal popularity is more important than having them mathematically balanced. Because popularity is the manifestation of those raw values. I wish for people to talk to one another and be unable decide on a best weapon. And even if they compute which is the best in that day, it will change after some time. I think that’s a wonderful mechanic to have instead of the same rigid situation we’ve been mostly stuck with since CI3. Yes, the WBP does many things in that direction, but WBP would eventually reach an end. Automatic Weapon Balancing (AWB) would keep the damage tables constantly changing forever.