An exploration of FPS mechanics: Why BHVR keeps on screwing up their 'guns'
The way a weapon works in a game is critical to its gamefeel. In a fast paced game with mostly fleeing targets, the mechanics of hardcore recoil, bloom and deviation make little sense, which makes it no wonder that BHVR's first experiment with them failed so hard.
Luckily, Deathgarden patched its guns to make them a bit less RNG.
BHVR... clearly doesn't understand FPS games? Which is why they keep making the same mistake: They make a rapid fire weapon that has extremely high deviation (basically the max angle at which a projectile can be fired at, which limits how precise you can be with it, especially at range), recoil (how much the weapon throws of your aim and messes with your camera itself), and bloom (how much the deviation increases as you fire, and potentially how much more random it gets) in a game that doesn't need these features, simply because they know guns have them in other games.
But why do guns have these features in other games, and why do they make NO sense for the things BHVR is doing?
Deviation is the most simple to explain, its a limit on how good the gun can be at range while still allowing it to hurt at range. A gun with high deviation is less consistent the further out you are. This is important in a game like say... counterstrike, because it means that you can have something like an SMG try to fight a shotgun at range without nothing happening, but lose consistently to a sniper rifle, but less important in DBD. At long range, the fact the projectile has travel distance already is what is limiting its usage at a distance. Unlike in Counterstrike, your target isn't standing still firing back, which means that the effect of projectile travel time already serves as the hard limit to ranged accuracy. And its more 'fair' too, it has an actual interaction because if you are good at prediction you can still hit, you just need to be better at it the further out you are. Randomly missing despite being 'dead on' sucks, and doesn't make sense in DBD's design space. But also, its critical to remember Trickster is effectively 'scoping' when he shoots: he has an animation delay to get ready to fire, and is slowed down when firing. This means that it is extra egregious to have deviation. Sure, his scope isn't as bad as Huntress, but because his projectiles require track aim rather than flick aim, it means that the hit lag is extra bad at range. TL;DR? The fact he takes more than one hit to down, and has to aim like huntress, means he doesn't need deviation to make him 'fair' at long range. Even with pinpoint accuracy he would be fine.
Recoil makes even less sense. Recoil exists to make it harder to track a situation as you fire more. That is it. It rewards you with clearer information when you stop firing to reward you for letting up and not emptying the mag. In games with spray patterns it rewards you for understanding the weapons, but as far as I can tell the knives don't have spray patterns so that sucks and is out. Because Trickster is intended to rapid fire while chasing, he needs to be able to track to do it. The fact he jerks around and you need to control the camera just makes him a pain.
But the bloom is the worst bit, and its the thing BHVR KEEPS SCREWING UP.
Bloom is there to reward you for not panicking and firing in controlled bursts despite being scared and under fire. You give up the lowest possible TTK to reduce your actual TTK in a manner that is unintuitive and rewards the best player. But because the trickster is never panicking, bloom just exists to punish spamshots. The problem? YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SPAMSHOT IN THESE GAMES. Extreme bloom makes no sense on trickster because his entire design is completely antithetical to the idea of controlled short bursts of lethality, that is what huntress does. Huntress has the AK doing double taps down long. Trickster is meant to be the guy with the LMG spraying anyone who refuses to break LOS.
This is why, in most shooters, the close range 'spray and pray' weapons DO have bloom, so you can tap out hits long range (but, again, deviation AND projectile travel time make that impossible in DBD, especially because your target is ALWAYS moving), but its never larger than the body of your target at the gun's optimal range, so as to reward you for what your doing. In DBD, if an attack has multiple hits to kill, there is no reason to let go of the trigger because no one is shooting back. So it just sucks and feels random to miss. Worse, because Trickster's move is so slowed down while getting ready to shoot, and because he has an animation to get ready to fire, bloom is EXTRA inappropriate.
This is why any game where your supposed to be running around chasing each other doesn't have severe bloom for most of its guns.
But trickster's bloom is some of the most absurd I have seen in any game. It literally results in more deviation than holding M1 down on an AK in CS:GO and running forward firing.
It also commits a lot of other no-nos with bloom: You hit max bloom before you can reach your minimum TTK, for example, meaning you never can get an injure state without extreme variance. A weapon's bloom should NEVER be larger than the body at optimal range before your minimum TTK is over or the gun becomes a 'random clown fiesta.' Even inaccurate guns like say... the M4 in CS:GO will accurately two tap the head every time if you know how to use it. You hit maximum bloom the SECOND you fire twice, you have no intermediate 'ramp up' bloom so your either firing at normal deviation or max deviation, which is frustrating. And the bloom's extreme, even at point blank rank it always will be larger than your target's hitbox, which is too much bloom. You literally can't miss a shot point blank in CS:GO firing a sniper rifle JUMPING. It amazes me you can miss a survivor when your pillbox is touching and your looking right at them.
This isn't a 'Trickster is weak' post (but he is), this is a 'BHVR, stop making guns that feel awful to shoot. People like to HIT WHAT THEY ARE AIMING AT when they use them correctly' post. The ultimate issue is BHVR keeps making weapons that when you use them 'correctly' still are random, so there is never a scenario where you can actually use the weapon correctly.
Fixing deviation, recoil, and bloom won't fix trickster (though fixing deviation and bloom, and maybe leaving recoil, ideally taking it out, would at least make his power USABLE, as right now because you have no control over your shots it is iterally a liability), but it is absolutely necessary to make him not feel like garbage. These core issues are way more fundamental than 'balance.'
They will forever be 'incorrect' until these fundamental rules are unbroken.
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