The Reason for Over-Equipping

[_____________OmniPol]

Recently Funcom posted many of their thoughts on exploits and over-equipping. I can talk about the over-equipping part. The question should be asked: why do people over-equip? They do it because it is a necessity. The problem doesn't lie in bugs allowing people to carry QL 100 guns at lvl 75, the problem lies in the fact that if a player does not have such a high level gun- he'll die. His damage will be so poor compared to, not only other players, but to the monsters as well. If someone does not over-equip themselves, they can forget about going solo or doing missions. Their only refuge would be to get in a team with a tank that does over-equip and then hide behind him. Monsters have so many hit points that one needs over-equipped gear to fight off even greens or yellows.

[___________TreeTrunk]

Perhaps that is true at higher levels.

As a level 16 trader, I can solo just fine as long as I keep my shotgun and critical nano's up to my level range. Ofcourse, I have to set the mission slider to about 1/3 to the left of middle difficulty.

[_______________spydr]

I think funcom should take a note from Blizzard (who makes Diablo). Diablo is ballanced for the casual gamer. Power Levelers not only totally own the game...but they are all really high level and most people don't even see them.....

Diablo is fun. If you choose to greatly increase your power through numbercrunching..the game gets easier.

In AO, you have to powerlevel and numbercrunch to kill that grey leet over there....

[___________TreeTrunk]

I agree that MMORPGs of the current design don't take in casual gamers very well.

At least in an online FPS, even while I am getting my ass kicked by twitchperts, I can have fun participating. In an MMORPG levels appear to serve as a segregation mechanism. Participating in the storyline can be that much more difficult.

This is precisely why utilizing the Mission System is critical for conveyting storyline and meaning to the average casual player.
A casual player can log in, get assigned a critical mission, and change the course of history.

Critical missions are not the only viable mechanism. In another mechanism, mission types can be created, and the success percentage (over thousands of assigned missions) can determine a game story decision.

[_____________Talaris]

The thing is if they "nerf" uber-equiping they will have to relevel the monster playing field. I am all for some kind of fix to uber-equiping because it would increase the team play nature of the game. Everyone seems to be upset about this messing up their solo game, but if they did the fix correctly solo'ers wouldn't really notice much change other then lower number and it would bring a lot more to teaming up.

The fix that I would like to see the most is capped QL scale. Basically if you buff into your gun and the buffs where off then the guns damage drop to a lower QL until you meet those skills, too many people have implants that raise skills just to use a new weapon then take them out and put some in for armor and so on. This will mean a large drop in damage for many power players. But it should not be such a big deal IF funcom drops monsters down at the same time. And because it hits all players equally it should not effect PvP at all other then drawing out fights, so then they could take the crappy half damage thing out. If you want to power play it you can either group or get buffed and run your mission while still buffed, you just can do it 3 days later.

At the same rate I feel that skill buffs and implants that boost you past the reqs for a weapon/armor should attempt to boost it QL up at a ratio making teaming with skill buffs more effective.

What ever the solution is that comes about, I want to see it on test for a nice long while before it comes to the Live servers, the last thing we need is to unbalance the game anymore with out enough testing.

[XtroXtreme]

Yep, PvM balance is down the drain. If they are to fix over-equiping they need to fix PvM balance as well.

[______________Taelyn]

Originally posted by TreeTrunk
Perhaps that is true at higher levels.

As a level 16 trader, I can solo just fine as long as I keep my shotgun and critical nano's up to my level range. Ofcourse, I have to set the mission slider to about 1/3 to the left of middle difficulty.

Level 16? No, that's too low. The game gets much harder as you go along. It increases in difficulty slowly. I barely noticed it until my fixer hit level 38 and couldn't solo a green without a mausser twice his level. You'll see.

[Zerosignal]

As a lvl 132 soldier, it takes me 2 hours to solo a mission using a Ql195 nova flow(self buffed) in a few more lvls ill have a Ql200 on, but i will not be able to solo mission anymore.

Why? you ask.

Well i don't have a gun any higher then Ql200 and at 140-150 missions will be too hard to solo, i will not out damage the mobs.

Hell at 132 i am seeing the mobs heal regenerate while fighting them, it has gotten to the point where i look for a crit buff before heading out.

Funcom balanced the game around low lvlers over-equiping, now you have screwed the high lvl game.