Smuggler Archive
Thread: my thoughts on why weapon 'breakage' way pulled from test
1. currently the decay system's 'disabling' leaves the user holding the weapon firing away all the while wondering why he stopped doing damage (unless he happened to catch that system message in the middle of battle). Something more attention getting is needed when a weapon 'jams' or 'disables' such as unequiping.
2. In my opinion the biggest reason why the decay system was a mistake is that a zero condition weapon is non repairable. (a bit of history first) Repairs have been broken since Jan 2004. In Nov 2003 theres patch notes that state crafters had significantly higher chance of repairing items of their profession than other players. At that time new repair tools were created and the old repair 'kits' were removed from the game. Repairs from nov to jan by a master weaponsmith resulted in a 'minor blemish' repair 65-75% of the time. This type of repair lowered max condition by 40 to 50 points as long as the weapon condition was >50% of the max condition. In January this bonus to item professions (weapons repair bonus to weaponsmith, armor for armorsmith etc) stopped working and everyone gets exactly the same results despite weapon repair skill tapes and all 4 boxes in repair of the force sensative crafting repair tree. Currently if condition is >50% you get a 'max condition has been reduced' message resulting in a 200 point max condition reduction. If it is <50% but more than 100 points condition you get a 400-500 point max condition reduction. At 100 points of condition the stats start lowering to zero and at zero the item stops doing any damage at all. If a weapon hits zero it cannot be repaired and any repair attempt lowers the condition into the negative. This means that arbitrarily using the condition system to emulate 'jams' will result in a permanantly non-repairable weapon.
since they took a shortcut there is no chance of coding a replacement 'jamming' system before tuesday. If a jamming system is going to be introduced its going to have to get coded from scratch. My suggestion is adding a column to the weapon table for jam status. The default value is a 0 and when its decided the weapon needs to 'jam' then they change it to a 1. The function that writes the change to the database also needs to unequip the weapon and send a system message. This will give a much faster indicator of a problem with that weapon so that the weilder can switch weapons before taking 5 or 6 hits wondering whats going on. I suggest also modifying the UI that shows a red box around 0 condition items to also show that box around items that have a 1 in the jam column.
I fully support a risk/reward system and those that dont want a 'jam' in combat need to make a choice of carrying multiple weapons or make requests that less points be spent into modifying. In my opinion smaller increments should have been used in percent increase. Maxing out speed customization should have been less than 100 since its a paultry gain in speed of .1 to the final result. If all the steps lowered in cost a 'safe zone' in slicing could exist. If the player didnt want to have a 'jam' but still wanted some slice, a 25 point slice should be almost (not absolute) free of any chance of jam. A 100 point slice definitely needs to jam once every 2 weeks but the percentage increases in mods needs to go up too otherwise the risk outweighs the reward esp where speed is concerned. A 6% speed slice on weapon is only going to lower it by .01 and to 'jam' every 2 weeks for a .01 increase in speed is not a balanced risk/reward.
Funny thing is... if they took it away temporarily in order to make it work right, and they plan on putting it back in, all they have to do is let us know, and that would make us happy.
But until they do, anyspeculation on why they did it is justthat... speculation.
Good post.
Sadly, I doubt anybody from the Dev team will actually bother reading it or listening to it.
It really is pretty damn sickening for them to claim to have been working on this system for months.
Good post Omosack,
I appreciate your last paragraph about the risk/reward - but even at a 25% modification, I doubt the small reward of speed/damage would still be worth the minute risk of a jam.
IF the breakage system was in the game, then I still think people would still get the full slice on an uber weapon, (after all - there's point in being "just a little bit pregnent" ) and use it for "special occassions" while carrying a second "everyday" weapon. Would've been a boon to weaponsmiths.
Ah well.
Cheers
Dat
Daturaze wrote:
Good post Omosack,
I appreciate your last paragraph about the risk/reward - but even at a 25% modification, I doubt the small reward of speed/damage would still be worth the minute risk of a jam.
IF the breakage system was in the game, then I still think people would still get the full slice on an uber weapon, (after all - there's point in being "just a little bit pregnent" ) and use it for "special occassions" while carrying a second "everyday" weapon. Would've been a boon to weaponsmiths.
Ah well.
Cheers
Dat
I think people like the idea of the immersion, but it would get old really fast. A lot of people would just avoid slicing altogether.
mcb650 wrote:
I don't get why some people have flipped out about weapon breakage being removed. With the difficulty of the MOBs now relative to your level, do you really want your weapon giving out when you have two enhanced kwis on you? I don't. I might've tolerated it back when I could tank eight rancor and nightsister at once, but you basically only get one shot with MOBs these days. You do less damage than your opponent over even a 3 second period and you die. It's that simple.
I think people like the idea of the immersion, but it would get old really fast. A lot of people would just avoid slicing altogether.
People already will avoid slicing. Even without the breakage, it's just not worth even 10k to get a 6% slice.
I feel that breakage should be left in, however we should be able to slice for greater values... perhaps up to 50%. This would increase the use of slices because people would be trying to get their weapon as fast or as powerful (or both) as they could get, but then breakage may occuer because of this slice. Which then would bring them back to us to repair the item.
The numbers are pretty easy to figure out from a balance point of view really.
PUPs have been balanced for the CU, correct?
Every PUP has one upside - it increases a weapon stat.
Every PUP has two downsides - They run out, and they also decrease another weapon stat.
Slices have two upsides - it increases a weapon stat, and it is permanent.
With breakage, they also have two downsides - The chance of a "jam", and the "illegal" crackdown angle.
I'd say that advantage vs. disadvantage balance between the two are pretty even.
Hence, slices should be able to increase weapon stats just as much as power-ups do.
Now who knows what the max increases for power-ups are? 
Zeon; "People already will avoid slicing. Even without the breakage, it's just not worth even 10k to get a 6% slice. "
If that even. I'm buying weapons that are pretty much at their max DPS on Live now. The max is still there and you can't slice past it so why would anyone want to pay anything when it isn't going to substantially increase your DPS?
SpinningCloud wrote:
Zeon; "People already will avoid slicing. Even without the breakage, it's just not worth even 10k to get a 6% slice. "
If that even. I'm buying weapons that are pretty much at their max DPS on Live now. The max is still there and you can't slice past it so why would anyone want to pay anything when it isn't going to substantially increase your DPS?
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Are you saying that the new slicing system STILL does not take weapon damage or speed beyond their "hard caps" ?! Is this true?
*runs over to the TC forum...*
Oh, and yay me, that's Post #1000! 