Armorsmith Archive
Thread: Guess what MAJOR ARMOR NERF IN PUBLISH 10 from e3
Shi,
I am not going to say your 100% wrong. I do believe that composite needs some toning down. I would not be opposed to for instance a cap at 65% general 80% special layer resist. Something you may not know either Shi is that Advanced Composite is a Master level armor and as such I would submit that it deserves to have somewhat greater stats then the rest. Just like the T21 has greater stats and is a master level weapon in the weaponsmith line. I personally would not be opposed to givingcomposite an energy vulnerability either. However if this occurs I absolutely expect and demand that the other armor types are brought up in effectiveness so I can sell other armor types with for instance a high energy effectiveness, their vulnerabilities of all armors limited to two and made consistant across all pieces, AND their special protectionsmade universal across all pieces. On top of this I would aboslutely have to demand that the PSG's work. Shi your statement earlier about all that damage reduction added to PSG'sis simply wrong. PSG's don't always work that in and of itself is a problem. I am also fairly certain that Armor and synthsteak don't stack. I could be wrong on this point however I am no longer a chef and haven't tested it.
Shi again I don't think very many if any smiths are saying 90% composite is good for the game. I think we are however saying that nerfing composite to the current worthlessness of all other armors is not something we can accept. If this happens I am done with this game period. There are no if ands or buts. I remember how frustrating this game was before and I am not going to return to that point just so the minority will be happy that they now have a more challenging game experience. I came here to play in the star wars universe. In the star wars universe the individual made the difference. Jaango shots that charging rhinolike thing and takes it down in one shot. This is an example of what I am talking about. If my ability to solo is destroyed through the nerfing of armor Iam done not only with the profession I lovebut with the game itselfbecause I will no longer be able to solo which is something I enjoy just as much as I enjoy PvP.In addition to this I would have been LIED to by the developers and you won't see Thunderheart get on here and comment on this. It is the gods honest truth and many more people saw the promise madeeven before this game went retail that you would be able to solo or group equally and that moreover this would not be everquest galaxies. Shi if you think I am the only one who feels this way then let me direct your attention to Asheron's Call 2. In that game the absolute worst developer of them all Jessica a lady who is truely clueless singlehandedly tried to force a group oriented concept down the throats of its players. The last I heard AC2's future is very much in doubt and servers are collapsing because no one wants to play everquest who isn't playing everquest already.
Shi I noticed you were a crafter and you are in CATS. Cats has a very good reputation on Starsider and every person in your PA I have met I like alot. Would you as a crafter and as a PA mate enjoy seeing new players and friends in CATS quit in frustration? Would you enjoy not having enough customers or a population to keep running your business? I ask you this because you have seen SOE's record in nerfing in fact we all have seen their record. They nerfed the CH to non existance. They supposedly nerfed stacking to take care of "problems in PvP" and yet if we look at the above poster the stacking issues still exist and then theAT ST nerf has to be the biggest bungle job of them allto date. I don't think you can tell me which one of their nerfs actually fixed anything or more importantly made it more enjoyable for its players to play.
Shi you also made the statement that your going to go to specialists. I can promise you this. If the other armors aren't made worth while there will be no specialists. It wouldn't be worth our time nor would it be worth your buying it. Shi your not an armorsmith so I understand completely where your coming from. IHowever I do believe as well meaning and as passionate as you obviously are that your conception of many of the armors is flawed in that I don't think you quite understand just how bad the situation actually is. With the other armors
Natanial Storm
Message Edited by WarlordRhawn on 05-28-2004 02:44 AM
Krogchoi wrote:
> 2. Combat Rebalance is so that you can no longer go out and solo in "adventure planets like Yavin, Dath, Dantooine and etc.
That would be retarded, it would mean SWG becoming just like Everquest, where you can not do anything interesting solo.
That's part of the reason why I quit EQ and came to SWG : I was happy to have a game where I could just play without having to be looking for a group for an hour before I could do anything.
Death Watch Bunker is just like that : It is stupidely hard, and is no fun. It would be a great dungeon without the Super battle droids.
GrueLokk wrote:
I really hate to be the bearer of bad news for everyone. But there is a very good reason that composite and ubese are the only armors that are made often. Let me run down a quick list of the reasons this is going to screw you if they nerf those two armors. Ill list them in order of seriousness. Note I am an armorsmith and have quite literally mastered most of the inner workings of composite.
1: Comp and ubese are the only armors that require very few specialized creatures components that cant be mined. If these two armors become obsolete, expect that you will have a harder time finding armor than back when chitin was killer on the bazzar. 99% of the Armorsmiths will only make armor for them and a few freinds. Lord knows im not running out and collecting avian bones and 3-4 different types of hides in order to make you an armor your only going to want to pay 50 k for the entire set due to its crap resists.
2: We have been collecting special resources for a year, to make the composite your seeing now. We have invested 10s of millions of credits (High end armorsmiths i speak of here.) To get the best resources possible, to be able to get 65%- 70% base preslice composite out on the market for you all, in a large enough supply that not only the filthy rich can have it. You want this game to be balanced, well welcome to the world of the haves and the have nots. This is not good for pvp, and will make the game unplayable. The developers already have started making weapons unbelievably powerful if you play EQ style and camp the same mobs all over. This is not what made the game good, this is what made UO Fail. Item based PVP is no good in a MMORPG. IF you want to have that go play carebear EQ and that way you can use your uber wep to camp the same mobs over and over faster.
3: Lowering the resists on this armor is going to make the players with the akva min looted 1200 dmg t 21s or vibro lances tear through you in 1 - 2 hits with out a problem. We lower the resists and this will be a one sided whichever class has the best wep dropped cosntantly FOTM, and youll never see another carbineer or commando again.
4: If you want armorsmiths to take the time to make you armor do not make it even harder to make. I for one will not do it, if they are going to require me to work 3 x harder to do the same amt of business. Armor is already the hardest market to compete in, requiring the most expensive tapes on the game to be competitive, and requiring a huge amt of cash in creature resources. And also requiring rare resources on par with noone else. How many of AS specific resources are gated... I hear alot of players that have never made a single piece of armor save for maybe ubese shirts or mabari chests while grinding for retarded Holo's saying this is good for the game. Well welcome to the world of thats probably the only armor your going to find anymore on the bazzar. They want us to wear faction armor more often HAH. That will actually work with this patch, cause its going to be one of the only armors youll be able to get your hands on.
You all may disregard this as a rant, but I know for a fact that there is quite a few armorsmiths that are thinking to themselves, damn hes right. Theres a reason i havent made chitin or padded since i was a noob, or just for looks. So go ahead and keep cheering them on so you can play your Borked pvp EQ style game. It will kill this game faster than anyone of you think. That is all, good luck with your Item based pvp one shot kill game.
/agree
Shimond wrote:
Armor specialists. See you'd start to see people specializing in certain types of armor (kind of how you see people specialize in weapons now) instead of everyone shooting for the holy grail that is composite.
-Shi
I'm an armorsmith kiddo. A decent one at that. And if they nerf armor, I'm out of the game. People will not want to pay for composite with 40% resists when just last week they could get compo with 80% resists. And when people start to only want to pay 100k for a triple layered set of compo, it's not worth all the trouble I go to to collect resources and make it.
Just to make composite armor I have over 20 million units of resources. That's not counting what I keep in stock for ubese which is probably another 5 mil units. I don't want to go from making great armor to complete crap. I don't want to have to try to collect bone, 5 types of hide, or insect skeletons. Wooly and leathery hide is bad enough to have to hunt/pay for.
If you ask any armorsmith they're tell you that by far (worse than the **edit**ty and rare mineral shifts) gathering organics is the worst part of thier job.
I'm just telling it from a smith's point of view. If faced with the extra work of gathering more organics to make those other types of armor, I'd quit making armor. If faced with the prospect of players wanting the newly nerfed armor for 100k a suit, I'd quit making armor.
And that's just as an armorsmith. As a player if I went to dantoine and found myself having to run from pickets or janta's, I'd quit the game. The solution to the game isn't to nerf armor. It's to add different content to challenge the player base. This is just another example of the devs being lazy.
/ugh
Message Edited by ZenobiaJolie on 05-28-2004 03:03 AM
Shi I had one more comment to make on this. Combat Rebalance shouldn't mean universal nerf. I am afraid that the developers and many players seem to have once again made a catastrophic error. That error is in their perception of what is indeed wrong. I believe that they think that if they make this game more like everquest they will attract more people and bring people back. The selling point on this game should never have been PvE. By its very nature the Star Wars Universe was a story about a struggle indeed a war that was mainly between but not limited to two factions. PvP is where there focus should have been at the very begining.What I am talking about istrue immersion such as getting the players more involved with the war in star wars. For example missions that pitted players of different factions against each other with meaningful and tangible awards for the victors (skill tapes anyone?). Insteadof releasing content for the upper .01% ie the Deathwatch dungeon. While we are mentioning the Death Watch dungeon here is something to think about. YOu think the Death watch dungeon is hard now? Just wait until composite is nerfed. Time and time again instead of fixing the trueproblemthe developerschoose the quick and easy route and now we have a spiraling loot based system that in my opinion is UNDERMINING the crafting system and we have half hearted attempts at immersion such as the wait times at shuttles and starports. All that imersive technique has done in my mind is reinforce the idea that this is not a world where spaceships fly inbetween planets and reinfoced that this is a really technologically bland world with limited resources who can sometimes achieve space flight. That isn't the world of privateers like Plat O'keef, Dash Rendar, or Han Solo.
Now we have the situation we are faced withcurrently. Instead of addressing the problem the focus is on the quick and that will cause more problems and a greater amount of canceled subscriptions. A nerf to useless ness which I now defniitely believe we will see because of what Mandelorian armor has been shown to be is further proof in my mind that the trend of mismanageing and bungling is going to continue. This is the same thinking that has oppressed free expression throughout the classes and turned this world intoclone archtypes. So your going to nerf composite? Well is the idea if everything is worthless then you will get variety? That idea is wrong. Its dead wrong. People will find which one is the most effective and that is exactly what they will wear. That still isn't Star Wars. The solution Shi and this isn't a quick fix is to first balance the attack classes so that each has a different way of delivering the same proportional amount of damage. Then you go to the armor and you buff the other types and cap the problems so that you:
A: Encourage Variety
B: Achieve balance.
Where and when indoubt you go back to what is Star Wars and yes that does meangetting rid of the mind poisons that can be lobbed at greater distances then a ranged firearm can shoot, giving it so much accuracy that it can't miss, is like a heat seeking missile, and finally "Phases" through walls. This is a game that has Star Wars themes and its not the Star Wars Universe. That is entirely their fault. Now wecome back to theproblem and I agree there is a problem. We have the war of non star wars things such as combat medics and the most feared weapon in the universe which should have been the DX line of weapons (that line in the star wars universe was BANNED because it destabilized beings at the cellular and molecular level) is now a geonosian rifle and a JAWA ION CANNON. Instead of a Jawa Ion Cannon being devastating to droids (which by the way are very much starwars and still don't have a prominent enough place in the game). The DX line being GREATLY feared instead of completely useless and what is worse we have developers who seem to be dancing around the problem and working in super secret so much so that they don't appear to be informing their own customer service people in the form of the correspondants for each class. Nor do we have thunderheart even giving us useful information when he answers questions. Just look at how many "combat rebalance" answers we have.
I am very much worried about this game I enjoy. I am worried because of their record and because of their propensity to bungle just about everything up. I for one don't see any of their nerfs as positive and I have yet to see anyone tell me how any of these nerfs has increased their enjoyement of the game. What I have seen is them constantly ignore us and I challenge thunderheart or anyone else within SOE or Lucas Arts to open up the veil of secrecy that is this mysterious two words "combat rebalance" and tell the people who are paying their subscriptions just what their plan for their professions are.
Natanial Storm
Warlord,
I would agree with you in theory, as would most in this thread I think...but I would humbly say I think we're past the point of needing a general rant about that state of the game...which is really all I hear you saying.
Let's not keep wasting our time flooding the thread with "the game should not revolved around PvE" or "90% compo should be nerfed"...let's offer specific solutions.
I've kept quiet for a week or so now to see what others would have to say and day after day I just keep reading the same rhetoric over and over.
I say let's lay out the things we all seem to agree on and get past em so we're not just repeating ourselves...then we can start offering the devs possible solutions. I'm sure TH is following this thread just as much as everyone else at this point and if we keep bogging it down, it'll become pointless. Let's offer solutions that go beyond the "nerf it" attitude. Here's what I see as points already covered..
...we all understand that this thread is just theoretical, noone knows what the CB patch will bring
...with the exception of a few biased players, I think we ALL agree compo needs changed
...I think we all also agree that you can't simply just nerf compo without beefing up the other armor types to fill the void
...I think we've covered that nerfing buffs alone won't solve the issue, it'll only remove layered armor from the game and this is just a filthy nerf
...increasing enc on compo does nothing to help the other armor types so IMHO this is not a fix
...forcing people to group as a means to solve balance issues is just nuts...not everyone plays this game to group so unless we agree we want to kick half the galaxy out, this is not an option
...simply adding tougher and tougher mobs does not balance out the armor issue. DWB is a joke, listen to anyone who's gone there with buffs and compo and you'll see what I'm talking about
hmm...what else has been said thus far?
Oh, Zenobia. People will buy the best armor period. If 40% is the best, it'll sell. Why? They don't have any other choice. They can **edit** and moan that they bought 80% last week, but that won't change. No one else will have 80%+ armor, so they can take their armor and get over it. I will have to admit though, the promise of you quitting if this change comes does make it more appealing.
Dynastar wrote:
There is something quite silly with the fact that the only mob I avoid on Dathomir is a Nightsister Elder. Anything else, I lay waste to with either my T21 or quite limited melee abilities. This is due partially to buffs, but moreso thanks to armor. Hell, I don't even use 80% composite, I use 70ish% Ubese for it. If this doesn't set off bells and whistles in your head that something is wrong, you need a CAT scan.
Oh, Zenobia. People will buy the best armor period. If 40% is the best, it'll sell. Why? They don't have any other choice. They can **edit** and moan that they bought 80% last week, but that won't change. No one else will have 80%+ armor, so they can take their armor and get over it. I will have to admit though, the promise of you quitting if this change comes does make it more appealing.
I make high base, 70% unsliced comp. This, of course has the potential to slice up to 90% base. It takes months to gather the resources to do this. The few peices that do achieve the good effectiveness slice are reserved for my guild for PvP and never hit the vendor. The majority of the armor from a batch like this is pretty lame because it is too heavy to justify the moderate resistances. Despite my constant hard work, no one in my guild has a full set of 90% comp. Even using this armor our team struggles against well thought out templates and good PvPers. My point here is that the rarity and expense of this armor keeps it's impact on game balance low. I think that most of those complaining about it either don't have because of its scarcity or are wookies that want all races nerfed down to their level of protection.
Some said that they felt that the high resist armor ruins the game because it allows for too vast an opportunity to solo. These players can still group as much as they please. I for one, welcome being able to log in and play against a wide variety of NPCs without being forced to group with nija looters and l33T dudz. I enjoy the company of my guild and group with them more often than not. The EQ gospel of mandatory grouping prevented me from logging in for just an hour and enjoying a lot of that game. Once the SWG icon was on my desktop I could never again force myself to click on the EQ icon and go into Evercamp.
I would welcome something that would allow other armor types to be more useful. Swapping armor in response to what you are fighting would make everyone buy more sets and be good for business. RIS? It is vapor armor. I have never seen anyone wearing it. I have given up looking the the Giant Dune Kimo scale. BH armor from the Deathwatch Bunker? I think that will be more rare than RIS. Rather than diminish composite they could create more drops that improve the effectiveness of other armor or introduce a new resource or layer that drops the HAMs to where it would be desirable.
I doubt that anything we say on these boards will prevent the nerf bat. AT-ST are now an endangered species and it is sad to see such a neat pet fade away. Speaking of pets, I can't recall when the last time I saw a pet used in PvP. Hmmm nerf bat again?
My big concern is how they would impliment this instant nerf to all existing composite. If they just throw a switch capping resists, then all of the armor that I have sold or given away plus the 600 peices of armor on my vendors would become trash. This wouldn't be because of lower resists but because I could probably achieve the same resist cap at half of the HAM costs.
You will never be without a job, nor will all your resources go to waste.
There's no rule that says you have to make all armor types just because they all become useful. The field will gradually spread out with each AS finding his/her new place in the grand scheme of things.
If anything it will actually IMPROVE your business because not every smith will be focusing solely on compo if the rebalance is done right.