Friday with Means - October 9th, 2009 - Parry and Riposte - Back from the dead!

[SSK]

You mean advs?

[-XeI20-]

Really? What about PE/rifle agents and SoZ/Tigress MPs?

You are weak in the ways of troll. Lesson one in trolling is to post something which will provoke the target. A post with blatant stupidity is a poor choice.

[Xenotric]

I do enjoy the gun preist combat of equilibrium.

I think debating wether or not things can be done realistically in a computer game where very little is realistic is a bit silly.

The fact is even if the game was meant to be as realistic as possible, some leeway has to be taken to allow balancing, fun gameplay and so forth.

Though quick comment about some ones earlier posts

Notum is the only source of power that allows nanotechnology to advance as much as it has according to the storyline.
Reflects do go to 100% and more (see nulity sphere and certain npc shields)
AC's arent capped as far as Im aware, just players can only wear so much armour and mobs are mobs and have predesignated AC that is much more then players.

That said I dont have any response for the rest of them, though I could probably come up with some rubbish that will be disregarded or picked at.

[Manaas]

btw parrying bullets with guns is stupid, the force of a bullet striking the barrel is enough for the gun to explode if you fire at the same time.

I never saw that dude ever "parry" a bullet with a gun, he was merely dodging them.

[bitnykk]

some nice fresh news there.

i don't know if it would bring problems yet (spam or server lag e.g.), but for sure the mail system will simplify a lot of things for us players !! also it shall revive arpa3.net if (as the screen shows) you can send negative amounts of money & use this way for commercial exchanges.

for parry/riposte, i hope this won't make some melee users more powerful than they already are ...

and finally i'd like to attract the AO team's attention over an important policy question i submitted to game mechanic forum, that would cost very little time and possibly no coding nor patching :
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=562063

thanx0r

[Aethyrguard]

AC's arent capped as far as Im aware, just players can only wear so much armour and mobs are mobs and have predesignated AC that is much more then players.

Actually, AC's are hard capped at about 6.5k, after that it is always min damage. I really hope that part of this balancing act is to raise the cap on AC's to double or triple what they are now. If the scaling were left as is, meaning damage is reduced at the same rate of 10 AC = -1dmg but the cap raised then people would actually care about AC's on their armor higher than tl5 where the cap can be feasibly attained with little sacrifice. Additionally, if say armor set 1 had 13k Chem/Radiation, 12k Poison/cold/fire, and 11k Melee and Projectile, then there would actually be a difference in how much damage a target takes depending on the type of damage. Right now everything is forced Min damage at about 1/2 or 1/3 of the actual AC's available and floating around in game.

[Xenotric]

Its 10 AC = 1 damage reduction and Im still not convinced theres an actual cap, just the fact that theres not many weapons with a big enough damage spread not to be reduced to min damage after AC.

But I'd really have to experiment a bit more. I know some monsters have tens of thousands of AC, I also know hecklers where one of the first mobs I ever started hitting min damage constantly on, the mobs that have less I was still doing a range of damage on.

[Aethyrguard]

Its 10 AC = 1 damage reduction and Im still not convinced theres an actual cap, just the fact that theres not many weapons with a big enough damage spread not to be reduced to min damage after AC.

But I'd really have to experiment a bit more.

Whoops typo.. But you are wrong it is capped at 6.5k, feel free to test it to your hearts content!

[Aethyrguard]

@ Means / Kintaii - Can you answer me this one question regarding Parry/Riposte changes. Will Riposte have any sort of Defensive checks, AC dmg reduction, AR v Evades, Reflects, etc?

[Xenotric]

Well the weapon with the highest spread I can think of that isnt a rocket launcher is the ql 300 turn spirited trader shotguns at 1-1000 damage

Pvp that would be 1-500

to get it down to 1-1 you'd only need 4990 AC, so in that way, yes it is capped but more due to weapons then AC, if I can get my trader buddy to help out I can do some tests on mobs and see if 6500 is enough to reduce 1-1000 to 1-1

And yes as pointed out below this would be basic numbers, you'd still need more to cap actual peoples damage.

[Mostadio]

Well the weapon with the highest spread I can think of that isnt a rocket launcher is the ql 300 turn spirited trader shotguns at 1-1000 damage

Pvp that would be 1-500

to get it down to 1-1 you'd only need 4990 AC, so in that way, yes it is capped but more due to weapons then AC, if I can get my trader buddy to help out I can do some tests on mobs and see if 6500 is enough to reduce 1-1000 to 1-1

If you had an attack rating of 1 that would be correct; sadly that's not how you formulate damage in AO. Try again.

[Xenotric]

Just did a quick test, trader with his shotgun and well over max beneficial against mob with well over 15k AC, and was still not hitting minimum, so pvm atleast there is no 6.5k cap

[Louderer789]

There's not a cap in pvp either, ACs are just not an effective defense because majority of SL and later weapons have high min damage and small damage range. Want to see that everything won't hit for min with 6.5k ACs? Have an MA or a pet hit you.

[Xenotric]

Yeah thats what I thought, these days most everyone has a low spread weapon that even with the full attack rating multiple on it isnt that big as such not lots of AC is needed to close the gap, if we had more people using weapons that where 1-1000 or such it would probably be noticeable.

To be honest the fact that AC can't reduce the min damage of the weapon or the +damage a person has nor does it really have much effect on some specials means its rather outdated, even if weapons where changed to have a big spread AC would still loose out to Reflects which is a shame as I think that having AC have a decent effect on damage would help lots with sharing out who is good at what.

[Aethyrguard]

There's not a cap in pvp either, ACs are just not an effective defense because majority of SL and later weapons have high min damage and small damage range. Want to see that everything won't hit for min with 6.5k ACs? Have an MA or a pet hit you.

You are wrong there is and has always been an AC cap. That cap should have been raised with the release of SL but it wasn't. That is what forces everyone to worry more about min damage than max. It is prevelent from Adonis->Pande. Which is why people use an FBR instead of a Copy of the Excalibur even tho that choice would otherwise make no sense.

The only real way to test it is to do a full IPR (spend no perk points), take all your armor off and symbs. Eg get to a point of 0 AC's. Then slowly put it on testing each step of re-equipping with something like 10 hits each. Then notice at what point ACs stop reducing damage. If AC's did not have a cap, people wouldn't be making jokes about ACs as a viable form of defense for the last oh I dunno 7+ years?

[Sidana]

Not to sound negative but I don't think twi9tch is what AO needs.

[IHaveHugeNick]

Mailing System! YAY!... it only took them four years to consider my suggestion! =P

Your suggestion? The only thing suggested more often then mailing system is adding nipples and bouncing boobies.

/takecredit fail.

[Klod9000]

You are weak in the ways of troll. Lesson one in trolling is to post something which will provoke the target. A post with blatant stupidity is a poor choice.

It is not stupidity, it's a fact about combined melee/ranged specializations a few professions in AO can do, opposed to your claim that such things are not present in AO.

Anyways, about parry and riposte... Jesus still didn't approve that so, keep 'em buried.

[Neista]

Parry/Riposte was posted out of context with the rest of the changes, guys Chill and wait to see the big picture...

I have no melee toons at all and i'm not bitching (for a change).

[Towerblock]

You are weak in the ways of troll. Lesson one in trolling is to post something which will provoke the target. A post with blatant stupidity is a poor choice.

/cough
ORLY?