Rebalance? Rebalance RK weapons!

[Scottik]

Bump for this idea. It should have been made long time ago.

(Hell, many of those weapons must have been useless since the begining.)

[Ikarus]

I like the huge amount of different guns.
Would be more fun if they'd all be somewhat viable, but I guess this would really be too much to ask. I actually don't want to be the one adjusting every number in thousands of different guns coming in three to ten ql ranges.

The idea behind the 000-Weapon upgrades was great. The way it has been implemented, however, was really bad. The very least should be to adjust those weapons in three different aspects.
- Increase the damage ranges and
- Lower the Requirements together with
- Increasing the availability and lower the prices. 400k for a ql25 upgrade is simply horrifying design. Tradeskilled with shop components (and the gun, of course) akin to carbonum armors for example.

We have a ql 200 BBI Faithful, popular adv gun, with already high requirements:
1036 pistol, 513 fling; 2/2; 30-410(200) dmg, 2000 MBS.

The "upgrade" gun in question is any fully upgrade pistol in ql 155
1036 pistol, 518 fling, 1/1, 95-142(95) dmg, 1248 MBS.

This is terrible and should really get some attention. I do like the idea of a branch of different looking generic weapons as a basis. Basis meaning they should be easy to aquire and deliver good damage.



As much as I'd love to see every RK-Weapon upgraded I'm fully aware that this is a huge task without a similar huge gain.
What about a compromise ( Aside fixing the 000-upgrades, of course ).

The Community selects a small number of "interesting" weapons for each skill that may be revised. Already "realistic" guns are of course out of the question. We have 15 ( MA aside ) weapon skills. With 3 weapons per skill we should have enough to have a considerable impact on the 'feel' of the game without having huge amounts of development hours draining into unimportance. ( like the 000 upgrades. )
Tech-heads, weaponsmiths and artisans unite! Provide some backyard-Rubi-Ka'n improvements to our dear old war horses.
This would also make a nice addition to the item description.

[CompactedPoo]

Since I have a froob's experience, I'd like to weigh in. The froob in question is a good friend of mine IRL who was looking for something F2P since he's strapped for cash now a days. Since I had just in the last few months jumped back into AO (played on and off since the day it went live) I told him he should give it a try. I think we can all agree that AO is more difficult to pick up and play than the current stock of WoW and all of it's clones in terms of complexity. AO is not noob friendly (not as steep as Eve, but holding a firm second or third place). Current MMOs on the market, you start the game, get a intro quest and away you go as the game holds your hand. No worries of 10,000 different Weapons (most of which stink), Armors (most of which are sub-par), Implants, Buffs, etc.

I helped him as much as possible, explaining all of the different systems (sometimes multiple times) as best I could and ran through a bunch of Team Missions on a lowbie alt I'd made. I had him reroll once or twice and kept explaining that just because swimming is green doesn't mean you should keep it maxed. He pumped points into anything green or really light blue. "But I swam a lot when I was exploring on noob island", "How much are you going to swim with a flying vehicle?" I posed. A lot of current MMO's use a more Diablo 2'esque advancement system, AO leaves you a lot of room to screw up, especially when you don't know what your doing.

Weapons were where most of his questions came from. He liked sticking links in tells asking me if this Medium Shotgun (or whatever he'd just looted, there were a lot) was good for his Soldier. "As a Soldier stick with Assault Rifle, Burst, Full Auto, Fling...as a lowbie froob your best options are Division 9 Plasma, which you can only get from Dyna Bosses or buy from other players with money you don't have", "If you want to roll it, Nova Flow MK4's as mission rewards, or MKI's I can get you with my Trader are "ok" as a froob weapon, or an XCI from missions are passable, everything else is pretty much poo" "when your able, Hellspinner Shocks are a staple for froob Soldiers and upgradable", "Where do I get a Hellspinner?", "From a Cyborg boss in Greater Tir County that you can neither get to or hope to kill", I replied.

At around level 20 his frustration was palpable and I could tell he was on the verge of quitting. So I made him some Imps (and explained again how they worked, he was proud of his QL30 Basic store bought imps until I rained on his parade), logged in his Soldier with his consent and went to work making his playing time more enjoyable. Issue 1 was the full suit of Chilled Plasteel he had gotten from missions, replaced with some nice Carbonum, after squeezing on an NCU and Belt replacement (Issue #2, he still had 13NCU from noob island). Then on with the Division 9 Plasma I procured and updates to the Nano's since he still hadn't found the Soldier nano terminal in Basics apparently.

Next was dual logging my old MA and leading him through the Cyborg bunker and getting him a Hellspinner for later use. On his next log in he began running missions again and I received the tell "This is freaking awesome, I was about to decide that this game wasn't for me and give up on it, it's actually fun now". "I took the helmet off tho and I can't get it back on", Me: "Ugh, find an Agent for Feline Grace and a Doc for Iron Circle and stop taking things off you noob".

A lot of froobs don't have a veteran willing to help them out to this extent and point them in the right direction. Nor are a lot of veterans inclined to help a froob to this extent (we all have had lowbie alts at one time or another where you couldn't get a buff from someone you were standing right next to, no matter how nicely you ask). "Why didn't he just join an Org" you may ask. Most Orgs in AO are full of Vets that are too busy running raids to lend this much assistance, likewise, most Orgs are full of level 150+ characters, which leaves you doing things alone anyway as well as the people who get tired of the froob questions and start in with the insults. I didn't feel that subjecting him to further humiliation (other than my own) would foster his enjoyment.

Like most people, he just wanted to watch things die. Being killed by two salamanders from a trash pile apparently isn't a glorious death. I joked that he had his own la-z-boy on the respawn point in Trade. More viable weapon options for froobs might keep them around and turn them into paying subscribers since they'd be met with less frustration at least when it came to killing things.

[Pomidor]

AO is complex, thats for sure - and you are right, its n00b hostile game. I think, that FC should do something about it - what? Add Guide, with spoken dialog about basics:
- Nano programs
- implants
- Missions

Back to the guns - those in store are way to expansive for newcomer, and way to weak compaering to Island ones - it may mislead player, that Island was most important part of the game, and RK thing is something worse.

[CriticalDmg]

Since I have a froob's experience, I'd like to weigh in.
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I actually got to lvl 200 on my MA as a fr00b, and though there's certainly quite a few hurdles to overcome while leveling there's a giant difference between the "willing to learn how to" and the ones that just "wanna pwn stuff without any effort or knowledge" type of players.

The Community selects a small number of "interesting" weapons for each skill that may be revised. Already "realistic" guns are of course out of the question. We have 15 ( MA aside ) weapon skills.

Why MA aside ? All other profs can twink on higher ql weapons (and pets) while MAs are stuck with their low ql "fists".

in fact, while leveling a toon i didnt equip any weapons at all, just leeched until i got access to a decent one and thats still a nice way to go, others dont equip anything until they get to inf...

Now you're talking about SL... you can forget about RK weapons in there (since even less are useful in SL then on RK).
There's leechers everywhere, RK or SL, it doesn't matter - mostly, it's not the availability's fault, but the players who just don't bother (xp pistols in inf, shield MPs [you're not going to hold aggro, why the f*** are you not using "some" weapon instead], pet profs with no weapons at all but their pet, etc), hell, there's people that just don't bother to press Q on new mobs, and are more concerned on looting that uber loot from the mission mob that'll sell to the shop for 5 credits...

I restarted bashing this issue because ive got friends who were scared away from the game because they felt useless because I wasnt playing at that time to buy them uber weapons/armor.
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but since we live in an era of damage, weapons need more attention. its also ridiculous that in a totw team the styg enf kills 6 cultists while the rest of the team kill 2 with their gimpy weapons.
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someone who just started out has no skills and no preferences. they usually ask other players what to use as a trader for example: "use pump trainee dude" or modest ones "twink on a higher ql Vektor Lizard" instead they either stick to a POS shotgun and have no fun at all or just leech while other players kill
i mean, its no challenge to leech. at all. and they are discouraged to make themselves useful because they can not find any weapon that is at least half-decent
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try to think with a newb's head: the newb just left noob island and the first thing that comes to mind "OMG I'M LOST, WHAT TO DO, WHERE CAN I FIND GOOD EQUIP?!??!!" well this is a bit of an exaggeration but its something similar. then the next thing the newb sees are the shops.
"yay there are weapons and armor there, but they are soo expensive [LAFF...]". the newb will probably spend the hard-earned few thousand creds for a weapon that is even worse than the noob island one.

It's really common to see someone asking on OOC which gun to buy for a level XX prof X. And it's even harder to answer. "Don't buy anything, they're worse than what you have from noob island". Lol?

You need to remember, that those weaps were desigent with bare AO (w/o addons), and TM missions or encounters or outdor XP was a challange to full team
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and imagine somone who just got himself into AO and he finds that newb weaps are better then those that arent cheap in stores!

AO is complex, thats for sure - and you are right, its n00b hostile game. I think, that FC should do something about it - what? Add Guide, with spoken dialog about basics:
- Nano programs
- implants
- Missions

You are all complaining about the wrong issue...
It's not the weapon/armor's fault, it's the pathetic starter experience to a very complex game. AO is a game without a guide, period.

...Add to that not much support (comparing to old times at RK) and players are cluless about game mechanics/equippemnt (inc. weapon) and, when they fell useless/weak, they jsut leave this game....

This is not fr00b-only, there's noobs with expansions too, lots and lots of them.
If I'm not wrong Funcom never released a guide on how game mechanics work, it'll all been done by players, and the only way to find it is go through countless posts on this forum, which the vast majority of the player base doesn't ever use nor read. (AR/evades/AAO/AAD/inits/NR/over equipping(what does and doesn't go OE)/special's recharges/special's caps/....../team level [lol]/... let alone the fact that most of the things we do know about these are not accurate but are close estimates, since FC can't be bothered posting the damn formulas for these, for hell knows what reason)

[Ikarus]

Why MA aside ? All other profs can twink on higher ql weapons (and pets) while MAs are stuck with their low ql "fists".

There aren't that many MA-Weapons available in the game for the targeted audience that updating them would be that great deal. But I don't have a problem if they'd revise them. I was just more under the (probably wrong) impression that MA weapons are something for highlevels since "MAs use fists". Yes, I've never played one.
On the second thought it wouldn't be bad if they actually get the same treatment as everyone else, so you're right.

[aramsunat]

@CriticalDmg:

yes you are also right, weapons is not the main reason ppl quit. its part of the steep learning curve. I would also hate to see AO becoming a nobrainer game "just like wow" but a little boost for the newbies wouldnt hurt anyone.
Sooner or later the game will FORCE you to twink (especially true for froobs). even if you have a good weapon you will be forced to twink to put up with the mobs at further levels (example: a chiroptera enfo is close to nothing at 150 without proper twinkage)

newbs need more guidance - true. but this is another topic

give a newb a viable weapon, they can easily acquire for example around lvl 15 and do reasonable damage with it, which is obviously not as good as a pump trainee/master but good enough for the noob not to feel worthless.

also if the difference between a good weapon and a bad weapon is soooo huge, newbies will not make teams themselves, instead they wait until a twink shows up

im in for any arrangement how to revitalize the good old weapons, but I'm somewhat against giving brand new guns. it would help solving the early-quitting problem, but would render virtually any old weapon completely obsolete ("omg not even a noob uses that poo") and im pretty sure that their design would burn more employee-hours than rebuffing the old weapons

Plus I think thats part of the AO legacy, give those weapons a second chance

[nikkydkhick]

The whole 'practically worthless weapons' angle of AO has never made a bit of sense. Some-how the intention of making a few weapons very powerful, got perverted into making most weapons practically useless. It makes no sense that almost all the weapons sold in shops on the planet are no better than using your bare knuckles against the local wildlife. They might as well be replaced with simple decals that say 'a shop selling useless junk'. They detract from the game, and convince newcomers the design of this place very poor. Or you can leave things as they are, and perhaps the new AO box art can have a section that blurts "A landscape filled with useless shops, overflowing with crap weapons!"

It would not upset the current weapon pecking order if the lower 30% had thier firepower increased to about half of the best weapons. The best weapons remain uber and unbeatable, while shop weapons at least become useful.

This is just another facet of the way AO's overall value and attractiveness is consistently sacrificed in the name of 'Twinking is everything'. It does not have to be a binary relationship between the best weapons and useless weapons.

[Thecrow91]

bump

[Ocene]

Bump too.

There are tons of real good soldier weapons out there that we could benefit from.

I'm thinking about some of the weapons that have some real interesting procs on them .

[Chrys]

Heh I remember when I first started playing, I'd cobbled together about 40,000 creds and excitedly ran to the store to see what I could find for my awesome(ly gimp) Assault Rifle MP. Sadly, all the Assault Rifles in the store were no better than the one I'd put on from noob island, and they were supposed to be 30 "qls" higher!

Anyway bump.

Also please fix Gift of Jupiter so it actually adds the right damage type

[CppThis]

As an experienced froob, I'd be happy enough if they added in more Steps-class weapons at all level ranges. Or reducing health on all RK mobs so killing yellow/orange without lots of OSB isn't quite so ridiculous.

That said, I sorta agree with the people saying the huge amount of 'shop food' items leaves a bad impression on new players, and is worth looking at. As I've said elsewhere, the most dated aspect of AO is not the graphics but the gameplay.

[drainbamage]

As an experienced froob, I'd be happy enough if they added in more Steps-class weapons at all level ranges. Or reducing health on all RK mobs so killing yellow/orange without lots of OSB isn't quite so ridiculous.

Most SL mobs could also stand to have their health and ACs slashed (and maybe get some new abilities).

[Genie]

Posted this suggestion many years ago, and have been pushing it ever since. Nothing has happened though. Even new weapons added have been useless, meaning they are worse than the leading brand, and that no one uses them. Just a waste of DB space.

Here is my old suggestion with examples of old RK weapons upgraded to comparable versions.

If weapons are to be used they need to do comparable amounts of damage, so that you wont gimp yourself by choosing a different weapon. Variations would be in specials, damage type and speed. It's incredible that Funcom does not understand that NO ONE will ever use a weapon that performs worse than a different weapon.

[zeusima]

Literally there are weapons so dire that a level 100 soldier can do more damage with his fists from MA trickledown instead of using them. There's no way it can be *that* difficult to fix. Most of the weapons don't even sell for that much to shops any way.

There's also the issue of all the good pistols being advy only. If you removed the flags from things like BBI-faithfuls and joint clan scouts it would make a whole lot of people's lives a bit easier.

[Therrito]

I appreciate where you're coming from, but people bought expansions for better gear. What incentive would FC possibly have to make RK weapons any better?

Some people cannot afford expansions

[Dragocze]

Here is my old suggestion with examples of old RK weapons upgraded to comparable versions.

Wow. Really good job. Did you balanced all ranged weapons ? It seems like lots of work. Despite the fact, FC doesn't care much about this suggestion in the past, can I persuade you to make the same for melee weapons too?

[Mostadio]

I remember all the weapon choices I had on my fixer before SL was released. Way before perenniums or totw even existed. Out of all the SMG type weapons in the game, there were 3 that were decent. These days, I'd rather use fists than equip one on a paid toon. I had always hoped that some of these "golden oldies" would be revamped, not put on par with the top end weapons, but at least made into useful levelling options.

The problem we're facing isn't endgame weapons. We've got at least some choice there. The major hurdle is the plethora of crap weapons clogging the database for lowbie and midbie levelling players. A lot of them are garbage but usually for every prof there's at least one "decent" rollabile/shop buyable variety. The problem is, the noobs have no idea which this is. Experienced players know the names like OT Kerans, Vektor ND, Home Defender, but not the noobs. Nor do they have the tens of thousands of credits to buy these. They ask for money and get told "do missions". Yeah right dood. This guy needs a new gun so he CAN do missions.

My personal take on upgraded froob weapons is to take these one or two decent options and upgrade them to make them more viable. I'm not saying to put them on the lines of pumps and redlines, but to make mainstays like the MCS, division 9, and X-3 somewhat appealing for veteran players who don't want to just grab a QL10 typed kyr until they're able to strap on a perennium, or the enforcer who doesn't want to shell out on an icebreaker or what have you until he can get his OP CoH weapon or noob rod. Just something that's easy to get and competitive. It doesn't have to be a wtf uber twink weapon to be competitive, just able to provide the player with the ability to deal decent damage while grinding out those first few painful levels. If veteran players want to use it and it's easily accessible, then the noobs can be pointed into a better direction. Shelling out millions on a weapon you're only going to use for 10-25 levels is ludicrous.

[doctorgore]

Purge the garbage from the database.

[nitr0]

90% of the weapons should deal 40-60% the dmg good weapons do, not 10%-30%.