Yes I can see I was completely wrong now that you explained it in such a scientific manner.Originally Posted by Omutb
Yes I can see I was completely wrong now that you explained it in such a scientific manner.
Yep ,so how can we have these problems in the first place if we have Test server????
makes me wonder.
................
Because 90% of the playerbase doesnt want to go onto test? But I bet ALL of you want to go on to the beta sever and try out the balance changes.
"A whole new place to run around for ages in then die suddenly without warning."
"I know who coded pet pathing... and when I see him I say "/follow" and I start waling in to walls :P"
The "Trolls" option is incorrect. The term trolls is not used to describe the gathering of information on the Internet.
<@Kintaii> L2P
Test will never have enough ppl to test mass pvp. Ever. Fact of life.
So for testing pvp balance it's no good. It's noones fault rly it's just the way things are.
I'd say you didnt do LE beta then. They opened it up for everyone and there was a huge influx of testing and balancing done and in the end they cleared up a major part of the LE launch bugs.
In the end, no its not possible to remove all bugs, but doing it this way there's a large chance of removing the majority of the bugs and then clean up the rest after in a patch or two.
"A whole new place to run around for ages in then die suddenly without warning."
"I know who coded pet pathing... and when I see him I say "/follow" and I start waling in to walls :P"
The "Trolls" option is incorrect. The term trolls is not used to describe the gathering of information on the Internet.
<@Kintaii> L2P
Personally, I agree that a large patch is risky business, but it also shakes things up, and I'd say it's a lot more efficient in the long run. My reasoning is this: If the same changes were to be done through a series of small, sequential patches, each change would have to be balanced with the existing, unbalanced system. This would result in the first entire wave of patches being unbalanced by necessity, meaning each profession would need a bare minimum of two patches to achieve the new vision, most likely more. In light of this, and how tangled things have become over the years with various band-aids and patches to fix patches to fix patches, I'd say it's a fairly prudent choice to take a leap of faith and weather the storm rather than continue to take ineffective baby-steps.
It's akin to bridging a gap that is only connected via a tightrope. Sure you can slowly cross the rope, and there's less chance of catastrophic failure, but if you can manage it, it's probably quicker and easier to jump the gap at once. Especially if you've tried to cross the rope several times already and it's slick and frayed now.
Also I'd like to point out that when everything is up for grabs and released at once, a test server is going to be much more effective than with each small patch, because not only is it going to draw many more people in to test things, but the responses to new balance issues will be more likely to be addressed. If FC started small patches with Adventurer, and worked down alphabetically to Engineer before realizing that the Adventurer patch needed fixing, the problem would probably take much longer to correct simply due to logistics and planning.
While we're at it, how did all that intensive testing impact LE launch?
Oh right, it still was a complete disaster that made half of playerbase quit overnight.
As for Test Server , there have been a lot of people over the years who wanted to go there and help beat the crap out of bugs, but guess what, the TS enviroment is completely futile and not suited for testing anything, so it just serves as a vessel for a clique of test-born elitist douchebags - who admitedly do some bug hunting but often simply don't have enough manpower.
True, but I hope the feedback from the rebalancing tests is received better than the feedback from the LE testing. We reported a crapton of stuff that made it to live, as well as things making it to live that never even appeared on beta.
Member of Spartans
Hacre/Solitus/Keeper/220/29/70 - Ninpopotamus/Solitus/NT/220/30/70 - Charmming/Opifex/Crat/220/30/70
Genius at work.
Agree 100% here.
I agree that making huge changes to game balance when it takes thousands of hours of work to make an endgame toon is not the best idea. Presumably people had a fairly good idea that they liked how their profession played before putting that much work into it.
President of ShadowMercs
Where do you draw the line though? By this logic, NTs shouldn't lose LE nukes. But we all know they should, providing they get a decent toolset to replace them.
Same goes for professions that have used AS as a crutch for all these years. Much better to rework them so they have a toolset that replaces the need to hug the flavour of the month AS weapons like the Tiger and the Troa'Ler.
Member of Spartans
Hacre/Solitus/Keeper/220/29/70 - Ninpopotamus/Solitus/NT/220/30/70 - Charmming/Opifex/Crat/220/30/70
Genius at work.
How come? Removing LE nukes will have 0 impact on NT gameplay. Nuking is nuking is nuking.
The problem starts with the professions who ha(d)ve broken toolsets and most of the PvP power they have came not through new content, but from creative players who were experimenting with multitude of setups, often playing the game completely not as intended.
Delivering completely new toolset will completely change the "theme" of professions and the way how we play, ie. i have spend years exploring every way of turning my Engineer into offensive powerhouse and the current plan seems to be to turn him into /pet attack \n /afk pizza , which is not bad by itself, but its just such big change.
Of course it has an impact. Using an LE nuke in mass PvP always carries a risk due to the recharge, but it's balanced by the impact the nuke can have, either on a single target as a finisher, a bread and butter move in a 1v1 vs a Soldier, or if it was cast just prior to the NT being called (which does happen, your guys call me pretty quickly at towers). Losing LE nukes will certainly change my gameplay, introducing various nuke combinations will change the NT's game play. You can't just simplify it down to "you'll be casting after the changes" because it doesn't work like that.
Member of Spartans
Hacre/Solitus/Keeper/220/29/70 - Ninpopotamus/Solitus/NT/220/30/70 - Charmming/Opifex/Crat/220/30/70
Genius at work.
It will be very interesting.
...provided people queue BS in my timezone, allowing me to actually experience any of these changes in pvp. (had to)
Don't be lonely anymore.
Look at your post, now back at mine. Now back to your post, now back at mine. Sadly, yours isn't mine, but if you stopped trolling and started posting legitimate comments it could look like mine. Look down, back up, where are you? You're scrolling through posts, reading the posts your posts could look like. Back at mine, it's a reply saying something you want to hear. Look again, my reply is now diamonds. Anything is possible when you think before you post.
I would much rather that CB/IW were tweaked instead of removing LE nukes but that's really beside the point.
I don't see how completely changing so many things in the game can result in better balance. The more likely outcome seems to be that it will be more unbalanced than it is now and require a lot of game changing patches to fix. Right now its all paper pvp which never quite works out the same way in game.
President of ShadowMercs
The ultimate goal of a pvp balance effort is, or ought to be to make it so that playerskill and setup means the most. Class should mean less.
Any and every class should have a decent chance to beat any other class, ideally.
So.. how do we go about getting there, or at least a little closer?
The first step should be to remove the most grossly overpowered things that nulify playerskill and setup and gets everything down to luck, or in some cases to nothing more than pressing a button to win.
FC did start this work already. They changed Orbital Strike. They also changed crat proc stuns. These are perfect examples of things that nulify player skill/effort and by doing so any kind of fun as there is no way to counter these things.
The next step would/should be to determine what other things that fit in the same category.
Some guesses would be: GTH, RI, NBS and several of the nemesis nanos.
One button should never tilt a fight so much in favour of the caster/attacker or whatever has already won if it lands.
Simply remove these nanos and if needed compensate said classes in other areas. Then analyze this. First on test and then on live for some time.
After that continuously monitor the situation and do a second pass.
But with much more subtle changes. Tweak some classes defenses, some offenses, slowly, over time. New and shiny overpowered items and nanos are not needed at this point, tweak the stuff we already have ig!
Continue like this with ever smaller changes. NOT stuff that will force ppl to remake their toons completely! The AO community consists to a very large degree of oldtimers with 2 or 3 accounts. They won't want to remake their armies of toons.
Anyhow. This is how I would try to achieve something that resembles balance.
I also totally agree with noobius on this. If FC actually goes through with all the changes they are considering, the game won't be AO anymore, and could also end up being much more unballanced then it is now.
The reason the player base in this game consists mostly of people who have been playing for years is because its totally unique and creative amoung all other cookie cutter MMOs, and these players appreciate that. It would be much more rewarding to do things like updating graphics, and updating the engine to make things like tara and tower battles actualy capable of handling more ppl on the server instead of being a lag fest. If things like that worked better theres no reason the game couldnt be advertised more to bring in new players.
As for mechanics that need altering, there really isnt much, the big ones are:
Grand Theft Humidity - Shorten the time on this if needed since it can be annoying to get away from a trader and have to wait this out, but make sure Nano Bot Defense recharge is lowered equaly since that nano is useless without GTH runing.
Borrow Reflect - This is the only nemi nano that actually gives a possitive effect, and instead of giving like 80%ish reflect, its 100%. At least lower the reflect on trader so you take some damage with this runing.
Remedy Inhibitor - The length of this nano is what makes it most over powered in pvp in my opinion. At least lower the duration.
Constant Barrage - NT should have huge damage on nukes, but its the fact that theirs virtualy no chance to avoid them because of this nano, not to mention any other negative nano that is cast on you while this is runing. Needs to be nerfed by how much NR it drains or make it much harder to land.
Defeat Righteousness - This nemi nano removes aura nanos from keeper that are very difficult for them to cast. Once this is cast the keeper needs to stop and swap tons of gear to buff these nanos again which can be then taken off again with the press of a button. Lower the requirements on keeper aura nanos to solve this problem.
80% Pistol perks - This one is a no brainer, make them check 100%
MA special attacks - No point in having attacks that alter the defense of a target if it has the same 100% check as their perks that they can't land anyway. All MA special attacks should be lowered to at least 95% check, if not 90%. They need this love bad.
Crat tape debuffs ,Luck's Improved Capricious Consequence, as well as all the shop buyable incompetences should be removable, out of fight, with viral scanners.
The biggest over all problem i really see in pvp right now is that non evade classes are becoming unperkable in the right setup. A class that is meant to be perked, but can't be, becomes very over powered. Agent is the class im seeing this happen the most with. The aao vs aad needs to be reworked slightly. One thing that would help this would be making the aao hud3 that you buy with VP, equal in aao as the amount of evades/aad you get from the defense version.
The 2 Worst possible things that could happen from the reballance:
3 second charge time on AS - I honestly have no idea what FC is thinking with this one. AS is not a perk, its a special attack. If this is done it wont be AO anymore.
Making specials like AS and FA lock each other out - Another one of really neat things about AO is the ability to swap weapons on toons as part of your alpha to make use of more special attacks. This is another thing that if changed, will ruin AO as we know it. Not to mention completely ruin the Fixer profession.
I got a lot more but i dont want to make this post too long. The main point is that this complete reballance is the last thing AO needs right now. Some subtle changes like the ones i listed and a new engine to help the game that already exists run smoother should be first priority.
Shujiro/Illtradeya/Evilburrito
Sorry but Aimed Shot Online needed a swift kick to the nuts, all this talk of slow change? Bring change but do it slowly! Where the hell have you people been the last few years? Slow change has done -nothing- for AO.
Better to get it over with swiftly.
Darkempire 220/30/70 Agent
{edited by Anarrina: see me if you have questions}
When specifically asked for positive words, responding with a personal attack is incredibly rude and inappropriate. Please do not repeat such behavior.
I never said not to nerf it, but doing it by putting a charge time on a special attack is the worst possible way to do it. Thats like a solution you would get asking someone off the street that never played AO before in their life would come up with :P
Shujiro/Illtradeya/Evilburrito
orly? we're still paying to play it like ..10 years later.
imo bring it slow, test it, make it work. it takes too long for a game this age to recover from bad decisions. measure twice, cut once
I would rather have consistent, tested changes hitting live, than sudden dramatic huge amounts of change all at once, then the same amount of time wasted trying to patch all the holes that it would have taken to do it right the first time around.
AO: ▐ Renamed 220/30 adv▐ Giit 200/30 NT game over setup▐ Somethiing 199/21 Confused Sold▐ Sixunder 158/21 tard ▐ Eightup 150/20 flex▐ Giitjiit 57/6 NT▐
FFXIV: Giit Paradisian - 50 CNJ/White Mage - Hyperion server
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orly? we're still paying to play it like ..10 years later.
imo bring it slow, test it, make it work. it takes too long for a game this age to recover from bad decisions. measure twice, cut once
I would rather have consistent, tested changes hitting live, than sudden dramatic huge amounts of change all at once, then the same amount of time wasted trying to patch all the holes that it would have taken to do it right the first time around.
Yeah and how many left after LE? Please
LE is in fact the perfect example of how not to do it, and bro after 10 years we still the same issues. So guess what nothing has been fixed.
Last edited by Alternity; Jan 22nd, 2010 at 12:24:24.
Darkempire 220/30/70 Agent
{edited by Anarrina: see me if you have questions}
When specifically asked for positive words, responding with a personal attack is incredibly rude and inappropriate. Please do not repeat such behavior.
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