[2020] Hey guys, Here’s My Feedback – Weapon Balance

As a long time Division veteran with thousands of hours put into the franchise including The Division 1, I would like to share my thoughts about the game, mainly about the balance issue.

English is my second language so please be sure to ask me question if you don’t understand my wording.

This will going to be a series of post rather than a single long post because it is too daunting to read so many words, I will talk about weapon balance, gear balance, talent, pve difficulty and pvp.

Once I finish these posts, I will put them on the official forum.

Okay..so where are we going to start with? How about..

Weapon Balance

With such a wide variety of weapons to choose, in a RPG setting, it is not a surprise that there are superior weapon and inferior weapon. So the gist is this, dev should maintain every weapon’s performance around a baseline, the best case scenario is:

1. there is no outlier that becomes no brainer pick whatever the situation is
2. there is no underperforming weapon that it objectively inderior than other weapon in every situation.

I will briefly talk about the meta – namely classic M1A and MG5, and focus more on the underperforming weapon.

Outlier – Classic M1A: let’s be honest here, classic M1A is the no brainer pick if you are dps player and want to pick target in distance in the current version of the game, simply because RoF in rifle category means nothing because if you spam shots you shots spread so you can’t land consistent headshot, and every weapon got a trade off between RoF and damage, which means classic M1A has a quite decent damage thanks to its low RoF, and it use magazine to reload and can equip scope attachment while 1886 can’t.

Outlier ­– MG5：Thanks to the crazy amount of damage that NPC deal(heroic diff and above), if you want to deal decent damage output while avoid exposing yourself too long in enemy sightline, your only choice is to deal huge amount of damage as little time as possible, and MG5 is the best candidate, simply because magazine size in LMG category weighted too much when a weapon has a trade off between damage and magazine size and since enemy hit so hard you can’t lay down your fire longer than a few seconds without risking your own life so you can't utilize your mag size advantage, and thanks to MG5 small magazine size, it has very decent damage considering its RoF, in addition to that, it has higher base headshot bonus than any other lmg, so if you can aim very well and use glass canon, MG5 is the no brain pick. Fast hand talent can easily migrate the frequently reload issue.

To be honest MG5 is fine, classic M1A is the real outlier that outperform even other weapon category in their own optimal situation, I didn’t mean those weapons need to be nerf but since player are good at finding the problem but are not good at finding solution, I’ll just leave it here.

So, these weapon have very potent burst damage which makes them become the outlier. what about the weapon category that are intend to do burst damage—namely SMG and shotgun?

Let me give you a answer: They just didn’t work, we have tried it, they were objectively underperforming compare to AR and LMG, because:

• Their raw damage output advantage in close range isn’t good enough to compensate to lose AR and LMG’s all range flexibility.
• In a shooter game, one of the outplay mechanics is headshot, so if you want to perform well, you have to land headshot to gain more damage. Even worse, their poor accuracy make them difficult to land headshot outside 10 meter range, even if you managed to land headshot with these weapon category, they have lower base headshot multiplier compared to other weapon category which is not worth it to risk to miss your shots, so your best choice is to land bodyshot to ensure every bullet hit your enemy to utilize their high raw damage output.
• And even..even worse, in higher difficulty, unless you are a tank, closing your enemy within 10 meter to utilize these weapon category is not worth it, because enemy is so overpower that you just barely win a direct trade fire with an elite with little health left, and in close quarter combat enemy just outright walk to your face to “flank” you, which puts you in a situation where you have to trade fire with NPC, to put it simple, deliberately close to your enemy is a death sentence unless you are a tank.

And to make things clear, every weapon is viable if you have a good understanding of the game, maybe you would say “but my build use smg and I can solo heroic content with ease so your point is invalid”. I can even solo legendary with a freaking pistol(all red liberty bulwark shield). My point is SMG and shotgun are objectively inferior than other weapon category, using SMG or shotgun doesn’t make you a bad player, they just make you underperforming. Of course you can choose to not to chase the meta, that’s your decision.

And.. how about we talk about the balance between specific weapon in the same weapon category?

Let me give you an example, this time we will talk about marksman rifle, those statistic are in lv 40.

Classic M44 Carbine VS Model 700

+ Has higher base damage(376096 vs 347888)

+ Has higher RoF(55 vs 54)

+ Has fater reload time, and magazine reloading if empty(4.2s from empty vs 7.2s from empty)

+ Has further optimal range(60m vs 42m)

+ Has underbarrel attachment while Model 700 don’t

- Has smaller magazine size(5 vs 7)

- doesn’t have muzzle slot while Model 700 has

This comparison is nearly the same in modern version counterpart.

Now tell me, which one do you prefer? Regardless attachment, do you really prefer 2 more bullets in your mag rather than higher damage, higher RoF, higher reload speed, and further range?

Let’s be honest here, M44 is objectively better than M700, what is even better is that M44 has named weapon called The White Death which is not only powerful but also versatile.

At the current version of the game, if you want to optimized your build, when you see any weapon with M700 on its name, there’s no brainer to delete them.

Here is another example, this time we will talk about lmg

M249 vs M60E4

= Same damage(56414)

= Same mag size(100)

+ Has higher RPM(550 vs 500)

+ Has faster reload time(5.6s vs 5.8s if reload from empty)

+ Better damage falloff(0.51%/m vs 1.04%/m)

+ All variants are fully modable while some of the M60E4 are not

- Slightly inferior optimal range(35m vs 40m)

I don’t see any scenario where you would choose M60E4 rather than M249.

Even in long distance M249 is outperform M60E4 because it has less damage falloff.

M60E4 is used to be the meta and the dev nerf them, but with WONY they didn’t rebalance it, so all M60E4 variant are also the no brainer to dismantle them.

And there’s a lot of weapon that is underperforming in almost every scenario compare to other weapon(just normal performing weapon) in the same category, pistol category is the least balance, if you want to see the full list of underperforming weapon please let me know, I just think this will be waste of time if dev can’t hear my feedback and nobody cares it.

TL;DR Since enemy changes in TU8, player are more prefer to build burst damage rather than sustain damage, and the poor decision to balance rifle with RPM, makes classic M1A the current meta, at the mean time some of the weapon are underperforming in almost every scenario compared to other weapon in the same weapon category. So the game needs to not only address the outlier, but also buff the other underperforming weapon to around the baseline.

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