Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: The Real Problem with Resources and Weaons ... and the *real* solution.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
Doesn't plumbum have 2 qualities that matter? Last time I checked ... it wasa combo ofCD and OQ ...
Hmm ... yes it does ... and you have finally revealed yourself.
Did you completely miss the part where I said "A 600 OQ Plumbum is as good as an 800 OQ Plumbum"?
Do you not realize that when it calls for 50% Conductivity, a50 CD Plumbum over a 100 CD Plumbum will not make a difference? I could have a 100 Conductivity/800 OQ Plumbum, and I'd havemaybe apoint of damage over whatever the average is. You'd need a Plumbum with a conductivity higher than the current assumed cap would allow to even make a difference in your gun's stats based on the conductivity stat alone.
It isn't calling for 100% OQ, it's split down the middle, and thus you need an even more drastic difference in resource quality for it to actually do anything. For Plumbum Iron to have a significant difference, it needs both Conductivity and Overall Quality without restricting caps. When it's only depending off of one quality of 20 units of a resource split between two other resources, that only accounts for 50% of the product, it does not do enough. I'd have to say you have never used Plumbum in your career if you could not figure that out.
Secondly, I didn't bring up copper, you did. You said WUKs.
"Now other things that are not named (WUK's) that use high CD get a new source of potential metals ... I hope I don't have to explain why this is not good."
What do WUKs use? Metal. What metal is in the highest conductivity? Copper. Why would you use Iron over Copper? I have no idea, but you seemed to think there was a reason for your analogy.
Lastly, I'm not imposing that we make Rhodium Steel into another Duralloy, with over three stats in the 900s every time. That's the difference, Plumbum/Rhodium would be "average" metals, they wouldn't be higher-end metals, but they'd at the very least, be less restricted than they are now. As I said, there are far too many resources for two more "average" metals being thrown in the mix to make an impact, you just cannot refute that. It's plain to anyone who has ever made these guns, that if they had the right resources, they would have appropriate stats and that these metals being added to their schematics was simply a flaw that continues to be overlooked. Resource shifts hardly existed in beta, nor did factories, it's not like most of these guns were even tested properly before their schematics were pushed to live.
So, you fix the flaw and all is well, you don't go the hard way about an easy fix that doesn't have any drastic effect on the game. This is a dynamic game, any problems in the future that would arise from such a fix would themselves be fixed; this happens on a daily basis, it is a MMORPG, after all.
Conversely, you could just replace all instances of "Plumbum" with "Doonium" and "Rhodium" with "Duranium" and save a hell of a lot of time, as well.
Logix wrote:
Did you completely miss the part where I said "A 600 OQ Plumbum is as good as an 800 OQ Plumbum"?
Didn't miss it ... it's just not germain to the overall issue at hand.
Do you not realize that when it calls for 50% Conductivity, a50 CD Plumbum over a 100 CD Plumbum will not make a difference? I could have a 100 Conductivity/800 OQ Plumbum, and I'd havemaybe apoint of damage over whatever the average is. You'd need a Plumbum with a conductivity higher than the current assumed cap would allow to even make a difference in your gun's stats based on the conductivity stat alone.
But this is the way caps work in general ... there are ranges ... and that's that ...
Your argument is more for removing all caps ... and still *sidesteps* the fundemantenal problem you are ignoring.
It isn't calling for 100% OQ, it's split down the middle, and thus you need an even more drastic difference in resource quality for it to actually do anything. For Plumbum Iron to have a significant difference, it needs both Conductivity and Overall Quality without restricting caps. When it's only depending off of one quality of 20 units of a resource split between two other resources, that only accounts for 50% of the product, it does not do enough. I'd have to say you have never used Plumbum in your career if you could not figure that out.
Then this won't fix the problem ... the problem still remains:
Problem: Weapons were balanced based upon *no caps*.
Your solution will only make the gunsbetter ... but that still doesn't get them where they need to be ... to what they were balanced at.
Secondly, I didn't bring up copper, you did. You said WUKs.
I didn't say copper ... I said WUK's :-) ... if you uncapped Plumbum it would compete with copper ... but I think you are on that trail now ... cause you are going to set *limits* on your caps which will re-enforce my above argument.
"Now other things that are not named (WUK's) that use high CD get a new source of potential metals ... I hope I don't have to explain why this is not good."
What do WUKs use? Metal. What metal is in the highest conductivity? Copper. Why would you use Iron over Copper? I have no idea, but you seemed to think there was a reason for your analogy.
Because you just "uncapped" the CD on plumbum allowing it to compete with Copper. And you *have* to uncap CD on all the metals for guns to allow them to reach *balance* level. But I see you don't want it fully uncapped by what you write below.
Lastly, I'm not imposing that we make Rhodium Steel into another Duralloy, with over three stats in the 900s every time. That's the difference, Plumbum/Rhodium would be "average" metals, they wouldn't be higher-end metals, but they'd at the very least, be less restricted than they are now. As I said, there are far too many resources for two more "average" metals being thrown in the mix to make an impact, you just cannot refute that. It's plain to anyone who has ever made these guns, that if they had the right resources, they would have appropriate stats and that these metals being added to their schematics was simply a flaw that continues to be overlooked. Resource shifts hardly existed in beta, nor did factories, it's not like most of these guns were even tested properly before their schematics were pushed to live.
If they are not capable of uncapping the CD on plumbum (and other metals) the Dev's will *still* have to rebalance the guns.
As I have asserted over and over again ... I am positive they *balanced* the guns based upon a perfect build ... they based scarcity on the Spawn rotations ... and they based quality on the fact that the stats were random.
I don't believe they ever accounted for the *caps* on those qualities due to resource families and class's.
So to solve the problem *soley* by resource manipulation they would *have* to uncap it ... and that *is* essentially my point.
If we go with a middle of the road Rhodium that would *at least* give us better CD ... but the problem still reamins ... the gun will be underpowered because all the guns were balanced in the context of possibly perfect gun creations.
It would not matter where components were concerned ... cause components just *add* static content ... if guns were balanced accross the board and then a component were gated (like pistol barrels) then all the pistols would be gated (albiet the projectile pistols)
But I digress ... the basic fact is that gun will have to be reblanced ... there is no other option ...
Well ... there is one other option ... change where they fall in the trees ... Move laser Carbine *up* to novice carbineer and move elite down to where laser is now (or something like that).
That is the *other solution* ... change or expectations of the guns :-)
So, you fix the flaw and all is well, you don't go the hard way about an easy fix that doesn't have any drastic effect on the game. This is a dynamic game, any problems in the future that would arise from such a fix would themselves be fixed; this happens on a daily basis, it is a MMORPG, after all.
Yes and No ... you don't fix something that you *know* will break something else ... unless you already have the fix for that working as well.
More importantly ... I think about things in a programing viewpoint ... I *know* pretty much a lot of the constraints the Dev's are facing. I know what I would tell the Designer when he came to me and proposed to Fix system A with Kludge B ... I face it every day.
I would say ... "That is a band aid ... and doesn't that also cause X and Y??" ... and I would send them back to fix it properly.
The question I can't answer here is what is more important? The Specs for the Resource Qualities / Scarcities ... or the Specs for Weapons Damage / Experimentation.
I would Assume that the Resource specs are more scared as they are simplier and affect vastly more system ... meaning that changes would occur in the Weapons Spec's ... and once you get that far you ask whether it's a property (base damage) fix or a method (experimentations) fix ... and generally you never change methods when you can change properties.
Cause when it comes to programing there are *rules* you need to live by ... unless you want this code base to end up like windows? Kludge, upon Kludge, upon Kludge ... That was the old way to write code ... down and dirty, slap a patch on there, who cares who inherits this mess in the future ... aren't we government employess? we don't have to be responsible for the mess we leave behind. Any Cobol programmer out there would know what I am talking about :-)
Conversely, you could just replace all instances of "Plumbum" with "Doonium" and "Rhodium" with "Duranium" and save a hell of a lot of time, as well.
Well ... then there is no *need* for Plumbum :-)
I believe the original design spec called for every "class" to be used by somebody ... so this would just push the problem onto somebody else ... and end up with a metal that has not home at all.
I mean would anybody ever really use plumbum if it weren't a required metal?
I understand your position completely ... but I think we, as a community, would get farther asking them to rebalance the gun based upon those resource caps ...
Your last suggestion of switching is not bad ... but I have a feeling the guns would not get all the way there ... and we would still end up with a need for rebalancing for many weapons.
They are *going* to have to rebalance ... and I think this hit them with the experimenation thread ... especially with the issue of the "missing stat" resources ... I think the post I made really got some Dev's talking ... exactly *what* should happen with the missing stat ... is that fair? omg we just gated an entire line of guns by doing that.
Yea, yea ... they were talking about how the exp worked ... but I think my question which I insesently repeated drove home the fact that things could get gated rather fast ... and there was not clarity on the situation.
I will be most intereted to find out from our new correspondent what the story is ... I understand one has been choosen ... but has not been announced ... probably doing the NDA stuff ... and i bet there some form or training or talking about what they can and can not do ... etc, etc, etc.
Hero, Logix, I think you're both wrong.
Now, I'm assuming that the developer intended for certain resources to be sucky (rhodium, plumbum, polonion, desh copper, byrthosis gemstone). And yet, many weapons, especially the advanced ones, still include these resources in their schematics. And I also assume that these sucky resources were put in the schematics for the good weapons intentionally, in order to make the gun "difficult" to work on, and to make smiths scrounge for resources over a long period of time in order to eke out slight performance gains.
If those assumptions are wrong, and the designer who put plumbum iron in half the firearms didn't know that it was going to suck, or if plumbum sucks because of a bug in the resource spawning code, then everything else I say is totally non-valid.
So, if some resources are "fated" to be sucky at certain characteristics, then it's just not a good idea to change them and increase their caps. The universe needs to have sucky resources just as it needs to have good ones. There still needs to be some challenge in making the "difficult" weapons, other than just stockpiling the uber spawn. Oh, and boosting rhodium steel would boost EVERY weapon that uses its component.
However, simply bumping up the stats of the weapons using weark materials doesn't really help either. Currently, all E11 weapons will be kind of sucky, and you'll see little variation between smiths because the plumbum is bringing EVERYTHING down to a similar level, what variation you do see is probably due to components, not the parent schematic. Now, if all the E11 had their stats boosted to compensate, then all the E11 weapons would have really good stats, but still, there would be little variation.
Therefore, I must reiterate that I think a better move to the afflicted schematics would be to reduce the amounts of the sucky resources required in the schematics (perhaps increase non-rare materials to compensate). This would keep complicated weapons as difficult to build, requiring exotic resources. It would increase the potential variability in weapons between smiths, AND it would boost the performance of these underseved weapons.
The bad part is that this change would also require a "balancing pass" on all those poor neglected weapons. And the decision would be different in each case. The T21 uses polonium, but it's still good. The Replublic Blaster uses plumbum, but it's actually pretty darn good now, while the SR combat pistol was only a niche pistol before the republic blaster started working, and is kind of worthless now. Then you've got the E11's, which are just sad.
And I'd expect the developers to sit down a really think out the weapon balance about, oh, never.
Copper > Steel/Iron. Period. Copper will always reign supreme for Conductivity, it doesn't matter how many Steels and Irons you throw in with average Conductivity range. That is not an argument. One more Steel/Iron with average-level conductivity will not replace the ~990 Conductivity Polysteel Coppers across most of the servers. They just do not replace copper and they never will.
Additionally, while more arguable, it isn't going to replace the other notorious Steels/Irons, such as Kammris Iron, Doonium Iron and Duralloy Steel. These three metals have the greatest potentials for their types than that of the "average" steels and irons.
Yes, because these metals are not used *today*, it is okay. This is a dynamic game, as I stated. You cannot base every minor change off of what may come in the future, else no changes would be made. The possibility of speeders and rifles? That's not a valid counter-argument, there is nothing at all tying them to these two resources. That is just grasping at straws and like I will reiterate over and over again, you cannot pull such a vague conclusion in such a dynamic game.
Market fluctuation has nothing to do with this. In a world of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of different resources going in and out of the market, changing two will not affect it in the slightest. Two less absolute crap resources spawning every month or so isn't going to make a scratch on the economy. It's like having every server to have one less Weaponsmith than there is now: there are hundreds and hundreds, it's not going to make a difference, it's not going to cause a huge skyrocketing demand of weapons because there's one less Weaponsmith. Conversely, nothing would change if you added 1 more Weaponsmith to every server, it's not enough to make a dent.
Changing the guns like this is the equivalent to changing the schematic to use generic Iron. You are getting a dramatic increase to stats without a change in the work you do. Thus, demand and supply will skyrocket (because no one sells these guns as no one buys them) and every Joe Schmoe Weaponsmith on the block will be selling these guns at roughly the same stats. The difference is, at least with a genericIron, you might have a *little* more advantage if you were around a lot longer. But just adding stats, you don't. You won't have any available opportunity to have an edge over someone else. It does nothing for the economy, the market doesn't fluctuatefor these particular guns.
High-end guns and partsneed a Link-Steel aluminum. They need a Doonium Iron. They need some sort of additional competition over the norm. A certain set of guns should not be exempt from this competition, it just does not make sense. If I go to Endor and throw down 10 PMEs on the highest-quality Plumbum that only I know about, I deserve the reward for that effort. I don't deserve a 0.3% increase in wound chance, while everyone else is using 55 Conductivity Plumbum and making otherwise identical weaponry.
But I want to discuss one other thing that the original poster talked about. That is "missing resources". he assumed that it was buggy and not working. It might be working as it should be, it might just be a matter of probabilities. Spawns are (probably) random and (probably) has a different probabilities to spawn. It might just be bad luck if a certain resource don't spawn or all. On Wanderhome we have got may spawns of Rhodium. Now we got two at the same time. Had been an exciting and frustrating week for us weaponsmiths. First Irolunn spawns for the first time in 2 months (last was 2 digit OQ), but there also spans some good cond copper, good Kamris, Plumbum and Doonium. What are you going to harvest :-). Sorry, OT :-)
On thing I have noticed is that there seem to be a pattern in how many planets a resource spawns on. Several times some resources like Plumbum, Kamris and Doonium ha sonly spawned on one or two palnets, while more generice copper is on 6 or more planets. I think this is intentional. We have one spawn of Plumbum (800+ OQ) on Dant only (I am surprised that there are almost no miners out there).
EasyMcRhinopants wrote:
Hero, Logix, I think you're both wrong.
Thinking is easy ...supporting your thinking with rationale is another story.
Now, I'm assuming that the developer intended for certain resources to be sucky (rhodium, plumbum, polonion, desh copper, byrthosis gemstone).
We are both on the same page so far :-) ... I believe they are intended to be sucky as well.
And yet, many weapons, especially the advanced ones, still include these resources in their schematics.
I don't know if they were included to be *suckey* or included due to their rarity ... they are not necessarily linked together.
And I also assume that these sucky resources were put in the schematics for the good weapons intentionally, in order to make the gun "difficult" to work on,
I would believe more these *rare* resources were put in to make them harder to work on ... not necessarily cause this *set* of rares is sucky.
and to make smiths scrounge for resources over a long period of time in order to eke out slight performance gains.
We do that anyway ... what would be the point of the Dev's gating the *top* guns ... like Elite Carbines and SR combats? the ones you have to work the farthest to achieve?
If those assumptions are wrong, and the designer who put plumbum iron in half the firearms didn't know that it was going to suck, or if plumbum sucks because of a bug in the resource spawning code, then everything else I say is totally non-valid.
You are close ... I don't believe the designer who *balanced* the gun damage was looking at the fact those resources were *capped*. This game has been designed over years ... they may have balanced the guns before they *capped* the resources ... they may have just known about the scaricty ... heck ... they might have done the guns first ... put in the resources ... then a year later added scaricty and caps ...
As a matter of fact I would say that scarcity and caps would have come long after the intials "let's see if we can get a character to fire a gun" part of the programming :-)
So, if some resources are "fated" to be sucky at certain characteristics, then it's just not a good idea to change them and increase their caps.
This would be valid ... except the guns that are gated are supposed to be Top Tier guns ...
The universe needs to have sucky resources just as it needs to have good ones. There still needs to be some challenge in making the "difficult" weapons, other than just stockpiling the uber spawn. Oh, and boosting rhodium steel would boost EVERY weapon that uses its component.
The challenge is scarcity ... how often then spawn ... how big are the actual spawns ... how long the spawns stick around ... and what planets they spawn on.
When you toss that in with randomness of the stats ... well ... that is the *resource* game ...
The issue here is that once I have won that game ... once I have checked every planet, every day for 3 months and I find the *best* of server spawn ... I should have won :-)
But what good is it? Since the guns damage doesn't take into account the resources cap ... the gun sucks ...nobody will buy it ... nobody will use it ... it turns from "I won" to "Game Over". There is no game ... thee is no fun ... because winning the *resource hunt* game doesn't have a prize at the end.
Well ... it has a prize ... you now get to make a gun that is sucky that nobody will buy ...
However, simply bumping up the stats of the weapons using weark materials doesn't really help either. Currently, all E11 weapons will be kind of sucky, and you'll see little variation between smiths because the plumbum is bringing EVERYTHING down to a similar level, what variation you do see is probably due to components, not the parent schematic. Now, if all the E11 had their stats boosted to compensate, then all the E11 weapons would have really good stats, but still, there would be little variation.
Variations in guns are supposed to be based around DPS, Type of Damage and Armour Piercing values, and what certs it takes to get.
The Elite Carbine ... is supposed to be used by Novice Caribineers and up ... it's their *prize* for making it that far ... but the gun's damage is gated by the cap on the resources.
Therefore, I must reiterate that I think a better move to the afflicted schematics would be to reduce the amounts of the sucky resources required in the schematics (perhaps increase non-rare materials to compensate). This would keep complicated weapons as difficult to build, requiring exotic resources. It would increase the potential variability in weapons between smiths, AND it would boost the performance of these underseved weapons.
How *exactly* is this better then just upping the base damage of the gun? As long as there is a *gated* resource in the gun there is *gated* damage UNLESS you rebalance the damage of the gun.
My suggestion has been, and I guess you missed it, to just rebalance the base damage of the gun to take into account the sucky resource :-)
The bad part is that this change would also require a "balancing pass" on all those poor neglected weapons. And the decision would be different in each case. The T21 uses polonium, but it's still good. The Replublic Blaster uses plumbum, but it's actually pretty darn good now, while the SR combat pistol was only a niche pistol before the republic blaster started working, and is kind of worthless now. Then you've got the E11's, which are just sad.
And I'd expect the developers to sit down a really think out the weapon balance about, oh, never.
Balancing Pass ... now there is an idea ... why didn't I think of that ...
DOH!! ... that is what I have been suggesting :-) ... It needs to be done on a few guns in particular ...
The republic? 582 out of 1,000 on my chart ...now of courseremoving caps oneffect this gun ... where as *rebalancing* might or might not ...ifit's damage, under the caped resource, is in line with where it's supposed to be then nothing would be changed.
And that is my point back to Logix ... if the cap were removed or upped to much on the plumbum you might end up with something like the republic being the *uber* gun of the day. 1 change affecting many things.
I would rather them look at the guns,accounting for thecaped resources, and make sure their damage output is in line with game design specs. I don't believeall of them are ...
I don't believe resources are broke ... I believe they are fine ... I believe some guns are broke and not up to design specs ... fix the guns is my belief.
The problem is it just doesnt make sense the way it is
Someone stated it exactly how I see it in another thread but cant remember which one, that if a schematic result will be based on CD/OQ it would be plain stupid to make it with materials that never have good stats in these fields, except if it's to get special results (dmg type or armor piercing for example), so if we need less than best quality stuff to get acid or stun or any dmg type so be it
But why would one use plumbum iron for Rep blasters which have energy dmg when u can get energy dmg with any metals (scouts, DL44,...) makes no sense, nobody can say plumbum is for AP1 as Power5 req plumbum and is simply energy dmg with AP0 along with E11 carb/rifles
Samething with adv vibro blade units requiring Desh copper when it's based on UT at 100%, copper doesnt seem like a good choice for any UT stuff but hey, some coppers can get near 800 UT when Desh copper hardly get to 400, not to mention the solid petrochem that doesnt have UT at all and cant help raising the avg but that's beside the point 
DX2 and DXR6 req platinite copper (potentially 1000 CD/OQ nothing to say here) and Titanium alum (potentially max OQ but among lowest CD alum) so cant be maxed but giving acid dmg and AP1 so it's ok, we can think other materials wouldnt give both those modifiers
All I'd ask for is logic, I know it would require lots of changes, but nothing's easy eh 
EasyMcRhinopants wrote:
Hero, Logix, I think you're both wrong.
Now, I'm assuming that the developer intended for certain resources to be sucky (rhodium, plumbum, polonion, desh copper, byrthosis gemstone). And yet, many weapons, especially the advanced ones, still include these resources in their schematics. And I also assume that these sucky resources were put in the schematics for the good weapons intentionally, in order to make the gun "difficult" to work on, and to make smiths scrounge for resources over a long period of time in order to eke out slight performance gains.
If those assumptions are wrong, and the designer who put plumbum iron in half the firearms didn't know that it was going to suck, or if plumbum sucks because of a bug in the resource spawning code, then everything else I say is totally non-valid.
You know there have been a great deal of serious oversights in this profession.
We had a vital component of firearms not adding a bonus at all, for months. We have developers consciously putting schematics in at Novice when they can't even be crafted for another skillbox. We have had things like certain parts requiring 100% Potential Energy when none of their resource requirements even have thePotential Energy stat. Imean, these mistakes are serious, slap-on-the-forehead, "DOH!" kind of mistakes.
It's just hard for me to say that a Developer, knowing these resources could not reach proper heights to make these weapons worthwhile,intentionally put them in these schematics. I just can't believe it was anything but another "DOH!" mistake. These resources aren't going to get better, that is the problem. If this developer intentionally put these resources in these guns, he was under the impression that Plumbum, etc, didn't have the caps on them that they have now. Like I said in an earlier post, it's just not a Scout Blaster situation. It's not like how we were in July, freaking out over the Scout Blaster craze, because we had yet to find any good Doonium for Scatters or Irons for FWG5s. We're much more knowledgeable and experienced since that issue, and I think we're all pretty certain that the Plumbum problem just isn't something that will get better over time.
Now the DX2, in my opinion, is a perfectly balanced weapon. It requires two semi-rare specific resources that are on the "average" side of the spectrum, meaning the DX2 will always be changing as resources diminish and new spawns become available. Of course, the DX2 kind of sucks because of the lack of Advanced Pistol Barrels, but if they were possible to be experimented into high-percentages, I think we'd all agree that this pistol would rock the house, as it should.
The one gun that I think should be manually enhanced, however, is the Elite Carbine. I cannot explain why this carbine sucks. It's an elite combat profession weapon, it doesn't require naturally restricted resources, and on paper, this should be a good gun. But, it just sucks. If we get better Advanced Rifle Barrels, it'll still suck, because you can use those barrels on Laser Carbines, which will take precedence again.
Back to the DX2, however, the DX2 is an elite profession weapon and as such, its ingredients and more difficult to obtain. So why, why do we have this SR Combat Pistol, a Pistol IV weapon, that is near impossibleto obtain reasonable stats with? Why do we have a Power5 Pistol with a more difficult schematic than the Scout Blaster and DX2 combined? These are low-end weapons, why would they intentionally have these low-end weapons suck for ages and ages? It just doesn't add up.
I disagree with keeping the Plumbum in the weapon, even with limited amounts. The more you decrease the units of Plumbum going into the weapon, the more you decrease the affect it will actually have on a weapon.
So if you have a Super Shooter S10 that requires 10 units of Plumbum, 25 units of Iron and 45 units of Ferrous Metal, that Plumbum will do nothing for variation. It's just the same if it weren't there at all. 10 units on a 50%/50% item using Plumbum is gonna mean a 1000 OQ Plumbum is the equivalent of a 500 OQ Plumbum. So, you might as well take the Plumbum out anyway, as it's not going to cause any added difficulty to these weapons.
I agree with your point on variation, these weapons need variation, but doing this to these guns will be the same as removing it altogether.
I'm personally starting to lean more towards replacing them all with Doonium/Kammris/whatever. Of course, if we were back to when FWG5s and Scatters didn't suck, we'd be in the position to ask ourselves, "Hm, I don't have much of my Uber_Doonium left, do I want to make FWG5s? Or should I make SR Combats? Or Scatters?!?!" Overall, it'd do more for overstocked resources, it'd limit the amount of "infinite" supplies of Doonium, etc, that Weaponsmiths have, because they have more of their uber Iron supplies being quickly diminished while they try to choose which weapon to keep in stock.
Logix wrote:
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.
Sorry Logix, but you are wrong about that. That exact paragraph is listed in the patch notes(under the craftingsection)for the November 13th patch that gave us player cities and mounts,so it has gone to the live servers and is working how they intended now.
AlsoI have another point. I don't know how many of you were in the Beta but I recall in the early stages before crafting was put in at all, they had this terminal where you could go and buy any gun or armor for 5 credits...just to test them out. And all the weapons there were what I think was the baseline that was used to test them all.All of them had stats that were much lower than we as crafters can make. Any weaponsmith would have been embarrassed tosell any of the weapons avialable in that station LOL. It seems to me they were balancing weapons based on average quality resources used (maybe 500ish)and NO experimentation.
ObiWanJN wrote:
Sorry Logix, but you are wrong about that. That exact paragraph is listed in the patch notes(under the craftingsection)for the November 13th patch that gave us player cities and mounts,so it has gone to the live servers and is working how they intended now.
Patch notes are in Error.
There is another Dev Post recinding this ... saying that they have put it back to the way it was. If you want proof go troll TH's posts ... you will find it ... I believe in the thread I started on test center where I screamed possible Nerf.
ObiWanJN wrote:
Logix wrote:
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:
Also I have another point. I don't know how many of you were in the Beta but I recall in the early stages before crafting was put in at all, they had this terminal where you could go and buy any gun or armor for 5 credits...just to test them out. And all the weapons there were what I think was the baseline that was used to test them all. All of them had stats that were much lower than we as crafters can make. Any weaponsmith would have been embarrassed to sell any of the weapons avialable in that station LOL. It seems to me they were balancing weapons based on average quality resources used (maybe 500ish) and NO experimentation.
A lot of things happened in Beta that we'll never see again. The resources in Beta were much easier. The last two weeks of Beta I had Plumbium Iron with 1970 Cond/OQ. Almost all of the spawns had qualities that were near perfect for their purpose (i.e. copper was almost always over 1800 CD/OQ etc.)
The big frustration is that we don't have the potential to max out the qualities of a large number of weapons. It appears, to me, that the damage design was done based on near perfect materials, but there is no intent to spawn those materials.
The overall logic in a number of schematics seems broken. The design was probably rushed at some point. We ended up with strange things like projectile weapons with power handlers, projectile weapons that require conductivity as a primary characteristic, etc. I think the original intent was to have a more complex set of characteristics for each weapon. Instad of the current schematics where all of the characteristics are the same, the circuitry would use CD/OQ, the housing would use Heat and Shock Res, and the grip might use Unit Toughness. I suspect the formula complexity was reduced in order to either meet the schedule, or reduce processor load. Hence the current system where all the characteristics are the same, but don't match the resources required.
My suggestion in Beta, and since, has been to balance pass the schematics, and apply some logic to the requirements. Use materials in the schematics that tend to have the characteristics required. Provide for the potential for a near perfect weapon. Balancing the weapons after that becomes simple. If a weapon is overpowered, just adjust the potential damage ranges for a given weapon to bring it in line. No need to fiddle with resource characteristics.
Given the fact that enhancements with large damage modifiers didn't completely break the game, it seems to me that the unenhanced weapons are no where near their planned potential. The resource gates do nothing but frustrate the crafter.
I like the current system, but I also recognize that a single resource, Plumbum Iron, controls the entire line of carbines in the game.
We have all had the expectation that as we qualified for each new weapon it was going to be more powerful than our last...
For all intents and purposes the EE3, DXR6, and elite are the same weapon....almost identical damage numbers. (EE3 = Kammris, DXR6 and Elite are Plumbum)
Whether they remove the requirement of Plumbum, alter Plumbum, or change the requirement of one of the guns to Colat - is immaterial to me....it does seem that the carabineers have been unfairly singled out - after they get laser carbine there is nothing else to buy...
As regards resources, I like the named requirement - it is one of the few places where an Expert Weaponsmith can outshine a Master - if he is lucky enough to have some good stuff after the Master runs out of it...