The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Quovatis

Well, assuming the NC still have the lower rate of fire but high damage theme, they will either not see any benefit at all, or see more than a 20% improvement. That's just how the math works out when it only takes 2 or 3 shots to kill something. If every weapon in the game required the same number of hits to kill something, then there wouldn't be an issue. Of course the game would be pretty boring that way too.

Of course it can balance out of you can get health/armor bonuses. In that case, the NC will see their TTKs against opponents rise faster than the VS/TR So there is a chance for balance there, again assuming the old PS1 themes still hold.

1) How freaking stupid do you think the devs are? You think they'll let the skills get that unbalanced?

2) What kind of fantasy world are you living in where you are worried about "stats" you just made up out of the blue?

Don't panic. It's premature to freak about balance.

[Kran De Loy]

Originally Posted by Raymac

1) How freaking stupid do you think the devs are? You think they'll let the skills get that unbalanced?

2) What kind of fantasy world are you living in where you are worried about "stats" you just made up out of the blue?

Don't panic. It's premature to freak about balance.

Oh, no doubt the imbalance will be there. Also no doubt that no one, not even the Developers, can or will know how those imbalances will form.

But the entire idea of cutting down on those imbalances is to brainstorm them and speculate about them.

In the end tho, I do agree with you. Too soon and too detailed.

[Raymac]

Sorry, after re-reading my post, I really come off as an ass. I'd edit what I said, but that would be a chicken move by me. Not sure why I was so pissy. Sorry Quovatis and everyone else.

[Princess Frosty]

I voted not necessary.

I believe power on the battlefield comes primarily from versatility, if I can heal myself and shoot heavy weapons for example then I'm more combat effective than some newb who doesn't have enough certs for that combo.

My only worry now is with the class system you're locked out of that diversity unless you die and select another loadout.

I have to say I'm not really sold on the new class and cert system overall, I think things like inventory management was really part of the skill of Planetside, you could pack an inventory many different ways and be combat effective in a number of different ways on the battlefield.

[opticalshadow]

like is ps1, ther poiwer of a vet should be the ability to apply any needed role to a battle field. their guns fire no stronger, but they have versitility.

thats what i want in ps2, versitility as the reward, not power. the whole core of ps1 was that all soldires were equal, and that i could join a server for the first time and compete on a slugfest with a vet with no problems of who had the higer tier gear.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Higby

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

My guess is that it will make a difference, just a very slight difference, and anybody who is competative will likely want to have any advantage they can, no matter how slight that advantage is. (i.e. like using implants, or cave benefits in PS1)

[Kran De Loy]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

..
I guess I could answer that like you were being a sarcastic ass and that your choice of phrasing was just accidental.

Three reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
1) To give the player base an idea that their time is not put to waste, that there is character advancement and to reward players that play a lot while not leaving the casual gamer in the dust.
2) This is an MMO, there will be more than just 2 people shooting at each other and not all of them will have only 100hp.
3) That information was purposefully designed to show a specific point and should not be taken as concrete data.

[Duddy]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

He certainly didn't that it was an insignificant difference, besides that is a closed scenario for an example and not representative of the actual effect on normal gameplay.

To illustrate my point, say in the example the target had started with less health, this would make the benefit much more significant.

Oh and again, it is an example. Or more specifically:

Originally Posted by Higby

a hugely simplified example

[NapalmEnima]

Weapons in PS (and presumably PS2) lose damage over distance.

A 2% damage increase may not change the "bullets needed to kill at point blank", but it just might add a meter or two to the distance that "point blank" works out to be. So now you know you can start hosing at 5m instead of 3. Not a big deal for an assault class (who will start shooting regardless), but that cloaker now knows she doesn't need to take a couple steps before she opens up with her AMP (or whatever the PS2 equivalent works out to be).

And when you've got N different kinds of weapons in a squad all blazing away, 1% might make a difference between "my squaddy's bullet makes you run away" and "my squaddy's bullet kills you". Not often, but it'll happen. And when it does, you'll be grateful... if you actually notice (probably not, lets be honest).

That reminds me... user-devised UIs. Off to the Idea Section

[Chaff]

I don't care - until I see how it affects game play. A vocal crybaby minority should not influnce the games structure.

Players that stick with the game a long time or are skilled enough to max their certs, BEP,.....deserve something extra. Nothing huge. Maybe nothing big, but something. A 10% boost sounds reasonable. If they're BETTER players they'll pwn newbs (and experienced players with avg or marginal skills) anyway. What's the big deal ?

I don't care - yet. Players that qualify for whatever boost SOE chooses to grant should provide more XP/BEP to whoever kills them.

Seeing some super-dedicated Tank Outfit roll out in a bunch of boosted and mild-to-medium modified tanks should make newbs (or anyone else for that matter) WANT to acquire advanced skills/certs/rewards/perks.

Goals should mean something tangible when you reach them. SOE has to GIVE advancing players something.

I'm not worried about it at all. I am curious to see how they structure it - and how it actualluy ends up working. Until the game launches - it's much ado about nothing - mindless speculation leads to mindlessness.

[Stanis]

Looks like MMORPG mechanics to provide an ongoing carrot.

What concerns me about skill tree or 'power advancements' leading to a hypothetical 20% maximum bonus:

It was the comment that they devs are still in the air over weather you'll need to work along the Heavy Assault tree to unlock MAX armour.

See, that's the part of the skill trees that worry me.
Either we play a game where every player soon discovers you need to go HA3, MAX1, MOSSIE1, HACK2 to get a basic level of self sufficiency. (metagame)

And if you can achieve that in say 10 days of auto-skilling. What is the point. Just give it to us at the start.


It also leads to my worry that in the mid or late game you realise thanks to metagame there is no recert. You can not unlearn a cert a day and change from being a spec'd out reaver pilot to a spec'd out MBT/support role.

That makes me sad. That was a beauty of the PS1 cert system. Everything could be changed. Because it was an FPS not an RPG with character development.

If it takes about a month to unlock level 10 skills, and about a week to get BR10 through game play .. Will that just mean we play a finely balanced game of alt characters with enough BR to keep offline-skilling.

If we can all just pickup and use every piece of kit from the very beginning then it looks like the skill tree is a never ending carrot. A gilded carrot.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Chaff

Players that stick with the game a long time or are skilled enough to max their certs, BEP,.....deserve something extra. Nothing huge. Maybe nothing big, but something. A 10% boost sounds reasonable. If they're BETTER players they'll pwn newbs (and experienced players with avg or marginal skills) anyway. What's the big deal ?

If they'll own the noobs already why do they need 10% more damage? (I know we won't get that much, just an example).

I already own new players in PS, I don't need more damage to do it lol.

[millo]

Doesn't Battlefield: Bad Company 2 do something similar with Magnum ammo increasing bullet damage by 25%? It gave an edge but you could still kill people without it (and it was flat 25% straight to damage bonus). Of course the silly thing was that in the end everyone would use it above any other perk, but still it was a big deal just on some kind of weapon/server combination (M95+HC server----->oneshot kill to the chest). Also, if it's a rough figure of every bonus added (RoF, accuracy, magazine size, damage, dropoff, all combined), it would probably mean even less, especially if they set up the skill progression so you can close 80-90% of the gap in a couple weeks (a la EvE).

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Kran De Loy

..
I guess I could answer that like you were being a sarcastic ass and that your choice of phrasing was just accidental.

I asked a simple yet terse question. There was no sarcasm in it.

Three reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
1) To give the player base an idea that their time is not put to waste, that there is character advancement and to reward players that play a lot while not leaving the casual gamer in the dust.

Why is this necessary?

2) This is an MMO, there will be more than just 2 people shooting at each other and not all of them will have only 100hp.

Planetside is an MMO also yet it does not have this. Again, why is this necessary?

3) That information was purposefully designed to show a specific point and should not be taken as concrete data.

The example is irrelevant, I can give numbers where a 10% difference makes a 2-shot kill a 1-shot kill.

The numbers are not interesting, the reasons for having it in the game at all are far more relevant and are the root of the issue.