[2020] Nice to see the Havoc is still nerfed.

This is deep in the weeds at this point, but it's worth the example to show that we think about this stuff, I promise! Things are usually done for a reason.

There are good combat reasons why guns aren't that accurate in hipfire. Hipfire accuracy is fundamentally about a stronger tradeoff between movement and accuracy. In titanfall it's about constant movement, so hipfire is accurate because you don't want a big penalty to movement (note: I didn't work on titanfall). In Apex we want the tradeoff between movement and accuracy. In general, the further the range you can effectively fight, the higher the mobility penalty (e.g. snipers have slow ADS movespeeds, and very bad hipfire, you need to be more stationary). Because of the relatively slow projectiles in apex and the recoil, it's hard to hit people at range that are moving. If someone could be sniping you from far away and also just AD strafing it'd be almost random if you got to hit them or not. We improve hipfire for closer range weapons like SMGs. In fact that's a big part of what makes them good in close range, they can be much more mobile (harder to hit) and stay accurate enough. If we made ARs too accurate with hipfire, they would have too many strengths because they would be strong in mid range while also being too strong in close range -- it's important that weapon classes have weaknesses. We choose the hipfire accuracy as a meaningful axis for guns to differ on -- I believe for good reason and in a way that is healthy for the game -- and that means some guns have to have bad hipfire.

EDIT: hey man just cause I disagree doesn't mean we gotta downvote this poster to oblivion lol. Sorry Bearcerra!

The wingman is limited by lack of long range optics, and mostly by very low bullet speed (and some other stuff). The wingman's projectiles are significantly lower than AR and sniper projectiles. Wingman shots at range tend to be less accurate, the faster fire rate just is a little more forgiving with this. This doesn't make the wingman unusable at range, it just increases the skill required to be effective. It's definitely possible that the wingman is still too effective at range (especially for high skill players), but on the same note even SMGs push the limits of their range pretty hard in the hands of a very strong player. In general the data shows that the wingman is outperformed at long ranges almost all skill levels. It has unique strengths at medium to medium long range with its mobility, but I believe those strengths are generally earned due to the difficulty of using the weapon effectively, and weapons like the G7 and the Hemlok still generally outperform it in these scenarios. This isn't set in stone, of course! It's something we look at frequently and keep an eye on.

It's hard because there are valid counterpoints and arguments, most things aren't just a "this is the definitively correct answer". There're also technical reasons and prioritization reasons behind things that are hard to explain to people / that are usually not accepted well. On reddit with me vs everyone is not really a good place to have these discussions. Overall, I've learned that it's really just not worth trying to have game design arguments with the faceless void of the internet. I know it's valuable to a lot of people though! So I try and post from time to time, I just don't usually go into multiple levels of responses.

Yes! We want different weapons to have different power curves accessible by loot -- some weapons start stronger but can't grow in power that much, while other weapons have a much wide progression curve. In general, I think that leads to good looting gameplay and interesting decisions, and it gives interesting strengths and weaknesses to weapons. Take the flatline vs the r301, for example. The Flatline does more damage, has a larger effective mag, etc. but at the cost of more difficult to control recoil and different loot transition options (heavy ammo vs light). While we want the R301 to be more of an accessible weapon, one of the intentional weaknesses of the flatline is the more difficult recoil control, which makes it higher skill weapon. We want to lean into that weakness as an interesting aspect of the gun, so it doesn't allow you to mitigate the recoil using barrel stabilizers.

np! :)