Give Experimental weapons quality tiers? (i.e. nerf early experimentals)

Feedback/Feature Requests
1

So, as it is, experimental weapons are cool, but too much of a power hike too soon.

For example, in my current game, I found an experimental Kpist just before leaving Norra Saltholmen for the mainland. Sure, now I have a kickass gun, but I will also no longer have the excitement of finding a better quality Kpist in this playthrough, because there are none.
One solution would be to push the Experimental drops much further (later) in the game still, but this would needlessly reduce interesting content from the early game.

So, my suggested solution is this: Instead of experimentals just being the last tier of a given weapon, make them into their own separate weapons, subject to the same quality tiers as the standard ones. This way, finding one would still be exciting without making future drops of the same weapon completely obsolete.

For example - and I’m gonna use some made-up numbers here just for extra clarity:
I have a Worn quality standard Kpist. It has an effective range of 70m and a spread of 1,5. It does its job.
Then, I find a Worn quality Experimental Kpist. It has the same values, but also an added Overdrive mode.* Woo, upgrade! Happy days!
I later come across a Good quality standard Kpist. It has a higher effective range of 85 meters and a smaller spread of 1,2. Now I get to make an interesting choice; Do I want the better general performance at the cost of losing the Overdrive mode? I decide to keep both because hey why not.
Later I find an Exceptional quality Experimental Kpist, which is an upgrade over both having 100m range and 1,0 spread PLUS Overdrive, spinning the cycle of upgrades another rotation further. And on it goes.

(*: This example assumes that currently the experimentals are identical to the yellow Special tier, but with the added special property. If they are not, adjust accordingly.)

I don’t know how hard this would be to implement, but it would smoothen the progression/power curve, while keeping experimental weapons interesting and still allowing them to drop early on so as to not make early game too dry.

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2

Make the experimental weapons level locked until at least lv 20 so then you can’t use them if given or found on rivals

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3

This would directly work against what I suggested, because my point was to balance Experimentals without removing them from the early game.

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4

I’d like to see them removed completely.
I think adding tiers overcomplicates the weapon system even more than it already is. I agree there’s a balance problem, but I don’t think adding more weapons is the solution.

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5

There is nothing overcomplicated about the system.

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6

The experimental weapons are weaker at lv1 than let’s say a lv31, it takes more shots to kill a tank for example (almost double) then it would a lv 31 player to kill a tank.
But do fully understand a grade system on experimental weapons would work and would pose certain dilemmas on weapon choices

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7

From the balance perspective, I disagree.

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8

I had a chat with Mr. @Norpal on Discord.
Idea was, that there were also levels of Exp weapons, lower tier, as he said: “truly experimental”, to which I added that it would be awesome if these had hickups in their Experimental powers, up to even damaging the player for the lowest, or earliest version (where the lower tiers would be earlier versions which were… well… just that).

I for one like the idea, really.
Having an Exp Kpist from the start just is HORRIBLY bad.

I had a lengthy discussion about this with Mr. @Larz, where I suggested, that higher tiers would be found only higher up North, so that the further you get, the better the quality would become, with HIGH up North only the Exp would drop (and the lower tiers, but not the way around).
Mr. @larz disliked the idea…
Hence I never posted it.

Still, the idea by Mr. @Norpal is quite doable.
Should come with a warning for the Dili ones: “Might be harmful to health. Avalanche is not responsible for…”. XD

9

From the gameplay perspective, malfunctioning weapons would just be frustrating. At lower levels new players already have to contend with all the bugs. Giving them intentionally “glitchy” weapons isn’t going to help.

And Xog, is that you with the unreadable name on discord?

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10

@Flick
I agree.
But these things DO happen IRL as well… :wink:

Unreadable, you mean the pentagrams?
Then yes, miss.

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11

I know they happen in RL, but Gen Zero is a game, and games need their flow. One of my gripes about the tick balance is that they disrupt the flow of the game. Malfunctioning weapons would have the same problem. Do you have any examples where a fun game has successfully incorporated misfiring or broken weapons?

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12

Yeah, the features Xog are suggesting are neat on paper, but personally I think they probably wouldn’t pan out too well in practice. They’re beyond the scope of my idea anyways. Probably better to discuss them in a different thread.

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13

@Flick
COD, and many alike have had these in their game.

Each one was fixable through the system as it was IRL…

14

Merely repeating what I told you there, sir.
As stated in the post.

15

I don’t know cod, and I agree that glitchy game flow is better for another thread.

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16

I do think they’ve unbalanced the game, but on the flip-side I really enjoyed hunting for them.

I was thinking about ways to balance them out without taking them out or over complicating things and the best I could come up with was either;

a) they require different (hard to find) ammo
b) they have limited uses before they break, and then you need to find another.

(a) I think would probably make it too complicated, unless you just had “experimental ammo / charges” that could be used in any experimental weapons.

(b) Appeals as it would give me something to hunt for beyond items of clothing.

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17

Nice, love the ideas.
Well done.

18

I’m pretty sure most players starting out would consider rivals to be too greater a challenge and resource drain to be worth pursuing, it’s probably expected for early players to come back to the old rivals with their better gear later.

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19

And yet we can get top gear at level 4 already.
How ironic, no?

20

Level locking gear often makes the excitement of getting good loot of a tough robot much less rewarding. Especially how long it can sometimes take to level up.

For example, If I get an experimental at lvl 5, but it’s locked until lvl 20 I’m not going to care that much because by the time I can finally use it I’ve either forgotten about it, or have made a comfortable load out without it.

It’s a decent idea, but I don’t think the game balances in a way to make this viable.

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