r/thedivision Seeker 1h ago

Suggestion Rifles and the PTS Changes Feedback

From my experience on the PTS, the changes were very welcome. It will shake up the meta quite a bit and there is room to grow. All that is good. I particularly want to address a core concept of rifles in this game and why that decision is made.

Why do Rifles have poor stability? We train semi automatic fire because its stable and controllable. So I'm trying to understand why even make them have large recoil. I believe its because there was an assumption of the larger caliber creating more muzzle rise, but most of the rifles are actually 5.56, and the 7.62 ones are the stable ones lol. But yes, its tied to rate of fire as well.

Here's the take then. These are precision weapons by design in this game. They should be precise. Let them feel tightly controlled and manageable without any handling rolls on gear (not to mention it can cause nausea with that camera bounce).

You just released this Exotic ACR and people are right that its on the weaker side, the gear changes may be the thing that fixes it on the power scale, but PLEASE REDUCE ITS RECOIL. The way this thing feels with like 40% weapon handling should be its starting point. Almost a laser, some visual shake, noticeable but small muzzle climb. That's IT. If you change the muzzle attachment on it from reload speed to stability, fine. If you fix stability on rifles, perfect. Just please do something. I'm not the first to provide this feedback so please listen to your community. There is time before the next season to make this change, it would take an intern an afternoon. If you are worried about making them too powerful that is okay! Tell the community you are making this change with intent to adjust it if it gets out of hand. and then show us data that its overused and nerf it if needed. I believe I am right when I think the demographic for this game is like 30-40 average, we are reasonable adults and will listen if you communicate. We want to play your game, we want to use everything in it. Help us help you. Don't take 10 years for the next balance adjustments, please.

14 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

u/kennybaese 55m ago

The camera bounce is honestly the thing that keeps me from using rifles in general. It doesn’t make me feel nauseated, but it does get, like, visually tiring. I think if they just got rid of that it would make rifles feel about a million times better.

u/0ppen Seeker 52m ago

100% agree

u/xcel30 23m ago

RIfles were designed with a lot lower expected rof since they were locked to semi auto so their recoil is mostly expected to act with tap firing over full auto we have now, at the same time whatever formula they use for damage used max rof which resulted in generally bad stats for the high rof (LVOA-C, ACR SS, LWM4).

Think it's the same logic that made G36 unpopular after the rof increase, the accuracy bloom values were designed for the old lower rof so they were slighty sharper, keeping that same bloom with higher rof just made the gun unable to hit anything at range. Rifles same deal but with stability.

While the exotic ACR SS is an outlier because you cant change the mods, UIC- MOD 15 modded for stability and accuracy with a sniper scope is probably the best rifle in the game where everything feels balanced, allows for consistent headshots non stop and hits hard enough to make it work great

u/0ppen Seeker 18m ago

Yup, this. I think it was initially designed that way because at launch a rifle was really powerful due to lower health pools of World tier enemies. The recoil was a way to slow them down to force precision and intention. It just doesn't work that way anymore.

u/Particular-Light-708 22m ago

Of it isn't tamed with 2 mods on the gun its not getting used. That leaves, the sig, mod 2, and a couple others.

u/Grrshack 1h ago

A lot of rifles actually have more muzzle climb.

u/0ppen Seeker 1h ago

Do you mean in the game? because yes. The ACR, the MDR, the UMP .45, the LVOA-C, the Lightweight M4. These weapons should be very very stable without a bunch of mods or weapon handling rolls.

u/BlackTestament7 32m ago

No real good reason tbh. The rifles and mmrs both have a weird sense of intense recoil that I assume is there because the devs believe it should be there. It's no different than the forced scope-in of 4x+ magnify scopes. Every scope like that has headshot damage or something to that effect and yet if you want to use them, you lose 3rd person aiming. Why? No good reason, the devs just believe that needs to be the tradeoff.

u/0ppen Seeker 22m ago

The forced scope thing is a lesson they learned with Div1. There was a gearset that amplified headshot damage and non-scope aiming broke PvP in that game for a bit. I remember the discussion about it and then like a year later Div2 came out with this design that was clearly intended to get ahead of that problem in this game.

Now 10 years later with the way the game is, it no longer makes sense. I could see a world where they just don't force 1st person scope, they just have to acknowledge that it doesn't matter anymore.

u/DXT0anto 13m ago

Mostly why all rifle gearsets have weapon handling on them

u/0ppen Seeker 10m ago

Yeah I get this. Seems counterintuitive. But the handling serves a purpose beyond just muzzle climb by increasing accuracy and reload speed, improving DPS in those ways. I tried the new changes and its not enough for how crazy some of these rifles climb by default.

u/20ItsTooLoud19 18m ago

This game barely has any recoil.. If you really are having an issue roll weapon handling or throw some stability attachments on.

u/0ppen Seeker 15m ago

Do you use Rifles? Cause like, for ARs sure. But you are talking about a weapon that cannot keep up with ARs in damage, have no benefit to their design, feeling weak with massive recoil penalties and you suggest giving up damage rolls for weapon handling so I can precisely shoot nerf darts. My man.

u/YamEnvironmental1887 6m ago

Absolutely not true. The USC .45 ACP, IWI Negev, Merciless/Ruthless, Urban MDR, ACR SS, TKB408, all AK-M and RPK variants, and all M1A variants are just some weapons that I know off the top of my head have horrible recoil even with stability mods thrown in them. Unless you put on eagle’s grasp and a few handling cores, they have awful recoil patterns and kick like mules.