Bounty Hunter Archive
Thread: Combat Balance Delayed
ScoutMastr
Sat Jul 17, 2004 8:20 am
#53
For the most part, this could hold us over until the rebalance/revamp, but the CL100 cap, if not higher, is a must. Again, I would hold off the BE portion until you've had a chance tochat with the BE correspondent.
Vertexon wrote:
Here's my list so far.One likely addition to this could be raising max number of pet levels (so people could have two CL 50s out at once, for example). Despite the short term satisfaction it would produce, I'm not sure if meddling with pet stats directly is something we would want on a "temporary" basis, knowing that one day it would get changed back yet again. I'm certainly open to discussion on the ramifications of that.
This list was taken right out of the "Making CH Competive" and "Issue/Request List" threads (with the exception of the newEmbolden/Enrage stuff)
Problem: Pets are very easy for players to kill in PvP
Solution: Allow pets to benefit from the 75% PvP damage reduction (or remove this reduction from players)
agreed
Problem: The special attacks "Poison," "Disease," and "Knockdown" do not work with the UseSpecial training commands
Solution: Fix the UseSpecial training commands so they work with these three pet abilities
agreed
Problem:Animalmelee attacks only do Kinetic damage... the most commonly resisted form of damage in SWG
Solution: Give all animals (both wild and pet) a variety of damage types
agreed, especially if they can give BE petsa variety also.
Problem: Some Bio-Engineered pets are brokenly powerful, trivializing the CH's taming skills and giving non-CH too powerful of a pet
yes, some NON-CH pets are not what's intended, and the devs have been informed by the BE community. We are hoping for a fix ASAP--not "pet validity checks", but a fix.
Solution: Bring Bio-Engineered pets in line with wild animals. Apply more weight to things like Kinetic resist, Light Armor, HAM, and special attacks to discourage brokenly overspecialized pets
No, No, and NO! .../sigh...I apologize for yelling, butBE pets are supposed to be better than a wild counterpart with the same CL, it's to encourage CH's to buy BE pets. That'salso why BE's can make some pets that don't have babies. As for "overspecialization"...are you serious? Specialization is the key to our craft, in fact we are endeavoring to further specialize pets for the CH community. The stats you mentioned are extremely weighted, and we have to be very careful and try many recipes/experimentations to come up with viable pets. FYI, As bad as we have it when it comes to storage for our pets, BE's have terrible dna storage problems, because they don't stack--this makes every sample very valuable--so when I tell you that we have to try many recipes to come up with these specialized pets, that's A LOT of dna--but specialization is what makes the process worth the frustration. You should discuss this with the BE correspondent before submitting.
Problem: Not enough variety in wild pets, particularly at the high end. Leads to the few available choices becoming "Flavor of the Month"
Solution: Make all creatures CL 70 and under have a chance of spawning babies
Again, I think some creatures aren't tamable because it gives CH's a reason to buy BE pets--a solution to this would be to make all creatures tamable that are CL100 and under, but also give BE's access to all types of creature skins.
Problem: Pets still sometimes lose vitality in PvP, despite the changes in Publish 9
Solution: Have QA examine this issue and make recommendations for repairing it
agreed
Problem: Pet defenses are weak compared to those used by players (defense mods, mitigation, 80% composite armor, etc)
Solution: Nerf player defenses. Or boost creature defenses to compensate. Perhaps even a short duration boost, like adding defense increases to the skill Embolden Pets
agreed
Problem: Petdamage per second is weak compared to those used by players
Solution: Nerf player damage. Or boost creature damage to compensate. Perhaps even a short duration boost, like adding damage increases to the skill Enrage Pets
agreed
Problem: Pets are extremely vulnerable to state effects (DOTs, Dizzy, Intimdate, Warcry, etc)
Solution: Boost pet defense against state effects. Could take the form of across the board creature revamp, bonuses embedded in CH skill tree advancement, or bonuses embedded in short duration abilities like Embolden Pets
agreed
Problem: Mounted combat is tactically weaker and riskier than combat on foot. Makes mounts very undesirable compared to vehicles.
Solution: More robust mounted combat system. Allow players to use special attacks while mounted. Allow pet itself to attack while mounted. Add area of effect "trample damage" to mounted pets. Add mount wearable armor.
agreed
Problem: The skill "Jedi Mind Trick" is basically an "I Win" button against Creature Handlers.
Solution: Change Jedi Mind Trick so it does not affect player-owned pets.
I don't have a Jedi, but I'm not convinced on this one. Has anyone ever seen this work? I think some testing is in order--we have to keep in mind that Jedi are very resourceful, and manipulating creatures should be considered a legitimate power--perhaps this ability does a huge drain on their force pool?
Problem: One big pet has much more tanking power than two or three smaller pets
Solution: When a CH calls multiple pets, apply a stat bonus to them for "working together." See Ultima Online's "pack instincts" system
interesting, but this would have to depend on the stats of the pets.
Problem: Some pets run away constantly during battle, even when at full health. Some "body types" more affected than others (i.e. gronda, gulginaw, reptilian flier, graul)
Solution: Probably related to problems with ideal attack range. Send to QA and work on improving for the affected pets.
agreed
digiwrath
Sat Jul 17, 2004 8:46 am
#54
you still have to agree that current cl 10 animals are just brokenly powerful. something has to be done about them to make them more of a lvl 10 pet. 6-8k ham with 14%+kinetic resist isridiculous for the clvl that it is.
ScoutMastr wrote:
Solution: Bring Bio-Engineered pets in line with wild animals. Apply more weight to things like Kinetic resist, Light Armor, HAM, and special attacks to discourage brokenly overspecialized pets
No, No, and NO! .../sigh...I apologize for yelling, butBE pets are supposed to be better than a wild counterpart with the same CL, it's to encourage CH's to buy BE pets. That'salso why BE's can make some pets that don't have babies. As for "overspecialization"...are you serious? Specialization is the key to our craft, in fact we are endeavoring to further specialize pets for the CH community. The stats you mentioned are extremely weighted, and we have to be very careful and try many recipes/experimentations to come up with viable pets. FYI, As bad as we have it when it comes to storage for our pets, BE's have terrible dna storage problems, because they don't stack--this makes every sample very valuable--so when I tell you that we have to try many recipes to come up with these specialized pets, that's A LOT of dna--but specialization is what makes the process worth the frustration. You should discuss this with the BE correspondent before submitting.
ScoutMastr
Sat Jul 17, 2004 10:51 am
#55
digiwrath wrote:
you still have to agree that current cl 10 animals are just brokenly powerful. something has to be done about them to make them more of a lvl 10 pet. 6-8k ham with 14%+kinetic resist isridiculous for the clvl that it is.
ScoutMastr wrote:
Solution: Bring Bio-Engineered pets in line with wild animals. Apply more weight to things like Kinetic resist, Light Armor, HAM, and special attacks to discourage brokenly overspecialized pets
No, No, and NO! .../sigh...I apologize for yelling, butBE pets are supposed to be better than a wild counterpart with the same CL, it's to encourage CH's to buy BE pets. That'salso why BE's can make some pets that don't have babies. As for "overspecialization"...are you serious? Specialization is the key to our craft, in fact we are endeavoring to further specialize pets for the CH community. The stats you mentioned are extremely weighted, and we have to be very careful and try many recipes/experimentations to come up with viable pets. FYI, As bad as we have it when it comes to storage for our pets, BE's have terrible dna storage problems, because they don't stack--this makes every sample very valuable--so when I tell you that we have to try many recipes to come up with these specialized pets, that's A LOT of dna--but specialization is what makes the process worth the frustration. You should discuss this with the BE correspondent before submitting.
I absolutely agree, and so do the devs...unfortunately they've been so busy with other projects, that they haven't set aside the time to actually fix the problem. The BE community is very concerned about this because we can't be confident that the non-CH pets we sell are valid. The "checks" they put in the game, really do not help the matter, they've only caused further frustration. We are hoping this is resolved very soon.
Kyreal
Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:21 am
#56
vert i agree with most of your suggestions.
cl10 super pets need to be deleted anything over 3k ham and 10-15 kinetic should be poofed. no reason a non-ch has control to an 8-10k ham pet, thats just pure bs.
only other thing i suggest is for mounts.
imho, vehicles should be banned from dathomir, endor and yavin. reason? no player cities, no vendors, these are the pure adventure and hunting planets. you have no reason to be super fast on these planets and vehicles make it 2 easy for people to escape danger. these planets should be mounts only thus making mounts viable and needed by all players and giving CH/BE some kind of a creature market back to the populace.
Nuttynoah
Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:38 am
#57
Hi all
Ye i know i have said this before, well im going to say it again.........
Fix the bugs first like the anouning pet auto-store...etc
Give pets more damage at the moment its a joke.....
I agree with a lot thats been said in this thread and other threads about CH ideas....
NO CAPTAIN, I SEE NO SHIPS JUST HARDSHIPS
Seiryuu
Sat Jul 17, 2004 1:06 pm
#58
I have updated the links again. Playing musical web pages is fun!
Vertexon
Sat Jul 17, 2004 2:13 pm
#59
ScoutMastr wrote:
Solution: Bring Bio-Engineered pets in line with wild animals. Apply more weight to things like Kinetic resist, Light Armor, HAM, and special attacks to discourage brokenly overspecialized pets
No, No, and NO! .../sigh...I apologize for yelling, butBE pets are supposed to be better than a wild counterpart with the same CL, it's to encourage CH's to buy BE pets.
BE pets are likelysupposed to be better for the CL, but I think most people would objectively agree that what's possible since the revamp is extreme (I'm not just referring to non-CH pets, either). It's not possible to have wild twins with Light armor unless you go with the Kinetic Vulnerable Riverside Sulfur Mynock. However, not only can you have Light Armor, Highly Kinetic Resistant BE twins...there are recipes floating around for havingthose qualities in triplets. That's not just better, that'sincreasing the power of a CH who uses BE pets vs. Wild pets by 300%.
That'salso why BE's can make some pets that don't have babies.
That's a possibility, but it could also have been due to other design considerations (or simple oversight). There are a few body types that are tamable in the wild yet cannot be Bio-Engineered.
As for "overspecialization"...are you serious? Specialization is the key to our craft, in fact we are endeavoring to further specialize pets for the CH community. The stats you mentioned are extremely weighted, and we have to be very careful and try many recipes/experimentations to come up with viable pets.
Overspecialization is part of the imbalance. Clones that are designed for PvE are being heavily skewed toward the qualities I mentioned (Kinetic resist, Light Armor, low damage, high HAM). Specialization in generalis an important andvalued part of the system... but overspecialization is imbalanced. You don't seecreatures with low damage, 50% Kinetic resist, Light Armor, and vulnerabilities to everything else walking around in the wild. Fighting something like that wouldn't be very fun,nor(I argue) wouldwielding such a dramatically skewed pet in the Kinetic-dominated PvE world. But these kinds of pets are exactly what is possible in the current BE system.
FYI, As bad as we have it when it comes to storage for our pets, BE's have terrible dna storage problems, because they don't stack--this makes every sample very valuable--so when I tell you that we have to try many recipes to come up with these specialized pets, that's A LOT of dna--but specialization is what makes the process worth the frustration.
I do lurk on the Bio-Engineer forum, and understand the difficulties Bio-Engineers go through (particularly those who docontinual experimenting, rather thanrelying onalready esablished recipes). But some (not all) of the products ofthe BElabors are unbalancing gameplay and draining fun from the Creature Handling. Part of the inherentfun and appeal of the CH profession for some folksis searchingdangerous alien worlds for cool pets. That needs to come back, but there first needs to be a reason tolook for those pets. Ideally a balance will be struck in which both Tamers and Bio-Engineers co-exist.
You should discuss this with the BE correspondent before submitting.
I'm always happy to discuss issues with anyone.
Dodece
Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:17 pm
#60
I hate to burst anyones bubble but if ninety percent of their staff is in the jtl. Exactly who do you think would do this stuff. There is nobody left to do anything. The reason for the questions is to get people to talk instead of hit the cancel button. Nobody to read your ideas or to impliment them.
We all got punched in the face a few days ago. Do not walk right into another knuckle sandwich.This is just another way to lie and pacify you. To do these things codeing is involved. There is nobody to do any codeing for them. Do not be blinded by a cookie. This is now standard dev stalling tactic number one. Ask people what they want. Pretend to pay attention, and since they think you are doing something for them they will not leave.
Please show them that you are smarter then that.
My subscription ends in two weeks. Like so many year long customers. I no longer have any hope for this game. The lies the horrid bugs. The complete desire to take me for every cent they can. I can list of the thousand wrong things in the game, but we all know them by now.
MormiHalba
Sat Jul 17, 2004 6:20 pm
#61
As a brand new Master BE I think BE should be able to mix and match HAM to Damage to actually create low CL pets, but the DEVs need to give us some hard Stats or formula for CL as in if you increase HAM by 1k you lose 10 points off damage as an example. Combat droids also need to get the same formula and also count into the CH pet tree. By this I mean any commandable PvE pet (excluding Overt faction pets) can either be a high HAM/ Min Damage tank for the ranged profession or a Low HAM/ Higher Damage Ranged pet for the Melee guys. They should be able to be wild tamed, BE created or Droid created.
Also I see nothing wrong with DE being able to make higher level droids but you must have the required CH skills to operate them. This is because we will never get any new Droid handler profession.
As to the discussions on if this game is viable anymore, I for one am waiting for the release of World of Warcraft then it will be Goodbye to Jedi Wars. I call it Jedi wars because that is what it is becoming if you are not Jedi you don't matter. There is lots of broken professions in this game but if Jedi are NOT affected nothing will be done take the Combat Medic overpower was only fixed when it started to impinge on Jedi owning the world.
In summary unless they give us some hard stats I will CONTINUE to make as good a product as I can for the separate customer bases.
GFoyle
Sat Jul 17, 2004 6:57 pm
#62
One thing to bear in mind with some of those ideas though:
Pets use the same code and stast as standard wild critters - increasing pet damage, for instance, would also mean an increased wild creature damage, which has implications for PvE combat balance.
I'm not saying "don't do it" - but it's certainly something the devs will have to take into consideration.
Frankly its this sort of thing that has led to the combat balance delay.
They aren't just trying to balancea dozen elitecombat professions - they also have to balance every combination of those professions. 144 professions assuming 2 elite masteries, several hundred more if you consider dabbling across multiple professions (hence the infamous "defence stacking").
This was why CH got "rebalanced" in the first place, it was just too good when used in combination with one of the other Elite combat professions (as usual though, they went too far :robottongue
.
.CH is unique in that it can be fully utilised in tandem with the other elite combat professions. With any other pair of professions your weapon determines which skill set you use. While this situation exists CH can never be allowed to equal any of the other professions in effectiveness or we'll be back in the "Pet Wars" situation we were in before the creature revamp.
Basically we haveonly a fewchoices:
1.) Accept that creatures can never be allowed to approach the damage -dealing capablility of other combat professions (although something could possibly be done with thier tanking ablilites in comparison with melee classes).
2.) Make CH an "exclusive" profession, through a "control device" requirement, a significant personal combat penalty when controlling pets, increasing the SP requirement so excluding gaining another profession to master level or some other mechanism.
3.) Something else which I'm not creative enough to think of.
Mind you, with the number of Jedi running around, combat balance is turning into a bit of a farce anyway,
Finding Jedi is easy - just follow the trail of corpses on Endor, Dant, etc. It's now far easier to find a Jedi than an Image Desgner,Architect, etc. (OK, so I'm a tad ticked off that my gurreck hunt was abandoned becuse 4 of the little buggers had slaughtered everything in thier path).
Quite how they are going the prevent the GCW turning into anything other than "Jedi Wars" I have no idea.
Oops! Sort of drifted off-topic there (ish - it all relates to the rebalance though).
I'm trying to keep a positive mental attitude about all this, but it's difficult. I'm trying to forget about all the crappy design decisions made in the past that have led to all this and concentrate on how they are going to turn this into a great game in the future. (Without thinking that they are going to make the same **edit**-ups all over again and make things even worse).
/rant mode on
Oh sod it! Who am I kidding.
They made a complete balls up of Jedi implimentaion to start with and have completely cocked it up again with the revamp.
Making Jedi achiveable through quests and tasks (no matter how difficult) was always absolutely guarenteed to produce a large population of Jedi. It was freaking inevitable. PA's have been set up with the sole purpose of getting Jedi for thier members and the "Jedi Quests" will make this even easier. How many of those AFK entertainers are doing it solely for "the love of the profession"?
They should have coded a hard cap on the number of Jedi on a server - then we couldn't have had half a dozen Jedi hanging around posing at every major starport.
Welcome to "Jedi Wars" - forget anything else. After the revamp everyone will be rubbish at combatin comparison toone class, which (almost) everyone will be questing for to the exclusion of all else.
Over the last year an awful lot of design and development decisions appear tohave been made solely with the aim of keeping the game population occupied until the next "magical fix" and not with the long term viability of the game in mind. Consequently they've stored up a whole heap of issues with the game that are getting progressively more difficuklt, if not impossible, to resolve.
As a result I personally have very little faith in SOE's ability to deliver viable solutions to any of the issues currently facing the game.
I'm sorry about that - ! just had to vent somewhere and this was it.
/rant mode off
/em goes to fix a large drink
TheLoneBowler
Sat Jul 17, 2004 9:09 pm
#63
Cudayn wrote:
Move Master CH level cap to 100. <-------- This one definately. Do a quick realign of the level boxes and that way all CHs can enjoy this benefit.
/pokes head in
/raises eyebrow
This would be nice
On a side note, In order for creature handler to equal the damage output of another player on it's own (pet control device idea) pets would probably have to be in the 150 cl range. Damage isn't as high as a nother player even at that level, butpets would get medium armor.
JodoKai
Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:39 am
#64
GFoyle wrote:One thing to bear in mind with some of those ideas though:Pets use the same code and stast as standard wild critters - increasing pet damage, for instance, would also mean an increased wild creature damage, which has implications for PvE combat balance.
This is why if put the increase damage and defense bonuses in a CH skill like Enrage or Embolden the only thing that would be effected would be CH pets.
ScoutMastr
Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:45 am
#65
Vertexon wrote:
ScoutMastr wrote:
Solution: Bring Bio-Engineered pets in line with wild animals. Apply more weight to things like Kinetic resist, Light Armor, HAM, and special attacks to discourage brokenly overspecialized pets
No, No, and NO! .../sigh...I apologize for yelling, butBE pets are supposed to be better than a wild counterpart with the same CL, it's to encourage CH's to buy BE pets.
BE pets are likelysupposed to be better for the CL, but I think most people would objectively agree that what's possible since the revamp is extreme (I'm not just referring to non-CH pets, either). It's not possible to have wild twins with Light armor unless you go with the Kinetic Vulnerable Riverside Sulfur Mynock. However, not only can you have Light Armor, Highly Kinetic Resistant BE twins...there are recipes floating around for havingthose qualities in triplets. That's not just better, that'sincreasing the power of a CH who uses BE pets vs. Wild pets by 300%.
I'm no mathematician, but I think we're being a bit loose with our math here...300%? First we'd have to conclude that having armor makes a BE pet 100% better than the wild, right? Doesn't matter really, the cloning process is all about compromises. We may sacrifice those resists we feel aren't important so that light armor and kinetic come through at a lowered CL--that's common sense, but ironically you've already suggested the answer: Give wild creatures a variety of different damage types. I'm not sure how they'd do that though, considering that energy, heat, cold, blast, and electric, would probably not be in their natural capabilities-stun and acid?...should be ok. It's something for the devs to think about though as they introduce new creatures to the game. Even if just kinetic, stun, and acid damage were used EQUALLY throughout the wild creatures, that would be enough to keep BE's from concentrating on kinetic/armor only--then there's the fact that wild creatures usually hit the health more often, so we stagger HAM accordingly to save a few CL points. If the HAM were being hit more evenly, we wouldn't see BE pets with 12k/7k/5k HAM's running about. You simply don't limit (nerf) a BE's ability, just to "quick fix" this problem--as a CH, you especially, should know better...for shame Vert.
That'salso why BE's can make some pets that don't have babies.
That's a possibility, but it could also have been due to other design considerations (or simple oversight). There are a few body types that are tamable in the wild yet cannot be Bio-Engineered.
...that gives us CH's more reason to tame wild creatures, it's all good.
As for "overspecialization"...are you serious? Specialization is the key to our craft, in fact we are endeavoring to further specialize pets for the CH community. The stats you mentioned are extremely weighted, and we have to be very careful and try many recipes/experimentations to come up with viable pets.
Overspecialization is part of the imbalance. Clones that are designed for PvE are being heavily skewed toward the qualities I mentioned (Kinetic resist, Light Armor, low damage, high HAM). Specialization in generalis an important andvalued part of the system... but overspecialization is imbalanced. You don't seecreatures with low damage, 50% Kinetic resist, Light Armor, and vulnerabilities to everything else walking around in the wild. Fighting something like that wouldn't be very fun,nor(I argue) wouldwielding such a dramatically skewed pet in the Kinetic-dominated PvE world. But these kinds of pets are exactly what is possible in the current BE system.
No, you don't see creatures like that in the wild, that's what we do, and it's why we became BE's--to make specialized pets...I can not stress this enough. Who are you to tell us they're "over" specialized? Specialization = efficiency, it would be inefficient to clone in resists that a CH will not encounter while using the pet, thus upping the CL. However, in the wild, creature stats are more evenly distributed--giving them a wide variety of uses. As for the fun factor--trust me, with our current combat capabilities, these pets aren't what's killing our fun.
FYI, As bad as we have it when it comes to storage for our pets, BE's have terrible dna storage problems, because they don't stack--this makes every sample very valuable--so when I tell you that we have to try many recipes to come up with these specialized pets, that's A LOT of dna--but specialization is what makes the process worth the frustration.
I do lurk on the Bio-Engineer forum, and understand the difficulties Bio-Engineers go through (particularly those who docontinual experimenting, rather thanrelying onalready esablished recipes). But some (not all) of the products ofthe BElabors are unbalancing gameplay and draining fun from the Creature Handling. Part of the inherentfun and appeal of the CH profession for some folksis searchingdangerous alien worlds for cool pets. That needs to come back, but there first needs to be a reason tolook for those pets. Ideally a balance will be struck in which both Tamers and Bio-Engineers co-exist.
I think this was a bogus argument from the start. If finding and taming creatures is what a CH found fun about the profession, then they still do. With rares out there now, it's even better--but if it's power you want, then all it becomes is "I want my power for free"...you'd be willing to invest the time in searching for that most powerful tamable, and I can respect that, but for some reason, some of those same CH's can't respect the time and effort BE's put into their craft, and therefore call for nerfs. Look at it this way: a CH can find, tame, and use a wild pet to make money doing missions, or possibly even sell the creature. A BE can make a pet, but with no CH skill, that pet has to be sold. There's no other way for that creation to pay off for that BE. A BE pet's stats have to be skewed in order for a CH to feel it's worth it--if the stats are close to a wild counterpart, then the CH would be more likely to do the "fun" thing, and go find the wild (baby)...so long BE market.
You should discuss this with the BE correspondent before submitting.
I'm always happy to discuss issues with anyone.
...again, I'd leave this one off of the "quick fix until Combat revamp" list. It could be game breaking for the BE community, but it's just a minor annoyance for some of the CH community.