Where's your competitive spirit Triggerman? someone takes opposition OUTSIDE your little box and you can't handle it? This is WAR, get your words out as weapons and fight. And the one with more mastery of language, etiquette, and reasonable argument will win. Deal with it and bring your words to the table in a better way than Hyperbole and Ad Homonym. But don't get mad when someone is combating is thinking outside the box to combat his opponents. One of the best strategies in life conflicts is to step outside your opponents game and beat them on another level outside the understood battlefield.
Now, for the argument against Alicia's gun Rock and Roll, I think they're fairly reasonable:
1. What I am about to say does not mean that I believe Alicia's other weapons are any good. I'm aware that Novera and Eager are very under-powered, and that Smoking Daisy is very niche. But that does not mean a character cannot have an overpowered weapon, try not to think in a linear, black and white fashion. Realize that it's possible for her to have both crappy AND overpowered weapons AT THE SAME TIME.
2. A weapon or item doesn't exist in isolation, it's part of a greater package with the wielders capabilities and opponents. And this is what makes something complete, incomplete, underpowered or overpowered. In the case of the R&R it has good range and fairly nice spread, so it's not hard to miss, and it does a lot of damage with a high RoF. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't in combination with Hero Killer and a character who basically flies making it hard to hit her but, since you have to be blind to miss with the spread of R&R, she can usually hit you, over and over and over whilst in the air. This means she can fly over a whole party without running the risk of getting into CQC. She has a high powered gun, with range further than she can jump and is hard to miss with, she risks nothing as other characters in the game who ALSO have good weapons.
Kuzman has Lichbogun but is slow and lumbering and has no mobility. Great weapon balanced by the characters limitations. Same for Konstantin, he has Tolchock, which is a great weapon, but he is also slow and has no mobility. If you are overwhelmed you can, at least, run away from him and heal up. Also ranged characters can hit him since he is so immobile, he has weaknesses which means there is risk. Ginebra has Schleuder and, as we saw, this gun was nerfed and her health in Cougar form was reduced, because it was a powerful combination that was nearly unbeatable. She could wound you, wun up, transform and get your aleph. Now she can't do that as easily because she can die in transformation with only 60 health. She has to risk now, weaknesses as well as strengths. All three of these are examples of characters with strong weapons that are VERY good but have weaknesses and limitations as well that balance their whole "package" out. Compared to other characters in the game Alicia's kit coupled with the R&R is vastly more superior than them and she has very little weaknesses.
3. Numbers, numbers, numbers. The reason the nerfed Ginebra was only partially due to player feedback. You don't REALLY think developers make their decisions based solely on players complaining do you? No, it's also in conjunction with their internal data they record. Now we've all been playing this game for quite a while now. And I see more Alicias now than Ginebras pre nerf. Regardless of your opinions, the data will not lie. Now I'm only guessing here, but I have a feeling that a whole shit ton of Antagonists games are won with Alicia using R&R, more so than Alicia's without R&R (of course because her first two guns are horrible, and no one wants to use SD anymore even though it takes finesse to be badass with it) and also more than ANY other character as antagonists. This is what I've seen in my limitid experience with the game. I'm guessing many of you have, if you're honest, seen the same thing.
To add to this, I'm willing to bet their data will show a disproportionate amount of won games with the R&R, again, more so than any other character in the game. This has weight, whether you like it or not, or whether you agree with it or not. There is a REASON this data will be this way, and as developers they must look to see what this reason is. And it's fairly obvious as I've thoroughly described in point 2 above.
4. Solo Queue and coordination. Much of the arguments against nerfing R&R are, "Well if you can coordinate you have a chance to beat her." Don't be silly, no ones making the argument that she is IMPOSSIBLE to defeat, she's not a constantly glowing yellow indestructible one shotting force. This is hyperbolic. She is overpowerewd, as in most things in gaming, it means that, despite being possible to overcome, she has things stacked in her favor to the point that makes it less likely to beat. But there's something to be said if one character in the game takes the entire concerted effort of a team to beat and absolutely none of the others necessarily do. If that's your argument then how do you explain all the other characters who don't? And then there's the solo queue issue, wherein it's hard to coordinate with the three other players if you are in randoms. Hard to get coordinated against the only character that it takes whole team to beat when you are in randoms. It's also hard to communicate with those randoms when there is no built in chat function, only "come with me", "Need Ammo", "Help" and "ok".
5. "You don't like losing", who does? While I admit I dislike PvP, there is a distinct difference to losing to other characters in this game over losing to R&R. Other characters are actually balanced (now for the most part), so you can form a strategy other then, "She's too powerful let's all zerg her and maybe we'll get a kill.". With other characters you can have two characters on mission duties, one character on adds and another on antag duty, heck maybe two characters on antag duty if the player is good, three is stretching it and four means the character is broken. Other characters I lose to I know why I lost, and it may be because I overextended, didn't play to my strengths, and to the weaknesses of the enemy character, or maybe we had a baby Harec and I should have been more aggressive, maybe the enemy wasn't so skilled but we didn't have enough add control. But with Alicia using R&R, there is nothing I can think of. Just a superior weapon flying in the air dishing out more damage than I can do to her, more accurate because she has spread, and any weapon I would have that also has spread is guaranteed to do less damage or a weapon that cannot reach her (I.E. like Rak's primary weapon). The weapon goes through shields, bounces off walls, there really is little you can do with such a high damage yielding weapon from this high mobility target with a weapon that has little aim skill necessary. So when you lose, you lose because you chose a crappier character, meaning EVERY other character aside from Alicia with R&R. You lose because the character has very little weaknesses, risk very little in order to secure kills and can do so practically uncontested, because R&R along with flying is overpowered, again for the reasons adequately pointed out to in point 2.
6. Solutions. Well we can all agree the first thing would be to buff her other three weapons, although I would say not to the point of R&R. We've already talked about what could be buffed about them. I would like to point out what the problem of R&R is. High damage from good distance from the sky. My suggestion would be either to add a steeper falloff so that she has to come closer and take a risk like all other characters, to have a weakness like the rest of us. If she wants to fire from a distance she can, but the damage will be low, in the 20's and 30's at the far end and maybe 40's and 50's at the medium range and then the big damage up to the closer third, the 90's we all see. Keep in mind she's safe in the air and can reach you very easily with little need for accuracy AND it bounces.
Konstantin can, if he wants, shoot at you from across the map, but it doesn't do much damage, I know because I have a maxed out Tolchock. Harec get's one bullet and has 60 health and is stuck in his perch until he comes back down. Blah blah, etc... other characters have weakness and risk. To balance R&R I say falloff.
7. Final point. The whole, "She finally is good in the game don't nerf her gun!". To that I say that she was good before to. She had Smoking Daisy, and also the other guns need to be buffed instead.
There's also another point of absurdity to that statement. You would be willing to sacrifice the rest for the sake of the one? I would think nerfing her over invalidating all other characters would be a solution, if anything, over the other. You could have one character who needs to be looked at because she had an OP weapon that had to be nerfed, and although it sucks for that ONE character, it will eventually be fixed and re-balanced. OR, in a more absurd option, you could have ONE weapon that reins over them all and all the rest of the character have a high chance of losing against that ONE weapon. Sacrifice the man on the rails or the people on the train? Which one is the rational choice? Both are not great, but at least in the situation of the R&R and Alicia, the "man can be resurrected at a later date."
Now, please respond addressing the 6 points. Try not to avoid one, as it is a sign is a disingenuous argument due to the fact that they are tied together. And if you agree with me, please let MSE know. If you agree and have another solution please share it.
And try and be a good sport.
