NPC Balance Thread

HCFrog

This is probably the biggest thing that will take getting used to in the new CR.

Ballistic defense is pretty much the equivalent of DR, but the way the rolls work now, you won't see the situation you did in the old system, where lower levels couldn't hit you. 100% is way too often, but I suppose level 35s should be hitting a level 50 maybe... half of the time or so? Level 50s should hit level 50s about 66% of the time.

The new system is a lot more about damage and damage resistance, than it is about accuracy and defense.

**Symmetric** · 02/10/2006 15:21:54

Thank you for the clarification, HCFrog.

I have one more question, if you could answer it:

It was mentioned before that enhanced clothing wouldn't have as much of an impact as it currently does now, but you mentioned earlier in this thread that at level 50, you're expected to have 200 points of damage resistance.

You said with 6 pieces of enhanced clothing (with 33 points of damage resistance each) at level 50 would add up to 198, plus whatever bonus your Grandmaster, etc. buff would provide. Considering we only have 6 slots for enhanced clothing (hat, jacket, shirt, pants, gloves, and shoes - glasses so far do not have enhanced versions, save for one item), does that mean we will become even more dependent on a hodgepodge of mismatched clothing?

Also, the enhanced/armored/shielded clothing tends to lean towards providing more of one or two resistances (such as armored only providing melee/ranged resistance, and shielded providing viral/thrown), compared to all four (melee, ranged, thrown, viral). Even if I were to load up enough enhanced clothing to start decreasing one type of damage, I'm completely open to other types of attacks. On the other hand, if I were to balance my resistances out across the four types, I wouldn't have any of them high enough to get over that "magic 200" mark. Is this intended?

Again, I only ask this because with the current system, I can wear a basic, unbuffed outfit of matching clothes, and still hold my own against con blues and yellows. It seems that with the new system, enhanced clothing will become a necessity.

Message Edited by Symmetric on 02-10-200606:21 PM

HCFrog

Good question!

I know one of our other designers is still working on fleshing out all of the enhanced items with ones that are better, but I'm not sure how much better.

Knowing what I know now that I've learned more, I'd say that clothes are primarily going to be important for giving you resistance, with other buffs adding onto that basic purpose. I think the sheer number of shielded and armored enhanced items should allow for a lot of combinations - there are 273 different top level armored shirts, as well as 273 shielded shirts, and 200 top level pants, 547 top level coats... just for male characters. This should allow for more options than currently, where (at least in PvP where you actually have to have your best stuff) there are a very limited number of clothing items that most people would wear.

As for the other buffs that clothing might give, your stats and buffs are going to give you way more influence than any clothes.

It's a very good point about how you could previously go grind NPCs naked and still be able to... wait... naked NPC grinding? Did I just say that? But anyhow, it does look like you won't be able to go out fighting with non-enhanced clothing, at least not multiple mobs.

**ZaneZavin**

As far as clothing goes, more IS regen please. Currently I run out of IS too fast and am trapped in a boring normal attacks only fight.

**ZaneZavin**

HCFrog wrote:
The direction we're headed in is to keep things approximately the same difficulty as they were before, but I'd say making things easier at low level and a bit harder at high level.
Running through an entire mission on "Hard" at level 50, and barely (if ever) being hit, is actually not "Hard", IMO, but we're not setting out to make things take way longer than they used to.
And I remember the low level gameplay being way too tough when I was a noob... pretty discouraging. We'd definitely like to change that.
Now a question: What kind of resistances do y'all have?

At level 50, it is expected that you'd have 200 points of any sort of resistance. I think if you have 6 pieces of top level (33pts) armored clothing, you'll get to 198. So say you have 160 points of ballistic resistance, your resistance is treated as you being a level 40 player. Then if you're being shot by level 50 mobs, it's as if you're actually being free fired by purples. They're going to get a big bonus to their damage until you get your ballistic resistance up to 200.

And if you can get your resistance up over 200, you'll start mitigating the damage they do to you.

At level 20, the target is 80; anything under and you'll take extra damage. Anything over and you'll start reducing the damage you take.

I think 200 is pretty high. Special items really need to add more to these, so it's possible to reach these numbers without only wearing armored stuff.

mitez

What i dont understand is that they said clothing would have a smaller role in the Combat system but now we find it defines whether we win against a mob or lose.

Also i feel the amount of damage we do should be increased as it would speed up combat because at the moment we are there forever in IL which is probably why the mobs kill us, even the low lvl mobs.

**Tytanya_MxO**

HCFrog wrote:
Good question!

I know one of our other designers is still working on fleshing out all of the enhanced items with ones that are better, but I'm not sure how much better.

Knowing what I know now that I've learned more, I'd say that clothes are primarily going to be important for giving you resistance, with other buffs adding onto that basic purpose. I think the sheer number of shielded and armored enhanced items should allow for a lot of combinations - there are 273 different top level armored shirts, as well as 273 shielded shirts, and 200 top level pants, 547 top level coats... just for male characters. This should allow for more options than currently, where (at least in PvP where you actually have to have your best stuff) there are a very limited number of clothing items that most people would wear.

As for the other buffs that clothing might give, your stats and buffs are going to give you way more influence than any clothes.

It's a very good point about how you could previously go grind NPCs naked and still be able to... wait... naked NPC grinding? Did I just say that? But anyhow, it does look like you won't be able to go out fighting with non-enhanced clothing, at least not multiple mobs.

Indeed it seems the need for the best clothing is at least as serious as atm, while I appreciate providing these buffs over a wider variety of styles is a welcome gesture it is some way from what the community has been asking for. (quite a few suggestion have flowed through the general discusion board)

In an earlier reply you mention aiming to make the relative balance of the game similar to what it is in the current combat system, but later state a level 50 will get hit by a level 35 50% of the time...atm a level 35 simply will not hit a level 50! Equally if I understand correctly a level 50's chance of hitting only increases by 15% over a level 35? These issues if correct will fuel the feeling a lot of players have with regard to themselves being nerfed in effectiveness.

I would suggest that the advantage of evading being hit should be increased per level rather than address the issue of damage resistance, after all you get hit by a bullet you are hurt - in the movies Neo & morpheus learn to dodge bullets not shrug off the effects etc?

**Symmetric**

mitez wrote:
What i dont understand is that they said clothing would have a smaller role in the Combat system but now we find it defines whether we win against a mob or lose.

Agreed. Enhanced items should do just that - enhance our abilities. They shouldn't be a necessity, they should just make things easier should we choose to use them.

Take other MMOs for example. While items with bonuses definitely make things easier and helps your character perform better, an average player can still survive with basic items as well, albeit they may not do as much damage or have as much HP.

The clothing system in MxO is just too cool to be forced into wearing things that don't suit your style. I was hoping that the new combat system would allow for a bit more individuality, but it looks like it's going in the opposite direction. Whereas before you could get away with wearing a completely unbuffed outfit and still survive against grays, greens, blues, and even yellows, now we're going to be expected to wear enhanced/armored/shielded clothing to even be able to survive against a gang of greens. SMILEY

**ZaneZavin**

There is not enough resistances from skills. As it stands now we have to use all of our equipment to get good resistance and If we have bonuses to those resistances they do not "upgrade" the resistance granted from the clothing.

TheTaxidermist

I took my level 50 to creston today with a sniper/rifleman build loaded. And I ran into some trouble with the mobs there. With bufffs and clothing bonuses my BDR came to about 188.

Coming out of a fight with two level 48 mobs, one of them 2 chevrons, I was left with around 100-200 health left. This didn't feel quite right, in my view. I'd expect to get run down but not so much by two blue NPC's (2 levels lower).

It also occured to me, that it was taking a long time to kill each of them. Currently, all of my clothing is pretty much buffing BDR. I thought, perhaps If I were damaging them more each hit, then they would be dead much faster, resulting in much less damage to me SMILEY

I haven't tried this theory out yet, due to not being able to find any clothing that boosted BD. So I'm unsure, wether or not NPC's are still a tad too difficult, or wether a more balanced and varied combination of clothing buffs is key.

If anyone has any BD clothing, please let me know so I can test this.

davemusic · 02/11/2006 15:33:30

TheTaxidermist wrote:
I took my level 50 to creston today with a sniper/rifleman build loaded. And I ran into some trouble with the mobs there. With bufffs and clothing bonuses my BDR came to about 188.

Coming out of a fight with two level 48 mobs, one of them 2 chevrons, I was left with around 100-200 health left. This didn't feel quite right, in my view. I'd expect to get run down but not so much by two blue NPC's (2 levels lower).

The rifleman has a good damage output but not a tank in my understanding. Try to change your style to fight. Pull one out of the group, or split one off the other and finish him. Should work.

dave

Message Edited by davemusic on 02-12-200612:33 AM

**Rexxhavukk**

Npc's are just plain too powerful.

Raicho

I do not see that many higher level items in the game and even fewer seem to drop on the test server. I brought over maybe 5-10 enhanced items from the live server that are over level 40 and even fewer armored or shielded items. Since I have been testing on the QA I think the highest enhanced item I have found was a level 30 hat. I have one pair of male and female level 50 armored pants and maybe 2 or 3 shirts and this comes from playing for almost a year and decomping pretty much everything I found and could get my hands on. While I enjoy the new system the items seem to be lacking and if what you say about that many being in the game maybe the loot table needs adjusted. I have run a lot of missions on the qa server and hardly ever get anything over level 35 except for weapons and this is with the level 50 hard missions. I know the archive,dungeon,collector and box items aren't in the qa yet but how are those who do not have them supposed to get them if they have so few options. The highest gloves I have is 20. The best glasses is the level 45 program launcher and the only enhanced glasses I have besides that is level 25. The highest hat I have is that level 30 one I found on the qa server. They all are lacking but those 3 by far the worst.

HCFrog

Tytanya_MxO wrote:
In an earlier reply you mention aiming to make the relative balance of the game similar to what it is in the current combat system, but later state a level 50 will get hit by a level 35 50% of the time...atm a level 35 simply will not hit a level 50! Equally if I understand correctly a level 50's chance of hitting only increases by 15% over a level 35? These issues if correct will fuel the feeling a lot of players have with regard to themselves being nerfed in effectiveness.

To clarify: by the balance being the same, I mean you'll be able to have about the same outcome from the same kind of fight as you did before. It may look different while it's happening - the amount you're hit, etc. - but you'll be able to take on about the same kind of fight as before, with the same outcome.

**Renesis13B**

By that logic as long as we can still win the fight then everything is balanced. I can fight 5 level 48s and win every fight but ill have to hyperjump away and heal after every fight. I dont see that as balance. It makes fighting tedious and boring. With the old system is was a rush taking on 10 npcs 5+ levels higher than you. With this new system that will never happen.