So, let's talk about the Plasma Rifle

Early Access
1

I feel like this is going to be a touchy subject for some reason

So most of the Weapon Balancing has (thankfully) cooled down a bit now, and most weapons are at least viable and fun to play with (though some are more “seriously” competitive than others, in all fairness).

However, Plasma Rifle is pretty objectively the best weapon, I feel.
(If you disagree, comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts.)

Here’s what it currently has in it’s favour:

  • It has a good focus and is effective at hitting specific, singular targets, which makes Laser Pointers very effective and Pecking Orders (crucial for high scores) easy to attain.
  • It has a very respectable DPS generally, and can effectively eliminate dangerous targets at speed.
  • Sustained fire generates an AoE effect, allowing it to clear huge crowds effortlessly if they are clumped tightly enough together. This makes Multi-Kills (another high score aspect) really easy too.
  • It has a high fire rate, which also aids in both Multi-Kills and Pecking Orders.
  • It auto-targets in it’s cone of fire, meaning it usually hits it’s target and is easy to obtain Meritorious Marksmanship awards with (which can also score very respectably).
  • The AoE effect is applied radially with no concern to the number of enemies in it’s aura, meaning that even large hordes moving in a straight line (like Braided Assault, for example) can still score Pecking Orders and Multi-Kills.
  • It’s chief weakness - quick overheat time - is undermined by the fact that overheat time is the #1 game mechanic that can be circumvented by having a lot of keys, which incidentally, most seriously competitive players do. Strong heat sinks and coolant canisters, plus clever exploitation of available atomic powerups, can make overheat a null-and-void concern.

tl;dr: The thing is pretty OP.

Do we feel like something needs to be done about this? Are you a “serious” competitive player (full disclosure: I’m not, I’m somewhat casual) who depends on Plasma? Or are you a player who still manages high scores and doesn’t use Plasma?

Does it need a damage nerf? Perhaps the overheat should be made more extreme? Maybe the AoE needs to go, instead, and it be given a fire rate to compensate without being able to just wipe the screen of enemies. Maybe the AoE needs to have the Damage Sharing mechanic that Absolver previously had, so that it’s less outrageously effective against crowds, given that it’s already so good against single high-health targets! (I’d like to hear thoughts on that idea especially - it doesn’t feel too extreme to me).

Or maybe you like Plasma as it is, or your just sick of Early Access spending so much time on weapon balance and want to move on, in which case, please also comment and share your thoughts. I feel like Plasma is just too good at this stage, but I’m not creating this topic just to try and say “let’s change this!” so much as promote discussion on what has pretty consistently been a hot-topic weapon, now that we’ve all had ample time to experience the weapons in a pretty stable post-WRP state. For this reason I’m not adding any polls to this post - I think reasoning and discussion is going to be more valuable than “yes/no” in this situation.

So thank you for reading my text wall, and feel free to discuss! Are you feeling the same way as me? Are you outraged by this suggestion? Or are you just sick of it and want to see the game launch already? I think this is worth talking about. :joy:

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I would argue that Poistron Stream is better. But then again, different people have their favorites (mine being lightning fryer)

Anyway Poistron stream does everything Plasma rifle can do plus it overheats less faster

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Nah, it already got slightly nerfed in the last weapon rebalancing. Also, it’s meant to be the strongest weapon.

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Tbh I want the AoE removed. I preferred the old damage ramping. I liked Plasma as be what it used to be: Spam the heck out, and do enormous damage to one enemy at a time.

Heck, even to this day, I still manually fire Plasma Rifle.

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I dont think plasma is THAT op, it cant shoot sideways, it is an auto-lock , so its bad at changing targets, and coward buff nerfed plasma rifle

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It’s not meant to.

It can be.

It’s not?

It wasn’t a buff, but a rework. Hell, I’d even call it a nerf.

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well i could agree on that, there are sometimes :
-positron is way better than plasma: things that are kinda cramped, like Corridor Shooter
-Riddler has a thing that plasma isnt capable of: Feathers, like sometimes, if you are going like no coolants, you are gonna have a hard time against things like Henterprise’s Feathers (in my experience)
-the time that plasma hits, it didnt even register as a hit, like in asteroids, i like aim, shoot an asteroid, then, it didnt register and i got bonked
-due to it’s “high overheat rate”, some weapons like riddler can sometimes be better than plasma in some situations

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I’d really like to see more content, and balancing can be done pretty much at any point in an MMO’s life, as it’s constantly balanced with every update. Tbh, the Weapon Balancing does out a long time ago, if you ask me, and we’re currently in a content less limbo for the past year. Plasma is a problem that has to be dealt with, a group of weapons being slightly better than the rest is something that can e dealt with, but plasma being a lone meta weapon is kinda a big problem. Even if it’s done, what kind of content has come to us, when balancing wasn’t the topic? The game feels largely the same as it did when I first played it back in EA 15, even though nearly 60 updates have been issued since. I’m noy being pessimistic, but one does wonder. I think iA has balked at adding new ships because of all the balance problems and complexities the addition of the bombers revealed. Even so, new spaceships are content unlikely to be experienced by a large part of the playerbase, due to the grindiness attached to the acquisition of keys, and the high key cost of them. It might be better if there was more mission variety that would make obtaining that many keys an enjoyable process. I feel the game isn’t too addicting currently due to lack of coherent progression in be it keys, or items, or exploration. It’s just… flat. Wormholes were a good step in the right direction in incentivizing exploration, and the galaxy needs more points of interest like that. As seen in previous topics, is has refused to make items acquirable outside of the galactic market, which may be convenient, but again, this takes me back to my point about things like spaceships: to make them harder to obtain, the only parameter that can be boosted is the key cost. The other option would be to gate it behind liscence, which wouldn’t go down too well with players. Overall, for the addition of new content, some key elements (no pun intended) of the game will have to see some change. Though that could have been done in all this time. I understand 5that there are a lot of technicalities hindered the addition of content, but if things continue in this way into the Steam release, the playerbase there may melt away fast, and bad reviews can mean the death of it.

Forgive my spelling throughout this post

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I am in agreement to this even if I receive serious opposition against this idea again. I trust iA to eventually get the damage sharing values right even if it takes several more versions. (I apologize for sharing screenshots of the server without permission, I wanted to gather evidence of people being opposed to this idea but in doing so, I had essentially tried to shame them for their reactions. I take full responsibility for my actions.)

Due to the very nature of some weapons, this medal might prove to just further justify the usage of single beam weapons like Positron, Plasma and Absolver, and we all know how horribly outcompeted Absolver is against those two weapons. I might even go as far as to remove this medal entirely or at least seriously rework on its conditions

This is a very niche example of Position’s superiority over Plasma, I have more examples, one being feathers, Plasma can struggle pretty hard against Henterprise’s feathers but Positron can easily handle it, Positron also has THE maximum DPS with splitting which it can achieve much more frequently due to the chaining feature with bosses and as a result, it can cheese most of them. Plasma might attain more DPS against chicken waves but the AOE has no effect on bosses, so while Plasma isn’t weak against bosses, it is outcompeted by a considerable number of weapons for boss busting. In fact, I don’t think there’s any real hard counter against Positron, the best counter would be a tanky boss with a relatively small hotbox, but that doesn’t exist.

Also thank God for that coward rework, fast weapons are now more usable in high difficulty chicken waves.

And lastly, while most of the weapons are far more balanced than before, I still have some ideas on them, but I’ll post them in another reply or a new topic.

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Screenshot (63)

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i didnt give permissions to share my server stuff

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There is no such thing as restricting a public domain.

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Yeah , that’s what I said. Glad to see that someone had the same opinion. I thought it was just me

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guess so

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Bruh moment

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Quite surprised owospid hasn’t said anything yet

Edit: oh boy

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Ha ha.

I don’t have much to add (complaining aside, you’ve been warned), especially considering that I launch the game once in a blue moon, whenever something new and interesting enough gets added (so most recently, the league).

I assumed that OWL’s nerfs would be sufficient enough.

Regarding replacing AoE with damage ramp - damage ramp was ultimate ass when it was first added because it was way less efficient that firing manually. Plasma had (and still does have) the lowest hit rate out of all weapons in the game - 6.5/s. Reducing that to 5/s and instead increasing it’s already overboard damage per hit was a rubbish idea (once again, Positron would’ve been a much better platform for this mechanic, but let’s go back to that). Now, we don’t have to worry about manual fire anymore, but I still don’t think it’d work too well either way.
AoE is the only thing that gives Plasma any wave-clearing potential. Removing it means that it pretty much becomes a boss rush-only weapon (assuming that its DPS gets increased to a reasonable level). That being said,

Regarding removing the AoE - considering what state Absolver is still in after all this time, it wouldn’t be that out of place to yeet it away and even change nothing else.

I don’t recall anyone from the WBP team saying that, nor have I ever seen IA say that.

Its target performance in the later WBP reworks was a combination of its fast overheat in automatic mode and its low rate of fire (which is something that IA insisted on). Damage ramp didn’t work, so we came up with the AoE. Yeah, it was already strong back then, but I considered it to be balanceable - its single target DPS was perfectly adequate with the 13-ish (or something like that) seconds of overheat time, and its regular wave performance could be toned down with just the AoE multiplier.

Since the addition of overdrive, Plasma has become basically unbalanceable in its current state. The base DPS is rubbish (though it’s a bit better after OWL’s changes) and you can’t make it any higher (as evidenced by my absolute megabrain attempts at doing so) without making it shred through enemies in normal waves, even if we ignore the AoE.

Either way, I have no idea how to fix any of this, and I have no energy to think about it. I already spent way too much time on WBP, considering that I just kept coming back even after everyone else called it a day.
I only wrote all of this because I got mentioned. Which, I realize that me stubbornly keeping WBP on life support instead of letting it pass away with dignity is basically a meme, but I think (well, hope, frankly) I have reached my limit.

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Blockquote Heck, even to this day, I still manually fire Plasma Rifle.

same dude, same lol

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I think that Positron is nearly as good, though it struggles with Pecking Orders when it comes time to hit a series of specific targets. And like most weapons (except the poor hypergun) there will be niche cases where any other weapon will be able to outperform it.

I’m not complaining that Plasma is just “too good” - most of the weapons (though not all) could have that argument made for them if you’re experienced enough. I’m saying that, for Invasions, it’s by far the best way to get a high score to the point where you really shouldn’t be using other things. If someone can present me with evidence otherwise, I’d be happy to concede this point.

This, this this.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting damage sharing for Absolver again, just for Plasma’s AoE. Absolver only had one way to deal with enemies, so damage sharing killed it. But Plasma has strengths regardless and therefore I feel can stand to have a bit of a nerf.

I just feel like maybe the “strongest” weapons should be the ones that don’t also get a 5k point bonus every wave. Currently the best weapons are also the accurate ones, which I feel is a bit of an oversight when DPS is the only factor considered in balancing. Photon is a perfectly fine weapon for gameplay, but it stands not a chance of scoring competitively because of all the points rewards for discerning fire.

I’m suggesting something opposite. If we strip the AoE effect, we give the Rifle a better fire rate to compensate for crowds. But right now it feels very much like a swiss-army-knife of a weapon, which was never what it was originally designed for.

For what it’s worth (as essentially a third-party who just plays the game and stays away from any drama), I’ve felt very noticeable improvements in the overall gameplay experience since WBP. When I first joined, I couldn’t play for very long at a time, because the only way to even realistically survive high difficulties was to mash the fire button with Utensil Poker until my hand felt like falling off. So know that the efforts (from both the community and iA) have been much appreciated by at least one person. :wink:

Ok, maybe it is time for a poll now (votes are public):

Should Plasma Rifle have AoE removed?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Something Else
0 voters

also what’s wrong with Absolver

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Positron > Plasma Rifle

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