"Exploits, Nerfs, Banning and Overequipping" by Gaute Godager

[XtroXtreme]

Weakening items is all funcom have suggested, so what is the problem with people.

If they can self buff to get a weapon, as agents say, it is no problem just buff on and you get full power (but you might have to sacrifice a lot of NCU space to keep those buffs up).

If you want the full power you got from a Traders wrangle just have one in the team, otherwise get over it.

[Nullifax]

This place seems to be home to a lot of people who really don't understand the Wrangle line of nanos at all. Can anyone tell me what would be the use of the Wrangle line of nanos if they got rid of overequipping? If they reduced the effectiveness of an overequipped weapon it would also make wrangles completely useless. Why? Wrangles last for a couple minutes. Wrangles also completely debuff the Trader who uses them. No Trader in their right mind would even think of wrangling a teammate during combat and hope to survive, so that's out of the question.

As for people who are about to flame me, calling me a whining Trader or an uber-overequipper. I'm neither. I play a Meta-physicist and a Martial Artist too. Which means not only do I not have a Trader, it means I can never benefit from a wrangle either. What is the point of my saying that? It means that my opinion here is 100% unbiased. If you nerf over-equipping, it wouldn't change either of my characters one bit. In fact, it would make both more powerful compared to other classes. I feel over-equipping is fine how it is, for those who don't exploit.

So here is my suggestion:

FIX THE DARN EXPLOITS BEFORE YOU EVEN SO MUCH AS THINK OF CHANGING FUNDEMENTAL GAME CONCEPTS!!!!!!!!

(Like the one that allows level 1 people run around with 6 slot belts and 360+ NCUs; I know how it's done and I've reported it, NOW FIX IT)

[____________Therpest]

this will make NT MP MA and Traders the Best PVP

Nts Dont overequip (most of the time)
MP i have siad to much
MA they dont use weps so wouldnt matter
Traders wouild just debuff anyone to hell

[______________Akasha]

This idea is amazing.

Nerf all overequippers. It's perfect. It's not fair that any of us can over equip if we wanted to. Ya know, I'd rather make funcom work to nerf these guys that waste time in making their chars so uber. THEY HAD TO HAVE CHEATED, of course. I am a good gamer, and I couldn't do what they did, so I know they cheated, I just know it.

Regardless of all those non-sense comments about the fact that most over equippers still technically stayed in the rules of the game (no exploiting, etc) I didn't have the patience to do this, so nobody else should. I'm all for this. Kudos to you Funcom.

And to the traders that say they'll be REALLY useless now, I AGREE COMPLETELY. I mean c'mon, it's not like they aren't weak already. Not that i've seen any PVP title'd traders out there. and thank god traders don't crit for around 4k my level. and thank god that by nerfing ALL overequippers, you REALLY mean nerfing ALL non-traders, since traders can still keep their attack ratings higher than anybody else (by far). you should nerf them too. Take away shotguns. And nanos. then they'll be useless.

then i'll be happy and other people like me will be happy.

and to the one who says he's 100% unbiased, then later on in the same sentence says something to the effect of "well gee, see? i'm a meta and an MA, i'm not affected AT ALL, except that now i'll be better than everyone else" your intelligence blinds me. You are simply amazing. If i knew you, i'd propose to you. And in case you think i'm lying, here is the quote

----

If you nerf over-equipping, it wouldn't change either of my characters one bit. In fact, it would make both more powerful compared to other classes.

----

Brilliant. I love you all. Nerf the leets next, they hit me too hard

[_____________Lazerus]

Originally posted by Akasha
and to the one who says he's 100% unbiased, then later on in the same sentence says something to the effect of "well gee, see? i'm a meta and an MA, i'm not affected AT ALL, except that now i'll be better than everyone else" your intelligence blinds me. You are simply amazing. If i knew you, i'd propose to you. And in case you think i'm lying, here is the quote

----

If you nerf over-equipping, it wouldn't change either of my characters one bit. In fact, it would make both more powerful compared to other classes.

----

Brilliant. I love you all. Nerf the leets next, they hit me too hard

Not too bright yerself ARE you, what he is saying is that MAs and MPs cant overequip and therefore gain no bonuses from it, so fighting a player of equivilant level they would die, if overequipping were abolished then an MP/MP/NT would be more powerful to the other player than were he twinked. As a twinked lvl 60 enf will whack 7 bails of **** out of an equivilent MA so much so that it isnt even funny.

[______________Akasha]

In fact, i knew exactly what he meant. All i pointed out that he said he was mentioning his professions in order to validate his comments, since he would be --completely-- unaffected by the nerf, and if that were true, he would be 100% unbiased. However, he was not --completely-- unaffacted and therefore is not 100% unbiased. And so his point of bringing up his professions to validate his comments (as if those of us who are directly affected do not have valid comments) was in vain.

I hope this has cleared things up for you.

[Flapsie]

Well weakening wouldn't make a trader completely useless if they put that thing onto MOB's too...

[plaindog]

Omg. Why is everybody whining about others overequipping all the time? I don't see the picture here? Explain it to me.

Does it concern you that other players who pay for the game, use the resources which are around them to become better in what their class do? Isn't that what we do in everyday life? Better equipment make you perform better in everyday life, doesen't it or am I wrong? plz tell me I'm wrong.

Again why are you whining all the time. I DONT overequip myself but have plans on actually tweaking my new MA character to the limit. So should you! It's allowed, its in the god damn game. Other players can buff you so please take advantage of that fact.

Why did Funcom put buffs in the game if you can't use it? It is a fact that you can get buffed so why not do it. Please shut up, Im sick of listening to you and reading your posts.

[Giganti]

Honestly, I don't think overequipping nerf will improve the game any. It just means more balancing.

I think what needs to be done, in retrospect to all the posts and what I've been thinking about... is just make overequipping fairly balanced for all equipment.

Pistols are FAIRLY twinkable, but not great... MA cannot twink much beyond implants in terms of damage... while traders can get, if good, into a 200 Home Defender at level 70 or so. They need to balance it out so classes are equally powerful at varying levels, but removing overequipping as a whole is too radical an idea, and will cause enough bugs/problems/errors/complaints/etc to make the developers waste months on fixing every last glitch. I'd rather see the time spent fixing classes..

[_____________Kuniama]

To be honest, the more I think about it, the only *true* objection I have is to implant stacking. If they got rid of that, and then forced everyone to reinstall thier implants, I'd be perfectly willing to let most everything else slide (altho I do think weapons and pets should be less effective based on your skills, assuming you overbuffed to get them on/out)

[Flapsie]

I start wondering if stacking of implants is actually planned by FC so they can skip making tutoring work...

[Fyberoptic]

i just started reading this and this was postedback in the begining and i dont know if anyone replyed to it yet but i thought id bring it back up causeits awsome.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Why not just remove all skill based requirements to equip an item. Then have a formula that modifies the effect of the item based on what percentage of the skill "target" you meet. For example I get given a piece of armour that has a skill target of say strength 100 and gives 500 AC I would be able to equip it on a new character with a really low strength but I would not see any effect from the armour till I met say 51 Str then scale the AC addition so that I would et increased AC up to Str 100 where it would max out at the 500AC it should. The equation could be something like

If (Skill >= Skill Requirement)
{
Benefit = Item Benefit;
}
else{
Benefit Gained = (((Skill Requirement - Skill) / (Skill)) - 0.5)) *2 * Item Benefit;
If(Benefit Gained < 0) Benefit Gained = 0;
}

This way no one can over equip anymore than anyone else but the vast majority of people that have over equipped will still gain some benefit from the items they have so as not to leave them naked. The benefit gained would be the end result of the calculation of any item so that could be intelligence increase from a nano cluster or the damage of a weapon or the damage from a nano formula. In some ways it would be more realistic (not sure that that's a good idea though ) as just because I cannot use a gun would not mean that I cannot hold it and likewise there should be no reason that I could not upload (install) a nano crystal (some software) even though I cannot run it you could go as far as to let any profession upload any crystal it wouldn¡¦t matter because they wouldn¡¦t be able to run them (except for the Agent) I feel that this would also help solve all the gaps that currently exist for equipment and nano programs in that you would for example not have to have exactly the right armour for your level to get close tot eh maximum benefit like you do currently and you would have access to many more NF at any given time even if the higher ones are heavily gimped.

Well that's my idea anyway but I¡¦m sure it would be a nightmare to code


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this idea is great and it alows you to grow int oyour armor so would not need to always buy armor just once and a while.

[_____________Psilock]

Implant stacking definitely has to go.

Over-equipping has to be reduced. I like the idea of equiping better items than your level with the STANDARD methods such as implants and expertise buffs. But Wrangle and Mocham over-equipping has to go. Not all classes can over-equip. One poster said how he was critted for 600+ by an NTs shotgun and that the NT was overequiping. I tell you this incase you haven't figured it out.... No one, and I mean no one plays an NT to use shotgun.
Also the MA, Doctor and MP(although the MP is powerful enough with his own buffs).

I think the players of AO are spoiled and anything that might jeapordise their uber over-equiped and spoiled characters scares them.

AO has become like a D&D "Monty-hall" champaign (that is too much loot and far too powerful characters for their level). This needs to be fixed ASAP and is the only problem I currently see with AO but its a big one.

Over-equipping was obviously never meant to work as it does now. It was intended to be able to let a player use slightly better equipment not QL 200 on a lvl 70.

I love PvP and look forward to it, but I won't go PvPing with my characters simply because I'll die so fast from over-equiped chars it isn't funny. Thus over-equiping is limiting my game and making it far less enjoyable.

Ppl say standard equipers are lazy? No you've got it backwards. Standard equiped chars have a harder time in missions, teams and dungeons that makes for a more challenging play style.
An over-equiped char has a far easier time doing everything from grid travel, missions and PvP.

Funcom, please fix over-equiping so that either there is a percentile cap on the char level, a character Title cap or a hard level cap. Have skills modify the damage done with weapons so that if a Trader casts a team wrangle during combat all players weapons would do slightly more damage with standard weapons due to skill increase.

[Nullifax]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Akasha
and to the one who says he's 100% unbiased, then later on in the same sentence says something to the effect of "well gee, see? i'm a meta and an MA, i'm not affected AT ALL, except that now i'll be better than everyone else" your intelligence blinds me. You are simply amazing. If i knew you, i'd propose to you. And in case you think i'm lying, here is the quote

----

If you nerf over-equipping, it wouldn't change either of my characters one bit. In fact, it would make both more powerful compared to other classes.

----

Brilliant. I love you all. Nerf the leets next, they hit me too hard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You obviously don't understand the meaning of the word "biased."

It means supporting an opinion which supports an action which would result in my GAINING something. I very obviously would only gain something if they actually DID nerf the overequippers, but you obviously failed to read my post. I AM TOTALLY 100% ABSOLUTELY AGAINST NERFING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LET ME SAY IT AGAIN: I AM AGAINST NERFING!!

Since NOT nerfing means my characters are actually weaker in comparison, then my opinion supports an action which does not give me anything. Thus, UNbiased.

So, jackass, next time you post make sure you stop *****ing at the people who actually SHARE your opinions!!!

[Flapsie]

Why not do it really easy and put in a lvl requirement ?!?

[Fyberoptic]

i totaly agree uber over equiping is ruining the game and its just about now how high i can iver equip and what i can kill now. it is part of the problem with RP in the game too. it needs to and should be fixed and hopefully FC sees that and does something.

[________________khem]

im bored waiting for them to fix my battle suit grid bugged character so i thought i would add another detail of my suggestion for my own sake

Weapon X
Quality Level: 150
Max Skill Range: Weapon Skill 600
Max Damage: 1-150
Operating Level: 100
Current Skill Usage: Weapon Skill 450
Damage: 1-100

Weapon wielder using nano program to increase their Weapon Skill...

Weapon X
Quality Level: 150
Max Skill Range: Weapon Skill 600
Max Damage: 1-150
Operating Level: 125
Current Skill Usage: 500
Damage: 1-125

Someone else can do the math for the 20% + increase.
To respond to someone replying that there would be too many skill checks it would be exactly the same if they were to implement the penalty system Gaute suggested. And skill checks and checks on countless other things are done all the time. So that argument against this idea I believe to be unbelievable.

[_________Leviathonss]

Originally posted by Truwind
As far as a player wipe if you want to lose ( I venture to say ) 70% of your playerbase go for it. Or better yet release a patch like 12.6 again and you wont have to worry about daily updates or such because the 10% who stay wont be able to read English

Agreed , you will have to recruit more Korean ARKs

[_____________Asmodan]

Originally posted by Flapsie
Why not do it really easy and put in a lvl requirement ?!?

And who's level we going to base this on? Atrox enforcers have more Str/Stam so they will obviously be able to use somewhat better hammers than Solitus enforcers, way better than Nanomage and Opifex ones.

So do you base it on Solitus and tell Atrox to go screw off, but Opifex and Nanomage it's ok to OE?

You can't just do level based restrictions, it would do more to force cookie cutter characters than anything they have even thought of.

[Flapsie]

Originally posted by Asmodan


And who's level we going to base this on? Atrox enforcers have more Str/Stam so they will obviously be able to use somewhat better hammers than Solitus enforcers, way better than Nanomage and Opifex ones.

So do you base it on Solitus and tell Atrox to go screw off, but Opifex and Nanomage it's ok to OE?

You can't just do level based restrictions, it would do more to force cookie cutter characters than anything they have even thought of.

I didn't think of that... Thanx for setting me straight
The way they are doing it in 14.2 I think is the best and fairest way for everyone... although I've heard alot of engies and MP's whining now... I guess just as much as the NT's did when nanos was done that to...