CORRECTIONS: - Apparently the Quantum damage-ics lightweight and precision sidearm values are incorrect, so precisions actually have higher sustained DPS than lightweights do, and lightweights actually have less (see updated Archetypes tab), so I've adjusted them to be the same tier accordingly
That would be too open. Then they wouldn't have any excuses when they made the exact wrong balance changes even if we KNOW leadership was stopping them from making the right changes. There's a reason we got to hear from them on podcasts and shows less and less
The balence team doesn't have the budget Also that may be to much players can get mad at to much communication since they are stupid and don't understand how long stuff takes to make or balence
They do, they publish sandbox updates and explanations. But they have to draw a line because history tells us actually interacting with the community is tricky because for the most part the community are.. 'children.'
One thing I haven't really seen you talk about is per shot damage, and how that interacts with redbard. The performance delta between 1 shotting a red bar and 2 shotting a redbar is HUGE, even though It may be a 10% dps increase on certain levels of content. Its why certain archetype are good in lower tier but trash in higher tier content. If its a slow weapon that can get an enemy down to 5% hp in one shot it literally doesn't make a difference if it lost 40 percent of its damage, its still going to kill in 2 hits. Considering the delta time increase of an enemies lifespan when you either miss a shot or the enemy survives a shot really determine a weapons feel. This is why IMO rocket sidearms are so good, they almost always kill in 1-3 hits, regardless of content level, where sometime a breach GL will double the TTK on certain enemies because they no longer get 1 shot, and that means the nemy in threatening you for another full reload and grenade travel worth of time, the rocket side arm you only have to wait ~0.4 seconds You got close to this discussion when you talk about autos vs bows doing nearly the same DPS but having much different ease of use.
He has discussed this quite a lot in the past regarding hand cannons and bows and prioritizing one-shotting targets (often encouraging use of precision frames over lightweights if it achieves that goal). Probably didn't have time in this two hour video to go so deep but he is aware of that logic. Its a smart way to look at it!
When he was making a lot of this on stream it was discussed a decent bit, but main issue is it is more complex than would initially seem. While this video is targeted towards endgame, you have to consider various factors. Main factor to consider is which red bar you are actually facing? A thrall has different hp than an acolyte which is different from a knight which is different a vandal etc. A small 10% buff might not allow a gun to 1 shot a vandal but maybe it can now start 1 shotting an acolyte. Additionally plenty of factors can affect these values. What power delta is the activity? What modifiers are present? What perks are active? Which specific enemy are you shooting? What type of activity are you in? So, you could be looking at a hundred or so different breakpoints that would then have to be considered for every weapon. However, Mossy has already done some pretty cool analysis on hp amounts, so this could be a cool point to follow up on in another video. In "foetracer enemy health summary" tab, keep in mind there are also power delta and other factors that affect effective hp: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b57Hb8m1L3daFfUckQQqvvN6VOpD03KEssvQLMFpC5I/edit?usp=sharing
this video gave me such a better understanding of what weapons are good for with the minor and elite scaling and just putting in perspective different ranges and archetypes
My complaint about buffing LFRs is that, as we learned in TWQ, when LFRs are good people don't use anything else. rockets were more optimal the entire time (notwithstanding that we didn't know about Pack Hunter's bug at the time, so it wasn't as recognized), but they take nonzero effort, so it could feel like pulling teeth to get people to actually use them when you could clear the encounter with room to spare just by staring at a Div bubble. Which that gun's nerfs help, but I'm still skeptical that a flat damage buff is a good idea without some other changes. I also wouldn't mind seeing more primaries get the "extra damage to orange bars" treatment, and I think that might be a good solution for scouts in particular. Maybe SMGs as well (despite that you actually toned down their elite scaling lol). The thing about scouts is, aside from S23 when the artifact was basically tailor-made to break Polaris Lance, there never feels like there's a situation where there are enemies far away from you that a hand cannon will face damage falloff, that are also threatening enough that you wouldn't rather just get closer to them to kill them, yet are also not enemies you wouldn't rather just burn special or heavy ammo to kill. A good example would be a gaggle of Taken Knights up on a ledge somewhere: they can hurt hard enough that it might be worth burning a rocket to kill them, but maybe that's the sort of situation a scout rifle should be good at. But as primaries, and notoriously low damage ones to boot, they take way too long as it is.
LFRs kinda desperately need a sizeable buff. Since their nerf we've seen the meteoric rise of HGLs, swords, and various exotic weapons being as easy or easier (Leviathan's Breath, Dragon's Breath, Whisper of the Worm, etc.) with significantly better dps. So, even reverting the lightfall nerf probably wouldn't even make them a go-to option.
i counter this and say, while true; gls and rockets are easier to use and do more damage, also weapons like levis, whisper and sleeper exist and fill that same niche. i don’t think it would hurt to give LFRs a good buff since it would make them an option rather than powercrept and outclassed.
Who honestly cares what people prefer to use. What matters is what's actually good and feels actually better to use when properly done so. Linears feeling good and being decent is just a reflection on how players are in terms of skill. If anyone could get away with it they'd gladly use Choir of One if it meant being lazy due to a lack of skill in using a rocket or GL. This is totally fine for normal content but even with buffs linears wouldn't compare in contest to rockets or GLs let people use whatever they want in content that doesn't matter
Lfrs straight up have absolutely no use case because of the lack of damage. Sleeper doesn't have enough ammo to be viable for basically anything. If something is more difficult to use it should do more damage if used correctly, rockets and gls being the easiest dps options shouldn't be absolutely eclipsing them
I think high impact fusions should just be the highest dps dealer for its family just to mess with those guys who hate them. When u bring a high impact MG or rocket ppl know we’re going through a long fight, but for a high impact fusion your just considered a weirdo because “it feels like ass” when the feel of a weapon is a personal thing in the first place.
I say this all the time, just remember, the sandbox team's job is the tinker with the sandbox. If they make it perfect or nearly perfect (which ain't too hard), then they're out of a job. Could they then primarily be refocused onto other things like expanding the sandbox and making it more interesting? Yes. Is management going to see it that way? Who knows, and they ain't about to take that risk. So instead they take it slow. Plus management is very 'sandbox complexity' adverse. They did that once with the original warmind cell/charges of light/elemental well mods (which were amazing and only failed because they made them completely fomo/inaccessible to most players who didn't participate in those seasons), and then management decided they didn't like it and completely canned complexity and build diversity as a whole. So if they make the current sandbox perfect now then they REALLY make more of themselves unemployed, cause management ain't about to go for lots of interesting and complex build crafting as a part of the sandbox anymore.
@@embelished_meister500I feel like Titans should really lean into offering "support" that keeps the fight going like having the ability to spawn ammo for the team innately in their kit. This would allow them to offer support that is different from Warlock and Hunter, but it's just as valuable as what they can offer.
@@thatonepenguinperson618I want different Titan subclasses to have access to their own different elemental banners like banner of war but they would give different buffs. Titan could be the Frontline support unit that the rest of the team rallies around to get the benefit of their aoe buffs sort of like an anchor for the fireteam
@@banancreww Maybe it’s just the whole argument of people not wanting to freeze or suspend when they could should just explode. Though I feel headstone is often underused
some side notes- 1. i wish the RPM displayed on rockets was actually correct! 2. one thing the rocket subfamilies get correct is actually using reload stat as a differentiator between subfamilies. (a la aggressive frame rockets) reload stat is underutilized in determining subfamily differences. (arguably stability as well on heavies and specials) 3. you're absolutely correct on the wave-frame BR difference needing to be larger. plus, now that it matters, bungie needs to go and hand tune the BR stat of all our current wave frames to differentiate them- it shouldn't be 50 for all of them. (the same applies to the velocity stat on them, but to a lesser extent) this is extended to my next observation below- 4. i wish bungie would rework swords so that their individual stats actually mattered among the same subfamily- give me adaptive swords with base extra charge rate, reserves, or guard endurance etc! give me more reason to select one sword over another of the same subfamily than just impact stat and whatever the meta damage perk is. 5. something you acknowledged when talking about the smg buffs you suggest, is that bungie have never given an archetype a 50% buff before, and I think it's probably smart to consider valuing this to keep the proposed changes more realistic. such as, does it still match your balance philosophy if this was closer to 40%? 6. in terms of avoiding powercreep, i think there's room to consider that as well- while this slightly goes against your philosophy of balancing around the current best feeling archetype, and ALSO there are some clear outliers warping this (notably in the primaries changes via smgs) something to point out would be that after your changes, (1:33:07) the average primary weapon would have a 13.94% increase. are there ways this average increase could be reduced to 10%? maybe even 7%? 7. you definitely hit the nail on the head on that bungie should push for more roles in their sandbox, akin to hand cannons being the major shredders, but not being as good elsewhere. 8. final questions to think on: on a similar vein in terms of intrinsic frames, how would the sandbox look if the aggressive shotgun fire rate bonus after a kill was extended to ALL aggressive frame weapons? (how can bungie make high-impact and aggressive frame weapons feel more different from each other among subfamilies, but more similar and familiar across weapon types? why are double fire GLs not just heavy burst frame? why are wave sword frames not just called wave frames and the same for aggressive glaives? while it's nice for the movement utility niche, does it step on LW GL's toes that micro missile frames also have the LW bonus?)
The hallmark of a balanced weapon sandbox will be that every weapon archetype will have a *relevant* situation in which it is the best pick. Great analysis, Aegis. And respectable takes on suggested sandbox changes.
I also want to add that sometimes people just like certain weapons archetypes and want to use them all the time. IMO a balanced sandbox is one where people can use their other weapon slots to cover their favorite weapon/weapon type weaknesses. That lets people play what they want for the most part while still being able to, with enough skill, participate in the content they want. Now, im not saying take away weapon weaknesses, keep them, but have ways OTHER weapons can pull the slack. That will, along with every weapon having a niche they excell at, solidify the sandbox.
WOW. This was super well thought out and insanely informative. I appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to have bungie completely ignore your logical suggestions!
This is pinnacle, sophisticated destiny 2 content. The suggestions at the end I think encapsulate both the current player-perceived issues and potential solutions moving forward. Really appreciate this and hope to see this gain traction within the community. ❤
Would be cool to see a vid like this about subclasses. I’m extremely disappointed that Bungie has nerfed mid to bad Hunter subs because of Prismatic. I always thought that Prismatic invalidating most Hunter and Warlock subs was not healthy for the game, and that it would need changes. But nerfing other subs alongside it will ensure this is always a problem. They need to let the stronger versions of these abilities exist on their respective subs, to give them a reason to be used.
I hate where precision linears are at because they NEED FTTC/TT to even think about being relevant and competing with the burst linears. My idea is to remove FTTC/TT from all current and future precision linears and just increase their reserves by 60%-80%.
Good video, the work is insane. I think the main problem is currently the ability spam. Weapons needs change but, the abilities/subclass need a complete rework, 4.0 or something, prismatic is nowhere near balanced.
I gotta say I loved everything on how you did this. Excellently showcased. While I didn't agree with every conclusion (like scout rifles being worst) it did make me really sad that this wasn't an actual balance patch. Man, the game would feel so much better if these changes were implemented. Side note: You may want to explore using Tableau more for comparisons, it makes it much easier to compare . I had no idea how some of these measure up to each other just by looking at the numbers. Would love to see something similar, but comparing primary/special dps against elite enemies.
Watching this guy analyse , balance and add creative ideas and unique characteristics to these bland weapons archetypes was genuinely exciting. Awesome video.
Bungie should pull a quick backup, of their current settings; Then change this according to this video for a few patches, and see player feedback. Also; HUGE respect to you. That's amazing work and research!
It's great seeing you apply a lot of your analysis to the "big picture". Hopefully this AT LEAST starts more internal discussions, some guns have felt so redundant or just *extremly* niche rn, it's kinda sad.
Yes, but no freedom to actually do it. That's why the corporations always contract outsiders, just because of the freedom to think. After that, they will put all the work to actually implement it into the sandbox, not an easy thing either.
As good as support autos are, I still think they need a damage buff against red bars along with every other auto (maybe less for 720s). Proccing both the frame buff and circle of life still feels weak compared to just using Rufus’ Fury Edit: or change velocity to be quicker
As always, excellent video! Although, one of the main flaws of the game that I think is the reason we don't see good weapon balancing is due to perk variations and buildcrafting. About buildcrafting: we have so many weapons and weapon perks that interact strongly with our build, but few buildcrafting options to make our weapons stronger in non-DPS scenarios while also being interesring to use. I would be interested to see a similar video of you trying to balance other aspects of the sandbox, like mods, exotic armors and weapons, and suclasses!
One of my biggest concerns with the LFR’s is that they functionally competes against snipers for ranged damage and I often find myself even wondering why they added this weapon archetype to the game instead of just working on snipers for example still hunt and whisper of the worm are 100% getting picked over any exotic or legendary linear we have for precision boss dps, realistically if bungie removed LFR’s from the game only about 1-7% of the player base would actually even care because good players know that LFR’s are rarely if ever the best for the current situation ahead of them
So I'm breaking my comment up into two parts, the initial feelings I have prior and my thoughts after watching. For initial thoughts... I think that on paper this idea is a cool one. I am looking forward to watching just to hear how you break it all down. With that said, I think something that is relevant but not exactly.... "measurable" is Bungie's habits around buffs and nerfs to anything in the game (weapons, abilities, enemies, etc.). From what I can tell they issue changes based on how much of a threat it is to the diversity of the larger game's sandbox. So a weapon that isn't good but is used by everyone is more likely to be nerfed than a weapon that is four times better, but only used by a select few. They will also issue changes to weapons or abilities that people like yourself use for the speedrun type stuff if they fear that a broken tactic is potentially too easy to exploit or otherwise dangerous to the larger casual player's sandbox. Ultimately, regardless of which weapon is "the best" a moderately coherent team could take damn near any set of legendary heavy weapons and complete pretty much any raid or raid encounter, or dungeon encounter. We can debate weather or not that should be the case or not, but it is still true. So therefore most of the changes that Bungie makes are aimed at keeping that crowd generally using at least a somewhat diverse set of loadouts. And typically when the larger playerbase struggles with something like Ghosts of the Deep or Salvation's Edge, their struggle has less to do with the difference between a Aggressive Rocket Frame vs. an Adaptive, and has more to do with how they approach the game overall. So I'm always a bit skeptical of people's requests to buff or nerf this n' that because it is usually focused on their perception of the game rather than on a holistic view of the game as a whole. They rarely take on a view that values a random player in the Comsodrome with no endgame aspirations as equal to a player who races for World's First Contest clears. After listening through... I think that while this is certainly an ambitious project and interesting... I think you focus a bit too much on the ideal lab situation and not enough on how this works in the real world. This is the bane of all data driven research... Data is a snapshot. It is a point in time, and when we work with data we're essentially working outside of time. Time is paused while we examine and adjust our data points, and then we unpause it to see what happens after we made our changes. Did it go how we predicted? Regardless, how does it help us learn more and how does it guide future questions and explorations? . I think in this scenario, some interpretive work would have been helpful. Exploring thought experiments for why things are the way they are and not just accepting the easy answer of "Bungie doesn't know what they're doing". Because obviously they do know, or we wouldn't be rounding a ten year anniversary for their franchise. That isn't to say they don't make mistakes, but I think it is disingenuous at worst, or unfair at best, to treat the game's sandbox as nonsensical. You wouldn't be making this video if it was. There is a lot of material out there that goes into how and why game developement works the way it does, and why it produces things that sometimes seem backwards or nonsensical. Destiny 2 isn't the only game with a bizzare sandbox that falls apart under this level of scrutiny. So why is that? I don't question your math, but I think there is more to weapon tuning than math. As I said, Bungie focuses of usage rates more than anything when it comes to nerfs. They didn't nerf LFRs back in the day because they were numerically OP. They nerfed them because the vast majority of the player base was using them almost exclusively over anything else. We can pick apart why the players were doing that all we want, but ultimately that the players were doing it is why they were nerfed. And it's why they will probably not be buffed to be competitive for a long time. I think you also take into account things like Pack Hunter too much in how you balance weapon families and to me that says less about Rockets/Swords, and more about Pack Hunter. It is not a reasonable stance to balance entire weapon families around exotics that players may not own or ever use. You might use them a lot, raiders and hyper efficient GM players might use them a lot. But most players aren't going to be min-maxing rocket builds around Gjally. So it doesn't make sense to balance swords or rockets around Pack Hunter. Rather, it would make far more sense to balance Pack Hunter around other swords and rockets. It should not be doing so much heavy lifting to the point that it feels mandatory to use it in a competitive setting. On a different topic, the reason Bungie releases new weapons as OP is because if they don't then most players won't use them. Even if they are OP (like for example, the new healing auto rifle which is flat better and pretty good but isn't used). So if we take a habit of buff/nerfs that focus less on actual power and more on meta dominance, and a tendency to release new weapons as OP, I think this would likely explain a lot of the really random looking charts that you found. It would explain why some things are allowed to be OP and others aren't. Because those OP things are not warping the meta in a way they find problematic. We can debate if we agree with them or not, but I think it is unfair to criticize their model as "nonsensical" because it is an organic one that has evovlved over time with the playerbase. The playerbase as a whole largely does not make use of the edge/fringe cases that your using to justify your changes. Players on the high end do to varying degrees. But most players do not. Most players just play the game and use what they want to use. And what they use is driven more by modifiers in a nightfall or which weapons have champion mods this season than anything else. TLDR: I think that in a vacuum where you can pause time, your changes make sense. I think that the weirdness you're finding is rooted in the game's life as a whole in real time. It's a story about how the meta shifted over time.
Any chance you're gonna do this for abilities as well? I'd love to see your take on Supers and Grenades (covering all abilities including aspects and things would be a little too much maybe).
i wish this shit was real. recently, ive been using an under over/ kinetic tremors multimach, and while probably being my favorite primary in the game right now, just hits awful. thank you for the smg love.
I don't see how Hullabaloo is considered the best performer of Compressed Wave Frames. It has very comparable perks to Dimensional Hypotrochoid, but lacks that weapon's Nanotech Tracer Rockets Origin Trait, which ups the damage rather significantly.
Distinguishing power weapon archetypes better is needed but should be small incremental nerfs to fix them not buffs. We can already 1 phase everything fairly easy.
And people said Rick had long intros XD Next Video: Can Aegis fix Destiny 2 before Rick Kackis finishes his Intro Also I actually really like these spreadsheet analysis. Really nice way to visualise how the sandbox is doing
First off great job, this is amazing, secondly I’ve watched this about 1.5-2 times total, the only thing I’m not seeing that might effect some of there reasoning for current damage values are TTK and how to make each frame viable inside of an archetype of weapon, or if they should even bother. I say that because since you mentioned all range values were pretty much even on archetypes, then wouldn’t someone theoretically pick the faster hand cannon since both would theoretically 1 shot in high level content? I think that would also make for a great video to be honest, unless it was here and I just happened to miss it, my apologies if so.
All weapons should be farmable without patterns, but you need to collect materials by dismantling dropped weapons, perks as modules, weapon frames, origin perk or masterwork module as a result of dismantling
Hand Cannons having less DPS than SMGs is absurd, SMGs are by far the easiest weapon in the game to use in PvE, they should not have any more dps than autorifles
I've never been a fan of whenever people talk about "balancing the sandbox" for PvE, because it's always missing the point of what PvE is (it's not competitive, it's supposed to feel good and be fun over everything; the issue is a lack of modes, encounters, enemy variety, and a difficulty tier above what we have, not with our gear and abilities), and almost always talking about damage, when it's more how a gun *feels* to use. Bungie could make 900 Machingeguns do the same damage as 450s tomorrow, and I still wouldn't use them, because I don't like how they *feel* to use. I don't like how 450 Autos feel in PvE, or 150 Scouts, or 120 Hand Cannons, or High-Impact Pulses and Fusions, etc. Tweaking the damage of these archetypes, or even stupidly nerfing others, isn't going to change anything for me, it's just going to piss me off. That all being said, this was good, I don't think there were any changes that I'd dismiss outright.
The problem this is trying to address is that some options don't feel as fun when they don't offer anything unique outside of their damage capabilities (which is a fair amount of weapons), but I understand what you mean and addressed it in the video
To truly test weapons is to take it to an end game taken ogre or a tormentor so my take is to freeze the orge chill clip, then caliban liars or consecration titan can do the job.
While this is really cool, I have to imagine Bungie doesn't care in the slightest about having an actual balanced sandbox to this degree. The imbalance is on purpose. If the sandbox is perfectly balanced at all times, then it becomes MUCH harder to get people to use cool new guns. Bungie's MO is that of the forced meta with continual power creep. They've tried to solve this in several different ways, but nothing sells new guns like them being strictly better than old ones. Average Destiny players are not going to intuit the nuances of situationally optimal strategies. They tend to just gravitate a 1 size fits all solution.
I support these changes, but it's unrealistic to expect some "everything feels good to use patch". The whole reason we have balance changes the way we do is to change the old meta for a new meta. Having everything feel good to use would kill Bungie's ability to usa balance changes as a way to create interest for a specific weapon that they might be releasing in next season. You can expect Bungie to double down on their current balance philosophy as their are downscaling content creation.
They should make melee weapons feel cool before they worry about whether they’re objectively good. I’ve been playing Warframe, Space Marine 2 and older Souls games, it is NOT hard to make simple melee weapons feel cool.
Any wannabe good game should communicate well with their playerbase. This should have maybe been a live discussion with a community manager or something. Great work on your part nonetheless.
I think a big portion of weapon balance needs to come from general enemy/encounter changes. If we get more encounters that force certain weapons like Witness and Crota, as opposed to bosses like Morgeth that anything can be used on, we might see a better distribution of viable options. I feel that in today's d2 endgame, burst damage is far favored over total damage.
"I don't know if Bungie ever buffed an archetype by 50% in the history of their patch notes". There was that one time back in the House of Wolves days when they buffed shotguns by 100%, I think.
