Easy Balance Speed Suggestion

[bubblegum8965]

Hello Xiphos!

I agree Pre-CU had its quirks, though I don't believe they were idealized when the game was envisioned. The game was said to have been rushed out in beta mode and class balance is off, this would add some of the balance back.

I just believe that if Awakening wants to exist 5-10 years down the road changes are inevitable, people will get bored of doing krayts/Axivah etc and all people will eventually have a jedi. I think making Awakening what Pre-CU should have been is better than what is was. I know plenty of individuals that like CU/NGE and just wished some of the mechanics and balance of it were incorporated into Pre-CU class setting. Things like quest lines, housing, extra items etc. The good stuff!

I think this keeps Awkening in the Pre-CU setting and allows Awakening to become more hardmode, since you can't come in with the same "Oh im gonna be a Master swords stacker with Medic 444x and rape everything in game," mentality that a lot people have. This includes myself, I solo content as do most people.
What this helps aid is the abundance of classes and helps to get the less used classes to become more useful.

This change would help to aid in Awakening's goal of "...Awakening aims to provide the best SWG experience possible." Clearly Pre-CU as it stood was great but wasn't the greatest it could have been, I believe the intention of the devs is to do that and this has one way of making that happen without deliberately buffing or nerfing one class at a time.

[QuorTek]

I believe that this need to turn into an MMO where you simply do not just go around and solo end game content... a good thing would be have a stacker ( tank ) being able to mitigate high damage, but having to rely on a full time other person that that is a master healer of both professions... and so you cannot just have you alt healing you... lower the damage for swords/tkm/fencer/pikeman when it comes to elite mobs, like doing half damage or less and giving DPS classes a bonus to damage regarding damage or let it stay as it is.

Adjusting the speed equation would effectively lower the DPS for classes that actually do a ton of damage per hit. I'm not sure how cutting the damage in half for any of the classes would solve anything. We would actually start seeing MORE people roll swordsman, and they would still be able to speed cap w/ a power hammer.

Would see more of a blend of classes out there as it is that way and more group play, but you spend lets say 30 minutes killing an ancient krayt and only if lucky a pearl or tissue drop to mention an example would be nice if it dropped two or three things to make it worth while grouping, but putting it into system 2 tanks ( for better agro ) at least 2 healers ( for keeping tanks and group alive due to AOEs, loss of tanked thing ) and 3-4 DPS ( to actually kill the said thing within a proper time frame ).

Not sure how loot drop rates relate to this particular suggestion.

Also a rage timer could be built in since people would try and solo anyway, so if cannot down an ancient solo in less than 30 mins you would get instant killed, the damage from close range severely reduced would end up in the thing enraging, then going nasty terminating the person.

Again, completely unrelated to weapon speed.

As for ranged weapons going, everything cool takes alot of tissues vs melee that might take 1 or 2 special items to make the weapon powerfull... where as a DXR6 rifle or carbine takes 6 tissues a hell of alot of work and if a rare tissue drop it would go into pistols because it is very hard to turn a profit out of it otherwise due to the random slicing for damage or speed which in this case do that.

You are completely overlooking the fact that high end weapons would no longer be instantly turned to garbage with a speed slice. With no speed caps, weaponsmiths won't be taking a huge gamble by using tissues in a DXR6 or T21.

Honestly speed of weapons is not much of an issue either, but the damage levels they can reach is and if you want a working new speed system you need to cap the weapon types in speed, meaning a pistol could not go over 450 damage, a carbine would not be able to go up to 650 damage and a rifle would be capped at 950 damage.. FTs/LLC based weapons capped at 1100 damage, with a speed penalty to each weapon that can't be reached by tapes or mastery.

The exact point of this suggestion is that weapon speed is not an issue! Capping max damage on weapons solves absolutely nothing and would have a devastating impact on our economy. Ignoring AP and damage types for a moment, lets look at the options here:
450 dmg / sec pistol
650 dmg / sec carbine
950 dmg / sec rifle
1100 dmg/ sec heavy weapon
I have enough math under my belt to realize at a glance that if I'm going for dps I'm picking up a rifle or heavy weapon... just like it is now.

But people would like to be able to solo everything and they do, including myself... its fine one blast lairs or whichever random mission one does fast.. but when it comes to heavy mobs such as Krayt, NS Protector and above, geo cave, the DWB.. random jedi NPCs then something need to be done or it end up in a more same class scenario for doing all those awesome things and people are more into doing it alone instead of having to share the single drop with a friend.

Loot drop rates again?

SWG has been broken since release, but the best combat system was pre-CU and choice of professions as well, it just need to be tuned from beta into 1.0 and a lot of work is involved in that and for starters let all professions do the same damage types and have each profession do there things about states.... it is not like you see a guild of pikemen or carbineers only.

We all know this game has had issues but changing the speed equation would be a simple step that solves many of them. Giving every class access to weapons of all damage types, target the same pools, or apply the same states is not the type of "balance" most of us are looking for.

Well people want to make the game better than what it was.. and even if it is speed only that people look into lets say you can't with current rate get 1 sec per hit with a rifle... and you can with a pistol... then people would go with pistols... as they can be build up to incredible high amounts of damage and if the pistols go at 1 hit per sec and a rifle go at 1 hit per 2 seconds it is clearly to see who the loser is because a pistol take no effort to make tissue wise... where as rifles would be doing half damage at 5-600 max damage.... if you want to lower the speed for the bigger weapons you for sure have to do something about the damage as well... or you will just create another problem... rifles not being used at all.

That is how I read alot of this stuff as it is... we are stuck with what Sony Online Entertainment built... and everyone want to keep it that way... bugged... still beta/alpha or whichever... and the people behind the emu not working on the issues... just re-doing what SoE did... and once its done... they will just stop the project at 1.0 claiming they finished the perfect pre-CU which they technically did... but we are still stuck with the problems... stuff need to become way harder so it is not soloable... because soloing is what people do in SWG... and to do such you need a stacker to do the dirty job... and second as the current trend is now... a commando alt.

I am just spewing out facts in the way I see the game... then people around can agree or disagree or keep to selfish ways that nothing ever should be changed, even if it could be for the better... also I would not mind to point out I am all for this speed thing... but you got to take a lot of other factors into consideration as well and likewise it is not making the burden easier on the awakening staff either.

[bubblegum8965]

"Well people want to make the game better than what it was.. and even if it is speed only that people look into lets say you can't with current rate get 1 sec per hit with a rifle... and you can with a pistol... then people would go with pistols... as they can be build up to incredible high amounts of damage and if the pistols go at 1 hit per sec and a rifle go at 1 hit per 2 seconds it is clearly to see who the loser is because a pistol take no effort to make tissue wise... where as rifles would be doing half damage at 5-600 max damage.... if you want to lower the speed for the bigger weapons you for sure have to do something about the damage as well... or you will just create another problem... rifles not being used at all."

This is off first off, the average* (average being the key) damage per pistol vs carbine vs rifle here would show that even 1/1.5/2 second respectively would have the rifle doing more damage. That is before AP is taken into consideration and rifle is the AP3 weapon anyone truly uses currently.
Make an argument for carbines why this shouldn't occur or for pikeman, if you can do that and back it with numbers then I will take a look at it. Rifleman is OP right now and so is Swordsmen, anyone defending it would simply being doing so because they are used to their class being the "best." Which is always the group that complains before a potential change.


"That is how I read alot of this stuff as it is... we are stuck with what Sony Online Entertainment built... and everyone want to keep it that way... bugged... still beta/alpha or whichever... and the people behind the emu not working on the issues... just re-doing what SoE did... and once its done... they will just stop the project at 1.0 claiming they finished the perfect pre-CU which they technically did... but we are still stuck with the problems... stuff need to become way harder so it is not soloable... because soloing is what people do in SWG... and to do such you need a stacker to do the dirty job... and second as the current trend is now... a commando alt."
This is what i stated in my very last post, glad you see it too. Without a very very clear picture of what they want awakening to become 5-10 years from now, and no a good version or great version of Pre-CU is not the answer (its too vague), then this server will eventually die like any other server that want to simply recreate precu, because precu would have died. There is a cap to everything. The plan should be *1 year fix all precu problems *2 years implement JTL/Fix problems and implement RoTW/rest of NGE system non-combat and fix PreCU combat balance *3year Implement new ideas/quest/instances etc. Such as that without those new ideas this server dies, plain and simple. I love Awakening and I want to see it succeed but it needs new ideas for some stuff to keep it fresh enough to not rot and pass away.
Now no more of that topic.

"I am just spewing out facts in the way I see the game... then people around can agree or disagree or keep to selfish ways that nothing ever should be changed, even if it could be for the better... also I would not mind to point out I am all for this speed thing... but you got to take a lot of other factors into consideration as well and likewise it is not making the burden easier on the awakening staff either."

I noticed you were for it. I saw that you were playing the devils advocate as in most of the suggestion post since someone has to do it and these post are viewed enough to get a good viewpoint on the server consensus as a whole.

[QuorTek]

We need to steer clear from the solo stuff... maybe only allow one combat/non-combat toon alive at the same time with dual logging... increase the damage gain to a level so you need a master doc/cm healing... reducing damage for stacker classes.. put on enrage timer so am forced to have a group of people to do stuff with... and among that increase the loot drops.

Further more... add same damage professions... but let each profession have a type of damage for it self, so it has unique benefits for when alone, but sharing good stuff for grouped content.

Find benefits for rifles, pistols and carbines... currently people are only interested in LLCs and FTs... and it show.... it seem to be the same with every MMO people flock to the professions that works the best or too good.

A way to walk over the speed conversation though could be you would get benefits from positioning.. front pistols... middle carbines and behind, rifles, let the combination all together grant a bonus that would be a great benefit for grouped content - then make it so you need groups of 4-6 or more for being able to take down a krayt at all or NS Protector, Jedi NPC etc as well with all that increase loot drops so prices would not rise incredible into the sky due to having to be grouped for everything awesome.

Actual hunting groups for Rancors and Krayt, NS, Geo Cave and more would be nice and more fun especially if it is like you still would be at risk for getting bashed for good.

[evilryu]

Idealistic, but what you're describing is a wholesale change to the combat mechanics - this isn't going to happening on awakening.

I'm all for speed adjustments if it helps the makes other classes more viable. Whether you like it or not, there are always going to be FOTM/cookie cutter builds/classes in every game.

As for soloing, this game (in both SOE Live and EMU form) has been around for well over a decade; I can't remember where I read it but someone once said this game is basically solved - people know how to do everything efficiently - there are very little surprises left. Some times it's far easier to solo mobs than to have large groups. I've been soloing since I joined in March and I've covered most things except for some of the end bosses, I'm still enjoying this game and server immensely.

Personally, there hasn't been much incentives for me to be guilded or hunt in groups because there are plenty of AFK buff bots, plenty of material online to assist in any professions, I've got (with a great deal of time and effort) my toons to a level I can dual box hunt most mobs in the game. The like it or loathe it chat system change kinda makes it feel like I'm playing an MMO but not an MMO most of the time - but I don't mind.

[bubblegum8965]

Evilryu were comments forwarded to myself or Quortek? About it being a total overhaul of the combat system?

Since I don't think this is a total overhaul, though what Quortek suggested would be.
I know there will always be the best buold this is aimed at making weaker classes stronger and more useful as well as hurting those classes that do a ton of damage because speed is irrelevant at the moment.

This would be enough change to make a difference while being small enough that the devs could even do it in increments of +5 to the denominator over 6 months and most people wouldn't notice for a few months and only if they were looking for it.

[evilryu]

To QuorTek. I think his suggestions are far too broad for the scope and dev (volunteered) resources of Awakening.

[QuorTek]

The problem would still rise.. if you change something you may destroy everything else.. but if you got to do anything you seriously need to redo the entire way of how things are done and run into combat upgrades, I agree to that some changes need to be made but it should rather involve in how players do stuff.... but it would probably be to harsh onto all the volounteer SWGEMU + Random server devs to get involved with.

Good example of a game where it all just runs almost perfectly would be Final Fantasy 14, EvE Online and some few others.

[skyhunter11]

Changing the denominator to 150 may be too extreme but changing it to 125 instead might be the sweet spot. Rifles, swords, and double blades light sabers could just be a shy slower than other weapons but not mind numbing slow. With tapes and skills, the most you could be at is 100 speed. After the calculation, you would need a weapon with 5 speed or less to cap at default at. When you apply special ability modifiers, the speed of attack increases accordingly.

The best you can get with LLC is 85 speed. Need to make a 3.5 or better LLC to cap at default. At the 125 change, you would need a 1.4 damage LLC cap default. That could still be viable. A LLC crafted and sliced for speed could get there but damage is sacrificed. Which i think would still work and be a good balanced.

From a jedi's standpoint, they would have to weigh all the factors to decide they want to use a slower but more damage double bladed light saber, the faster one handed but less damage, or the traditional two handed style that is balanced.

Narrk

Edited - Just want to explain better LLC speed capping. With +25 tapes, you can have 85 speed, you at speed cap basic attack at 6.6 speed. But, when you use a special like fast blast, the delay is 3.5 times so you would need a much faster LLC to fire fast blast at the speed cap. You need a LLC faster than 2.0 secs to hit the speed cap with fast blast. Only a few BHs on this server have that Uber llc that is damaged sliced on faster thsn 2.0 seconds.. I have one like that but it's speed sliced. I have another sliced for damage but I am just a shy slower than speed cap with fast blast.

Changing the speed equation from 100 to 125, would require a LLC speed of 0.8 secs to speed cap cast blast. I doubt that a LLC can be crafted to that speed and have a damage slice. My trusty old LLC would fire fast blast at 2.5 seconds. My speed sliced LLC would be at 2 seconds. The DPS would be slightly better on my damage sliced.

[bubblegum8965]

The problem with the denominator being 125 is that you can still cap with a class such as rifles with tapes.
There isn't a way to make tapes no add to the skill level without adding a new line of code which is what I am trying to avoid.
Minimally changing the system but changing it for balance.

The goal is that no class can speed cap as we know it and the new speed cap would be 125 skill but still being delayed by ability choice and weapons speed. I know this would weaken the current LLC/fb combo as well as the classes considered 'strong'. Jedi could stay unaffected with the use of Force Speed skill and in doing so make another ability more useful for full template jedi than just beginner leveling jedi.

A massive overall of the system as Quortek has suggested wouldn't work, ideally maybe. But with the given resources there is no chance. Minimal changes to what is available would provide the best shot at balancing things out without taking away the Pre-CU way of life. Making Awakening the best form of Pre-CU possible.


Edit: to give an idea the 150 change would only add a 1/3 delay and if the denominator was 125 with skill/tape capping at 100 would provide a 1/5 delay.

I don't know if such a delay would create the classes differencestart for pistol/carb/rifle I am trying to aim for more so than jedi/BH. Those are the root classes and should be focused on.

[skyhunter11]

To speed cap with rifles, you need master markman, not sure if you need master rifleman, and +25 speed tapes. That gives you a 100 speed modifier. If you change the base denominator in the speed equation to 125, at 100 speed skill in rifles, increases your refire rate to 80%. With default attacks you could speed cap. But all players use their special abilities. Most special abilities have a speed delay. That's where rifles would suffer slowness of using 125.

I don't see a problem with pistols, carbs, small melee weapons refire rates at speed cap when when using specials. Their damage is so much less than a rifles.

Star wars is a fast paced sci-fi fantasy universe. 150 denominator would make all weapons too slow and the game would not be fun. You would have to reduce the HAM of every npc and creature to compensate for the decreased dps.

The faster weapons aren't an issue of speed cap, they have other problems. Current speed cap is why rifles and swords are so superior to anything else. If a player invests all the time and resources to get the best stuff, refire rates close to the speed cap of 1 second isn't game breaking.

The other option is to reduce the skill mods of rifleman and swordsman to 60 at master, with master brawler or marksman it's a speed increase of 5, and if add 25 tapes, you are at 90. When at 90, you won't refire specials at 1 second. That might be less impact than reworking the equation. Forgive me if someone already mentioned this.

Narrk

[lassic]

To speed cap with rifles, you need master marksman, not sure if you need master rifleman, and +25 speed tapes. That gives you a 100 speed modifier. If you change the base denominator in the speed equation to 125, at 100 speed skill in rifles, increases your refire rate to 80%. With default attacks you could speed cap. But all players use their special abilities. Most special abilities have a speed delay. That's where rifles would suffer slowness of using 125.

I don't see a problem with pistols, carbs, small melee weapons refire rates at speed cap when when using specials. Their damage is so much less than a rifles.

Star wars is a fast paced sci-fi fantasy universe. 150 denominator would make all weapons too slow and the game would not be fun. [font=]You would have to reduce the HAM of every npc and creature to compensate for the decreased dps.[/font]
This problem is something I think is being missed in the discussion. It would require some testing. I don't know coding, and am not sure if it is just a keystroke to change the speed coefficient. If it is, it might be worth testing it on the test server and just seeing how it plays out. I know I would definitely get on there and test all the PvE stuff.


Narrk

[bubblegum8965]

I thought about that as well and didn't mention it haha.

I believe it would complement the vision of hard mode since the speed difference and therefore reduced dps would be most noticeable on end game mobs.

Jantas and such might take a two or three more hits to kill, but nothing unavoidable with the state of our buffs and armor.

I believe this would encourage grouping more for end game content and potentially for regular mobs as well.
This wouldn't affect grinding as much until you get into advanced classes since the delays are relatively the same till about 80 speed skill when compared to the current system.

I would truly like to get more of the CSRs opinions on this since not that I don't appreciate everyone's views on this, because I definitely do! I just believe this is a very good fix to a lot of current issues that's easy to implement and I would like to see how this compares to the current fixes being worked on that we dont know about or other fixes that have been mentioned in the past.