Hehe I knew that of course. What I want to know is if they will adopt requirements similar to regular AI clump, ie need to be 80-90% within QL range.Originally Posted by PhoenixOfAges
Hehe I knew that of course. What I want to know is if they will adopt requirements similar to regular AI clump, ie need to be 80-90% within QL range.
At which point we go back to how most BSs never run and never have. Also how before the first BS VP bump we were told it was to draw more people to them. Although most still don't run and BS VP was increased two more times since then. Now they give over five times as much VP as they did at launch on a win plus there's the VP reward items that each can give as much as a 220 got on a BS win at launch but most BSs still don't run. If they "changed their minds" then it was clearly a mistake as in the current situation only 36 out of 220 lvls are able to gather VP too well through BSs.
No matter how much of a die hard PvP fan you are you have to admit BSs for VP is not working too well and it's been like that for over three years now so it's been given more than enough of a chance to work itself out. If anything it's worse now than it was two plus years ago due to a decline in interest in BSs, more things to do which spreads out the player base and perhaps less players in general. With a wide range of VP items usable by most any lvl of char a system that allows people of any lvl to reasonably get their VP is important. That then becomes even more important since they're removing the nodrop tag on at least the weapon upgrade clumps. If they're going to make at least some of the upgrade clumps far easier to get for people of any lvl but make no changes in regards to VP that would make no sense at all.
With the nodrop tag getting removed on at least the weapon ones if they change the drop rates on those at all I can see it going down, not up. It'd be nice if it went up but with no nodrop tag not having to log the alt for a pick up or just buying the clumps already makes things far far easier than it is now if that was all they changed. AI weapon clumps and lead bots which never had the nodrop tag for instance have a rather poor drop rate and to add to the complication each only drop from certain bosses.
True but the lvl of the boss in a LE missions is a few percentage or so higher than the lvl of the mission. The LE mission lvl cap is 250 so the highest lvl a LE mission boss would be is about 260 something or so. AI gens can be up to lvl 300 or so I believe which makes getting those higher QL weapon clumps and armour bots easier.
What could be nice if they adjusted the QL requirements for clumps is if they added a new version of upgrade clump that doesn't have the nodrop tag and left the old ones people already have alone. That way those that gathered up the old type for later as they plugged away in one fashion or another still have useful clumps. Then the newer ones could have a higher QL req but still not quite the 90% requirement the AI ones require for weapons or 80% for armour bots.
Last edited by PhoenixOfAges; Feb 7th, 2010 at 01:08:51.
so, lots of questions but no answers.
Question : Can we have option to lock all equipment from options? It really s''''''s when you unequip something by mistake. I mean.. How hard is it to make into game?
Juhan - 199 enf
Zozikel - 180 advy
Haabalaka - 177 doc
Ladies - 176 doc
Gentlemen - 199 crat
Hesburger - 176 soldier
+ more alts
I believe the plan is to answer some Qs in next FWM.
we will hope so
bin mal wieder da und Schreibfehler dürft ihr immer noch behalten
My guess is that you had to kill towers in a particular order instead of killing them all at the same time but was changed before we could test it.Alright, something i really would like to know is how it ORIGINALY was intended to spawn AC in s42, before you changed it
blah
There is a question intriguing me for a long time.
Roughly 99% of all the weapons in the item database are CRAP. USE-LESS. Good for nothing good for no one. Not even the gimpiest noob. Heck, not even as shop fodder. Some weapons suck even harder than the solar powered stuff you get on nub island. I seriously doubt if they were useful even at AO launch. With all the new weapons, there are only 3 old weapons functioning, the onehander, the sapphistic bow and supernova. With the upcoming specials nerf, all of these weapons become completely obsolete.
Same applies for armor and some misc items. I have made a quick research (thx for xyphos.com) of the items:
around 10,800 weapon entries in the database
around 11,000 armor entries
So....
Is there any future plans to reintroduce these old weapons/armors with modified stats? To make them actually useful. Some weapons for gimps (go and play a total gimp, that has just arrived to RK with no friends etc, and you cant find a better weapon in subway other than that you have brought from nub island and that just scratches the mobs). I'd suggest sometime in the future these weapons can be used to add diversity (very different weapon mechanics, with huge tradeoffs that might make people to alter their setups for that weapon believing in a situational advantage). Currently they do not serve any such goal and to be honest they should be just cut out of the game so AO will take up 1,5 gb instead of 2+.
There was an update back in 17.7 that modified some of the weapons (the so-called 000 weps), but the dmg was too low at low ql's to be useful to newbs, and the QL's stop at 200, so theyre not even useful to mid-high lvl folks. They could probably go back and tweak those (at least make them go to ql300), but they won't.
They tried that once with the weapons, and it didn't work out so well. Part of that is that the players wanted to slap just about any special on any wepaon, so pistols with AS and Full Auto, which simply wasn't feasible. The second part is that the implementation went wrong on several points: First, the new weapons scale for requirements similar to AI weapons, which they are not the equal of, and they are limited in the maximum damage scale despite the fact that these weapons are meant for RK usage where max damage is a factor. Finally, the weapon qls in the DB go to ql300, but ingame only to 200.
For armor with new stats, simply look at Miys and the sided evasion tradeskill armors (Omni Steel-Ribbed and Apoc), which while not revamped older armor are newer and an effective armor choice that the vast majority of players look at as a viable option (My only complaint is that it's all based off of the Nano Armor mesh and textures, I'd have liked a different texture base for each armor style, Miy's Tank should look like it goes on a tank, not on a nanomage.)
As for chopping out stuff, I'm not a fan, mainly because a lot of the backstory of RK can be found in a lot of those items. Sure if they're going to remain shopfood up their value to some degree so you can get more from them when selling them to the shop.but I'm not of a mind to throw away all the rich history put into this game in the descriptions of items.
EDIT: @xxaaaxx55: I have a writeup in my sig on fixing the -000 weapons to make them more useful to both froobs and paid players alike. Should be a good read.
Read it, agreed with it wholeheartedly, and bumped it, but as I said there, the cynic in me isn't too hopeful :/
Unrelated: if shades are allegedly getting token boards (unless they changed their minds), how about adding Shade (and Keeper) tags to some of the HI 1750 boards?
Yes please, the gap between 1k and 2.5k is just too depressing to even start grinding.
I remember my first days in AO. I was 9 at the time (15 now), and straight off Runescape when I, browsing cNet's "MMO" section, found Anarchy Online. I would pick up any armour or weapon I saw in the subway, strap it on, and if it looked cool, keep it. One thing I remember in particular was trying to solo abby with a sniper rifle that shot red lazors (I was a soldier, too). A S(t)igma, if I remember correctly. I sat there for an hour, prostrate (when are they going to add a function for this) on the ledge above in a position he could not reach, just shooting. Then an ARK popped up and told me that was useless and I tried training out like I saw all those cool people doing, died in the first minute. Oh god, I cannot believe, looking back, how much I put up with. And I never quit, totally. I stopped playing for 2 months or so several times, but I would come back and try again. The most I got for a total of 2 years was a level 56 soldier that was -very- gimp specced in just about all the different weapons and wrong skills....
But I thoroughly agree. Not that I want to have a bunch of 9 year olds playing the game, but those who haven't been playing more than a month and had a good mentor, tend to think that anything would do. It's common MMO sense, that armour and weapons progressively get better as you level. Obviously not the case, but it screws up plenty of people's stats and toons trying to adapt for each new piece.
Being a poor player (I always am in MMOs), I tend to get depressed when someone on my team tells me it's high time to go out and dump a bunch on a new peren. Normally doing so results in plenty of hours of grinding for money (another thing which should be worked on, economy inflation). I always wished the pistols dropped by haxl0rz (hecklers) were in some way useful and relative to my class, or anyone's for that matter. So instead of that moment going out and dumping 10mil on a new QL 150 perennium, I would pick up one of those and grab it since even though it is much weaker at the same QL as a peren, I could use it until I can afford something else.
Since this is not the case, my QL 74 peren which I had since 60 levels earlier is the superior to this rifle with requirements that are higher than my current ones. I agree the gaps should not be closed completely, but they are so wide, it's unfair and makes it hard on players without a 220 trader to make them monies.
I'll get to these during the week as this isnt really possible while spending time with my kids.
Colin Cragg
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Past Game Director (2008-2011)
Means posting while I'm awake, zomg!
You, on the other hand, fail to see that turning VP into a PvM job isnt going to solve the BS problem at all. So, you cant expect those "PvP die hards" to support your point of view just because it serves your agenda.
Theres no point in driving even more people away from BS (yes, there are sometimes BS running and yes, there are people joining not primarily interested in PvP for the VP). The solution should be to make BS and PvP in general more appealing to more people who are not interested in being beaten up all the time - thats what the re-balancing hopefully will bring.
ಠ_ಠ
Nor is clinging to the idealistic and factious claim that VP somehow belongs to PvPers.
Battlestation is dead and will remain so until such time as Funcom does something that PvPers want. Things like new maps and new modes (not just caps) would certainly increase appeal, yet they don't do it.
If VP itself was the reason people wanted to do BS, then BS would be active because they certainly give VP. Which tells me, as it should anyone who opens their eyes and isn't trying to blindly run through the forums screaming about how VP is theirs, that VP is not, and has never been, incentive enough to PvP. Increasing VP or excluding other sources will not increase PvP because they've practically already done that and still, look; Battlestation is dead or dying.
So stop clinging to VP like it's some golden egg, let those who don't want to be cannon fodder on BS get it by other means and start bugging Means and Funcom for actual improvements to PvP.
(This is a general address not just to who I quoted)
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BSs were suppose to be a PvP arena. As I said they increased VP to the point they now give over five times what they did on a win and each VP reward item can give as much as a 220 used to get on a BS win. They even told us they were doing it to draw more people in by increasing the incentive to get them all running. Yet they're still mostly dead. So clearly more VP hasn't done much if anything to help. It's been more a source of frustration than anything.
Some die hard PvPers for instance have started threads asking for zero VP BSs or complaining about the VP farmers "ruining" BSs. PvPers are there to fight, they may have no interest in VP at all. They also want an actual fight, not a game of shoot the fish in the barrel.
To be effective in PvP you really do need to take the time to build up your char, get the char lvls, AI lvls, research, best gear, buff gear to get stuff on and so forth. That takes a lot of time and creds. The standard lvling char isn't going to take any where near that much time or put as much creds in for gear they'll out lvl in no time. IP set ups, perk set ups and so forth will also not be PvP ready. They won't stand a chance against a PvP twink made for a certain lvl that may never lvl past that lvl.
The rebalancing is a general game rebalancing, not a PvP rebalancing, mobs and PvM matters are also on slate for adjustments apparently. Then as far as I've heard the rebalancing won't give one on one PvP balance, it will still be group vs group balanced. Some of the excesses and weaknesses will be dealt with but that's about it. Then that still will do nothing about the time, cred and other factors involved in making a solid PvP twink.
Many BS related suggestions have been made but really those would only help make the currently active BSs more active. The dead ones will surely remain quite dead. Then it would still be group vs group and that requires numbers so don't expect the min number requirements to go down much if at all. Population is a general problem in AO and something that requires at the very least twelve active people in a set lvl range of typically 25 lvls isn't going to be easy to gather up at most lvls.
This brings us right back to 36 out of 220 lvls having at least semi-reasonable access to VP based on BS activity. Even that number is somewhat generous considering as how 25 of those lvls represents the lvl 150-174 BS. On RK2 at least (the supposed most active server) typically it would run one or two rounds, three if you're real lucky then spend more time down than it did running. That's during the peak times when it would be seeing the most activity. The 20-49 and 50-74 BSs really don't see enough consistent activity to be considered effective.
Even if we did use the 36 out of 220 number that's just over 16%. If your doctor told you a treatment procedure had a 16% success rate you'd want a more reliable treatment. That's what we're asking for. BSs were given over three years to work themselves out. Many people gave up signing up for any but the defined "active" BSs so long ago any further changes will almost certainly see no results. So it's time to move to another option for VP.
Last edited by PhoenixOfAges; Feb 7th, 2010 at 11:41:57.
It took about a week to a month at the most for people to start complaining about the same old BS map. So if they add new maps people will soon complain that it's the same play but with some new backgrounds. If they add some new win goals they will soon complain that the play has some new backgrounds and an extra act or two but it's still the same play with the same actors. If they add semi-randomly selected teams people will soon complain that it's still the same actors but they just change roles now and then. Then it's so often the same actors as there aren't that many interest in participating in that activity. No matter what they change people will still get tired of it soon enough if they spend enough time there. There are those that claim to spend almost all their time online in BSs so for them it wouldn't take long before it gets to be same old same old and are bored again. It would help but only for so long and really only for the BSs already seeing activity.
Also if the VP is still high in BSs there will still be PvPers complaining how the VP farmers ruin BSs and other things. I've seen it often, the people there for VP four point cap, coon cap, cap, cap, cap then the PvPers gripe how their fun ended early because of the VP farmers and leave. The PvPers then come to the forums to complain about the VP farmers, ask for changes to the four point cap rules, zero VP BSs, general changes to capping rules, and so on. People there for the VP and those there for the PvP participate in different ways causing trouble for both parties. BSs need to be about the PvP and just about the PvP. Splitting its focus isn't helping matters.
Last edited by PhoenixOfAges; Feb 7th, 2010 at 11:38:03.
This has been confirmed by Means before. What we originally had to do was kill all towers, kill the bosses while stoping the aliens from spawning a second tower. A bug caused the AC to spawn sometimes when killing the second tower like we did/do and it was changed. AC was also supposed to randomly come to any of the raidgroups.
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