Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: The Real Problem with Resources and Weaons ... and the *real* solution.
Greets ...
I just posted an explanation like this in another thread ... but I wanted to start a clean thread to cover it.
I will state the *solution* first, then back it up with short, concise, logic that I don't think anybody is going to agrue with.
First off there are 2 problems ... one is really a bug and the other is a balance issue.
The Bug: Not all *named/required* resources spawn ... either at all, or a decent rate:
The Fix: Program in a *minimum* respawn rate ... suggestion of 8 weeks.
That number is up for debate and not the focus of this thread ... we believe the spawn system is bugged and once that is fixed that is a dead issue ... on to the *real* problem with resources and weapons.
The Problem: Top TierWeapons don't alway do *Top Tier* Damage.
The Fix: Balance Guns damage based upon resource limitiations.
The Situation:
A) Resource Game Design calls for different typesresources to be strong in certain areas and weak in other areas. This can not be changed.
B)Weapons were designed to use many different types of resources, which vary in quality, so that weapons quality and availability are violitile. This should not be changed.
Neither of those above should be changed and are there for obvious game balancing issues.
C) Weapns were designed so that top tier guns have a maximum DPS that is higher then lower tier guns.
When they balanced the weapons ... they compared a *perfect* CDEF vs a *perfect* DL44 vs a *perfect* Power5 vs a *perfect* FWG5 vs a *perfect* DX2 vs a *perfect* SR Combat. (for example)
That is the *real* problem ... we can't make *perfect* DX2's or *perfect* SR combats. (or elites, republics, etc, etc).
The Devsneed to re-evalute each gun based upon the *realistic* average considering the *limitations* of the resources that are required.
For instance ... on a scale of 1-1000 ... I can make a 955 DL44 ... but only a 491 SR Combat.
955 vs 491
That *is* the problem. The reasons are based upon the quality of the named resource ... there have been a lot of suggestions as to how to fix this but boil down to:
Either change the qualities on those named resources or remove the need to use named resources. I submit that neither of those are good ideas and don't address what caused the problem in the first place.
It's the balancing of the guns maximum power *based* upon *perfect* guns when you have *no* chance to every make anything *near* perfect due to other game designed system.
The fix is very easy ... just tweak the based damage to the guns to reflect these realities.
This would be a *heck* of a lot easier then either tweaking experimination on just a *small* set of weapons ... or messing with the entire *resource* balancing question game wide.
I believe they serioulsy *broke* commando weapons because they did not address the issue with broken spawns ... and just sucked those *required* resources out of those guns and now everybodies flamers are pretty much as good as everyone else's flamers ... but that is another issue for another thread.
I hope you take the time to consider what I am saying here and how it's best to fix the problem where the problem is created ... and in this case the problem is *created* when they set the base damage of the guns on the *assumption* that all guns could theoritically be made *perfect*.
A couple of responses.
The Resource Spawn system is not "bugged", but is "Bugged on some servers". The Tempest server works perfectly. You can see our resource history at http://enactive.org/swg. You will see that everything spawns correctly over time. Tempest was started a month after the other servers, so I suspect there was a problem with the Spawn timers that was fixed before Tempest was deployed, but which still has an impact now. I agree, fix the bugged spawns on those servers with problems.
Regarding experimentation, there is really no difference between the two proposed changes. They result in the same result.
If we take the SR Combat pistol, minimum score is 0 and the maximum score for it is 681 (Plumbum 82CD, 1000OQ, Netronium Steel, 345CD 1000OQ, and Metal 1000CD 1000OQ). Lets assume the base max theoretical damage is 100 at 1000 score (not counting BPH). Now with the current system, max damage is 68. The two propositions -
- Score is changed to scale 0-681 to 0-1000 resulting in max damage of 100.
- Max theoretical damage is changed to 146, which gives 100 at score 681.
No difference. Either way we get 100 dmg with best inputs.
Reposting my thoughts on this from the other thread:
I disagree. The amount of weapons and components completely gated by this resource problem is too large, and rebalancing them would be an incredibly inefficient way to go about it.
I personally do not see how Rhodium Steel and Plumbum Iron being naturally low in conductivity is detrimental to the game in the slightest. Rhodium Steel and Plumbum Iron are only used in Weaponsmith items. No other crafted item in the game requires these metals. So, why are we going about the hard way of fixing something just to avoid changing a resource that only affects us in the first place?
Lastly, before you say "adding another potentially higher quality steel/iron to the game would negatively affect it" -- There are already Irons and Steels known for their qualities. Kammris Iron, Doonium Iron and Duralloy Steel are notorious for their reputation of being high quality metals for their type. Whereas Rhodium Steel and Plumbum Iron -- outside of Weaponsmithing -- are grind metals, period. No one uses them, no one seeks them out, they are not detrimental to the economy in any way, they are just wasting space. Adding one more average-level steel/iron is not going to change anything, Doonium/Kammris and Duralloy will still be more often sought out. Fixing them would solve a lot of Weaponsmith issues a lot faster, than going through a painful and slow rebalancing phase of adding damage manually to certain weapons and components.
I agree that weapon balance is based upon perfect 100% experimented numbers, or 1000.
So if the DX2 required resources are inherently poor in quality and the SR Combat's required resources are inherently great in quality... the SR Combat, by scale, is a better weapon than the DX2... and requires a much lower skill to use.
Instead of working backwards from 1000, why not just reverse it and work forward from say 300?
Ie., given the median quality resources available as the bar... the quality of the weapon will either be greater or less than, depending on the resources used. This would allow for a variety of damage ranges and a greater drive for Weaponsmiths to go after the better resources.
Tweaking the weaponary base stats is a pretty severe fix though. Doing that will send a casscade of problems and changes running through the majority of proffessions in the game. It's too big to take lightly. I can't see the Devs choosing such a large gamble, the repercussions could be enormous.
But you are right, the problem of a bunch of mid level guns still remains. There are two things that come to mind about this. The first is the game is still young. As time goes more and more resoruces will spawn and there fore better rare resoruce will be come availible. Yes, you will have to have collected them from ages ago and this will restrict the best quality to the oldest crafters, but in all sense isn't that the way it should be? A new crafter still has the option to buy these resources at very high prices. Looking at it as a whole, it is pretty balanced.
The other thought would be, if you really want to fix it asap, is to impliment greater spawn regularirty of every resource type. This will in turn put more types of these named resoruces on the server and hence a greater quality range. As you have stated above this is believed to be bugged, and if so it will be fixed sometime down the road anyways.
So all up, I'd have to say let it roll as is. If we are to be thumping our fists about anything, it should be to get confirmation from the Devs on what is actually going on with resource spawn regularity. Is it working as intended on all servers? Is it regular? Is it monitored?
Soar wrote:
The first is the game is still young. As time goes more and more resoruces will spawn and there fore better rare resoruce will be come availible. Yes, you will have to have collected them from ages ago and this will restrict the best quality to the oldest crafters, but in all sense isn't that the way it should be? A new crafter still has the option to buy these resources at very high prices. Looking at it as a whole, it is pretty balanced.
This is not the case, if you're referring to Plumbum/Rhodium issues making certain weapons absolute crap.
This is not an issue of, "We've only seen one Plumbum spawn ever so we're assuming these guns will never get any better." It is an issue of, "We have, collectively, across all of the servers, seen at least 300 different spawns of these resources and not a single spawn was enough to make these guns worth using."
It is not a "wait and see" situation, unfortunately. These resources simply do not get better, they are designed to be that way.
Agreed. Leaving it the way it is, is not a solution. Out of all Pistols in the game, only 2 or 3 are useful, the rest have bad stats. Those stats need to be fixed... some way.
Logix wrote:
This is not an issue of, "We've only seen one Plumbum spawn ever so we're assuming these guns will never get any better." It is an issue of, "We have, collectively, across all of the servers, seen at least 300 different spawns of these resources and not a single spawn was enough to make these guns worth using."
It is not a "wait and see" situation, unfortunately. These resources simply do not get better, they are designed to be that way.
Here's the problem with making the theoretical damage of these weapons higher: If at some point the devs screw up something and plumbum iron ships with high conductivity, they're going to be the most uberleet weapons ever, and quite unbalancing(like commando weapons, zing!) 
Another option would be to keep the rare, sucky resources in the item, but to reduce the proportional amount significantly. For instance, a E11 carbine requires 40 units of plumbum, and 29 other metal. If the schematic was changed so that it required 10-15 units of plumbum, and 59 other metal, then the plumbum would still be a gating resource, but the weapon would get a big boost. I bet this would take less work, and have less potential balancing screwups, than adjusting the min/max stats of the weapons.
Logix wrote:
Soar wrote:
The first is the game is still young. As time goes more and more resoruces will spawn and there fore better rare resoruce will be come availible. Yes, you will have to have collected them from ages ago and this will restrict the best quality to the oldest crafters, but in all sense isn't that the way it should be? A new crafter still has the option to buy these resources at very high prices. Looking at it as a whole, it is pretty balanced.
This is not the case, if you're referring to Plumbum/Rhodium issues making certain weapons absolute crap.This is not an issue of, "We've only seen one Plumbum spawn ever so we're assuming these guns will never get any better." It is an issue of, "We have, collectively, across all of the servers, seen at least 300 different spawns of these resources and not a single spawn was enough to make these guns worth using."
It is not a "wait and see" situation, unfortunately. These resources simply do not get better, they are designed to be that way.
Hmm, good point. If the system currently has weaponary balanced based on what the stats of items generated with perfect resoruces of 1000 regardless of the actual max quality of the included resources, then this would need to be addressed.
Does anyone have any concrete data or Dev responses concerning this?
Soar wrote:
Hmm, good point. If the system currently has weaponary balanced based on what the stats of items generated with perfect resoruces of 1000 regardless of the actual max quality of the included resources, then this would need to be addressed.
Does anyone have any concrete data or Dev responses concerning this?
I would bet my entire character's net worth that Plumbum/Rhodium both have caps on Conductivity.
Logix wrote:
Soar wrote:
Hmm, good point. If the system currently has weaponary balanced based on what the stats of items generated with perfect resoruces of 1000 regardless of the actual max quality of the included resources, then this would need to be addressed.
Does anyone have any concrete data or Dev responses concerning this?
I would bet my entire character's net worth that Plumbum/Rhodium both have caps on Conductivity.
No, I meant on wether or not weapon balancing is based on the actual resoruce max stats or if everything just went in as 1000
Yeah, i agree entirely about the max stats thing.
Soar wrote:
No, I meant on wether or not weapon balancing is based on the actual resoruce max stats or if everything just went in as 1000
Yeah, i agree entirely about the max stats thing.
Oh, yeah. Concrete evidence:
- Fixed experimentation formula to use the correct range when determining how much an item attribute changes. The formula was supposed to be based on the resource max range, but was using the entire attribute range. A crit success experimenting with an attribute can push the attrib over the resource max value, but never over the item max attrib value.
This was a major Test Center change that never made it to Live.