DICE TeamSo, overall I don't feel like any of my primary issues with gameplay have been even slightly addressed this season. I do appreciate the nerfs to helicopter survivability, though I haven't had much chance to see how they behave in practice.
The most straightforward issue to address is that the battle pass takes way too much XP to unlock tiers, especially later in the season. It should never take more than 30,000 XP to unlock a full tier. It's stupid how reliant on completing weekly missions the system is as a whole, particularly since missions alone don't complete the pass. Stop tuning the game to be a dealthy tedious grind; it's a rampant problem in attachment unlocks as well.
The bigger issue which is admittedly more technically involved to fix- shooting feels terrible; the combination of fairly high player basic mobility and the joystick response curve just doesn't feel very good, doesn't work well, and the aim assist system is just a mess that doesn't seem designed to deal with any situation particularly well; at short ranges it has odd tendencies to get stuck between targets and lock onto nothing or else follow targets behind cover awkwardly, and at longer ranges it interferes with making necessary adjustments to properly lead the target and land a kill. While making smarter or more reliable aim assist would band-aid the awkward feel of aiming, I think the problem is much more appropriately addressed by giving players multiple joystick response curves to choose from, and probably reducing walk/strafe speed by 10-20%. I realize we need to keep traversal sprint near present speed to deal with moving through larger areas, but I believe it's reasonable to lower other aspects of player mobility.
Beyond that, I don't think gun balance is particularly good. It's quite possible some of my perceptions are skewed by bad server performance and hit registration, but here's a list of complaints:
1. High-power rounds consistently don't offer enough of a damage advantage. The DM7 should 2-body at most ranges with them, and it obviously can't currently. Carried ammo on the DM7 should be double current value.
2. PBX-45 feels dramatically underpowered, again particularly when using high power rounds, there doesn't feel like a viable practical damage gain.
3. Long barrel attachments need a rework. I hate that they influence rate of fire; they should be more like in typical Call of Duty games- more damage range, velocity, and perhaps recoil control at the expense of aim down sight time or some other player mobility aspect.
4. I want all the bolt action rifles to have reliable 1-shot kills to the body up to at least 200 meters, with the larger caliber options having a bigger one-shot kill area and longer range. The degree of bullet drop on the NTW-50 is too extreme and nonsensical when we also allow the stupid BSV-M to shoot flat to 300 meters with subsonic ammunition.
5. While I agree with the spirit of lowering SMG headshot damage compared to assault rifles, it does feel like at most common combat ranges the assault rifles simply outclass SMGs. It's not clear to me from gameplay experience if there's ever a range where SMGs are favorable currently.
6. The SVK's recoil is absurd. Reduce it. It's also really silly that it uses 5 round magazines instead of 10 round. I get that the idea is to make it a slower but longer range and more powerful alternative to the DM7, but both guns deserve some serious buffs, especially the SVK and high-power rounds on both.
As far as the new operator goes, I'm not thrilled. I don't feel like adding a minigun with a ballistic shield attached is a good way to encourage infantry combat, but on the other hand it's probably not a bad thing to have more tools to defend/hold objectives and choke points. What I would suggest is allowing the more powerful rifles (SFAR, DM7, SVK, snipers, .45-70 Govt for examples) to have partial damage through the shield with most ammo options. I don't believe any deployable shield or cover in the game should prevent penetration of .50 BMG type projectiles or other more powerful options.
For guns, I'd really like to see the P90 join the SMGs. One of my favorite guns, and it seems frankly absurd that in a near-future setting we don't have any PDW-type cartridges represented among SMGs.
Final note- I really don't like the amount of grappling nonsense that exists. Between the grapple gun and wing suits, I think there's some unreasonable gaps in player mobility purely because of how much difference it makes to terrain accessibility. I'm probably in a minority on this point, but I'd much prefer these mechanics go away and be replaced by a more modest mobility buff.
