Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
i think balancing changes should be incremental and not be done on verdeena.
Personally I'd like to see that too. We do need to make some sweeping changes though to get to a better place from which to increment. If we only rounded down all values to remove decimals (a needless complexity) in a patch, there would be plenty of annoyances.
Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
neocron once HAD a "fun" balancing (hybrids anyone?). that's one of the reasons why so many people have fond memories of that time. it sure wasn't perfect but it was better what followed after wards. every iteration made balancing worse it seemed. now it is so bad and convoluted (due to a few pointless additions like nanintes) that you had to start from scratch and that's why it is a mess. the whole idea of all those broad sweeps (removing comma values e.g.) seem like logical steps but the ramifications can already be seen in the stagnation of the development and the motivation of the team. there is no silver bullet to this problem.
Other factors play into the motivational issues. I am pleased to say we're seeing some great progress in some areas again. Hopefully others will follow.

Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
i'd suggest you keep tweaking the balancing on titan with the help of active community feedback and only use verdeena to test the changes you do technology wise. balancing is never done and will always need feedback of as many people as possible. changes you do based on pure number tweaks (be it with the help of a tool) most likely will be a disaster. the biggest problem is that everything should seem fair enough to most people and yet not everything should be the same. only a large enough use base can give you that feedback. some "numbers" will be much stronger or weaker in certain peoples' hands so doing it "by the numbers" will not lead to a satisfactory outcome.
As above, I'd like to see that and I do think that's where we will get. You're quite right in saying we need active use of things to get a better picture. Since we're entirely free to play it makes more sense that we can keep iterating on the "retail" servers so long as it's not catastrophic change every patch (which is why we're making some big changes all at once, to hopefully reduce the pain).

Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
I do think nanites were badly implemented. They make psi on spies fairly redundant and the heal tool out heals psi healing. I think a big problem has always been balance and I agree every iteration of the balancing project has broken a lot of elements.
As with everything, we're open to suggestions and idea on how these can be better implemented. If we can improve an aspect of the game we will (albeit 'eventually').
Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
I think implants were fine before the use of decimals and retweaking values that made no sense.
Plenty of us agree. That's why we're changing those things which we've discussed openly in the Vedeena forum.

Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
As it stands very few setups are viable.
Variety is the spice of life. That's the aim. Variety in setups, variety in weapons, variety in who and what you see on the battlefield.

Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
In my ideal world of balancing it would be get rid of decimals, restore previous neocron implant values, rethink WoC (five levels of pure useless), rethink nanites, give tanks back psi and get rid of the tank rifle and pistol power armour. Also buff Private Eyes and make cloaked spies cloaked but also give them the chance to get slappped while doing so.
Removing decimals is happening. Implant values are being reworked but Bragi is your man for that. Again we're discussing those changes out in the open. Your fleshed out ideas and constructive criticism are always welcome in the Vedeena forum threads. Yes, we need more WoC usage, that's on our list (it's a big list). We'd love to hear your thoughts in dedicated threads in the Brainport. The rest of balance issues please do either create your own proposals in the Brainport or chip in on the relevant threads in the Vedeena forum.


Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
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.
We'd rather rethink it, expand it, improved it than scrap it. Weapon balance is obviously something we're working on to address any overpowered items. There will always be a "flavour of the week" setup/class/weapon though.

The idea is and always should have been that WoC is the optional extra for players with more time. It should reward you with different things not better things.

"Oh look at that weapon! That power armour looks really cool! That player is really competitive like me but I've never seen that weapon/armour/thing before... maybe I'll invest a bunch of time so I can be a bit more unique!"

That sort of thing. Oh and as for not getting started... the lore around WoC's implementation makes me cry inside.

Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
i for one dislike the idea of making everything just plain better without its drawbacks. there should be hard choices with fun consequences. not easy goto solutions everyone just uses. skill and dedication needs to be rewarded again. rares should be hard to come by. inflation is a big issue in neocron imho.
Please write up your ideas in the Brainport.

Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
that's a far cry from the problems the game really faces though. for all the hard work the volunteer team puts into neocron i have a feeling they've utterly destroyed its base and don't know where to start repairing it. hence the lack of motivation and no meaningful updates in years really. maybe i'm wrong... actually i hope i'm wrong.
You'll be pleased to know you are wrong then.

Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
there is a lack of leadership or direction. a lack of vision. sometimes something can emerge out of a community but the volunteer team is just to closed for that to happen. this is were a lot of successful open source communities shine but as was said in the past it is most unlikely that neocron will ever (be able) to go that route.
Have you read the whole thread?

Quote Originally Posted by eNTi View Post
i've never encountered something dying that slowly before and i hope for some kind of resurrection before the servers will shut down for good.
We have no intention of shutting down the servers any time soon. We have stated many times what we are and how we see the game going and the reasons for that. This is a labour of love. I shan't go into it again in the same thread though, having written about this topic already.

Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
I agree with you eNTI Neocron has crazy inflation. Some weapons and implants cost 15 million credits and the credit limit on chars is 20 million. Unressed rares are now a new form of currency, which sees people trading hundreds of them for weapons, but these parts could also be used for creating weapons that could go into the economy. Some players will only accept rares because they have all the money they need. So a trade character might struggle if his only income is trade, while a rares farmer gets essentially more income. But not much to be done there but tweak some loot tables and mob damage.
I for one would love to see this fixed. We've discussed it a few times internally and have several options we could use. The issue is that this is a very delicate thing to adjust. I think '


Quote Originally Posted by Hell-demon View Post
This is a massive problem. I'd like to draw your attention to this article:

https://biobreak.wordpress.com/2013/...y-7-neocron-2/
Thanks for this. Very valuable thoughts and opinions in there.

Now let's imagine you are a new player. Scrap your nostalgia goggles and look at things from a newcomer's eyes. You stumble across Neocron, most likely word of mouth because there is no advertising for this, and you want to play. You fire up the game and try and navigate through tutorials and the bewildering newbie area. You get to the city and it is empty. If you happen to come across Plaza you may find 5 people (from my experience at the moment). A Massively Multiplayer game with no people.

You go online and check the fourms. Very little to no activity. Check the twitter. No activity apart from server down for maintenance, a quote from a faction and pictures from an event years ago. Hardly any new patches too.

Dead game. That's what you will think. Hardly any players and unless you come across http://www.techhaven.org/ you may struggle with the learning curve.

I've seen the population increase for a bit when the double xp weekend was in effect. Now it's dwindling. If the team did a whole week of double xp, had competitions and events for a week, plus volunteers to help newbies you could boost the population for a time. Newbie week or something.

Food for thought.[/QUOTE]
Yes, extra man power would be nice.

Beyond this point I can't say anything other than we agree with you on most points? We know there's plenty to fix, we know there's plenty to do. We'd love to see constructive proposals for ways we can fix or improve things like inflation, like Wisdom of Ceres, like the New Player Experience. Many critiques we receive is that we don't do enough and that we need to let the community help and that we need to take more people on. The best way anyone, right out of the gate, can help us is by posting their ideas, suggestions, proposals on the forum in a sensible manner so we can use those as foundations for the next thing we can address.

As already discussed in this thread, we know there has been a huge gap in progress. I've tried to explain how that happened but the gears are turning and things are happening again.