Gaute's word on LLTS and criticals

[____________Intrepid]

Originally posted by Cz

I do know Engineers get hit quite a bit by this, but wouldn't it be more logical that they rely on their bot, rather than being killing machines themselves?

ROFL thats funny but i wouldn't quit your dayjob yet.

Yes i could rely on my bot or i could ask a level 100 MA to do my killig for me. They have roughly the same power.

My level 57 trader has a higher attack rating then my level 200 slayerdroid. How can i rely on pet damage when my pet can't even hit a primus or secondus mob at ace camp? can't even HIT it.

[_____________Condaan]

I'll try to be more constructive this time, as it seems my point was missed in the last post.

All of these equations with critical percentages (even with the FoB % separated) are distorting the actual picture of what will happen if this change goes in. Critical chance per period of time is 'really' what we should be evaluating here. I know Cz posted something along the lines of getting back to us with what the 'max' is, so I'll wait to make any suggestions along those lines. However, in our comparisons, let's take a 2.5 minute (duration of FoB?) span of time as our 'base'.

I haven't seen anyone complain about agents critting, etc., so we can leave the agent hat item and temporary crit nanos out of the discussion (though once the hard 'max' number is released, these would have to be compared against that number, like anything else).

Using a ql150 FoB, and assuming a 15% critical chance over the course of 15 seconds out of 2.5 minutes.

0.15 * (15/150) = 0.015

Approximately 1.5% additional crit chance over the course of time. I think it could be argued either way that this 1.5% is actually worth more or less. For the sake of this discussion, I'll assume that 'over time' used in the most optimal method, it's actually 3%.


Over a period of 2.5mins for the proposed method:
MAs => 3% base + 24% UVC + 3% FoB + 2% random items= 32%

Non-MA Melee => 3% base + 7% MoP + 3% FoB + 2% random items = 15%

Non-MA Ranged => 3% base + 7% Crat Speech + 15% LLTS + 4% TTS + 2% random items = 31%

With MAs as the standard, Non-MA melee users crit 47% as often as MAs and Non-MA Ranged users crit 97% as often as MAs. Now, compare this to the current state of affairs:

MAs => 3% base + 24% UVC + 3% FoB + 15% LLTS + 4% TTS + 2% random items= 51%
Non-MA Melee => 3% base + 7% MoP + 3% FoB + 15% LLTS + 4% TTS + 2% random items = 34%
Non-MA Ranged => 3% base + 7% speech + 15% LLTS + 3% FoB + 4% TTS + 2% random items = 34%

With MAs again as the standard, both sets of people can now crit at 67% as often as MAs.

Am I the only one that thinks this will throw balance WAY off? Just a few more numbers:

MAs take a 19% nerf to their chance to critical.
Non-MA melee take a 19% nerf to their chance to critical.
Non-MA ranged take a 3% nerf to their chance to critical.

Note, all of these numbers are:
At Max
Over Time

If you disagree with my assertion that we should consider the 'over time' chance to critical, obviously my numbers don't make any sense, heh.

As another possible solution, has anyone thought of making FoB and LLTS not stack? It's a nerf, and it hurts a few professions out there, so in general I'd be opposed to it, but it sure would help to deflate some of the 'theoretically possible' numbers that are being bandied about.

Condaan

** EDIT **
Changed my numbers to reflect the 15 second nature of FoB =)

[Phione]

Flurry crit chance is 15 second, not 20 sec... No idea when did the 20 sec thing started.

[_____________Condaan]

Just a few responses to Cz

FoB vs LLTS
I don't think we ever said they were equal, or the same. They're of course not. One is (supposed to be) a constant firearm crit buff item, the other a short close combat crit buff.

You did separate the numbers, but the FoB numbers in relation to time are significantly less than what is shown. It is these bloated numbers, I believe, which cause the angst over critical percentages.

'Everybody' having a crit of 40-60%
Nobody ever said that, I believe. It's still a way too high potential.

Again, we should make a distinction between short term critical chance and critical chance over x time.

Stacking code changes
Not sure how easy it is, but I'm sure it takes about 10 times as long to code as doing several item / nano changes, and 20 times longer to test.

Fast is good, right is better.

FoB making you open to crits
When you team, which most people do at high levels - high levels being when people can get these extreme crit chances - all the time, you losing evades is not so much of a problem as when you solo.

Have a Soldier pull off an alpha strike, or an Agent get in a nice Aimed Shot, and you won't have the mob hitting at you anyway; hence the evades going down means very little in this situation. And this is a situation which has to be considered.

15 seconds of extra 20% chance to crit (or more likely 15%) equates to ~2 crits tops. That's an additional round of combat, tops. The benefit simply isn't worth the cost. It's negligible either way...so why nerf? Agents/Soldiers pulling aggro - it 'could' happen, but hardly something you can count on. Besides, the benefit is negligible anyway, why would we bother?

Hunting greens and yellows at level 190
I have been told by many high level players that those level 190 mobs get hunted from 120 to 200, so it seems people can kill those "greens and yellows" when they are deep deep red too.

I guess we could use a better scaling on the toughness or the reward (XP especially) on the mob levels though.

Better scaling (and including rewards over ql200) would be a HUGE improvement to the game, regardless of the outcome of this LLTS / Critical business. About your quote though, while levelling is still very fast in the ~125 range, and reasonably challenging (a chance of death, omg!), 150+ it's just a grind. Killing the same mobs, in the same mission, for the same rewards. Reducing critical chances across the board (as this proposed nerf will), will just cause more people to leave the game rather than push through the exponential boredom curve of exping, due to the further reduced return for time invested.

I applaud FC for coming to the community to gather ideas on this issue, but as I've said before, we need more information. Is it the maximum possible critical chance, at a given point in time that is too high? Or, is it the chance to crit over x period of time? The distinction here is HUGE, as is the difference in the 'right' solution.

Condaan

[Phione]

Currently, there isn't any Melee Weapon (exception would be EoT and Blood Bat, which are... err... almost impossible to acquire?) that actually provides a decent Base Damage Advantage, that'd allow Melee users to neglect Crit chances. Not to mention the lack of Crit Dependent Melee Weapons.

Take a look at the most commonly used 1hb combo, Alloy/Pipe. It can only rival ranged weapons with high crit chance, not to mention how pathetic it'd be without it. And if you take a look at 1he combo, Byom/Rider, it does have pretty decent damage output EXCEPT the fact remain you'll have 250 less attack rating than the 1hb users, which caused you to miss a bunch of hits.

Not to mention Beams. The lack of Specials as well as slow speed makes it a "decent" weapon, but no where near good, if compare to weapons like X-3 (Aimed Shot is able to do a much greater damage than Dimach or Brawl).

If today, a nerfing melee users out of the Scopes happened, it'd impact ALL Enforcers using the lower crit % scopes, which I do not think is fair consider the current weapon setups.

Unless FC incorporate this solution (nerfing Melee users out of Scopes) with major melee weapon stat reform giving Melee users a clear-cut weapon damage advantage, I'm totally aginst such proposal.

[gwend]

i saw it mentioned about a few times i like the idea of

take the shot
+4% crit chance
-1000 physical init
-1000 melee init

mor/mod/mop
-1000 ranged init

sg/vs/lma/uvc
-1000 ranged init

from a pvp pov i think with the ranged init crit or die weapons would be fast enough to still be effective where as people with vektor who crit for 1600 and do normal dmg of 1-500 would be hurt alot more


by nerfing crits buffs to melee only basically the people using crit or die weapons will be forced to switch to something else thus like every patch making everyone more into clones using the same weapons that will work the best for them diversity just flys right out the window with every nerf

[Phione]

Ok, currently, the damage output is something like this:
MAs deal the most damage
Non-MA melee Users and Ranged users deal the same damage.

With this nerf, it'll become something like this:
MAs deal a bit more than Ranged Users (losing LLTS, TTS).
Ranged Users deals a bit less damage (losing Mark).
Melee Users deal A LOT LESS damage (losing LLTS, TTS).

If you want to argue about FoB, I can tell you this right here right now: I don't care if FoB gives crit chance, I rather have FC to get rid of that crit chance and instead let me use my 8% VE!

[DaveDread]

Originally posted by Condaan
Over a period of 2.5mins for the proposed method:
MAs => 3% base + 24% UVC + 3% FoB + 2% random items= 32%

Non-MA Melee => 3% base + 7% MoP + 3% FoB + 2% random items = 15%

Non-MA Ranged => 3% base + 7% Crat Speech + 15% LLTS + 4% TTS + 2% random items = 31%

Read Condaans post again and think of it this way:

Ranged can have a larger crit% then a MA 90% of the time.
Ranged can have double the crit% of a non-MA melee 90% of the time.
Ranged users can have double the crit% of a non-MA melee even when the ranged is wearing a common 8% VE 90% of the time.

[Turin]

Originally posted by Cz
Finally got through the thread. Now for some comments.

QL 200 FoB
Ok, I guess nobody can use a QL 200. Make it a QL 180, which would be about 18% crit, I think.

FoB vs LLTS
I don't think we ever said they were equal, or the same. They're of course not. One is (supposed to be) a constant firearm crit buff item, the other a short close combat crit buff.

11% crat crit speech
Supposed to be 7%, I'm sure.

Take The Shot
Possibly forgotten completely. Should be added to the equation (as many have already done). Count for some minor buffs too (e.g. GoC).

Us playing the game
Yes, in fact we do. I won't bother to check all the Funcom game accounts, but I know we have a fair share of 100+ characters. I hardly play with other Funcom employees, so I really don't know who's the highest, or how many we have at 150+.

'Everybody' having a crit of 40-60%
Nobody ever said that, I believe. It's still a way too high potential.

Stacking code changes
Not sure how easy it is, but I'm sure it takes about 10 times as long to code as doing several item / nano changes, and 20 times longer to test.

FoB making you open to crits
When you team, which most people do at high levels - high levels being when people can get these extreme crit chances - all the time, you losing evades is not so much of a problem as when you solo.

Have a Soldier pull off an alpha strike, or an Agent get in a nice Aimed Shot, and you won't have the mob hitting at you anyway; hence the evades going down means very little in this situation. And this is a situation which has to be considered.

Me ignoring Engineers
I believe I'm not paying much attention to any profession right now, especially not in this thread, so that is a very unfair statement, imo.

For the record, I have three Engi characters, even though (to not give the impression that I'm an expert) none are high level (yet ). One uses MA as main attack.

I also have a Martial Artist (one of my mains), not using ranged weapons though.

Hunting greens and yellows at level 190
I have been told by many high level players that those level 190 mobs get hunted from 120 to 200, so it seems people can kill those "greens and yellows" when they are deep deep red too.

I guess we could use a better scaling on the toughness or the reward (XP especially) on the mob levels though.

Promise not to change the LLTS
Please give me a link to this. I remember the patch notes saying the old ones would stay. There might have been some word on not changing them, but I can't remember it.

Scope being a HUD
Yes, it doesn't specify that a HUD can't help close combat. Neither is it given that anything you put on your head helps close combat as much as ranged.

Just a quick example: The HUD can be linked to your firearm (upon equipping), and gived you a crosswire in front of your eyes. Doing such on a weapon you can swing, or your hands, is hard indeed. Doing it on a weapon which hits where it points is easy (it's done in late 20th century helicopters).

Cap the crit chance
...but allow for some things to go above it.

Possible, but a lot of coder work. Item and nano changes are easier to do and test. Why do I like pushing easy (i.e. quickly done) takss forward? Because it gives better time to do other things, like fixing bugs and making new content.

Cheetra
Great post. Just wanted to say that.

Mega^|3io
Weren't you the one who sent one of us a message after losing your post count, telling the recipient to F... off? If so, that would be the reason. Stay nice, like here, and I won't ban you again.

---

Ok, I probably forgot a lot, and am probably wrong here and there. Feel free to correct me, as long as you do it in a nice manner. And that goes for correcting everybody else too.

Back later...

I only say one thing, and me and you kind of had this discussion in an e-mail. ( btw, i was only banned 3 days, not the 5 you said, just an FYI, dunno if that was intended because I appologized or not ) but anyways.


You said, the old items would be left in the game.

This is a very LEADING statement. By those words, we believe we will get to keep our LLTS's. By changing the stats, you are NOT keeping the item in the gam,e you are putting a new item in the game and giveing it the name of an old item. it is NOT the same item though. just something new with an old name.

[odian102]

the highend scopes are only viable with a few weapons, like the ithaca. So, let them stay.

All funcom has to do is design a whole new set of weapons based on avg damage and not crit. These weapons will have to be equal to or better then a old weapons with a 15% scope on them.

Problem solved, without breaking promises.

[Arinia]

I just want to know one thing.

I read the whole thread, maybe I missed it but I don't know.

You admit that FoB and LLTS/VE aren't in the same class of items.

What is the reasoning behind the statement that Melee users should have less of a chance to crit?

Try PvPing with a fast, low(er) damage weapon with no critbuff. I've gotten several tells in PvP already to the effect of "wow, you sure gave me time to run, you were doing crap damage".

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...dmg#post632781

[Resta]

Cz let me help you.

First of all what we doing now is calculating critical chance but no one is looking at actual situation.
I will take responsibility to say that FOB is better then LLTS. Reasons FOB has higher critical chance, FOB has bonus to initate and speed unlike LLTS has penalty.

Now lets take in considiration mele weapons. Most of them are slow Enchanced Queen Blade, Suport Beam, Blood Bat, Byom Blade, Edge of Tarasque, Punishment Rod, Blood-Stained Mace i assmue that most of those items will be awaylable.
They all are great weapons and have very high normal damge. Plus High Attack Time/Recharge. Using FoB with this weapons will increase speed and plus on top of that gives great critical chance.

Now lets take a look at slow ranged weapons. Augmented Hellspinner Shock Cannon, Costom Heavy Suppresor, Home Defender, Yatmachmy X-3 Riffle, Diamondie Kick Pistol, Nophex Plasma Destroyer II, Pain of Patricia, MTI Martins Simple AR01, Mauser Chemical Streamer all of this are weapons have good normal damge but slow attack speed. Its imposible to use LLTS with any weapon that has Attack Time higher then 2.5. Maybe soldiers can use Vision Enchancer but they get penalty.

So in this case if we calculate critical chance piscture will be like this.

Mele 3% (basic) 7% (MoP crat speech) 3% (misc items)
With FoB ql 180 16% for 25 seconds plus speed bonus.
All together 29%

Ranged
Soldiers - 3% (basic) 7% (MoP crat speech) 3%(Misc Items) 8% (TS-VE) all together 21% plus penalty to speed.
Non Soldiers - 3% (basic) 7%(MoP crat speech) 3%(Misc Items)
all together 13% critical chance.

Even if this weapons are for high lvl players, but we are talking that at high lvl players have to high critical chance.


Now let me flame you
Why funcom talking about reducing critical chance and does not put weapons that have good normal damge. There tons of great weapons in datobase that not crit or die. Why dont you put them in game? The problem with people having to high critical chance is becasue best weapons right now are Ithaca, Raids, River series 6, Aloy Stuff. Why are they so good? River/Ithaca has specials and good range, while Home Defender has no range and no specials. Aloys Stuff has lots of specials while Hammer has one special. Even if raid has no range and one special but chemical damge makes it up. I am looking at new weapons in datobase and personaly even if i have 15%, 13%, 14% LLTSs i would love to trade all that for Pain of Patrica

In conclusion.

BUMP for LLTS with great mele/psyhical ini penalty, UVC with great ranged penalty, FoB with great ranged penalty.

BUMP for adding new weapons for all proffesions and all weapon skills that have Good Normal Damge.

BUMP for making AO a good game.

BUMP for 7 IPR points since so many of us will have to reset lots of skills.

[______________Mylast]

Then every MA and Agent will be running around debuffing in PvP

Originally posted by gwend
i saw it mentioned about a few times i like the idea of

take the shot
+4% crit chance
-1000 physical init
-1000 melee init

mor/mod/mop
-1000 ranged init

sg/vs/lma/uvc
-1000 ranged init

from a pvp pov i think with the ranged init crit or die weapons would be fast enough to still be effective where as people with vektor who crit for 1600 and do normal dmg of 1-500 would be hurt alot more


by nerfing crits buffs to melee only basically the people using crit or die weapons will be forced to switch to something else thus like every patch making everyone more into clones using the same weapons that will work the best for them diversity just flys right out the window with every nerf

[______________Mylast]

I like this idea, thumbs up here

Originally posted by Krabbus
This is a serious post from an engineer using MA, I have a 8% LLTS at the moment I love it. I can agree on this "fix" if it was complete. The way it have been suggested both by players and Gaute is way from complete.

Martial Artist
They are specialized at melee and weapons that is close to this category (bows, and other ma weapons), they are also very good to make a critical hit and have nanolines for this. They also have nanolines to teach other people to make a critical hit. The problem is, that MAs can't teach ranged users how to make a critical hit, only close combat professions - this is logical. So the solution here is to implement a huge ranged init penalty at the critnanos for others (2%, 4% and 7%)

Agents
This professions is specialized in ranged and are very good to concentrate for a few seconds to make a good critical hit. They also can teach other to make a critical hit by 4% (TTS) but they only know how to use ranged weapons, so it's impossible for agents to teach melee users. So the solution here is to implement a huge melee/phys init penalty on TTS.

Crats
Crats is a profession that covers most areas, they have a critical speech that helps other profession to make a critical hit. Crats aren't specialized and therefor will this speech affect every person beeing around.


Conclusion
This is all logical, you can't only do this "fix" half way, you have to follow the pattern as you mentioned in point 4. MA's can never learn ranged weapons users how to make a critical hit when he isn't specialized in using weapons and other way around for agents. One thing, is to make cratspeech and MAs crit(other) to stack to balance it out.
The "fix" Gaute mention will only affect melee users, and ranged users will be unaffected - I guess this wasn't the intention, or was it? Below is a list over the chance for critical hit:

Martial Artists:
3% + 22% (self buff) + 7% (crat speech) + 4% (misc, e.g 2 x GoC)
Total: 36%
With FoB QL150: 51%

Non-MAs using close combat:
3% + 7% (MoP) + 7% (crat speech) + 4% (misc, e.g 2 x GoC)
Total: 21%
With FoB QL130: 34%

Non-MAs using ranged:
3% + 7% (crat speech) + 15% (LLTS) + 4% (TTS) + 4% (misc, e.g 2 x GoC)
Total: 33% (or 26% using best TS-VE instead of LLTS)

For me this will be the best balance between melee users and ranged users. You also have to remember that a FoB only give a crit chance withing 20-25 seconds at max, which is 2% crit over 3 minutes (15% crit for 25 seconds). By the way, FoB doesn't increase phys init, only melee init... what does non-MAs using physinit have?


Gaute, and Cz, doesn't this seem logical? You can't do this "fix" half way, you have to comlete it to make all critical units to follow the pattern you suggested in point 4.

Edit: Added cratspeech for MAs, since they are supposed to have the best chance to make a critical hit. Added TTS for ranged users. My post is based on that critspeech is going to stack with MA's mark lines.

Krabbus - Level 142 MA Engineer

[Bionitrous]

Hehe, that's a good one. Martial Artists putting MoP on their enemies in PvP to screw up their initiatives.

God, what a bloody mess this whole initiative changing idea is.

You thought it was bad having the Doc debuff your initiatives? Now the Martial Artist will come along and make yer gun useless and the Agent will TTS you to the point you can't raise your arms. Bull ***.

When will they see that the best thing to do is to simply limit a crit to once every 4 swings or shots from a gun. A straight 25% cap.

Alternatively, they could get creative and put it this way if you crit, then your next 3 attempts are not allowed to crit. Then you could still keep your 62% chance and be pretty sure that once your 3 regular hits were up, you'd get a crit soon enough before having to 'cool down' for 3 more swings.

I seriously hope we see Funcom not take the lazy, sloppy way out with this and actually gauge the effect of the init fix in 14.6 and take advantage of the time to do this right.

[Phione]

Most of the weapon you mentioned is either too rare to obtain, or not even there. When looking at something that'd effect the whole AO population, which is exclusion of melee users from the Scopes (which includes LLTS, VE, and TIM), we must only take into account about the most commonly used weapons.

In this case, for Enforcers, is the Beam and Alloy/Pipe. (the reason for not mentioning Byom Blade is because of its insanely low Attack rating, caused by FC's unforseen mistake).

Some beam users uses a low % LLTS (VE gives nano init panalty), since they are able to swing at full speed with FoB+Rage. BUT, here comes the tricky part, it's only good for so on so time, and after FoB's init effect is gone, they'll left with just Rage, which isn't enough to get the Beam to 1/1.

However, when looking at high crit ranged weapon, or even the best weapons of Soldiers (Nova Flow, Div9, CHS), these weapons have both decent base damage as well as decent crit damage. Its fast speed allows the user to equip a higher % LLTS or VE while still maintaining 1/1 speed. RANGED ALREADY HAVE AN ADVANTAGE! CONSTANT CRIT CHANCE WITH FULL SPEED.

Not to mention 1hb enforcers, who'd suffer even worse if Scopes are taken away. Alloy/Pipe = junk without decent crit chance, and you're taking away the only way they can do damage.

[__________Lucid Flow]

Originally posted by Krabbus
Yes, I know that, but I want the critspeech to stack with MA Crit to balance the critical chance between MAs, Melee and Ranged users... If critspeech doesn't benefit MAs will ranged users with 15% scope have higher chance to make a critical hit, that's very wrong, isn't it?

This way will non-MAs and Ranged users be more equal. To balance it even more between non-MAs and Ranged users we can increase the MA critnano(other) to be 12% to equal 8% scope (VE) and 4% TTS.

For me it seems this is the best way to do it, also upping MA's critnano (others) a bit to balance it even more. Noted that I forgot TTS for ranged users in the calculation...

Oh, maybe I missed that part.... If you were saying they SHOULD, then i'm all for it.

ALL for it ^^

[Bionitrous]

Lucid, you want an MA to put Mark of Risk on you in PvP so that you shoot every 20 seconds?

[Phione]

lol... that'd make MoP half a debuff :P

[Bionitrous]

Hehe ... and I'll have my Agent put 'Take the Shot' on you, Phione, and then you won't be able to swing at me.

Gotta love where this is heading. 'Massive melee init debuff for TTS'? Yeah right. You thought Adv's turning you into a bird in PvP was bad. Now they gonna buff your Crit chance and stop you from swinging.