The Perfect Weapon

[____________Shiseiji]

Hmm... wouldn't mind having something that resembled a Div9 only it did cold damge and had a 5% chance of freezing the person, or lowering his initiatives.

[Internalfireh]

This is exactly what I look for in a game FREEDOM within your world, not only that it would solve the whole 'Balance' Problem.

As it stands PvP is Rock, paper, Scissors (with Ma being the Ref ;p ) with a Tradeskill system like this, not only would it be the most advanced of any MMORPG but it could shift balance to the desireabililty [<Spelling i know ;p] of the players. For example in current state of AO:

Fixer in GA is Almost impossible to kill with Non Debffuing Classes. Yet Debuffing Classes and NTs are good and effective against GA Fixers, Hell NT even have thier own Profesison Killing Nano (for the afore mentioned Fixer) This IS the problem, FC are setting Rules made of stone, No variations.

Imagine this, you have got a gun made to your specification, It might be amazing at killing say a GA Fixer, It does Radiation Damage and has a modifying item (Say an additional Slot named Mod to the creation step) that is designed to attack in the Nano Damge Area (It doesnt use evades or Defense Skills but the users Nano Resist Skill, Mini NT in a gun to put it simply) This wud rock the GA fixer but be uterly useless against a Enforcer or Soldier because there strength is in Good Ac's and Evades. Thats balance, you say "Hows that balance when someone can kill someone too easy" Balance IS NOT THAT, with this system implemented the Victim of one "Unbalance" can be the victor of another becvasue they themselves can change thier stratagies when fighting different classes.

If your an Ma fighitng an Enf you want Fire fists on Why.. ? Rage does Fire Damage, Enforcer uses Layers to stop the 1.3k ish (approx ;p ) Fire damage Rage does to them, Hence my Fire damage from my fists is getting thru Layers 3 times as fast because his own nano program is helping me. Thats a strategy that helps eliminate the Rock Paper Scissors approach.. Yes ill proably still get owned cus Ma's are gimped but what if I could use a Low offense High Defense strategy with a certain gun, Designed to do little damage but provide High defense, The enforcer cant keep Mogo running for Ever, he will eventually run out of nano pool (Enfs are known for having Not so good nano pools and High nano cost nanos such as the Mongo Line) and youl keep working away at him, untill he eventually Dies. Yes and No.. Maybe.

This system would still have a Rock Paper scissors element to it but not to the extent it exsists now. Obviously an Agent is not built to be able to withstand an Enforcers Damage, A NT isnt designed to be effective when Nano Shutdowned by a MP. At least there would be mroe freedom and shift of balance choosen by the paths of the players. Fc have less patching, wont need to Nerf so much Because technically the players will be doing this themselves except this time that player who Whines Nerf can help himself by changing him self.

This has been posted before and me and my AO friends belive it as well, there are idfferent classes in this game and yet the only thing seprating them is how good they can kill. Doctors, Traders, Crats ARE NOT FIGTHING classes so why is it that Traders and Dcotrs ar among the best classes for PvPing. As i see it MA, Sol and Enf are the big bad guys. you dont want to be meeting them toe to toe on 0%. Adventurers, these are semi good healers and semi good fighters.

NT's should be Uber with thier nanos but utterly destoyed when it comes to defending against a top tier class.

Fixers in my views are designed for doing good dmage but having to run when it gets too hot, yet they have GA that allows them to Evade 7/10 hits and nanos that were intent were for Defense purposes (Snares and Roots were designed form escaping not for Enhancing Combat Abilities)

Who wins in Real Life, that Doc out of Emergency Room or the trained Soldier of the battle field?

That Door To Door Trading Salesman wielding a briefcase and 'Finincial Plan' aint gonna beat the intensely, Spiritually Trained Master of Unarmed Combat in a 1 on 1 duel.

The fat ass dood with the building site material isnt going to loose to a NUmber Crunching, Politician with a Personal Assistant.
You can see what im getting at.

I really want to see this game Evolve, I love AO, but atm my MA is lvl 150, Permently doing BS missions and loosing in PvP, isnt this game meant to be Fun ?

-Internalfire

[____________Shiseiji]

What? Me? A trained soldier of war take on a doctor? Phht! Everyone knows that all I'm good for is a human shield, feared only by leets on Mondays, Thurdays, and Fridays. (On the other days they just laugh at me.)

Oh, and I can cast Mirror shield.

And I can cast reflect shields on people too.

[Internalfireh]

Read it again *sigh*

[______________Thoram]

I have been thinking of a system that might work and that might not be as hard to implement

Lets take a rifle for example. A rifle consist of a barrel, handle, trigger, clip. This is the standard model.

Now lets say that the barrel is a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The barrel have 4 'connections' that you can add items to.

connection 1 is the bottom rear end. here you fit a handle
connection 2 is the bottom middle/end. Here you fit a trigger
connection 3 is the bottom middle. Here you fit the clip
Connection 4 is the top. Here you fit the scope.

Now lets say that the barrel got this various connections are marked by 1,2,3 and 4.

At connection 1 you add the handle. And a handle only have one connection. The hanbdle have the same connection number as the barrel. IE connection 1. The handle can be of varoius material, length and designs. but they all have 1 connection and with the same connection number as one location of the barrel

The lowdown is this. I dont think it would be difficult to mark each item that are used to build weapons and other things with a connection number and have items that fits in those locations of the item have the same number. but have more then one item have the same number. Like all rifle handles for example have the same connection number but it is the design of the rifle handle that is different. Same for triggers, scopes, clips and such.

This you can have rifle and other weapons that looks pretty much the same but still be different. Like two people have the same looking rifles but one is using chemical ammo while the other is using energy ammo. It is only the clip type that is different. (simply put)

[Daimoness]

The problem with such a "variable" approach would be that we'll need a dynamic database that adds a new weapon item to it once someone invents a new weapon and brandished his name ot it.

There was an item with a "slot" approach in the game - the Arul Saba Bracelets, which apparently have been taken out of the game again, supposedly due to implementation problems.

Designing a base from scratch is impossible due to the concept of this game, however a possibility to customize weapons wouldbe great, much in the same way as armor.

And while you are at it, scrap 50% of the weapons in the database as no one uses them. In fact it's more like 90%, but well.

[______________Thoram]

Originally posted by Daimoness
And while you are at it, scrap 50% of the weapons in the database as no one uses them. In fact it's more like 90%, but well.

I agree. Fc boast about having 100 of thousands of items in the game, but only 10% or less are actually viable for use.

[__________1st Yeshua]

It's good to see so much support for this idea.

I'm very excited about the possibilities, and I am glad to see that so many others are as well, even if it is just a pipe dream.

I agree that this would not be an easy undertaking for FC. However, I think the benefits easily justify any means they would have to employ. I don't believe that any other MMORPG offers such a robust approach to the items manufacture process, not even Star Wars Galaxies will use a system quite this open.

Whether we call them slots or connections I hope that FC gives some serious consideration to this idea. The possibilities are just to sweet to ignore.

As far as the database work that a few have mentioned, everytime a new character comes on board a new name is added to a dynamic database. It shouldn't be so hard to create a database that is capable of containing all of the items that players may create. At least I don't see why it would. I mean, it's not like they only have a 2 GB hard drive to store everything on, right. And the only limitation would be the size of the storage space. Perhaps each new item could be given an item id just like the ordinary pre-manufactured items, invisible to the players, but an easy way of keeping track of the items.

I don't know, maybe I'm an idiot, I mean I really am not a programmer, but I just don't see how this could be so difficult.

[_______Shadowstalker]

Originally posted by Kiryat-Dharin
Some time go look at all the implant items that exist.

Then tell me it wouldn't be a time-consuming job to create this system, even after deciding exactly how it would work.

Data entry SUCKS. I wouldn't want to have to enter in all the possible combinations; would you?

They shouldn't. They never should have done it like that for implants either.


/Buurn