Virus despite how enjoyable the game world can be at times, also has some rather glaring balance issues, many of which have been chronicled in the myriad of prior threads with a multitude of suggestions. However I would like to add some of my own based on my own experiences from playing the game world more than most. Get ready for quite the read because I have quite a few tweaks I would like to see.
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First off I have done a prior write-up on rebalancing enraged and the initial infected system here: Another Zombie Enrage Suggestion
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Infected need to be made slightly faster than survivors, currently survivors and infected run at identical speeds. I would suggest their speed be increased by 2%, potentially up to 5% however I will give my reasons for wanting such a small increase later on.
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As a further way to increase the skill ceiling of the game and buff infected; roaring. At the moment using right-click to roar has no tangible effect and only gives away your position to survivors. As such I see this as a prime opportunity to give an additional, temporary speed buff to infected. Giving an additional 8% increase in speed for 3-5s.
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TNT should cause chain reactions. This is a preventative measure against TNT stacking, punishing survivors stacking all of their TNT at the start of a round and then simply sitting behind it all, practically untouchable. While it’s still possible for TNT to be placed down one at a time, or carefully spacing it out, it will require much more time and awareness to replicate what’s possible now.
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Sci-Fi Handgun (hereby referred to as “Sci-Fi”) and Handgun (for the purposes of this article referred to as the “HG”) should NOT share ammo. This is a detail most people likely do not realize but these two weapons are unique in that they share ammo with each other. As such if survivors get both Sci-Fi and HG then it’s akin to only having one handgun with two firing modes; it’s cool but their ammo sharing greatly limits the usefulness of this pair compared to quite literally any other pair of handguns.
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Sci-Fi and HG need their total ammo increased. At the present moment these weapons have very limited ammo counts which makes sense on the surface, they should mostly be weapons used in reserve. However compared to the Dual Silencers (aka “Dualies”) their ammo pool is pitiful. Increasing their ammo counts to 65 and 70 respectively would go a long ways to making both of them more consistently reliable.
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Sci-Fi needs a magazine size buff: currently the 5 round magazine is a bit awkward in size, especially with how fast it can be emptied. I would recommend increasing the magazine size to 6 or 7 shots, possibly even 9 or 10 as it would require good trigger discipline to not drain the 65 rounds being carried in seconds.
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Tommy Gun (aka “Tommy”) needs to be nerfed. This is a reasonably well agreed upon opinion to my knowledge and as such I would like to propose my own solutions to this. First off reduce the magazine capacity from 60 rounds to 50 rounds, not only is this is a nerf but it gives the Tommy its actual, historical magazine size. Second off, reduce the total ammo of Tommy from 180 rounds(!) to 100 or 120. Thirdly, reduce Tommy’s damage from 22 to a flat 20.
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Double Barrel (aka “DB”) needs to be nerfed. This one is a bit less agreed upon however I am of the opinion that DB is a bit too strong in its current state. I would recommend reducing the total ammo to 22 shells and removing a single pellet, thus meaning it deals 20X7 damage, or 140 damage per shell. This will hopefully make it a liiiiiiiiiiiiitle less consistent and harder to solely use for an entire round.
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Return Plasma Autorifle (aka "Plasma) left-click functionality while charging. I believe this was patched as a “bug” or something of the like however this made the weapon considerably more versatile beyond just being able to delete infected instantly or score chip damage. Being able to shoot normally while holding a charge was a pretty obscure technique and wasn’t the most practical either but the removal of it greatly harmed the Plasma’s ability to handle multiple threats which almost every other weapon can do better to some extent.
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Tweak Sonic Shotgun (aka “Sonic”). Sonic despite being far and away worse than DB, is still a pretty solid weapon however I would like to see it tweaked a little to bring it more in line with its brethren. Firstly, increase the accuracy; currently only four pellets across such a wide area gives extremely high chances of having pellets splice targets resulting in zero damage. Secondly, reduce each pellets damage from 18 to 16, in tandem with the accuracy changes this should make the Sonic require much better aim in order to maximize its usefulness, while the damage reduction will reduce its ability to chip infected at range. Thirdly, buff the alt-fires range and slightly buff its strength. Currently the alt-fire is kind of… “limited” in use so improving it to be better at crowd control would be fantastic. Fourthly, please allow the use of left-click while holding an alt-fire charge. Like Plasma this will greatly improve the Sonic’s versatility and help introduce a bit more variety in gunplay.
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Enforce a two-handgun loadout. Currently there is a chance for all survivors to get a single handgun, or two handguns at seemingly random. This can quickly become a problem if the single handgun is Flak which only has four shells. Now sure there’s a reasonable chance people would never need to use it anyways however it also means that at random, there’s a chance for survivors to be markedly more gimped with far less total ammo. Guaranteeing two handguns no matter what will help somewhat alleviate RNG pains.
Quite a bit to read but it gives a fairly comprehensive rebalance to Virus with what’s currently available. Another idea that I was considering, but declined to bring up formally was from this thread Is virus too easy? with infected regenerating health when not in combat. While I do like this idea I’m a bit concerned it might encourage more passive gameplay from infected, especially if given the buffs previous mentioned.
As a general suggestion on top of all of this, I would love to see more weapons get added to Virus as currently there are only 10 weapons which is frankly, pitiful. Perhaps when SDNL gets released this idea can be looked at more thoroughly but Virus really needs more weapons to help add more variance to gameplay and (hopefully) reduce the possibility of getting “god loadouts” that are extremely difficult for infected to fight against.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading all of this! I understand that it’s highly unlikely for any of these suggestions to be turned into reality but gathering others’ opinions might help greatly improve the balance, and enjoyability of a niche gameworld that I’ve put way too many hours into.
