Nerfing Shock Ammunition (discussion)

General Discussion
13

The shock ammo i have, is 9mm handgun and .270. I haven’t unlocked the 7.62mm yet. Also, i’ve only used 9mm handgun ammo with experimental Klaucke.

After using it, i also see why some may consider it OP since when it comes to the damage dealt, the electricity arcs are constantly dealing damage over long period of time and you can dispatch even the largest of machines very easily and fast. :astonished:
Due to that, it has the highest damage potential of all experimental ammo.

Should it be nerfed? :thinking: I don’t think so.

If shock ammo would have the same ease of availability as regular ammo, then Yes. But it does not.
Instead, you have to first complete several base defence missions just to get the crafting schem. Once you have the schem, you need to spend quite a lot of resources, including Uranium to craft it. And only way to gain more Uranium, is to complete more base defence missions. Severely limiting its availability.
On top of that, you can’t use Ammo Packs to duplicate it either, at least that’s what i’ve heard of. :face_with_monocle: Haven’t tested it personally.

So, if devs would nerf the shock ammo, what that leads to? :roll_eyes: For one, it reduces the fun of using it since it doesn’t produce the same level of satisfaction anymore. And for two, most people would be going back to the 2nd best option: experimental .50 cal. :unamused:

Should devs nerf the experimental .50 cal as well? :thinking: Because it is (probably) the best weapon in the game? Well, experimental weapons have been around for almost 2 years now and while there have been some folks who have asked nerfing it, nothing has been done as of date.

In the end, i view the shock ammo and experimental .50 cal as optional. There is no requirement to use either of the two and if you think it’s too OP for you, just stop using it.
That’s what i’ve done with experimental .50 cal and shock ammo as well. :slight_smile: Haven’t crafted any more from the initial amount, to test it and while i do carry experimental .50 cal with me, i rarely use it. I keep it as a last resort, when :brown_circle: hits the fan and i need to get out of it. :sweat_smile:

3 Likes
14

I hope you guys are not being serious when proposing things like losing skills and taking all player’s items. Please don’t forget player base consists not only of supergods, but many inexperienced casual players as well, and things like this would scare them enough to run away from this game forever, particularly after seeing their skill tree reduced to zero. And I am pretty sure that’s the last thing developers want.

The way I see it, there may be certain unlockable features after you reach some level (e.g. 20 or 31) in form of permadeath or dropping your stuff so you’d need to get it back (Diablo 2 style) if you like, but these features must be strictly optional.

And about Diablo 2 - yeah you lose some money after each death as well, so people just throw money on the ground before the hard fight to avoid this :smiley:

3 Likes
15

Seems a little harsh to be wanting to change things already considering 1/3 of the community are still waiting for release.

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16

:rofl: Yes, good point. The devs should stand behind their development decisions, and don’t get intimidatated by all the personal requests but look what is best for the game.

1 Like
18

What do you mean with this? The features of shock ammo is obvious, but heat ammo pointing out back packs?

19

Shock Ammo is one of the best additions to the game in a good while. I wish the other experimental ammo types had more of an impact like the shock ammo has. It is genuinely fun to use and while it is indeed powerful I feel that nerfing it (i.e making it weaker, do less damage etc) would take away too much of what makes it so desirable.

As a balance issue though, it can tip the game difficulty severely in your favour if you hoard lots of it, especially for machineguns like the Exp Kvm 59. The only solution I can think of, would be to adjust the cost of crafting, or perhaps the amount recieved from crafting, rather than nerfing the effect of the ammo itself.

As for death penalty, I can recommend continuing the discussion in this thread.

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20

But the crafting cost is already high, making it even higher might lead to the same loss in enjoyment.

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21

And here in lies the fundamental issue with anything…balance.

Nerf the shock ammo, keep the GRG glitch. Problem solved

22

Indeed, it’s tricky. But keep the Grg glitch? Nah, we can do without it. Rather, make the weapon more powerful. But that’s a discussion for another topic.

23

There isn’t a problem really with shock ammo, it works perfect. It just people saying it’s OP. But it isn’t.
Grg glitch? It doesn’t glitch with me, does it?

25

OK. I haven’t tried that ammo yet. Shocking isn’t it? I found the shock ammo and used it with the Kotenok sniper.

1 Like
26

No my point being if your gonna have something OP, ( like the GRG glitch ) there’s a fair case this needs to go. * 27 HEDP in one sequence as funny as it is - is not GZ.

Watching the hours of Pontus using it since the update - I’ve not considered it to be OP in any way - but of course it’s easy to say when I don’t have 1st hand experience.

Maybe they should consider a sweep of the guns, instead if the ammo itself.

27

Shock ammo is hard to come by, which diminishes its Op properties. I used it on the reaper in the end fight to keep it from self destructing. Because if you keep shocking it, it seems to me that it can’t get to that point. Trick is to avoid reloading on the wrong time, and have enough shock ammo. You will find out yourself soon.

And ofcourse glitches should be fixed, even fun ones. But shock ammo is not a glitch, it is fun though.

1 Like
28

I take that point, especially since if you are not very careful, you die a lot starting out. But like the Rivals, which only can be properly looted after level 25, it might be at the same level that you start losing skill points for dying. I’ve got my new-game character to level 27 now and am frankly puzzled what to do with the points that I shall still get up to 31. I’ve got everything I need, but protecting it would mean that I have to move carefully and really take some good decisions. By level 17/18, you have what you need to survive. After that you are wondering about throw accuracy and stuff. Maybe level 15 would be the interesting place to start. You have enough to survive and after that is where you start blindly attacking squads of Hunters, just for the craik. What I want is to keep the terror that you start out with, and it’s not the end of the world if you die.

Taking stuff out of your plundra I’m not in favour of.

29

That’s an interesting idea. I haven’t bothered with the sniper yet, 'cos it hasn’t got enough grunt for a sniper rifle in this game. I tried it out and ignored it.

30

It would. I like to build a base and then defend it to a smoking ruin. That’s what the fun is. But grafting for steel is an hours-long pain.

31

The last 100 hours or so i haven’t touched the pvg sniper and only used the Kotenok for long distance weapon. With shock ammo it gets a bit more grunt (if I understand grunt). :coffee:

34

I see we are beginning to find problems with the games violent and constant changeing in ways it was never intended to be changed in…

Personally I think instead of the devs breaking their backs adding in every bloody thing the community demands of them, no matter how it will actually effect the game, they should make a rough draft of a separate game entirely.
Say a game more like what people want GZ to be, a fast pased FPS base building game like ARK or Rust.

35

I don’t think that’s true. Even if the devs try to please the community to the best of their ability, they still have their own ideas and concept to work from.

Combining the original vision of the game along with feature suggestions from the community in a coefficient manner that benefits as many as possible is something they’re always striving to do.
And I think they’ve pulled it off well, so far.

2 Likes
36

The most “jerk” gun would be exp 12g with medslugs. Oh so much griefing potential.
Anyways. Shock ammo itself ain’t that OP. They powerful, indeed, but rare and precious.
IF people think shock ammo is “too good” - i’d keep the effect, but changed the caliber to something with slower fire rate.
Well, we still have almost ubiquitous exp. Barrett and not-so-ubiquitous exp. MAG.

1 Like