Do you even know why people say the guns are OP? You sound like someone who dies on hard all the time and exclaims 'If these guns are so good why am I dying all the time?" And you want experienced players to teach all the noobs how to play, and in the same breath you don't want to cater to the experienced players.
Well here is some advice for you and the other noobs: Play the game. I'm serious. You don't need to know fleshpound combos, support tricks, and 90% of tactics to survive normal or hard difficulty. At all. You just need to be familiar with the game. You don't even need teamwork on those difficulties. I could show tons of youtube videos and even walk around west london with a couple of noobs and be like 'hey here's some spawns, here's some more. watch out for the top of the overpass, you should probably stay under the bridge." It wouldn't make them better. Hell, it's probably too much information at once anyway they wouldn't automatically start playing like someone who knows what's going on. The gameplay can be so dynamic most of the 'skill' comes from decision making - when to shoot, what to shoot, when to run, where to run, etc etc. There aren't golden rules to make inexperienced players better.
And now the weapons. I'll touch on the m99 to keep this less winded, and I'll use a post from the steam forums which I found to very nicely explain the difference between how people dealth with fp's before the update vs after with the m99
Originally Posted by N3Burgener
There are numerous potential risks and drawbacks of other perks and weapon strategies that require more nuanced and active teamwork to compensate for.
Engaging a FP as a support specialist:
1. He needs to be much closer, meaning there's greater risk of being hit by other trash in the process, so his teammates need to actively cover him
2. He needs an open lane in which to engage the FP; if something slips into that lane, they can intercept his grenades and cause him to (a) blow himself up, (b) rage the FP without killing it, or (c) waste his grenades.
3. He is limited by the number of grenades he can carry; if no one else contributes damage, he will be out of grenades very quickly and someone else will have to step up
4. All it takes is one siren to extinguish his grenades and render him useless against the FP; sirens are an especially high priority for teammates when there's a FP around.
5. It's possible (albeit rare) that a husk may detonate the support's grenades in mid-air, as they leave his hand, thus causing instant death.
6. If there are two or more FPs at once, killing one may rage the others without also killing them
Similar issues crop up with demolitions users:
1. Sirens extinguish their rockets, grenades, and pipe bombs, so teammates have to be especially diligent with taking those out
2. Pipe bombs can easily be wasted on stuff like bloats or scrakes, so teammates have to be diligent about preserving pipe bombs
3. Pipe bombs will be completely useless if the FP is raged early, meaning teammates have to be especially careful not to accidentally rage the FP, and they have to actively lure it onto the pipe.
4. He also has range limitations; if the FP spawns too far away it will auto-rage. If the FP gets too close, the demo can't do much of anything
5. Usual risks of blowing himself up in the process
6. I know they made it so hand grenades clip through teammates -- is this true of rockets / grenade launchers? If not, then you also have that to worry about.
7. Not to mention the smoke. The damn smoke.
8. High cost of buying pipe bombs
For M14 EBR users:
1. They have to be much closer to the scrake/FP, meaning all the usual risks of taking damage from other specimen.
2. They need a clear line of sight because their shots won't penetrate anything that gets in the way
3. They require more consecutive hits to connect which can easily be interrupted by taking damage or something getting in the way
4. It takes them more time to down a FP or scrake because they have to (a) get in position (b) clear other trash if they're not being covered properly (c) perform the longer combo of shots
If you have an M99 user on the team, all of these risks are circumvented.
1. Works at infinite range -- you can shoot things the instant they appear without having to get into position or waiting for an open lane.
2. Works at very close range -- you can pull off headshots from the hip without worrying about blowing yourself up.
3. Shots penetrate anything that gets in the way, so you don't have to worry about your line of sight being broken by other crap
4. Holds more ammo and does more damage than the LAW -- cheaper ammo than either the LAW or pipe bombs
5. Doesn't smoke up other players' vision
6. Sirens will not block your shots
7. You get a fully-perked 9mm with a crap-ton of ammo that decaps trash with a single headshot (infinitely more useful than a LAW-demo's 9mm)
An M99 sharp double headshotting a FP while everyone else deals with trash doesn't really constitute teamwork because everyone is performing entirely separate roles that don't really depend on one another to succeed. To re-use my own analogy: assembly line workers all contribute vital components to a finished product, but they do it separately, as individuals, not as a cohesive group.
An M99 sharp is similar to an assembly line in that regard; he can kill a FP with complete disregard for whatever his teammates may be doing, whereas other perks are far more often at the mercy of their teammates. When you have a support, demo, EBR sharp, or even zerker in the team, there are certain things you have to do in order to let them do their jobs efficiently and effectively. With an M99, they just sit in the back, do their thing, and you don't have to worry about it.
The only real downside to the M99 is the risk of missing the second shot on the FP, but even that's pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. The first shot should always be a given, because a good sharp will not fire unless he knows he'll hit and if he knows he's in a situation where he can easily follow up with that second shot. Since the FP stops to do his rage animation, his head is perfectly still for the follow-up shot on account of the weapon's insanely fast reload speed.
Even if you miss the second shot, and it only counts as a body-shot, you've already knocked off like 50% of the FP's total health, which is a serious enough chunk of damage that a little concentrated fire from the rest of the team should be able to take it out. And with that crazy-fast reload speed, you'll probably have time for a third or even a fourth shot before it gets close enough to do anything.
This doesn't even cover scrakes. Before there was a lull in gameplay where there was a stunned scrake sitting there waiting to be killed. Demo had to hold back on the grenades or you'd get a ragey scrake running out of a smoke cloud, trash had to be kept clear out of the way and sharps had to complete that 2nd shot. Now you can 1 shot them, or multiple, from far or up close, they're still stunned if you miss the head, and even if you use the crossbow, with the reload speed as fast as it is + the wonky hitbox, you don't need to adjust your aim. You just aim that first shot at the head, and hold down m1 to complete the 2nd shot (even if the scrakes head is down) which is now very quick. If you can't see how dealing with the 2 toughest specimens has been changed, and how much that affects a game, then you truly don't understand what people are upset about.
The main issue isn't it's 'too easy' now. Yes, it has been made easier, but that that's more of a side-issue to the fact that the addition of the new weapons has changed game play and not for the better. Mostly to blame is the m99 - it's anti-teamwork and makes things boring. The other guns also have their issues but they aren't as glaring (eg. the mk23 is just as effective or better than the hand cannon in most situations and costs less, holds more ammo, and weighs half as much. Seriously, what sharp buys the handcannon anymore now that they can carry the xbow, magnum AND mk23?)
They at least stopped the patriarch chainsaw trick from working, but with the m99 that does 4156 dmg on a headshot, who cares.
You're sitting here saying that because there's players who suck, the game is already hard for them, only 1.2% have beaten west london on HoE so the OP weapons can't be OP or a lot more would be beating HoE, and I'll say this, there IS a lot more people beating HoE because of the m99.
The statistic you laid down for westlondon is crap in lots of ways. First of all, it includes everyone who owns kf and doesn't play it. This is what I tried to illustrate with the '70% of people have killed 100 specimens' achievement.
Also, not everyone plays HoE. Lastly, it goes back to 2009 when the game was released and the new guns have been out for about a month. Hardly long enough to significantly change the percentage anyway.
You should try to see what and why people are arguing for when they say 'the weapons are op' instead of hearing 'pfft these weapons make the game easy' and then declaring them wrong because the game is hard for you and other players.
