To Ubi Soft: Why nerf popular characters instead of buffing unpopular ones?

[Kestrel Hudson]

I don't want to bash Ubi Soft or anything.

I'm definitely not the first one with the same question. And I hope at least someone from Ubi Soft will finally listen to it - from me or someone else.

It's obvious that balancing attack characters turned into whack'em-all, with nerf hammer keep hitting the ones whoever have the highest pick rate at the moment. It's only a question of time when Yana and Sledge are going to get their guns nerfed with new recoil pattern.

My opinion on new recoil patterns and where the negative reaction comes from:
Me personally (and I'm not particulary young, I don't have the best reflexes and motor skills) I can't control the recoil of nerfed F2, Zofia's AR etc. For me, it's like those guns, and therefore the characters that don't have any viable alternatives to those guns (like Ace and Twitch) ceased to exist. I won't pick them ever again. The AR class already is harder to handle than SMGs, in the game, where landing headshot first is crucial to win. The gun, that sways all over the screen, has absolutely no use to me. Playing on attack is already hard enough, especially at solo-queue.

Of course it creates negative reaction in community, since now we have even less options and playstyles to choose from, especially on attack - where things are already frustrating enough. It doesn't make me want to choose the operatives that I don't play as often, it just reduces the pool of a few viable ones I can choose from. Now I feel (and I believe, lots of other players) mistreated and I just want to give up - since soon you are going to nerf the entire pool of those characters to the point of being useless and there won't be any incentetive for me to continue playing.

Alternatives to blunt nerfing of popular attack characters
Why won't you create a positive reaction instead? Imagine, bunch of useless characters, that are at the very bottom of pickrate rating become viable. Like Nook - she gets an AR and 3 speed. Or Gridlock with Fuze - become 2 speed. Glaz receives a machine pistol and gets a major buff to his primary, making it perform exactly like any other DMR in the game (including all the scopes variety). I would immidiately jump right in to try these characters again,

There are almost 20 operators, that are below average in terms of pickrate. You can switch or buff their primary guns, buff their speed (no one wants to play with slow ops on attack, since attack isn't about holding angles), give them frags and Gonne-6, secondary SMGs, shotguns, other gadgets.

Instead of decreasing the pool of viable charcters - make it richer and more diversed. People would feel encouraged to launch the game again and to try something new, instead of being discourage to continue playing it.

Don't nerf guns, switch the loadout
Even when it comes down to nerfing. For example, you considered F2 being OP, and it was, but you nerfed it to the point of being useless to the wast majority. I get it, it's hard to balance such a weapon, But now the majority of the playerbase (outside of Plat and above) can't use Twitch at all. Why won't you make her at least viable by giving her some other, not-OP alternative. Switch her shotgun or DMR to some mediocre AR, like PARA or 556?

And same with Ace. He is OP, I agree. But why reduce AK-12 to rubble, and not just switch his loadout to something else? Maybe even something like DMRs, LMGs, SMGs? Same as you did with Melusi.

This kind of changes won't be met with huge excitement - but still, instead of completely discouraging players to continuing playing the game it would make them switch playstyle a bit. Again, some players, I'm sure, wouldl find changes of primary loadout interesting enough to launch the game and try them.

[Arash The Great]

Couldn't have said better myself

[Copy & Cat]

I guess everyone is going to have bad guns and only be balanced around gadgets.... Except there's a lot and i mean a lot underwhelming to bad gadgets that are too situational and require the enemy team being dumb instead, also there's also 3 armor rating being a big disavantage and many other factors

[TwisterCat]

Originally posted by Arash The Great:

Couldn't have said better myself

[IX]

Originally posted by TwisterCat:

Originally posted by Arash The Great:

Couldn't have said better myself

[Captain Spanky T. Kirk]

yeah ubisoft doesnt know what theyre doing anymore its sad

[MANCER MINHA VIDA]

100% agree
I guess we can all see what is coming next
X operator has a high pick rate , gets nerfed
X is so useless that you´re forced to use other ops(Y) , not because they were good or "underrated" , it is just because you don´t have other options anymore
Y operators get overpicked and guess what?
I don´t think sledge and iana are going to be less picked but there is a high chance that iq , nomad , zero , hibana whaterver are going to have a high pickrate because of the argument above
I know ash and zofia had high pickrates but the same thing happened briefly
Ubi nerfed ash first then zofia had like 90% presence ( zofia didn´t get the nerf at this time)
You can see it is just the same thing happening over and over

[_ShâdowyLight_]

I really believe Fuze is just getting bullied this update. His gadget buff is fantastic, but the recoil nerf won’t make up for a more interesting gadget. The problem is ACE. Everyone knows this. All the players and Dev team know the problem is ACE. HE shouldn’t have the AK12. Just because HE has it, someone else is getting punished for it. Change his weapon! It can’t be that hard! Test servers exist for a reason. Try Nomad’s AK for example. Or perhaps Jager’s AR with only 1.5x MAX? Jager’s AR is now a bit more difficult and has reduced ammo count. I just really wish they tried approaches by communicating with the community.

[jap]

recoil nerfs are welcome, as long as they do not make the guns obsolete.

416 and R4C did not deserve to be laser beams while being really good fragging weapons, their post recoil nerf update recoil is not that hard to control if you practice enough, while eliminating the fact that even an average player with average aim and movement can suddenly do really well with those guns without any effort.

[Mellon]

Originally posted by _ShâdowyLight_:

I really believe Fuze is just getting bullied this update. His gadget buff is fantastic, but the recoil nerf won’t make up for a more interesting gadget. The problem is ACE. Everyone knows this. All the players and Dev team know the problem is ACE. HE shouldn’t have the AK12. Just because HE has it, someone else is getting punished for it. Change his weapon! It can’t be that hard! Test servers exist for a reason. Try Nomad’s AK for example. Or perhaps Jager’s AR with only 1.5x MAX? Jager’s AR is now a bit more difficult and has reduced ammo count. I just really wish they tried approaches by communicating with the community.

What's so bad about nerfing a guns recoil in respect to his gadget getting buffed? Fuze was all about the gadget in the first place. I could see people actually bringing a fuze now because he can do jobs that were off limit to him before. I agree Ace was still too strong and I saw this coming for the AK12 but it's only a recoil nerf, nevermind a damage or mag size nerf. Most players will just adapt to the new recoil in order to keep the value of having an Ace on the team. Also I do get the argument of changing Ace's gun with someone else but that wont solve the problem, that's just shifting it to another operator. It's better to nerf recoil that to just swap up guns, it's why they have done it before but it wasn't appropriate for this situation.

[Mellon]

Originally posted by kaan723:

recoil nerfs are welcome, as long as they do not make the guns obsolete.

416 and R4C did not deserve to be laser beams while being really good fragging weapons, their post recoil nerf update recoil is not that hard to control if you practice enough, while eliminating the fact that even an average player with average aim and movement can suddenly do really well with those guns without any effort.

Agreed

[krossovki]

Some time ago in discusison with my friend i proudly pointed Siege as a game where average player doesn't need macros to feel confident in firefight. Well... Looks like this is not actual info)
It is very very bad direction to make shooting more dependent on absolutelly useless in real life skills. The gap between nolifers and average players will become much bigger. Nolifers - they easily spend another 2k hours to train recoil control. Average player will just delete the game next time he feel helpless again.
Me myself, i was in one step of getting Ash Legendary skin, when I found how sweet was playing this character. But now I looking for a way to spend my money to get (something really) good.

[Collateral damage]

Originally posted by Kestrel Hudson:

tl;dr

Nerfs are fair. But adding an extra gun to choose from is a given. Sadly Ubisoft fired the last guy who knew how to code 3 options for a loadout sometime after they released Finka, so it's most likely not happening.

[Kestrel Hudson]

Originally posted by kaan723:

recoil nerfs are welcome, as long as they do not make the guns obsolete.

416 and R4C did not deserve to be laser beams while being really good fragging weapons, their post recoil nerf update recoil is not that hard to control if you practice enough, while eliminating the fact that even an average player with average aim and movement can suddenly do really well with those guns without any effort.

Regarding recoil (and generally, regarding recoil nerfs in this and neighbour threads):

1. The initial message was about buffs vs nerfs, and not only about recoil. Significant buffs would attract people, make someone return, try something new. They are not hard to implement and Ubi Soft has tons of things they could easily switch around. Nerfs, on the other hand, only discourage most of people, especially when the game is dry on content.

2. The mentioned R4C and 416-C are only 2 guns out of bunch. Yep, the nerfs were justified, especially on Jager. But it isn't as easily applied to what followed and is to follow.

3. >90% of SMGs and ARs in the game perform like lasers (with only few notable exceptions), by this difinition. Why nerf only those few?

4. Even at the levels I used to play (silver-gold) at least half of gunfights ends up with a headshot. DPS matters only to an extent. I'm sure, at plat and above headshots are even more important and frequent. Anything that make you miss headshots, while your opponent doesn't have the same issue, make the curernt role unviable.

5. Attackers have to challenge the narrow angles that being held by defenders with guns that are harder to control and also have to react to flanking roamers with the same guns that are slower to ADS on top of being harder to control. Where's logic in that? Where's logic in making things even harder specifically for them?

6. If new recoil could be completely neglected by practice, why bother to introduce it to begin with?

7. If I have to study and practice the recoil of specific guns, I'd have to play the same few characters, like 1 or 2 on attack and 1 or 2 on defense - in order to keep the mechanical skill on the crucial level. So I would lock myself on Ash/Zofia and Jager/Vigil. Isn't it the opposite to what Ubi Soft wants to achieve?

8. This is my personal view on things, but I just don't have hours of my life to waste on shooting in the wall in some videogame just to get good with 1/60th of it's roaster. If I have enough free time, I'd rather learn some programming language or to play a guitar, spend my time with significant other. Or try to enjoy myself by playing a videogame that is about having fun, and not about grinding and pointlessly shooting at some wall in order to improve "skill" and keep up with new so important changes. If it's a must, I'd rather find some other videogame. I'm sure, lots of other players would say the same.

[Toreador]

They need to revert the changes to sledge and give amaru her shotgun secondary back

[_ShâdowyLight_]

Originally posted by the toast man:

They need to revert the changes to sledge and give amaru her shotgun secondary back

Sledge should keep his machine pistol, yes. But why would Amaru ever need her shotgun back? Its only purpose was to open hatches from below so that she could grapple up the hatch. Now that she breaks the hatch with the grappling hook, there’s no point in a secondary shotgun.