A new approach to drugs

Hello fellow runners,

As you may have noticed, you can't use the /set kill_self 1 in the PTS. As this will move to retail, this mean that we cannot perma drug, then run to our PPU friend and suicide at his feets to remove the 10minutes eye cancer debuff.

This mean that drugging will have a huge impact on gameplay and drastically slow down the pace, because it will imply two things:
-either you are out of combat for 10minutes
-either you get a friend to kill you next to PPU = it's like /ariki but involve one more character

Top that with the fact drugs also have negatives buff and you might think that it's such a pita that people won't use it anymore.
Yet I think people will still use them. Why ? Because players will always seek the maximum power output even tho it cost them to suicide or wait 10min after a fight. It will make it even more of a pain but people will still use them.


So what I'm I suggesting here ?
-A bonus to your stats for the duration.
-Followed by a bigger debuff after the drug effect, lasting for the same duration.
-Reduce the duration of all drugs from 180/300/600s to 60/180/300s. So it's more of a temporal booster that you can trigger in a fight than a real long buff.
-Removal of screen flickering/Eye cancer thingie.

EXEMPLE OF THE SUGGESTION:

X-Beast: +3 STR +20 HC +15 WPL (300s)
Followed by: -15 HLT -15 ATH (300s)
Temporal boost to DPS at cost of effective defense

Resist Potion Fire: +25 FIR (60s)
Followed by: -40 PCR (60s)
Temporal boost to fire resist at cost of piercing

Blue Fairy: +10 CST +10 RES +10 IMP (180s)
Followed by: -30 TRA (180s)



TL;DR

Current: Drug = long buff then eye cancer = can't play need suicide or afk coffee/tea
Suggestion: Drug = shorter buff then big debuff = no eye cancer, no need sepuku

I would much rather have drugs be enhancements of the players resists and have no debuff to be honest. (more medicine and pharmaceuticals than increasing damage output).

I would like them to last much longer also (20-30 mins would be good).

I would like to remove the drug flash effect completely also.

This would do 2 things, one it would encourage more drug use (players could viably go out and hunt harder level mobs even in PVE with drugs at lower levels) and two it would help people who maybe arent as good at pvp to survive that little bit longer at no real cost to themselves. Other than their wallet.

Everyone with any experience of NC knows that cash is a worthless asset at cap. The only people who are broke are the ones who constantly buy drugs.

This suggestion would get everyone buying drugs and thus drain money from the economy.

What are you proposing as a drawback to drugs ?
Drugs are terrible for your body and leave a damageful impact, otherwise everyone would use them and permanently. Thus it would become a useless feature and a necessary extra cost.

Like you said, rich capped player would be 24/7 on drugs and noobs couldn't afford them, increaing the gap of combat effectiveness between rich/poor.

But what you brought is an interesting idea: We could add "vitamins" which would offer a minor bonus without drawbacks.

Also it would be nice indeed to remove the drug flash, but we have to implement something instead of the drug flash which is enough of a counter to make drugs a situationnal booster and not mandatory item to use in combat. That's why I'm proposing big debuffs.

No drawback to drugs. There are no combat drugs in the proposal. Therefore there is nothing to widen the gap between good players and bad ones, if anything all it does is narrow that gap due to higher resists and health. The good player will still win but in a larger amount of time, the bad player now has a fighting chance.

There is no such thing as noobs who cant afford stuff. High level players are cash rich. Noobs can and will sell valuable items for cash. This is basic economics. If the noob cant afford stuff he does like everyone else does in a capitalist society, he gets off his ass and works for it, no more welfare handouts.

You are confusing the issue of drugs used in combat versus drugs used in "general" life.

I propose removing combat drugs altogether if they cannot be balanced, or leave them as they are with higher penalties if you wish. I dont really mind how it is done. I never used to use drugs in NC1 and I did fine. It became necessary sometime in nc2 but still low tech PE was viable so it didnt matter. All my chars have been built on defence first and firepower second.

In nc2.2 it became a case of drug to the moon to stay effective and crouch on your knees next to your friend/dual logged alt the other side of the safe zone.

If that kind of pvp comes as a consequence of drugs then honestly I would do without them. They ruined the "fear" factor in NC for me. People would run to a safezone when they saw their drugs were running out. Its not necessarily about the effect on the character that bothers me but the effect that is often intangible but verily felt on the player sat at the keyboard. These things affect the game because the player will play differently.

Its like when P2 became unsafe and suddenly everyone moved to the p1/p2 zone line instead of Pepper Park 1. It was the same zoneline pvp but somehow it just didnt feel the same.

I would like to recapture the "older" flavour of pvp in neocron, huge op fights with every class represented there rather than just the current "OP" class. Drugs are small but vital part of getting that right.