Pistoleer Archive
Thread: How Speed Works In The Game: The #1 Issue Facing Pistoleers
Noules000 ,
If it were true, they need to fix rifleman anyway. Rifleman GET to mastery, which means they aren't so broken that they have to have the speed effects to function.
Recall that pistoleers felt that way about disarming shot 2. It was worth having EVERY SINGLE special attack in our line being worthless, and having EVERY SINGLE defensive modifier being worthless, and even was worth having at best, AR1 weaponry that was broken.
It was removed, and we'renowtreading water. But if that's what it takes to start us on the road to being fixed, then so be it. But we can't make progress unless speed is fixed. Maybe now we will be deserving of disarm shots that disarm, body shots that are better than marksman, and random ham shots that do more than marksman roll/kip shots. I think speed is just another splinter that has to be removed so the healing can begin (whatever that silly statement means!).
Ok, great job on the math first of all...it took a lot of time and effort so thank you.
Personally though, maybe this seems a bit odd to me that so many of uspistoleers expect to be higher on the damage per second scale than the bottom rung for ranged weapons. I mean....we use freaking pistols! It's the smallest gun. If you want to do more damage(that's what this is really about...not speed, but damage because that is the end result of more speed past the cap) then go pick up a heavier weapon. It sucks if you expected pistoleer to be more dangerous than that, but in the end, we got the peashooter and they got the slingshot.
If all you care about is highest damage per second, go commando, or bounty carbine/carbineer or rifleman. If you expect all the different weapons to have the same, or similar damages per second thenwhy even have different trees? just let someone buy a different skinned gun and have "Ranged attack skill"
Thanks for the kind words.
We expected to have the lowest damage weapons ... but we ALSO expected to shoot the fastest to somewhat balance that out.
Right now, because of the way speed works, we can't shoot any faster than the rifleman with his T21. That makes absolutely no sense, and THAT is what this post is about.
The way speed is broken, and until that is fixed, pistoleer will be broken as well.
Brilliant post. Get this in asap.
Not that it'll do any good, but hey, can't say we didn't give it a whirl...
Excellent post! Obviously a lot of work went into this. An exhaustive analysis which takes into account specials would be far more complicated. Most players seem to spam specials more often than they need to anyway.
The default formula reduces to the following:
WeaponSpeed * SpecialDelayMod*(1 - (PistolSpeed/100)
And if result < 1.0s , result = 1.0s
As mentioned in the article, the problem with this formula is that weapon speed adjustment approaches 0 as PistolSpeed approaches 100. This neccessitates a cap, or you would have zero or negative delay values.
I have a suggestion for an alternate formula:
WeaponSpeed * SpecialDelayMod * 100 / (100 + PistolSpeed)
A PistolSpeed skill of 100 would cut the weapon delay by half. A PistolSpeed skill of 200 would cut the weapon dealy by two thirds. There would be no need to cap the speed, as it would scale very well. It would even eliminate the current big problems with weapon speed afforded by pistol/carbine BH hybrids.
The only real weakness of this formula is that you end up with diminishing returns with higher levels of skill, but giving larger bonuses at higher levels would counteract that. The other problem is a practical one: it would require quite a bit of rebalancing to get the numbers right.
Bottom line is that the devs are responsible for balance and game design, so they have to come up with their own formulas.
- Armok Labo (Corbantis)
well, to keep damage in balance(ala the bigger the gun the heavier the damage) yet shoot faster, that means lowering our damage ranges. What does it matter if we shoot faster, but for less damage? We still have the same numbers, we just have a steadier stream of blaster bolts.
Excelent work!
I do hope the dev's read this and think on it, it is quite obviously an issue.
To some of the others:
Like it has been said, it's possible to increase the Pistoleer's DPS without raising damage, by speed. The "big guns" still have their effect of hitting hard and that does work.
It's comperable to 2-Handed vs 1-Handed, or dual wielding, in fantasy games like EQ or DAOC. The big 2-handed axe and hammer users get the big damage numbers, but hit much more slowly and the smaller lighter fighters hit for less but much more quickly. This was especially prevelent in DAOC with what is known as "front-loading"- which is in this game as well. Which basically means your first attack is "instant" and your delay becomes a factor after that. In DAoC PvP, the large 2-Handed attackers were much more powerful because they could do huge amounts of damage in the shortest amount of time, leaving the lighter hitting fighters left behind.
If you graph out weapon damage like this(big and slow, small and fast), it would show that the shorter a fight is, the better the damage is for the harder hitters(commando's etc). But the longer a fight drags on, is where some of the lighter fighters(Pistols etc) *SHOULD* be catching up-possibly even passing the heavier weapons. Where/what time does this occur? Well, that's up to the Devs- but as it's stated, right now the "per second" part of DPS is basically the same for every weapon style(that's maxxed out). Pistol users are *NOT* asking for the big damage hits that range in the 1000's +.
Pistol users(at least should) be expected to do less damage than someone else in their first shot, but as we take our second, third, forth, etc shot- then that gap should start to close on the heavy weapon's users.
Someone else said above that damage to health might have been toned down because it was hit more, this sounds very likely. Im sure random pool attacks hit more to health because it is not just rolling against 3 choices(33% chance each), it's rolling to hit a body part- which there are a lot more of in the health pool. 6 body parts for health, 2 body parts for action, and 1 for mind. The % chance for a RANDOM shot to hit: 66% for health, 22% for action, and 11% chance for mind. This is the same reason why creatures & pets hit more to health(which is mentioned as one of the reason's CH's and other classes use some pistol)