Nano Resistance is my candidate for number one worst system in the game. The source of the vast majority of balance problems in AO is this system.
Mission statement: Let's turn the use of Nano Resistance into a system that is active, intuitive, and stat oriented, so that profession and setup becomes the control for its use, but skill becomes the control for its results.
Current system:
Nano Resistance basically produces what is statistically likely to happen. It pits nano skills with a modifier versus nano resistance with a modifier. In theory, a player with 1500 nano skill using a program with a 100% chance is likely to land that nano on a player with 1500 NR 50% of the time.
Pros:
- It does SOMETHING. Players do keep the system in mind when twinking, and when PvPing.
Cons:
- PURELY luck based system justifies the creation of incredibly over powerful abilities that are "balanced" because they have a relatively low chance of working. Examples being nanos like program override, which has a 175% NR check, but removes perk defenses from the target.
- Players can get 20,000 + NR with little sacrifice. This makes their resistance all powerful versus nano casters in ordinary situations.
- The luck based system allows nano casters to (albeit, rarely) kill people with 20,000 NR. You may never have won the lottery, but you hear about people winning the lottery all the time.
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Proposed new system:
Let's get the "radical" portion of this concept out of the way, first. All nano programs should always land on every target. Let's compare this portion to a recent change in balancing; the removal of Shade stun procs. Funcom realized that balancing around luck simply cannot work. So, they opted to remove the stun procs, and now they are able to justify making all other procs for Shades both 100% chance and more effective. If it proves that these procs are TOO effective, they can very easily be fine tuned with feedback from players. If all offensive nanos always landed on targets, then they would HAVE to be modified to have more reasonable effectiveness.
The second portion of this new system would deal with what players actually do with Nano Resistance. We can't remove it from the game; it's been an integral (though faulty) part of it for a long time. I propose that nano resistance is transformed into a new pool - similar to health and nano. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest it gets its own bar. This pool would have a maximum value based on how much Nano Resistance skill a player has. The way it would be used is through tools. All of these would have a nano resistance requirement. As they are used, they would drain the player's nano resistance. Nano resistance would recover over time, at a faster rate the lower it is compared to the player's maximum capacity. Some effects of these abilities would be as follows:
- Tools that transform a portion of a player's nano resistance into absorb layers that only work against incoming nano damage. Their effectiveness would be based on the amount of nano resistance the user has remaining. Different versions of these tools would have varying degrees of effectiveness; the highest level would use up a massive amount of nano resistance but also give a very large absorb - perhaps something like 2k NR for 10k damage. These numbers would have to be worked out during the balance process. Other versions would be less efficient, perhaps 500 NR for 1000 damage. The former would be highly effective for survival for a short duration, but would leave the user's nano resistance capacity almost completely depleted. The latter would be good enough for periodic use during long term engagements.
- Tools that remove debuffs. Different versions of these tools would remove lengths of time from debuffs depending on their nano resistance cost. Expensive ones would almost immediately remove most debuffs.
- Tools that provide short term debuff immunity to various debuffs, these would be incredibly expensive.
- Tools that have "nano parrying" capability, on use they reflect portions of debuffs, or damage
Obviously, if all of these tools were items, players' inventories would fill up very quickly. The inventory stores items, the nano book stores nano programs. These tools should be stored in some sort of utility belt (A new window).
Pros:
- Nano resistance will no longer be based purely on luck
- The system would be more engaging, thus more fun
- Nano resistance will be an active system that will require skill to master. It's use would become far more dynamic, versus all forms of offensive nano programs.
- Debuffs and hostile nanos can be more easily countered, but tactics would have to be employed in order to make the best use of nano resistance. Against an NT it might be readily apparent that just absorbing their nukes is a good idea, but if the player does not leave NR available in their pool for root removing they could very easily find themselves defeated by the NT's allies.
- Debuffs and hostile nanos will require more effort to maintain on a player by the attacker. The current nature of debuffs is that players can simply fire and forget in a vast majority of situations.
- Tools could require twinking to use. They should deplete nano resistance pool on use, but I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to require other skills to use, such as computer literacy or nano programming for some. In theory these tools should be found to have analogs in other systems like nano casting
- Here's the big one; those abilities that are outstandingly overpowered would have to be looked at with a fair eye once they have a 100% chance of landing.
Cons:
- New users of the system might find it would have a steep learning curve. If the system was made intuitive enough, however, I do not see why it would be any worse than the current systems of nano programs and skill point allocation.
- Some professions with very low amounts of NR (Shades, Soldiers) might find their reserves depleted too quickly. This might be a problem that would have to be addressed with those professions
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Originally Posted by Veebliez
