What are some of the parameters we use when determining a weapon's power? Do we look at impact damage, rate of fire, armor penetration, damage type?
TL;DROverpower is judged mainly by damage, rate of fire, spread and range, tested against small ships, but VFX and audio can also make a weapon feel stronger or weaker than it is.
Yeah, I guess all of those things. When we think of a weapon being overpowered, I tend to think, okay, that's the DPS, that's the time to kill of all the ships. The smaller ships usually, if I sink, so your weapon is overpowered. That's how I test it anyway.
Give it a little go on those small ships. Step one is what should this weapon be doing? If it's a cannon and it's overpowered, it's probably either doing too much damage or it's firing too fast. So an overpowered cannon is something different to an overpowered repeater. They'll probably have very different behaviours that are causing that overpowered weapon.
The easiest thing is checking the damage, checking the rate of fire, and then the spread, I suppose. It's the accuracy, the range. So how easy is it to hit with this weapon, and how much does it do damage-wise over a short period of time?
I mean, you can get other areas that aren't the natural statistics that cause the feeling of a weapon being overpowered. Some things you don't tend to think of, like the VFX or the audio. Some VFX might not be playing as you intended. They might be less intrusive, which gives the feeling that it's more powerful than it is. And the same for the audio. Quite often, people perceive weapon strength to the sound it's making. It sounds silly, but it is something. If you have a big sniper rifle in the game and it just goes [weak sound], then people tend to think, well, that's a rubbish sniper rifle. It could be doing all the damage in the world. But that audio really sells it, and if that's not on point as well, that can sometimes factor into it.
It all ties it all together. And it's like quite a lot of games, actually, if you dig into the details or you have access behind the scenes, some of the weapons are clones of each other. And it's just the visuals and the audio that change. You'll have people arguing that Weapon X is better than Weapon Y and it's not, it's the same, it's just the whole package that makes it feel that way.