Flyl
23-12-03, 20:02
Ok so reading through the forums I've come to the conclusion that bar a few people, the majority wouldn't know balanced if it came upto them and hit them in the face. Most people only want changes because it will benefit their charactor class and make them better. People have come to realise that enough of them whine about something Reakktor will change it to suit them, however in the end this just makes them whine more (ala Ressurection nerf anybody?)
Below are my suggestions to help balance the game. These are just suggestions. Anybody who is going to flame or reply with one word answers need not bother, if you're going to reply I'm going to require you to give constructive critism for or against any particular argument, explaining your reasoning. Whining about nerfs or bugs or how it affects the class you play is the reason that the game is as unbalanced as it is at the moment.
If you do like the thread, rate it 5 stars when you post so perhaps somebody from Reakktor can take some of them into consideration.
I thank you in advance for your co-operation.
PSI Monks
• Shelter's shouldn't affect damage that poisen does, passive monks already have multiple rare and shop bought spells at their disposal for combatting against poisen damage. source here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85379)
• Make the cancelling effect that PPU and APU have on each other lower, allowing more powerful hybrids and removing the "support charactor" ethos that surrounds monks.
• Increase the requirements (in terms of MST/PPU/APU) on the higher level spells, this affects hybrids more than anything else, by reducing the size of their psi pool, therefore reducing their rank, and ability to sustain offensive fire for long periods of time.
• Adjust the maximum rate of fire on offensive spells to 95 / minute from 105 / minute instead of adjusting the damage spells do. This will keep the damage an APU does per hit the same, but reduce the amount of times they can fire in a minute.
• Completly remove parashock spells- see the section 'Freezers' below.
• Increase the quality of shop bought spells but remove the possibility of them being slotted. This will effect hybrids/ppu monks mainly. As it is shop bought spells are 'average' quality and possibly slotted. Some of these spells are none-researchable items. If they're sold at higher quality then it will counteract the need for them to be constructed. Alternativly they could be changed from none-researchable to researchable items to allow them to be constructed.
• Add a rare poisen beam spell. (Holy Plague?)
Tanks
Tanks are one of the most powerful offensive classes in the game. While lacking the ability to do much more than fight, they have the potential to move faster, take more damage, and do more damage than any other class, this needs to be focused on when people complain they got beaten by a tank. In a solo fight - a duel, 1v1 with a tank, between two people with the same sort of skills, there should be no competition or indescision in the matter, the tanks greater consitution and cannon weapons should win.
• Increase the damage on the Malediction, Doombeamer and Moonstriker. These are the highest TL weapons in the game but do less damage in any particular time frame as lower TL weapons. The moonstriker in particular should do enough damage to compensate for its inaccuracy. This goes for all rocket launchers in particular.
• Leave the Devourer's damage is at the moment. I've heard a lot of people (PPU's and PE's in general) complaining about the damage that a Devourer can do, saying it needs nerfing. The damage on the Devourer is fine if you change your resists to compensate for the poisen damage it does.
• Increase the resists given by the high level Duranium / Tank PA in terms of peirce and energy resist.
Private Eyes
Rifles are commonly known as the most underpowered weapon in their game, taking this into considering with the drop in speed it gives you while they're active. Most people prefer to go with pistols for PvP because of their high rate of fire, lack of need to specialise, and the speed of movement while they're active.
• Increase the damage of rifles to 214% maximum damage.
• Increase the weapons lore requirement of rifles to 1.6x TL of the item for optimum aiming.
• Leave damage of pistols at 178% maximum damage.
Increase the damage of Ray of Last Hope, Slasher, and Executioner slightly.
• Change the weapons lore requirement of pistols to be equal to the TL of the weapon. IE: Ray of Last Hope optimum weapon lore would be 108.
Spies
The spies are the intellectual and dexterous class of the game, but without the ability to take the damage of a private eye. This should really be focused on during balancing. In close range combat a spy should only have two options, death, or stealthing and running away.
• Increase the TC requirement of the Obliterator to 120 TC, 95 INT, 100 DEX.
• Leave stealth time of obliterator at 90 seconds. There have been posts recently complaining about the amount of time obliterator stays active for, anybody having this much TC deserves / needs 90 seconds of stealth. source here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84663&highlight=obliterator)
• Other stealth related functions, see stealth section.
----
Loms
Lom pills were originally added as a temporary solution while Reakktor played with the balance of weapons early on in retail, rather than releasing all stats every patch. Now that this has settled down, there should be one final skill release and then loms should be wiped, removed from the shops, and made drop only.
• Increase SI per lom to 80%.
• Increase the amount of experiance lost. At the moment too many people powerlevel with one kind of weapon and then use loms to change to another skill.
• Remove them from the shops
• Make loms mob drop only from low level mobs (like beggars, and lazars for example)
• Make loms none researchable, none clonable items
Synaptic Impairment
Impairment is one of the most annoying aspects of the in game material, I disagree with removing it completly, but think that things need to be tweeked.
• Change synaptic impairment timing to 5 minutes for 100% impairment
• Give 50% synaptic impairment per death
• Give 80% synaptic impairment per lom pill taken
Stealth
• Give stealth its own graphic so it doesn't look like a hack tool.
• Allow stealth to be turned on / off without drugs. While other items are disabled while stealthed, leave the stealth tool active and make using it again deactivate the stealth function.
• Make stealth require recharging. IE: You cannot restealth immediatly after coming out of stealth, similar to impairment but only affects stealth.
Freezers
This is a large ongoing argument thats been in progress since the middle of beta when freezers were first added. Clientel started the complaints, and many others have followed the steps. Basically freezers need removing from the game, completly. They're unnessesary.
• Remove Thunderstorm rifle from the game and replace it with a rare Gatlin Rifle (see rare pool section)
• Remove all Parashock spells from the game. Parashock is an offensive spell used by a PPU. If PPU's are to retain their defensive abilities they should only be capable of support functions to other runners. Parashock isn't supporting, its attacking.
• Give the fallen angels a new toy thats distributed at their home base in the place of freezers.
Soullight and Quickbelts, Item Dropping, etc
At the moment, -17> Soullight means you'll drop 6 items in a "quick belt" randomly chosen from your inventory. It means that at -16 soullight you'll still drop 6 items in a quick belt in your inventory even though copbots don't shoot you. Anything above this means you'll drop one item, and have a safe slot. Now here are my suggestions. This will just give those none pk'ers or tradeskillers a reason to have more soullight.
• At -17 soullight and below. You'll drop one item straight to the ground without a quickbelt upon dieing.
• At -10, to -16 soullight you'll drop 3 items in a quickbelt upon dieing.
• At -1, to -10 soullight you'll drop an item in your quickbelt upon dieing, and have a safe slot in your belt.
• Above 0 soullight, you'll drop one item *from your belt* (Not your inventory) into a belt with a hack rating similar to an op, upon dieing.
• Above 20 soullight, you won't drop a belt.
• If you have -25 faction sympathy in any particular faction REGARDLESS of if you're in a clan, the guards and npcs of that faction will kill you on sight.
• If you get to -25 faction sympathy in your own faction REGARDLESS of if you're in a clan, you will (if applicable) be removed from the clan and the faction.
Tradeskill Experiance
Read here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85357) - My thoughts on the issue exactly. Tradeskilling should give approximatly 1000x the TL of the item in experiance for each succesful build. This means for example, researching would be the fastest method of capping intelligence, as for a TL 80 item you'd get 80000 xp per go. Bear in mind with the lomming changes suggested that this would prevent people powerleveling on tradeskills and lomming, this wouldn't be unbalanced. Meanwhile construction would have the same 80000 experiance, spread across intelligence, dexterity, and strength.
Rare pool
Remove:
Paw of Tiger,
Electric Tempest,
Thunderbolt,
Thunderstorm,
Holy Paralasys,
Add:
Rare gatlin rifle,
Rare gatlin pistol,
Rare gatlin cannon, (even though theres already the tangent speedgun)
Rare poisen beam, (holy plague?)
Rare nail gun,
Rare fusion drone,
Rare observer drone, (for fun :) All seeing eye?)
Hack glove.
Damage Boost
Damage boost. Boosting to give more damage, it's a passive skill that everybody expects from a PPU monk, but what does the monk get out of it? Well if they're unteamed, nothing. If they're teamed, they'll get a bit of XP. Now my idea for damage boost, is that the caster of damage boost will get experiance based on the additional damage caused by damage boost, this will allow a PPU to get experiance if they're unteamed, and get more experiance if they are teamed, thus solving the everlasting problem to how to level a passive monk's intelligence. Of course, a private eye class runner can also use damage boost, which would allow them to level their PSI and INT skills quicker, which wouldn't really make a difference considering that INT is normally capped by the time they can use damage boost.
Other things I support
Runner owned shops (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85521)
Multiple users of one apartment (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85534)
Making Neocron into a true city (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76294)
Turret CST times at Ops (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85351)
Removing Freezers (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85317)
Underground Travel (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84707)
Below are my suggestions to help balance the game. These are just suggestions. Anybody who is going to flame or reply with one word answers need not bother, if you're going to reply I'm going to require you to give constructive critism for or against any particular argument, explaining your reasoning. Whining about nerfs or bugs or how it affects the class you play is the reason that the game is as unbalanced as it is at the moment.
If you do like the thread, rate it 5 stars when you post so perhaps somebody from Reakktor can take some of them into consideration.
I thank you in advance for your co-operation.
PSI Monks
• Shelter's shouldn't affect damage that poisen does, passive monks already have multiple rare and shop bought spells at their disposal for combatting against poisen damage. source here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85379)
• Make the cancelling effect that PPU and APU have on each other lower, allowing more powerful hybrids and removing the "support charactor" ethos that surrounds monks.
• Increase the requirements (in terms of MST/PPU/APU) on the higher level spells, this affects hybrids more than anything else, by reducing the size of their psi pool, therefore reducing their rank, and ability to sustain offensive fire for long periods of time.
• Adjust the maximum rate of fire on offensive spells to 95 / minute from 105 / minute instead of adjusting the damage spells do. This will keep the damage an APU does per hit the same, but reduce the amount of times they can fire in a minute.
• Completly remove parashock spells- see the section 'Freezers' below.
• Increase the quality of shop bought spells but remove the possibility of them being slotted. This will effect hybrids/ppu monks mainly. As it is shop bought spells are 'average' quality and possibly slotted. Some of these spells are none-researchable items. If they're sold at higher quality then it will counteract the need for them to be constructed. Alternativly they could be changed from none-researchable to researchable items to allow them to be constructed.
• Add a rare poisen beam spell. (Holy Plague?)
Tanks
Tanks are one of the most powerful offensive classes in the game. While lacking the ability to do much more than fight, they have the potential to move faster, take more damage, and do more damage than any other class, this needs to be focused on when people complain they got beaten by a tank. In a solo fight - a duel, 1v1 with a tank, between two people with the same sort of skills, there should be no competition or indescision in the matter, the tanks greater consitution and cannon weapons should win.
• Increase the damage on the Malediction, Doombeamer and Moonstriker. These are the highest TL weapons in the game but do less damage in any particular time frame as lower TL weapons. The moonstriker in particular should do enough damage to compensate for its inaccuracy. This goes for all rocket launchers in particular.
• Leave the Devourer's damage is at the moment. I've heard a lot of people (PPU's and PE's in general) complaining about the damage that a Devourer can do, saying it needs nerfing. The damage on the Devourer is fine if you change your resists to compensate for the poisen damage it does.
• Increase the resists given by the high level Duranium / Tank PA in terms of peirce and energy resist.
Private Eyes
Rifles are commonly known as the most underpowered weapon in their game, taking this into considering with the drop in speed it gives you while they're active. Most people prefer to go with pistols for PvP because of their high rate of fire, lack of need to specialise, and the speed of movement while they're active.
• Increase the damage of rifles to 214% maximum damage.
• Increase the weapons lore requirement of rifles to 1.6x TL of the item for optimum aiming.
• Leave damage of pistols at 178% maximum damage.
Increase the damage of Ray of Last Hope, Slasher, and Executioner slightly.
• Change the weapons lore requirement of pistols to be equal to the TL of the weapon. IE: Ray of Last Hope optimum weapon lore would be 108.
Spies
The spies are the intellectual and dexterous class of the game, but without the ability to take the damage of a private eye. This should really be focused on during balancing. In close range combat a spy should only have two options, death, or stealthing and running away.
• Increase the TC requirement of the Obliterator to 120 TC, 95 INT, 100 DEX.
• Leave stealth time of obliterator at 90 seconds. There have been posts recently complaining about the amount of time obliterator stays active for, anybody having this much TC deserves / needs 90 seconds of stealth. source here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84663&highlight=obliterator)
• Other stealth related functions, see stealth section.
----
Loms
Lom pills were originally added as a temporary solution while Reakktor played with the balance of weapons early on in retail, rather than releasing all stats every patch. Now that this has settled down, there should be one final skill release and then loms should be wiped, removed from the shops, and made drop only.
• Increase SI per lom to 80%.
• Increase the amount of experiance lost. At the moment too many people powerlevel with one kind of weapon and then use loms to change to another skill.
• Remove them from the shops
• Make loms mob drop only from low level mobs (like beggars, and lazars for example)
• Make loms none researchable, none clonable items
Synaptic Impairment
Impairment is one of the most annoying aspects of the in game material, I disagree with removing it completly, but think that things need to be tweeked.
• Change synaptic impairment timing to 5 minutes for 100% impairment
• Give 50% synaptic impairment per death
• Give 80% synaptic impairment per lom pill taken
Stealth
• Give stealth its own graphic so it doesn't look like a hack tool.
• Allow stealth to be turned on / off without drugs. While other items are disabled while stealthed, leave the stealth tool active and make using it again deactivate the stealth function.
• Make stealth require recharging. IE: You cannot restealth immediatly after coming out of stealth, similar to impairment but only affects stealth.
Freezers
This is a large ongoing argument thats been in progress since the middle of beta when freezers were first added. Clientel started the complaints, and many others have followed the steps. Basically freezers need removing from the game, completly. They're unnessesary.
• Remove Thunderstorm rifle from the game and replace it with a rare Gatlin Rifle (see rare pool section)
• Remove all Parashock spells from the game. Parashock is an offensive spell used by a PPU. If PPU's are to retain their defensive abilities they should only be capable of support functions to other runners. Parashock isn't supporting, its attacking.
• Give the fallen angels a new toy thats distributed at their home base in the place of freezers.
Soullight and Quickbelts, Item Dropping, etc
At the moment, -17> Soullight means you'll drop 6 items in a "quick belt" randomly chosen from your inventory. It means that at -16 soullight you'll still drop 6 items in a quick belt in your inventory even though copbots don't shoot you. Anything above this means you'll drop one item, and have a safe slot. Now here are my suggestions. This will just give those none pk'ers or tradeskillers a reason to have more soullight.
• At -17 soullight and below. You'll drop one item straight to the ground without a quickbelt upon dieing.
• At -10, to -16 soullight you'll drop 3 items in a quickbelt upon dieing.
• At -1, to -10 soullight you'll drop an item in your quickbelt upon dieing, and have a safe slot in your belt.
• Above 0 soullight, you'll drop one item *from your belt* (Not your inventory) into a belt with a hack rating similar to an op, upon dieing.
• Above 20 soullight, you won't drop a belt.
• If you have -25 faction sympathy in any particular faction REGARDLESS of if you're in a clan, the guards and npcs of that faction will kill you on sight.
• If you get to -25 faction sympathy in your own faction REGARDLESS of if you're in a clan, you will (if applicable) be removed from the clan and the faction.
Tradeskill Experiance
Read here (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85357) - My thoughts on the issue exactly. Tradeskilling should give approximatly 1000x the TL of the item in experiance for each succesful build. This means for example, researching would be the fastest method of capping intelligence, as for a TL 80 item you'd get 80000 xp per go. Bear in mind with the lomming changes suggested that this would prevent people powerleveling on tradeskills and lomming, this wouldn't be unbalanced. Meanwhile construction would have the same 80000 experiance, spread across intelligence, dexterity, and strength.
Rare pool
Remove:
Paw of Tiger,
Electric Tempest,
Thunderbolt,
Thunderstorm,
Holy Paralasys,
Add:
Rare gatlin rifle,
Rare gatlin pistol,
Rare gatlin cannon, (even though theres already the tangent speedgun)
Rare poisen beam, (holy plague?)
Rare nail gun,
Rare fusion drone,
Rare observer drone, (for fun :) All seeing eye?)
Hack glove.
Damage Boost
Damage boost. Boosting to give more damage, it's a passive skill that everybody expects from a PPU monk, but what does the monk get out of it? Well if they're unteamed, nothing. If they're teamed, they'll get a bit of XP. Now my idea for damage boost, is that the caster of damage boost will get experiance based on the additional damage caused by damage boost, this will allow a PPU to get experiance if they're unteamed, and get more experiance if they are teamed, thus solving the everlasting problem to how to level a passive monk's intelligence. Of course, a private eye class runner can also use damage boost, which would allow them to level their PSI and INT skills quicker, which wouldn't really make a difference considering that INT is normally capped by the time they can use damage boost.
Other things I support
Runner owned shops (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85521)
Multiple users of one apartment (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85534)
Making Neocron into a true city (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76294)
Turret CST times at Ops (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85351)
Removing Freezers (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85317)
Underground Travel (http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84707)