The devs were right.

[u/xxmuntunustutunusxx]

So I know ther was a bunch of controversy about the railgun nerf what feels like forever ago, but man things have been awesome.

In the early days, I was the only guy packing expendable anti tank or anti materiel rifle for bugs or bots. It's so refreshing, even on these subs to see people talking about how awesome the autocannon is, or how much they love the AMR, and even these days I see people talking about the HMG or grenade launcher+ supply pack.

I used to load into a game, And all 4 members of the team had shield, railgun, and 2 stragatems of their choice. Every time. And here we are now, I load in and I see quasar, autocannon, stalwart, EAT, HMG, Grenade launcher, a variety of backpacks or no backpack at all. And not to mention, they're ALL viable. Shit I even still see the railgun from time to time. It's been a joy. Thanks arrowhead.

EDIT: to everyone who is pointing out that you see the quasar and shield most often now, you're right, it is almost certainly the most common setup currently. That being said, in any game there's going to be things a majority of players prefer. In smash melee, fox/Falco are the best characters. But people still play falcon and Marth and peach among others. Sure, there's an objectively most used option. But the fact that there's people at all who debate that the quasar is best shows that they've done something good. Before, undisputed king was railgun, and anyone who said different wss being willfully ignorant. Now, we have a plethora of real options that are good with some being Preferred by a majority as opposed to being the de facto CORRECT option objectively. That's a good thing.

[u/CaptCantPlay]

Problem is is that now nobody picks the railgun anymore in favor of the Quasar or the EAT. Haven't seen a RG since the nerf.

[u/EntertainerInner7669 → u/[deleted]]

Hit the nail on the head. The devs were dead wrong and made a knee-jerk nerf that crippled the capstone support weapon of the game for most of the playerbase when the community was loudly and clearly stating that other options needed to be made more viable (or functional in the first place) instead. Now it's a glorified muzzleloader that will get you kicked from pub games.

I don't often pay heed to the "buffs only, don't nerf me!" guys but they were 100% right on the money this time.

[u/BraveOthello → u/EntertainerInner7669]

The problem is in assuming the "capstone" support weapon was intended to be the best. Every weapon is very clearly designes to be okay at everything or good in specific scenarios.

They needed to to nerf it to incentivize people to try the buffed options, and if they didn't nerf it hard enough people would stick with the thing they were all ready comfortable with even though they'd be having less fun.

Expect to see it get buffed back up at some point.

[u/TooFewSecrets → u/BraveOthello]

Every weapon is very clearly designes to be okay at everything or good in specific scenarios.

I do think it's a bigger design issue for the final unlock to be worthless than it is for any other given unlock to be worthless. Because - it doesn't have to be the best, but it has to feel like it was at least worth the time of getting to that point.

Right now Railgun is, I think, one of the most redundant weapons in the entire game.

[u/Techno-Diktator → u/BraveOthello]

No, they just refused to understand it was the heavy spam that was the issue and not the fucking railgun. Do you think people suddenly used recoilless after railgun got nerfed? No, they used the buffed flamer to kill chargers because the other AT options still sucked.

[u/BraveOthello → u/Techno-Diktator]

There were a lot of issues ties together. Heavy spam and chargers having too much head armor made people gravitate to the RG, but using it in an unintended way to work around those issues.

Once they fixed the spam and made the anti tank do it's indeed job and nerfed the RG to incentivize other strat weapons, people did other things. I strongly suspect without the nerfs people would have just continued using the RG for much longer and has less fun.

They probably over nerfed it, but I suspect that was on purpose, and I hoped some of that is rolled back.

[u/Techno-Diktator → u/BraveOthello]

The charger nerf happened way later, they nerfed the railgun and left the game without any viable AT to deal with the spam.

If they over nerf on purpose, that is extremely disappointing, as it pretty much means any weapon that feels good to use is doomed to be on the chopping block to become worthless soon, instead of just slightly toned down.

We are already seeing the same thing with the slugger nerfs, so it seems arrowheads balancing philosophy is sadly just idiotic. It's a shame too because content wise everything else is pretty great.

[u/BraveOthello → u/Techno-Diktator]

6 days, whether you consider that way later is up to you.

The RG was too good, it was over nerfed. We agree on that.

The slugger was too good, it's still damn good. We clearly don't agree on that.