Carbineer Archive
Thread: Regarding todays announcment of carbiners (9/18)
In order for this to be viable, this is the only way to make it work... Heavy weapons should be the most powerful weapon . Figure out what the highest damage of the best hw is going to be. Don't want anyone to be able to 1 shot? Then the max damage on the best hw needs to accommodate for that. So you get the best hw with the best skill needs to less than say 600-700 damage in PvP. Everything else should be built down from that. Rifles do 3/4 that damage. Carbs do 1/2 that damage. Pistols do 1/4 that damage. Then add your speed modifiers so that the best weapon of each class with the best special for each weapon with speed taken into account does about the same damage. Once this is sorted out, THEN you build your environment around you with mobs ham/armor/damage based on the already established fighting classes.
Problem with the balancing is they are doing it with kneejerk reactions and apparently trying to balance pvp and pve seperately, combined with trying to balance the various fighting classes with each other. Now it's a tangled mess that I don't think will ever get straightened out.
Kaffis wrote:
Well, see. If they're doubling pistol speed, I think they can make enough of a case to halve pistol damage and not take flak for it (aside from idiots). So I think they can keep pistols right where they are without really being percieved as nerfing them. So now your rifle has to be 150-783 to be equal -- but are you taking into account armor rating (and yes, I know FWG5 is heat, I'll get to that in a second)? Let's equalize them against AR0 stuff -- assume an E11 rifle for AR2 (since we're talking FWG5, not DX2 -- balancing a T21 to those numbers would be easier for the extra AR). That's about 56% increased damage, so we can figure roughly 2/3s the target actual damage for the listed damage. Thus, you need a rifle with stats of 100-500.. That doesn't look too bad, to me. It's probably still an increase in damage to go with the decrease in speed, but not so much that you'll be one-shotting moderate mind pools (I don't think?), right?
Now, I said I'd get to the heat damage, right? Well, to account for this, I think they might be well served to let vulnerabilities take effective AR down to zero *before* the AR difference is calculated -- so rifles and carbines with both AR and specialty damage get bonus damage on vulnerabilities -- the FWG5 has no AR, and so would lose relative ground there to let the other two make up for the FWG5's high damage stats.
You are absolutely correct about the AR rating and the E11 (Shouldn't the E11 be a carbine by the way?). Also of the same level is the Jawa rifle. Which I don't believe has an AR so that stats would have to be what I did quote to equal. I probably should have clarified that my base stats would be for an AR0 rifle of the same level (Rifle IV Marksman) to the FWG5.
I didn't account for any heat damage bonus since it's my understand that only takes effect if it has a vulnerability to the damage type. I assumed in my example that the creature wasn't vulnerable to it nor resisting to it. Something I probably should have clarified.
There will still be one shot PvP kills though. Those damage ratings are for base damage. Using a special is a multiplies. I believe it's 2x for headshot2 and 2.5x for headshot3 (should be the same for your actionshot2 and 3). Now even with the AR calculation you gave of 100-500 damage with AR2. If the person is wearing no armor or more specifically no helmet the damage can go up to 1100 at max. Averaging around 700 lets say. So 700 * 2.5 (headshot3) *0.25 (PvP reduction) is an average of 438 on average and high of 688.
Close but not quite one shot kills on an average mind pool which I assume to be about 700. At a 600 average you may get a one shot kill on a high end hit. Mine is 1000 but I'm a riflemen and use it for my specials. I've seen some really low ones on combat specialists. Except for one small fact. All these stats are for unsliced, non-power up weapons, with out kryat or other creature tissue enhancement either. These can increase damage by 25-50%? I've seen 30% powerups so I'm only guessing at the high end at 50%. Now you are looking (at 50%) at an average of 657 and high of 1032. That will be a one shot kill on the average player.
When I mentioned a possible solution of nerfing the pistol I meant exactly what you metioned. Cutting the damage in half. But then what is the point? Why go thru all the work of coding the changes to cut the damage in half and double the speed to .5 seconds when you get the exact same result? In that case it's much more efficient to leave pistols alone. Increase carbines to say 2sec, rifles to 3sec and double and triple the respective weapons. You'd only be making two sets of changes instead of three.
Based solely on what the post said I get the impression they are going to break more things than this is going to fix. I'd much rather see them working on fixing the broken skills we (I know you guys have a lot of broken ones too) have before making this kind of massive change. Especially if, as they said, they are going to do the speed changes first. Then look into maybe increasing damge. They need to do both at the same time otherwise you will probably be seeing a fair amount of people leaving rifleman and carbineer to pistoleer.
They'd be the flavor of the month. More damage over the same amount of time, less penalties for shooting while running, a very minimul melee modifier (1.1X I believe, Rifleman is 2.5X, don't know what yours is), and their long range mods are about the same as everyone elses. No real disadvantages.
Good discussion so far and all costructive.
At this point I would like to interject the combo idea and must say on the surface seems like a very bad idea in respect to pvp.
Combos are great in mortal combat, not so good in an mmorpg where lag is in the formula and single macro strings can kill people without much thought.
If they are going to go throu with it I hope it is worked pve first.
Waste Kaffis and others:
Just so you know, Dan posted again today about severl issues, including weapon speed caps:
Speed Caps:
So .5 second for pistoleers was an example. It’s not guranteed to be that.. It might still be 1.0 seconds due to server performance.
Any weapon that has it’s attacks slowed down due to the speed cap will have a commensurate damage increase to go along with it.
So I'm sure they will look carefully into the issue before implementing it. I expect 1, 2, 3 sec speed caps for pistols, carbines, and rifles. And with that setup, rifles will probably do twice the base damage of pistols. So you only need 100-500 to be equal, or a displayed rifle stats of 67-333 because of AP. Thus, the mind damage of the average mindshot will be about 292, instead of 438, and a high of about 459, instead of 688 using Wastes numbers.So if you get lucky, you will almost 1 shot kill the guy with 700 mind, but on average it will take three shots.
Dillos wrote:
Waste Kaffis and others:
So I'm sure they will look carefully into the issue before implementing it. I expect 1, 2, 3 sec speed caps for pistols, carbines, and rifles. And with that setup, rifles will probably do twice the base damage of pistols. So you only need 100-500 to be equal, or a displayed rifle stats of 67-333 because of AP. Thus, the mind damage of the average mindshot will be about 292, instead of 438, and a high of about 459, instead of 688 using Wastes numbers.So if you get lucky, you will almost 1 shot kill the guy with 700 mind, but on average it will take three shots.
I also saw the post. Some good news there. However your analysis is slightly incorrect. A rifle would have to be triple base damage of a pistol to be equal (3sec v 1sec is 3x). The carbine would be twice. It will reduce the likelyhood of one shotting in PvP to only very high end damage on below average pools. Which I find acceptable. Anyone with only 400 in a pool shouldn't expect to take more than one or two shots at most before dropping.
For the other good news check out the following thread. They are looking into MOB warping. Guess they got tired of reading all those bug reports I sent in. I was doing a bug report each time it happened to me. 
I must say. For my first time on the Carbineer board you guys have been great. Very friendly and lots of good info. Best of luck to all of you in your chosen profession.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=570065
There's one more thing to consider, Waste. I am of the suspicion that speed-cap riflemen are currently viewed as being more powerful than they should be. Those 7 and 8 second delays are there for a reason, and completely negated by the (broken) speed mod system.
There's probably going to be an overall decrease in DPS for master riflemen. Of course, I'd expect similar decreases for BH hybrids for carbine and pistol -- I have a strong suspicion that most special moves won't be able to hit caps under this modified system. At least, if they're smart. Because, just like slow weapons, slow moves are a balancing point ignored by high speed mods, too.
And, perhaps they won't be bothered by the potential to one-shot an unhelmeted player with a solid hit -- we certainly saw plenty of helmets (even when accompanied by minimal or no other armor) in the movies.
I'm just saying that we know little enough, and there are plentiful enough options, that I'm not going to get overly concerned yet.
I think the post today helped some of our concerns. I agree we have to wait and see what happens.
I'm not sure why they would think rifles are overpowered right now. I've seen pistol with base stats as good as most rifles. Decreasing the DPS would probably be a bad idea. Though it male PvP last longer it would have an adverse effect on PvE. I think it's safe to say that there is more PvE going on than PvP so this would have a larger negative effect.
Hopefully they'll also change the accuracy range modifiers too. The graph of the range mods are kind of screwy and need to be evened out. But that is for another day.
Like you said. Have to wait and see what the finally decide upon before we can really do some number crunching and compare.
I am glad and disappointed at the same time with this annoucement. I am glad for the HAM cost reduction but at the same time, I find AoE attacks to be more trouble than they are worth in many cases. One has to remember they can easily hit extra mobs therefore drawing extra aggro on you or hit the lair and spawn 1-3 extra creatures. I have seen numerous times where a simple AoE skill ultimately results in the hole group dying because of this. Therefore, finding out Legshot3 is going AoE disappointed me. In this post-posture/KD nerf age, I have already removed Actionshot2 from my tool bar. I really don't think the Devs understand how hunting works on the hard planets nor do they understand this rock/paper/scissor-health/action/mind system they have created. Even using random fire or random fire specials, things die from the health bar. Groups kill by pounding a mob a single mob. A targeted action hit is of little use in anything less than a group of carbineers and an AoE action hit is even less usefull.
I am also VERY very concerned about these speed changes. First of all it breaks my character in which I have worked hard to get it so my character fires a damage-sliced carbine (so a slow carbine) with crippleshot at the 1 second cap. Second, the changes in speed break the combos and will very likely give a huge boost to pistols that the Devs do not forsee (lets be honest...the Devs are reactionists not big-thinkers carefully thinking through solutions and problems). For example, lets assume the pistols, carbines and rifles all get a hard speed cap of 1, 2 and 3 seconds respectively. We will also lock the DPS constant do a rifle does 300 damage per hit and a carbine 200 damage. Now, lets assume you geta 25% damage bonus after each hit. Lets do some math:
Pistols:0 sec =100 damage,1 sec =125 damage,2 sec = 156 damage,3 sec = 195 damage,4 seconds = 244 damage, 5 sec = 305 damage, 6 sec =381 (Damage after 6 seconds = 1506)
Carbines:0 sec = 200 damage,2 seconds = 250,4 sec = 312,6 seconds= 390 (Damage after 6 seconds = 1152)
Rifles: 0 sec = 300 damage, 3 seconds = 375 damage, 6 seconds = 468 damage. (Damage after 6 seconds = 1143)
I have made many assumptions about how damage will compund and that dps will be even but the point here is that pistols, by firing faster, will reach the "end-move" combo much faster than carbines and MUCH faster than rifles. This will give pistols a huge, huge boost. Further, ifthe pistoleers combo is "broken" somehow, it will be quick for them to start over. Imagine if the end-move combo is after 5 hits. Pistols do this is 5 seconds, carbines in 10 seconds and rifles in 15 seconds. Break the combo after the 4th hit and the you are looking at getting another pistol combo in 5 seconds as opposed to 10 more or 15 more for the carbine or rifle.
I hate to complain about something that is not even out yet, but this type of system really scares me since it will undoubtly favor the pistoleers unless the devs really do some very creative thinking. Second it scares me because a straight master carbineer cannot even hit the current speed cap because of lack of speed mods...only a BH can hit that speed cap (it takes +85 carbine speed for me to fire a 3.5 sec laser carbine using crippleshot at 1 second).