The BAR.

[John98]

I think the bar was better at

15 clip lol even if i did complain about the size

[BabyGhost]

Side note: How can guns be balanced while still retaining variety since there are so many guns on the market now?

It's probably going to be very difficult. New guns shouldn't have been released without balancing the other ones first. Look how many of the old weapons that became obsolete. Some of the old weapons are getting buffed to meet today's gun standards, but it's going to be a lot of work. New guns should have went for uniqueness as well. Not just a copy of another weapon but with slightly different stats. The most notable example is the K180 vs Five Seven. Surprisingly, Five Seven seems more popular than K180. Some new guns were quite interesting, and probably the most unique weapon ever to come to era was the Ultrice Gun. But that Ultrice Gun got obsolete quickly in stats. A VIP weapon costing $7500 for a small chance of slowness with terrible fire rate and damage. A dart gun is far much better to use than the Ultrice Gun.

[Meph]

In fact, BAR should have never appeared to era in the first place. For a ridiculous price with overpowered stats wasn't initially chaos for era. But it was a slow build up to where it was now. BAR won't stay rare, it will just slowly multiply. Now the BAR users have expanded greatly. The BAR, despite being one of the most expensive weapons in the game, is now one of the more common weapons in the game. Tell me the last time you went basing and never saw a BAR user.

As you know, I agree with you full-heartedly on this.

I’m sure you remember my posts on the forums back then talking about how much I’d love to nerf the BAR, but wouldn’t do it because I felt it would screw over the BAR owners. I truly think that nobody wanted the BAR nerfed more than me. Its presence on the server goes against everything the title ‘Gun Admin’ stands for.

Gun choices are supposed to be out of player preference. Meaning, the player chooses a gun that works for them. The BAR created a situation where this decision was made out of necessity in order to compete. Even the BAR owners at first didn’t want to use it, and I’m sure they would have rather spent the money elsewhere. But in order to compete, they felt that they had to make that purchase.

Regardless of how skilled somebody is, the BAR provides an advantage that should have never been provided. I honestly don’t know what the hell the person was thinking when they set the stats. We all tend to think it was “money”. However, if this was really the motive, they should have had the foresight to see that, not only were they ruining gameplay, but they were shooting themselves in the foot. They made the BAR one of the last purchases that a player will ever make.

After all, why would anybody need to purchase another gun once they have the BAR? If it were released with balanced stats that only gave it a slight advantage, players would be constantly trying to find a gun that works better for them. Every gun release, they’d be thinking: “This could be the one”, and keep on purchasing new guns to find their glass slipper. But instead, they’ve taken the guesswork out of the equation. Players know that when they purchase the BAR, they’re making an investment that will give them a better chance of victory than any can possibly offer.

As much as I hated it, those players already made their purchase. I couldn’t find an ethical way to nerf it without widespread approval from the server. (http://puu.sh/a7XkL/646fa59379.png)
It would be like me coming in to work my shift at McDonalds, clocking in, and then walking around the dining room removing 1 patty from everybody’s Big Mac and saying, “Sorry, the guys that work morning crew didn’t know what they were doing.”

What's worse is that there are now guns spammier and even less skillful than the BAR.

Bingo.

While I couldn’t do anything with the BAR, I remember I could sleep at night knowing that it was just one gun. For the most part, the rest of the guns were level enough that I could work with, and still maintain some level of skill-based play because I would have control of every gun that would come up in the future. As long as I maintained a check-and-balance with every gun that comes after it, the server would keep its skill-based standards in play.

Of course, I took leave in February of 2013 to help my wife finish her pregnancy, and in recovery. I came back seven months later to find that not everybody has my standards. I came back to find that, instead of trying to maintain the standards that enforced skill-based play, they lowered them to try to compete with the BAR. I came back to find that it was no longer just one gun.

I feel somewhat responsible, because I think I should have given some guidance before leaving. Like I mentioned in some of my other posts, I think the title “Gun Admin” was undefined, and they just ran with what their interpretation of it was.

When I see somebody in the position “Guns Admin”, I expect them to do what I did, and put the guns through appropriate testing phases before their release. I expect them to think about the gun they’re going to release—what tier it is, what type of gun it is, and how much it will cost. Then compare it to the other guns on the server that share the same tier, type, and price range; using them as a benchmark.

Then tweak that gun to produce something unique, while not overpowering or under powering the guns within that benchmark—and this takes time. I remember I’d put in anywhere from five to nine hours on every gun to produce something unique while ensuring that it remained within the bounds of the guns from the same cloth.

Again- I stayed true to the definition of ‘Guns Admin’; I don’t think the position was clearly defined when they threw in a replacement. So I understand why this has happened.

Side note: How can guns be balanced while still retaining variety since there are so many guns on the market now?

First, you’d have to find a reasonable starting point. To find a starting point, one would have to first question their own motives: “What do I want to accomplish?”

I
If their goal is to lead the server down the narrow path of pay2win and keep inching further away from skill-based play, they’ve already got their starting point right now. They just have to continue producing guns with the low standards they’ve already got, and continue lowering the standards with every new wave of guns, and making older guns obsolete.

This makes players’ older purchases worthless, and paints a picture that their current purchase will eventually be worthless, because they’ll expect the standards to be lowered again with the next wave of guns.
Once they hit that point of releasing the next wave of guns, they can do one of two things:

• Meet that expectation and ruin gameplay some more.
• Fail to meet that expectation and lose sales, and waste the resources invested in making those new guns.

This vicious cycle will repeat itself until we find this whole conversation a moot point, because our guns will be so far removed from skill-based play that people won’t remember what skill-based play is.

II
If their goal is to bring the server back to skill-based play and balance the guns with this standard in mind, they’re going to have to modify the guns globally and create a new starting point. The one we have now has very little variety to spark the interest of anybody that wants skill-based play.

Fortunately, this won’t ruin anybody’s purchase- if every gun is nerfed equally, they all have the same respective stats to one-another. The real problem with guns right now isn’t that they’re powerful, it’s that people can achieve victory using cheap tactics such as spamming. Low freeze on these guns is what makes spamming effective, since their movement isn’t impeded and they have no repercussions for doing it. This said, I would start with freeze.

If you added 0.04 freeze to every gun on the server, spamming on the server would decrease tremendously. While they would still be able to do it, it wouldn’t be as effective of a technique, since they would be more vulnerable while they were holding their fire button down. To put it in perspective:

• BAR would go from 0.20 to 0.24 freeze, putting it at about the current freeze of an AK47(0.25). So just envision an AK47 dealing 10 damage.
• Shipka would go from 0.21 to 0.25, which is exactly the current freeze of an ACR(0.25).
• Souizen would go from 0.12 to 0.16—which is the current freeze of a MetalStorm(0.16).
• Vulcan Minigun would go from 0.10 to 0.14, which is about the current freeze of a Ghost M4(0.145).
• Respectively, the guns mentioned here would be: AK47(0.29), ACR(0.29), MetalStorm(0.20), GhostM4(0.185)

Spamming would still be possible, but not as effective as it currently is. People would be forced to apply more technique than simply holding their buttons down. And, while it would still be possible with guns such as the Souizen and Vulcan Minigun, they’d be much slower than they currently are, and they’re already met with counter stats that would be more prominently evident (Souizen’s long reload, or Minigun’s low damage).

Once this issue is addressed, and everybody’s not focusing on spamming, they’ll begin focusing on the other stats that make a gun unique, and relieve the Gun Admins from the pressure of having to compromise freeze so that people would make the purchase. The players would be more appreciative of these, and instead, make their purchases based on things such as clip size, reload freeze, spread, and rate of fire. Hell—even the graphic would play a large role in stats—the bullet being positioned at the barrel enables longer guns to shoot over walls, and shorter guns to wreak havoc close-range, and emphasize spread more.

Our society needs to identify what it wants, and put faith in somebody to see through that it happens.
You can't dance around the elephant in the room forever.

[Rockstar]

I 110% agree with you Meph. You've summed it up completely.

[Zexo]

Take the biggest games in F2P gaming, League of Legends, TF2, etc. They nerf and balance all the time. No one gets refunds on RP and stuff.

A GA'S job is to balance the game. There's been complaints about the BAR for years already and about how spammy AND high damage it was. It's about time the nerf came about. You should be lucky it came with balancing buffs to try to even it out. Bitzsam said this is a test, not permanent. Don't get too worried yet.

We kind of all know what a BAR is by this point in the game...

Lower standards you argue? All newer guns are lower standards in my opinion. Guns this spammy like miniguns and gm4s haven't been released before because they used to be seen as too OP. Attempts to balance through nerfs can be seen as raising the standard, aiming for a skill-based game. Not p2w.

Refusal to hear counterarguments is seen as ignorant and immature. This is a forum. It's meant for multi-way discussion, not just complaints.

As a player of LoL and TF2 in which i have a lot of experience i can tell you those nerfs are completely different. LoL champs being nerfed is not at all bad since they are extremely easy to get. TF2 items? pfft please you can choose whatever item you want from a large selection and buy it from a bot at cheap as crap prices. the thing with graal is that people pay about 70$ for the item wheras in LoL and Tf2, etc its worth 5-10$

[Coolkiz22]

With these stat changes, the BAR did get more a nerf than a buff, but that isn't the biggest issue here. The BAR changes have been made too late, resulting huge riot among the community. If these changes have been made sooner, the backlash wouldn't be as severe. As the era community has developed the sense of "Get the most expensive weapon in the game to win". The BAR defined era balancing of what some players like to call Pay2Win. Either Pay2Win or "Grind2Win". All what mostly mattered was that you had the most expensive weapon in the game. Drastically breaking balance between non paying player vs a paying player. If both players were skilled but had different weapons, the player with the more expensive gun would be more likely to win. That's the obvious logic of era's balancing.

In fact, BAR should have never appeared to era in the first place. For a ridiculous price with overpowered stats wasn't initially chaos for era. But it was a slow build up to where it was now. BAR won't stay rare, it will just slowly multiply. Now the BAR users have expanded greatly. The BAR, despite being one of the most expensive weapons in the game, is now one of the more common weapons in the game. Tell me the last time you went basing and never saw a BAR user.

You can earn money for making something that's practically "Pay2Win". But you can't expect positive results from your community. I don't see a reverse coming for the BAR. But the players who paid for the BAR are now affected by the results. What I advise for gun buyers is to purchase expensive weapons with extreme caution. If you think the weapon is overpowered, then don't use real money for it. There have been several overpowered guns that got nerfed. But the weapons that are underpowered get buffed too. Go for balance. Not sheer power.

you are the best player relation admin ever. others would defend other admins but u said what u personaly think of this. thank you this riot will be goimg for a really long time tho

[Vacci]

As a player of LoL and TF2 in which i have a lot of experience i can tell you those nerfs are completely different. LoL champs being nerfed is not at all bad since they are extremely easy to get. TF2 items? pfft please you can choose whatever item you want from a large selection and buy it from a bot at cheap as crap prices. the thing with graal is that people pay about 70$ for the item wheras in LoL and Tf2, etc its worth 5-10$

"easy to get" that's because it's fairly cheap. 6300 IP to get a champion via the free route. Whatever sources I'm finding (because I don't personallly play LoL) finding it takes around 2 weeks, or 20 hours of gameplay to save up that much. 20 hours of earning gralats in Era can also get you a decently priced gun. Also, $70 gets you a number of champions in LoL, while in Era you can also get multiple cheaper guns. But, everyone here decides to put all their eggs in one basket, the BAR, and it got nerfed. As previously stated, no one forced players to spend so much on a BAR. They could have gone with other, more balanced guns that are less likely to get nerfed.

Also, LoL is a better example of a well balanced game. New champions attempt to bring to the game things that previously weren't available and the constant patches are in order to maintain balance and variety within the game. If it was more imbalanced, you'd see the same 5 champions get picked every single time (like we have the BAR, and some other high priced options) and players without that specific team would lose majority of the time being too weak for the overpowered ones.

---

if every gun is nerfed equally, they all have the same respective stats to one-another.

I feel like if this were put into effect, there'd be cries from many players and we'd be like the parents that are saying "trust us, it's good for you" But seriously, this argument is hard to counter. Sure, people would be unhappy that guns were nerfed in general, but at the end of the day, their expensive guns are still stronger than the cheaper ones. It's a simple way to counter the buildup of spam on the server, as well as promote skill a little more with freeze becoming a noteworthy stat once again.

[htlv010]

what is BAR's exact stats?

[Lord Greg]

"easy to get" that's because it's fairly cheap. 6300 IP to get a champion via the free route. Whatever sources I'm finding (because I don't personallly play LoL) finding it takes around 2 weeks, or 20 hours of gameplay to save up that much. 20 hours of earning gralats in Era can also get you a decently priced gun. Also, $70 gets you a number of champions in LoL, while in Era you can also get multiple cheaper guns. But, everyone here decides to put all their eggs in one basket, the BAR, and it got nerfed. As previously stated, no one forced players to spend so much on a BAR. They could have gone with other, more balanced guns that are less likely to get nerfed.

Also, LoL is a better example of a well balanced game. New champions attempt to bring to the game things that previously weren't available and the constant patches are in order to maintain balance and variety within the game. If it was more imbalanced, you'd see the same 5 champions get picked every single time (like we have the BAR, and some other high priced options) and players without that specific team would lose majority of the time being too weak for the overpowered ones.

---

I feel like if this were put into effect, there'd be cries from many players and we'd be like the parents that are saying "trust us, it's good for you" But seriously, this argument is hard to counter. Sure, people would be unhappy that guns were nerfed in general, but at the end of the day, their expensive guns are still stronger than the cheaper ones. It's a simple way to counter the buildup of spam on the server, as well as promote skill a little more with freeze becoming a noteworthy stat once again.

That is not right though. Players bought a gun for what it was. There were never any warning when buying saying that guns may be subject to change so it should remain as it was when purchased.

[TopDawg]

I say just remove bar and refund all owners. Simple fix, why complicate it.