New TL7 Trader drains...

[Infamine]

Hi, i'm not used to post alot, but one thing i'd really like to see, is title 7 trader drains as effective as they were before SL, by that i mean taking away 40% of your skills, like divest taking away 25% and then plunder 15%.

And maybe add some crit gain to the drain.

I think it was pretty much balanced at the time...


The funniest part about this all "balance" idea is that pvp once was pretty much balanced, untill for some reason some weird guys started to nerf pvp damage to make the fights last longer, then the other way around, etc...

I dont know if any dev from the pre-SL days is still actually working on this game, but i'd really like to have an answer to a question that's been bugging me for years :

why was UVC made MA only ?

Maybe someone else can answer me ?

Anyway, about the original reason i posted, at TL7, trader drains aren't effective enough, they really need an upgrade, even if its pvp only nanos...

[Saetos]

And maybe add some crit gain to the drain.

Um... Don't they do that already?

why was UVC made MA only ?

Because if it wasn't, Traders would have more critchance than Martial Artists, which shouldn't happen.

Anyway, about the original reason i posted, at TL7, trader drains aren't effective enough, they really need an upgrade, even if its pvp only nanos...

Oh yes they are, we're able to drain 1300 Attack Rating already without LE procs; quite honestly that's effective enough. With 40% skill drain you'd be draining WAY too much skills.

[navycut]

lol they aren't effective wha?? Yeah um 1 drain basically shuts down my toon.

[Marinegent]

Drains are OP imho.

At least, by them selves - perhaps not. Combined with everything else traders have? Draining offense and buffing their defense, nanite drains, GTH, procs, etc...


I think traders should get a bit of reduction in their drain abilities, or have higher NR checks added to everything. As it stands they can shut down most professions quite easily.

[MyGift]

Maybe drains u use are bad and outdated...Check shop/quests dewd...

2 drains landed on anything and u get BY leet....

Drains should have lower durations...5 min to be helpless is toooo long...not to mention they can cast it over and over again...

[Wrangeline]

Maybe drains u use are bad and outdated...Check shop/quests dewd...

2 drains landed on anything and u get BY leet....

Drains should have lower durations...5 min to be helpless is toooo long...not to mention they can cast it over and over again...

You mean 3 minutes?

[Lheann]

why was UVC made MA only ?

Maybe someone else can answer me ?

Because in the 12.x series of AO there came a time that every a level 20 toon could ladder up into QL200 implants and equip a QL200 shotty and with UVC and no OE rules in the game at the time could then go out and kill everything in its path. In that time if you did not have 70+% crit chance while running around you were VERY gimp and PVP food.

Thus FC made sweeping changes to save the game and some of those included:
ELLTS removed from drop tables and shop tables
UVC line of crit buffs became MA only
OE rules introduced
Hot swapping implants removed
Disabled being able to remove NCU belt and leave NCU equipped.

And it was actually possible for a short time have in excess in of 100% crit chance for a short duration with the right nano and setup combo. Of course everyone running around doing crits every hit made leveling stupid fast.

[Neon_1]

I think it was pretty much balanced at the time...

Few things.....

1. Why do I always get the feeling, when someone says that line, that it really means;; "Damn, my prof was stupidly OP then, why cant I have it now ?"

2. Why everybody keeps stating that "things were balanced back then....", when thats not even close to the truth ? I havent played the entire AO-timeline, so I cant state what accurately was the situation 8 years ago, but what I have read/heard, it definetly wasnt the case. For the nostalgy reasons, I blame point nr. 1 again.

3. Your suggestions are stupid and would make traders even more OP than they are now. You can debuff anybody but NR shades to oblivion already. What more do you want ? If anything, the debuffs should be nerfed, and propably they will be.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

the way I'd like to see drains is as follows:

divest is buff drain
ransack is a drain buff

Heres the distinction: Divest say, has a lower check, drains the target for say: 150 points, BUT returns 150% of the drain as a BIG BUFF, thus giving 225 skills.

Ransack on the other hand, is a DRAIN buff, so, with a higher check, it deprives the target of a LARGE amount of skills, say, 225, BUT only returns say, 40% of the drain as a buff (say, 150).

This way, the Trader sets himself up for a bigger harder drain with a easy drain first. The other thing this does, is it places greater emphasis on self buffing through divest, than through ransack.

The benefits of this type of scheme is as follows:

• Trader gets a big buff to begin,
  
• The target can still function
• The game is easier to play for the target (most of whom, until this very moment, hate traders for their damn drains)
• And the trader gains a relatively larger offensive bonus for an easier to land drain.
• Places MORE emphasis on the second drain to completely cripple the target, but, provides a bigger immediate bonus to the trader.

[Infamine]

Mhm, my bad, just realised i actually skipped the DB nanos -_-

Thanks Saetos & MyGift



@Lheann : all those "changes" (lol...) didnt happend at the same time, but whatever, no point talking about it anymore


@ Neon_1 : actually i played a soldier at that time, so trader were kinda hard to deal with...

[Tergx]

Few things.....


2. Why everybody keeps stating that "things were balanced back then....", when thats not even close to the truth ? I havent played the entire AO-timeline, so I cant state what accurately was the situation 8 years ago, but what I have read/heard, it definetly wasnt the case. For the nostalgy reasons, I blame point nr. 1 again.

because.......before the stupid nerfs that came along with the retarded shadowdorks expansion, PvP was truely awesome in this game and incredibly fun. As it is now it is not even worth mentioning in the same context, actually mass PvP (that's what I am talking about, mass PvP) as it is now is a complete joke.

The Notum Wars expansion was truely awesome. So, take it from someone who has actually played this game before mass PvP was shot dead by shadowlands, and all its ridiculous crap like shadowbreeds that handed Omni all the high ql spots with 1 button. Then it was rolled over again in reverse by the ludicrous orbital strikes......lol like they couldn't see that those were going to be abused.

Now were all rats in a cage and have been taught that it is mass PvP.

So, in direct respose to what you posted about your doubt that it was "balanced", I would say that you are using a word that is not fairly debateable, as everyone that plays this game will have a different opinion of what is "balanced". What I can say is that it was immensely fun, so much so, that high level tower battles had so many participants that we consistantly crashed the servers before they introduced the CC. They happened ALOT too.

What do we do now? wait in a que..........pfft. The battlestation is beyond predictable and boring. So what I think you have read about that PvP used to be balanced was more along the lines of that is was fun and unpredictable for the most part. So compared to what it is now, one could easily say that it used to be way more "balanced" than it is now.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents

[Tergx]

traders that play 220s and pvp will know that the drains are not OP at all, and do nothing to prevent a traders death.

all non-traders that pvp against us will generally be annoyed that we cast things that cause them to actually be less effective. Then they predictably post that with one drain, that lands every time of course that they fall to the ground and die because they can't even use first aid stims because our drains are so powerful.

another boring, predictable thread..........except if it's about adding special skill debuffs to our drains. Keeping on upping the amount that the drains debuff would be ridiculous at some point and unnecessary imo. Adding the ability to debuff special skills would bring back the effectiveness that our drains use to have long ago. Who cares if someone can't cast this or that...boo hoo, that's the whole point.

[Tergx]

Oh yes they are, we're able to drain 1300 Attack Rating already without LE procs; quite honestly that's effective enough. With 40% skill drain you'd be draining WAY too much skills.

trader professional? devil's advocate? "able to" doesn't necessarily equate to probable or realistic

[Strupstad]

the way I'd like to see drains is as follows:

divest is buff drain
ransack is a drain buff

Heres the distinction: Divest say, has a lower check, drains the target for say: 150 points, BUT returns 150% of the drain as a BIG BUFF, thus giving 225 skills.

Ransack on the other hand, is a DRAIN buff, so, with a higher check, it deprives the target of a LARGE amount of skills, say, 225, BUT only returns say, 40% of the drain as a buff (say, 150).

This way, the Trader sets himself up for a bigger harder drain with a easy drain first. The other thing this does, is it places greater emphasis on self buffing through divest, than through ransack.

The benefits of this type of scheme is as follows:

• Trader gets a big buff to begin,
  
• The target can still function
• The game is easier to play for the target (most of whom, until this very moment, hate traders for their damn drains)
• And the trader gains a relatively larger offensive bonus for an easier to land drain.
• Places MORE emphasis on the second drain to completely cripple the target, but, provides a bigger immediate bonus to the trader.

Actually not a bad idea, if you slice the recharge on those nanos by a couple of seconds

[Saetos]

trader professional? devil's advocate? "able to" doesn't necessarily equate to probable or realistic

Realistic?

It's both Nanite Improveds and a Corporate Protection. On most targets and using a nanoskill setup, it's not too hard to get that going.

[Infamine]

Okay, i think i probably was not really clear about what i really meant...

I'm not saying to stupidly keep adding numbers like what was done in the past years (triples, hp, heals, etc...) but instead to make things that are already ingame actually work...

So maybe its by adding a special debuff to the drains, maybe something else like disabling a part of the profession perks ?, but as it is right now it doesn't work the way i think it's supposed to : forcing the drained player to think outside the box, and to use his toolset some other way than the obvious one to bypass his current incapacitation ...


So now, after reading Tergxj posts, i feel that i'm not some lone soul feeling that pvp was really funny and challenging at some point in this game, and balanced i'm saying balanced, because anyone was able to deal with anyone, maybe not on a one vs one situation, but on battles, as a soldier, i was able to kill docs, traders, adv, etc... on the same rate as they were able to kill me... Nobody had some kind of overpowered advantage (well maybe EQB at some point, but still...)

From the pvp point of view (and many other), SL was a complete failure... it totally destroyed the slight balanced between professions by just stupidly upping numbers, and also drove away probably 75% of the players...

I hope this "balance" patch will be an addition the game, like "Notum Wars" and not another total failure like "SL".
I'm not sure that having 15 new fancy button to push is gonna make things more balanced, or make more people join the game, theres already plenty of carebear games out there where you get spoonfed from lvl 1 till endgame...


NB: About UVC/ELLTS/etc... maybe you think it was totally stupid to have those ingame, but as far as i reminder, all player X needed to do not to be a total gimp was to blitz a mission to get a ql200 ellts, blitz another one to get his "insert weapon of choice", and then ask any MA for UVC, to be able to compete with 90% of the other players... And actually making leveling faster was kind of cool, seeing how long it took to reach 200...

[Lheann]

@Lheann : all those "changes" (lol...) didnt happend at the same time, but whatever, no point talking about it anymore

Strange, considering I never indicate that they did happen all at once. But they did happen over a series of patches to address the very problem I described as well as a few other problems.

[Saetos]

NB: About UVC/ELLTS/etc... maybe you think it was totally stupid to have those ingame, but as far as i reminder, all player X needed to do not to be a total gimp was to blitz a mission to get a ql200 ellts, blitz another one to get his "insert weapon of choice", and then ask any MA for UVC, to be able to compete with 90% of the other players... And actually making leveling faster was kind of cool, seeing how long it took to reach 200...

Because having 40%+ static crit chance on every character in an RPG is a great design concept.

Wait...

[Stinnipeng]

You still playing Terg?

I feel, as an agent... that the drains are overpowered in its current state, seeing my char is locked down 90%, and only my 11 sec AS remains, if you were to drain specials aswell, I would be at 0% effectiveness...

Is that really fair?

[Infamine]

Because having 40%+ static crit chance on every character in an RPG is a great design concept.

Wait...

Nope you missed my point, the great design concept was that no one was left out, it was fun easily available for anyone with access to a mission booth...

All i'm saying, is that, i'm not sure that the more complicated it gets, the more enjoyable it becomes for people

One could also point out, how could tower wars be fun when you had to turn distance view to almost 0 not to lag for 3 seconds, when you would die from damage you never actually saw, but it really was fun, because it was simple, and everyone stood a chance...

Don't take my words the wrong way, i'm not trying to make everyone uber and able to kill anyone in a matter of seconds, all i'm saying, is that maybe it would be a good idea for the devs to look into the way things were back at NW, take what was good, and use it at as a base for the future balance patch, because really, people had fun pvping...

I really like this game (guess that why i'm still playing it after 9 years...), and i would really hate to see it lose its player again, that's all...