Why replace the mg with the ARC?

Both hagar and electro fall under the "area of effect" category, where spread doesn't matter, as the intention is to cause splash over a large area.

It matters because regardless the intended category, people will still improvise with them and at that point luck becomes a deciding factor. Even without a spread, splash over large area is almost guaranteed with any rapid fire weapon because nobody stands still or holds their mouse at a perfect fixed position at every single time. You might as well be in control of what area you're splashing on, there's no need to rely on a randomized spread system to make the spread happen which just ruins it for other potential uses and lowers their improvisation value for us "supermans".

The position that al weapons should be perfectly predictable isn't really any better than the position that these weapons are effectively limited in range and use by design; these are game design choices, not better and worse options. Mario, thanks for clarifying that the intent of the spread is to limit their range, and, thus, their effectiveness outside of specific close-range situations.

After some thought on my opinion, I like that some weapons are significantly more dangerous at range because it forces players to fight for territory and limits the effectiveness of avoiding the action. As it's balanced now, I think the mg complements that balance nicely. The unique weapons and fight for the powerful weapons and pickups are, in my opinion, what makes Xonotic an interesting and unique arena shooter.

I really like what you guys did to the original Nexuiz so I hope you keep doing what you're doing.

As for the original topic; arc and machine gun are both technically hitscan beam weapons, it doesn't make sense to have 2 of the same kind of weapon in the core balance, even if they have minor differences.
Machine gun will remain in the extended balance.

Well, it's at least it's not a removal, but I'm still going to miss the range especially on the alt-fire.

   
(The tiny dot just below the "Vortex perch" is from the alt-fire, shooting from the team base's flag "room". It's not as great as Vortex damage wise, but it also doesn't have as much of a refire time. Quite helpful for the scenario of someone camping there, hogging Vortex respawns, and sniping at people jumping from the launch ramps. In a lot of other situations I think the range will be handy.)

I am worried that once you remove randomness from hagar it will become so overpowered in a capable player's hands that it needs to get nerfed beyond usability for casual players...

Speaking from experience with the experimental Arc, it won't be any much easier to use due to the slow travel speed. I haven't been able to chain hit more than 4 projectiles in air (playing against Cirruz/Taleb though) which is 80dmg, but I'm sure someone would master it eventually like what's a possibility with any weapon really.

I'm really not feeling it with the Arc. Machine Gun is the only hit scan gun that has a similar effective range (alt-fire) to the Vortex. Sure, close range fights (primary fire) it loses against Crylink/Mortar/Electro/Devastator, though I'm not really seeing much of a use for a(nother) close/limited range weapon.

If the Machine Gun deals too little damage, the fix would be increasing the damage output of the gun.

If the Machine Gun needs to interrupt the movement of the target, the fix would be adjusting the effects of the hits.

If the Machine Gun has spread, and spread needs to be removed from weapons, the fix would be removing the spread.

With Arc instead of MG, the Vortex becomes really advantageous. More so than it already is. As to what extended balance actually is, I'm not sure.

Only thing I dislike about Arc is the migration of the "reload/delay" factor from machinegun. It's kind of like we're trying to get rid of machinegun by adding another weapon that's lacking in the same exact manner. The overheat (reload) and the delay after you stop firing kind of rebel each other in making the gun less useful. If you let go of the fire, you can't refire instantly (this delay is inconsistent with the tickrate of the weapon and that's how it may feel "off") - so you're usually better off just holding the fire button whenever engaging with an opponent. However if you do that, then the weapon will eventually overload and you waste a lot of ammo by not being able to let go of the fire and adjust your aim. The only solid argument for overheat's existence (that I've heard so far) is game modes that have infinite ammo. I think this is where the priorities and logic fall short. Sure, you could spam Arc with a mutator like that, but what else would you expect from "infinite ammo"? Reading back a little bit what I said, in contrast I think this delay feature in combination with overheat is actually what contributes into making it more spammy in core gameplay, since careful aim/firing adjustment is punished with a delay and getting around that delay is punished with an overheat cooldown. This is a very awkward combination of restrictions on that weapon.

Additionally, I think that Arc's primary is trying too hard to not be a copy from Quake (some kind of Quakephobia exaggeration going on) and we ended up with a hitscan spaghetti shaft. It could very well be a straight hitscan beam for close/mid range, which would essentially be a machinegun without a spread and limited distance. Low/mid hitscan is the role that the gun is (should be) filling after all. What the arc effect essentially does is that it makes it harder to hit mid range and easier to hit close range. Also, if you aim with movement keys only without moving the mouse - the beam won't arc at all. So it's half way there already.

You'd basically have to rename the gun if the beam no longer arced, as it wouldn't be the arc. It'd be more like a rapid fire vortex in the hands of anyone capable of aiming.
As for overheating: Yes, this is intended to mimic machine gun's reloading. The overall intention with the arc is to replace the machine gun, so it has been designed to be somewhat similar in balance.

The arc is in need of further rebalancing, so it probably won't be a core weapon in the next release.

You'd basically have to rename the gun if the beam no longer arced, as it wouldn't be the arc. It'd be more like a rapid fire vortex in the hands of anyone capable of aiming.

Admittedly Arc is a cool name and I'm especially fond of the icon, but I'm more attached to the idea of rapid fire (mid range) vortex.

As for overheating: Yes, this is intended to mimic machine gun's reloading. The overall intention with the arc is to replace the machine gun, so it has been designed to be somewhat similar in balance.

Any chance of disregarding that intention entirely? Let's just make a weapon that emphasizes on track aiming, an element that Xonotic definitely lacks and needs. Machinegun has proven not to be a role model for this.

The arc is in need of further rebalancing, so it probably won't be a core weapon in the next release.

Whats the delay for though? Hit me up at irc and drag me to your server or whatever it takes.

Balancing should never be done by one person... It's a community effort that finds the best overall default settings for the weapon. Balancing them to one person's tastes or ideals would lead to more balance threads and flame wars than I'd care to imagine.
While Xonotic may be lacking in the highly accurate aim tracking weapons, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Rewarding skilled players too much will just lead to new players quitting (and I still recall jumping around on Erbium with you, just showed that the weapon is still too powerful).

The bending is a core part of the weapon, to remove it would be to remove the Arc.

As a new player myself, I don't really think a strong lg-type weapon would be rewarding skilled players *too* much (if thats even a thing). Getting killed by an lg isn't too crazy, it isn't as intimidating as being bounced in the air by a mortar and getting railed midair. If anything is gonna intimidate new players it's gonna be how crazy the spam can get with combos. But I don't think that's a bad thing, combos are awesome. The only 'problem' is that lg type weapons take a lot of practice and dedication to master.

Balancing should never be done by one person... It's a community effort that finds the best overall default settings for the weapon.

Balancing can absolutely be done by just one person, but whatever chances they do needs to be available for criticism. We don't need a ten fucking guys to come up with a formula and mathematics for the balance. It's not rocket science. We can start with an idea of one guy, test it, disregard it if it sucks and then try another guy's idea. Then after countless of tested ideas we can look back and see if we could combine the pros from various previously tested ideas for a better entity. Best way to test it among competitive players is to hold a cup with an experimental balance for example.

Only community effort we see here are people saying their immediate opinions about one of the few ever existing versions of Arc and not actual criticism for making it better. For there to be any hope for a fruitful community effort, there needs to be a proper experimental server available for everyone, not just a closed circle of people. There's only been like three versions of Arc available to public and most people have only ever seen and played with one of them, no version so far has been particularly satisfying for almost any group of people. We see inconsistent arguments regarding Arc, because people talk about different kinds of Arcs that they've stumbled upon in different servers. We need to redirect the focus into only one kind of Arc, one which will be constantly changed and tweaked based on criticism and testing, latter being more important.

As a new player myself, I don't really think a strong lg-type weapon would be rewarding skilled players *too* much (if thats even a thing). Getting killed by an lg isn't too crazy, it isn't as intimidating as being bounced in the air by a mortar and getting railed midair. If anything is gonna intimidate new players it's gonna be how crazy the spam can get with combos. But I don't think that's a bad thing, combos are awesome. The only 'problem' is that lg type weapons take a lot of practice and dedication to master.

I feel that you're evaluating the "LG" with how you would use that weapon individually with no regard to the existence of other weapons. You could for example wipe some LG on your opponent to deal little bit of damage and then finish them off with a rocket immediately. This kind of usage doesn't require master level skill and accuracy with it, it doesn't matter if you can't hit a long sequence of LG on your opponent because you're bringing it's efficiency forth with how you handle other weapons you have in combination with it.

As a new player myself, I don't really think a strong lg-type weapon would be rewarding skilled players *too* much (if thats even a thing). Getting killed by an lg isn't too crazy, it isn't as intimidating as being bounced in the air by a mortar and getting railed midair. If anything is gonna intimidate new players it's gonna be how crazy the spam can get with combos. But I don't think that's a bad thing, combos are awesome. The only 'problem' is that lg type weapons take a lot of practice and dedication to master.

I feel that you're evaluating the "LG" with how you would use that weapon individually with no regard to the existence of other weapons. You could for example wipe some LG on your opponent to deal little bit of damage and then finish them off with a rocket immediately. This kind of usage doesn't require master level skill and accuracy with it, it doesn't matter if you can't hit a long sequence of LG on your opponent because you're bringing it's efficiency forth with how you handle other weapons you have in combination with it.

True I guess. But that's a good argument for the arc not being an uber hardcore aim heavy weapon.

You're not gonna be able to engineer it very well for game play if you only have one player to test it against, especially if they're not somewhat equally skilled.
The benefit of having multiple or many players around is being able to see and use it in action while tweaking, while everyone throws ideas around.
Tweaking can be done alone, but the process of criticism and improvements from others is then much slower, and personally, getting constantly killed by you again on some laggy private server doesn't sound very productive.

True I guess. But that's a good argument for the arc not being an uber hardcore aim heavy weapon.

It doesn't have to be, but it can be in the right hands. If you have the skills to use it on it's own then you should be able to reap it's benefits, but it should not be completely useless in a beginner's hands either. LG in Quake Live is not a very good example, because it's pretty much in the "strongest weapon" position. LG accuracy in QL is one of the deciding factors in a high/medium skill duel and therefore a very important weapon. Needless to say, Xonotic's Arc doesn't need to be like this, CPMA's LG isn't like this, but it could still fill the void in track aiming in Xonotic.

Tweaking can be done alone, but the process of criticism and improvements from others is then much slower, and personally, getting constantly killed by you again on some laggy private server doesn't sound very productive.

Slow progress would be much better than a stagnated progress. Quit complaining and let's do something about it. We need a server in EU as well NA and people playing in it, you make it sound like this is impossible.

You're right about one thing; Too much time is spent discussing and arguing over tasks, instead of getting them done.

If you want to fix the Arc balance, nobody's stopping you.

If you want to fix the Arc balance, nobody's stopping you.

This "do it yourself" response is getting kind of old, although I'm flattered that you think I should be entrusted with the task, let alone know how to do it.

The "do it yourself" response comes from there being 3 semi active developers, and many time consuming tasks requiring attention.
Sure, throwing up servers in multiple locations and inviting the community to them for testing isn't impossible, but as you say, few actually know how to tweak the balance, so it isn't something that can be left in other's hands.

Or you could be honest and say when you're not interested in someone's suggestion, in which case I could take the hint and seek for one of the two other semi active developers. You don't have to worry about my emotions when denied.

and many time consuming tasks requiring attention.

:>

Ah I see, developers now can not have fun anymore with the game they dev for. They should do the tasks that other people deem more important.

That's the kind of attitude that made a certain other developer leave, twice. Ungh.

We are running low on developers... Again. And seemingly, server admins. As well as players.

Ah I see, developers now can not have fun anymore with the game they dev for. They should do the tasks that other people deem more important.

Like I said, communication is key. If one suggestion doesn't sound appealing then out with it right away. No need to make excuses like "don't have time, maybe do it yourself" while very well knowing that the suggester is not capable of doing it themselves. People talk to devs expressly, because they know they can work with it assuming they have time and interest.

Balance is always a hot topic... Everyone has suggestions/demands, but it's very tedious and time consuming changing the official balance. Not something we want to do constantly, when many other aspects of the game are in dire need of improvement.
The demanding part isn't really happening in this specific thread, but there are times when people have gone so far as to flame the developers on IRC for not getting things done quickly.

I also think it would be sad to assume that nobody else in the entire community is able to help with any of these tasks (especially the suggestions related to balance configuration, where only time and little knowledge is required to submit the changes).