This suggestion applies to all of Towers guns so theres not a definitive category to put it into.
Allow me to compare TU’s weapon mechanics to Team Fortress 2’s gun mechanics (Not saying one or the other is better overall. Please don’t get that idea.). Most of TF2’s weapons are very hit or miss and are single shot, meaning instead of spraying down an enemy and missing alot and feeling empty inside when you die, you take one single, powerful shot that feels amazing to hit. The sound design also helps to provide that oomph effect with the weapons, from the ping of the hitsound, to the impact noise of lead against flesh. Compare this to most of Tower Unites weapons. Alot of the weapons in Virus and ZM are fully automatic. When you fire the plasma autorifle (is that what its called?), the infecteds high movement speed allows them to dodge your shots very easily making you feel like its the games fault and not your aim at fault. But when you fire a double barrel or flak cannon, since they are single shot and have that oomph sound when they are fired, hitting a shot and absolutely annihilating an infected with one powerful blow feels great and makes your dopamine levels skyrocket. And when you miss a shot, its not as if the shots gravitated away from the infected, there was only one shot and your aim to blame.
You know the meme about the Spas 12 being better in ZM than what the devs chose to be the best, the Egon Cannon? I feel like this has to do with the fact that the Spas has the ever so good sounding “oomphy” sound effect when its shot and when you hit a zombie, it displays one fat, large number as the damage dealt. Compare that to the Egon cannon, you fire it at a zombie and it takes off little 12’s of HP. In Doom 4, there is a similarly named “Gauss Cannon”. Its practically the opposite of the Egon and is what the Egon should aspire to be. It is a single shot cannon that delivers a single high damage bolt with a lovely bassey sound effect that either you miss, and have your aim to blame, or you hit an enemy and blow them to pieces and are rewarded with showers of blood. The flamethrower in ZM is rare to find but manages to be extremely unrewarding to use. The particles don’t seem to match up with the hitboxes and you aren’t able to hit enemies. The particles look great and light up the dark areas of Compound but deal small amounts of damage over time to zombies. If you ever played the Jungle Inferno update in TF2, you would know of a flamethrower called the “Dragons Fury”. It fires a single, powerful, fireball that deals massive amounts of damage with ever increasing damage the more shots you hit on an enemy. The unique sound of firing it and the unique particles help differentiate it from other weapons and it feels so good to kill another player with it. The ZM flamethrower just can’t hold up.
You’ve read 2 paragraphs of some internet guy ranting about weapon design in an early access game. But please, look past that and think of how the weapons in TU could be improved by encouraging single, accurate, heavy damage shots rather than spraying and praying. Heres a lil list of the things that could be done to give the weapons that extra push in the right direction:
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Change around the weapon sounds and make them more “bassey” to make them sound more heavy and devastating rather than some tiny little blips of little damage. (Double Barrel and Flak Cannon are okay)
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Change around actual weapon stats to make them more oriented around single accurate heavy damage shots rather than automatic spraydowns of very dodgeable low damage bullets.
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If changing from automatic to single-shot is not possible, instead lower the rate of fire and increase damage, also applying the bassey gunshot sounds. This would be the best of both worlds, retaining the automatic style, but increasing the importance of accuracy and adding those large amounts of damage.
One of the other things about TU’s weapons that has been the topic of many conversations is feedback. When I shoot somebody with the Silencer in Virus, all I get is a somewhat oomphy sound effect from the gunshot and a hard to notice hitmarker. Sorry to mention COD but all im mentioning is the feedback from weapons. When you shoot somebody in COD, you get a sharp tick from the hitmarker and the killsound once you neutralize an enemy. When you headshot somebody in Rust, you hear a feel good CRUNCH sound effect coming from the enemies skull and the dopamine kicks in. Virus has a good idea about feedback, but ZM doesn’t. When you shoot a zombie in ZM, you get the amount of damage you hit them for and the gunshot sound. Nothing else, and when you’re chipping away at a horde of zombies with an automatic weapon, you don’t feel good. You would rather be annihilating them with an AOE grenade or the survivors shield (Serious props to the survivors shield btw, its the best feeling in ZM to shred a crowd of zombies into pieces with the press of a button and seeing the hundreds of thousands of hit points you are dealing. More things in ZM and Virus need to be like this!!!). Virus has hitmarkers with no sound (There may be a sound but I may not be able to hear it) and the scream sound of a zombie, no headshot multiplier or crunchy sound, just a scream and a hitmarker. ZM and Virus both have half of a part of a good feedback system and they need to be smooshed together.
Top 5 ZM weapons that could be improved or are good and how/why
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Egon Cannon: Like I said earlier, it should aspire to be more like the gauss cannon from Doom 4 and doesn’t have that single shot oomph.
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Double Barrel Shotgun: This is a great weapon and has that oomph feel but falls flat at the part where it only kills a small portion of a zombie hoard, there is no weapon penetration for basically any weapon making crowd control unrewarding and boring.
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All Melee weapons besides Chainsaw: The melee weapons are great, they deal heavy amounts of damage in a single blow. Some weapons like the Guitar and its retro counterpart have great sound effects.
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Chainsaw: This is what you do not want to do when making a melee weapon, it feels weak and underpowered. Allow me to compare to TF2’s melee system, as broken as it may be, it feels great to land a high damage blow on an enemy. But the chainsaw deals small amounts of damage over time, the real kicker is that its a melee weapon and you need to stay at close range while awkwardly chipping away at a zombie. Damage upgrades may help alleviate this but its not as if I will get a chainsaw every round anyways.
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Spas: This is what the Double Barrel should be more like, high damage with oomphy shots. Nothing much more to say.
Top 5 Virus weapons that could be improved or are good and how/why
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Double Barrel: Whenever I get this weapon in my loadout at the start of a round, I feel a rush of relief that it isn’t the sonic shotgun and anticipation of the wall being painted with the green blood of the infected and their split apart body parts. It has the most oomph out of all the Virus weapons with an instant kill alt-fire that blows apart infected. Its just that good. More Virus weapons should be this way.
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Sonic Shotgun: Whenever I get this weapon in my loadout at the start of a round, I feel a rush of some unidentifiable feeling, Less anticipation of the slaughter of infected, more anticipation of my impending doom. Its a troll weapon more than anything, it doesn’t have that oomph though. It has a bassey sound but doesn’t mix well with the other sounds of the game. When I said it was a troll weapon, I was talking about the countless times I’ve flung infected out of bounds, but thats a topic for a bug report.
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Tommy Gun: This is a weapon that now appears regardless of whether or not you get a double barrel or a sonic iirc, it only delivers high damage at close range spread out across multiple bullets so its really just a worse double barrel. 4/10, needs less ammo, more oomph.
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Silencer: This weapon has practically no delay between shots making click macros turn it into a rapid fire death machine. It has a great oomph sound but could use more bass Kind of like what Valve did when they updated the CS:GO gun sounds and changed the USP-S sound..
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TNT: Yes this is technically a weapon, I would like to congratulate the devs on making such a perfect utility/weapon. Its an oomphy single literal explosion of damage that blows apart infected. Its perfect!
I know I just went on a multi paragraph rant about an early access game but I seriously hope the devs consider what I talked about. Please leave any comments, questions, compliments and all that stuff in the comment thingy below. Thanks for reading!
TL:DR: Most of the Virus and ZM weapons are bad and could be better lol