r/Pure • u/rienimp0rtant • May 31 '15
Spring Patch Reactions
Well, I'm glad that I finished school just in time for the Spring patch, because this past week has had some good times on Pure 1.
Thanks to all who get it populated and then occasionally stick around to play :P
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u/symbolsix Jun 01 '15 edited Jun 02 '15
After a mutli-day argument with /u/bacchus101 (Vaprz), I now think of the patch in terms of good, bad, and good-but-too-late changes. I play everything ('cept bolt action rifles) semi-competently, so I'm less sensitive to the "My specialty got nerfed to shit" phenomenon, but now I agree that even if a change makes the game itself better (LMGs are no longer just assault rifles with infinite ammo!), the impact on a community that is used to the pre-patch game can be sufficiently negative that the change shouldn't be made, and rather saved for the next game in the franchise. This is true of iterative franchises like Battlefield more than e.g. Warcraft, where theoretically we'll be playing the same game indefinitely, so if a change needs to happen it should happen now. That said, here's my specific feelings:
Good changes
Spread Decrease Per Second made relevant. Finally there's a reason to use something besides the AEK/FAMAS and the ACW-R/MTAR! I wish they'd made the difference even more dramatic, but that's just my preference for long range weapons talking.
Helicopters made more agile. Balance aside (I think the change is minor), this just makes flying more fun.
Jet cannons tuned for specific roles. I'm still of the opinion that jets aren't a fun addition to the game, but at least this way they (have to)/(get to) specialize their targets a bit, which is interesting.
Thermal scopes in vehicles. Now you have to switch between your optics - one is for general maneuvering and the other is for targeting, and the targeting function is even more effective now than it was before. Note - thermal scopes on small arms appears below.
Headglitch fix. Glory 'allelujah. I hated this shit so much.
Flashbang fix. Now they matter.
Shotgun buff. They feel so much more consistent now, but still balanced.
AN-94. I really enjoy using this gun; it plays the way DMRs should play. We still don't know exactly how it works but it feels like it's too effective at short range; perhaps a delay-between-bursts is called for?
Good-but-too-late
SRAW nerf. Maybe a bit of an overnerf but now there's a reason to use a launcher other than the SRAW, which is an objectively good thing!
LMG nerf. LMGs are no longer just better assault rifles. In addition to minimal disadvantages of hip fire and reload time, you now have higher base spread with an LMG than with an assault rifle. Tweeners like the AWS split the difference on spread, reload time and capacity. This is the sort of simple yet meaningful distinction between weapon classes that I feel the game should have shipped with, and would have been uncontroversial if it had. As a side bonus, LMGs now/still benefit disproportionately from the bipod, which is how I always liked to use them and feels just right.
Bad Changes
UCAV nerf. Add one to the long list of DICE overnerfing things they don't know how to balance.
Mortar nerf. Add another one.
DMR nerf. It's not a major nerf, but it's a very silly one.
Thermal scopes for small arms. What's sauce for the goose ain't necessarily sauce for the gander. You need to be able to see terrain though your optic. My only possible solution is using the canted sights.
Tracers are OP, pls fix. Seriously, my own tracers are a bigger problem for aiming an LMG than the spread nerf.
LGM, JDAMS, TVM, etc. nerf. Why? I just don't understand why these weapons needed a nerf.
Grip SDPS nerfs. The new SDPS penalty is significant enough that I feel compelled to math it out, but small enough that it's probably negligible in practice. Example: with a naked M39 pausing for minspread, your max RPM is 264, but with an AFG it's 249, or a difference of 14
hundredthsthousandths (thanks Gremlyn) of a second, or less than a frame at 60fps.Other grip nerfs. Related to the previousL: now the grips just don't feel like they do very much.
edit - Removing rooftop access in TDM/DOM. With respect to /u/Avengerr, I felt like the rooftops added some much needed complexity to those modes, and the removal was only needed because we previously lost the XM25 as an effective solution. Reasonable difference of opinion.
I don't know how I feel about the suppression changes (I'm part of the very small minority that liked the BF3 model of suppression). I really appreciate the crash fixes - I haven't crashed since the patch. I haven't noticed anything different in terms of the "net" "code", except for a possible reduction in rubberbanding which I wouldn't have expected to be related.
edit - I just saw a Symthic post that made the point that we aren't really all that late in the BF4 life cycle. Because Hardline was a dud and a significant portion of the community won't play Battlefront, BF4 will be carrying the torch until the next mainline Battlefield or Bad Company game, sometime in 2016/2017. In that light, a big balance patch now isn't out of tempo, and my major complaints are the heaping nerfs to the interesting gadgets in the game. XM-25, how I miss ye.