Why the hell does the M249 have so much recoil even on single shot?

This lmg has even more recoil than an AKM which makes no sense considering it fires 5.56 and being heavy as shit. It should have a good amount of stability and much lower recoil values. It makes no sense and completely unrealistic to have so much recoil. I don't know why the devs decided to do this at all, considering insurgency is going for a more realistic approach.

@iamnotapro870 I think that LMGs, being heavy as hell, should have a big amount of sway and horizontal recoil rather than huge vertical recoil. It would make much more sense... It's indeed pretty awkward and unrealistic currently, especially for the M249.

i mean i get that it should be clunky, but having more weight pulling down should mean more stability, i mean its literally pulling against the recoil firing up and should be harder for the gun to bounce around;. i agree on having more horizontal recoil tho, but these guys put a shit ton of vertical recoil on it too

This is a tough one. Do we really want people running around spraying 800-1000 rounds per minute unchecked? I think if they remove the recoil then they would have to make the weight a huge factor. Make it so you get tired extremely fast and have to slow to a slow walk and make turning to aim slightly slower as well. Its used more for a suppression weapon and the recoil forces it into that role.

I looked it up and the military only have one person in a squad carrying it. Leads me to believe its not the go to weapon for most situations.

Its mainly to promote its reliability of being on bipod. It shouldn't stop you from tap-firing though, right? But yeah i agree the rise is hilariously bad, and could be replaced with horizontal, or maybe like an inconsistent recoil?

I too find the recoil really annoying on machine guns. Especially the horizontal recoil, it just feels so artificial. It’s as if when you fire, the devs are personally intervening by taking away you’re ability to control the gun and pushing your gun up and down to balance gameplay. I don’t know if that makes any sense but it’s the best I can describe it. I made a post a week or two ago describing an alternative way to balance machine guns, I don’t feel like explaining it on here so I’ll just link the post. https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/33070/possible-way-to-balance-machine-guns

@cturix even on single shot its terrible

@iamnotapro870
A single shot can at least land where you want it. Much like all weapons. Just keep your taps slow

@cturix why use an lmg if your gonna be on single shot? makes no sense to me, im just saying even on single its terrible if you check the recoil stats.

@iamnotapro870 i wouldnt use any gun to spray, but the recoil is most likely to encourage the bipod's use, as said before. Just use proning more often until it gets looked into again i guess

@mlb7 the problem is there is more recoil than an SVD on single shot, so spraying is really not a concern right now

I think the decision was made on a gamepla-design choice:

We have vertical recoil, right? No matter how high it is, it can be controlled rather easily by just pulling the mouse down. The mg feels powerful when deployed, but while standing or crouching you feel at a disadvantage, giving the gunner a distinct role. The recoil is hard to contol, but, still controlable if you get the hang of it and first and foremost, responsive.

Now if you were to replace the recoil with sway: The gunner would now have a 200 round assault rifle with a heavier weight, better recoil management, but RNG sway added to the gun to not make it OP. I would consider the later approach worse game-design wise, as it takes away controllability from the player and replaces it with rng stuff, making for frustrating and unresponsive controlls. In addition to that, the difference against other classes would be reduced.

So while I am still all in favour of realism in games, some real-life mechanics just don't lend themselves well to the game world.

@ryuk47 Horizontal recoil is also RNG though.

@ryuk47 I really wish they would increase the vertical recoil on all guns (but maybe give the m249 a pass on that one) in favor of a heavy reduction in RNG horizontal recoil. Predictable horizontal recoil would be fine (e.g., the MP7 kicks up and a bit to the left or something), but RNG recoil has to go. The RNG in recoil combines with RNG from sway (which can come from trying to traverse the map in a reasonable amount of time, not being prone, or---most egregious--people shooting at you and missing) to take control away from the player. While you still have some control over the weapon, it's enough so that the fight is based only on skill.

@cyoce said in Why the hell does the M249 have so much recoil even on single shot?:

@ryuk47 I really wish they would increase the vertical recoil on all guns (but maybe give the m249 a pass on that one) in favor of a heavy reduction in RNG horizontal recoil. Predictable horizontal recoil would be fine (e.g., the MP7 kicks up and a bit to the left or something), but RNG recoil has to go. The RNG in recoil combines with RNG from sway (which can come from trying to traverse the map in a reasonable amount of time, not being prone, or---most egregious--people shooting at you and missing) to take control away from the player. While you still have some control over the weapon, it's enough so that the fight is based only on skill.

Yesterday, another game that's a Battle Royale, Ring of Elysium, cam to the same conclusion about horiz. recoil:
0_1545250228647_YES.PNG

Some guns still need more vertical recoil (cough M4A1 cough) for sure. Ideally, very few, if any, firearms should allow you to laser someone on full-auto past maybe 20 meters without some severe recoil compensation skills or attachments.

As for weapon sway, it's never too problematic for me. One thing that is a bit annoying is that if you're completely out of breath/stamina, you can't use the Focus ability whatsoever. So, on top of a decent amount of sway, there's also no way to counter it without just doing nothing for 20 seconds.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@marksmanmax I run into that sway problem every time I try to take an alternate route to/behind (if the restricted areas even let me go that far, lol) the objective. I'm out of breath due to running around the side of a large map with slow run speed and I can't use the focus ability. It's also an issue when you're being suppressed. There was one situation when three people were shooting at me on the other side of a street and missing. After a few shots, my aim was shaking across the entire street. That's an absurd reward for bad aim.

@tooth-decay Maybe I should have made it more clearly: I do dislike RNG horizontal recoil, though I have never had the situation of it being overly infulential on my shooting in this game.

@cyoce Same thing as above ^^

@marksmanmax And about the sway from supression: While I think it is very immersive and adds nicely to the more scary and traumatizing fell of the game, especially against AI, I do agree that for the very reasons you and others have pointed out upon that it has no place in PvP. Not the way it handles right now.

Concering the sway from supression I would suppose to increase the ammount of time it takes for a player to become supressed. Like a single-fired rifle shouldn't be enough to make me stay in cover, especially as it rewards, as has been said, the bad aim of an opponent. However when being under constant automated fire closely to let's say 10-20 rounds, then the effect should hit in like it does already.
This would give the LMG's the distinct role of supressing enemies and take that away from the ordinary rifleman or at least make them think whether emptying half a mag is worth the effect.

Unless the recoil gets buffed, its a completely inferior lmg to the PKM in pretty much any scenario besides being bipoded.

On one hand you dont want people running around with it like rambo but you also have to keep in mind that its practically unusable. It has incredibly slightly less recoil than the pkm but without a oneshot kill, making it immidiately unable to keep up.

The truth is that its a heavy gun with a small calliber and imo it shouldnt have nearly any of the recoil that it does. If youre worried about balancing I think maybe having 1 gunner per 16 players would be a bennefit to reduce lmg presence. Not only that but having an lmg like that doesnt instantly make you into god, you might have one of the better guns but when it comes down to it, even a makarov could kill you. The potential for insane gameplay is there but you could do that with any gun, technically.

The PKM dominates this gun and makes gunner on security into the most unplayed class, by far.

I hope you guys realize that all light machine guns are equipped with AP rounds and can down a fully geared opponents in one shot. This along with the inherently high ROF will definitely make the gun unbalanced hence why there is such high recoil.

last edited by imacookie

its still less than the fal
or at least i see it that way