CUEmu - Thread Posts

Eryk

Fri Apr 16, 2004 9:55 am

Great post. Five stars for you!

You know, and all the Devs would have to do is change around some of the resists to make other armor more marketable. And maybe add a few layers into other advanced segments, giving us more options. There is a whole unexplored world of armor out there...

SOE Applicant: Here is my resume.
SOE Interviewer: It's half finished.
SOE Applicant: So are your products.
SOE Interviewer: You're hired.

- I support killing your Jedi, over and over.

Eryk

Fri Apr 16, 2004 9:56 am

#28

Grr...double post.

Message Edited by Eryk on 04-16-2004 11:56 AM

SOE Applicant: Here is my resume.
SOE Interviewer: It's half finished.
SOE Applicant: So are your products.
SOE Interviewer: You're hired.

- I support killing your Jedi, over and over.

Vevy

Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:32 pm

#29

WOW I spend all morning online and little response, then I leave for a couple hours and the floodgates open...lol

There's alotta new points here so I'll attempt to hit them all...

The biggest concern in the recent posts seems to be enc is meaningless with doc buffs and I disagree. The original system sucked and everyone knows it, including the devs cause they changed it. There's a huge differencebetween soloing groups of nightsisters, and knocking everyone back to the point a single piket would swoop em. I think you're also sidestepping the fact that the buffs are not the reason for this but rather the uber armor. Answer me this...could any player simply get buffed and go into the nightsister cave with no armor and survive? A few perhaps but the majority undoubtedly NO. When I was a master carbineer just a few weeks ago, even with buffs AND 85% base compo, I got my @ss whipped long before I ever got to the first chamber. So to say that EVERYONE is a one-man tank with buffs and compo simply is not the case.

The tanks are the defense stackers (now a moot point), and the otherwise PURE hardcore fighters...but buffs alone don't give them that advantage. It's the combination of buffs AND uber compo, plus some good PvP skills,not either or. I think this point keeps getting skipped over and needs to be repeated as often as necessary til everyone gets it.

Once you've accepted that, it seems to me the buffs are not the issue but rather the armor. There are simply too many good things about buffs that would destroy the game to remove them. So instead of nerfing something that has many good points to it, I say fix armor instead since it's already a one-type show. Adding worthwhile vulnerabilities to armor will effectively negate much of the advantage buffs give anyway. Ask yourself this...what could you do toa tank if his compo armor had a big fat vulnerability to energy weapons that you KNEW at most he could only layer up to 30% instead of the current 80%+???

My opinion is those buffs will not save his life when faced with a beefy laser carb spamming CS shots on him...and that's my whole point in this thread. Let's get away from simply nerfing things as a hotfix and get into actually fixing something to make it better. On the other side of that coin, you simply cannot ruin compo and call it a day. If we're going to take away a resist from compo, we need to give it back somewhere else to balance out the system...this is where the other armor types come in.

To answer the question...YES I do believe mabari and chitin and all the other types shoudl be able to reach 80%...but ONLY in their respective fields. I do NOT think every armor should have every resist type, just to varying %'s. IMO this will not change anything because again, why buy armor that's capped at 50% when you can get 80%? Enc is not the deciding factor in armor and IMO it shouldn't be. We all play this game to have fun, not to simulate RL. We WANT to be uber and l33t, that's why we pay our $15 a month. There are far more exciting ways to balance the issue without lowering the standard of gameplay...especially when we have half a dozen armor types already in the game that aren't getting any attention.

I just made master WS this past week and the first thing that I've noticed is that people use weaps from all over the skill trees. Not just the level 4 and master weaps, but ALL of them. Yet with armor it's master compo or nothing. The reason is because no oneweap can simply do it all for every person. Different profs need different weaps and damage types. This is a lesson that needs to be passed along to armor. No one armor type should do it all and if the resists were spread out over all the types, players would be forced to choose one type vs another for the battle they're about to get into.

One typecan get80% energy, but stinks at kinetic...another type can get 80% kinetic, but stinks at acid or blast...and so on. In my mind and in watching all the pointless nerfs that have come and go with no real balance...we need something that actually improves the game, not another nerf that is simply gonna reduce the standard of gameplay that all players are accustomed to.

Vevy
Master Armorsmith / Master Weaponsmith

Shlo_mo_shun

Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:55 pm

#30

One major problem/issue that is overlooked, and one of the reasons that Composite has gotten so strong, is that it's special increases with the base experimentation. Why does this happen (I can't remember, but I read why somewhere)in composite and not in any other armor? If it didn't, do you know what 80%Kinetic/70%Base composite would have in electricity? Like 20%. This is what happens if you try tomake high base % Padded orUbese. Why not Composite. Give a couple more electrical damage weapons (outside of MBH), and you haven't really done much but make other armors suddenly more attractive right? now, buff em up a little and you have more balance.....

The simple fix if you ask me.

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Vevy

Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:25 pm

#31

That's another dumb point about armor...looking at the adv stuff I have no the vendor now...the elec resists is actually lower than the base...so much for "special protections"

Vevy
Master Armorsmith / Master Weaponsmith

Ufgood-Zep

Fri Apr 16, 2004 4:22 pm

#32

"4) It's not the case where reducing armor and buffs is going to make you unable to do anything in the game, just not doing everything. Maybe make it so you can solo tuskens or crystal snakes, but leave the "big game mobs" for the large groups. As it stands now, everybody is a one man (or woman) wrecking crew, and there is little need to actually group. I would disagree with your comment that "Limitation == Boring Gameplay". While that may be true, lack of challenge also begets boring gameplay. Let's say you can solo every mob in the game (which you very closely can do now if properly prepared). Then what is the point of having a group in a *multiplayer* game? With the current framework, people regularly brag "I can solo a kryat, and I can solo a nightsister groups, I'm l33t""

We both pay the same $15 a month to play this game, if you WANT to group to take down a NS elder or krayt its still possible and still easier then soloing one. I go out and solo an elder and it takes about 40 minutes, you take a nice group and that time is cut down ALOT. So why is it if I choose to go by myself and do it im suddenly in the wrong?

ALOT of people play this game because we dont need to group with a large number of people i dont know or dont like to go kill anything worthwhile, we still group with people, we still socialize but not all of us like being FORCED into a group when we dont want to be. No one is telling you that you HAVE to go solo a NS elder but those of us that WANT to have that option open to us and thats how it should be, none of this force grouping **edit** simply because some people cant solo them and dont want the rest of us to not be able to do it.

"You wana paly with fire, be my quest." - Hakan
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Received Badge For: "Master of all things obvious"

Okram2k

Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:42 pm

#33

I just had one of those light bulbs pop up above my head, kinda scared my roomate, but anyway...

In SWG there are two main types of damage, Energy and Kinetic. I'd say easily 80% of all damage taken fits under those two catagories.

Under them the most common are Acid, thenHeat, thenBlast, thenStun, thenElectricity, and on down. (does anything do restraint damage? I can't think of anything that does)

So my thought was:

first, make composite the Jack of All Trades Armor.

It's good at everything, but not awesome at any one paticular thing. I say cap the base stats of armor at 55-60% and only allow a max layer advantage of 10% total (so you could get, say maximum of 65% to a stat layered, this would of course suggest to the armorsmith to use three different layeres, bringing up to say 65% energy and kinetic,80% electricity (possibly even dropping the special resist and only having layered stats have a special resistance)and everything else at 55%, still very good armor, but not as uber as today's armor)

Ubese to me, seems to fit it's rolequite well, it is the prime PvE armor, it is great for stopping kinetic attacks, and that's it. Most MASs concentrate soely on kinetic with ubese, and it does it's job very well. If something is shooting at you, however, your up the creek without a paddle.

Padded, in my opinion, should step up to the role of Anti-Ranged armor, with special resistance against Energy and Acid (the most common ranged weapon types) and be weak to stun, and kinetic. Allow Padded's Special Resists to be able to get to 80% when layeredand it could become one of the best, if anything PvNPC armor. Especially for those who love doing faction missions.

Chitin and tentel, still, to me, remain lower armors, chitin maybe become the role of mini composite. Not nearly as good, but cheap to make and great for younger players, and a way for young armorsmiths to apeal to the poorer crouds. Mabari could step up a tiny bit to be a version of ubese, which would make it insanely great for young players who are grinding missions to get exp and money, as PVE is all they really do.

There is my two cents.

dddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Oa'kron of Tempest
Retired Armorsmith, Architect, Merchant, and RSF Pilot!
Armorsmith Correspondant: November 2004 - April 2005.
Revolutionary: April 2005 - Present.
" So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers."
- Jeff Hickman

jfang

Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:11 am

#34

Vevy, to respond to your comments (in order as you mentioned them, I can't copy your comments and make it readable, I'm new to the forums):

1) The original idea would be to make a armor (maybe composite) usually the best, but have other armors be better in certain situations. If that means bringing up other armors to be as good as composite, so be it (although I believe that this would have issues in and of itself). Out of curiosity, you do you propose to make another armor equivalent to composite, where you can get 80% on almost every damage type without either reducing compositeand/or giving it more armor holes, or making every armor identical?

2) I believe he meant "damage mitigation" in that you reduce damage, not the game concept/skill "damage mitigation 3". And the comment of "encumberance can't really significantly put a dent in current buffs, so wearing armor is strictly better when fighting that not wearing armor, so armor is pure benefit and no cost" still hasn't been addressed.

3) If you have 1500 quickness and stamina, you might regenerate a little slower than 2500 quickness and stamina, but functionally, you can spam specials as long as you like with no real need for a break. Encumberance was originally intended to make you significantly slow down. If there is a slow down, it is pretty negligible. If you can spam 50 specials a minute and stopping for10 seconds with armorversus 60 without armor, will you really be able to tell the difference? (As opposed to going from 1500 quickness to 500 quickness, where you will be able to tell a *serious* difference in the drain on your action pool from using specials, as we presume was originally intended by the devs.)

4) It's not the case where reducing armor and buffsis going to make you unable to do anything in the game, just not doing everything. Maybe make it so you can solo tuskens or crystal snakes, but leave the "big game mobs" for the large groups. As it stands now, everybody is a one man (or woman) wrecking crew, and there is littleneed to actually group. I would disagree with your comment that "Limitation == Boring Gameplay". While that may be true, lack of challenge also begets boring gameplay. Let's say you can solo every mob in the game (which you very closely can do now if properly prepared). Then what is the point of having a group in a *multiplayer* game? With the current framework, people regularly brag "I can solo a kryat, and I can solo a nightsister groups, I'm l33t". I believe that the devs never intended this to be the case. The comment is that the current state of buffs and armor, composite allows this to happen (as you can be buffed so much that the encumberance, the "drawback" of armor, doesn't exist), and that several people (maybe not you) think this is bad. Do you really think it is reasonable for a single human to be able to kill a x thousand ton dragon who is one of the oldest things on Tantoine?

Xeranx

Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:21 am

#35

Vevy it takes a big person to call out that something is wrong even when it will most likely hit your bank account. 5 stars for you.

Teräs Käsi Master 9-27-2003
Master Smuggler 3-04-2004

Kesin

Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:55 am

#36

Excellent comments so far. now i have a preposal to fix the buffs problem of making encumb neglegable. i propose that they set armors to take a certain % of your secondary stats. Then there could also be a minimum ham level that has to be achieved to wear it. Kinda a simple idea that i haven't really fleshed out but say comp requires a min ham of like 800 to wear(so it will still require supplementary buffs to wear) but instead of simpy taking 800 ham it takes either 800 ham or 90% of your stat value, whichever is greater.

Then there would be a definate cost to using the armor regardless and would then raise the use of lower ham armors.

Vevy

Sat Apr 17, 2004 1:09 pm

#37

Dewi,

Of course it's subjective...read the title of the thread again. I said it was MY perspective on how armor should be. And inspite of your claim to disagree, you pretty much echoed what I said anyway. At least that was myfirst thoughtafter reading your reply anyway.

I never said Ubese was worthless, I simply said it wasn't better than compo. Ubese is the poor man's kinetic armor, and I suppose the lazy man's as well, but that doesn't make it great and it'll never be a substitute for a set of 80%+ base compo. It's just more convenient when you don't need a high-end suit. Eventually everyone will get 500k and upgrade to a suit of compo if things stay the way they are. After all, peoplewill only bebroke and lazy for so long. After awhile they'll get tired of not being able to compete and they'll want that edge, it's inevitable. Any type of armor will sell to SOMEONE, the question is what is the majority using and noone can deny compo is overwhelming the field. The price difference says it all too. What does your Ubese sell for? 100-150k a suit? If that? My 80%+ base slices sell for 900k+ a suit and I can't keep em in stock. I've raised the prices several times to try and makethe high-end pieceslast longer and they just keep pumping money into the vendors inspite of it. The players are clearly exhibiting what they think the best armor is by the lengths they're willing to go to get it. You put a suit of the best ubese up for 900k it'll sit on the vendor til h3ll freezes over. There's just no balance to it.

...not all armorsmiths grind up techniques first either. That's actually the slow way to master. Regardless, IMO, unless ALL types of armor have the same 80% potential in some area, they will never become mainstream. 80% is always better than 50% regardless of any other consideration and in the end, base will make the final determination of what everyone wants.

Vevy
Master Armorsmith / Master Weaponsmith

Drewpey

Sat Apr 17, 2004 1:52 pm

#38

This is the problem with the armor system. There shouldn't be an "edge" just for wearing composite...there should be an "Edge" for wearing the right armor at the right time versus the right weapon.

I have a BH on another server and the most I have had on him is 150k. I as well as many other people don't spend 100% of my SWG time on one character. Don't classify poor people with lazy people. There is more to the game than making credits and getting badges. People who think credits=success are not playing for fun.

80%+ base armor shouldn't be in the game unless its RIS and/or madolorian IMO...this is too powerful to have people running around in. It only makes the powerful more powerful and the weak more weak. Anyone who gets this armor should have to go to hell and back for it, period.

Composite is everywhere, and thats the problem. Its too powerful. Nerf it. Anything that protects everything should be low. There needs to be PROs and CONs to every armor, not just with HAM costs but with protections. If you want to hide behind a "protect all" armor, then you should have lower stats than a person who takes a chance going into a fight with a heat/cold special protection armor. This is the way armor should be, but they have taken the best out ofmost types of armor and combined it into composite.

You mention thats "the slow way to master" but again, you missed the point. The point of playing this isn't to "get to master so I can make composite" its to "make the best armor I can". If you make armor types worth making, then people won't be so hard pressed to get to master. If they are making money selling 80/20 heat mabari (if that were possible) then instead of losing brain cells grinding, you are having fun, making a name for yourself, and providing the community with good armor, and doing more than breaking even)

Also, I like how your post is almost proud of price gouging....you mention raising prices for no other reason but to gain money(or to "makethe high-end pieceslast longer") but why would you want pieces just sitting on your vendor....why not just move them at a fair price? Do you really think the effort to get that 80%+ base of comp is worth 900k+? Its not...there is no extra effort involved other than having a slicer friend spend some time with your armor, and you just charge more for your sliced armor too.

Don't come back with the old "supply vs demand" excuse. Yes, I have had several Econ classes, but this is a game, not real life. Once you start trying to calculate where supply meets demand, you start ruining the game. When you tell a newbie he has to give you everything he owns for your nice armor, you start ruining the game. When you start trying to corner the market, and force other armorsmiths out of business, you start ruining the game. Some people take SWG business too seriously...we are all here to have fun. You may think overpricing goods is "fun", but its only at the expense of someone else's "fun". Make armor, sell armor, be happy and make others happy. ITS A GAME!

~Anden of Starsider
~Dewi of Scylla (retired)

I want my GCW!

Borwin

Sat Apr 17, 2004 3:57 pm

#39

Implement more faction specific armor schematics that have different strengths and weaknesses per armor type.

Here are some examples of armor that the dev's could implement for the Empire:

Snow Trooper Armor : Base Resistances = Composite.
- Special Protection = Cold.
- Vulnerability = Heat , Restraint / Special Damage.
Regular Storm Trooper Armor : Base Resistances = Composite.
- Special Protection = Stun.
- Vulnerability = Blast , Restraint / Special Damage.
Storm Trooper Armor (Black) : Base Resistances = Composite.
- Special Protection = Blast
- Vulnerability = Acid , Restraint / Special Damage.
Red Imperial Guard Armor : Base Resistances = Composite.
- Special Protection = Heat
- Vulnerability = Cold , Restraint / Special Damage.
Imperial Scout Armor ( Jungle ) : Base Resistances = Composite.

Special Protection = Acid
Vulnerability = Electricity , Restraint / Special Damage.

Rebel Armor: Please forgive me but I dont know of more than 2 different rebel military uniforms in the movies:

Rebel Snow Trooper Armor: Base Resistances = Composite.

Special Protection = Cold
Vulnerability = Heat, Restraint / Special Damage.

Rebel Marine Armor: Base Resistances = Composite.

Special Protection = Stun
Vulnerability = Blast, Restraint / Special Damage.

Neutral Armor : Would be allowable by everyone but wouldnt offer any stun protection since most npc's only deal kinetic damage. The exclusion to stun protection could be the upcoming Mandalorian Armor which would be drop or quest based.

Mandalorian Armor ( Rare ) : Base resistances would be at 70%
- Special Protection = None
- Vulnerability = None
Composite Armor would be changed to work as follows:
- Special Protection = Electricity
- Vulnerability = Stun, Restraint / Special Damage.

Restraint Damage / Special Damage would a special damage type that the dev's could add to certain npc's in the game that arent meant to be soloed such as krayts. The Rebels would have their own faction specific armor and each of these items would be craftable by armorsmiths. This would put equal emphasis on all weapon damage types so that people wont feel the need to only seek out stun damage weaponry.

Also I would change special costs to depend on the quality of Armor / Weapons instead of on buffs. Currently everything depends upon buffs therefore making Low HAM cost Weapons / Armor worthless and this needs to be changed so that smiths that create Low HAM items will actually be in demand.

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