CORRECTIONS: - Apparently the Quantum damage-ics lightweight and precision sidearm values are incorrect, so precisions actually have higher sustained DPS than lightweights do, and lightweights actually have less (see updated Archetypes tab), so I've adjusted them to be the same tier accordingly
That would be too open. Then they wouldn't have any excuses when they made the exact wrong balance changes even if we KNOW leadership was stopping them from making the right changes. There's a reason we got to hear from them on podcasts and shows less and less
The balence team doesn't have the budget Also that may be to much players can get mad at to much communication since they are stupid and don't understand how long stuff takes to make or balence
They do, they publish sandbox updates and explanations. But they have to draw a line because history tells us actually interacting with the community is tricky because for the most part the community are.. 'children.'
One thing I haven't really seen you talk about is per shot damage, and how that interacts with redbard. The performance delta between 1 shotting a red bar and 2 shotting a redbar is HUGE, even though It may be a 10% dps increase on certain levels of content. Its why certain archetype are good in lower tier but trash in higher tier content. If its a slow weapon that can get an enemy down to 5% hp in one shot it literally doesn't make a difference if it lost 40 percent of its damage, its still going to kill in 2 hits. Considering the delta time increase of an enemies lifespan when you either miss a shot or the enemy survives a shot really determine a weapons feel. This is why IMO rocket sidearms are so good, they almost always kill in 1-3 hits, regardless of content level, where sometime a breach GL will double the TTK on certain enemies because they no longer get 1 shot, and that means the nemy in threatening you for another full reload and grenade travel worth of time, the rocket side arm you only have to wait ~0.4 seconds You got close to this discussion when you talk about autos vs bows doing nearly the same DPS but having much different ease of use.
He has discussed this quite a lot in the past regarding hand cannons and bows and prioritizing one-shotting targets (often encouraging use of precision frames over lightweights if it achieves that goal). Probably didn't have time in this two hour video to go so deep but he is aware of that logic. Its a smart way to look at it!
When he was making a lot of this on stream it was discussed a decent bit, but main issue is it is more complex than would initially seem. While this video is targeted towards endgame, you have to consider various factors. Main factor to consider is which red bar you are actually facing? A thrall has different hp than an acolyte which is different from a knight which is different a vandal etc. A small 10% buff might not allow a gun to 1 shot a vandal but maybe it can now start 1 shotting an acolyte. Additionally plenty of factors can affect these values. What power delta is the activity? What modifiers are present? What perks are active? Which specific enemy are you shooting? What type of activity are you in? So, you could be looking at a hundred or so different breakpoints that would then have to be considered for every weapon. However, Mossy has already done some pretty cool analysis on hp amounts, so this could be a cool point to follow up on in another video. In "foetracer enemy health summary" tab, keep in mind there are also power delta and other factors that affect effective hp: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b57Hb8m1L3daFfUckQQqvvN6VOpD03KEssvQLMFpC5I/edit?usp=sharing
this video gave me such a better understanding of what weapons are good for with the minor and elite scaling and just putting in perspective different ranges and archetypes
I think high impact fusions should just be the highest dps dealer for its family just to mess with those guys who hate them. When u bring a high impact MG or rocket ppl know we’re going through a long fight, but for a high impact fusion your just considered a weirdo because “it feels like ass” when the feel of a weapon is a personal thing in the first place.
@@banancreww Maybe it’s just the whole argument of people not wanting to freeze or suspend when they could should just explode. Though I feel headstone is often underused
The hallmark of a balanced weapon sandbox will be that every weapon archetype will have a *relevant* situation in which it is the best pick. Great analysis, Aegis. And respectable takes on suggested sandbox changes.
I also want to add that sometimes people just like certain weapons archetypes and want to use them all the time. IMO a balanced sandbox is one where people can use their other weapon slots to cover their favorite weapon/weapon type weaknesses. That lets people play what they want for the most part while still being able to, with enough skill, participate in the content they want. Now, im not saying take away weapon weaknesses, keep them, but have ways OTHER weapons can pull the slack. That will, along with every weapon having a niche they excell at, solidify the sandbox.
My complaint about buffing LFRs is that, as we learned in TWQ, when LFRs are good people don't use anything else. rockets were more optimal the entire time (notwithstanding that we didn't know about Pack Hunter's bug at the time, so it wasn't as recognized), but they take nonzero effort, so it could feel like pulling teeth to get people to actually use them when you could clear the encounter with room to spare just by staring at a Div bubble. Which that gun's nerfs help, but I'm still skeptical that a flat damage buff is a good idea without some other changes. I also wouldn't mind seeing more primaries get the "extra damage to orange bars" treatment, and I think that might be a good solution for scouts in particular. Maybe SMGs as well (despite that you actually toned down their elite scaling lol). The thing about scouts is, aside from S23 when the artifact was basically tailor-made to break Polaris Lance, there never feels like there's a situation where there are enemies far away from you that a hand cannon will face damage falloff, that are also threatening enough that you wouldn't rather just get closer to them to kill them, yet are also not enemies you wouldn't rather just burn special or heavy ammo to kill. A good example would be a gaggle of Taken Knights up on a ledge somewhere: they can hurt hard enough that it might be worth burning a rocket to kill them, but maybe that's the sort of situation a scout rifle should be good at. But as primaries, and notoriously low damage ones to boot, they take way too long as it is.
LFRs kinda desperately need a sizeable buff. Since their nerf we've seen the meteoric rise of HGLs, swords, and various exotic weapons being as easy or easier (Leviathan's Breath, Dragon's Breath, Whisper of the Worm, etc.) with significantly better dps. So, even reverting the lightfall nerf probably wouldn't even make them a go-to option.
i counter this and say, while true; gls and rockets are easier to use and do more damage, also weapons like levis, whisper and sleeper exist and fill that same niche. i don’t think it would hurt to give LFRs a good buff since it would make them an option rather than powercrept and outclassed.
Who honestly cares what people prefer to use. What matters is what's actually good and feels actually better to use when properly done so. Linears feeling good and being decent is just a reflection on how players are in terms of skill. If anyone could get away with it they'd gladly use Choir of One if it meant being lazy due to a lack of skill in using a rocket or GL. This is totally fine for normal content but even with buffs linears wouldn't compare in contest to rockets or GLs let people use whatever they want in content that doesn't matter
Lfrs straight up have absolutely no use case because of the lack of damage. Sleeper doesn't have enough ammo to be viable for basically anything. If something is more difficult to use it should do more damage if used correctly, rockets and gls being the easiest dps options shouldn't be absolutely eclipsing them
some side notes- 1. i wish the RPM displayed on rockets was actually correct! 2. one thing the rocket subfamilies get correct is actually using reload stat as a differentiator between subfamilies. (a la aggressive frame rockets) reload stat is underutilized in determining subfamily differences. (arguably stability as well on heavies and specials) 3. you're absolutely correct on the wave-frame BR difference needing to be larger. plus, now that it matters, bungie needs to go and hand tune the BR stat of all our current wave frames to differentiate them- it shouldn't be 50 for all of them. (the same applies to the velocity stat on them, but to a lesser extent) this is extended to my next observation below- 4. i wish bungie would rework swords so that their individual stats actually mattered among the same subfamily- give me adaptive swords with base extra charge rate, reserves, or guard endurance etc! give me more reason to select one sword over another of the same subfamily than just impact stat and whatever the meta damage perk is. 5. something you acknowledged when talking about the smg buffs you suggest, is that bungie have never given an archetype a 50% buff before, and I think it's probably smart to consider valuing this to keep the proposed changes more realistic. such as, does it still match your balance philosophy if this was closer to 40%? 6. in terms of avoiding powercreep, i think there's room to consider that as well- while this slightly goes against your philosophy of balancing around the current best feeling archetype, and ALSO there are some clear outliers warping this (notably in the primaries changes via smgs) something to point out would be that after your changes, (1:33:07) the average primary weapon would have a 13.94% increase. are there ways this average increase could be reduced to 10%? maybe even 7%? 7. you definitely hit the nail on the head on that bungie should push for more roles in their sandbox, akin to hand cannons being the major shredders, but not being as good elsewhere. 8. final questions to think on: on a similar vein in terms of intrinsic frames, how would the sandbox look if the aggressive shotgun fire rate bonus after a kill was extended to ALL aggressive frame weapons? (how can bungie make high-impact and aggressive frame weapons feel more different from each other among subfamilies, but more similar and familiar across weapon types? why are double fire GLs not just heavy burst frame? why are wave sword frames not just called wave frames and the same for aggressive glaives? while it's nice for the movement utility niche, does it step on LW GL's toes that micro missile frames also have the LW bonus?)
WOW. This was super well thought out and insanely informative. I appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to have bungie completely ignore your logical suggestions!
Watching this guy analyse , balance and add creative ideas and unique characteristics to these bland weapons archetypes was genuinely exciting. Awesome video.
Would be cool to see a vid like this about subclasses. I’m extremely disappointed that Bungie has nerfed mid to bad Hunter subs because of Prismatic. I always thought that Prismatic invalidating most Hunter and Warlock subs was not healthy for the game, and that it would need changes. But nerfing other subs alongside it will ensure this is always a problem. They need to let the stronger versions of these abilities exist on their respective subs, to give them a reason to be used.
This is pinnacle, sophisticated destiny 2 content. The suggestions at the end I think encapsulate both the current player-perceived issues and potential solutions moving forward. Really appreciate this and hope to see this gain traction within the community. ❤
The problem with doing stuff mathematically is that a) some archetypes feel so much better and are more forgiving that if you change their damage linearly in damage/dps/total damage then this archetype will be the preferred one. I remember when the damage numbers were more mathematically in line for rockets and then people only used precisions because the tracking gave you a security blanket to which you can still hit your damage while others made you miss more on various bosses. Best example at that time was Rhulk. And even today people still go "well if you wanna be on the secure side go precision rockets on him" due to the tracking. Since the reception of rhulk as a boss was generally very positive, i could see them adding more bosses that move around and therefore archetypes like this would be more preferred even if damage is less. Next issue is that 120 HC generally feel bad... most of them don´t feel that good honestly. And the only ones that do are MASSIVE outliers like igneous. These types of issues could be addressed by not just giving them more flat damage but more crit multipliers. Yeah they will be harder to use then 140s but if you are good with them, you´ll get a massive boner while mastering this archetype. This still doesn´t fix the issue of igneous basically being an exotic in disguise but what can you do about that besides giving it mostly pvp perks and not the best pve perks. Which btw is another factor to consider. Balancing by giving out perks to certain weapon archetypes. What if you´d give the more slower firing, harder hitting weapon more explosive type perks that push the weapon further into it´s feel like 120 HC getting firefly which would give them high reload speed and an even better "shooting explosive cannonballs" feel while giving more rapid fire weapons perks that build into their brrr type nature like onslaught, one for all, stat for all. (on that note, we do not have a 120 with firefly... please bungo, give me a häkke 120 with firefly, i want the punchy sound combined with an explosion). That is something where identity is also lost where every weapon can theoretically get every perk. You could still experiment with perks by giving explosive perks to a rapid fire weapon if they are a hard to obtain raid weapon. Or if you want to give out same perks to everything, have it be different versions. Lets say kinetic tremors. You would never use a slow firing archetype with it because it takes to long to proc while the fastest firing archetype with this is goated. That makes no sense. Why are smaller less damaging weapons able to proc, what is effectively speaking a mini earth quake, it faster then the big hard hitting ones? ANOTHER suggestion i´d have would be to have more synergies between the 3rd/4th column perks and 1st/2nd column ones. One for all and stat for all seem to be one of the only ones having synergy with armor piercing rounds because you can shoot into a crowd, pierce 1 target and hit 2 at once procing those perks faster. Or you wanting to max out the magazine capacity even at the loss of reload speed for envious assassin. Why not make it that kinetic tremors procs faster the more flinch your weapon does so now high cal rounds on a slow hard hitting weapon proc kinetic tremors faster than any other archetype or giving it more range/damage/ticks giving you more reason to build craft rather then in pve going "max reload speed and stability and thats it" and in pvp going "max range and handling" for 95% of the situations. Masterworks are also borderline useless. It´s another stat that you actually PAY FOR to have on your weapon. How about your weapon stats at lvl 1 instantly rather then having it to invest resources to it becomes that in the first place. No masterwork, and at lvl 20 when you would get the +2 to all except the masterwork, you can then choose the masterwork yourself. And these masterworks are not just simple stat additions, or at least not as as simple as now. What about introducing other stats like zoom, like "radar comes back faster", more options for the player to decide rather then 1 out of 4 stats (on average, you have swords with only 1 masterwork, there it´s completely useless, you have rockets, bows and gls that have 5) and give them maybe options to synergise more with their kit. Now with the fixed recoil thing, some weapons never hit that "perfect" recoil because no matter what you use, the recoil never feels great. And with 100 not being 100 but some wierd one that doesn´t feel like it should be like that... like seriously, how can 83 on elsies rifle feel like 100 more then 100? What if you would also get other things like a mini snapshot sights. Some weapons don´t feel to great when doing ads but using snapshot sights is to much and you´d rather use the perk slot for something else? Stuff that makes the weapon feel better without giving you more flat stats. There should be a lot more things going on in the weapon department then damage values and the 3rd/4th column perks. I would like there to be a reason to use other barrels or mags besides the obvious ones. I want to think about my weapon building more then just "give me slide shot opening shot with tons of handling" in pvp (and multimach is actualy a good example because one of it´s pvp pog roll is a lot of stability with kinetic tremors and in pve you have the attrition orbs kinetic tremors orb printing machine) and max reload and stability in pve with some damage and reload perks. If we would achieve that, than i genuinely believe that pure mathematical damage values will be WAY less important due to all kinds of other factors making a weapon feel/perform better or worse. But if you make things a lot more samey then mathematical calculations are a lot more important. Prismatic as a subclass has the same problem right now. Even if you get so many options, there is a min maxed version for pve and pvp for all 3 subclasses because you had to much options. Back when we had top/middle/bottom trees, each one had a distinct personality and theme. Now you can do more or less everything at once. Where is the build crafting in that?
I totally agree with your idea that there should be a lot more uniqueness to not just weapon families but archetypes as well, I think adding more factors besides essentially just perks would go a long way, this video was moreso an academic exercise than anything else, but I appreciate your insight!
@@embelished_meister500I feel like Titans should really lean into offering "support" that keeps the fight going like having the ability to spawn ammo for the team innately in their kit. This would allow them to offer support that is different from Warlock and Hunter, but it's just as valuable as what they can offer.
@@thatonepenguinperson618I want different Titan subclasses to have access to their own different elemental banners like banner of war but they would give different buffs. Titan could be the Frontline support unit that the rest of the team rallies around to get the benefit of their aoe buffs sort of like an anchor for the fireteam
I say this all the time, just remember, the sandbox team's job is the tinker with the sandbox. If they make it perfect or nearly perfect (which ain't too hard), then they're out of a job. Could they then primarily be refocused onto other things like expanding the sandbox and making it more interesting? Yes. Is management going to see it that way? Who knows, and they ain't about to take that risk. So instead they take it slow. Plus management is very 'sandbox complexity' adverse. They did that once with the original warmind cell/charges of light/elemental well mods (which were amazing and only failed because they made them completely fomo/inaccessible to most players who didn't participate in those seasons), and then management decided they didn't like it and completely canned complexity and build diversity as a whole. So if they make the current sandbox perfect now then they REALLY make more of themselves unemployed, cause management ain't about to go for lots of interesting and complex build crafting as a part of the sandbox anymore.
It's great seeing you apply a lot of your analysis to the "big picture". Hopefully this AT LEAST starts more internal discussions, some guns have felt so redundant or just *extremly* niche rn, it's kinda sad.
Bungie should pull a quick backup, of their current settings; Then change this according to this video for a few patches, and see player feedback. Also; HUGE respect to you. That's amazing work and research!
As always, excellent video! Although, one of the main flaws of the game that I think is the reason we don't see good weapon balancing is due to perk variations and buildcrafting. About buildcrafting: we have so many weapons and weapon perks that interact strongly with our build, but few buildcrafting options to make our weapons stronger in non-DPS scenarios while also being interesring to use. I would be interested to see a similar video of you trying to balance other aspects of the sandbox, like mods, exotic armors and weapons, and suclasses!
Any chance you're gonna do this for abilities as well? I'd love to see your take on Supers and Grenades (covering all abilities including aspects and things would be a little too much maybe).
As good as support autos are, I still think they need a damage buff against red bars along with every other auto (maybe less for 720s). Proccing both the frame buff and circle of life still feels weak compared to just using Rufus’ Fury Edit: or change velocity to be quicker
Good video, the work is insane. I think the main problem is currently the ability spam. Weapons needs change but, the abilities/subclass need a complete rework, 4.0 or something, prismatic is nowhere near balanced.
First off great job, this is amazing, secondly I’ve watched this about 1.5-2 times total, the only thing I’m not seeing that might effect some of there reasoning for current damage values are TTK and how to make each frame viable inside of an archetype of weapon, or if they should even bother. I say that because since you mentioned all range values were pretty much even on archetypes, then wouldn’t someone theoretically pick the faster hand cannon since both would theoretically 1 shot in high level content? I think that would also make for a great video to be honest, unless it was here and I just happened to miss it, my apologies if so.
I'm sitting here trying to figure out where I recognized your name and I realized after looking you up I used to watch you play destiny when I was heavy into it 😭 now I'm just a fortnite guy 😂😂
I hate where precision linears are at because they NEED FTTC/TT to even think about being relevant and competing with the burst linears. My idea is to remove FTTC/TT from all current and future precision linears and just increase their reserves by 60%-80%.
i wish this shit was real. recently, ive been using an under over/ kinetic tremors multimach, and while probably being my favorite primary in the game right now, just hits awful. thank you for the smg love.
One of my biggest concerns with the LFR’s is that they functionally competes against snipers for ranged damage and I often find myself even wondering why they added this weapon archetype to the game instead of just working on snipers for example still hunt and whisper of the worm are 100% getting picked over any exotic or legendary linear we have for precision boss dps, realistically if bungie removed LFR’s from the game only about 1-7% of the player base would actually even care because good players know that LFR’s are rarely if ever the best for the current situation ahead of them
I think a big portion of weapon balance needs to come from general enemy/encounter changes. If we get more encounters that force certain weapons like Witness and Crota, as opposed to bosses like Morgeth that anything can be used on, we might see a better distribution of viable options. I feel that in today's d2 endgame, burst damage is far favored over total damage.
So I'm breaking my comment up into two parts, the initial feelings I have prior and my thoughts after watching. For initial thoughts... I think that on paper this idea is a cool one. I am looking forward to watching just to hear how you break it all down. With that said, I think something that is relevant but not exactly.... "measurable" is Bungie's habits around buffs and nerfs to anything in the game (weapons, abilities, enemies, etc.). From what I can tell they issue changes based on how much of a threat it is to the diversity of the larger game's sandbox. So a weapon that isn't good but is used by everyone is more likely to be nerfed than a weapon that is four times better, but only used by a select few. They will also issue changes to weapons or abilities that people like yourself use for the speedrun type stuff if they fear that a broken tactic is potentially too easy to exploit or otherwise dangerous to the larger casual player's sandbox. Ultimately, regardless of which weapon is "the best" a moderately coherent team could take damn near any set of legendary heavy weapons and complete pretty much any raid or raid encounter, or dungeon encounter. We can debate weather or not that should be the case or not, but it is still true. So therefore most of the changes that Bungie makes are aimed at keeping that crowd generally using at least a somewhat diverse set of loadouts. And typically when the larger playerbase struggles with something like Ghosts of the Deep or Salvation's Edge, their struggle has less to do with the difference between a Aggressive Rocket Frame vs. an Adaptive, and has more to do with how they approach the game overall. So I'm always a bit skeptical of people's requests to buff or nerf this n' that because it is usually focused on their perception of the game rather than on a holistic view of the game as a whole. They rarely take on a view that values a random player in the Comsodrome with no endgame aspirations as equal to a player who races for World's First Contest clears. After listening through... I think that while this is certainly an ambitious project and interesting... I think you focus a bit too much on the ideal lab situation and not enough on how this works in the real world. This is the bane of all data driven research... Data is a snapshot. It is a point in time, and when we work with data we're essentially working outside of time. Time is paused while we examine and adjust our data points, and then we unpause it to see what happens after we made our changes. Did it go how we predicted? Regardless, how does it help us learn more and how does it guide future questions and explorations? . I think in this scenario, some interpretive work would have been helpful. Exploring thought experiments for why things are the way they are and not just accepting the easy answer of "Bungie doesn't know what they're doing". Because obviously they do know, or we wouldn't be rounding a ten year anniversary for their franchise. That isn't to say they don't make mistakes, but I think it is disingenuous at worst, or unfair at best, to treat the game's sandbox as nonsensical. You wouldn't be making this video if it was. There is a lot of material out there that goes into how and why game developement works the way it does, and why it produces things that sometimes seem backwards or nonsensical. Destiny 2 isn't the only game with a bizzare sandbox that falls apart under this level of scrutiny. So why is that? I don't question your math, but I think there is more to weapon tuning than math. As I said, Bungie focuses of usage rates more than anything when it comes to nerfs. They didn't nerf LFRs back in the day because they were numerically OP. They nerfed them because the vast majority of the player base was using them almost exclusively over anything else. We can pick apart why the players were doing that all we want, but ultimately that the players were doing it is why they were nerfed. And it's why they will probably not be buffed to be competitive for a long time. I think you also take into account things like Pack Hunter too much in how you balance weapon families and to me that says less about Rockets/Swords, and more about Pack Hunter. It is not a reasonable stance to balance entire weapon families around exotics that players may not own or ever use. You might use them a lot, raiders and hyper efficient GM players might use them a lot. But most players aren't going to be min-maxing rocket builds around Gjally. So it doesn't make sense to balance swords or rockets around Pack Hunter. Rather, it would make far more sense to balance Pack Hunter around other swords and rockets. It should not be doing so much heavy lifting to the point that it feels mandatory to use it in a competitive setting. On a different topic, the reason Bungie releases new weapons as OP is because if they don't then most players won't use them. Even if they are OP (like for example, the new healing auto rifle which is flat better and pretty good but isn't used). So if we take a habit of buff/nerfs that focus less on actual power and more on meta dominance, and a tendency to release new weapons as OP, I think this would likely explain a lot of the really random looking charts that you found. It would explain why some things are allowed to be OP and others aren't. Because those OP things are not warping the meta in a way they find problematic. We can debate if we agree with them or not, but I think it is unfair to criticize their model as "nonsensical" because it is an organic one that has evovlved over time with the playerbase. The playerbase as a whole largely does not make use of the edge/fringe cases that your using to justify your changes. Players on the high end do to varying degrees. But most players do not. Most players just play the game and use what they want to use. And what they use is driven more by modifiers in a nightfall or which weapons have champion mods this season than anything else. TLDR: I think that in a vacuum where you can pause time, your changes make sense. I think that the weirdness you're finding is rooted in the game's life as a whole in real time. It's a story about how the meta shifted over time.
For sure, I agree that honing in too much on data can be problematic when looking at the wider scheme of game design, and I did try to account for that by using some 'feel factors' (like what I anchored primaries around), but I do think that some of these changes would just make the game more interesting to play overall
@@TheAegisRelic I don't disagree with that last part, it would definitely be more interesting! And just to be clear, I know you try to make sure you account for the limitations of data, and it's something I appreciate about your content in general. I just think in this area there is a lot of organic "balancing" that has less to do with this type of data and more to do with how they themselves perceive how people are using things. With that said, have you thought about actually working in design on stuff like this? Thanks for taking the time to read and reply!
And people said Rick had long intros XD Next Video: Can Aegis fix Destiny 2 before Rick Kackis finishes his Intro Also I actually really like these spreadsheet analysis. Really nice way to visualise how the sandbox is doing
Distinguishing power weapon archetypes better is needed but should be small incremental nerfs to fix them not buffs. We can already 1 phase everything fairly easy.
All weapons should be farmable without patterns, but you need to collect materials by dismantling dropped weapons, perks as modules, weapon frames, origin perk or masterwork module as a result of dismantling
![FWR Vesper's host in under 10 minutes [9:50]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n8wwy46HMqY/mqdefault.jpg)
CORRECTIONS:
- Apparently the Quantum damage-ics lightweight and precision sidearm values are incorrect, so precisions actually have higher sustained DPS than lightweights do, and lightweights actually have less (see updated Archetypes tab), so I've adjusted them to be the same tier accordingly
Aegis lead sandbox developper, lead community manager
That would be neat
aegis lead best boy.
He would but you don't spell developer with double "p"
Absolutely not.
come come now, bungie only hires people with skills
1:52 "Data scientists" brother, you made a Tableau to analyze damage of different weapons in D2. That's you now, you're the data scientist.
Happy you're still motivated to do this work. I haven't even booted up the game in over a week, let alone thought about it at length
I wish the devs did videos like this to talk to the community and gather feedback for future development.
That would be too open. Then they wouldn't have any excuses when they made the exact wrong balance changes even if we KNOW leadership was stopping them from making the right changes. There's a reason we got to hear from them on podcasts and shows less and less
The balence team doesn't have the budget
Also that may be to much players can get mad at to much communication since they are stupid and don't understand how long stuff takes to make or balence
With how many sandbox team members have been bullied off social media, I don’t know why anyone would expect them to do that
They do, they publish sandbox updates and explanations. But they have to draw a line because history tells us actually interacting with the community is tricky because for the most part the community are.. 'children.'
@@SlongestKongest They don't have the budget because of 4 side projects. They need to pull their head out of their assholes.
Bro really trying to hit that 10 minute mark with this one
These content creators always trying to draw out their video runtime for ad revenue man
My man can solve world hunger with this brain the D2 community is so lucky
can you fix my life next?
And my relationship with my gf?
he could fix me, that's for sure..
And the future of destiny
@@marcelettaI could fix you too😏😏
Real
One thing I haven't really seen you talk about is per shot damage, and how that interacts with redbard. The performance delta between 1 shotting a red bar and 2 shotting a redbar is HUGE, even though It may be a 10% dps increase on certain levels of content. Its why certain archetype are good in lower tier but trash in higher tier content. If its a slow weapon that can get an enemy down to 5% hp in one shot it literally doesn't make a difference if it lost 40 percent of its damage, its still going to kill in 2 hits. Considering the delta time increase of an enemies lifespan when you either miss a shot or the enemy survives a shot really determine a weapons feel.
This is why IMO rocket sidearms are so good, they almost always kill in 1-3 hits, regardless of content level, where sometime a breach GL will double the TTK on certain enemies because they no longer get 1 shot, and that means the nemy in threatening you for another full reload and grenade travel worth of time, the rocket side arm you only have to wait ~0.4 seconds
You got close to this discussion when you talk about autos vs bows doing nearly the same DPS but having much different ease of use.
He has discussed this quite a lot in the past regarding hand cannons and bows and prioritizing one-shotting targets (often encouraging use of precision frames over lightweights if it achieves that goal). Probably didn't have time in this two hour video to go so deep but he is aware of that logic. Its a smart way to look at it!
When he was making a lot of this on stream it was discussed a decent bit, but main issue is it is more complex than would initially seem.
While this video is targeted towards endgame, you have to consider various factors.
Main factor to consider is which red bar you are actually facing? A thrall has different hp than an acolyte which is different from a knight which is different a vandal etc. A small 10% buff might not allow a gun to 1 shot a vandal but maybe it can now start 1 shotting an acolyte.
Additionally plenty of factors can affect these values.
What power delta is the activity?
What modifiers are present?
What perks are active?
Which specific enemy are you shooting?
What type of activity are you in?
So, you could be looking at a hundred or so different breakpoints that would then have to be considered for every weapon.
However, Mossy has already done some pretty cool analysis on hp amounts, so this could be a cool point to follow up on in another video.
In "foetracer enemy health summary" tab, keep in mind there are also power delta and other factors that affect effective hp: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b57Hb8m1L3daFfUckQQqvvN6VOpD03KEssvQLMFpC5I/edit?usp=sharing
this video gave me such a better understanding of what weapons are good for with the minor and elite scaling and just putting in perspective different ranges and archetypes
2 hour Aegis video?! Absolute treat on this beautiful sunday
Bro really pulled a Thanos waiting for Bungie to balance their game.
"Fine, I'll do it myself"
- Aegis
Thank you aegis relic from Vault of glass very cool
no problem jurajkormanovic8710 from youtube!
Aegis putting more thought into this sandbox then the devs
Watching these videos makes me realize how much of a nerd I am for stats…
Wish I had this level of passion/dedication with anything in life
maybe this chungus life is worth living... 2 hour aegis video....
I think high impact fusions should just be the highest dps dealer for its family just to mess with those guys who hate them.
When u bring a high impact MG or rocket ppl know we’re going through a long fight, but for a high impact fusion your just considered a weirdo because “it feels like ass” when the feel of a weapon is a personal thing in the first place.
Personally, High-imps are the best feeling fusions. It's really a feel thing
an hour, 43 minutes, and 34 seconds of Aegis restored my will to live
Hot take: Headstone should intrinsically have some form of Hakke Breach Armament
@@banancreww Maybe it’s just the whole argument of people not wanting to freeze or suspend when they could should just explode. Though I feel headstone is often underused
The hallmark of a balanced weapon sandbox will be that every weapon archetype will have a *relevant* situation in which it is the best pick.
Great analysis, Aegis. And respectable takes on suggested sandbox changes.
I also want to add that sometimes people just like certain weapons archetypes and want to use them all the time. IMO a balanced sandbox is one where people can use their other weapon slots to cover their favorite weapon/weapon type weaknesses. That lets people play what they want for the most part while still being able to, with enough skill, participate in the content they want. Now, im not saying take away weapon weaknesses, keep them, but have ways OTHER weapons can pull the slack. That will, along with every weapon having a niche they excell at, solidify the sandbox.
My complaint about buffing LFRs is that, as we learned in TWQ, when LFRs are good people don't use anything else. rockets were more optimal the entire time (notwithstanding that we didn't know about Pack Hunter's bug at the time, so it wasn't as recognized), but they take nonzero effort, so it could feel like pulling teeth to get people to actually use them when you could clear the encounter with room to spare just by staring at a Div bubble. Which that gun's nerfs help, but I'm still skeptical that a flat damage buff is a good idea without some other changes.
I also wouldn't mind seeing more primaries get the "extra damage to orange bars" treatment, and I think that might be a good solution for scouts in particular. Maybe SMGs as well (despite that you actually toned down their elite scaling lol). The thing about scouts is, aside from S23 when the artifact was basically tailor-made to break Polaris Lance, there never feels like there's a situation where there are enemies far away from you that a hand cannon will face damage falloff, that are also threatening enough that you wouldn't rather just get closer to them to kill them, yet are also not enemies you wouldn't rather just burn special or heavy ammo to kill. A good example would be a gaggle of Taken Knights up on a ledge somewhere: they can hurt hard enough that it might be worth burning a rocket to kill them, but maybe that's the sort of situation a scout rifle should be good at. But as primaries, and notoriously low damage ones to boot, they take way too long as it is.
LFRs kinda desperately need a sizeable buff.
Since their nerf we've seen the meteoric rise of HGLs, swords, and various exotic weapons being as easy or easier (Leviathan's Breath, Dragon's Breath, Whisper of the Worm, etc.) with significantly better dps.
So, even reverting the lightfall nerf probably wouldn't even make them a go-to option.
plenty of people used rockets even in day 1 vow lol
i counter this and say, while true; gls and rockets are easier to use and do more damage, also weapons like levis, whisper and sleeper exist and fill that same niche. i don’t think it would hurt to give LFRs a good buff since it would make them an option rather than powercrept and outclassed.
Who honestly cares what people prefer to use. What matters is what's actually good and feels actually better to use when properly done so. Linears feeling good and being decent is just a reflection on how players are in terms of skill. If anyone could get away with it they'd gladly use Choir of One if it meant being lazy due to a lack of skill in using a rocket or GL. This is totally fine for normal content but even with buffs linears wouldn't compare in contest to rockets or GLs let people use whatever they want in content that doesn't matter
Lfrs straight up have absolutely no use case because of the lack of damage. Sleeper doesn't have enough ammo to be viable for basically anything. If something is more difficult to use it should do more damage if used correctly, rockets and gls being the easiest dps options shouldn't be absolutely eclipsing them
The amount of effort in this is incredible. What an awesome video.
some side notes-
1. i wish the RPM displayed on rockets was actually correct!
2. one thing the rocket subfamilies get correct is actually using reload stat as a differentiator between subfamilies. (a la aggressive frame rockets) reload stat is underutilized in determining subfamily differences. (arguably stability as well on heavies and specials)
3. you're absolutely correct on the wave-frame BR difference needing to be larger. plus, now that it matters, bungie needs to go and hand tune the BR stat of all our current wave frames to differentiate them- it shouldn't be 50 for all of them. (the same applies to the velocity stat on them, but to a lesser extent) this is extended to my next observation below-
4. i wish bungie would rework swords so that their individual stats actually mattered among the same subfamily- give me adaptive swords with base extra charge rate, reserves, or guard endurance etc! give me more reason to select one sword over another of the same subfamily than just impact stat and whatever the meta damage perk is.
5. something you acknowledged when talking about the smg buffs you suggest, is that bungie have never given an archetype a 50% buff before, and I think it's probably smart to consider valuing this to keep the proposed changes more realistic. such as, does it still match your balance philosophy if this was closer to 40%?
6. in terms of avoiding powercreep, i think there's room to consider that as well- while this slightly goes against your philosophy of balancing around the current best feeling archetype, and ALSO there are some clear outliers warping this (notably in the primaries changes via smgs) something to point out would be that after your changes, (1:33:07) the average primary weapon would have a 13.94% increase. are there ways this average increase could be reduced to 10%? maybe even 7%?
7. you definitely hit the nail on the head on that bungie should push for more roles in their sandbox, akin to hand cannons being the major shredders, but not being as good elsewhere.
8. final questions to think on: on a similar vein in terms of intrinsic frames, how would the sandbox look if the aggressive shotgun fire rate bonus after a kill was extended to ALL aggressive frame weapons? (how can bungie make high-impact and aggressive frame weapons feel more different from each other among subfamilies, but more similar and familiar across weapon types? why are double fire GLs not just heavy burst frame? why are wave sword frames not just called wave frames and the same for aggressive glaives? while it's nice for the movement utility niche, does it step on LW GL's toes that micro missile frames also have the LW bonus?)
Lots of good points! You're basically thinking in the same space that I am on most of these topics
Great work Aegis, needed this after the hellish challenge I did from trials report. Hope you’re well broski
This dude is going to be hired by bungie
... and then laid off before the next income report
@@Sestze LMFAO
@@Sestze maybe he will get to see the cars tho
And then laid off when they're CEO needs some more cars
WOW. This was super well thought out and insanely informative. I appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to have bungie completely ignore your logical suggestions!
Watching this guy analyse , balance and add creative ideas and unique characteristics to these bland weapons archetypes was genuinely exciting. Awesome video.
I always come to your channel, love the content and the effort
You are awesome! I love how you nerd out with the data. I'm going to check out the tableau charts
Would be cool to see a vid like this about subclasses. I’m extremely disappointed that Bungie has nerfed mid to bad Hunter subs because of Prismatic.
I always thought that Prismatic invalidating most Hunter and Warlock subs was not healthy for the game, and that it would need changes. But nerfing other subs alongside it will ensure this is always a problem. They need to let the stronger versions of these abilities exist on their respective subs, to give them a reason to be used.
Somebody hire this guy already
This is pinnacle, sophisticated destiny 2 content. The suggestions at the end I think encapsulate both the current player-perceived issues and potential solutions moving forward. Really appreciate this and hope to see this gain traction within the community. ❤
The problem with doing stuff mathematically is that a) some archetypes feel so much better and are more forgiving that if you change their damage linearly in damage/dps/total damage then this archetype will be the preferred one. I remember when the damage numbers were more mathematically in line for rockets and then people only used precisions because the tracking gave you a security blanket to which you can still hit your damage while others made you miss more on various bosses. Best example at that time was Rhulk. And even today people still go "well if you wanna be on the secure side go precision rockets on him" due to the tracking. Since the reception of rhulk as a boss was generally very positive, i could see them adding more bosses that move around and therefore archetypes like this would be more preferred even if damage is less.
Next issue is that 120 HC generally feel bad... most of them don´t feel that good honestly. And the only ones that do are MASSIVE outliers like igneous. These types of issues could be addressed by not just giving them more flat damage but more crit multipliers. Yeah they will be harder to use then 140s but if you are good with them, you´ll get a massive boner while mastering this archetype. This still doesn´t fix the issue of igneous basically being an exotic in disguise but what can you do about that besides giving it mostly pvp perks and not the best pve perks.
Which btw is another factor to consider. Balancing by giving out perks to certain weapon archetypes. What if you´d give the more slower firing, harder hitting weapon more explosive type perks that push the weapon further into it´s feel like 120 HC getting firefly which would give them high reload speed and an even better "shooting explosive cannonballs" feel while giving more rapid fire weapons perks that build into their brrr type nature like onslaught, one for all, stat for all. (on that note, we do not have a 120 with firefly... please bungo, give me a häkke 120 with firefly, i want the punchy sound combined with an explosion).
That is something where identity is also lost where every weapon can theoretically get every perk. You could still experiment with perks by giving explosive perks to a rapid fire weapon if they are a hard to obtain raid weapon. Or if you want to give out same perks to everything, have it be different versions. Lets say kinetic tremors. You would never use a slow firing archetype with it because it takes to long to proc while the fastest firing archetype with this is goated. That makes no sense. Why are smaller less damaging weapons able to proc, what is effectively speaking a mini earth quake, it faster then the big hard hitting ones?
ANOTHER suggestion i´d have would be to have more synergies between the 3rd/4th column perks and 1st/2nd column ones. One for all and stat for all seem to be one of the only ones having synergy with armor piercing rounds because you can shoot into a crowd, pierce 1 target and hit 2 at once procing those perks faster. Or you wanting to max out the magazine capacity even at the loss of reload speed for envious assassin. Why not make it that kinetic tremors procs faster the more flinch your weapon does so now high cal rounds on a slow hard hitting weapon proc kinetic tremors faster than any other archetype or giving it more range/damage/ticks giving you more reason to build craft rather then in pve going "max reload speed and stability and thats it" and in pvp going "max range and handling" for 95% of the situations.
Masterworks are also borderline useless. It´s another stat that you actually PAY FOR to have on your weapon. How about your weapon stats at lvl 1 instantly rather then having it to invest resources to it becomes that in the first place. No masterwork, and at lvl 20 when you would get the +2 to all except the masterwork, you can then choose the masterwork yourself. And these masterworks are not just simple stat additions, or at least not as as simple as now. What about introducing other stats like zoom, like "radar comes back faster", more options for the player to decide rather then 1 out of 4 stats (on average, you have swords with only 1 masterwork, there it´s completely useless, you have rockets, bows and gls that have 5) and give them maybe options to synergise more with their kit. Now with the fixed recoil thing, some weapons never hit that "perfect" recoil because no matter what you use, the recoil never feels great. And with 100 not being 100 but some wierd one that doesn´t feel like it should be like that... like seriously, how can 83 on elsies rifle feel like 100 more then 100? What if you would also get other things like a mini snapshot sights. Some weapons don´t feel to great when doing ads but using snapshot sights is to much and you´d rather use the perk slot for something else? Stuff that makes the weapon feel better without giving you more flat stats.
There should be a lot more things going on in the weapon department then damage values and the 3rd/4th column perks. I would like there to be a reason to use other barrels or mags besides the obvious ones. I want to think about my weapon building more then just "give me slide shot opening shot with tons of handling" in pvp (and multimach is actualy a good example because one of it´s pvp pog roll is a lot of stability with kinetic tremors and in pve you have the attrition orbs kinetic tremors orb printing machine) and max reload and stability in pve with some damage and reload perks.
If we would achieve that, than i genuinely believe that pure mathematical damage values will be WAY less important due to all kinds of other factors making a weapon feel/perform better or worse. But if you make things a lot more samey then mathematical calculations are a lot more important.
Prismatic as a subclass has the same problem right now. Even if you get so many options, there is a min maxed version for pve and pvp for all 3 subclasses because you had to much options.
Back when we had top/middle/bottom trees, each one had a distinct personality and theme. Now you can do more or less everything at once. Where is the build crafting in that?
I totally agree with your idea that there should be a lot more uniqueness to not just weapon families but archetypes as well, I think adding more factors besides essentially just perks would go a long way, this video was moreso an academic exercise than anything else, but I appreciate your insight!
this video cleared the minion wave front of TL’s nexus and got Weibo to world’s finals 🔥🔥🔥 THANK YOU AEGIS I LOVE YOU
we need this for subclasses/classes
Please give Titans some flavor and an identity 🙏
@@embelished_meister500I feel like Titans should really lean into offering "support" that keeps the fight going like having the ability to spawn ammo for the team innately in their kit. This would allow them to offer support that is different from Warlock and Hunter, but it's just as valuable as what they can offer.
@@thatonepenguinperson618I want different Titan subclasses to have access to their own different elemental banners like banner of war but they would give different buffs. Titan could be the Frontline support unit that the rest of the team rallies around to get the benefit of their aoe buffs sort of like an anchor for the fireteam
I think there is objectively no reasons video like this shouldn’t be featured and addressed in a TWID. Easy communication W
at this point the sandbox team should hire you. really good video!
This was really cool. Would love to see more stuff like this
So much thought and work given to this. Great work!
I like how the slopes of the lines in this video are in units of microhertz
Ngl brotha I got so much respect for you now after this video🙏
aegis is the last bungie employee left
I say this all the time, just remember, the sandbox team's job is the tinker with the sandbox. If they make it perfect or nearly perfect (which ain't too hard), then they're out of a job.
Could they then primarily be refocused onto other things like expanding the sandbox and making it more interesting? Yes. Is management going to see it that way? Who knows, and they ain't about to take that risk. So instead they take it slow.
Plus management is very 'sandbox complexity' adverse. They did that once with the original warmind cell/charges of light/elemental well mods (which were amazing and only failed because they made them completely fomo/inaccessible to most players who didn't participate in those seasons), and then management decided they didn't like it and completely canned complexity and build diversity as a whole.
So if they make the current sandbox perfect now then they REALLY make more of themselves unemployed, cause management ain't about to go for lots of interesting and complex build crafting as a part of the sandbox anymore.
How I have not seen this video yet? Got something great to listen to while fixing my car.
We don’t deserve this legend. He does too much for us. Thank you! ❤
It's great seeing you apply a lot of your analysis to the "big picture". Hopefully this AT LEAST starts more internal discussions, some guns have felt so redundant or just *extremly* niche rn, it's kinda sad.
Just hire this man already
Bungie should pull a quick backup, of their current settings; Then change this according to this video for a few patches, and see player feedback.
Also; HUGE respect to you. That's amazing work and research!
I clicked thinking this was a short video, so glad I was wrong
Smgs need a lot of pve love
As always, excellent video! Although, one of the main flaws of the game that I think is the reason we don't see good weapon balancing is due to perk variations and buildcrafting. About buildcrafting: we have so many weapons and weapon perks that interact strongly with our build, but few buildcrafting options to make our weapons stronger in non-DPS scenarios while also being interesring to use. I would be interested to see a similar video of you trying to balance other aspects of the sandbox, like mods, exotic armors and weapons, and suclasses!
aegis, can you fix the sandbox of my marriage next?
This is incredible. I would LOVE if bungie did these changes
This was awesome, great work.
Holy fuck. Aegis I love you
Any chance you're gonna do this for abilities as well? I'd love to see your take on Supers and Grenades (covering all abilities including aspects and things would be a little too much maybe).
Yeah I might
Bungie about to take some notes, for sure
I wish
You know Aegis cooked when this video is nearly two fucking hours long and it’s still an imperfect science. What a mess of a game we all love, lmao.
Imagine if bungie hired people with this dedication
Bungo hire this guy plz
As good as support autos are, I still think they need a damage buff against red bars along with every other auto (maybe less for 720s). Proccing both the frame buff and circle of life still feels weak compared to just using Rufus’ Fury
Edit: or change velocity to be quicker
Good video, the work is insane.
I think the main problem is currently the ability spam. Weapons needs change but, the abilities/subclass need a complete rework, 4.0 or something, prismatic is nowhere near balanced.
I just want Coriolis Force to be consistent.
Bungie? Where you at? This is for you
First off great job, this is amazing, secondly I’ve watched this about 1.5-2 times total, the only thing I’m not seeing that might effect some of there reasoning for current damage values are TTK and how to make each frame viable inside of an archetype of weapon, or if they should even bother. I say that because since you mentioned all range values were pretty much even on archetypes, then wouldn’t someone theoretically pick the faster hand cannon since both would theoretically 1 shot in high level content? I think that would also make for a great video to be honest, unless it was here and I just happened to miss it, my apologies if so.
Aegis is cooking with this one
I'm sitting here trying to figure out where I recognized your name and I realized after looking you up I used to watch you play destiny when I was heavy into it 😭 now I'm just a fortnite guy 😂😂
Posting this comment to boost the algorithm. Hopefully bungie sees this and takes notes
god tier yap mr relic
Not been playing for half a year now (still haven't bought FS), but props Aegis.
Waiting here now a month later for the Revenant meta predictions/changes
You should be working for Bungie! You are amazing.
I hate where precision linears are at because they NEED FTTC/TT to even think about being relevant and competing with the burst linears. My idea is to remove FTTC/TT from all current and future precision linears and just increase their reserves by 60%-80%.
Interesting suggestion, that would open them to double damage perks (think in the vein of Cornered/Surrounded Scintillation) too
The fact I willingly watch this video but dread math lectures 💀
If Bungie used even a 1/3 of this data o7
i wish this shit was real. recently, ive been using an under over/ kinetic tremors multimach, and while probably being my favorite primary in the game right now, just hits awful. thank you for the smg love.
I really hope the devs watch this
new correct opinion just dropped
Thank you for giving me my new opinion Aegis 😎😎😎
how is this man not employed at bungie in the PvE sandbox team
One of my biggest concerns with the LFR’s is that they functionally competes against snipers for ranged damage and I often find myself even wondering why they added this weapon archetype to the game instead of just working on snipers for example still hunt and whisper of the worm are 100% getting picked over any exotic or legendary linear we have for precision boss dps, realistically if bungie removed LFR’s from the game only about 1-7% of the player base would actually even care because good players know that LFR’s are rarely if ever the best for the current situation ahead of them
I think a big portion of weapon balance needs to come from general enemy/encounter changes. If we get more encounters that force certain weapons like Witness and Crota, as opposed to bosses like Morgeth that anything can be used on, we might see a better distribution of viable options. I feel that in today's d2 endgame, burst damage is far favored over total damage.
This video is you basically pissing in a violon.
O _ O
The DEFINITIVE yap session
You may be able to fix the game… but i will never be able to fix her😔
This is my sleep ASMR
i saw green number on ikelos i must click
So I'm breaking my comment up into two parts, the initial feelings I have prior and my thoughts after watching.
For initial thoughts... I think that on paper this idea is a cool one. I am looking forward to watching just to hear how you break it all down. With that said, I think something that is relevant but not exactly.... "measurable" is Bungie's habits around buffs and nerfs to anything in the game (weapons, abilities, enemies, etc.). From what I can tell they issue changes based on how much of a threat it is to the diversity of the larger game's sandbox. So a weapon that isn't good but is used by everyone is more likely to be nerfed than a weapon that is four times better, but only used by a select few. They will also issue changes to weapons or abilities that people like yourself use for the speedrun type stuff if they fear that a broken tactic is potentially too easy to exploit or otherwise dangerous to the larger casual player's sandbox. Ultimately, regardless of which weapon is "the best" a moderately coherent team could take damn near any set of legendary heavy weapons and complete pretty much any raid or raid encounter, or dungeon encounter. We can debate weather or not that should be the case or not, but it is still true. So therefore most of the changes that Bungie makes are aimed at keeping that crowd generally using at least a somewhat diverse set of loadouts. And typically when the larger playerbase struggles with something like Ghosts of the Deep or Salvation's Edge, their struggle has less to do with the difference between a Aggressive Rocket Frame vs. an Adaptive, and has more to do with how they approach the game overall. So I'm always a bit skeptical of people's requests to buff or nerf this n' that because it is usually focused on their perception of the game rather than on a holistic view of the game as a whole. They rarely take on a view that values a random player in the Comsodrome with no endgame aspirations as equal to a player who races for World's First Contest clears.
After listening through... I think that while this is certainly an ambitious project and interesting... I think you focus a bit too much on the ideal lab situation and not enough on how this works in the real world. This is the bane of all data driven research... Data is a snapshot. It is a point in time, and when we work with data we're essentially working outside of time. Time is paused while we examine and adjust our data points, and then we unpause it to see what happens after we made our changes. Did it go how we predicted? Regardless, how does it help us learn more and how does it guide future questions and explorations? . I think in this scenario, some interpretive work would have been helpful. Exploring thought experiments for why things are the way they are and not just accepting the easy answer of "Bungie doesn't know what they're doing". Because obviously they do know, or we wouldn't be rounding a ten year anniversary for their franchise. That isn't to say they don't make mistakes, but I think it is disingenuous at worst, or unfair at best, to treat the game's sandbox as nonsensical. You wouldn't be making this video if it was. There is a lot of material out there that goes into how and why game developement works the way it does, and why it produces things that sometimes seem backwards or nonsensical. Destiny 2 isn't the only game with a bizzare sandbox that falls apart under this level of scrutiny. So why is that?
I don't question your math, but I think there is more to weapon tuning than math. As I said, Bungie focuses of usage rates more than anything when it comes to nerfs. They didn't nerf LFRs back in the day because they were numerically OP. They nerfed them because the vast majority of the player base was using them almost exclusively over anything else. We can pick apart why the players were doing that all we want, but ultimately that the players were doing it is why they were nerfed. And it's why they will probably not be buffed to be competitive for a long time.
I think you also take into account things like Pack Hunter too much in how you balance weapon families and to me that says less about Rockets/Swords, and more about Pack Hunter. It is not a reasonable stance to balance entire weapon families around exotics that players may not own or ever use. You might use them a lot, raiders and hyper efficient GM players might use them a lot. But most players aren't going to be min-maxing rocket builds around Gjally. So it doesn't make sense to balance swords or rockets around Pack Hunter. Rather, it would make far more sense to balance Pack Hunter around other swords and rockets. It should not be doing so much heavy lifting to the point that it feels mandatory to use it in a competitive setting.
On a different topic, the reason Bungie releases new weapons as OP is because if they don't then most players won't use them. Even if they are OP (like for example, the new healing auto rifle which is flat better and pretty good but isn't used).
So if we take a habit of buff/nerfs that focus less on actual power and more on meta dominance, and a tendency to release new weapons as OP, I think this would likely explain a lot of the really random looking charts that you found. It would explain why some things are allowed to be OP and others aren't. Because those OP things are not warping the meta in a way they find problematic. We can debate if we agree with them or not, but I think it is unfair to criticize their model as "nonsensical" because it is an organic one that has evovlved over time with the playerbase. The playerbase as a whole largely does not make use of the edge/fringe cases that your using to justify your changes. Players on the high end do to varying degrees. But most players do not. Most players just play the game and use what they want to use. And what they use is driven more by modifiers in a nightfall or which weapons have champion mods this season than anything else.
TLDR: I think that in a vacuum where you can pause time, your changes make sense. I think that the weirdness you're finding is rooted in the game's life as a whole in real time. It's a story about how the meta shifted over time.
For sure, I agree that honing in too much on data can be problematic when looking at the wider scheme of game design, and I did try to account for that by using some 'feel factors' (like what I anchored primaries around), but I do think that some of these changes would just make the game more interesting to play overall
@@TheAegisRelic I don't disagree with that last part, it would definitely be more interesting! And just to be clear, I know you try to make sure you account for the limitations of data, and it's something I appreciate about your content in general. I just think in this area there is a lot of organic "balancing" that has less to do with this type of data and more to do with how they themselves perceive how people are using things.
With that said, have you thought about actually working in design on stuff like this?
Thanks for taking the time to read and reply!
You help make being part of this community worthwhile. Thank you Aegis relic from VoG.
Agree heartily yet linears need a bigger buff.
next vid finna be "Attempting to Fix the Destiny Communities lack of huzz"
And people said Rick had long intros XD
Next Video: Can Aegis fix Destiny 2 before Rick Kackis finishes his Intro
Also I actually really like these spreadsheet analysis. Really nice way to visualise how the sandbox is doing
Distinguishing power weapon archetypes better is needed but should be small incremental nerfs to fix them not buffs. We can already 1 phase everything fairly easy.
aw hell nah aegis relic didn't get the memo we aint playing this game no more
At this point they should just hire Aegis as "Sandbox Co Lead"
Did you say a few months ago that you planned to create a video series showcasing end game builds utilizing every exotic? That sounded interesting.
I did but I ran out of time that season, maybe another time
@@TheAegisRelic You got a brand-new season right now, but it's pretty heavy on Stasis, so maybe not this one. Would love to see it happen one day.
Make this man a dev
Good morning aegis
All weapons should be farmable without patterns, but you need to collect materials by dismantling dropped weapons, perks as modules, weapon frames, origin perk or masterwork module as a result of dismantling