Multiple problems with weapons, and resists, and EHP balance issues

If we look at Cyberpunk and what it means to be "at the top of your game", and I don't care about PVE(I know it needs reworked as well)...we can establish classes and architypes there, and where should. But, in PVP...it's a bit ridiculous in a Cyberpunk game. We don't have critical hit, so...yeah....
I don't want this to be me bitching about tanks, because I'm not. I'm actually, really, and truly disappointed in the current balance of the game. I believe this is the most unhappy I've been with Neocron and PVP thus far in terms of how useful ALL of the classes are at a given time.

Tested today:

Tank with ravager, devourer, and cursed soul against my PE doing chest shots(most common in cyberpunk games for accuracy of testing/damage)

Ravager used energy/xray ammo. Devourer was fire/poison. Cursed soul was Energy/Force.

Body health is the single best con stat to raise in terms of EHP up until lvl 75, then there are diminishing returns in comparison to resists.

Ravager is broken or something else is going on. The Energy/Xray damage did the same exact damage regardless of xray resist level and antigamma bones.
Dev works as intended.
Cursed soul force resist was not tested.

Energy seems to offer a larger amount of resist per point than both fire and poison.

The Con stat itself offers a boost to HP; automatically giving bonus to the tank...which does FAR too much damage for their possible EHP(effective hp), and far too low of damage for spy/pe for their lower effective HP.

Raising HLT will give you between 4-5hp(avg 5) per 1 skill point. So basically this turns into a diminishing return. 1 for 5, 1 for 2.5, 3 for 1.6

The problem? With mixing inquisition and blessed psi armor, with his set up and damage vs. me, you get approximately .6 dmg reduction in both fire AND poison per skill point spent. This was vs both the cursed soul and ravager, which don't do the same total damage. With my testing it was a FLAT RATE. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Why is it unacceptable? This makes the tank and his possible EHP leaps and BOUNDS above both the spy and PE, which, honestly the tank already has a large advantage over in terms of speed and usually damage. The tank also has access to splash weapons, which the PE and Spy generally do not.

IF you crunch the numbers in op fighting or overall PVP there is never an instance where the tank should come out on the losing end. They run strength as a primary, and thus have more options to resist piercing and have access to duranium to resist energy in equal fashion, the main damage types for spies and private eyes.

This is unacceptable for gameplay and balance across the board. We need a rework with testing, and we need (as I said in another thread) a "leveling off" towards the end of the leveling stem to have PVP be correct. We need more weapons to be viable. They are unacceptable at current state.

We have to remember:

Offense vs. Defense
Damage vs. EHP
Balance of weapons/normalization of top tier weapons(WoC weapons should all be normalized, MINIMUM.)
Style
STYLE.
STYLE!

I fully agree that the game isn't balanced right now (PVP and PVE), but you have to take some extra things into account.

I believe that the devs intended tanks to (usually) fight at short / medium range, whereas PE's and Spies (in case of rifles) have access to rather long range where they can take a BIG chunk of health off a tank before he even gets in firing range with this CS (or even worse, a devourer).
But range advantages don't always work out well if the opponent uses cover to close the gap. This is a problem in many games where the so called "sniper" classes seem very powerful on paper but aren't due to the just mentioned clever use of cover by the short range high damage / EHP classes.

And then I haven't even mentioned pistols or APU spells yet which have short range but are mostly handled by non Tanks who lack the EHP to stand toe to toe with a Tank and come out victorious.

Lowering max range on rifles and upping it on spells, pistols and cannons could be a step towards evening out the playing field, but this is by far the best or only option.

However, let me play devil's advocate here for a moment.
We all have to realize that this game is currently being run by a volunteer dev team and that they most likely also have jobs and a social life to tend to.
I'm sure that the devs are painfully aware that something has to be done, but we as players should give them the time they need to work something out. It's not as easy as spending a few minutes changing some numbers in the code.


As my ending note let me say that this is not an attack on you or your post, I actually like and support it, but I expect that this post can potentially end in a long discussion/argument with dev bashing which isn't helping anyone.
I just hope that my post can serve as a reminder for everyone who wants to reply to think before giving negative feedback.

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Originally Posted by [F6]Knight

I fully agree that the game isn't balanced right now (PVP and PVE), but you have to take some extra things into account.

I believe that the devs intended tanks to (usually) fight at short / medium range, whereas PE's and Spies (in case of rifles) have access to rather long range where they can take a BIG chunk of health off a tank before he even gets in firing range with this CS (or even worse, a devourer).
But range advantages don't always work out well if the opponent uses cover to close the gap. This is a problem in many games where the so called "sniper" classes seem very powerful on paper but aren't due to the just mentioned clever use of cover by the short range high damage / EHP classes.

And then I haven't even mentioned pistols or APU spells yet which have short range but are mostly handled by non Tanks who lack the EHP to stand toe to toe with a Tank and come out victorious.

Lowering max range on rifles and upping it on spells, pistols and cannons could be a step towards evening out the playing field, but this is by far the best or only option.

However, let me play devil's advocate here for a moment.
We all have to realize that this game is currently being run by a volunteer dev team and that they most likely also have jobs and a social life to tend to.
I'm sure that the devs are painfully aware that something has to be done, but we as players should give them the time they need to work something out. It's not as easy as spending a few minutes changing some numbers in the code.


As my ending note let me say that this is not an attack on you or your post, I actually like and support it, but I expect that this post can potentially end in a long discussion/argument with dev bashing which isn't helping anyone.
I just hope that my post can serve as a reminder for everyone who wants to reply to think before giving negative feedback.

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Not really on the range thing. Each style has a few weapons for both close and long range. The problem is weapons in general suck except for a select few.

Imho the most important point in your rant is the word "style". You're right, style was neglected as an important factor for a cyberpunk game. Where are our dual-wield pistols, where is the special anti-psi sniper ammo, where's all the cool stuff? (i need to point out that both examples are... just examples)

In fact the "rock-paper-scissors" principle got weakened, and needs to be re-strengthened in neocron. Each class should have specific strenghts and weaknesses. Attempts to make all classes equal, and equally strong, would make NC more boring (than ever).

Again a big thumbs up for your input, Model192.

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Originally Posted by Torg

where is the special anti-psi sniper ammo

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This was actually ingame years ago but got removed again for obvious reasons. 2-3 shotting PPU's with a SH wasn't exactly balanced.

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Originally Posted by [F6]Knight

This was actually ingame years ago but got removed again for obvious reasons. 2-3 shotting PPU's with a SH wasn't exactly balanced.

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True, but what about something like 8 shots to kill a ppu? They'll have plenty of time to try and heal, but it puts them under pressure that they don't get unless anti-buffed.
Plus SH is a clunky weapon to use, and does rather poor damage these days.

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Originally Posted by Netphreak

True, but what about something like 8 shots to kill a ppu? They'll have plenty of time to try and heal, but it puts them under pressure that they don't get unless anti-buffed.
Plus SH is a clunky weapon to use, and does rather poor damage these days.

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I really dont want to see more close combat SH users..

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Originally Posted by Dropout

I really dont want to see more close combat SH users..

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Then it should be made like the redeemer were it requires range to do any kind of decent damage. Thus giving people the incentive to use its a long range weapon.

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Originally Posted by Netphreak

Then it should be made like the redeemer were it requires range to do any kind of decent damage. Thus giving people the incentive to use its a long range weapon.

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this !

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Originally Posted by Dropout

I really dont want to see more close combat SH users..

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No scoping 14 year olds. This isnt cod is it ;) :D

Resis calculation (3 parts just look at the links above). Keep in mind spys and PE's can use shields and nanites which can be very effective with specialising on damagetypes.

edit: And stealth :)

You have to understand that 90% of PvP happens within melee range anyway. :)

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Originally Posted by William Antrim

You have to understand that 90% of PvP happens within melee range anyway. :)

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Which is something that would be nice to change/mix up a bit. Mixing in some longer range fighting would really start to make things interesting at OP's.

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Originally Posted by Netphreak

Which is something that would be nice to change/mix up a bit. Mixing in some longer range fighting would really start to make things interesting at OP's.

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^ this.

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Originally Posted by Netphreak

Which is something that would be nice to change/mix up a bit. Mixing in some longer range fighting would really start to make things interesting at OP's.

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I disagree.
Dont think Theres anything I dislike more in games than snipers.
Close range fighting is what makes this game fun (and as fast-paced as it is).

The Spirit Mod was removed for good reason. Completely aside from the SH, people would immediately swap to another weapon once the shields dropped. It was an interesting idea, but the implication was always horribly open to abuse.

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Originally Posted by Dropout

Dont think Theres anything I dislike more in games than snipers.

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sniping is what i love most. especially in OP fights. veeery annoying. but back to OP: we're all waiting for the big balancing project.

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Originally Posted by Torg

sniping is what i love most. especially in OP fights.

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That does not surprise me, at all.

Update: Testing on the Disruptor is showing that no matter if I stack energy and fire armor, and add in resists, it still comes at about 380-400 damage per a burst of four. GMs have been wanting more of this in brain port, and I'm bringing this back up.

Weapons are in huge need of normalization. From another thread:

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In Cyberpunk it's about the style. Any of the weapons that a bad ass decides to pick up he should be just about equally as good with. It's not style when you have to crunch numbers and see what's the best. I should be just as bad ass with an Xbow as with a SWAT Backup gun. After the weapons reach a certain tier they need to level out within reason, and for nothing else other than style in CYBERPUNK. I don't mean they all aim the same/do the same damage/fire rate, all that. But, they should all be equally as viable. Tanks should be equal to PE equal to APU equal to Spy in a rock/paper/scissors/stealth/gun sort of way. I miss taking my shotgun and 4 chevs and causing havoc for the capped players in pepper park. I miss that a lot.

The game built legends before, as cyberpunk games do, now it's just a joke.


This is a GREAT cyberpunk reference for broad ideas of "balance" and gameplay types. http://cs.netsville.com

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Bumping this again, because of the obvious patch it's being ignored.

I feel like ROF decrease and things like that have set them up to have more reliable client/server calls but it's really inappropriate for the game.

Dev stacks, I believe, are also doing exactly what I outlined with the Ravager above. Resists SIMPLY are NOT functional.

This is clearly and issue with them not addressing real issues(client/server calls/calculations and INDIVIDUAL WEAPON CHANGES. NOT SWEEPING SYSTEM-CHANGES.)

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Originally Posted by William Antrim

You have to understand that 90% of PvP happens within melee range anyway. :)

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Which is why its impossible to play an APU class in the current balance/pre balance state. Even to get the jump on someone the damage/frequency is just too low to compete.

You have no choice but to tiptoe around or wait for a PPU and even then, 1-2 tanks with a devourer with have you sleeping with the fish in a couple of seconds.

Sniping in this game is going to be unsatisfying and poorly executed until they can fix some fundamental issues.

1- Targetting. As long as reticle lock and reset operate the way they do, locking a target at range in an opfight is going to be basically impossible if they are fighting with many people at melee range as is mentioned above.
2- Draw distance. There is only 1 draw distance (unless I'm wrong and they fixed that sometime between nc1 and nc2.2). Scoping doesn't do shiznit.
3- Snipers have small penii which lead them to be unsatisfied in life and love.