I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this little guy. To me its kind of annoying, but I understand it being in the game for your sneaky types and those just getting into FPS gaming. What does everyone else think?
It's good, no doubt about it. I just kinda feel that it's a bit overpowered. It needs to be toned down a bit, for example: You should need more lock-ons to kill a pilot. Ya know?
It is primarily a weapon for mopping up NPC's at high speed. It can be particularly useful since many players seem to be mostly ignoring the grunts and spectres, and someone needs to kill them or else they'll eventually be a serious threat once they've reached a critical mass (I know, hack spectres when you can, but sometimes you just don't have time). The lockon mode is very lackluster against players (and rightly so). You're better off using it as a dumb pistol or maybe trying a trickshot by shooting your own frag nade out of the air. If you killed someone head-to-head with the smart pistol, then you could have achieved the same feat with the Hammond sidearm. Either that or the opponent is the worst shot ever and you get the eternity necessary to achieve a kill-lock. You're just at a distinct disadvantage against players in a head-to-head scenario, and ANY weapon will score you a kill in an ambush scenario where you catch them with their pants down.
I have to agree with King on this one, the lock on time for this thing is around 3 seconds. And then you just pull the trigger. As for General you say it loses in a one on one?, not entirely true. Remember this thing locks on to a pilots head, and those 3 shots take you down most of the time. Where if you are the one without the smart pistol, you have to hit 5 times and actually aim.
You can practically empty a whole mag into center-of-mass in the time it takes to lock 3 times. Might as well use the hammond. You'll be dead if you wait for the lock. edit: Also, against pilots. It locks onto center-of-mass. I've double checked some vids of players scoring full-lock kills against pilots with the smart pistol. They weren't getting headshots. I've also only observed center-of-mass locks against spectres. It only rakes in the headshots against grunts.
I'm sorry General, I was mistaken you are correct it does only auto headshot grunts. I did go back and look at a video that a friend of mine had. And I noticed that the guys who used the SMP did have a couple of cards active that made them more agile. For example one guys strategy was to lock onto you shoot, wall run re lock and shoot again. What I am most concerned about is how this weapon will hold up in times to come. Right now on the beta there is not a lot of team work, or communication at all. But just imagine a team where they have a two guys sticking together running around the map with this gun. And the auto killing grunts also becomes a issue in game types like arbitration. I played a game last night, where my team lost and players on the other team had scores about like this. Pilot kills: 2 Titan Kills: 1 AI kills: 30 And the first thing that ran through my mind was how in the world did they win and all their kills were AI kills. Maybe a adjustment needs to be made either on the gun or how many points AI kills are worth.
I think it's a little annoying, but avoidable. I hate the burn card it has though; that needs to be removed entirely.
The amped version is a bit much, since it seems to kill with two shots and locks on faster. However burn cards period have some crazy powerful stuff. Infinite grenades or perma-cloak for example. It really isn't far fair to compare the smart pistol to the amped smart pistol. edit: corrected typo
I hate it, for a few reasons: First of all, the fact that it completely removes the need to aim, a complete noob who can't aim has a chance of winning a gunfight against me because he can point in my direction, even if I'm in-front of him, lets say I'm reloading, if he wasn't using that thing I could try to avoid being hit and then kill him, which is very possible but with the smart pistol it's pretty much impossible. It also, a few times, helped people spot me. I look at the killcams when I get killed by that damn pistol, some people don't even see me, whether it's because I'm behind some smoke or on a titan, maybe just cloaked and hard to see at a certain place, they don't even need to see me as it just spots me for them. Another thing is the fact that I can't react if they lock on to me without me seeing them. It's not that rare for me that a guy shots me from behind, he's either generally a bad aimer or just couldn't aim that one time, then I turn around and kill him (years of playing CoD made me able to do that pretty fast...). With the smart pistol, if a guy is behind me (or to the side or even if I just miss him and he is in-front of me) and he aims at my general direction, he gets enough locks and as soon as he pulls the trigger it's done, I'm dead and can't do anything about it. It's like getting killed by a sniper... All those things are very situational though and in a face to face gunfight there isn't much of a chance for the guy to actually kill me with the auto-lock, so it's not a game breaker imo. TL;DR It's annoying but I can live with it. Not OP imo.
I can't stand this weapon, it goes against everything I love about FPS, especially FPS games on PC. I don't have a problem with the amped burn card version, since it seems to me that some of the other rare burn cards are even more laughably OP. In a fun way though. We were getting slaughtered by a guy who used his stryder burn card right at the start, until I died and used my amped mag launcher card. It was a blast. They need to change it so you either can't lock onto stealthed pilots, or locking onto pilots gives up your position on the minimap. Getting the drop on somebody does not automatically guarantee a kill for any other gun. It dramatically increases the likelihood but that's not the same thing. And then make the burn card about as rare as the amped mag launcher or the map hack card.
I don't view it as a problem myself. If someone gets me from behind, I don't really care what weapon they used. It was their advantage. If I miss them for a solid 3 seconds and they kill me with the pistol....well now I'm just embarrassed with my own performance there. It's not their gun.
The thing is, for me if someone gets me from behind, a few times I have a chance to try and either dodge and run away or turn around and kill him. With the Smart Pistol that's not even an option. I'm dead instantly.
I don't care if the other team have this gun in a game mode like attrition or pilot hunter, it's no big deal to kill the person attacking you. If however you are playing CTF and the other team has 2 or more people with smart pistols hiding away defending the flag it turns into a complete nightmare. You simply don't stand a chance ... unless you are actually on a team that understands how to use a titan in CTF which seems rare for me at the moment lol. I jump on a friendly titan and they just stand still, that drives me nuts too. It's also a pain in marked for death because the whole enemy team run at you with smart pistols lol. They need to increase the number of locks required to lock onto a pilot, or they need to slow down the amount of time it takes to lock onto a pilot ... or better still get rid of it. I hate that gun so much and when it comes up on a daily I hate myself for having to use it, it removes a lot of fun from the game.
Jesus Christ, you people just won't stop, will you? The SMP is only viable in situations where you should have died anyway. Get over it.
Seriously though I do hate this gun but I can live with it in any game style except CTF and Marked for death. When you get the flag and you have to run back to your base and you are being chased by any other gun, you hear the first shot(s) and normally have a chance to duck out of the way of the next shot(s), or if they are close you get a chance to fight them off. With the smart pistol you just die. No fun.
If you're actually moving around the map properly those three locks are going to be a challenge to get- if anything gets in the way it's broken. And really, if you don't have someone covering your rear, WTF are you running the flag anyways?
The Smart Pistol is the greatest thing ever invented! I am handicapped and only able to use my left hand and it actually makes me competitive in this game. I mostly farm grunts w/ it but I also get kills on pilots when they are not paying attention. If I am playing against anyone with any skill at all they pretty much kick my ass. I can understand the frustration on getting killed by it, it just means your having a bad game or in fact you suck. lmfao