For a weapon that costs 100 event coins, which is a sizeable amount regardless of how much event coins you have earned during your gameplay, one thing that I have always had a problem with was the overall purpose of gas launchers.
I don't actually hate the design of gas launchers. In fact, I actually love the overall idea of being able to shoot gas of your choosing (confusion, burning, poison) but nowadays I feel like it's moot.
While the gas launcher was released for as long as I can remember, the fact of the matter is that the gas launcher's efficiency and use was doomed from the start. Back then, not only were there less people on era but less people also owned gas mask/ didn't realize the significance of gas masks.
Fast forward to now and all you see are those "hardcore" sparrers that strut around with their 12.5k, 20k or whatever gas masks as a result of sparring at the spar complex. You can even get gas masks from MPX (which even though it requires lower wins, it is offset by the fact that there are comparatively less people in MPX than in complex) and as a reward from pking a certain amount of people. Of course, the option of buying a mask still remains. (Also wanted to note that since the value of a gralat has massively decreased as this game progressed post- bar, gas masks are actually pretty easy to obtain with gralats as well.)
With the prevalence of gas masks, even if a pker enters a base and gets killed by a gas launcher user, he/ she can always put their handy dandy gas masks and pretty much destroy 90% of a gas launcher's purpose.
From my understanding, there is a grenade mode for the gas launcher. While I personally like this mode as well, I feel like GA's need to do something that focuses on the "gas" aspect of the launcher, not just try and accommodate problems by sticking on new and alternate modes for a gun that has the word "gas" in it.
One suggestion is to let gas masks filter out the gas that you can place down but let the gas from a gas launcher affect someone wearing a mask.
Of course, this would mean that alternate descriptions/ gasses would have to be made to justify this. (Ex. "Enhanced gas" or even a different type of gas)
Another suggestion is to make it so that the gas launcher has x% chance of penetrating the mask and make the wearer suffer the effects.
Anyways, I am curious as to how owners of the gas launchers use it themselves. Do you guys actually bother using the gas mode or do you primarily use it to attack people across walls?
Food for thought.
~thyme