[Crat] Feedback

[Demoder]

The positive:
I like it how they make the XP perks accessable at lower levels (60 instead of 110 and so on).
The fact that lower levels get their hands on the better evade buffs a tiny bit sooner sounds okay too.
Both of these changes lets the player get a better feel of their toolset at a lower level, instead of feeling like playing a disabled class untill level 125+.
I like the idea behind the change in the Loophole perkline. Changing Puppeteer from relying on the pets level, to relying on the character level, makes sense. The extra AAO and Damage is greatly needed for the pets, too.

Question: it looks like the suggested changes to puppeteer will make it usable on two types of pets.. Did I misunderstand something?

Also, to all those talking about them adding psychology; Note that they move the +120 psychology buff from Directorship to Bureaucratic Shuffle, and moved the +80 psychology from Insurance Agent to Commanding Presence.
They did however add +60 psychology to Loophole (AI perk line).
This means that they moved the psychology buffs over to perks that everyone perks anyway, instead of just the XPstick perks. This is, in my opinion, an improvement.
Am I the only crat on all three servers that like using my crat as a Psychology tradeskiller? And I don't mind getting free AR to charms and whatever else which might use psychology as a attack skill.

Edit: The additional 99 nano init, 9 pm/si, 60 mc/ts/bm and +3% nanodmgmodifier in the Loophole line is really nice, too. It should help reduce the complete dependency of +nanoskill items (and/or provide better AR on nanos).

The suggestions:
To further reduce the feeling of the crat profession being a totally empty shell below level 125, they should add lower level malaises (the lowest one is lvllocked 135), and *maybe* add more defensives at lower levels. I always had the feeling my crats were utterly gimp on the evade side at lower levels, considering all the IP tend to go into abilities, hp, nanopool and nanoskills.

Fear nanos seem to be rather useless at higher levels due to the psychic check. How about adding some new ones, improving the existing ones; or add some fear perks? Wouldn't a fear perk using psychology (:P all you psychology haters!) as attack skill make sense? I mean.. fear is all about psychology.

SL AoE calms. Duration: 20 seconds. Lockout (on each and every target that it lands on): 50 seconds. Lockout should be checked on the calming nano, not the nano that casts the AoE effect, to prevent having to actually target something that doesn't have the lockout running in order to cast the AoE nano.

[Hacre]

I like the idea behind the change in the Loophole perkline. Changing Puppeteer from relying on the pets level, to relying on the character level

Not really. Decent Crats can tweak into the level 200 pet much sooner than level 200.

[Demoder]

Not really. Decent Crats can tweak into the level 200 pet much sooner than level 200.

I didn't say it was a change that would give a positive bonus to everyone in every aspect, even though with the current paper-suggestion, everyone would get a better buff from this perk than the current buff.
I just said I liked the change... and I like it, because it makes sense. The buffs should rely on your character, not your pet. (even though the pet relies in your character)

[Hacre]

I didn't say it was a change that would be positive in every aspect.
I just said I liked the change... and I like it, because it makes sense. The buffs should rely on your character, not your pet. (even though the pet relies in your character)

But it actually becomes less useful. At 220, you're only gaining 5 AR for the pet. However, you're losing a fair bit of AR on pets (which means a direct drop in pet damage) from the moment the perk becomes available in early levels, right up until level 201 unless the player is lazy and just casts pets as they become available via IP expenditure.

This also constitutes a direct nerf for Crats at TL5, where they suck already.

[Demoder]

This also constitutes a direct nerf for Crats at TL5, where they suck already.

auno.org, info on puppeteer: +200 aao at level 200 (so, +1 aao on the pet, per level on the pet). 200 pet: 200ar.

Quoting new setup:

Loophole 1: Offense modifier 200, All damage types: 5
Loophole 2: Offense modifier 205, All damage types: 10
Loophole 3: Offense modifier 210, All damage types: 20
Loophole 4: Offense modifier 215, All damage types: 25
Loophole 5: Offense modifier 220, All damage types: 30
Loophole 6: Offense modifier 225, All damage types: 35
Loophole 7: Offense modifier 230, All damage types: 40
Loophole 8: Offense modifier 235, All damage types: 50
Loophole 9: Offense modifier 240, All damage types: 75
Loophole 10: Offense modifier 250, All damage types: 100

Even on my 100 crat (which does selfcast the 200 pet), this would give 20 more AAO and 30 more +dmg to the pet than the current perk.
If I somehow managed to cast a 200 pet at level 15, the perk would still add 200 AAO, and +5dmg, so 5 more dmg than before. But realisticly speaking, it would give somewhere around 160 more AAO than before.

I wouldn't say that "gaining a bit less at tl5 than at tl7" is a nerf, especially not since the gain is more than what already exists.
This is of course assuming that the listed information is correct, and is not a "modifier at level 200". (And I kind of hope it IS a 'modifier at level 200', or the +200 aao would be very overpowered at level 15.)

[Hacre]

auno.org, info on puppeteer: +200 aao at level 200 (so, +1 aao on the pet, per level on the pet). 200 pet: 200ar.

Quoting new setup:

Even on my 100 crat (which does selfcast the 200 pet), this would give 20 more AAO and 30 more +dmg to the pet than the current perk.
If I somehow managed to cast a 200 pet at level 15, the perk would still add 200 AAO, and +5dmg, so 5 more dmg than before. But realisticly speaking, it would give somewhere around 160 more AAO than before.

I wouldn't say that "gaining a bit less at tl5 than at tl7" is a nerf, especially not since the gain is more than what already exists.
This is of course assuming that the listed information is correct, and is not a "modifier at level 200". (And I kind of hope it IS a 'modifier at level 200', or the +200 aao would be very overpowered at level 15.)

Ah I see. My apologies, when I read here "scales with player level" I thought that meant level 60 player gets 60aao buff. That'll teach me not to have another look at the PDF myself.

Thanks Demoder.

[FlyingV2]

Crats need some kind of defense boost more than anything. Maybe perks isn't the right place to give it to us, but in the balance discussion, this is fairly important as far as crats go.

Bump.

There needs to be some serious revamp of crat's defences.
It should be the main priority, and something that needs more thought and innovation than just reducing times on current perks.
The void from the stun removal is still present. While it's something that had to go and now in the past, I fear any sort of decent replacement for even a small percentage of the defence it gave us, has been long forgotten.

[Demoder]

Ah I see. My apologies, when I read here "scales with player level" I thought that meant level 60 player gets 60aao buff. That'll teach me not to have another look at the PDF myself.

Thanks Demoder.

It doesn't say "scales with player level" on the Puppeteer perk. (unless I am blind? Point me to it please.)
Though, it probably should.

Also.... If it DOES scale by level (which it doesn't say it does), there's also nothing saying if the modifier from each perk version scales by the pets level, or the player level. Only thing for certain is that the more perks in that line you have, the better a scale you can have (if there is a scale).

tl;dr: FC needs to revise the AI perk documentation for Puppeteer and specify if there is a level-based scale on the puppeteer perk, and if the scale depends on the player or pet level.

[Gridpain]

so ... how about fixing the refresh rate of perk aura "before" the balance ?

(yeah, it's a bump)

[DePreach]

It took about 6 weeks of discussions and 3 weeks to write the document.

If the plan to do something takes a quarter then I expect the actual changes to take in the region of a decade.

We actually coined a new phrase for this in the org. We have wetware, vaporware, software etc... we have just seen the emergence of wooware. Promise the earth if it will get em out of their pants (pants in this case being a metaphor for cash)

I want to see a timescale on the engine, on these perk changes and everything else, any half decent team leader will give a deadline and any half decent manager would demand one. The dev team is getting free run of the building at the minute and it seems every developer has free reign on what the hell he chooses to work on this week. I fear the management is too weak and apart from the weekly, often late, often far too brief shiny baubles that are being held up to pacify I see nothing moving.

APART from all this, in isolation these changes mean nothing, we need to see the nano changes as well, and the weapon changes, and the specials changes and the dynamic runspeed changes, we need to play with them before any actual figures are set in stone to see how the dynamic works. Surely a decade of screwing up balancing has taught someone out there the impossibility of considering every effect a change in game will have.

I am heartened by the fact that someone has seen a need for an overarching, cross the board change but I have little faith that anything will ever make a live environment.

Document Rebalancing version 1
-Perks
-Special Attacks
-Dynamics Changes
-Nano Changes
-Class Changes
-Profession Changes
-Equipment Changes

We have seen 1-1 now can we get the rest please.

Of course we can wait while you have the affront to blow the marketing budget on some 3 day party in the US, no problem at all.

There is no point discussing this document in isolation, if there are more changes planned outline them otherwise the perk changes will only further unbalance the game.

Lengthy bump?

[Manicmouse]

Planning is usually considered the most important part of the development lifecycle (in some methodologies).

Theory is that if you spent more time planning the rest is quite straight forward as you don't have to keep making changes once you start doing the coding

So fingers crossed that the implementation of these changes happens nice and fast! Though there are a lot of issues in this balance forum...

[DePreach]

I always find rapid prototyping better than the old structured approach.

Especially when there are many thousands of interconnected variables and your performance indicators are woolly and consist mainly of hearsay as in this case.