Smart Pistol

If you are being killed by this pistol, you need to move more. Camping or standing around too long is not part of the game.
I never stop my movement and there is a flow to this game that makes the Smart Pistol useless except for grunts etc...

 

I rarely get killed by a smart pistol. Not because of any skill on my part, but because its just not easy to reliably kill pilots with it. I've seen gameplay of people using it and I've used it, minimally, myself. The only situation which guarantees you smart pistol kills is when you've set yourself up on a roof top and no one has bothered to notice you. I've also seen people use it to kill people while chasing behind them, but in such a situation, the person chasing with the smart pistol would do far better to just aim manually and get the kill faster. Maybe I would see a different result if I looked into it more, but I'm confident in the view I've formed now.

That being said, it is pretty much the definition of a gun which takes minimal skill to use, though I don't think anyone will be performing particularly well with it in a couple months time when even the less aware players get the hint to check roofs and, occasionally, behind them.

 

Smart Pistol = No skill troll pistol for 10 year olds. It should not be featured in online play. Or it should have a kill timer. For example you need to kill 2 'Pilots' before you can use the lock feature again. Or wait 1 minute. This is ruining the game since EVERYONE seems to ne using it now. Cloak, camo, lock, shoot.................*facepalm*

 

The Smart Pistol is balanced the player just needs to be aware of his/her surroundings and use them, Ducking into cover, moving out of the enemies vision also removes the lock (inside a building use jump and jetpack/run along walls to get to thier sides all while firing at them worked for me in the beta.

These calls for nerfing are unfounded, each and every weapon in the game has thier strengths and weaknesses the players just need to figure them out and adapt.

 

@Clarkeh I agree with ya man like I've previously said that weapon sucks face to face against other pilots that aren't using it. It takes time to lock on and in that 3 to 4 seconds you could easily be killed. The smart pistols only use that I can see it being good for is cleaning up the bots and that's it. It dosent need to be merged it's not a god weapon calm down everybody just have to learn to bob and weave

 

i just against a really good player yesterday, smart pistol, parkor, stim, c4 pack, everything i go head to head with him he runs all over me, drop c4 , nuke me and take damage all over me while jump around, really challenging, i love fighting with a challenge,smart pistol are really hard to use, when u are against a group of players, he took out 3 of us in a team.. single handedly...

i say if used properly and with sufficient skill any weapon is a challenge to pit against, what i see from the match only people that really sucks at defending or attacking with a particular weapons will keep complaining and nag about it... its a game after all , get good at it or die trying.. nagging just makes u looks weaker.. imho...

 

I don't think the smart pistol is op at all. I might be a tad bit nooby, I agree with that, but it's not that bad. When u get killed by a smart pistol it is often, and I'd say 90% of the time, a situation where you would be killed anyway if the enemy was using a different gun. The only times I die from a smart pistol is when the bastard manages to sneak up on me or I make a mistake myself.
You just need to move right to get away from smart pistol users. I recommend jumping over their head if you're close enough. Running straight away from them is stupid and equals suicide. It will lock on to ur little ass and shoot it of XD.

 

Now...this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. So...me being aware? I take on 2 guys at once. Take the first guy down. I dodge the bullets of the second guy. Even get out of the way and to safety...narrowly missing the arc grenades....

Nope.

The guy on the roof who was TOTALLY out of the action takes me out without so much as getting the cross hairs to touch me. Not once. Not too sure how to be aware of that 100% when the 3rd man is completely outside of the field of play.

Again....I take on two dudes, take one down, side step grenades, jump to safety AND get completely out of the view of all 3 guys attacking me? Bullet follows me anway. I'm dead. I wouldn't 100% call that balanced. If the Smart Pistol could talk it'd just heave a big, fat, lazy sigh.

If I went to a basketball game and was watching two teams play.....if I started throwing bricks at one of the players, I'd hit him 100% of the time. Why? Because they're playing a game and I'm just the d-bag in the stands throwing bricks.

I'd say the pistol is balanced in that it's difficult to lock on to pilots. What ruins it is people. And how they use it. Sitting on roofs waiting or cloaking in dark corners and waiting? booooooooooo. If you're not constantly moving in Titanfall then you're not really playing Titanfall.

I'm with you in that I wouldn't want to see the pistol nerfed. But I would like you to have to at least make an effort to have the cross hair hit your target at least once.

 

Not OP at all. Sure you don't have to "aim" in the traditional sense but it has its own meta game, namely make the target stay in the reticle for long enough.

 

Agreeing that it's not OP. Saying it's boring and lazy meta inside what can be a lightning fast paced, living, breathing action movie.

EDIT: Please know I'm not being snarky or trying to be a dick It just sucks to parkour yourself half way across the map, rodeo a titan, doom it, get ejected into the air, do a 180 and kill the ejecting pilot on the way down, LAND into a rodeo of another Titan. Jump off. Kill 4 grunts. Kill another pilot. Kick a guy out a window while everything explodes around you.......

....only to get taken out by a guy standing still who didn't even have the common decency to aim at you and, even worse, let the computer do the aiming for him.

 

I will give the Smart Pistol one thing, its awesome for killing the grunts and spectre's lol

 

Can anyone tell me what the range is on the pistol? I feel like it'd be more balanced if it only had a very short range (maybe like... 4 times melee range? 5?), because then players might HAVE to aim down the sites on the gun, but so far each video has had someone pretty far away just locking on. Definitely not OP, but I feel like a limited range would make players have to move around and get close to people, so they'd at least play a little bit smarter with the pistol.

However, I don't necessarily dis players that would hide in corners stealthily... camping might suck, but if you repeatedly die to a camper that you know is there, he's pretty good at getting the drop on you then. If he only gets one cheap kill and then you kill him back, even trade.

 

To answer your question Bloodshot, the Small Pistol lock-on feature is listed as being "Short-Range". As for the measurement in meters or feet, I'm yet to find an answer.

Based on experience though, it feels like the lock-on feature is about the same as the maximum accurate range of the SMG before it starts spraying everywhere.

 

Well, hopefully someone like Drift0r starts doing the weapon In Depths.

 

All this moaning and griping about the smart-pistol seems a bit overblown. Will typically less mechanically skilled players gravitate towards this gun? Yes. But so what if new players need a crutch to feel effective? Why should you get mad about their play style?

If the gun were completely imbalanced it would be an issue, but it is not. The smart-pistol is NOT the most effective gun for pilot-to-pilot combat, period (A player can easily kill you *if aware of your presence* during the relatively long time it takes to obtain a full lock--theres also the issue of range) It is an amazing tool for rapidly collecting minion kills to pad your team's score in Attrition and to hasten your titanfall, but it is FAR inferior to the more traditional weapons when it comes to player vs player. I would argue that if you're dying to someone with a smart-pistol, you would just as likely have died to someone with a sniper rifle, because it means you were exposed, and taken unawares.

Two players going head to head in a firefight, one with the pistol, the other with the carbine, the carbine user will almost always win, unless they get outplayed, in which case its hard to be mad at the other guy for outplaying you.

Use the mechanics at your disposal to counter the smart-pistol, which in itself is just another game mechanic. Tip: climbing over walls breaks LoS, which breaks lock, cloak breaks lock, rapid erratic movements will also break lock. There are a million ways to NOT die to this weapon, so if you find yourself repeatedly dying to it, chances are you need to take a minute to reassess your strategy rather than insisting the game be changed to tailor your needs.

Will you get caught off-guard and killed by it from time to time? Inevitably. But so is dying in a game like this in general. Why get mad at the other player for killing you just because he "didn't have to aim"? How is that any different from someone getting off a lucky shot while spraying and praying with another gun?

 

I don't really know how OP it is/isn't, I'm just saying depending on how much range the lock on has it could be OP. I only saw it a bit in the Beta and it didn't seem that bad (though yes, AI die easily from it). It's kind of a niche weapon though, and really if they ever have competitive play, it'll most likely never see the light of day unless someone is a purely Titan player, and needs to rack up AI kills. Pros would easily be able to outgun someone with a Smart Pistol. But, I digress...

 

Range on the pistol is fairy short. You'll be rarely locking onto people from the second story window unless they are immediately below you. It's great for clearing minions, campers, and bunny hoppers - that's about it. Against a halfway decent person in a face to face fight, your better off switching to your sidearm and praying. It's not OP - it's more accurate to say "no fun to play against when you won't play be my self-imposed imaginary rules by not using it"

I used to hate the thing - used to think it was cheap. But then I sorta realized it really didn't matter. This game really wasn't designed around precision snap shooting, but accessible fun. So you have a choice - join in or not. If you choose not to join in and choose to challenge yourself by using something a little harder - great, but don't bitch if the accessible weapon takes you out because YOU MADE THE CHOICE. You have zero right to express your rage because YOU CHOSE to handicap yourself. Complaining about your handicap you chose to impose on yourself just shows everybody else how weak and insecure you are with yourself.

 

I really can't say much more... this ^. This all the way. I respect someone who can speak in a mature manner like that, it actually shocked me for a second. Personally I wouldn't use it, but I'll probably give it a chance once or twice, and maybe even grow to like it (and hate it in certain situations where it sucks), and like you said, my choice.

 

The smart-pistol is a tool, like any other in this game, and is specialized such that it excels in some roles and is sub-optimal in others.

When do you notice most players running around with smart-pistols? Attrition. By far. Why is that? Because it absolutely demolishes creep waves, which scores points for the team, which is ultimately the objective. Sometimes a player gets caught in the collateral here and there, but I assure you most dedicated pilot hunters will not be running this gun.

Case and point? Join a hardpoint match. The winning and top scoring players RARELY use this gun, and I can probably count the times ive been killed with it on Hardpoint on one hand. Why? Because its not that great against players, and its strength (creep killing) is not a benefit to the team in hardpoint.

Good luck to you if you try to storm a hardpoint with a smart pistol when the defenders are armed with shotguns, carbines, CAR smgs, and active sonar. You will be forced into head to head fights, and you will lose 90% of the time.

As has been previously stated, the smart-pistol is a threat to pilots primarily when taken unawares. Since the majority of players run sonar on hardpoint rather than cloak, chances of you taking someone unawares are... minimal.

On the other hand, some have pointed out that the smart-pistol can be manually aimed for rather devastating results... but so can any other weapon. If I'm getting massacred by a smart-pistol armed player who is manually aiming to take me down in 3 hits every time, I dont think getting mad at the weapon would be the approriate response, rather I'd be impressed with the player's aim/reflexes. Plenty of guns kill in 1-3 hits and with greater range/reliability. Any sniper rifle, the wingman sidearm, shotgun, etc