Weak weapons and general odd weapon balancing choices

[HankJW]

Sup you commiters of police genocide,

is it just me or do the weapons feel weak?
I finally unlocked the bolt action rifle and to my disappointment, its stopping power does not match the description, the expectation the high damage bar might suggest or the general expectation one might have when seeing a bolt action sniper rifle in a shooter. Especially when its the only one with the highest damage stat.
Because I cant be the only one who expected the cops to keel over after being shot in the heart like they do in most game or in PD2.
Gee, thanks a lot for this high damage rifle. In the time it takes to cycle the 2 rounds needed to kill a cop if you fail the headshot is enough for me to kill 2 or 3 cops with my pistol.
And Im talking about normal difficulty, what goes on the higher difficulties?

And I also think that I cant be the only one who finds it comical that cops can take almost whole 20 round compact AR mags without dying if you dont go for the head. Yes, I know, accuracy is favored and all, and they do fall over fairly quickly if I aim for the head.
But in my eyes, its a contradiction to the whole new grounded and slightly more realistic feel the game tries to convey. Im not saying enemies should die after 3 bullets regardless of hitzone. But make it logical and fit with the whole new "grounded" look.
Make the cops die to the bolt action to the upper chest at least. Yes, I get that the cops are wearing ballistic vests. But ballistic plates dont stop 10 to 15 AR bullets or high velocity sniper rifle rounds. Yes, we are not in Arma 3. But sometimes the times to kill combined with the rapid damage fall off make the guns feel like pea shooters in a childrens cartoon shooter, and the weak guns sounds for most guns dont help.
Yes, Payday always was an arcady shooter. But this new, more serious look doesnt fit with assault rifles that sound like sewing machines and take over half a mag to kill a cop because I happened to miss his head.

And another thing regarding the weapons stats: The stat bars in the loadout screen. Give us numbers, these bars make no sense and are completely made up, because without something to compare to, they mean nothing. Again, this is one of these things that dont need fixing cause they aint broken.
This is another stupid and unnecessary layer of intransparency regarding game mechaincs, begging the question: Why?

[Monokuma]

There's a hidden armor penetration stat, and the skill that increases armor penetration doesn't add any if it's 0.
AP deals health damage past the cop armor, no AP means you have to burst the armor off itself.
2 and 2 together, you're stuck with guns that have AP damage being the meta.

[Walrus-Sama]

The bolt-action sniper being able to kill in 1 headshot or 2 bodyshots doesn't seem too bad on it's own. Pushes you to aim for headshots.

However, when place next to the DMR, which fills the same role without the lengthy cycle bolt animation and general awkwardness, it's odd. The bolt-action sniper kinda feels redundant.

The bolt-action probably needs a buff.

[HankJW]

Originally posted by Monokuma:

There's a hidden armor penetration stat, and the skill that increases armor penetration doesn't add any if it's 0.
AP deals health damage past the cop armor, no AP means you have to burst the armor off itself.
2 and 2 together, you're stuck with guns that have AP damage being the meta.

Right, this is exactly what Im talking about: Why is this never properly explained? Why isnt it indicated in the weapon stats? Seems like a fairly important game mechanic to me.
This explains why it sometimes feels really slow to kill cops...

Originally posted by Walrus-Sama:

The bolt-action sniper being able to kill in 1 headshot or 2 bodyshots doesn't seem too bad on it's own. Pushes you to aim for headshots.

However, when place next to the DMR, which fills the same role without the lengthy cycle bolt animation and general awkwardness, it's odd. The bolt-action sniper kinda feels redundant.

The bolt-action probably needs a buff.

Exactly, it doesnt make sense to use the bolt action if there are alternatives that outperform it. And it doesnt even seem to penetrate that many cops, limiting its utility even further.
Like I said, it doesnt need to be a one shot kill everywhere. Ribcage is fine.
And especially on the higher difficulties and with the way levels are built, you dont really have that much time or cover to go for headshots, I mean this isnt Battlefield.
It felt so satisfying going to town in PD2 with the Mosin and mowing down rows of cops with a single bullet. In my opinion, slowing down everytime for a well aimed headshot somewhat stops the high speed momentum of a chaotic heist.
I get the accuracy appeal and all, but only headshots being one shot kills is too much. And I get that Payday isnt a realistic game. But come one, especially with a sniper rifle, a rifle made to penetrate body armor, its kinds stupid to have to shoot twice. On top of it being the strongest weapon in the game (apart from the overkill weapons of course).
Isnt this the general balancing strategy in shooters? Semi auto snipers like the SVD or M14 usually take 2-3 shots to kill and the slow fire rate of bolt action rifles are balanced by a high damage output so they are still useful.

I can suspend disbelief, but in what world do SWAT units wear body armor with thick plates made of hardened steel designed to stop military grade armor piercing ammo?
On higher difficulties, maybe. But on normal this just seems like youre fighting a private military company, not the police force.

[Keaton]

Basically the only thing difficulty changes is how much damage the cops deal, maybe how many spawn, and I think how accurate they are. Their toughness is the same across all difficulties so the weapon choice ends up being more strict than previous games.

Armor pen is by far the most important stat so it of course is not explained or displayed to the player at all. There are a number of guns that in the current state of the game can never penetrate armor regardless of skill setup, and these are:

Ziv Commando
Reinfeld 880*
Signature 40
Signature 403
Stryk 7

* The Reinfeld calculates its pellets individually so despite having no armor pen if enough pellets land to destroy the armor the rest of the pellets will deal damage directly to the HP of the SWAT

The SP Model 11 is the only gun that does not penetrate armor by default that can be made to penetrate with the Cutting Shot skill in the Sharpshooter tree.

Every Armored SWAT has an "Armor Hardness" value which is then subtracted by the guns Armor Penetration stat with the final number being how much HP damage is reduced. Note that even if a gun is penetrating armor they will always deal their full base damage to the SWATs armor in addition to any HP damage, any HP damage that penetrates armor is modified by headshot multipliers, and damage dealt directly to the armor is not modified by headshot multipliers.

The Armor Hardness stat of all the SWAT units are as follows
Light SWAT, Heavy SWAT, Naders, and Tasers: 1.5
Shields: 2.0
Bulldozers: 4.0

Using the SA A144 as an example with no skills landing a headshot on a Heavy SWAT within 20 meters:

The SA A144 has 1.3 Armor Pen and deals 50 damage up to 30m, a 5x Headshot multiplier up to 20m, and the Heavy Swat has 150 HP and 170 armor and an Armor Hardness of 1.5.

1.5 - 1.3 = 0.2, so the gun will deal 20% reduced damage through the armor. Thats 40 damage to HP and 50 damage to armor. 40 x 5 = 200, More than enough to kill the Heavy SWAT through his armor in one shot.

As a side note the Cutting Shot skill adds a flat 0.1 to a guns armor pen. And the only weapon that can penetrate a Bulldozers armor is the Het-5 Red Fox with its armor pen of 3.5.

People have datamined all the weapon stats so they shouldn't be too hard to find.

EDIT: Turns out the datamined list I had was slightly outdated. The Mosconi 12 Classic sits alongside the SP Model 11 with 0.5 Armor pen making them the only two guns that can only penetrate armor with Cutting Shot. And the Het-5 Red Fox may have 3.0 armor pen instead of 3.5 meaning nothing can penetrate Bulldozer armor, but I need to verify this.
EDIT 2: The Het-5 Red Fox does indeed penetrate the Bulldozers armor at a 50% rate so it should indeed have a 3.5 Armor Penetration value.

[Cryptic]

the cops - especially the dozer by like 50% have WAY too much spongyness. ridiculous

[Netsa]

Yeah, weapon balance is out of whack. We can talk about the whole system behind the way damage and armor penetration works, but it basically just comes down to one thing. Most weapons don't do enough damage.

The worst offenders are the bolt-action sniper rifle you brought up and the Mosconi shotgun. Their damage is just obviously way too low for no conceivable reason, especially given that they were exceedingly powerful in Payday 2. Both are weapons that should kill instantly on a bodyshot, because for gameplay reasons, they're way too slow and inefficient to also require headshots (and shotguns can't even reliably kill on a headshot). This is the way weapons like these work in just about every other game in general, regardless of whether those games are trying to be "realistic" or not.

SMGs and non-revolver pistols are also having issues because there's one enemy in the game that makes the armor penetration value of your weapons very obvious: the Shield. If your weapon cannot penetrate the glass on the shield, you know... your weapon sucks. End of story. SMGs have bad ammo pickup rates and non-revolver pistols are basically all the same gun but with different ammo clips.

Why the weapons are balanced this way is anyone's guess. If there's any logic behind it whatsoever, I would love to know.

[Turboman]

Learn to head shot. the bolt action is a one hit kill.

[Monokuma]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Learn to head shot. the bolt action is a one hit kill.

The thing is, so is the other rifle, a semi-automatic.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Learn to head shot. the bolt action is a one hit kill.

You can have perfect accuracy with the bolt action and it still remains a crappy weapon. That's the problem. There's too many cops on the map, there's no room for weapons that kill one guy every few years.

[Turboman]

Originally posted by Netsa:

Originally posted by Turboman:

Learn to head shot. the bolt action is a one hit kill.

You can have perfect accuracy with the bolt action and it still remains a crappy weapon. That's the problem. There's too many cops on the map, there's no room for weapons that kill one guy every few years.

I play only on veryhard/overkill. Maxed all weapons and the bolt action was one of the easiest.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Originally posted by Netsa:

You can have perfect accuracy with the bolt action and it still remains a crappy weapon. That's the problem. There's too many cops on the map, there's no room for weapons that kill one guy every few years.

I play only on veryhard/overkill. Maxed all weapons and the bolt action was one of the easiest.

I really don't care what your achievements are, the facts aren't there. When so many weapons in this game underperform, you can easily point to any non-pistol, non-shotgun weapon and go "this is one of the easiest." The CAR is one of the easiest, too.

[Keaton]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Learn to head shot. the bolt action is a one hit kill.

And so is the SA A144 and VF-7S, both of which have 20 round mags and are semi-auto and full auto respectively. Thats the problem with the Reinfeld 900s, Its just worse in every way.

[Turboman]

Originally posted by Netsa:

Originally posted by Turboman:

I play only on veryhard/overkill. Maxed all weapons and the bolt action was one of the easiest.

I really don't care what your achievements are, the facts aren't there. When so many weapons in this game underperform, you can easily point to any non-pistol, non-shotgun weapon and go "this is one of the easiest." The CAR is one of the easiest, too.

No shooter in any game is gonna balance every weapon. Some are good some are bad and the bolt action isn't bad. Get good or pick a different gun. Any buffs would make it overpowered.

[Monokuma]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Originally posted by Netsa:

I really don't care what your achievements are, the facts aren't there. When so many weapons in this game underperform, you can easily point to any non-pistol, non-shotgun weapon and go "this is one of the easiest." The CAR is one of the easiest, too.

No shooter in any game is gonna balance every weapon. Some are good some are bad and the bolt action isn't bad. Get good or pick a different gun. Any buffs would make it overpowered.

So far the only measurement of power you've given the bolt action is that it's a one hit kill for headshots, which other guns with faster fire rates and ammo capacity do as well.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Get good or pick a different gun.

Thanks, everyone is.

Not sure why you say buffing it would make it overpowered, buffing it would just turn it into any one of the other superior guns available.