Deepcore GK2 - Burst Fire overclock feedback.

[elire01]

The idea behind the overclock is neat but the execution falls flat, here's why:

It's just kind of all over the place and it makes it unenjoyable to play with. The stat bonuses seem to be picked at random and are so inconsequential that they barely, if at all affect the weapon.

The main gimmick of burst fire is more of a drawback than a feature and I'm disappointed that they failed to implement it properly as I really had my hopes up for a GK2 build that can compete with overclock-less M1000. I'll go over it stat by stat and explain my reasoning as to why it fails to achieve the desired results.

3-shot burst fire mode:

To my understanding, the idea behind burst fire is making scout's main job of killing high value targets such as spitters and mactera easier... this unfortunately simply isn't the case as it only really applies to web spitters and even at that it's still average, the other 2 variants require 2 or more bursts and at that point it's simply less efficient than overclockless gk2 and leagues worse than well modded m1000.

It's way worse for killing swarmers as it is slower and uses up more ammo but that would be fine, functionality trade off would be reasonable if it was in turn better at taking down the aforementioned high value targets, but since that isn't the case, we're simply left with an overclock that severely hinders the base weapon.

The burst fails to meet any meaningful breakpoints and scales awfully into higher hazards.

It's also affected by spread and recoil, meaning that the illusion of increased accuracy via bursts is instantly lost the moment your target is more than 15 meters away from you, which is unfortunately the range that most of them will be at.

Increased damage and stun chance:

+2 damage that fundamentally fails to augment the weapon’s offensive ability and is instead just a background statistic that is barely affecting the gameplay. It's simply too low to make any meaningful impact on what the weapon does well.
Let's look at what damage increases other gk2 overclocks offer.

Bullets of Mercy trades some of your magazine for a very high 50% increase.
Ai Stability Engine that gives up 1 damage and 2 rate of fire for perfect accuracy and 50% weakpoint damage bonus.
Homebrew Powder is giving on average 15% more damage but it's rng and despite that it amounts to be higher damage bonus than the +2 of burst fire.

The damage increase that Burst Fire provides accounts to more or less 10% improvement, depending on your upgrades. It's nothing on paper and invisible in practice. You kill neither faster nor more efficiently and it could really afford to instead be tied to the burst gimmick as well as being substantial enough to make the weapon do respectable damage that allows it to kill priority enemies in one burst.

The stun chance increase isn't affecting the weapon in any meaningful way as it's low enough that it doesn't improve your stunning capabilities and isn't % based so it doesn't scale with stun mod from last upgrade tier, making it hard to justify when it’s not even guaranteed.

No matter what you do you are left with inconsistent weakpoint only stun that's so painfully short you barely benefit from it. For reference, m1000 gets a guaranteed on-demand stun that's twice as long and doesn't even require a weakpoint hit.

Expanded Magazine Capacity:

3/5 more bullets are nothing. It's purely here so that the weapon doesn't end up with uneven burst sizes. Could be higher but is fine as is.

Solutions for making the Burst Fire overclock be more competitive and on par power-wise with other gk2 builds as well as m1k:

Burst fire accuracy increase till effective range of 15-25 meters is achieved without the use of either Battle-Frenzy/Floating Barrel upgrades. The weapon shouldn't rely so heavily on accuracy increasing modifications just to fulfill its base functionality.

Damage Increase... Increase. Being able to one-burst things such as acid spitters, standard mactera and trijaws should be achievable as by the time you would be firing your 2nd burst, the base weapon could've killed the enemy... what's the point of using the burst fire in that case? This shouldn't be modifier reliant damage such as weakpoint bonus as it would not translate well over into armor break that's essential for brundle flies & spitter variants.

Make it a gimmick so that landing all 3 shots of the burst dramatically increases its damage or otherwise give the overclock some means of making the weapon better at dealing with threats in one burst.

Stun Chance Increase should be percentage based and additional stun duration of 0.5-1 second should be added on top of it. More consistency along with greater stun length should make follow-up shots on targets that didn't die in one burst more bearable.

tl;dr
Burst Fire is not a fun gimmick overclock because its comparatively weak and hard to justify using over nothing as well as much better options such as AISE & BoM.

[wodzu_93]

Agreed that Burst Fire is very underpowered right now. However, I'd approach changing it differently.

Here's my suggestion for improving it:
* Increase burst count from 3 to 5.
* Remove magazine increase.
* Replace +2 damage with armor break (somewhere between +250% to +500%), stacks additively with T4B
* Make Burst Fire a TOGGLE - hold reload to switch between regular full auto and burst fire. When in full auto, weapon acts as if you don't have an OC equipped.

With above changes, Burst Fire becomes a "clean in disguise" OC, that makes your GK2 more versatile and good tool to deal with armored enemies - burst fire to strip armor, then switch to full auto for weakpoint DPS. Having both armor stripping and weakpoint damage on a GK2 feels like a good deal to me.

[eMercody]

Toggle is probably along the lines of hold the reload key so it takes unrealistically longer to swap between. If it were somehow instant, you could put a bullet into a Mactera and then burst for a quick kill.

So what if double clicking fired a burst? While a headache for the devs, it is statistically simple for the player.

[SCamp]

Make consecutive hits do 50% more damage than the last. (% damage provided is just a placeholder.)

Example: 1x -> 1.5x -> 2.25x.

Alternatively, give a 3x multiplier to damage on the last shot if the first two shots hit.

[N00B]

Idea:
You can toggle it on and off by aiming at marked enemies.

-3-round burst when aiming at marked enemies.

to further add to this:

-Pin-point accuracy when firing at marked enemies.

-landing 3 consecutive hits on a marked enemy applies stun.

-third consecutive hit deals +200% armor break

[Smetrix]

Originally posted by NOOB:

Idea:
You can toggle it on and off by aiming at marked enemies.

-3-round burst when aiming at marked enemies.

to further add to this:

-Pin-point accuracy when firing at marked enemies.

-landing 3 consecutive hits on a marked enemy applies stun.

-third consecutive hit deals +200% armor break

I think you need to cook that idea a bit more lol. Scouts job is to look out for dangerous targets, like acid spitters and mactera, and take them out before they do damage.

Having to mark the target first doesn’t strike me as a fun idea.

[Revalopod]

Originally posted by Smetrix:

Originally posted by NOOB:

Idea:
You can toggle it on and off by aiming at marked enemies.

-3-round burst when aiming at marked enemies.

to further add to this:

-Pin-point accuracy when firing at marked enemies.

-landing 3 consecutive hits on a marked enemy applies stun.

-third consecutive hit deals +200% armor break

I think you need to cook that idea a bit more lol. Scouts job is to look out for dangerous targets, like acid spitters and mactera, and take them out before they do damage.

Having to mark the target first doesn’t strike me as a fun idea.

Plus we've already got a Scout gun overclock for marking enemies.

[eMercody]

I thought of a charge shot mechanic in order to fire a burst, then I thought “wait a minute”

[ONI]

add a funtion that increases the target deepcore damange the more you shoot it with the burts. if it is suppose to take high priority targets make every bullet do more and more damage to the same target until a cetain limit of course.

[Mason]

Yeah in comparison to AISE and BoM there's no point in ever taking this overclock over either of those two. That OC needs a serious buff to make it worth using.

Originally posted by eMercody:

I thought of a charge shot mechanic in order to fire a burst, then I thought “wait a minute”

I think a charge mechanic where you release a ton of rounds in a single burst, like maybe 10 or 15 rounds instantaneously might be fun, I guess it would turn it into somewhat of a shotgun at that point.

But honestly bringing no OC at all is better than this turd we have now.

[N00B]

Originally posted by MASON:

Yeah in comparison to AISE and BoM there's no point in ever taking this overclock over either of those two. That OC needs a serious buff to make it worth using.

Originally posted by eMercody:

I thought of a charge shot mechanic in order to fire a burst, then I thought “wait a minute”

I think a charge mechanic where you release a ton of rounds in a single burst, like maybe 10 or 15 rounds instantaneously might be fun, I guess it would turn it into somewhat of a shotgun at that point.

But honestly bringing no OC at all is better than this turd we have now.

That does sound cool, though. I think if it was like the Pandora from DMC4, where charging it would change its properties, it could actually be really cool and fitting for the GK2.

1st charge level: 3 round burst that functions like a sniper shot, dealing massive weakpoint damage and staggering the target.

2nd charge level: fires 10 rounds in a wide burst. Shot gains increased armor breaking. Also releases shockwave that stuns enemies.

3rd charge level: Fires entirety of the magazine as one condensed projectile, (like the turret whip) dealing massive AoE damage at the point of impact.

This would actually fit the GK2 really well since its already the "jack of all trades" gun. It wouldn't be too op due to the ammo cost and the charge times, but it could let you essentially use the M1000, the double barrel and even the GL40 at the same time, despite one of those not even being a Scout weapon.

[tcpl]

Originally posted by NOOB:

That does sound cool, though. I think if it was like the Pandora from DMC4, where charging it would change its properties, it could actually be really cool and fitting for the GK2.

1st charge level: 3 round burst that functions like a sniper shot, dealing massive weakpoint damage and staggering the target.

2nd charge level: fires 10 rounds in a wide burst. Shot gains increased armor breaking. Also releases shockwave that stuns enemies.

3rd charge level: Fires entirety of the magazine as one condensed projectile, (like the turret whip) dealing massive AoE damage at the point of impact.

This would actually fit the GK2 really well since its already the "jack of all trades" gun. It wouldn't be too op due to the ammo cost and the charge times, but it could let you essentially use the M1000, the double barrel and even the GL40 at the same time, despite one of those not even being a Scout weapon.

That sounds like more of an engy OC.

My idea is to play on the name Burst Fire and add a firey explosion whenever all 3 rounds hit the same bug. Burst Fire leads to Burst Fire. That way its pitiful damage might actually be a boon as you could trigger the explosion off lowly bugs.

[elire01]

Originally posted by tcpl:

My idea is to play on the name Burst Fire and add a firey explosion whenever all 3 rounds hit the same bug. Burst Fire leads to Burst Fire. That way its pitiful damage might actually be a boon as you could trigger the explosion off lowly bugs.

Sounds fun but doesn't exactly fit scout's role but then again, entirety of Drak-25 doesn't bother to fit his role either.

I'm all up for your idea.

[N00B]

Originally posted by elire01:

Originally posted by tcpl:

My idea is to play on the name Burst Fire and add a firey explosion whenever all 3 rounds hit the same bug. Burst Fire leads to Burst Fire. That way its pitiful damage might actually be a boon as you could trigger the explosion off lowly bugs.

Sounds fun but doesn't exactly fit scout's role but then again, entirety of Drak-25 doesn't bother to fit his role either.

I'm all up for your idea.

Aight, here's my idea:

(+) Adds 3-round burst.
(+) +5 fire rate.
(+) Last shot deals +200% damage if all 3 rounds land.
(-) +100% spread.

The Drak focuses on AoE. The M1000 focuses on range. I think it'd be good if the GK2 essentially became an automatic shotgun for close range.

[eMercody]

When thinking of how to buff burst fire I think we should stop and consider what is burst fire. Early implementations was to help prevent soldiers from wasting ammo from full auto but also giving them more firepower in what’s essentially semi-auto. Some burst fire, like GK2 is faster than the full auto so all of the bullets land in roughly the same spot.

It is also worth noting that the DRG engine has a limitation of 20 rate of fire.

A possible solution to fix damage output is to have it shoot three pellets at once and give it the illusion of firing in rapid succession. (So like your magazine is secretly smaller, but the illusion allows it to always have even bursts) It also needs some sort of damage boost to the burst itself as it only hits grunt breakpoints, all pellets landing for damage boost can be an avenue to this, or a high Weakpoint modifier such as +45% to reach the coveted Mactera breakpoint. It still wastes ammo on small fry though.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

Originally posted by SCamp:

Make consecutive hits do 50% more damage than the last. (% damage provided is just a placeholder.)

Example: 1x -> 1.5x -> 2.25x.

Alternatively, give a 3x multiplier to damage on the last shot if the first two shots hit.

seconding this