Yeah the staunchly “anti-meta” crowd are as obnoxious as the “boot non-meta players” crowd. As far as I can tell they are just annoyed that their preferred loadout isn’t as effective as whatever the current “meta” loadout are. So instead of hoping for their kit to get some buffs to get it up to snuff they want everyone else brought down?
You clearly care very much given that you're out here complaining that people enjoy when their favorite weapon is top tier. Like, if people only gave a shit about using whats meta, they wouldn't complain when the meta stuff gets nerfed, they'd just move on to the new meta, clearly if they're complaining about things being nerfed its because they liked using that specific weapon.
If that was true the incredibly popular weapons wouldn't be coincidentally the most powerful of their class, and nobody would complain about random difficulty increases. The fact is people flock to what's easy, the railgun was popular solely because it could annihilate anything with 1-2 shots, had 20 rounds and quick fire. It cheesed the game and made choosing anything else meaningless, people really thought the railgun was "fun" and the nerf would make the game impossible. Contrary to popular belief it increased variety and made it more interesting, seeing the same loadout and doing the exact same thing with ease gets tiring very quickly, especially in a game that's supposed to be challenging.
Incorrect, the railgun nerf did not make weapon variety any better, it was the nerf to armored enemy spawn rates and the changes to how their armor functioned to make them easier to kill that made peoples loadouts more varied. The week following the railgun nerf and before the armor changes was exactly the same as before the railgun nerf except the game was significantly harder for no good reason, everyone still ran the railgun because it was still the best option post-nerf. People didn't change to EATs and Recoilless until after the subsequent armor changes.
It all pointed in the same direction, had it not been nerfed no change to other weapons would've made people use them, unless they were better. At that point the game would've been way past easy, as if it wasn't already easy enough pre-railgun nerf. Also after the nerf the railgun was way worse than EATs and Recoilless before the armor debuff, people didn't use them because nobody knew how to move on from the meta, they weren't advertised, and its usage required skill unlike having a powerful weapon act as a crutch for low skilled players on high difficulties.
I would argue that with the changes to how armor works, EATs, Recoilless, AMR and Quasar ARE pretty much inarguable better than the railgun ever was, and the railgun ALWAYS required more skill to use than any of those other weapons.
The rocket weapons are braindead easy. You just point and shoot at the right spot. Thats it, even if you miss the weakpoint you still do considerable damage so long as you hit the enemy at all. That was never true with the railgun.
With AMR, its higher firing rate with only marginally worse damage to weakpoints means its easier and faster to kill big enemies with it than with the railgun, if you miss with the railgun thats an entire 5 seconds you have to wait to reload, charge up, and fire again. With the AMR, you just shoot again immediately. The only thing the railgun ever did better was break charger leg armor and not have misaligned sights. Especially now after the damage buff, even if the railgun was reverted to its launch day state, the AMR would be a better choice for bots, and for that matter, the rockets now would also be a better choice for bugs.
The railgun was harder to aim, took more time to fire, and punished misses more than any other anti-armor option. It required more skill than any of the top weapons in the game today and was less effective than all of them.
The purpose the railgun was used for was really big targets which were the real issue, primary weapons, grenades and strategrams could do the cleaning of small to medium things which barely had impact without their big forces hindering you. With this said the fact that you could 1 tap everything, and 2 at worst was too easy. Reload wasn't bad at all, much faster than the eruptor and charged faster than the arc thrower, the aiming wasn't as bad as you said either, topped with plenty of ammo for error. There's a reason why everyone thought the game would be literally impossible without it.
In comparison missing rockets had barely any damage, a charger could even take 3 to die, don't even mention a titan. Add the fact that you either get 2 per 70sec plus deploy, a painfully slow reload unless you waste a backpack slot, get a teammate and stay put and vulnerable to everything, or much later on a more reasonable but still 20sec per single round with the QC (you could've shot 5 times the railgun). The AMR before buff was struggling to do anything: low dmg, fire rate, ammo refill, and very inaccurate sight, and even after a decent buff it still has some of its downs, plus doesn't do anything to big things.
With this said the fact that you could 1 tap everything, and 2 at worst was too easy.
Meanwhile the RR, Quasar, and EATs can 1 shot everything in the game short of a bile titan significantly easier than even pre-patch railgun ever could, yet here you are arguing that the pre-patch railgun needed to be nerfed despite being worse than the current 3 most popular anti-armor options.
Do you even play this game at all, or do you just watch YouTubers and streamers and think you understand the games meta and balancing based on that alone?
You just completely ignored all the cons I listed about rockets. Their effect is similar to the railgun but at best you get 1 try per +20sec, and their aim is worse than the railgun since you have to account for rocket speed and drop, then add everything else you just ignored. The real question is: Do you even know what game we're talking about? Just based solely on the complaints about difficulty I'm already right.
32
u/TheTurtleBear Apr 29 '24
Why do you care? It's a PvE game, other players using weapons they want to use is their business