General Balancing formulae

General Balancing formulae

I have read nearly every balance discussion thread in this forum, and something has just struck me, after mulling over one of gatesters posts I think.

Here are the "facts"

all profs need some sort of perk defence
all profs need some sort of perk offence
all profs need some sort of perk healing and/or nano recovery
All perk lines get Increasing returns (higher mods per perk investment)

So, in my mind, what I'd really like to see is this (please keep in mind this is HIGHLY simplified, and obviously not entirely representative for all profs)

1. A 10 perk line for offence, with damage perks (necessity)
2. A 10 perk line for defence, with healing or absorbs or evades (necessity)
3. A 5 perk line for secondary defences (optional)
4. A 5 perk line for secondary offences (optional)
5. 4 more 5 perk lines for auxiliary offences/defences/healing, etc. (optional)
6. Alien perklines with the same sort of structure, with similar auxilliary offence/defence/support/healing/etc.

Now, as many might say: well if your system is highly simplified, thats pretty much exactly how it is. And I wouldn't argue that, however, I have two main points, the first is this:

There should be two undeniably requisite perklines for each prof, 2 lines that you'd be foolhardy to go without. Examples of this might be: acrobat, coccoon, or the main weapon line for your prof. These are requisites for basic killing, DD, and defence. The rest of the lines should be optional, which shoudl allow you to customize your prof to the playstyle you prefer, whether that be: support, DD, teaming, evades, healing, stuns, resistances, debuffs, whatever, prof/group specific.

My second point is this:
Some profs currently are SUPERIORLY endowed with very very strong perklines, OR, have very short perklines which allow them to branch out into general perks to fulfill other basic needs, such as nano refilling.

Consider the benefit of Acrobat vs. Holy Mark

Consider the benefit of Evasive Stance vs. Holy Mark


The point of all this is: If you are Prof X, and you are level Y, how will you spend your perks? Currently, there are several profs who have several options, with very very strong defensive actions available through acrobat, and supplemented by reasonable damage perks available early on in the perklines.

However, any prof, which does not have access to acrobat, which, perk for perk is about 5x stronger defensively than any other perkline in game, must try to scrounge defence elsewhere.

for most profs, the defensive perk allocation will be 50% of your perks.
However, many profs are stuck with substandard options, requiring multiple lines to fulfill basic defensive requirements.

This is the crux.

Devs: when you are looking at the perk balances, observe the RELATIVE strength of perklines. PLEASE: consider, how a prof would try to find balance at any given level in the perk set up.

Also, I nor anyone else here wants perfect balance at all levels, BUT, what everyone (I assume) wants is to have a reasonably working defensive and offensive option available which does NOT require MORE than the perks you have to spend at the level you are at.

^^ Case in point, my TL5 keeper requires 18 perks for 2 damage perks, a highly flawed static defence, and pitifully underpowered heals (note, at 170, you only have 17 perks, so I'm at least one short making one of those three areas even more inept.)

Compare against: enforcer, at TL5, who can attribute all perks to defensive, since AI perks provide enough damage perks to be competitive with DD.

Compare against: advy: who can perk acrobat (4) and coccoon (6/7), AND have enough perks for genius (2) AND SL weapon line (4/5).

I don't know how they'd do this without turning it into Advy Online, breaking the game and making a new one. They'd have to take into account buffs, combat nanos, combat weapons, melee vs range, pets, friendly nanos, etc.

Perhaps it's better to just modify what they have and try to make it work.

This is a good point to make, though given the complexity of the perk system at this time as well as how perks are set up makes the simplification you present pretty difficult for some professions.

For instance: MPs have both offense and defense mixed into one of their perklines, Channel Rage. It has offensive perk actions but gives defensive bonuses including AAD and NR. Soothing Spirits, the other 'must have' perkline for MPs, only improves the healpet and gives some small perk healing.

Afterwards, we have to go chase down Starfall to improve our damage (since our profession perks do no damage directly) and that's another 10 perks down the drain. Any perks after that usually go for weapon buffing, Nano Doctorate, and or Genius 2 or TR3 root perk.

FC has put forth the option for another perkline, however our problem is that we already have our perks maxed out as it is, trying to squeeze blood from a stone for another 8 perk perkline is going to be tough, especially for the perkline as it's written out now (Trance, specificially).

However, what you've laid out, in terms of how perks are setup, would give an argument towards condensing some perklines (Starfall would be a great candidate here, it's mostly DD perks with low-grade nanoskill buffing towards the end), and seeing as how FC is willing to look at how perks are spent and used, and condense some lines like the Bureaucrat XP lines into one concise line, gives us hope they'll bear in mind that 40 perks is what we get, for better or worse, and give us viable options within that limited framework, especially as we can see weapon perk lines opening up now for more professions.

there is other factors aswell except perks.
Nanos, general dmg, amount of health, HD, ND, specials, evades etc.
u cant balance just the perks w/o looking at the whole picture of the game.

the higher offence u have the lower defence u should have try modeling it so its scaling together instead.