It seems like a good idea, but...
Great plan, good motive, but did you ever stop to think why most of us overequip?
Yea, I'm guilty of it, though I didn't use a single exploit. Got my Sledge of Doom on at L76. Easy Brutal Thug buff, Premium Team Wrangle, and Mighty Challenger to Gargantua with QL50 implants. Funny, eh?
However, have I ever PvPed with this character? No. Not yet, probably don't plan on it until way later. So, why did I overequip? Here's a clue: Ever fought out there in the wild? Seen how VERY ineffective you are VS even the simplest green mobs? Yea, there's your reason. Even overequipping armor, you're meat to 75% of the monsters out there. And it only gets harder the higher level you go.
With L130 armor on, an L170 Enf NPC still smacked me over the head for 500-900 a hit. Wow. What a difference overequipping made, eh? Sure as hell didn't save me from that little bat in his hands VS my sledge that hits for 2000, but I barely see a hair drop off his health.
So, what does this all mean? To sum it all up, here's it in a nutshell:
Overequipping, in a sense, is essential. The monsters are too rough for us to handle, most of the time, even in teams. You don't really feel that much of a sense of, "I have really become stronger," if you still need a team to take out the simplest monsters. I fight Lesser Woodwolves on occassions (con: green), and I STILL die to them due to their simple overwhelming attack speed VS mine. Even Lifebleeders can almost kill me... still. Yea, I know, pretty sad. Ask all those L150+ players if they can solo yellow mobs. You might be suprised (then again, probably not) as most of them willingly say, "No, the mobs have too much health/do too much damage."
Solution:
Why can't you just make monsters easier? There's a greater sense of accomplishment in a player if they find that they DON'T need to overequip to win PvM, let ALONE, having to join teams to kill yellow/green mobs (exception to this rule: bosses/unique mobs).
Kudos on the IP idea, though. =)
Please consider thise OE Fix:
my thoughts (they are important =)
This is going to be a very interesting patch. I've been playing since Beta 3 and this is the most influential patch i've ever seen. Countless numbers of people overequip (including myself) and its all going to end up balancing out now. It seems now that the game would fall to the skill of players, but i'm not sure how the skill would work. I mean you automatically shoot, all you have to do is hit the special attack buttons and have as many positive buffs on you. A level 50 soldier will be just like every other level 50 soldier (its almost like that now except for the not everyone knows how to overequip the same way. I do believe that game will lose a certain aspect of fun (overequipping has fun whether you think about it or not) but with all the new dungeons and gameplay additions (TEAM MISSIONS) we should be just fine. I mean besides, most of the stuff even far over our levels that we fight still does minimum or close to minimum damage even with less armor, really. I've tested it out, took off some armor. Anyway this is just my thoughts. The game will change, and i think it will be good, even though we'll be even more cloned =) Hey maybe that means we'll get more professions/breeds! WOO! =)
This is what they get for 1-mo beta 4
Ya know, this is what FC gets for having their extensive beta 4 period, an entire month. It was only a matter of time before something like came up. You reap what you sow..
Whether you are for this or against it, it does not change the fact that this will change the way AO is played. ITS TOO LATE for changes like this - for good or bad. It is a fundamental change in the way we develop and live out our characters, our alter-egos for that matter. Making this type of change is like saying:
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"We are going to change the laws of physics because:
1) America has planes that can fly over mach 3 and countries like Chad and Ethopia are starting to grasp the concept of the Wright brothers - We never intended to have a mere 200-yr old country to have mach 3 planes.
2) Russia has sattelites flying in a geo-synchronous orbit at 125 mi above the earth, and China only has them flying at 25 mi up, unable to be in geo-synch orbit - thats just not fair to China
So we are going to change the laws of physics to let all the countries with less developed technology to be the same as the others"
(sorry to pick on certain countries - no offense intended)
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ITS TOO LATE!!!! People - FC devs - Fellow Gamers: Its to darn late to make these drastic changes - This is what you get for having a mere month long beta
C'mon FC - Take it like a man!!
P.S. Does any of this matter anyways - who the heck is going to stay in AO when Star Wars Galaxies comes out.... I mean really now... Its Star Wars....
You go funcom don't listen to these whiners do the oe patch 14.0 not 14.2
my main is a 112 crat on rk2( MrBill Say hi all)
now at 112 for some wierd reason i can still kill oranges, go figure with nothing but my expertise buffed crat bot which we all know sux balls compared to even leveled mp and engi bots. well maybe more hp than an mp balloon.
i see the oe patch changing the way the game is played. groups will no longer fight l200 mobs at l100 which does a means a few good things.
1. ma's who complain about doing min dmg guess what will do more than min more.(and dont say you do min dmg against greens and yellows as i have a 112 crat with seriously sub par ma skills that does more than min dmg against greens and yellows)
2. crats will actually have a job(well hoping fc reduces mob lethality.) actually change that.
CROWD CONTROL will mean something. Might actually have to come up with some strategy to massacre those ql200 mobs
3. debuffing may mean something( debuffing a ql200 mob meant he still used ql180 nanos on you -- not really hopefully they tweak this a bit also) i think fc changed debuffing a bit recently. in the last two days while playing my trader after depriving/ransacking a mob it would hit softer and DID NOT CAST NANO's. i tested this last night also, with deprive/ransack no cast, with one or the other maybe cast, with neither i was always rooted/dotted/snared/reclaiming. also hehe MA using trader is sweet after the deprive/ransack
fc please increase time of deprive/ransack/wrangles i can see doing nothing but mashing deprive/ransack wrangle buttons after 14.2 with my trader.
also for the traders whining about wrangles stop it you know if you deprive then wrangle you actually only lose a few points in skill.
if you deprive and ransack you still end up with more skill than you wrangled.
4. people may move out of the missions and back to the world to hunt. has anyone but me noticed 90% of the zones in game are devoid of people even on rk1. go to perp waste or sfh/efp/strets and such, see how many ppl are actually there. hehe even in galway its kinda barren.
yes leveling will probably slow down a good bit post 100 but who cares( don't flame me please please i'm beggin) i think we need to add more of an eq style element to the game. you know planning to kill those super big mobs or a 30 minute fight to kill the boss mob instead of 20 seconds. I mean come on, i like leveling but right now it feels like everyone is on a mad dash to 200.
couple notes fc,
1. i would think you might want to reduce the xp loss when dying after 14.2. if it takes me ~3 million to level at 112 and i'm no longer fighting l180~200ish mobs(read 50-75k apop) and i'm fighting say10 to 20k mobs whihc instead of 4 hours to level takes me say 2 days wouldn't you think losing ALL THE XP if you died would be a bit much.
those are just numbers folks i didn't add anything up so don't go pulling out your calcs
2. PLEASE PLEASE reduce the lethality of mobs accordingly. everything is balanced with oe in mind so don't forget to remove that extra dmg when you do the patch.
i'm sure there are plenty of other things but i can't handle typing anylonger
ps. hey fc need anymore programmers i'm sick of all this industrial programming
MOB HIT POINTS--They are insane
If you lower the Hit points of monsters in the game to be on par with players BEFORE your proposed patch of doom i doubt you will lose anybody. BUT if you go ahead with patch and don't adjust mobs to realistic levels you will have an exodus from the game that will make patch 12.6 look good
just my 2 cents