FOnline: Ashes of Phoenix
Game improvements => Suggestions => Topic started by: BG Sexpert on April 14, 2014, 12:08:22 PM
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AoP has easily, the most innovative, and funnest firing mechanics of any FOnline out right now. However that is wasted because it has by far the worst weapon design.
The problems:
1. Having a dozen different guns with a dozen different ammo that do roughly the exact same thing doesn't introduce variety. It's not more realistic, its not more fun, its tedious. I've had this argument 1000x but it still needs to be said.
2. Weapon tiers is a flawed way of thinking. When you have tiers you remove all purpose of the individual weapon. As it stands, there are 3 tiers:
- Tier 1 entry level items that can be crafted without BP's and made of junk
- Tier 2 every item that can be crafted from BP's
- Tier 3 very rare, one of each class.
The result is essentially 3 different weapons, one that isn't worth using, one that is always used, and one that is only used in high PvP scenarios. Essentially 2 weapons per archetype
3. Too many different ammo's with little to no overall effect. What we have now is a convoluted, confusing balancing act between a weapon having good stats and using trash ammo, and a trash weapon using powerful ammo to maintain a middle point you call balance. Because all weapons are pretty much the same (tier 3 not implemented and nobody uses tier 1) the only real deciding factor for which weapon to use, is the cost of ammo. The result is players wasting carry weight with different ammo types for each of their weapons while they go out into the core. The odds of finding ammo that is useable is essentially nil, so the player is forced to make many trips back to the faction base to resupply. You should be trying to increase the time players spend in the core (The heart and soul of the game), not limit it with some bloated ammo system.
I understand that balance is a dynamic thing. There is still much to be done, but you are wasting your effort and time balancing a system that, at its core, is boring. I'd like to see how everyone else feels, but I can't post polls :/. I realize the playerbase is almost non-existent right now, so please anyone reading this; post your opinions!
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1. Having a dozen different guns with a dozen different ammo that do roughly the exact same thing doesn't introduce variety. It's not more realistic, its not more fun, its tedious. I've had this argument 1000x but it still needs to be said.
If that's really the case, that's bad and needs improvements indeed. As I feel it, mostly assault rifles suffer from this issue though.
2. Weapon tiers is a flawed way of thinking. When you have tiers you remove all purpose of the individual weapon. As it stands, there are 3 tiers:
- Tier 1 entry level items that can be crafted without BP's and made of junk
- Tier 2 every item that can be crafted from BP's
- Tier 3 very rare, one of each class.
The result is essentially 3 different weapons, one that isn't worth using, one that is always used, and one that is only used in high PvP scenarios. Essentially 2 weapons per archetype
I don't understand how you end up with "2 weapons per archetype". Could you enumerate them?
Anyway, the mention of Tiers is actually just about rarity, it should even be called otherwise when thinking about it.
3. Too many different ammo's with little to no overall effect. What we have now is a convoluted, confusing balancing act between a weapon having good stats and using trash ammo, and a trash weapon using powerful ammo to maintain a middle point you call balance. Because all weapons are pretty much the same (tier 3 not implemented and nobody uses tier 1) the only real deciding factor for which weapon to use, is the cost of ammo. The result is players wasting carry weight with different ammo types for each of their weapons while they go out into the core. The odds of finding ammo that is useable is essentially nil, so the player is forced to make many trips back to the faction base to resupply. You should be trying to increase the time players spend in the core (The heart and soul of the game), not limit it with some bloated ammo system.
I understand the point and I somewhat agree, though I think this is potentially difficult to solve without impacting other things. That's an interesting point though that has to be examined.
I realize the playerbase is almost non-existent right now, so please anyone reading this; post your opinions!
Yes, I know how you feel ;) As soon as I feel we're in the situation where launching is possible, I'll announce it as loud as I can!
So, what would you propose to solve those issues here?
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1. Weapon tiers is a flawed way of thinking. When you have tiers you remove all purpose of the individual weapon. As it stands, there are 3 tiers:
- Tier 1 entry level items that can be crafted without BP's and made of junk
- Tier 2 every item that can be crafted from BP's
- Tier 3 very rare, one of each class.
The result is essentially 3 different weapons, one that isn't worth using, one that is always used, and one that is only used in high PvP scenarios. Essentially 2 weapons per archetype
I don't understand how you end up with "2 weapons per archetype". Could you enumerate them?
The reason I say 2 weapons per archetype (shotguns/smgs/assault rifles each a different archetype) is because all the weapons currently considered tier 2 are balanced to be equivalent, and tier 3 supposedly being better.
I'm only referring to them as tiers, which is how John Porno referred to them. I would much prefer a more gradual series of succession. For instance, item become stronger as they progress down the artifact chain. A slight increase of functionality with the increase of cost makes sense to me.
There is nothing worse than spending your hard earned artifacts on a BP that is a direct downgrade of your current ones.
Players will always find a "best weapon" for their class. This is unavoidable, but giving them a weapon progression allows them to work their way up to the better weapons, with the rarest being uncraftable.
There is more diversity in weapon archetypes in AoP than in any other FOnline iteration. Each viable in their own right and situation. Giving each archetype a progression line would be infinitely more satisfying than a system in which all are roughly the same.
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I understand, but still I don't like the idea of most weapons being naturally worst than a few others that everyone will use, even if you say that's unavoidable. I think it is, but I guess there are things we can do to improve that.
Perhaps we could play with various degrees of rarity to justify more powerful weapons, but that could be hard to balance. We already have to see how Tiers 3 will play out.
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I understand, but still I don't like the idea of most weapons being naturally worst than a few others that everyone will use, even if you say that's unavoidable. I think it is, but I guess there are things we can do to improve that.
Perhaps we could play with various degrees of rarity to justify more powerful weapons, but that could be hard to balance. We already have to see how Tiers 3 will play out.
There could be weapons that you unlock, as well as upgrades for those weapons that you unlock. That way you are investing into your weapons to make them better.
For instance, you want to use your assault rifle for a mid ranged bursting weapon, so you find (or craft) and add an upgraded stock as well as a railgrip. This could reduce the AP cost, and increase the range of bursting radius. You want to use your M14 as a mid-long range single/fast shot weapon? You find/craft and ACOG scope that improves its effective range. You could create an entire different blueprint/crafting option for weapon modifications. Instead of having 1000 weapons with 1000 ammo types that exist to make a more diverse arsenal. You can have fewer weapons that have slight progression (with increased rarity) that the players can customize to fit whatever play style they wish.
For now, there is pretty much no reason to invest more artifacts into blueprints because the weapons never actually get any better. They are only slightly different (small range differences, number of bullets in a burst etc).
If I were to roll a brand new character, I would invest very little into blueprints because there isn't any real benefit.
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I would agree with you if AoP tried to be something like a moba, a battle arena perfectly balanced for professional e-sport. However, it's not and it is not supposed to. "perfect balance" simply is not the top design goal.
The way we wanted to design the game, and I think we have achieved that for the most part, is to mix classic mmorpg qualities into a universe that is only partly fictional, which also means it's partly realistic due to real weapons being involved.
This game has to mix fictional and real components and we decided as a general rule to try to portray all real components as authentic as possible and then use the fictional content like energy weapons and power armors, the character system as well as "unwritten laws" of fallout to adapt to the set-in-stone weapon statistics.
Rather than looking at AoP's balance as a moba game or a typical mmorpg, it is supposed to be closer to a battlefield-style shooter in the sense that "feel" comes before stats. The majority of players on the call of duty or battlefield servers does not look at the stats of the weapons. Granted, I haven't played the new battlefield 4, and the last CoD's I played were the good old cod2 and 4, but the point is that each weapon in an fps has a certain feel which can be more important than stats.
As an example, the most powerful weapon in BF3 should be the m240. Back when I first got it I liked it right away and later confirmed that it had the highest damage output in the game while still having favorable other parameters like accuracy, range and a pretty good handling overall. Still, that didnt meant that the whole server was only using the m240 as their go to machine gun. Some friends I was playing with, who did not check the stats, thought the pkp pecheneg was the strongest one, just because when they tried out both weapons it felt different and they liked it more.
I never studied game design and I never looked up how "balance" is defined in the gaming industry, but what I personally would deem a good balance in a fonline game (which is a pretty unique game that I wouldnt know any counterparts to) is when there is a high amount of flexibility and variety, with as many different items as possible being useful and being actively used by any number of players, while also making sure that the game has a certain skill ceiling, allowing both casuals and pvp apes to enjoy the core gameplay of the game to its fullest.
Another example I want to bring up is World of Tanks. The game suffers from 2 problems that AoP also is susceptible to. The first one is the classic battle of simulation vs. arcade. In Wot, it leads to pretty much every single tank having guns available that were never fielded in real life and also often wouldn't even work and never got past the blueprint stage. Some tanks and tank stats are even completely up to speculation on the dev's side. Now, the devs clearly put gameplay before authenticity and after all, they pretty much have the most profitable free to play game on the market, but that does leave an aftertaste for every tank-enthusiast that would like to play tanks in their historical configuration, without being completely useless in-game.
The second issue can be seen in low tier games, with a higher number of new players. Individual tanks that would be balanced perfectly well if both teams were made up of clanwar players, seem to be tremendously overpowered just because new players dont know how to counter it and fail to see it'ss weaknesses. This problem was quite prevalent during our last session and while I could make it easy for me and just blame all criticism on exactly that point, I am trying to take every comment and suggestion seriously and think it through.
As soon as a game mixes arcade and simulation to any extent, every single decision will have to compromise on something and while AoP is a "pvp oriented" server, it is not a "pvp only" server, a forced moba game trying to squeeze every last bit of "e-sport" out of a classic '97 rpg and such, the itemization which is the 2nd most important aspect of rpg after character building, has to "suffer" in order to cater to a wider audience.
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I would agree with you, if every weapon of each archetype didn't feel roughly the same (pistols excluded).
AoP has the most diversity of viable weapon archetypes of any FOnline to date. This is a really good thing. But inside of each archetype is a ton of redundancy and tedium. This is something I would like to see addressed. I'm not suggesting that guns need to be more balanced (balance will always be an issue and all you can do is the best you can); what I'm saying is that they are OVER balanced right now. You have made it so that each weapon within each archetype feels EXACTLY like the others.
This is a bad thing. The weapons need to have a reason for being there. As it stands, most of the weapons have no real purpose.They don't feel unique, it feels like filler. It also makes the crafting system pointless. Why would anyone continue to invest in a crafting system that has no pay out besides weapon reskins?
As far as authenticity goes, I'm not sure how many hard core gun enthusiasts there are that play FOnline. So the question of if you are making a game for the players to enjoy, or are making a game for yourself?
A good part of what keeps bringing people back to this aged game series, is the fierce PvP and cutthroat scene. What AoP has going for it, is the fantastic PvP oriented design. If you aren't willing to optimize the weapons to support a design like that, then you are going to disappoint a lot of players.
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What you are saying is basically that the weapons and the items should be optimized to cater to a pvp community. By saying the crafting system is redundant you already disregard every player that explicitly loved that aspect of the game. And I think there are still far more people in the fonline community than you think who don't only think in numbers and stats but just want to play and enjoy an open world mmo with a lot of items. Even if all the weapons were a purely cosmetic factor, which I entirely disagree with, then that in itself has a value that a lot of people can appreciate and that I don't want to discard.
While everything can always be improved further, I think we are at a point that offers the most enjoyment for pvp apes as well as the pve/rp/casual faction. I wont take 50 points of enjoyment away on one side to gain 20 more points on the other end of the scale, so to speak.
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What you are saying is basically that the weapons and the items should be optimized to cater to a pvp community. By saying the crafting system is redundant you already disregard every player that explicitly loved that aspect of the game. And I think there are still far more people in the fonline community than you think who don't only think in numbers and stats but just want to play and enjoy an open world mmo with a lot of items. Even if all the weapons were a purely cosmetic factor, which I entirely disagree with, then that in itself has a value that a lot of people can appreciate and that I don't want to discard.
While everything can always be improved further, I think we are at a point that offers the most enjoyment for pvp apes as well as the pve/rp/casual faction. I wont take 50 points of enjoyment away on one side to gain 20 more points on the other end of the scale, so to speak.
It was this exact mindset that killed 2238. Why not just add a zone where everyone sits at the entrance of NCR while the mods run around in their dog skins emoting *woof* for 24 hours a day.
It's hard not to sound condescending as a response. So I'll just say that I believe you are objectively wrong. But hey, we have a simple solution to this. I can't create a subject in the poll forum, but you can. Why not create a poll asking what brings the players to AoP. The crafting or the PvP?
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I think we can find a balance between the two extremes. We don't want to include a strict progression among weapons to prevent most of them to be useless at the end of the day. But we don't want weapons that feel like exact replicas of each other, as we don't want players to feel that they're wasting their time. Do we have any room to pronounce differences between weapons that currently feel the same? Could we identify those weapons?
Then, imo the problem in the first place comes from the crafting tech trees which obviously suggest that the next weapon will be better than the current one. I feel that's mostly the bad message sent here. Those tech trees have to evolve somehow. I know John is currently working on them, but I'm not certain of the extent those changes will solve issues described here.
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I think we can find a balance between the two extremes. We don't want to include a strict progression among weapons to prevent most of them to be useless at the end of the day. But we don't want weapons that feel like exact replicas of each other, as we don't want players to feel that they're wasting their time. Do we have any room to pronounce differences between weapons that currently feel the same? Could we identify those weapons?
Then, imo the problem in the first place comes from the crafting tech trees which obviously suggest that the next weapon will be better than the current one. I feel that's mostly the bad message sent here. Those tech trees have to evolve somehow. I know John is currently working on them, but I'm not certain of the extent those changes will solve issues described here.
I can agree with this completely. The increase of cost has to correspond to an increase in functionality. It doesn't have to be a linear progression. You could pick a blueprint from a list of existing BP's, as opposed to receiving ones at random.
In instances where blueprints are direct upgrades (Ak-74 to ak-74m etc) you could make the upgrade a rare loot spawn that can be found in the core. I think that would be a really fun addition to the game.
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It was this exact mindset that killed 2238. Why not just add a zone where everyone sits at the entrance of NCR while the mods run around in their dog skins emoting *woof* for 24 hours a day.
it was not "this" mindset that killed 2238. 2238 killed itself, and was a slow process that I have witnessed from 2010 on.
All I'm saying is that aop is a "pvp oriented" server, not a "pvp focussed" or "pvp only" server. The goal is not to have the best pvp at any cost, but to mix pvp and pve, arcade and simulation in a way that fits to the fallout universe in general, and our phoenix setting in specific. If you have concrete solutions for problems that you see, then feel free to post them and discuss them, but if you just post about the problems (which is easy enough to do) it sounds like it's only waiting to be solved. As I said before though, every solution comes with a compromise and I have a feeling that you would be willing to make compromises that I don't.
I can agree with this completely. The increase of cost has to correspond to an increase in functionality. It doesn't have to be a linear progression. You could pick a blueprint from a list of existing BP's, as opposed to receiving ones at random.
We have discussed many different ways of making the blueprints available. As I probably psoted in the past already somewhere, the blueprint system had the most discussions and revisions in the development process.
The fundamental problem is that a tech tree is a bad representation in a system where all weapons are supposed to be equals. Everyone that sees a tech tree automatically expects the next weapon to be "stronger" just because it's how it is in every other game. Instead, since strenght is not an available parameter we have to use a different one.
The reason we used a tree as opposed to being able to choose the weapon yourself, is that we wanted to force people to go through weaposn they might not like to get to what they want, mostly having positive effects on the economy and the presence in the core as well, since you would be spending more time on getting the relics.
Now I already know that seem people will think it's bad to force people to do anything, but I strongly believe that boring or tedious parts of a gameplay can not and should not be completely rid of. Taking this too far leads to people ragequitting, just like I ragequitted 2238 with the wipe 2012 and simply didnt even bother to farm BG's and CA's and only play sniper in leather jackets. The other extreme would be cheat codes for example. We all know that (singleplayer) games stop being fun as soon as you use cheats as it gets rid of all challenge, motivation and the resulting feeling oc accomplishment.
The tech tree might not be the best way to do it, but it certainly is one of the most cost-effective and simple mechanics, in the way of how complex its impact on the whole server is.
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You realize that the wipe in 2012 lead to a massive spike in player base right?
At what point will you be forced to realize that your perspective is that of the minority? Put the poll up and see what the players want. We can both sit here and argue that our opinions are that of the majority but until we actually have numbers to back our claims this is going nowhere.
If people don't want the weapon system (or AoP for that matter) to be balanced around and focused on PvP; then I will recant what I've been saying for the last few months and admit you are correct.
Now I'm not a developer, so that is the best I can do; you however are. If the numbers come back in my favor; you have to ask yourself "Am I the type of dev to give the players what they want and deserve, or am making a game for myself (Like all the past FOnline devs)."
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For dude thet seys he cant carry alot ammo then go pick Strong Back and Pack rat and you can. About waraity of guns for me it is nice they are all similar in dmg but have perks and traits thet chage the geamplay alot i hate example in Fonline Realoded almost all full farmed people use 1 same gun beacue it is the best
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You realize that the wipe in 2012 lead to a massive spike in player base right?
At what point will you be forced to realize that your perspective is that of the minority? Put the poll up and see what the players want. We can both sit here and argue that our opinions are that of the majority but until we actually have numbers to back our claims this is going nowhere.
The reason there was a spike in players after the wipe was not because of the changes but because of the wipe itself. We had people going into the "waiting for wipe" sleep mode as early as november 2010.
The feeling I got from the people whom I played with, c88, tttla, guardians, the organized, big and long standing pvp factions, people generally seemed to dislike the changes of the wipe since it fooled with snipers and sneaks that I deemed to be very balanced and enjoyable to play.
If anything, the wipe reduced the number of viable builds and we don't have to argue about critbursters, influence, silent death and whatnot.
And still, I don't even have any idea HOW you want the weapons to be changed. You're saying they need changing btu I wouldnt evne know how.
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Yeah, I'd like to see some guns that need changes and proposals to improve them. That would be a good start.
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There are too many weapons, and not enough hours in the day to address individual changes. The best I can offer is a suggestion about the weapons as a whole.
A weapon's effectiveness should increase with the cost of crafting materials. Some weapons are blatantly more costly to make, and are made of rarer materials. A weapon you can put together with junk should be less effective than one that requires steel piping, a scope, and alloys.
The weapons functionality could correlate to the lore. Most of the weapons are directly from the Fallout series and already have a lore to them. This is where rarity could come into play. Items like the combat shotgun are common and should be fairly easy to get ahold of. The Pancor Jackhammer on the other hand is higher end, and harder to get ahold of. The Pancor Jackhammer MK2 rarer yet. So for functionality you have combat shotgun, pancor, pancor mk2.
For items with direct upgrades you could make the upgraded versions as actual upgrades, and not moving the current numbers around (ak-74 and ak-74m for example). They could be craftable by finding rare blueprints from the core.
Instead of receiving random blueprints for trading in artifacts, you could pick which blueprint you want from a list. If you decide that some blueprints need to be more expensive, then the corresponding weapons need to be better as a result.
I'm open to other ideas. Anything could be an improvement. Things for now are very bland. Anything that would make the weapons within the archetype feel unique would be a welcome addition.
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Well, what you say here actually already describes the current situation. THe only one that doesn't is your last point on the blueprints, which I adressed in my previous post.
I'm afraid some bugs and unintended mistakes might have given you a wrong impression which lead you to come to different conclusions.
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Well, what you say here actually already describes the current situation. THe only one that doesn't is your last point on the blueprints, which I adressed in my previous post.
The current system is one in which all weapons are supposed to be roughly equal. I'm not in agreement with that design scheme. I would prefer for there to be weapons that are rarer or more expensive but better.
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Well, what you say here actually already describes the current situation. THe only one that doesn't is your last point on the blueprints, which I adressed in my previous post.
The current system is one in which all weapons are supposed to be roughly equal. I'm not in agreement with that design scheme. I would prefer for there to be weapons that are rarer or more expensive but better.
you want tier 1 vs tier 2-3 weapons to gave too big damage difrence for me they have more then enought and as i sey like in other fonline games they meke 1 or 2 op weapons thet all people use and i would not like this game to go same road. Anywey dude the bigest difrence is in traits perks thet give good variety
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The current system is one in which all weapons are supposed to be roughly equal. I'm not in agreement with that design scheme. I would prefer for there to be weapons that are rarer or more expensive but better.
And this is exactly what we don't want and what will never happen. It goes down the diablo/wow road and not the battlefield road.
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Then I guess weapons will continue to be a bland bloated system of redundancy. It serves literally no purpose apart from tugging at your own penis.
dude you suck
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Alright, this exchange is currently leading to nothing. It seems we'll have to discuss it again after server reopened.
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hey, the weapons are the reason why I'm coming here, there's a bunch of them!
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I'll admit my last post was fueled by frustration and was immature, so I removed it. I'll just end my part of this conversation by explaining why, in my opinion, gear progression is a must.
When you removed gear progression from the game you remove the major driving force behind what keeps players playing. Now I know there will likely be 3 or 4 forum members who will post in the contrary. That they were perfectly content in 2238 and reloaded to farm Gecko Mine day in and out, crafting and adding to the p90 piles at their ranger stations until eventually saving up enough caps to buy a bunker for themselves to live in alone. Then role playing at the entrance of NCR during the cool downs. Are these few players the ones whose opinions matter? They will hungrily suckle at the teat of whatever dev is currently running the server, throating log after log of feces with smiles on their faces.
1. Removing gear progression removes the driving force of end game content. Without the drive for bigger and better gear; all you have left to keep players around is malice. Malice to kill other players and destroy their faction. Now I will admit, this sounds mighty enticing at first. But without the progression of gear that is earned by paying the iron price (the priced earned by teamwork and payed for by the blood of your enemies) you will have a stalemate between all factions; with the only tipping point being the number of members. So the climactic release of malice may never come, or worse, may have no satisfaction because all you have done is destroy the hollowed husk of an abandoned faction whose players found more fun things to do.
2. Gear progression allows for the sway of power within and between factions. The players that have the best gear, clearly have the advantage. This forces other factions to use tactics and team work to remain competitive. On a larger point; IT ALLOWS FOR END GAME CONTENT. The whole point of each faction is to wipe out their competition, as stated in the lore. Without gear progression, this end game goal will come from factions having the most members as opposed to being the most skilled (welcome to Reloaded where the 50 remaining players on the server are the players of the amalgamated faction that calls themselves BBS).
3. With all gear being roughly equal, there is no reward from PvP. Who cares if I kill Big_Tim again, when at the end of the day we both go back and either grab a weapon from our endless pile or toss another on. By removing gear progression you remove all fulfillment from PvP. With rare, and better loot, you have a purpose for killing another player; to take their stuff. Believe me when I say this; there is nothing more satisfying that earning your first set of Power Armor by delicately planning and executing a member of a another faction (Thanks for the memories Gammatron).
I could go on and argue how applying the game design from CoD (a cancerous FPS) to Fallout (an RPG) while simultaneously suggesting that the formula from Diablo 2 (unarguably one of the most successful RPG's of all time) wouldn't work with your game design, is objectively wrong; but I don't have enough breath in my lungs. So I will just say this: by removing gear progression you remove the satisfaction of PvP, the ability to achieve end game content, and the purpose of the game entirely. I warn you that without these things you will be left with an overly sterile game that won't have the lasting power that we all would like to see. There is a lot of potential in AoP; I'd hate to see it squandered by a poor lead game design choice.
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dude, it is simply not going not to happen. The whole point of this server is to not have gear progression. It's like asking battlefield devs to make the game more realistic instead of just playing arma or asking CoD devs to implement vehicles. It's simply not part of the design, not by negligence but by definition.
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Bla bla bla
Dude to get nice gear you have to go and collect resurses(i wold only change spawn rate to very low) thet all will be fighting for so you dont have instant pile of zilion guns, next like i sey if you go gear progresion like you want ther will be 2-3 OP guns thet all will use and nothing more, and i played Reloaded only,i killed 1 BBS dude whit Close Combat and it was so fun they 4 capturing tawn and i raped 1 ass before i died (i was alone and i was newer in faction), AND ZILION TIME DUDE ALL GUNS HAVE SOME PERKS TRAITS THET MAKE THEM DIFRENT
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dude, it is simply not going not to happen. The whole point of this server is to not have gear progression. It's like asking battlefield devs to make the game more realistic instead of just playing arma or asking CoD devs to implement vehicles. It's simply not part of the design, not by negligence but by definition.
If you are going to design it that way then you should add crafting bonuses (like Reloaded) or rare (uncraftable) weapon modifications that you can get from looting and add to your weapon. You need something to give value to the individual weapon, something to make it suck to lose.
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If you are going to design it that way then you should add crafting bonuses (like Reloaded) or rare (uncraftable) weapon modifications that you can get from looting and add to your weapon. You need something to give value to the individual weapon, something to make it suck to lose.
But this is exactly the kind of thing that turns fonline into diablo and we decided months ago that weapon bonuses in such a form are counterproductive.
Players should not automatically be stronger than others because they are wealthier. The key is that very little grinding will be enough to reach the average or standard level of strenght in order to have a level playing field. Any form of farming or grinding beyond that should not make the player "stronger", but make him more versatile and flexible.
If you think about it, it means that in order to beat other people in pvp you have to pick the right equipment and use it properly (aka skill) rather than wow-tier grind money and farm dungeons or whatever. Again, we don't want to make a "classic" rpg where you continously get stronger and stronger. We have sacrificed that part of rpg gameplay and replaced it with RTS mechanics so to speak. Instead, classic rpg traits are incorporated into other aspects of the game.
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How does craft bonuses turn AoP into Diablo? There are no craft bonuses in Diablo. Everyone can craft weapons, so its not a matter of wealth. Its giving purpose to the PvP.
Honestly ask yourself, what is the incentive for the player to stay around after the first 2 weeks? The lore? There really isn't much back story or plot (kill other factions). The character progression? After 24 progression slows, and will eventually stop. The quests? You can only do so many S ranked quests before you get tired of the repetitive format. The desire to destroy the other factions will wane and become boring without the gear having some value.
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How does craft bonuses turn AoP into Diablo? There are no craft bonuses in Diablo. Everyone can craft weapons, so its not a matter of wealth. Its giving purpose to the PvP.
There are in diablo 3 but it doesn't really matter how the bonuses are applied to the weapons. In fact, crafting bonuses would be the worst ones as the crafting process in itself is quite tiresome. We have some ideas for fixed weapon bonus applied through ZC actions on a single weapon, but that will only come alter, if at all.
Bonuses, no matter which form, have several issues:
1: They have to be displayed properly and the Fonline interface is not too effecient at that.
2: They have to be balanced properly. That's a given but seeing as we have n-times the amount of weapons than other servers, it would be complicated to say the least.
3: They have to be integrated in a way that doesn't make the game even more confusing for the average player.
Basically, we already have a very similar system, rather than having 2 assault rifles with different bonuses, we have 10 different assault rifles. Both systems have their advantages but I feel that having 10 different AR's with up to 5 traits and 5 perks and then add bonuses on top of it would be too much.
Honestly ask yourself, what is the incentive for the player to stay around after the first 2 weeks? The lore? There really isn't much back story or plot (kill other factions). The character progression? After 24 progression slows, and will eventually stop. The desire to destroy the other factions will wane and become boring without the gear having some value.
I stayed around on 2238 for 3 years, in a game that has nothing to offer apart from the same tc on the same 5maps. For 2 years I was there for pretty much every larger pvp action and I only left because I couldn't cope with the grinding and the later balance changes.
There really is not much to do on an empty server. I guess an empty 2238 would be more fun than an empty AoP, but that can change once we have the opportunity to focus more on additional content. The motiviation to play this game should be the gameplay and the pvp itself, not the results of it. In that way it differs from the classic rpg, as said before.
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How does craft bonuses turn AoP into Diablo? There are no craft bonuses in Diablo. Everyone can craft weapons, so its not a matter of wealth. Its giving purpose to the PvP.
There are in diablo 3 but it doesn't really matter how the bonuses are applied to the weapons. In fact, crafting bonuses would be the worst ones as the crafting process in itself is quite tiresome. We have some ideas for fixed weapon bonus applied through ZC actions on a single weapon, but that will only come alter, if at all.
I like this idea a lot. Some sort of mechanic where the weapon gets better with more use. That sounds fun.
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I wanted to post something more elaborate but I will probably not do it until tomorrow.
Once resource gathering will be more developed, and properly limited by players amount, you will probably have to make choices in term of crafting and I'm sure weapons will look more valuable then. Not everyone will like the same weapons, and maps and enemies you face will have an impact on that choice as well. You should come to the conclusion that having two weapons to adapt to situations is a big plus, and that pair of weapons can also change a lot from a player to another.
Then, don't forget that Tiers 3 weapons will come too, hard if not impossible to craft and so very appealing to loot and use. Just as Gauss pistols have been on 2238 for example. Armors too will play their role. We miss some learning system for the MK2 and MK3 versions that'll come at some point, so they'll be less easy to craft. There are also rarer armors, like Support combat armors and PAs that will be interesting to look for. Faction combat armors should also be interesting to obtain and not farmable. Finally, there are all those other items that will be really interesting to loot on players, like doctor bags, traps, drugs, stealthboys or smoke grenades for example, which are always useful and that will make the difference between more and less rich platoons.
So yeah, you roughly get the same weapons as your opponent and you can stand a chance as a newcomer, but those who will smartly use all the possible items and tactics will be victorious at the end. No need to grind for 3 months and take bad habits, just start working on your pvp skills from day 1, that's the idea.
As John said, there is a plan to personalize your gun and make it become a sort of relic of the Wasteland (not to say legendary weapon :p) by using it in PvP (among other possible ways), possibly renaming it or adding successive kinds of titles to it. However, we need a lot of stuff to be balanced first, and we could not decide of the best way to implement it. That's why it has been postponed for now.
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I wanted to post something more elaborate but I will probably not do it until tomorrow.
Once resource gathering will be more developed, and properly limited by players amount, you will probably have to make choices in term of crafting and I'm sure weapons will look more valuable then. Not everyone will like the same weapons, and maps and enemies you face will have an impact on that choice as well. You should come to the conclusion that having two weapons to adapt to situations is a big plus, and that pair of weapons can also change a lot from a player to another.
Then, don't forget that Tiers 3 weapons will come too, hard if not impossible to craft and so very appealing to loot and use. Just as Gauss pistols have been on 2238 for example. Armors too will play their role. We miss some learning system for the MK2 and MK3 versions that'll come at some point, so they'll be less easy to craft. There are also rarer armors, like Support combat armors and PAs that will be interesting to look for. Faction combat armors should also be interesting to obtain and not farmable. Finally, there are all those other items that will be really interesting to loot on players, like doctor bags, traps, drugs, stealthboys or smoke grenades for example, which are always useful and that will make the difference between more and less rich platoons.
So yeah, you roughly get the same weapons as your opponent and you can stand a chance as a newcomer, but those who will smartly use all the possible items and tactics will be victorious at the end. No need to grind for 3 months and take bad habits, just start working on your pvp skills from day 1, that's the idea.
As John said, there is a plan to personalize your gun and make it become a sort of relic of the Wasteland (not to say legendary weapon :p) by using it in PvP (among other possible ways), possibly renaming it or adding successive kinds of titles to it. However, we need a lot of stuff to be balanced first, and we could not decide of the best way to implement it. That's why it has been postponed for now.
This is a good post.
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I would like to have some upgrades for weapons that allow a certain level of progression and customization (like armors). Keeping the breach between those upgraded weapons and regular ones fair enough to make a squad with no upgraded weapons able to beat a one with upgrades ones.
For example, lets say that weapon skill only unlock 3 weapon perks. And the other 2 can only be unlocked by a weapon upgrade (and also a skill requirement). Some weapons may have different upgrades making possible to specialize the weapon in a certain area (critical, damage, secondary effects, and so on)
Lets take the ripper for an example (which is my favorite weapon ;D)
Instead of having better bleed and more bleed unlocked only by melee skill, those perks will be unlocked by an upgrade: ‘serrated ripper’. Another upgrade, ‘ripper mark II’ will unlock instead bonus rate of fire and faster reload, and maybe another that unlock two more criticals. Note that you can choose only one of those upgrades for every ripper
Right now, once you get the max skill lvl, and unlock the blueprint, every weapon you craft have its max power, so if you lose it, you can just craft another one with the same stats.
With this proposal an upgraded weapon will require more resources (mostly special parts), making them more expensive and rare (not so rare as tier 3), but not a must have to do PvP.
Just like the difference between mark II and mark III armors, that mostly add a small edge to the stats
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This is an interesting idea really. However I'm not sure we want to reduce the number of perks unlocked by skill only. Also, I think it would be hard to come up with enough variants, especially with the number of weapons. I could imagine that weapon X with upgrade Y becoming more efficient in a Z condition than another gun that is supposed to be better in that condition. Now that's not necessarily bad as it adds more flexibility to the arsenal, but this could also be confusing for opponents which, observing their enemy with a scout, would maybe not know how to counter them.
What about this: let's say we introduce like a tenth of special booster items, that are craftable and pluggable on different weapons. Not all weapons would accept all boosts depending on their nature. Those boosts could add different bonuses that would be kept rather weak and hopefully, balanced enough compared with each other. You could put one boost by default on every gun, and then perhaps add more as you use the gun in PvP (so related to the Relic weapon system). Would that be appealing enough to you?
I think that approach could represent way less work for us and would allow multiple upgrades on every gun, where making 2-3 variants per weapon based on your suggestion would already be a huge deal.
We would have to represent the boost properly, perhaps with prefixes and affixes, but that could become messy too with successive upgrades. Finding an adequate prefix for every combination should be possible though. Then, we would have to show boosts in weapon description and show how many upgrades are available to apply on weapons.
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Im aware that multiple upgrades for each weapon will lead to weapons with similar stats, and maybe will be necessary to remove/redesign some of them, but also is not required for each weapon to have more than one upgrade. And every upgraded weapon will have a different name to make possible to recognize which bonus the weapon have.
Anyway, the approach you suggest seems very interesting, and will address (hopefully) the points discussed here. With a possible boost by default, and further boost as a reward for PvP it’s a great incentive to do more fights.
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This is an interesting idea really. However I'm not sure we want to reduce the number of perks unlocked by skill only. Also, I think it would be hard to come up with enough variants, especially with the number of weapons. I could imagine that weapon X with upgrade Y becoming more efficient in a Z condition than another gun that is supposed to be better in that condition. Now that's not necessarily bad as it adds more flexibility to the arsenal, but this could also be confusing for opponents which, observing their enemy with a scout, would maybe not know how to counter them.
What about this: let's say we introduce like a tenth of special booster items, that are craftable and pluggable on different weapons. Not all weapons would accept all boosts depending on their nature. Those boosts could add different bonuses that would be kept rather weak and hopefully, balanced enough compared with each other. You could put one boost by default on every gun, and then perhaps add more as you use the gun in PvP (so related to the Relic weapon system). Would that be appealing enough to you?
I think that approach could represent way less work for us and would allow multiple upgrades on every gun, where making 2-3 variants per weapon based on your suggestion would already be a huge deal.
We would have to represent the boost properly, perhaps with prefixes and affixes, but that could become messy too with successive upgrades. Finding an adequate prefix for every combination should be possible though. Then, we would have to show boosts in weapon description and show how many upgrades are available to apply on weapons.
This could be like the weapon modification system that was suggested earlier. I'd prefer to see the boosts be "find only" items, to increase the value but I'd be happy to see them as craftable as well.
It would be interesting to add Boost slots to crafted weapons only, that way crafted weapons will always be a little different than found ones. There could even be a cool "# of Boost slots" variety on crafted items to make things interesting. Crafted items could have 1-4 slots, with 1 being guaranteed and 4 being very rare. This could give some excitement to the crafting system.
Regardless if you include the latter, the boost system is an interesting idea. You could include the boosts on the weapon in the awareness perk, so you know what players are dealing with.
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In my personal opinion, which is not representative of the official devteam's stance on this, would be to have weapon mods that are either craftable or lootable or both which would have both positive and negative effects. However, those effects would never be a percentage, they would always be flat. Something like "-2 ap cost, -3 Magsize" Such a mod would probably be great on Assault rifles as you wouldnt notice the smaller magazine that much but it could also be interesting for some pistols where, depending on your stats, it could make you hit certain thresholds, meaning that with a certain pistol wiht that mod, you discard a very big part of your magazine, but you are able to use your first 100 AP to shoot the entire magazine.
That means that the same weapon mod would be a minor benefit on some guns, be virtually unnoticable on others but then also completely change the palystyle of some guns.
There are a lot of interesting things that can be done but the problem is, as I said, the interface. Once you have such a broad variety of weapons and weapon upgrades, you need a way to display the information effeciently and as I also said before, while weapons mdos are a "cool" feature, it doesn't necessarily match our design goals and might just complicate things without enhancing core gameplay.
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About flat bonuses/maluses, we surely should create some boosts and make some tests. I can imagine that we could face issues, with some boosts being mostly useless at the end and others being often ubber. Personally I would go for both a percentage and a flat value to guarantee a minimum balance between mod effects.
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i think we shoud leave this for leater on this game needs first lot comunity testing all weapons and other then when games beacome solid you shoud start intruducing DLC ahahah
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i think we shoud leave this for leater on this game needs first lot comunity testing all weapons and other then when games beacome solid you shoud start intruducing DLC ahahah
Just because you just got here doesn't mean that people haven't been testing the weapons pretty extensively.