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[BG Sexpert]

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!

[Shangalar]

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?

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[Shangalar]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[John Porno]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[John Porno]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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?

[Shangalar]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[John Porno]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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)."

[PusiteGA]

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

[John Porno]

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.

[Shangalar]

Yeah, I'd like to see some guns that need changes and proposals to improve them. That would be a good start.

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[John Porno]

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.

[BG Sexpert]

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.

[PusiteGA]

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