i've noticed a growing trend with funcom and their continual tweaking.
their latest patch has turned out to be disappointing in too many ways, for me to remain silent anymore.
i'm noticing a very very ugly trend, with each new patch, funcom has been punishing successful and intelligent players, and also hurting legit tatics, all in the name of "fairness" some things that displease me
1. agents need their range back. I do not have an agent character, but part of being an agent is having long range. agents worked hard to get that range, to punish them and make them melee characters defeats the purpose of having a sniper rifle.
2. same thing with NT's. NT's have had their range reduced to uselessness. . the whole POINT of being an NT is to be a long range artillery, NT's have very weak HP, and very weak armour. there are no BUFF's for INT and PYSCHIC, . which are the two strongest attributes of an NT, NT's can not get buffed into Nano armour. it takes a LOT of effort to make a really good NT character. and now their biggest strong point has been Nerfed to nothingness, again in the name of "fairness"
frankly this game isn't supposed to be fair. the title itself "ANARCY" online is a fair indication of that. Now i know why they nerfed range on nt's. 1, for pvp reasons, and 2, because they could nuke certain plants from very far away without getting hit. the First reason i will address later. the second reason to me isnt' a valid reason to nerf range on Nt's. . Yes NT's could Nuke plants from far away, but it takes a great deal of care to do so. typically surrounding those plants were very Mean mob's with large aggro ranges. it took planning and thought to hit those plants,. it was FUN to set up proper tactics to do so, funcom needs to understand that people enjoy challenges, particularly those that invole stratgy, and planning, and proper leadership. If funcom Really felt this was exploiting, they need to rethink this. instead of nefing NT's, they could have made the plants hit farther, it would have "fixed' the problem, and not annoyed so many people.. I found that going after plants was a lot more exicting then sitting at one of the Mob camps and pulling and nuking green's. going after the plants was certainly more risky. but now i can't even do that anymore. I have been punished for playing smart,, and punished for working to get my range and power up high.
NT's are physically slow, both in casting nukes, and in Physicalness , we have low HP and low AC. we can't run fast. all we had going for us was great range, and powerfull slow nukes. we are completely dependent on other classes both doc's tanks and even MP's who buff our MC. missions are absurdly hard for us without extra people. while it is possible to calm and nuke and calm and nuke through a mission, it's very tedious.and very expensive. I no longer bother with missions unless i get a group. and this is for SOLO missions, which by definition should be doeable by one person, but aren't because the mob's have way to many hp's... why do grey mob's have 2-5 times the hp i do?
missions are now worse.. why can't I blitz a mission? why do i have to be punished for blitzing a mission? the mission doesn't say "go kill everything there and get the item". i did not expect to see this "fix" in the current patch. funcom acts like blitzing a mission is an easy thing.. it ISN"T that easy!. but now i can't get the reward if i get aggroed in a mission?! i guess it's back to letting my agent friend sneak them again. i expect funcom to punish this soon too. shame on me for being clever, in a NON explotive way. by making funcom FORCE us to do missions their way only, they are punishing creativity, inguentity, and skill.. I liked doing both.. blizting a mission, and getting a group to go through, now my choice has been limited. Tokens have become a joke, they are impossible to get in any kind of volume at high levels, so thats another thing i Don't have to look forward to. If people want to "farm" for tokens, they should be able to. Just because Players do things that Funcom didn't expect, isn't reason enough to stop them, not including obvious exploits, which should be stopped.<funcom Did fix missions but i left this in anyway as it has other points>
Funcom needs to realize that the driving force of success is competition, and that competition is fun, to punish success, is to eliminate competition, to eliminate competition is to eliminate any drive to play this game. Right now i have very little drive to play, to me it is turning into a 3d chat program.
PVP, i think that funcom's changes to pvp were a step in the wrong direction, once again an artifical limitation has been implemented to punish those that hit a bit harder and slower, ie NT"s. I don't think that this has been completely thought through, while NT's will no longer be able to kill in one shot, melee people, those that hit fast and for weaker hits, will be able to kill a whole heck of a lot better now. given how weak nt's are physically, they are now at a disadvantage. "artifical" limitations do not work.
I propose another solution.I propose that everyone's HP is multipled by a factor of 2 to 4. I propose that Player Characters, and NPC's of simliar lvl have very simlar number of HP's (with exceptions to odd mob's n' so forth).. it has never made sense to me that this GREY "clan VIrus builder" has 4 times the number of hp's i do If all player characters had similarly increased HP that NPC's do, then PVP would fix itself. you wouldn't have to have this bizaare 40% cap. Slow nukers wouldn't be able to kill in one shot, for the most part. and they would at least get a chance for a second hit. The cap doesn't make sense, a LVL 200 ANYTHING *SHOULD* be able to kill a lvl 75 in one shot, what REALLY should be fixed is that dang grid in 2ho, STick a 75% field around it, BOOT grid campers, those are exploiters, Outside of exploiters, people who get killed in 0% zones have NO RIGHT to complain. Most of these people are in guilds, and will form parties to erradicate consitant party killers. Heck that's something FUN to do, for funcom to intervene because some people "can't handle it" isn't right, this game is about competition, not "fairness", hence the name "ANARCY online"
I really think a Flat acrosst he board 2-4x increase in Hitpoints of everyone will solve a LOT of problems, AND keep the game fun and competitive, . RANGE has to be brought back, both for snipers/agents, and NT's, these characters are supposed to shoot from afar, YES people can get sniped in a few shots withotu getting seen, . to me thats signficantly more realistic. reducing pvp to nothing more then "rolling dice" destroys tatic's and gets rid of Fun.. in particular for the real pvp people, the one's that go to 0% zones and set up ambushes. grid campers don't count, . people that camp suppresion zones dont' count either, the game should NOT be altered for this handful of people, Nerfing range because people camped the grid from long range is plain wrong. It hurt all the people that used ranged tatics in more legit situations., this game is slowly getting reduced to tedium, tanking and slowly widdling away a mob's super high hp doesn't require a lot of skill, It was a lot more fun for people to have choices in their style of combat. Increasing everyone's HP's will solve PVP issues, and remove some of the dependencies currently held on docs. A group SHOULD be able to go after orange mobs or red mobs without a doctor. People WILL gain levels, no matter what, to remove tactics from leveling, makes it more boring, but people will still level, funcom underestimates the drive behind the average gamer.
on a last note, i heard that engineers can no longer control pets from the safty of their aircraft. ok i must admit it is a *bit* lame to attack critters from an airplane. on the other hand i haven't seen too many super high lvl engineers either. a better fix would have been to simply make it so that you can't get xp while in an airplane, OR not even worry about the problem in the first place. after all the whole point of being an engineer is to have your Killer robot kill things for you.. doing so from the safty of an aircraft is just an extension of that, as far as i'm concerned.
Before Funcom alters a game in anyway, they have to ask themselves if they are punishing creative game play, and success, or if it's an actual exploit, so far i've mostly seen funcom punish creative game play,. I think if funcom had a staff of about 30 all time game players, at various lvl's, AND with about 5-20% of their IP completely wasted(to represent a more realistic view of actual players in the game), they would have a better understanding of what their Changes entail.
one last thing i would like to see fixed, the surgery clinc machiens need to buff treatment by 200, at least for people over lvl 100, Dumping IP into treatment is prohibativly expensive. while a 100 increase in treatment is pefectly fine for a low level, at higher level's 100 is nearly useless. it's very easy for a lowlevel to buff into a high quality implant, but nearly impossible now for a high level to buff into a simiarly high implant, or heck even one for their own level. the Second ability requirement on high end implants is meangingless, when the real dependency is on the treatment level. to me this is just another punishment for being successfull. Funcom didn't expect people to Buff into "anything", but a few people spent a great deal of time.effort. and money. to buff into very high end equipment. and those people got punished for their efforts. Agents, rifles, NT's. Range, and NT's pillows are just some examples. oh and Doc's, they dont' have Range anymore just like the NT's, and now that monsters aggro the heck out of them, playing a doc is hard, i actually don't mind that doc's get aggroed, IF they had their orginal range still, but they don't. so they end up tanking now. funcom i think wants us to always play with a dedicated tank. I think we should have more choices then that. Oh yah, social armour, *i* like fighting in my bikini!, yah it's not realistic, but it's fun!
Ok my dream list, these are somethings i would LOVE to see, spefically related to trade, and missions Trading, Throw away the current Trade channel, it's cumbersome tedious and annoying. Instead set up a system where people can LIST items they currently have for sale, into a data base, and then have it where people can look up items currently being offered for sale.
have it so that it's sorted by type, and quality level, for example have catogories "armor" "Guns" "jewlery" "Gems" just for example, then have links for ranges of quality levels 10-30 30-50 50-70 etc., then list the items for sale, The price the seller is asking, a link to contact them, AND a link for OTHER items that person is selling, have ti so that guilds can form STORES to sell things.. ALso levy a Light Listing fee, to discourage junk , , but this shouldn't be overly punitative, people can list junk if they want to, it just won't sell you see? this would really add a lot of fun to the game, and give guilds something to do. ie COMPETE with other guilds for selling stuff. the current Trade channel is a scrolling pain and frankly boring, people shouldn't have to spend hours posting stuff to trade channel. Should also have a catagory for "services" ie nano programming. Buffing. "underground" stuff too.. would add a more fun element to the game. i would love to see a guild advertising Extermination and hit services in a data base.
Missions, Mission rewards,. they need higher probablities for things that people actually use, ie armour . weapons and nano's, there should be a Sliders or switches to increase probabilty of getting a useful item, camping mission terminals for hours to get an NT nano isn't fun. HOWEVER with a better implenmted trade system, one should be able to do missions for OTHER items with the confiedence that they can sell them. For example i currently won't do missions for obscure soilder nano's, simply because i can't stand selling anything in Trade chat, but i would do em if i can list the item for a few days, or even a few hours at a time
You guys have a great game!, now quit messing it up!
(end very lenghty letter now)
Anisotropic 113 NT and staying there till mai catches up
feel free to email me
washu@hiwaay.net
