Anyone else feels like the new enemy is unbalanced?

[Skruvbedragare]

Been playing the mission Blood and Snow and these new enemies seem to kill my team members in 1-2 shots with their MP7 even though I'm using extended armor. They also seem to have no problem to take out my guys behind my shield units with the Iron Man shield. Also earlier I managed to flank one of them with my breacher firing 1 round point blank with the KSG into his side but he quickly turn towards my trooper killing him instantly.

I'm not sure if it's supposed to be like that but I kind of find it a bit unfair because I feel like I shouldn't have died there :I I know the MP7 are able to shoot trough armor quite nicely but they still seem to shoot trough shields like butter :( Any tips and thoughts?

[Fireworks]

yes these guys are a bit crazy. note that they don't use mp7s but mp9s, which apparently have some sort of super ammo that makes armor pretty useless.

i've found the jcs works best as it means a rapid one-shot kill. throw a flashbang where possible and hope you kill them before they kill you.

[Mack]

I had one of them kill 3 guys inside a couple seconds.

[axios2006]

Try to stun them. Never put your troops in the line of fire of this bad bad guys.

They require a more tactical approach.

They are just like Juggernaut Emil and Operator Orvill: the first impact is hard, when you know how to deal with them they will be less scaring.

[NotActuallyACat]

Originally posted by Fireworks:

yes these guys are a bit crazy. note that they don't use mp7s but mp9s, which apparently have some sort of super ammo that makes armor pretty useless.

i've found the jcs works best as it means a rapid one-shot kill. throw a flashbang where possible and hope you kill them before they kill you.

Yup. This round, according to the devs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.5%C3%9725mm

[boop]

6.5mm penetrates a MT-LB armor plate better than 7.62x51mm NATO

Swedish MAGIC

that being said they are a bit ridiculous, I think after armor damage could be turned down just a notch

that being said no one survives the JCS

why do you even use the KSG when the JCS is like the best shotgun hands down in 90% of situations

[doomed1]

It's not just that it's unbalanced for me, it's that it feels supremely lazy. I get it, give the new incredibly destructive gun to the enemy that can tank the most rounds yet. It just feels like such linear escalation. Instead of making the new baddie a tank with an SMG, why not make him slight and fast? Make him out-draw your guys, perfectly capable of swinging around before you're ready for him. It's like I don't even bother using any other guns but the Saiga, P90, and MP7 because I'm dealing with so much armor, but I really would like it if I could use other weapons more often without having to worry about if I'm going to run into a dozen heavy armor types.

It's not more challenging, it's boring. It's the same trap Overkill fell into with Payday 2. Instead of taking an interesting, varied approach to difficulty level, they instead decided that they'll just throw more and harder juggernaut enemies at you. The question becomes less whether or not you're skilled enough to beat them, but if you have enough bullets to do so.

No idea if the Devs are gonna read this, but it's pretty much my place on it. It's just not fun to have to fight the same-old-same-old "bigger guy with a badder gun" trope every time they decide to make a new enemy. I hope they go back and balance their enemies like they balance their guns, with give and takes. I'd like enemy types to be more than just counting the number of bullets I'd need to kill, but seeing them and knowing how I need to fight them.

Edit: oh, and on a completely unrelated note, 6.5 CBJ? Really? There's not even a civilian variant of that round out there, why would terrorists have it? It sure would be prohibitively expensive.

[Vulpe Nebuna]

They're supposed to have their sources, yeah, since the civilian round would most likely NOT have the AP properties described above.

I fully understand the fear of Overpowering enemies and of 'lazy developers", but i must assure you its not the case. We're working on multiple levels to create new challenges (weapons, armor, AI, scenarios) and some work better and some take more work to do properly.

Specifically about Jacketed Jake, there are some issues with him that will make him less deadly, in the future, but note his armor is just the regular "Low Threat Armor" that any Assault Rifle will pierce right through.

[Skruvbedragare]

Originally posted by Vulpe Nebuna:

They're supposed to have their sources, yeah, since the civilian round would most likely NOT have the AP properties described above.

I fully understand the fear of Overpowering enemies and of 'lazy developers", but i must assure you its not the case. We're working on multiple levels to create new challenges (weapons, armor, AI, scenarios) and some work better and some take more work to do properly.

Specifically about Jacketed Jake, there are some issues with him that will make him less deadly, in the future, but note his armor is just the regular "Low Threat Armor" that any Assault Rifle will pierce right through.

I understand that this new enemy is supposed to add variation to the game. I'm just suprised over how easy they seemed to penetrate both the shield and the shield wearers armor and still provide the amount of damage it did.

It might have been just that time. I have not done any tests for this matter so to say. Anyways I just kinda felt it was a bit too OP and that is simply just my opinion. I just wanted to share my thoughts and see what other thought of this.

I had no trouble beating the level with 2 stars after a few tries and I'm going to try get the last star later on :) Also I wanted to say this is a great game and I've been playing this since alpha and I loved it since I've been waiting for this type of game for a long time because I was a big fan of the SWAT games so thank you for this game :)

[Skruvbedragare]

Originally posted by {sBc} trotskygrad:

6.5mm penetrates a MT-LB armor plate better than 7.62x51mm NATO

Swedish MAGIC

that being said they are a bit ridiculous, I think after armor damage could be turned down just a notch

that being said no one survives the JCS

why do you even use the KSG when the JCS is like the best shotgun hands down in 90% of situations

Well I wanted to test out the KSG since it's kinda newish so I wanted to see how it performs in different situations. I'm not the type that tries out a few different weapons and think "This is the best one" and simply just stick with it. I often like to try out new things even if they might be worse or not :)

[doomed1]

Originally posted by Vulpe Nebuna:

They're supposed to have their sources, yeah, since the civilian round would most likely NOT have the AP properties described above.

I fully understand the fear of Overpowering enemies and of 'lazy developers", but i must assure you its not the case. We're working on multiple levels to create new challenges (weapons, armor, AI, scenarios) and some work better and some take more work to do properly.

Specifically about Jacketed Jake, there are some issues with him that will make him less deadly, in the future, but note his armor is just the regular "Low Threat Armor" that any Assault Rifle will pierce right through.

Oh no, I don't mean to insinuate anything about you guys being lazy. I'm really pleased with all your great output. I've got over a hundred hours into the game and I really find it an absolute blast to play. Not even Overkill is lazy, they output quite a bit of content and put their heart into it. My biggest issues is lazy thinking, and that linear sort of challenge isn't as interesting to me as I'd rather have more laterally challenging enemies that force me to think in new ways. Since we're still waiting out for Part 3 of the winter update, I'll see about those new enemy types to get a better idea of where you're going with it.

Anyway, I'm glad you guys are listening, and even more important, responding. Really gives me confidence in the game. I'm totally looking forward to the Part 3 update. Can't come soon enough.

ps, Unsuppressed MP7 when? :)

[Vulpe Nebuna]

;)

[Chanman]

Actually, I'd like to see more bad guys with shotguns - shotguns, including semis are possibly the most common firearms available to civilains and in Door Kickers, seem to be powerful against body armour for whatever reason (simulating hits to unarmoured extremeties?)

It's also one less thing to suspend disbelief for* (6.5mm doesn't look like it's in use by anybody yet making it about as likely to be encountered as 4.7mm caseless).

*Within reason. We are talking about a game where criminals fight to the death and a SWAT team can easily encounter several dozens of armed bad guys in one mission.

[Chanman]

On a more technical note, I've been poking around in the xml files where the game data is stored and understand why the MP9 is so lethal against extended protection now.

Extended protection has the same armour value as the Assault Vest. The higher protection rating comes from its greater coverage and not from thicker armour.

Soft armour (low-threat armour, sides of assault armour, and the back of front-plate only) all have an armour of 4 as well.

Armour plates have an armor value of 5

.45 ACP pistols, Junkie Harry's revolver, and the MP5SD3 all have an AP of 2

.40 pistols, both P226 pistols, both .45 ACP SMGs and the MPX-SD (integrally suppressed .40 SMG) all have an AP of 3

All 9mm guns (including the AI's MP5k and MAC-11), the unsuppressed MPX, and the Honey Badger all have an AP of 4

All other rifles (including the AK-47s) have an AP of 5

The MP9 has an AP of 6 which evidently shreds AP5 armour almost as if it wasn't there.
The sniper rifle incidentally, has an AP of 7.


The logic is fairly clear:

.45 ACP has an AP of 2, .40 S&W has an AP of 3, 9mm has an AP of 4, all rifle rounds have an AP of 5.

SMGs firing pistol rounds add 1 to the AP, unless it is integrally suppressed/firing subsonic ammo in which case it drops down by 1. The only gun that appears to break this patternis the MP5SD3 which drops 2 AP levels - but the gun is takes normally supersonic ammo and slows it down to subsonic speeds - I've read thath it's on par with the rather anemic .380, so in a military context, we're probably talking about 115 or 124 grain FMJ bullets - slowed down to subsonic, I guess they wouldn't be much ahead of 90 grain-ish .380 ACP, which appears to be a normally subsonic round as well.

[AYYYOTA]

They are definitely tough, but with smart play(ie: flashbangs/stuns) they are fairly easy to overcome.

Still, I felt there was more "RNG" factor with them than any of the previous enemies I faced. Meaning, there were more scenarios where I had to hit replay ~50 times due to them going Rambo and killing 3 people with one burst while upside down blindfolded in a barrel over Viagra Falls.

[Jack Kellar]

Reviving this thread quoting the "low threat heavy armor any rifle can punch through"

The Honey Badger firing .300 Blackout can not one shot these guys at all.