The Big Change: IDEAS behind numbers first (Weapon Balance)

[William Antrim]

You did. You want to balance weapons. Balance means PvP. Pve is easy to balance. Therefore you need to understand the mechanics of PvP. By your question and suggestions it seems you are not talking about PvP or have not considered it?

[Fremen]

I do speak about PvP too, not sure what you mean still.

By your replies it seems you haven't read my post because the only thing related to range I am talking about is related to the fusion & raygun mechanics.

And those mechanics are already implemented in the game for rifles, my suggestions was to extend those mechanics to Pistol and Heavy too.

Except that, none of what I talk is related to range, so you are out of topic

[William Antrim]

No not at all. I am asking you questions because I see a huge wall of text that doesnt really say much. I need to clarify what you are on about.

Range is not out of topic. You mention it in one of your changes but you do not seem to grasp the fact that pvp does NOT happen at range. This leads me to believe that you are talking about PVE which does not (in my opinion) need a wealth of changes. Mob damage could do with being toned down at certain points but for the most part it is not actually broken.

Pvp balancing is a whole other thing but at no point do you clarify if you are discussing pvp mechanics therefore I need to ask for this clarification.

You are talking about changing mechanics of the entire game when it does not seem clear if you have considered the implications fully yourself. Nobody fights anyone at long range or medium range for that matter. Pvp in Neocron is like Capoeira with guns. Runners dance around each other trying to break locks or make their own. I do not see any reference to this so I have to assume you are discussing something different.

I do not understand how you do not understand me. I am asking questions to find out your opinions. You openly state that you want to implement the same mechanics for heavy weapons and pistols as is for rifles. Then you tell me that none of that is related to range when by your previous statement you have just told me that you want to extend that mechanic.

Therefore by these suggestions you want to make these guns useless/useful dependent on their range.

So that makes me ask you - does this mean for PVP or for PVE because if these mechanics are implemented it sounds to me that the guns will be made useless in PvP. This leads me to believe that you have overlooked this mechanic or misunderstood it in some way, or you are simply not talking about PvP.

Either way I find huge flaws in your suggestions and so would politely like to clarify what it is you mean.

[Fremen]

Yes with my suggestions, the Fusion weapons and mostly the redeemer wouldn't not be a good weapon to pick up in most pvp scenarios because the damage would be bad at close range. Though it would be a great pick up long range scenarios like PvE hoverbombers farming.

And actually this wouldn't change much from what is in the game now, you don't take redeemer for pvp do you ?

[William Antrim]

So you're not really changing anything, or at best you are limiting the options available to PvP with. These changes are therefore inherently bad for nc as they are clearly nerfing stuff that doesn't need nerfing. You are taking mechanics that work fine and adding weaknesses and limitations to them. So this is bad for nc.

[Fremen]

Clearly not.

I want to extend the actual mechanics of the fusion and raygun weapons to pistol and heavies.

That's the first point.

The second topic is reworking the damage values of rare weapons to be somewhat similar instead of based on TL values only.
As I explained more in details in the first post.

Anyway you seem to read only what you want to hear about, not what I am actually saying.

[Netphreak]

This is due to individual weapon balance and factors such as the WoC bonus as opposed to the tl scaling. DPS by weapon type is completely out of whack in many cases.

My earlier point was that the whole point of using a lower TL weapon is that you either have higher defences or use it better with the use of more sub-skill implants.
The problem as I mentioned is that those sub-skill implants are invariably also the implants that increase TL as well.

Back in NC1 you had one dex based rare chip, the SF; All other implants were the level 3 non-rares and generally were split into main-stat and sub-skill. Even with the MC5s you still had a huge variation as there was only one for each main-stat and you still had to fill the other two slots.
Now we have four rare dex implants, the Swat, SF, DIP and CCP. All give high main-stat and sub-skill bonuses.
There's no reason to use a low tl weapon, because the best sub-skills generally come from the rares, which then increase the tl that you can use.
This is compounded by the fact that the dps/sub-skill gradient is much shallower than it was back in the day; An old Judge setup was SA (old dex MC5), SF, Moveon and PPR. You would get 165rpm. Swap out the Moveon or PPR for a targeting 3 (which gave around +15 pc) and it would jump to 178rpm. Almost a 10% bonus and the equal of the loss of defence.

^ This. You've nailed the previous defense vs damage balance we used to have.

Maybe once weapons are balanced we need the subskill bonus of the implants mentioned reduced (10 instead of 15 p-c), or give the pistol implants -r-c equivalent to the +p-c they give (not sure about this idea tbh),
but I'll leave the finer details to the devs. (and ofcourse forum debate)

I'm quoting DJ and myself again as this is something I think the OP really needs to take into consideration when it comes to working out some kind of balance weapon damage.

[Fremen]

I'm quoting DJ and myself again as this is something I think the OP really needs to take into consideration when it comes to working out some kind of balance weapon damage.

Yeah well we will see in what direction the devs are going to work regarding the implants.

Are they planning to step back on how implants were in NC1 or are they just going to round up the numbers on the actual implants without tweaking it too much.

[Netphreak]

Yeah well we will see in what direction the devs are going to work regarding the implants.

Are they planning to step back on how implants were in NC1 or are they just going to round up the numbers on the actual implants without tweaking it too much.

Tbh, I can't see how they can do it without tweaking everything.
My guess would be a big swing in the direction of how the mechanics worked in NC1 but that's merely my guess at this point.

[William Antrim]

Clearly not.

I want to extend the actual mechanics of the fusion and raygun weapons to pistol and heavies.

That's the first point.

The second topic is reworking the damage values of rare weapons to be somewhat similar instead of based on TL values only.
As I explained more in details in the first post.

Anyway you seem to read only what you want to hear about, not what I am actually saying.

I have to respectfully disagree because I see huge flaws in your changes. They have no benefit to nc that I can see and would damage the game in my opinion. The range issue is one of your proposed changes but you do not see the problem I guess. I have looked at it differently and feel quite strongly that it would be a huge negative for all concerned.

[Fremen]

Thanks all for your input so far.

I think the OP was too much of a big wall of text and from your replies I deducted that people didn't get the essence of my ideas ! Sorry for that.

So I will simply rephrase in shorter terms the 3 concepts I wanted to propose:


Main concept 1: Rework the damage values of Rares and WoC Weapons
In order to give diversity of weapons in end game.
-by equalizing the damage of TL 82 to TL 100 (rare + woc weapons) into a TL~95 average.
-by equalizing the damage of TL 101 to TL 115 (rare + woc weapons) into a TL~105 average.
(Implants/subskill will still work as intended: add more combat implants for damage output or resists implants for survival instead)


Main concept 2: Extend the weapon mechanics of Fusion and Raygun (Rifle) to Pistol and Heavies
-by changing fusion pistol to works like fusion rifles
-by changing the fusion canons into a single target weapon
(Fusion = more damage with range / Raygun = more damage the closer to target)


Main Concept 3: Tweak a bit WoC to make it more logic
-by moving the actual content to WoC 1 and WoC 2
-by removing the WoC 3, 4 and 5.
(which are imho so high in farming demand that it end up making player use game flaws/exploit to xp)

[Load_HeavyLoad]

your main concept 2 is already implemented although that renders the fusion pistol fairly useless all round because the BoH outranges it and when youre dancing up in someones grill the executioner suffers from range malus.

I also dont agree with your averaging or where the values lie all the TLs are fine just make the damage difference from tl 82 to tl115 a closer spread than it is already

[William Antrim]

Main concept 1 2 and 3 need their own threads.

To sum up in short however.

Main concept 1 = bad. Removing diversity will mean that everyone goes for one weapon. There will be no "point" to levelling up to get the best weapons. Players will simply get into the range they need and stay there. For a spy the difference between Dex 82 and Dex 100 is running into the millions and millions of XP. The PE will get a boost but you will shaft the other 3 classes.

Essentially you would turn the game into PE-Ocron. (I love PE's but I love diversity more).

Main concept 2 = Very Bad. You are effectively ruining fusion weaponry for pvp. I would prefer to make these changes the OTHER way and give ALL fusion the chance to have AOE. This is a larger gap in the market and a niche that (imo) fusion would fit nicely.

Main concept 3 = You want people to Woc 1 in half the time? This is good. Woc 2 at 100m xp - this might be good. What would you put into Woc 2 though? Guns and armour? Then what is the point in Woc 1? This looks like the most promising idea of the three but I would like to hear more about it personally.

So far these changes seem to have a negative impact on the game (in my opinion only) but I am keen to discuss more with you.

[Khorwin]

Those ideas are really intresting. But there is some points that should be told.

First of all, when people said why using exec (112 dex) than the slasher (103 dex) this is a good spot. But only PE do not reach 112 main skill when they are capped, let me explain. (main skill) 100 + (MC5 of that skill) 5+ (back bone imp) 2.5+ (glove) 2.5+ (non MC5 of the skill 3= 113 with a PA3 you reach 116/117). (For tank MC5+soldier+hardenbackbone =110 str with PA3 or WOC you reach 113/115). That mean that you do not change the template you use for a 103 tool or a 112.

On more thing have to be told. The fact is, the slasher that we take for exemple was in NC a 113 dex tool and so was the executioner. What I want to mean is that the TL of a gun is not written in stone and could be changed for balancing. I guess that the idea of 2 tiers is good but need some changes of the TL of each gun. One more exemple the BHG-9 the gun was only WOK 1 dex, no need of dex stat to use it.

In conclusion, the ideas of Fremen are good but need to be more precise. They are a first step of a new way of thinking neocron balancing weaponery. One of the most difficult pont is the balancing of PE and the tool of gun's they can use.

[zii]

Just a quick note on OP's first post.

> -by removing the WoC 3, 4 and 5.
> (which are imho so high in farming demand that it end up making player use game flaws/exploit to xp)

Incorrect. I had WOC5 on Terra on my Spy and Tank . This was achieved without exploiting. (Of course, my eyes bled!)