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Thread: Friday with Means - January 9th, 2009

  1. #1

    Friday with Means - January 9th, 2009

    Happy New Year!

    It has been a busy week...filled with many meetings as we begin to plan for the future of AO in 2009...and try our best to shake the vacation out of our minds and get right back into "the zone" balancing the new content for the "Legacy of the Xan" booster.

    This week we published a new version of the booster to TestLive and we are looking forward to another version coming middle of next week. This week also brought small update to live with a couple crash fixes and to get rid of a significant exploit. I am hoping the TestLive version next week will include significant adjustments made to the free pvp content (knockback and fear) included in the same update as the booster. I am also hoping next weeks version will see some of the work Macrosun has being producing based on his investigations of synch issues. Thanks to all who have taken the time to give their honest opinions about the functionality of these pvp additions...we will do our best to keep your opinions in mind and do our utmost to "make everyone happy". These additions are far from complete and they will not be included until we are all satisfied that they are ready and good for the game.

    Outside meetings this week I managed to get some time to start examining the orbital strike mechanics and their effects on current Notum Wars pvp. My current impression is that the orbital strikes have "gone too far" in terms of their effect on the outcome of tower battles. The original basic concept was to "spread out" combat to make individual contributions more significant. The general feeling from the community has been that OS mechanics have an overpowering effect on the outcome of these battles and really highlight the balance issues that exist between the sided shadowbreeds. Data would also indicate that high level bases rarely if ever change hands. This could of course be for many reasons...but again OS mechanics could be a possible cause. AO is a game where we push individual character power to the extreme and I have always had a hard time accepting the basic idea that being killed from space, without ever seeing your enemy, could be "fun". Especially when "killed from space" can (and does) happen multiple times in a single tower battle. Before I make any changes I would like the oportunity to discuss our ideas for change here.
    -----------------------------------------------
    Two Proposed Changes:

    1. Orbital Strikes will no longer kill anyone at full health.

    An unharmed player will probably never die. Someone at low health will.

    2. Spreading out players will now be achieved with knockback.

    Players caught in an orbital strike will now be moved significant distances away from "ground zero". Being rooted will not prevent this move. This should also lessen the chances of being caught be multiple OS attacks at once. On "landing" a brief but significant snare will make regrouping "slower" this should give the OS team a short advantage...yet not an overpowering one.
    ------------------------------------------------

    I'll be checking in here daily to participate in the discussion, and hopefully we'll see the first new version of the orbital strike on TestLive for next weekend. Hopefully the long awaited Engineer Mines will come at the same time.

    I hope everyone had a holiday season. I'm really happy to be back at work, recharged and ready to go!

    Colin "Means" Cragg
    Colin Cragg
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    Past Game Director (2008-2011)

  2. #2
    Welcome back! (first!)
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  3. #3
    Ibtk.

    Love the sound of option two, for orbital strikes. My brain is running circles here, would love to see some really complicated stuff like an OS to have two blast radius's. A much stronger one in the middle of it, a weaker towards the outside. So a ground zero person gets thrown about, smacked about and maybe even dotted (radiation!), and a person clipped by the OS just knocked about and thrown out (Uh, shockwaves or something).

    Then again, this is the opinion of a pvper-under-duress, and probably shouldn't be listened to. Theres plenty of others with a vested interest and thus a more informed opinion.

    And now.. sleep! FWM is somewhat genius. I wait on my PC patiently every saturday morning until 3am to catch a few nuggets of dev insight.
    Last edited by egadsrk2; Jan 9th, 2009 at 18:15:22.

  4. #4
    so, beeing slightly damaged by omni sb will make OS lethal for clan and not for omnis :P?
    woofwoof!

  5. #5
    Personally I think making orbital a knockback and not insta death would be a great idea. You are 100% right, nobody likes being killed from space and it being completely unavoidable other than don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    As long as the knockback knocks you far enough back to make it a bit of a pain in the butt, not as much as dying and having ress effect and having to rebuff but still a pain.
    Almadena

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    Two Proposed Changes:

    1. Orbital Strikes will no longer kill anyone at full health.
    An unharmed player will probably never die. Someone at low health will.
    NOOOOOOOOOO Please, this will make orbital strikes almost ueselss, as anyone will tell you during TL7 tower attacks pretty much evryone in the attacking blob is at 100% health except for maybe 1-3 who are being targeted by the defending blob which will make the OS strile pointless.
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    2. Spreading out players will now be achieved with knockback.
    Yes please =P
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  7. #7
    i think an os that just scattered the other blob up and snared for 30 secs is more than enough to give a nice advantage to the other side.
    i guess a -50%hp hit would be acceptable too since hopefully the targets will be widely spread out and less likely to get aoe killed after the os.

    oh also maybe put some nice mechanic in there so docs get thrown 100 m west and enfs and sols 100m east rest north and south

  8. #8
    Hi Means. I'm glad to see OS changed. What do you think about making assist PvM only and its effect on mass PvP?
    Dragocz RK1

  9. #9

    Thumbs up

    Welcome back Means, and thank you for reviving the agent profession to a team player. Never as good as a real profession, but able to step in and aid.

    The nanoes might not change the endgame PVP, but it indeed will change the team play and soloability with agents, while leveling up.

    It might lead to more choosing to play agent, as it will not be just as hard to level up, which again will lead to there actually being gimp Agents on BS.

    I look forward to the PVP-statistics after the booster launch. Then Agent might no longer be the
    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion View Post
    statistically the best performing PVP profession

    Thank you for adding mid-game contents, at least for the agents.

    Kind regards
    Ariensky

  10. #10
    Is the Booster still scheduled to release end of January? Previous News stated "The new target release date will be the end of January"

    Would like some info as to when the Booster Plans to release since i haven't even seen a Pre-Order date yet.
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  11. #11
    WB. Hope you had a good holiday season

    That being said, I'm going to annoy you again by dragging up an old post.

    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    Let me start by first saying I haven't read the rest of this thread and I won't be. Not everyone is going to get a significant upgrade in every patch. In a coming update I'm 100% certain other classes will be complaining about your upgrades. I hope this puts things in perspective.
    That's what you said after the last useless debuff we got. Before that, something similar was said about the useless debuff before we got. And about TTB before that. And about every patch we're still lacking weaponry and a functional CC toolset.

    How on earth do you rhyme that with the fact the crat fears are currently 100% break on both attack and debuff? If it's a c/p error, ignore this post. If it's not, what on earth are you people thinking?

    Crats have both passive and active AoE debuffs. This means we'll almost certainly break the fear very fast, even if we don't use any of our active debuffs.
    In this shape, the fear isn't even an escape nano, let alone anything that can even remotely be used offensively.

    Now factor in the fact there's more crats and engis with passive AoE debuff auras, and this fear is broken a fraction of a second after it lands. In other words, utterly and completely useless.

    Is your idea of the fear that we kindly ask all engis and crats to turn off their auras and everyone else to please not use AoE nanos?
    Last edited by crattey; Jan 9th, 2009 at 19:05:18.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitoujeanne View Post
    Is the Booster still scheduled to release end of January? Previous News stated "The new target release date will be the end of January"

    Would like some info as to when the Booster Plans to release since i haven't even seen a Pre-Order date yet.
    Ditto.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    Two Proposed Changes:

    1. Orbital Strikes will no longer kill anyone at full health.

    An unharmed player will probably never die. Someone at low health will.
    No please. It sucks for two reasons: one, you can use two OS in a row and still kill everyone. Two, it does not achieve the intended goal - disperse a crowd/blob (or like current OS, kill them) so that there's no longer serverside lag.

    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    2. Spreading out players will now be achieved with knockback.

    Players caught in an orbital strike will now be moved significant distances away from "ground zero". Being rooted will not prevent this move. This should also lessen the chances of being caught be multiple OS attacks at once. On "landing" a brief but significant snare will make regrouping "slower" this should give the OS team a short advantage...yet not an overpowering one.
    This, please! It does the intended job (dispersing the crowd) while not enabling a "raidforce" consisting of two toons to kill a raidforce of 50+ toons.

    The snare sounds great too, make it scale with your level maybe? Similar to perks like Suppressive Horde adding more damage each time you level up. Good values for TL7 would be 2k. Unbreakable and umremovable too, please.. which means you have to add it to a different school than Snare. As long as you don't add new things like the oldstyle OS, it should be fine.
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  14. #14
    There should be a combination... 50% health and a knockback attached.
    With just the knockback.. I doubt it will be used a lot.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    Two Proposed Changes:

    1. Orbital Strikes will no longer kill anyone at full health.

    An unharmed player will probably never die. Someone at low health will.
    Means, Instead of making the OS check health make the OS cast the "Orbital Blocker" and despawn any Laser Tags in the area around it.

    OS would lock out other OS from other orgs for X amount of time for X amount of distance.
    OS would destroy any Laser Tags that are on the ground besides the one that was directly fired.

    A new Laser Tag would be created for Air strike, the Air Strike Laser Tag would not be blocked by orbital, BUT would have it's damage greatly reduced.

    Leave the knockback in that is a perfect idea for what it was meant to be, expand the knockback range from what the damage range is though.
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  16. #16
    Second seems better. Although How about it kicks you back a long ways, does some damage as it is still a big ass beam from orbit but not too much (maybe 20% of full health) and sticks you with a level block dependant snare (higher level, larger run speed penalty and duration) or a root (higher lvl, longer duration). That way the blob is separated and kept from coming right back what with the RS of high level players. It also negates the omni SB effect when used with a OS.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Harios View Post
    There should be a combination... 50% health and a knockback attached.
    With just the knockback.. I doubt it will be used a lot.
    I don't understand your logic. Why wouldn't it be used? There is no downside to using it.....even if it was -20 AR to all in area you'd still use it instead of not using it right? I think knockback is only one of the things that could be done. Perhaps make multiple types of Orbitals? 1 that makes huge - AR to all in area, one that makes huge -defense to all in area, one that is knockback, one that is area stun for like 20 seconds? Choices are nice....however I think the most powerful one will be found and always used so In any case, my point is :

    Knockback/Debuff/Stun > Insta-unavoidable death from flying spaghetti monster
    Last edited by Madrid; Jan 9th, 2009 at 19:21:24.
    Almadena

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    Players caught in an orbital strike will now be moved significant distances away from "ground zero". Being rooted will not prevent this move.
    Still gives omni an advantage with their sb root, but a step in the right direction. People will come back to the fight after being os'ed now.

  19. #19
    Orbital Strike counter suggestion:

    Make the damage done not hp based by percentage of max health and max nano based. Then have 2 or 3 damage zones.

    Zone 1: Center of blaster (ground zero to 20 meters) 90% health removed and 75% nano removed. Knocked back 160 meters and snared for 30 seconds. Removed from combat mode and targeting queues cleared.

    Zone 2: Life Sucks radius (20 meters to 40 meters) 70% health removed and 50% nano removed. Knocked back 110 meters and snared for 15 seconds. Removed from combat and targeting queues not affected.

    Zone 3: What was that radius (40 meters to 80 meters) 50% health removed and 25% nano removed. Knocked backed 60 meters and snared for 5 seconds. Removed from combat and targeting queues not affected.

    Now OS has purpose but has enough knockback to keep stacked OS's from taking everyone out.

    OK the radius numbers would need some adjustment but that is the general idea. Yeah it needs works. But that is my feedback on proposals by means.
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  20. #20
    I like idea of dispersed crowds fighting other dipersed crowds so it is like combination of many mini 2v1;2v3etc. situations.

    However if one crowd gets dispersed and other doesn't (one which used OS) it will still be massacre of 50players picking of players one by one which imo is not cool at all.

    I for most enjoy outside pvp battles a lot (or I did some while ago) but the most awesome ones were some 15v15 basically with small numbers - less lag, don't die in 0.00001.

    So imo aim would be to get many combinations of small mini battles, don't know how others view it and how to implement it though

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