I'm going to try to work on editing weapon attributes soon. I don't know 100% if it's going to be doable since a lot of things are done clientside. However, here's two things I'm considering changing:

1. Pistol fire rate.
I know a lot of people are using autofire scripts for their pistol shots. While blocking scripting isn't feasible for a number of reasons, what we can do (like we did with haymaker blocking) is reduce its efficacy.
Dual Pistols currently can be fired at 11.42 shots per second. With each pistol shot doing 36 damage, this gives them a DPS of 412, sustained at 212 DPS--and 1080 damage per clip.
Compare this to the Uzi at 320 damage per second, 183 sustained, with 1000 damage per clip.
Even though it's a secondary weapon, dual pistols are more powerful than the Uzi--a primary weapon.

I've done some polling with different people to see what an average click per second is. The average I've seen seems to be around 7-8 clicks per second--a good 25% under the dual pistols max fire rate of 11.42 per second. If you want to test your own clicks per second, check out this site and report back with your results.
So, I'm thinking of reducing pistol fire rate by up to 25%. It will reduce the efficacy of scripts and keep the dualies from being so overpowered as a secondary weapon.
Thoughts, opinions, clicks-per-second data?

2. Hunting Rifle Spread
Increasing the hunting rifle spread to match old-L4D1 is something that's been talked about for quite a while. Given that I have multiple reasons to go digging in the l4d2 bins to mess with this now, I'll probably get around to it.
I'm looking for opinions on whether this should happen or not, and if the 1-HR limit should be removed if we increase the spread.

3. Other weapon changes?
Deagles could be nerfed if there was a good way to do it. Having a mini-HR in your pocket is kind of silly. Ideas and opinions on other weapon changes would be appreciated.

Edit: Personally I get about 6-7 clicks per second, depending on how hard I'm trying.

Edited once, 11/12/10 - 1:44am.

Problems with nerfing the pistols is they become even weaker relative to melee weapons which can already take out an entire horde in just a few swings, but if the reduction is just to ~9 clicks per second it probably wont be a problem as /real/ use of the pistols wont be affected much.

I think hunting rifle spread should be increased to that of the military sniper. We don't need to reduce it how extreme it was in L4D1. While it was a fun challenge to use the hunting rifle like this, I think it would prevent the hunting rifle's use in many of the faster paced areas in L4D2 (such as the running events). The limit of 1 definitely should not be removed. The point of this limit wasn't just to stop people from carrying 4 HRs all of the time (which really isn't a huge issue), but to prevent people from grabbing 4 HRs right before a tank spawns, raping the tank from 10 miles away, then picking their old guns back up.

Increased damage falloff (so the deagle is a bit less like the HR) and slightly reduced accuracy when down (so it is still accurate enough to clear at around 2/3 of its current range when down).

Just my personal opinion here, as far as pistols scripts go I really don't have much input as I don't script my weapons at all, but I have rarely seen people pick double pistols over melee so I'm not too sure how much of an issue it is.

Hr wise though, I can actually talk about. Am I for changing the spread? Yes, the spread shouldnt be as accurate as it is while running as the game currently has it, I've been able to just weave around and pick si b/c of how narrow the spread is. As for the limit, pretty much what canada said. If I do recall blight ran 4 hrs 1 time and absolutely destroyed a tank before it could do anything. So keep the hr cap.

I remember when we scrimmed TsW vs Blight, and on SF4 everyone took a hunting rifle for the first tank, both teams got 0 damage with their tank, then they switched back. It continued on for the other two tanks in the finale as well (one or two may have gotten close spawns and done a small amount of damage with SI support).

That was the game I realized we needed to add a limit too it.

i really havent seen many ppl use pistols alot but it does save ammo for hr

wtf at nerfing hr tho seriously wtf, but making it like the military is like taking 4 bullets out of the hr, might as well just give us that gun instead of the hr, fail

i rarely see ppl use deags, i personally pick one up all the time

I really don't see people take dual pistols, nor seen anyone complain about it being OP, so why would you consider decreasing firing rate? As for HR, I'd love the spread to be increased to l4d1 version, but it'd be more fair to make it military sniper spread probably. I really just don't think you should be able to run and gun with HR, but stand still to hit from a distance like a normal sniper should be.

9:27 AM - sygnus: Increasing the hunting rifle spread to match old-L4D1 is something that's been talked about for quite a while. Given that I have multiple reasons to go digging in the l4d2 bins to mess with this now, I'll probably get around to it.
I'm looking for opinions on whether this should happen or not, and if the 1-HR limit should be removed if we increase the spread.
9:27 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: honestly
9:27 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: I don't think they should nerf hf
9:27 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: I think they should buff tanks
9:27 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: to match l4d1 tanks
9:28 AM - sygnus: you can't really fix the animations
9:28 AM - sygnus: that's like the only real difference
9:28 AM - sygnus: + the rock animations
9:28 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: it's not the animations, the weapons in this game does more dmg to tanks
9:28 AM - sygnus: oh
9:28 AM - sygnus: well yea
9:28 AM - sygnus: but
9:29 AM - sygnus: i forgot about that ok
9:29 AM - sygnus: rofl
9:29 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: lmao
9:29 AM - sygnus: so just give the tank like
9:29 AM - sygnus: 2k more hp?
9:29 AM - cooljerk[5¹]: yeah

Thanks for posting a chatlog instead of just writing opinions. Of course, this is an appeal to authority, so you needed to use cooljerk's name.
Is there something I don't know about in terms of damage being dealt to tanks in L4D1? Because as far as I can tell all the weapon statistics are 100% the same. The only difference I see is Silenced SMG for L4D2. Which is a considerable amount of DPS, but it's not hugely different from pumpshotgun or HR, which are the same in both games (and nobody uses SMG anyhow).

If _one_ weapon is overpowered, we should nerf the one weapon instead of making everything else overpowered to fit the one weapon. Imagine if we scaled all of the SI health to fit the Autoshotgun's 1500 DPS.

The shotguns do 11.5DPS more than the L4D1 shotguns, and the silenced SMG does 80DPS more but also has a higher damage falloff and spread so it is lower at range. And hunting rifle DPS is the exact same between the games. Sustained DPS is a much lower difference as well.


I think the point would be that they would only be reduced to a speed at which someone could actually fire them, so the pistols would only actually receive a nerf for people who have pistol scripts.

If anything the HR should be made more like the military sniper in terms of spread if not the old l4d1 HR spread. The ******* guns has better accuracy than the smgs when running...

EDIT: I wouldn't be against slowing down the pistol speed even though I do use a script. Only real reason I use it so I don't have to spam click

Edited once, 11/12/10 - 12:47pm.

If nobody's interested in the pistol reduced fire rate I'll probably just not make it default--or not make it CG standard. It's something we've had requested in different regions. It is pretty blatantly an advantage given only to scripters, though.

If I'm fighting a tank with the standard SMG I usually use up my SMG clip, then switch to dualies full time for the higher DPS with scripts.

I completely agree with the dual pistol changes, it won't effect legit players much, if at all.

But I gotta hop on the HR bandwagon and say make it like the military sniper. A L4D1 era sniper would be utterly useless in gauntlets, or during DK's 3 middle maps.

I think that L4D1 tanks have an easier time simply because people are usually running shotties (due to their slight advantage and the excess amount of hunters) while in L4D2 most people are running Uzis. If everyone ran Uzis in L4D1 then people wouldn't be saying it's easier to play L4D1 tanks. Add to the fact that you have potential to get spitters during L4D2 tanks and you get tanks which are easier to kite and kill from a distance due to excess Uzis.

I think the HR is fine as it is. If you really want to nerf it then fine, but it's not all that big of a deal to me. Just means people'll have to change their styles up a bit.

So 1. don't care, don't script and don't ever run into it as a complaint in the game (not that I play that much anymore)

2. I would have to play with this first of course, and evaluate the actual changes you make, but ATM I think any drastic change is a ******ed idea. I'm of the opinion that the HR was changed for a reason in l4d2. You are playing against a completely different lineup of Special Infected. Hunters now have a quicker repounce, boomers are able to boom quickly after being melee'd, and the fact that jockey hitboxes are still terrible and you can only level a charger makes the strategies against these infected commonly just dodging while shooting them (to be on the safe side). Now if you **** with the HR, it pretty much makes whoever is carrying the HR an easy target. They won't be able to use the same strategy as the other weapons and makes deadstopping or leveling a crucial (but dangerous) tactic. This of course, is all in reference to accuracy. You can change the damage to your hearts content as long as it stays in the range of other T1 weapons.

3. Limit melee weapons and stop being pussies about it. If someone even asks me to put up a case for this I know confogl is on its deathbed and I don't even care what changes you decide to make anymore.


Oh, and I average about 6/7 clicks per second as well.

Having hunting rifle spread change to military spread only makes sense...if you scrim what so ever in a game you can see the person with hr almost always top frag. Why is that, because you can run full speed and rape face that's why. At least with the shotgun it isn't semi-automatic accurate at long rage.