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Nerfing the xbow. How?

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9_6

Grizzled Veteran
Sep 4, 2009
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#1
I'm compiling a list of changes for the next patch now.
it's here and one of its most important points is about nerfing the crossbow.

Specifically:

An unperked xbow should at least take 2 headshots to kill scrakes and proportionally more hits for pounds.
That alone would make the game much harder since there's no quick and easy way to deal with scrakes and fleshpounds anymore.
Those are the enemies that should require a bit of teamwork to take down, not just 1 medic with a crossbow who happens to be able to aim well enough to hit a barely moving target 2 times.
1-shotting 6 man suicidal fleshpounds should be exclusive to level 6 sharpshooters, if at all.
Click to expand...

Why nerf the crossbow?
Well, whenever someone says anything about an enemy being too weak, there's always a crossbow involved.
Patriarch? Crossbow. Fp? Crossbow. Scrake? Crossbow.
The crossbow is pretty much the pivotal point of game difficulty right now.
Have 1 guy who can aim in your group and it changes everything. Even if he isn't even a sharpshooter.

I do recognize its job is to take on the big boys but it's way too good at that right now.
How to make it less good without breaking it is a tough question though. Just raising the price didn't help so far.

So if someone who is better at number-crunching than me could make some concrete suggestions on, for example, changing the headshot multiplier from 6 to W because it would raise the number of headshots required to kill X from Y to Z while still keeping it a viable weapon choice, that would be awesome.
I'd like to have some actual values there instead of some obscure "it should take more headshots, figure out how to achieve that yourself"- suggestion.

Thanks.
 
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#2
A level 5 sharp should be able to headshot anything but a patty in one shot on suicidal. Making the crossbow any weaker than that will seriously cripple its usefulness to everyone, not just sharps... and also reduce the usefulness of the sharpshooter class itself. I'm not against nerfing sharp, but I am against making it useless.

Sharpshooter takes down the big stuff no one else easily can. Not even a level 6 demo with law can take down an FP in one shot (which is a bit insane considering you only get 15 rockets...).

I think what we really need to find out is whether or not one-shotting a 6-man suicidal FP is intentional or not. If not, I would definitely remove the automatic rage to restore some balance (or at least change it to a health level rather than a random timer)
 
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#4
idk about all the math that would be involved for weapon stats etc.... but imo:

Power:
(Suicidal) Level6 SS - should be able to get a oneshot decap on FP and Scrakes
(Suicidal) Level5 SS - should only be able to get a oneshot decap on scrakes but needs 2 headshots on FP

no other perk regardless of level or difficulty should EVER be able to take out a FP or a Scrake with one crossbow headshot.

Ammo:
40 bolts is too much. max for level6 SS should be around 20-25
 
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#5
-[SiN]-bswearer said:
idk about all the math that would be involved for weapon stats etc.... but imo:

Power:
(Suicidal) Level6 SS - should be able to get a oneshot decap on FP and Scrakes
(Suicidal) Level5 SS - should only be able to get a oneshot decap on scrakes but needs 2 headshots on FP

no other perk regardless of level or difficulty should EVER be able to take out a FP or a Scrake with one crossbow headshot.

Ammo:
40 bolts is too much. max for level6 SS should be around 20-25
Click to expand...

Agreed on no other class should be able to one or two-shot Scrakes and FPs. Although 20-25 doesn't leave much room for error in Suicidal games - how about 30?
 
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#6
Guys I won't touch the ammo count.
40 shots isn't the world and needing more shots to kill your target audience won't exactly work in its favor either.
This is exclusively about the damage and numbers.
I need a good number.

So far there have only been re-iterations of what I want to achieve, and nothing on how exactly to get there.
 
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#7
Like bswearer said, only a Sharpshooter should be able to easily kill a higher-tier specimen with one shot.

The Xbow should have its damage dropped to just above the insta-kill mark.

This way bodyshots do candlejack all to even clots.

The Xbow should be about precision shots, so oneshotting everything bar Patty is expected of this. However, excessive damage is pointless. The Xbow should only have enough damage to get the job done and not a point more.
 
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#8
CandleJack said:
Like bswearer said, only a Sharpshooter should be able to easily kill a higher-tier specimen with one shot.

The Xbow should have its damage dropped to just above the insta-kill mark.

This way bodyshots do candlejack all to even clots.

The Xbow should be about precision shots, so oneshotting everything bar Patty is expected of this. However, excessive damage is pointless. The Xbow should only have enough damage to get the job done and not a point more.
Click to expand...

Yes, this has been established. What 9_6 is interested in (I think) is pure numbers to be calculated. Unfortunately I don't really know how to provide that, so I'm kind of useless in this department.
 
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#13
CandleJack said:
*points at nerf button*
Click to expand...

nerfbigbadbow2334830.jpg
 
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#14
As I see it the problem is not that it does so much damage, but that it's so easy to use. Right now it's a low risk, high reward weapon.

If I were going to fix the crossbow, I'd reduce the penetration by a lot and make it take much, MUCH longer to reload - so long that if you miss, someone is going to die as a direct result of your failure.

Sharpshooter's damage is fine - it's the spamminess of his weapons that annoys me. He should be all about precision; pouring all your efforts into one perfectly aimed shot - and suffering the consequences if you miss. Same reason I wanted M14 to gain no benefit from sharpshooter's recoil reduction; even with the lowered ammo cap, people don't really have to worry about realigning their sights after each shot like they should.
 
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#15
Im thinkin something like this.

Difficulty Hard. 6 men multiplayer.

Other perk than Sharpshooter FP headshot damage takes 50% of FPs health.

So there is a point of use of Xbow, even if you are not sharpshooter.

Sharpshooter lvl 6 FP headshot damage, takes 90 % of FPs health.

Dunno how it goes in Suicidal, but if there is no instant kill in Hard, there is no instant kill in Suicidal neather. How do you like that in there?

Im not a Suicidal player, nowadays i play in Hard diff.

So there is no instant kill headshots in Hard and Suicidal, thats why i think there could be faster reloading time for xbow and for Sharpshooter perk only.

Damage reduce for xbow, and reloading buff for Sharpshooter.

-------------
Also. I dont know how it goes. Is it separate? If you shoot headshot, does it take heads health only, and no bodydamage. So if you take a shot to head, and theres 10% headhealth left after headshot, is FP body health still 100%? I quess its somekind separate.

Perhaps test this using commando and xbow to see.. What health bar tells after FP xbow headshot..
 
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#16
Okay, maybe I'm asking for too much and I'll just add some general "thou shalt not kill the strongest specimen with 1 shot"- direction and let them figure out how to achieve that.
It's a bit clumsy but I don't really have much of a choice it seems.
Decapitation is a very complex mechanism that I don't really fully grasp but I think the main culprit is the 6x headshot multiplier so lowering that until a value that keeps unperked xbows from 1-shotting scrakes is achieved should do.
 
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#17
Nerfing the Xbow, and Sharpshooter in general:

Remove bodyshot damage bonus entirely.

Lower the damage multiplier from 8 to 5-6. Hell, 4x would be good.

With 10 less bolts, so 30 in total.

This would mean each shot counts, and bodyshots can't drop anything; a crossbow bolt to anything above a crawler would just stun it.

Though the main problem is that Medic/Zerdic/Sharport can carry the Xbow in addition to their perk weapon and use it effectively.


Just a thought, but what about making the Xbow only decapitate scrakes and fleshpounds, requiring other perks to finish it off? With the new monetary system something like this could be done without breaking the game.
 
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#18
I'm strongly against any weapon that can take out the most powerful enemies in the game with a single shot, so I'd like to see it take at least 2 crossbow bolts to take out a scrake/fleshpound on hard/suicidal (promotes teamwork). Not sure about how the perk levels would come into it though.

(Hard only) I'd like to see it so that a level 6 sharpshooter can lower a fleshpound's health to about 5/10% with a headshot so that others can finish it off (or the player could switch to another weapon to finish it off).
 
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#19
I see many people don't aware about the head health and totaly health. You can't just making one blot to bring down a fp's health to 30% or 20% without decaping one. And if you are able to decap a fp in one shot, you will be able to one shot killing it unless the whole system is changed and this is not going to happen.

Also, I think we shouldn't touch the numbers of zeds themselves as this may make the sharpshooter a must have in the team as the numbers are adjusted to balance the xbow on 6-man suicidal ONLY.

Let's consider the Scrake case first. Seems we all agreed that xbow one-shotting scrake is fine, if a scrake needs two shots from a xbow sharpshooter, the xbow is nearing useless. So, that shot needs to be at least 2559, which can decap the scrake and plus the 25% totaly health, killing the scrake. Make it easier to achieve, tke 2600 sounds fine to me.


As far as I know, decaping a zeds will double that hit's damage + 25% of total health of the zed. And for 6-man suicidal fp, it has:
5906 total health
2756 head health
25% of total hp is 1476.5.

Fleshpound is taking 75% damage from xbow, so a 2600 damage xbow shot on scrake will only do 1950 damage on a flesh pound.

First shot will bring it down to 806 head health and 3306 total health with 50% resistance to most of the weapons. Second shot will decap the fp and do: 1950*2 + 1476.5 = 5376.5 damage. Able to kill the fleshpound in two shots.

Meanwhile, if xbow head shots can do more than 2953 on other zeds, 6-man suicidal fps will be one-shoted.

So, if the sharpshooter miss the second shot, the team will have to due with a 3306 hp raging fleshpound. If this is fine for most of us, lets find out how we can get 2559 -2953 head shot damage.


And yes, if you also want fp cannot be one-shoted on hard by high level sharpshooter, this is not gonna happen or suicidal fleshpounds will be nearly indestructible. I dont think there will be any problem on hard tough. If you think hard is too easy, just paly suicidal.
 
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#20
Well it depends if its been planned to alter the SSs damage bonus'. Mostly just removing the current 'deal x% more damage' and adding slightly more to the headshot x% damage increase. After all you can headshot anyway... and you shouldn't get an easy job killing Crawlers because hitting the head is difficult. There is no need to make things easier by dealing more damage than normal even if you miss your target (its head).

I stand by the fact it should take 2 shots to kill a Scrake unperked at least on around 3-4 player Hard and above and at the minimum 2 shots to kill a Fleshpound when lvl6, maybe extending to 3 at high man Suicidal. Why? Fleshpounds were supposed to require a team to kill. Even at 2 shots the SS can kill the FP before it finishes raging and charges at you. Any Sharpshooter worth his salt knows a 2shot FP is no harder than a 1 shot FP (unless its raging before you fire the first bolt but then thats your teams fault).

I'll come back to this later, but can we confirm whether the HS multiplier is 6 or 7.8? I think its the latter...
 
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