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Other => FOnline:2238 Forum => Archives => General Game Discussion => Topic started by: avv on April 14, 2010, 06:33:00 pm
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Here's an attempt to explain why the playerbase seems to be divided in to pvp and no-pvp players. And a possible solution for it.
To pvp succesfully, you need a powerbuild. Basically only thing players ask about pvp is what is good a build, they don't ask what is a good strategy to beat the enemy. That's because the only strategy to beat someone is to get top tier stuff and shoot your enemy first. Then you look at the result and hopefully it favours you. I'm sure that gang vs gang pvp has all kinds of nice strategies varying from squad's formation to equipment, but still all those who participate in gang pvp are powerbuilds. In other words, characters do most of the work for players and pvp is only balanced for powerbuilds.
If you want to enjoy all sides of the game, you want to have some charisma, intelligence and luxury perks. But those luxuries do not pay off in pvp in any way, except with charisma you get a merc. But still, pretty face doesn't deal more damage, that's why I always finish cute slaves with sledgehammer headshot to remind them of that. Pvp players might say that they pay "the price" for losing luxuries for improved pvp abilities, however they don't necessarily even want to participate in anything else than pvp so where's the loss?
Because SPECIAL is for single player game, all the skills and perks are geared towards fights against npcs. Npcs have supernatural abilities that have to be countered with pure mathematics and percentages. Similar system doesn't work well in multiplayer game where you fight against other players. For example if this was a fps game, a fonline sniper class would have headshotting autoaim as default feature. In a real fps game, the sniper class is only given a sniper rifle and rest is up to the player's skills.
What should be done to reduce the gap between pvp and non-pvp char effectiveness is to alter the way stat, perks and skills affect the character's firepower and hitpoints. Vision and action points are also important factors.
They should only determine what you can do, not how well you can do it.
If perks, stats and skills would only provide additional options instead of direct buffs to combat effectiveness, anyone could pick up a gun and go fight for whatever he felt worth fighting for. However a differend fighting builds would just have more tricks in their disposal, rather than simply being able to deal more damage and withstand more blows as default. Those tricks just wouldn't help if someone happens to outsmart the fighter and shoot him in the spine with shotgun.
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It seems..intreresting, but the whole idea would completely change the game mechanincs... I quess.
They should only determine what you can do, not how well you can do it.
If perks, stats and skills would only provide additional options instead of direct buffs to combat effectiveness, anyone could pick up a gun and go fight for whatever he felt worth fighting for.
I'm sorry- could you explain that part?
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I'm sorry- could you explain that part?
Yes. Instead of pure damage/crit chance/accuracy buffs perks provide an additional abilities which you can use. For example only characters with certain perk could perform eyeshots or disarming shots, because that kind of attacks demand higher than averge skill. Some other perk would allow you to reload your gun while you're running. Maybe some perk could give you additional weapon slot. Perks could give you additional attack methods like "triple strike" for punches and some small guns, "short burst" for big machine guns.
Perks like bonus rate of fire, bonus ranged damage, living anatomy should be either removed or their effect changed. They are too necessary for succesful pvp and force certain characters to take them or do significantly less damage. Same goes for more criticals and better criticals. That kind of perks are in this game because of fonline's singleplayer origin. Character had to become a one man army in order to kill enclave patrols or fight end boss.
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It's worth considering, but a lot of the stuff you talk about would require overhauling the Fallout mechanics to suit a multiplayer game. It'd be a Fallout MMO rather than the Fallout 2 mechanics with a lot of players. And that stuff would require engine tinkering.
I think such a change would be good, and make the game a lot more entertaining and appeal to a wider playerbase, but there's a lot of people who play this game because of how faithful it is to the originals.
I think the game is held back by its strict adherence to the original Fallout mechanics, but for some that its charm. Differing tastes, basically.
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So your suggestion is to take out all the good combat perks? That's retarded there aren't that many perks to begin with and the non combat perks are terrible.
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So your suggestion is to take out all the good combat perks? That's retarded there aren't that many perks to begin with and the non combat perks are terrible.
I'd change them. They aren't only good combat perks, but must have combat perks.
Instead of current instakill, autoaim, infinite range and vision snipers we'd have powerful, crippling, disarming, silent and sneaky snipers. Silent and sneaky would come from using the terrain and being aware of surroundings, not from some invisibility skill%, powerful would come from weapon used and the way sniper utilizes his aimed shots.
Then you could have altered battle system which allows you to spend action points to increase accuracy, so that sniper would prefer to hide somewhere, spot a target, start aiming, action points are being reduced but aim% next the crosshair rises, when aim% would be good enough, he'd shoot. A skilled enemy would try to avoid being shot by not to standing in the open, cross roads fast, move from cover to cover to prevent enemy from getting too high accuracy%.
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If anything i think the perks should be reworked so they give much smaller bonuses but there is greater variety and you get to pick one every level. This way you could actually customize your char without people complaining about jack of all trades.
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I don't like it, you want this game to be more like Counter Strike, I want it to stay being a Role Playing Game.
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I don't like it, you want this game to be more like Counter Strike, I want it to stay being a Role Playing Game.
Did you not read anything?
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Well, you want to give chances in PvP for non-powerbuilds based players right ? And for that, you want to make the battle system more based on a FPS than on "maths, percentages, and so on", right ? So, maybe I said shit, but after thinking my post wasn't so far from what you say.
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Wait... I wasn't answering to you actually, I was answering to avv XD
Sorry, it's 5:00 a.m. and I'm a bit tired ^^
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Wait... I wasn't answering to you actually, I was answering to avv XD
Sorry, it's 5:00 a.m. and I'm a bit tired ^^
Then donť reply to something you clearly did not read or understood.
Yes. Instead of pure damage/crit chance/accuracy buffs perks provide an additional abilities which you can use. For example only characters with certain perk could perform eyeshots or disarming shots, because that kind of attacks demand higher than averge skill. Some other perk would allow you to reload your gun while you're running. Maybe some perk could give you additional weapon slot. Perks could give you additional attack methods like "triple strike" for punches and some small guns, "short burst" for big machine guns.
Perks like bonus rate of fire, bonus ranged damage, living anatomy should be either removed or their effect changed. They are too necessary for succesful pvp and force certain characters to take them or do significantly less damage. Same goes for more criticals and better criticals. That kind of perks are in this game because of fonline's singleplayer origin. Character had to become a one man army in order to kill enclave patrols or fight end boss.
Best PvP idea that has crossed this forum in ages. But as said above its more like PvP overhaul rather than just some changes/altering. And that makes it technically hard = not something that devs would consider. If FOnline wants to be "successful" MMO it needs changes like this but problem here is, its not much Fallouty for some wannabe hardcore Fallout fans. I think I know how people from Beth$da got to feel when then end up reading their forums. Even tho Fallout 3 is literally stupid game I think no matter how it would end most of the "old fans" would swear at it anyway just because its not Fallout 2 with different content. So I think this will get dumped by wave of moralist that will try to burn you at the stake just for considering to implement something like "regular mmo mechanics".
If developers keep building this game in order to be as close to original Fallouts as possible then it will be impossible to ballance every aspect of the game. Its like 9th month of OBT 3 and there were tries to balance game economics with almost every single major patch that went out so far and whats the result? Its more or less the same from the day one. Even if there were no abuses and bugs that lead to +X thousands of caps game economics is still the same not working cycle. I would like to see the day when FOnline starts to be developed as completely new game from Fallout universe that follows its own mechanics and is taken as a game that don't want to be mmo copy of F2 nor realistic image of post-apo world.
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Best idea I've ever heard.
Now I am just hoping devs won't say that sucks and move it to junk :-X
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Yes. Instead of pure damage/crit chance/accuracy buffs perks provide an additional abilities which you can use. For example only characters with certain perk could perform eyeshots or disarming shots, because that kind of attacks demand higher than averge skill. Some other perk would allow you to reload your gun while you're running. Maybe some perk could give you additional weapon slot. Perks could give you additional attack methods like "triple strike" for punches and some small guns, "short burst" for big machine guns.
Thanks ;)
While I read the quoted text, I got this wierd feeling I've seen something like this before somewhere else. I think it was in WoW- If I understood your idea right: all characters will be able to participate in either PvP, PvE, PvM(militia ;))NBA,NHL,USA,AK... Becouse they will have those abilities, and customizing them will result in a..hmm..more balanced char?(more balanced towards a universal build)
I played Wow for a week maybe? (didn't like the graphics ;D)
This is just my personal kidna-digression. I'm not for making Fonline another clone of any other game, but seriously- I like the idea. It's not very Fallout-like tho.
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I like the idea of balancing things out, but then again, as someone stated, this game gets lots of its awesomeness from being fairly true to the original Fallout's.
I would rather see a possibility to play fallout 2 in co-op mode with 3-4 friends with quests and everything. But that isn't really what FOnline is about either.. I am no PvP player, I don't play that kind of games at all, because it is pointless (referring to games like CS). In this game i can see only one reason for PvP, besides town control (which seems to be the same thing on a larger scale), and that reason is loot.
I support current PvP system as long as you can choose to go there, but changing game mechanics to make it more of a player-speed-clicker-kill game, would probably make turn-based combat unnecessary, and without it you don't have fallout, not in any sense that seems suitable for PvE-players anyway.
As a side note, as a post-ap game I liked fallout 3, but it wasn't "fallout".
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I couldn't agree more - fallout is one man army type of game, balanced for PC to kill loads on NPC, and still stay alive. When we get several one man armies VS other one man armies, "the shit hits the fan", as the game mechanics is not tuned for that type of game.
I am for the pvp mechanics retuning, but I doubt, that Devs will start to do that - its too much work, it would be an almost new game, it would be a lengthy process and no one guarantees success. (as with trading)
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Yes. Instead of pure damage/crit chance/accuracy buffs perks provide an additional abilities which you can use. For example only characters with certain perk could perform eyeshots or disarming shots, because that kind of attacks demand higher than averge skill. Some other perk would allow you to reload your gun while you're running. Maybe some perk could give you additional weapon slot. Perks could give you additional attack methods like "triple strike" for punches and some small guns, "short burst" for big machine guns.
Perks like bonus rate of fire, bonus ranged damage, living anatomy should be either removed or their effect changed. They are too necessary for succesful pvp and force certain characters to take them or do significantly less damage. Same goes for more criticals and better criticals. That kind of perks are in this game because of fonline's singleplayer origin. Character had to become a one man army in order to kill enclave patrols or fight end boss.
In this text you've just said to remove perks that are considered must-have and instead add other perks. Unfortunately, "short burst" and "triple strike" and others would then become must-have perks and the situation won't change. This game is simply not meant for long-term PvP. Have you ever played an RPG where it's the players versus themselves and not monsters? That's what you're trying do to here and it's not working. Players versus players in such a limited universe won't have enough variety and only a handful of options is available because of that. If we had hundreds of balanced perks and weapons with tiers, buffs, additional damage mods, millions of other things, then indeed, PvP would flourish. As it is right now, that's a lost case and no simple removal of perks will help the fact that you need a top-level character to play.
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Unfortunately, "short burst" and "triple strike" and others would then become must-have perks and the situation won't change. This game is simply not meant for long-term PvP. Have you ever played an RPG where it's the players versus themselves and not monsters? That's what you're trying do to here and it's not working. Players versus players in such a limited universe won't have enough variety and only a handful of options is available because of that. If we had hundreds of balanced perks and weapons with tiers, buffs, additional damage mods, millions of other things, then indeed, PvP would flourish. As it is right now, that's a lost case and no simple removal of perks will help the fact that you need a top-level character to play.
The additional abilities would never do more damage, but simply allow you to deal it in various ways depending on situation. Pvp chars would be more flexible in combat, instead of overpowering. But yes, fonline pvp system is quite hard to balance and it's going to demand lots of work and taking other things than just perks into account.
The fact that no perk should provide direct damage buff could be just one principle of pvp. No man can think of this by himself, if we want to develop a succesful pvp system, many people must throw in their ideas and it should start from thinking of the basics.
For example we could think of what kind of player skills should affect his effectiveness. Reflexes and aim are out of question because this is not an fps game. Instead of that battles should be solved by strategic use of one's equipment and enviroment.
I support current PvP system as long as you can choose to go there, but changing game mechanics to make it more of a player-speed-clicker-kill game, would probably make turn-based combat unnecessary, and without it you don't have fallout, not in any sense that seems suitable for PvE-players anyway.
No speed clicking needed. We could take the fallout tactics' overwatch feature which worked fine. Then just fuse it with our existing line of sight feature and you are able to watch over an area and shoot enemy immediately when he enters within your LoS. The time which it takes to land a shot would then depend on your character's gun and perhaps some other factors.
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You have a good point there. But how to do it? The dev's are working on something else I think :S
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You have a good point there. But how to do it? The dev's are working on something else I think :S
In time. It's not necessary to do everything right now. The point of the thread was just point out why the community is split in two groups, explain the reason to this and then suggest a way to fix it. It can be done in various ways, not just this. If devs think that it's okay that the community is split, they will do nothing. But I recall devs telling that they do want the game to be a world where rp/pve and pvp can walk hand in hand. Then there comes the need for slowly rolling the gears towards that goal.
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Who wins, 1 level 21 char or 5 level 9 chars?
I don't necessarily agree that you need to be high level with all the perks to be dangerous in combat. If anything I'd say the only one and truely must have perk is better criticals, if you are a sniper char.
You can pump points into your weapon skill early and have reasonable accuracy from low(ish) levels, especially if you're not aiming shots.
Main thing about levelling 12-21 is the HP in my oh-so-humble opinion :P
Not that I don't agree the whole char levelling system could do with a good beating with the changes stick, just disagree with the prevalent opinion that smallish advantages rule out PvE people from joining in with PvPers. Its a culture difference and any system won't solve it.
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The additional abilities would never do more damage, but simply allow you to deal it in various ways depending on situation. Pvp chars would be more flexible in combat, instead of overpowering.
It does not matter. It gives you an advantage and with a small set of perks only a handful of "ideal" combinations is possible. What sniper would not take a perk to allow him to do eyeshots? Or big gunner to not take faster shooting perk? That's what I'm saying. Your perks offering abilities are just as good and bad as the current ones. And people will always go for the ones which allow them to do most damage.
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It does not matter. It gives you an advantage and with a small set of perks only a handful of "ideal" combinations is possible. What sniper would not take a perk to allow him to do eyeshots? Or big gunner to not take faster shooting perk? That's what I'm saying. Your perks offering abilities are just as good and bad as the current ones. And people will always go for the ones which allow them to do most damage.
Imho character development needs some overhaul too and this could be a good way how to rework it.
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armour could just work better?
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It does not matter. It gives you an advantage and with a small set of perks only a handful of "ideal" combinations is possible. What sniper would not take a perk to allow him to do eyeshots? Or big gunner to not take faster shooting perk? That's what I'm saying. Your perks offering abilities are just as good and bad as the current ones. And people will always go for the ones which allow them to do most damage.
Maybe those perks would become must for pvp builds. But the point was to balance the effectivity gap between adventure builds and combat builds. Right now pve builds do less pure damage, are less accurate and have less hitpoints. If perks didn't provide such bonuses and gave additional abilities the signifance between pve and pvp builds would be that pvp would be just more flexible, but only if the player understood to use that flexibility to his advantage.
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Maybe those perks would become must for pvp builds. But the point was to balance the effectivity gap between adventure builds and combat builds. Right now pve builds do less pure damage, are less accurate and have less hitpoints. If perks didn't provide such bonuses and gave additional abilities the signifance between pve and pvp builds would be that pvp would be just more flexible, but only if the player understood to use that flexibility to his advantage.
Unless the amount of perks were to be increased, the situation'd be the same.
PvE chars do less damage because they take perks useful for doing other stuff. Like pathfinder, or bonus move. PvP take toughness and lifegiver instead. So now instead you'd have "learn to aim" perk that PvE chars wouldn't take because they still prefer 'useless' perks and thus pure PvP chars are once more more deadly and PvE less so.