Agreed and I don't think this is nostalgia goggles being on sale around here.

Back in Neocron 1 melee tanks were viable and so were heavies. Private eyes with some tweaking of imps could actually use ressurection, giving them an extra string to their bow, but they were also handy with a literal crossbow and cleaned up nicely in plaza 2.

Monks were an issue but it could have been tweaked. Now it's a simple you are either APU and have no defensive abilities or buffs - or you are a passive monk and essentially a buttplug to someone else. You cannot viably level up solo as a PPU and many people have to roll APU and then do some serious respecing afterward. Private Eyes are completly borked right now.

They rely heavily on implants and drugs, which is fine but they have also been screwed over by item levels and said implants. Private eyes use range weapons and that is what is viable, yet a few iterations of balancing have brought in new items which don't work; specifically that of a heavy weapons role. We have power armour available which boosts strength but not enough implants to really put private eyes on par with a heavy weapons specialist such as a tank. It's just not viable and you will never see a PE using a rare Cursed Soul and doing justice on the battle field, especially when he is most proficient with Dex based weapons.

Now you can say that he is jack of all trades and so that option should be available, but it's not fleshed out enough to make for a well rounded character. There is also no realy melee option and a few implants were changed that made it harder to reach those item requirement sweet spots. Viability is crucial to the pe and it's hard when every one does everything better and the pe is very mediocre. He should be balanced that all areas of his skills compliment the class.

Simialr stuff has been done with the Tank in regards to trying to make a rifle/pistol build viable. It isn't. Square peg, round hole problem. The private eye and spy can outshine this build, but it's also redundant when the tanks heavy weapon build trumps a lot of other builds. I think a problem with balancing is homogenizing some classes and builds when they are clearly specialised and don't fit that mould. Not all classes should be fluid. This balancing project needs a lot of work.

There was a time when spies were underpowereed and now they are the ruling class. You need only look around the streets of neocron to see there are three heavily used classes and builds. Heavy tank, ranged spy or just spies in general and the odd PPU to help the other two classes.

Everyone else struggles. I love my melee tank but I can't do much with him. The damage so weak and the weapons so brittle. Don't get me started on WoC. WoC is the worst implemented element of neocron. Scrap it.

A worthless money, experience and time sink that only benefits the spy class and gives access to overpowered weapons. Since it's implementation it has had very little content:

*No weapons for psi monks
*No melee weapons for tanks and only 1 heavy weapon
*No drone weapons
*No implants for any class
*No reason to get the other 4 levels of WoC, there is no content for it
*Very expensive
*Time consuming and more so if you're a Private Eye
*Cosmetic armour for evey class is the only equal footing
*Mostly pistols and rifles

WoC needs a rethink too.