[CONCEPT ART] Razikjack

[GreatEmerald]

On the stream Epic mentioned how the Ripper was cool for those shooting, and not so much for those trying to avoid it. Also, plenty of people seem to think that the alt fire is rather uninspired. So I thought of this:

Primary fire: A fragile razor disc. Bounces off walls once, breaks into damaging shards when it hits a second wall. This idea is a bit inspired by the ChaosUT2 Cutter alt fire. That way the primary fire stays fairly random and good for crowd control, while becoming predictable enough that the target can try dodging it.
Secondary fire: Chargeable Skaarj projectiles. If tapped, fires two high-damage, medium speed flashy projectiles. If charged, the projectiles become bigger, move slower, and home in on enemies. Anything in between is something in-between.

Perhaps a Ripjack-like tertiary fire could also be added. Or perhaps it would toggle it to become a melee weapon.

[Nation Uprise]

Sounds good to me. Makes it identify more as a Skaarj weapon. I really like the primary fire idea that it shoots the usual blade but bounces only once and then fragments. The secondary fire also sounds good, although the homing i'm not really all for. I'd picture the secondary fire shooting almost like the Dispersion Pistol, where it can also charge up into a larger, slower but more damaging projectile. I'm all for combining weapons from the Unreal Universe that have become obsolete in order to make them into a good single, somewhat new, weapon. So to me this would be a mix of the Razorjack and Dispersion Pistol.

[Sir_Brizz]

Sounds pretty good. I really like the Ripjack in UC2 and I don't think it was that annoying for other players.

[Sly.]

I like that idea and am willing to give it a try in Blueprints... but first I need to make myself more familiar with it. Though my suggestion would be 1-2 bounces and breaking, to make it a bit more random. More than 2 bounces will surely be overpowered.

[GrumpySir]

Going to be honest, as a NEW player I always loved the Ripper. My feeling is that hate for the Ripper always came from the "pro" players, because it was spammy.

[GreatEmerald]

The secondary fire also sounds good, although the homing i'm not really all for. I'd picture the secondary fire shooting almost like the Dispersion Pistol, where it can also charge up into a larger, slower but more damaging projectile. I'm all for combining weapons from the Unreal Universe that have become obsolete in order to make them into a good single, somewhat new, weapon. So to me this would be a mix of the Razorjack and Dispersion Pistol.

The problem with that is that the Dispersion Pistol (and regular Skaarj projectiles, too) is pretty bad at actually hitting anything. Of course, the primary fire is for hitting enemies that are far away, so the secondary fire would become useful when the enemy is up close, but even then the primary would probably be preferred (in UT1, Ripper does 45 points of damage, Skaarj projectiles together do 32, although obviously that could be balanced out). With homing projectiles, you get a different twist. Also, huge homing Skaarj projectiles are what Heavy Skaarj shoot at you in Unreal II, so that's also a reference to that.

I like that idea and am willing to give it a try in Blueprints... but first I need to make myself more familiar with it. Though my suggestion would be 1-2 bounces and breaking, to make it a bit more random. More than 2 bounces will surely be overpowered.

Maybe, but with one bounce and the shards actually hurting enemies, it could become quite tactical, instead of just spammy. If you see an enemy around the corner, then you can fire at the wall, and know that your disc is likely to hit the other wall around where your enemy is. The shards make an area of effect, so you don't have to see exactly where the enemy is.

Going to be honest, as a NEW player I always loved the Ripper. My feeling is that hate for the Ripper always came from the "pro" players, because it was spammy.

Of course. The Ripper is literally the only weapon I could get any kills with when I tried playing UT1 online for the first time Epic themselves said that it's fun to use, but the problem is that it's not very fun to defend against such random projectiles. My concept here keeps the essence of the projectiles, but lowers the feeling of helplessness when getting killed by it.

[van Kuss]

Primary: Normal blade that doesn't bounce
Secondary: Charge up for a faster and more damage blade that bounces 7 times

Problem of spamminess solved

I like your primary fire but the second one really doesn't feel good on the same weapon that shoots rotating discs ^^

[GreatEmerald]

So here's a reminder of how Skaarj projectiles work in Unreal II:

I'm thinking of the Heavy Skaarj projectiles there. As you can see, it's big, slower but not that slow, and homing but not that much. It also does splash damage. So in my opinion it fits very well as a replacement for the Ripper's alt fire, which was also a splash damage projectile.

[Wormbo]

The original Unreal Razorjack had a guided altfire mode. Basically the blades were fired vertically and would adjust their direction to match your view direction.
For primary fire I'd always prefer the bouncy mode, even if it was limited to something between 5 and 10 bounces.

BTW: While Epic folks have pointed out that the Ripper remakes were not as much fun in UT200x and UT3 maps, I'd like to remind everyone that "HOLP"-style maps (Hardcore Oldschool Low-Poly) have been quite popular in UT3. They have less complex geometry and most of them would work as well for a Ripper remake as many UT1 maps.

[JoeWilcox]

My biggest complaint with the Ripper is the fact that for a new player it can be a shelf-moment inducing weapon. For the record I'd like to see it come back but it has to be judiciously placed in levels designed to allow for the fun but minimize the negatives. A good example is Face. On the long vista it was a great weapon to knock people off but they could see it coming. And since the spawn locations where outside of the towers it minimized the "oh my god I just spawned and a saw blade took my head off" effect. But it ruins a map like Curse.

[Nation Uprise]

So here's a reminder of how Skaarj projectiles work in Unreal II:

I'm thinking of the Heavy Skaarj projectiles there. As you can see, it's big, slower but not that slow, and homing but not that much. It also does splash damage. So in my opinion it fits very well as a replacement for the Ripper's alt fire, which was also a splash damage projectile.

This is what I meant by the dispersion pistol-like secondary fire for your proposed weapon. The projectile is almost exactly like a fast moving primary fire of the dispersion pistol, and the large skaarj projectile is like a fully charged dispersion pistol shot only with homing.

[Wail]

Honestly I think much of the "rage inducing" behavior of the Ripper could be removed if you turned off the headshot detection on projectiles after 1-2 bounces, but allowed them to bounce an unlimited (or large, say 8) number of times.
The individual blades themselves hurt, but you're not going to get instakilled by one unless you're at low health. I do like the ability of players to spam the weapon as AoE denial though. The iterations of this weapon that I've seen in ChaosUT and other mods have always been disappointing when they limited bounces severely. I have many fond memories of using that weapon on DM-Phobos, and it's always felt like there was a gap in the UT Arsenal for a fun, spammy weapon since it was removed.

I'm open to trying new things with the secondary. Maybe give them back the Ripjack guidance feature on alt-fire.

[SDAHeatWave]

Primary: Normal blade that doesn't bounce
Secondary: Charge up for a faster and more damage blade that bounces 7 times

Problem of spamminess solved

I like your primary fire but the second one really doesn't feel good on the same weapon that shoots rotating discs ^^

I was thinking the same line. Be like the bio where the charge depends on the bounces you get.

@JoeWilcox wouldn't that problem be with the mappers? I think mappers should know what weapons work best in a map. Not all weapons work good in every map. Ripper, Razorjack or whatever the name is going to be will be perfect for an open map but no a close map. So for the mappers if you want this gun probably make it an open map and no narrow hallways.