Overview
I didn’t have as much work that shipped in season 7 as I was focused on development for the bow primarily at this point — since season 7 included the release of a new map, we determined that the weapons could have a lighter release. I made some smaller updates to improve the LSTAR, which was generally underused and unliked at the time, as well as the typical weapon balance updates.
LSTAR Updates
For quick context, the LSTAR is an energy ammo LMG that heats up as the player fires. After reaching critical heat, the weapon will overheat, which requires a “lens change” animation.
LSTAR fired until overheating w/ lens replacement animation
Due to the overheat mechanic, I removed reloading from the LSTAR when I moved it into standard loot in season 4. This gives the LSTAR a somewhat unique play pattern, which is to fire until near overheated, then let go of the trigger and let some heat dissipate for a short time before firing again, and repeat. We referred to this as “feathering” the LSTAR trigger, and the recoil pattern rewarded players who were able to feather effectively.
However, the heat cooldown rate was limited to the same rate for both “how long to cool off once overheated (which also drove the lens change animation duration)” and “how long to cool off when trigger is let go but not overheated”. This made it very difficult to tune the numbers such that feathering the trigger felt good in hand. In season 7, we were thankfully able to get a small code feature to provide different heat cooldown times for the overheated vs non-overheated case. This gave me the opportunity to improve the feel of the feathering behavior!
LSTAR feathered near max heat for continuous firing