Gameplay and weapon balance

[no-lex]

This is a discussion board and reminder issue to make sure progress gets done on the core gameplay mechanics which have been changed for 2.0.

Ways to work within the game to figure out variables for 2.0: (if you come up with another, please comment)

• I or someone else can host a server and allow relevant people to savevars (most are already admin; @Dziq84 and possibly others can get auth) if they have a gameplay change they want to implement. If we do this, every change should have the relevant server config file attached and commented here. The advantage of this is that different people can drop in at different times and work on vars seperately while still having a consistent platform to base off of.

• We can host a group open vars session at a particular time (yet to be determined, depends on when people are available) and all work on the vars for an hour or two while we are all available. Since we live all over the world, it may be difficult-to-impossible to get all interested people online at the same time.

I am generally available during the weekdays from 22:30 to 05:30 UTC and may be available from about 14:30 to 05:30 UTC during the weekends.

edit: available weekend hours

[no-lex]

Flamer changes to make flamer1 require more skill:

flamerdamage1 220 (from 75) flamerweight1 200 (from -35) flamertime1 800 (from 200) flamerspeed1 170 (from 500) flamerdelayattack1 80 (from 90)

This flamer has a similarly short effective range of 15 meters, and this is only possible by lobbing the flames at a 30+ degree angle. Effective flamer use requires better ability to lead shots and greater ability to compensate for opponents' movement; however, it's maximum possible DPS is quite a bit higher than the old version due to the increase in damage compensating for the considerably higher difficulty of aiming the weapon.

[shirepirate]

it would be nice if the sword could be fixed from being super overpowered because of latency. that was the one thing that always bothered me in the weapon balance cause it couldnt really be fixed by just changing variables. if RE gets a larger playerbase this will undoubtedly become a more common complaint

[shirepirate]

that or, possibly removing the sword in lieu of another new weapon if the melee system can't be changed to feel good on the receiving end over higher latency

[cloudziq]

so molexted, these flamer vars are better than defaults (all is better than defaults) ;p, I try to post smth here later. Also shirepirate rings that bell which annoying hundreds of players in RE: the LAG OP sword - 75% of my deaths by sword is from 5 meters or more, this looks like buggy weapon in novice eyes - I remembered sword like that, as prone to lag weapon. Some players abusing sword :(

[lambda-11235]

It may also be worth nerfing/redesigning plasma 2. It's probably not good to have a weapon that is considered by experienced players to be useless because it team kills, but is extensively used by new comers. At the very least it should be changed so that it's not a team killer.

[no-lex]

It's fairly important to note that plasma will require ammo in 2.0 and therefore plasma2 spam is impossible if plasma ammo is handed out even slightly judiciously.

While I'm not a particular fan of plasma2 (or plasma1), I don't think making it teamkill-proof is a good solution, because plasma2 is too powerful as a close-range weapon to not damage allies (or oneself), and makes it a borderline OP weapon for defending cramped DAC points or CTF/BB bases. Also, RE weapons are all set up to allow team damage and having plasma2 be an outlier to that paradigm may be somewhat counterintuitive.

If anyone has an idea for how to completely redo plasma2, that may be a plausible alternative, since plasma2 is not a particularly well liked weapon anyway.

[b-sharman]

The results of making plasma2 teamkill-proof are apparent in a game mode like FFA, where team kills don't exist. If you camp in the general area of the plasma weapon pickup in 2.0 and just spam plasma2 to get bots you will get yourself a decently high score in an FFA match.

Even if it's easy for players to escape plasma2 balls, the inverse doesn't seem to apply as much for bots, which will always be a big factor in gameplay until we get enough players that bots are rare.

[lambda-11235]

Just to be clear, I meant redesign it so it's not prone to team killing, which is to say do something other than wipe everything out in a 2 meter radius. I did not mean turn of team damage.

[shirepirate]

Could probably use a rework for RE 2.0. That or weapon push/pull could be removed for your own team, making it easier to escape some effects while still damaging. Wouldn't want it to interfere with flamer-jumping though

[no-lex]

Because RE2 is planned to have pickupable ammo, there are three new vars which have not been balanced at all: weaponammoitem - amount of ammo picked up (default 6 clips) weaponammospawn - amount of ammo to spawn with (default 6 clips) weaponammostore - maximum stockpilable ammo (default 20 clips)

Because these numbers have not been balanced and tuned like most other balance vars, they are not particularly good (and probably not intended to be more than placeholders).

I happen to think they are all too high, with gameplay being nearly the same as 1.6 save for occasional out-of-ammo annoyances: not exactly what a competetive arena shooter needs to promote strategic gameplay revolving around ammo pickups. Significantly lower starting ammo along with smaller pickups should make RE2 more layout/pickup controlled and more strategy-based. As it is currently I think it's basically a more annoying RE1.6 with negligible real gameplay consequences.

Flamer is an example of a weapon which gets way too much ammo from pickups; the six spawn clips are enough to last until death in most circumstances, wasting the point of pickups. Flamer should probably start with a third as many clips as it has right now. Other weapons probably need similar trimmings, and feedback/suggestions are welcome.

Another thing worth considering is "spoiling" pickups: should it be possible to pickup useless ammo (to you) so that you can deny the opponent ammo? I don't have a particular opinion, but it's something I thought up that might be worth discussing.

[b-sharman]

Another thing that might need tweaking is that when you pick up ammo, your weapon automatically reloads to max. This saves a lot of time for shotgun users who have just emptied their clip. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is something to consider; I'm not sure if this behavior is intentional or not.

Anyway, even if you have plenty of shotgun ammo (I've never run out in a game before), shotgun ammo pickups are not quite useless.

[SniperGoth]

I feel like we need some sort of delay between move uses, like on 1.6 .

Right now, let's say you are in Center, looking at one of the large and continuous walls that surround the map, if you decide to look a bit lower and spam wallrun, walljump to the ground, wallrun, walljump to the ground, you can get incredible speeds and be almost impossible for enemies to catch up, unless they also do the move loop you are doing.

Or, you are in a circular room, and start to spam wallrun, meteor (crouch+ jump), slide, slidejump, wallrun, meteor and so on, your character is becomes a bullet, extremelly hard to kill, if you master this technique.

On 1.6, since you had a small delay between impulse moves, you couldn't spam and use it to your advantage... but now, you can, and im sure when people discover how fast you can become by doing this, it will be abused and become the Meta of the game.

Do the movement loop, or be an easy target.

[no-lex]

Probably reasonable enough; what delay seems to be most effective at mitigating these issues without being generally annoying?

[SniperGoth]

Maybe i'd say between 0.5 and 1 second. That way you can't really spam it, and it can still feel fast enough. Will need some testing for the sweet spot, still.

[no-lex]

For the ammo pickup balance, here are some prelim settings I came up with:

// weaponammoitem "the amount of ammo added to the inventory by an ammo pickup" "value"
// weaponammospawn "amount of ammo held at spawntime (including ammo loaded in weapon)" "value"
// weaponammostore "maximum amount of ammo carryable in inventory (excludes ammo loaded in weapon)" "value"

//shotgun holds a maximum of 8 shots
shotgunammoitem 24 //3 clips
shotgunammospawn 16 //2 clips
shotgunammostore 64 //8 clips

//smg holds 40 shots per mag
smgammoitem 80 //2 clips
smgammospawn 80 //2 clips
smgammostore 200 //5 clips

//flamer holds 50 shots per mag
flamerammoitem 100  //2 clips
flamerammospawn 100 //2 clips
flamerammostore 250 //5 clips

//plasma holds 30 shots per mag
plasmaammoitem 60 //2 clips
plasmaammospawn 60 //2 clips
plasmaammostore 210 //7 clips

//zapper holds 48 shots per mag
zapperammoitem 96 //2 clips
zapperammospawn 96 //2 clips
zapperammostore 288 //6 clips

//rifle holds 6 shots per mag
rifleammoitem 18 //3 clips
rifleammospawn 12 //2 clips
rifleammostore 36 //6 clips

These are all significantly smaller than the current settings, which should help promote pickups as part of gameplay.

Note that weaponammostore does not count shots loaded in the gun; with these vars, e.g. zapper can hold 288 + 48 = 336 shots and rifle can hold 36 + 6 = 42 shots given a fully loaded magazine.

Feedback and suggestions welcome as always. Would be good to get player-vs-player feedback on maps designed for 2.0 (ffs33, ctf13, etc.), noting that 1.6 maps generally are not seriously set up for pickup-based gameplay.

[lambda-11235]

One thing you have to be careful about with pickups is that they can completely destroy any sort of balance between beginners and experienced players, as people can just clean shop before others can react. Pickup spoiling will make this a lot worse. Another thing to consider is that some maps may have unbalanced pickups. What does one do if their ammo type is just not on a map? Could we have slowly regenerating ammo (like 1 clip every 30secs, or 60secs, etc.), in addition to pickups? That way we can avoid people being denied ammo.

[no-lex]

Being able to deny ammo is basically the point of having ammo as a gameplay mechanic; if it's not directly shaping gameplay it's just annoying.

Ammo spoiling basically makes RE pickups behave similarly to Quack pickups, where everyone is able to pick up all ammo; the downsides of this are basically similar to the downsides of Quack with respect to beginners. Quack is not particularly noob friendly, but it is also true that many AFPS players are already well versed in this style of gameplay.

Disallowing ammo spoiling might promote loadout changes within a game to attempt to throw off another player who is hogging their allowed pickups, but makes it harder to control someone's actions by corraling ammo (and therefore probably would need to be balanced with somewhat less ammo per pickup).

They both have their own advantages, and beating up on n0bs is absolutely a problem with any ammo implementation (and AFPS mechanics in general).

As for regenerating ammo, the spawn ammo should be enough to not be absolutely spawn-trampled, and if players stay alive long enough to exhaust that (when using ammo with reasonable prudence) they are competent enough to grab map ammo.

As for poorly implemented pickups on maps, that's a problem that needs to be fixed. If you have suggestions on particular 2.0 release-scheduled maps, let me know and I can attempt to remedy them.

[lambda-11235]

I think the ammostores should be lower. After getting my first ammo pickup I didn't really have to worry about picking anymore up for a long time when I used any weapons. Rifle is particularly bad in that respect. SMG and SG were the ones where I had to actively think about ammo the most.

[SniperGoth]

About that wallrun on Center i talked earlier... here's how that issue looks like, and why the delay could be important. https://youtu.be/Ck29i-g6_1o

[b-sharman]

Thanks for your var suggestions molexted! It's a good start.

With the weapon layout I use (shotgun + smg), the ammo vars were good after spawning, but when I had picked up ammo from a few corpses I didn't have to worry about ammo until I respawned again.

[no-lex]

Could probably remedy this by only allowing pickup of ammo still in the weapon (so you don't get the entire allotment of ammo from the corpse) and/or further reducing maximum/per-pickup ammo quantities. I don't believe that there is currently a mechanism in-game for only allowing pickup of ammo loaded into the weapon.

[SniperGoth]

One thing i'd like to come back is dashing. It was such a integral part of the gameplay meta, that playing without it on 1.9 > feels kinda easy to target enemies, or be the target yourself. Maybe you can dash 2 times before being able to do it again, to not be spammable since 1.9 doesn't have a energy bar.

[lambda-11235]

Personally one thing I disliked about dash in 1.6 was that it wasn't rebindable. I'd didn't like double tapping because I would accidentally do it every so often and mess myself up. Then when I want to dash I just move twice. It would be cool if there was a some kind of rebindable dash button.

[no-lex]

Here are some further pared-down values for weapon ammo capacity. Also added rifleammosub2 = 2 (rifle2 takes 2 ammo rather than 1) as a way to make rifle2 less spammable/make rifle1 less relatively useless.

// weaponammoitem "the amount of ammo added to the inventory by an ammo pickup" "value"
// weaponammospawn "amount of ammo held at spawntime (including ammo loaded in weapon)" "value"
// weaponammostore "maximum amount of ammo carryable in inventory (excludes ammo loaded in weapon)" "value"

//shotgun holds a maximum of 8 shots
shotgunammoitem 20 //2.5 clips
shotgunammospawn 12 //1.5 clips
shotgunammostore 40 //5 clips

//smg holds 40 shots per mag
smgammoitem 80 //2 clips
smgammospawn 80 //2 clips
smgammostore 200 //4 clips

//flamer holds 50 shots per mag
flamerammoitem 100  //2 clips
flamerammospawn 100 //2 clips
flamerammostore 200 //4 clips

//plasma holds 30 shots per mag
plasmaammoitem 60 //2 clips
plasmaammospawn 60 //2 clips
plasmaammostore 120 //4 clips

//zapper holds 48 shots per mag
zapperammoitem 96 //2 clips
zapperammospawn 96 //2 clips
zapperammostore 144 //3 clips

//rifle holds 6 shots per mag
rifleammoitem 18 //3 clips
rifleammospawn 12 //2 clips
rifleammostore 30 //5 clips
//reduce total uselessness of rifle1 currently by making it more ammo-efficient
rifleammosub2 2 

Also, since in game the player ejects and discards the old clip, shouldn't reloading always draw the entire clip size out of the inventory? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be able to keep the bullets left in the magazine that was discarded.

[lambda-11235]

I think the new ammos are good. I had to be conscious of my ammo usage, but it didn't feel like I was running out all the time. Also, for the clips I think it might be a pain to lose your ammo just because you need to reload. Looking at the animations, it seems that the avatar is storing used clips on their person, so it could be argued that they're refiling them.

[lambda-11235]

What about mines? They tend to be spammed now and can kinda defeat the whole point of a fast paced shooter. This is made a bit worse by the fact that they can be hidden, can be activated through walls, and can do massive damage while also causing a slow down. This can lead to people just spamming them everywhere and running away from all fights to score points.

[no-lex]

Most of my maps have very few mines: generally my duel maps have one or zero mines and my ffa maps tend to have two or less to alleviate mine spam.

I think many problems with mines can be resolved by increasing scarcity this way.

[no-lex]

Some alternate vars for the SMG which make it much more of a close range weapon at the cost of ammo usage and long range efficacy:

smgjitterpitchmax1 6
smgdelayattack1 55
smgdamage1 170
smgspeed1 4000
smgammoclip 30
smgammoadd 30
smgammoitem 60
smgammospawn 60
smgammostore 150

This configuration makes for a decent counter to the flamer or sword, but lacks enough ammo to be completely overpowering at close range (would be difficult to go on real streaks with).

[lambda-11235]

SMG 2 will also need to be updated. Currently I feel that it does too much damage on a direct hit, especially for its rate of fire. Below are some variables I set to make it more of a suppression weapon. It has a high spread with low damage, about 1-3 for enemies stuck in the flak zone. This could make it good for making sure enemies don't recharge their health. On a direct head shot (or body shot) it does ~50 damage, but jitter makes that difficult.

smgjitterpitchmax2 50
smgflakdamage2 10
smgfragrays2 80
smgflakradius2 3

[no-lex]

You may also want to increase smgjitterpitchmin2 with such a big smgjitterpitchmax2 value: the randomness with those vars feels very unnatural. With your current vars, smg2 basically pitches randomly between 0 and 50.

Reducing the damage by four and a half times seems a bit strong too. I got damages around 15-20 with direct smg2 hits which is way too low for this kind of weapon.

At some point it might be better to just make smg2 into a proper explosion and dispense with the randomness of the flak rays, but 80 might be alright (200 or something, though, would likely be better served with an explosion)

I'd do something like

smgjitterpitchmin2 15
smgjitterpitchmax2 22
smgflakdamage2 30
smgfragrays2 80
smgflakradius2 3
smgdelayattack2 500
smgammosub2 5
smgspeed2 400

to a similar effect.

[cloudziq]

I don't get it why this weapon appear like original but with slight changes (that is ok but looking like crap not actual weapon, especially slow moving secondary with 8000000 frags without any physics and this ridiculous short range)

My proposition below contains many vars (probably some not needed), and it's not considered final or mega balanced. Secondary mode is helpfull rather than just OP. The point of two kind of fire modes is to use these based on situation, yes?. Currently one is normal while secondary is mega strong.

-ammo counts are not ok though, I not touched that for now -secondary moving on arc, it is faster allowing to shots targets on much more distances but requires vertical altering of aim -primary jitter is lower but for past faced game and possible shot distance makes this more reliable

smgammosub2 10
smgbleeddamage2 10
smgbleeddelay2 500
smgbleedtime2 4500
smgburndamage2 10
smgburndelay2 600
smgburntime2 2500
smgcollide2 61
smgdamage1 160
smgdamage2 180
smgdelayattack1 100
smgdelayattack2 1400
smgdelayreload 2100
smgelasticity2 0.4
smgexplode2 22.0
smgflakcollide2 125
smgflakdamage2 2
smgflakelasticity2 0.45
smgflakpartlen2 3.5
smgflakspeedmax2 300.0
smgflakspeedmin2 70.0
smgflakweight2 400.0
smgfragrel2 0.8
smgfragscale2 1.2
smgfragskew2 1.5
smgfragspeed2 20
smgfragspread2 0.8
smgfragtime2 1400
smgfragtimeiter2 2
smgfullauto2 0
smgjitterpitchinair1 0.6
smgjitterpitchinair2 0.8
smgjitterpitchmax1 4.0
smgjitterpitchmax2 16.0
smgjitterpitchmin1 -1.0
smgjitterpitchmin2 12.0
smgjitterpitchstill2 6.0
smgjittertime1 40
smgjitteryawmax2 4.0
smgjitteryawmin2 -4.0
smgkickpush1 7.0
smglightcol1 0x391912
smglightcol2 0x282018
smgpartcol1 0x372217
smgpartcol2 0xB06829
smgpartfade2 500
smgpartlen2 8.0
smgpartsize2 0.6
smgparttype2 8
smgradius2 8.0
smgresidual2 3
smgspeed1 2600
smgspeed2 600
smgstunscale1 0.4
smgstuntime1 50
smgtime2 6000
smgwavepush2 1.6
smgweight1 40.0
smgweight2 320.0

nice... no newlines...ehhhh

[no-lex]

Over a handful of duel matches on a variety of maps (ennui, ffs33, abuset) @nonoesimposible and I came to similar conclusions about the shotgun: it is powerful enough to make most short and medium range weapons irrelevant.

This may be a side effect of the attempt at skeletal hitboxes, which consequently required a much more powerful shotgun to compensate. I saw damages as high as 180 at point blank range with SG1 and at ranges around 15 meters, I was able to do significant damage still (20-35).

I'm generally not a particularly good shotgun player, but was able to easily outscore my normal line which employed chiefly the flamer.

The shotgun could either get nerfed down to something closer to 1.6 vars, or the other relatively underpowered short/medium weapons (flamer, plasma, smg, zapper(?) ) could be brought up somewhat.

Thoughts?

[cloudziq]

more like 1.6 with higher speed of projectiles? shotgun2 especially, considering lack of dashes - in 1.6 player speed is 'parented' to shotgun2 projectile, more speed of move = faster projectile. Currently in 1.9 with no dashes, shotgun2 is less effective - compare it to rifle speed and you will see where is problem. Shotgun2 should have much much more range of effectivness

[SniperGoth]

What about, buffing every other weapon, instead of nerfing yet again the shotgun?

Personally i never use it because of how easy it is to rank up kills with it, but i'd rather get other weapons to the same damage range of the shotgun itself.

I remember qreeves talking something along the lines of making the lethality of the weapons higher, so maybe the time is now to experiment with it and see what works, and what doesn't.

As long as we don't get a 1.3 plasma (pea shooter)/rifle (A.K.A. Super Stun Gun of death) or 1.4 shotgun/grenade levels of absurdity, where it had a massive discrepancy of balance, that is.

[cloudziq]

"What about, buffing every other weapon, instead of nerfing yet again the shotgun?" shotgun is way too OP now compared to 1.6 , 'nerfing' it in 1.9 means it will be more like in 1.6 I guess, so no real 'debuff' in this case?

[SniperGoth]

While taking a look at how other games do their flamethrower, i came up with these vars, while testing them with @molexted earlier today.

flamerammospawn 150 flamerdamage1 40 flamerdelayattack1 30 flamermodspeed -25.0 flamermodweight 15.0 flamerpartblend1 1.0 flamerpartsize1 5.0 flamerspeed1 1000 flamerspread1 15.0 flamertime1 100 flamerweight1 -200.0

With these vars, the flamer has a more constant stream of fire, has more starting ammo, has a slightly longer range, less damage, but the ammo burns very fast, so you have to take some ammo management in consideration when using it.

It also makes you slower, to compensate the faster firerate.

Hopefuly it balances it out compared to the other weapons in the game, since you can't spam it as much anymore.

[no-lex]

A possible replacement for the zapper as a usable but not obnoxious (as the zapper is often portrayed) counter for rifle would be perhaps to introduce the idea of a second automatic weapon with a longer range and lower DPS than the submachine gun, which is currently being experimented with as a short ranged, high DPS weapon.

The vars are based on the current SMG but with a scoped (though otherwise identical) secondary fire and a harder hitting, faster projectile with less muzzle climb.

smgcollide2 629
smgcooked2 384
smgcookzoom 400
smgdamage1 270
smgdamage2 270
smgdelayattack1 160
smgdelayattack2 160
smgdrill1 4
smgdrill2 4
smgfragrays2 1
smgfragweap2 -1
smginteracts2 1
smgjitterpitchmax1 4.0
smgjitterpitchmax2 4.0
smgpartlen2 5.0
smgpartsize2 0.6
smgrelativity1 0.0
smgrelativity2 0.0
smgspeed1 8000
smgspeed2 8000

The muzzle velocity of 8000u/s is equivalent to 1000m/s, similar to modern small-caliber weapons. The faster muzzle velocity should reduce the difficulty of aiming the weapon at a moving target.

https://redeclipse.net/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=630 is a possible model for this weapon, which I would likely title the "Carbine" if it were to be added as a weapon.

[SniperGoth]

Regarding rifle, if we take a more extreme approach, why not leave it as a pick-up weapon, instead of being able to just spawn with it?

It would solve the problems and complains that i keep seeing time and time again.

But it would also alienate the fanbase of it too.

Another thing is to lock the zoomlevel to a high number (4 or 5), so rifle should be only useful for medium/large distances, making quickscoping and CQC unpractical and hard to do.

I'd ratther go the second option, which would make it more of a actual long-range weapon, than the jack of all trades, good for all ranges that it is currently.

Other than that, i see no other viable option, as since 2012, when i started to play, it was always the target of complains and nerfs that didn't work.

[lambda-11235]

I feel that if we have a pick-up only weapon, then all weapons should be pickup. Making the zoom level higher might be a good idea. Although a zoomlevel of 4 or 5 is impractical, considering the size of most RE maps, which are usually a bunch of tight corridors. Also, if the zapper isn't kept as a long range weapon than removing rifle from spawn would be bad because no other weapon has it's range.

[no-lex]

its*

[cloudziq]

why rifle must have so great zoom? why not make it just one level with slight zoom (like that carbine from Halo that Freem showed a few times), this way rifle must be used from closer distance and disallows cheap kills from long range without any effort. so if target is further away - then it's harder to hit (like with any other weapon), big zoom is unfair in most of the cases - allowing to counter any weapon while the same is not possible with other weapons.

[SniperGoth]

@lambda-11235 before 1.4 if im not mistaken, the game was only based on pickups, and loadouts were only enabled as a mutato, but it turned out so popular that became the default mode of play, same as TDM, which was also a mutator originally.

[no-lex]

Zoom is not really enforceable at all-- it is trivially easy to circumvent it, and really there's no way we can tell that the zoom has been tampered with. I'd rather have everyone have access to zoom than just the dishonest people.

Apart from possibly a slightly high damage output, I don't think the rifle is very OP: it is very bad at close range combat due to the very steep speed debuff (can't run from a fight) along with its damage/ammo characteristics. rifle1 doesn't really do enough damage to stand up to SG1/SMG1 and rifle2 has such limited ammo that it becomes a potato quite quickly; as aformentioned, running to get a pickup is going to get the rifle user killed due to their subpar speed, where they will get chased down by faster players with other loadouts quickly.

At ~100m ranges, the rifle is quite good (as it's supposed to be), but zapper2 is also very competent at this range and SMG is capable of dealing damage well when used semi-auto.

Rifle can be controlled by limited pickups on maps like this where the potential for rifle spam is apparent. Rifle is supposed to be quite ammo-dependent to help prevent camping, but also to allow for its control on open layouts.

If I was to set the rifle damages myself, here's what I would propose:

rifledamagelimb1 .2
rifledamagelimb2 .2
rifledamagetorso1 .4
rifledamagetorso2 .4
rifleexplode1 0

This would serve to reduce damage of non-headshots by 50%, making rifle require more skill to deal large amounts of damage. Also, on a somewhat non-sequitur, remove rifleexplode1 since it doesn't make a ton of sense.

[no-lex]

Working with @SniperGoth, we came up with the following vars for zapper which might be a little less annoying:

//ammo changes

zapperammoadd 30
zapperammoclip 30
zapperammospawn 60
zapperammostore 150
zapperammosub2 1

//cooking changes

zappercooked2 384
zappercooktime2 0
zappercookzoom 200

//damage changes

zapperdamage1 250
zapperdamage2 250
zapperdamagelimb1 0.7
zapperdamagelimb2 0.7
zapperdamagetorso1 0.7
zapperdamagetorso2 0.7

//rof and residual changes

zapperdelayattack1 200
zapperdelayattack2 200
zapperfullauto2 1
zapperresidual2 0

//visual changes

zapperpartfade2 100
zappertime1 1000
zappertime2 1000

These vars are similar to the carbine, with neither fire mode causing the stun residual and identical projectile characteristics for zapper1 and zapper2. By being a zapper, however, this more easily fulfills the uniqueness requirement that RE weapons generally are required to satisfy.

[no-lex]

A quick update: the prior two proposed changes (rifle and zapper) have been implemented; the zapper's modifications have some other changes to make zapper1/zapper2 identical (stun, partsize, speed, etc) but do not significantly change the weapon from the changes outlined above. See 47a5d6547d527ff8ad27846ca9ef56d7f607557e for the full details.

[cloudziq]

I tested zapper and really this have no any feel of power, weapon is annoying like before - its just less OP I used similiar setting long time ago, where two fire modes are really something different and need to be used based on situation, rather than zoom which in my opinion is just a cheap way of doing things

zapperammoadd 36
zapperammoclip 18
zapperammosub2 6
zappercooked2 1
zappercooktime2 100
zapperdamage2 400
zapperdamagetorso1 0.65
zapperdamagewhiplash2 0.1
zapperdelayattack1 300
zapperdelayattack2 1200
zapperdelayreload 2100
zapperdrill1 4
zapperexplode1 4.0
zapperexplode2 32.0
zapperflakdamage1 20
zapperguided1 5
zapperpartfade1 200
zapperpartlen1 256.0
zapperparttype2 3
zapperradial2 340
zapperresidual1 4
zappershockdamage1 1
zappershockdamage2 10
zappershocktime1 4000
zappershocktime2 4000
zapperspeed1 12000
zapperspeed2 60000
zapperspread2 4.0
zapperstun1 30
zapperstunscale1 0.2
zapperstunscale2 0.75
zapperstuntime1 250
zapperstuntime2 600
zapperwavepush1 4.0

[no-lex]

Potential plasma2 "acid gun" replacement for the noob-sucking blob currently ingame:

plasmaammosub2 15 //half of a mag
plasmacooked2 64 //more rays
plasmadamage2 130
plasmadelayattack2 1000 //from 1800
plasmaexplode2 8.0 //from 44
plasmahitpush2 0.0 //remove suck effect
plasmapartsize2 5.0
plasmaparttype2 5
plasmaradius2 4.0
plasmarays2 15
plasmaspeed2 125 //from 85
plasmaspread2 30.0
plasmataperin2 0.0
plasmataperout2 0.0
plasmatime2 5600 //from 3500
plasmatimedelay2 0
plasmaweight2 100.0 //from 0

plasma chunks midair in institute3

[cloudziq]

last change is really something that can add depth to the game. I like it, harder to kill using this than 'sucking ball' - more skill based and better feel/look/how weapon works, so that change is nice. I wonder how others will see it

[lambda-11235]

At first glance I like it. It's still covers a wide area without without being nigh inescapable. However, I'm still using a track pad, so I don't know how it acts under normal conditions.

Edit: Just got back. I think plasma two may need to be a bit weaker, as it is the damage is very high for such an area of coverage. I really like the zapper, as it feels like a good in attack speed vs damage between a SMG and rifle.

[Lagetta]

Hello, I came to check just recently the weapons on the new version in RE. The player size and slower movement in the game made in my opinion pistol2 really op. Taking -22 dmg in the torso (needing ONLY 5 hits) is like a new rifle power but a bit slower. Also unlimited ammo makes it one of the strongest weapons in close combat. same with shotgun1, It's just pure one shot kill if just get close enough with kicking techniques and timing the shot.