TL;DR: The Minigun is the black sheep of the DLC and needs a buff. Yay or Nay, and if Yay, how should TripWire do it? Vote on the poll!
-Entire Essay on the Minigun and why it's kinda poopy
Now I've tried out just about every single DLC weapon in KF2 by now and I gotta say almost every single one of them has a lot of interesting application to the game. Even weirder/less popular weapons like the Rhinos or Mine Reconstructor have a lot of very potent application to the game on Suicidal when used right!
And... Then there's the Minigun... Oh the poor Minigun.
I wanna preface this by saying I am a Commando main who swears by the Stoner as a primary choice of weapon. That sets my bar of weapon standards pretty low in terms of the meta of what weapons are best when, and even I, someone who prefers high-capacity and firing speed over bursts of damage, can undeniably say without a shadow of a doubt that the Minigun is sort of just... it's bad, aight? It's really bad. It CAN be used, it will certainly shred a few large Zeds before you run dry, but it has just so many cons to it that outway the goods of it. Let me just list out the pros and cons.
-Pros
1: High Firing Rate. Will shred trash and large zeds like butter.
2: High-ish Magazine. Can fire for a while, but is only 15 rounds higher than the Stoner.
3: It's pretty cool looking and sounds amazing... Yep, that's all I got.
-Cons
-1: $2000, 500 more than the stoner, scar, and HM Assult Rifle, and tied with the extremely powerful HM Grenade Rifle.
-2: Weighs 10 pounds. The only guns you can carry with this are either the Varmint starting gun and the Bullpup, no room for upgrades.
-3: Horribly small ammo pool. The Stoner carries just a little less ammo on the side (total of 575 bullets without prepared vs The Minigun's 630, a whole 55 bullet difference), yet sustains itself way better due to its more controlled firing speed. By the time you're done with the first quarter of a late-game wave, you'll be dry unless you find ammo boxes or have at least two supports to piggyback off of. If you feather it, you might make it halfway through.
-4: Low damage per-bullet. Makes sense given how fast this thing fires, but given how it only has 55 more bullets in its mag total compared to the Stoner topped with the fact your are WAY more likely to miss with the Minigun, this means your overall dps with this weapon is going to be way less than the far more easily controlled Stoner.
-5: Tier 5. Can't be upgraded unlike the Stoner, which can be if you desire it to, making it basically the minigun but even better.
-6: On top of all the prior notes, you also move at a highly decreased speed while revving and firing this. You need to backseat on the team if you don't want to be immediately swarmed by crawlers and murdered if you want to use this on anything besides Normal or Hard.
-7: Just as a boot to the head, as you can assume, this gun has no iron sights. Good luck making the most of those extra 55 bullets when most go straight into the wall.
-8: I'm paying $10-15 IRL for this?
Now I'm not just listing all these out to trash on the Minigun, it has a lot of potential to be a really fun weapon! Obviously it's going to be expensive to get and, when you are using it, it's gonna be very bulky since it's a frickin' Minigun. But at the same time it seems to be balanced around being a slight "upgrade" to the stoner rather than being to the reliable Fleshpound-eater it should actually be. Honestly this thing should be the Commando's version of the AMR for Sharpshooter, it's basically the same in terms of both being weapons aimed more towards destroying tanks and buildings rather than just blasting a few zeds, but while the AMR is a reliable Zed head-popper, the Minigun is..... Not. It can do it, but it's not going to just liquidate them like the AMR does religiously.
As to how we fix it I have a few ideas, but the first thing I want to get across is that its weight, cost, and movement speed penalty when firing. I think all those things make sense given the nature of the weapon, the question is what would be a good way of making it ACT how it should feel? And I got a few suggestions and I'll put it to a poll.
Suggestion 1: More Damage
if this thing is going to cost an arm, a leg, and have a considerably low ammo and mag size given that this thing is a minigun, it BETTER turn anything lower than a fleshpound or skrake into a puddle and turn actual fleshpounds and skrakes into a delicious sorbet of dashed hopes and metal. Point blank, this baby should completely decimate any zed in front of you.
Suggestion 2: More Ammo
If damage would make it a bit overpowered against boss encounters, then I would say just making this thing a borderline bottomless pit of ammo would be its own reward. One of the reasons I love the stoner so much is that its magazine size and steady firing speed paired with Tactical Reload and Eat Lead makes it basically shoot forever. The Minigun could be the absolute pinnacle of that, I'm saying we stop skimping with the 90 ammo mag and 630 ammo capacity and BULK IT all the way up to something like 125-150 mag size and 875 pool with maybe a decrease in accuracy to balance out having so much more ammo. Now you can reliably spray n' pray this baby into a crowd or into the chest of a fleshpound without much worry of ammo capacity unlike all of commando's other weapons, giving it its own little calling card of being "the commando gun that never runs out of ammo", which to some players might be worth the $2000, 10 pound investment... Ammo cost might be another issue, but thus is the cost of bullet immortality. I mean, it's not like you're gonna be spending that money on anything else besides armor at that point.
Suggestion 3: Mix of the two above
Bump up the damage, bump up the clip, call it a day. Now it shreds faster and with less of a constant ammo cost breathing down your neck as you try to have fun with it instead of constantly feathering the trigger to not immediately run out of ammo. TripWire can be the judge of how much of each will be fair.
Suggestion 4: Ammo Regeneration?
This one is just be tossing something out there and seeing if it sticks, it might be terrible for all I know, but a small oddball idea I had was that, for getting kills with the minigun, depending on the zed's size, you get some ammo back into your reserves or maybe even straight back into your clip. This depends on the size, so a Cyst will probably just be 2-5, a Siren would be 10-20, and a Skrake or Fleshpound would be around 50 (assists might grant half that). As long as you keep getting kills this gun will basically sustain itself so long as you actively use it and more reliably make it a weapon you can reasonably see yourself maining for the entire rest of the game. It's a bit wacky, but it's also a DLC weapon, so if we're going to have a weird gimmick like this it may as well be for this weapon. We could debuff the max ammo pool or weight if it's too ridiculous, but if it's something you guys think would be interesting I'd be all for it!
Conclusion
If you read all this way, thank you very much on your interest! Let me know what you think and give a vote on the poll so, if TripWire sees this, they'll get a better idea on what the fans would like for it! If you personally think the Minigun is an underrated gem (much like I do for the Mine Reconstructor, that beautifull blue-rasberry jelly gun), let me know why! Thanks again and hope you have a great day!
Also if a TripWire dev is reading this thank you for reading all the way through, I love your work on this game <3
-Entire Essay on the Minigun and why it's kinda poopy
Now I've tried out just about every single DLC weapon in KF2 by now and I gotta say almost every single one of them has a lot of interesting application to the game. Even weirder/less popular weapons like the Rhinos or Mine Reconstructor have a lot of very potent application to the game on Suicidal when used right!
And... Then there's the Minigun... Oh the poor Minigun.
I wanna preface this by saying I am a Commando main who swears by the Stoner as a primary choice of weapon. That sets my bar of weapon standards pretty low in terms of the meta of what weapons are best when, and even I, someone who prefers high-capacity and firing speed over bursts of damage, can undeniably say without a shadow of a doubt that the Minigun is sort of just... it's bad, aight? It's really bad. It CAN be used, it will certainly shred a few large Zeds before you run dry, but it has just so many cons to it that outway the goods of it. Let me just list out the pros and cons.
-Pros
1: High Firing Rate. Will shred trash and large zeds like butter.
2: High-ish Magazine. Can fire for a while, but is only 15 rounds higher than the Stoner.
3: It's pretty cool looking and sounds amazing... Yep, that's all I got.
-Cons
-1: $2000, 500 more than the stoner, scar, and HM Assult Rifle, and tied with the extremely powerful HM Grenade Rifle.
-2: Weighs 10 pounds. The only guns you can carry with this are either the Varmint starting gun and the Bullpup, no room for upgrades.
-3: Horribly small ammo pool. The Stoner carries just a little less ammo on the side (total of 575 bullets without prepared vs The Minigun's 630, a whole 55 bullet difference), yet sustains itself way better due to its more controlled firing speed. By the time you're done with the first quarter of a late-game wave, you'll be dry unless you find ammo boxes or have at least two supports to piggyback off of. If you feather it, you might make it halfway through.
-4: Low damage per-bullet. Makes sense given how fast this thing fires, but given how it only has 55 more bullets in its mag total compared to the Stoner topped with the fact your are WAY more likely to miss with the Minigun, this means your overall dps with this weapon is going to be way less than the far more easily controlled Stoner.
-5: Tier 5. Can't be upgraded unlike the Stoner, which can be if you desire it to, making it basically the minigun but even better.
-6: On top of all the prior notes, you also move at a highly decreased speed while revving and firing this. You need to backseat on the team if you don't want to be immediately swarmed by crawlers and murdered if you want to use this on anything besides Normal or Hard.
-7: Just as a boot to the head, as you can assume, this gun has no iron sights. Good luck making the most of those extra 55 bullets when most go straight into the wall.
-8: I'm paying $10-15 IRL for this?
Now I'm not just listing all these out to trash on the Minigun, it has a lot of potential to be a really fun weapon! Obviously it's going to be expensive to get and, when you are using it, it's gonna be very bulky since it's a frickin' Minigun. But at the same time it seems to be balanced around being a slight "upgrade" to the stoner rather than being to the reliable Fleshpound-eater it should actually be. Honestly this thing should be the Commando's version of the AMR for Sharpshooter, it's basically the same in terms of both being weapons aimed more towards destroying tanks and buildings rather than just blasting a few zeds, but while the AMR is a reliable Zed head-popper, the Minigun is..... Not. It can do it, but it's not going to just liquidate them like the AMR does religiously.
As to how we fix it I have a few ideas, but the first thing I want to get across is that its weight, cost, and movement speed penalty when firing. I think all those things make sense given the nature of the weapon, the question is what would be a good way of making it ACT how it should feel? And I got a few suggestions and I'll put it to a poll.
Suggestion 1: More Damage
if this thing is going to cost an arm, a leg, and have a considerably low ammo and mag size given that this thing is a minigun, it BETTER turn anything lower than a fleshpound or skrake into a puddle and turn actual fleshpounds and skrakes into a delicious sorbet of dashed hopes and metal. Point blank, this baby should completely decimate any zed in front of you.
Suggestion 2: More Ammo
If damage would make it a bit overpowered against boss encounters, then I would say just making this thing a borderline bottomless pit of ammo would be its own reward. One of the reasons I love the stoner so much is that its magazine size and steady firing speed paired with Tactical Reload and Eat Lead makes it basically shoot forever. The Minigun could be the absolute pinnacle of that, I'm saying we stop skimping with the 90 ammo mag and 630 ammo capacity and BULK IT all the way up to something like 125-150 mag size and 875 pool with maybe a decrease in accuracy to balance out having so much more ammo. Now you can reliably spray n' pray this baby into a crowd or into the chest of a fleshpound without much worry of ammo capacity unlike all of commando's other weapons, giving it its own little calling card of being "the commando gun that never runs out of ammo", which to some players might be worth the $2000, 10 pound investment... Ammo cost might be another issue, but thus is the cost of bullet immortality. I mean, it's not like you're gonna be spending that money on anything else besides armor at that point.
Suggestion 3: Mix of the two above
Bump up the damage, bump up the clip, call it a day. Now it shreds faster and with less of a constant ammo cost breathing down your neck as you try to have fun with it instead of constantly feathering the trigger to not immediately run out of ammo. TripWire can be the judge of how much of each will be fair.
Suggestion 4: Ammo Regeneration?
This one is just be tossing something out there and seeing if it sticks, it might be terrible for all I know, but a small oddball idea I had was that, for getting kills with the minigun, depending on the zed's size, you get some ammo back into your reserves or maybe even straight back into your clip. This depends on the size, so a Cyst will probably just be 2-5, a Siren would be 10-20, and a Skrake or Fleshpound would be around 50 (assists might grant half that). As long as you keep getting kills this gun will basically sustain itself so long as you actively use it and more reliably make it a weapon you can reasonably see yourself maining for the entire rest of the game. It's a bit wacky, but it's also a DLC weapon, so if we're going to have a weird gimmick like this it may as well be for this weapon. We could debuff the max ammo pool or weight if it's too ridiculous, but if it's something you guys think would be interesting I'd be all for it!
Conclusion
If you read all this way, thank you very much on your interest! Let me know what you think and give a vote on the poll so, if TripWire sees this, they'll get a better idea on what the fans would like for it! If you personally think the Minigun is an underrated gem (much like I do for the Mine Reconstructor, that beautifull blue-rasberry jelly gun), let me know why! Thanks again and hope you have a great day!
Also if a TripWire dev is reading this thank you for reading all the way through, I love your work on this game <3
