Discussion Thread: Dev Journal 02 - October 12, 2005

noVus

Nice to see SOE implementing email in game soon after they got the game. We begged Monolith to get the email system from day 1

Just please, please, PLEASE make the email system fit somewhat into the Matrix-verse. I beg you. At least in the UI. What would be really nice is to do what we discussed in beta. Create your email. Perhaps put an item or two in it (Attachments) then hit "Package" button, and then (as we saw in The Animatrix and ETM) you have to find a mailbox to drop your email "package" of and on it's way, using the Matrix itself as a drop off method.

Number one thing a dev has to think about? Cost of labor / code vs. payoff. The mailboxes are already interspersed throughout the world. The coding would be just about what you'd need for an email system anyways, and the payoff would make the game seem that much more immersive to us all. As far as MMO's go - that's a biggie, and that's exactly what naysayers against this game are complaining about.

Message Edited by noVus on 10-13-2005 07:57 PM
Message edited by noVus on 10/13/2005 18:57:03.

M1ndSpore

I am not going to page through all the entries in this thread.. just some thoughts

The ability for players to combat hackers has been around and is in mxo
right now.. pills buffs clothing etc.. all provide the balance which
everyone cries about. To combat status effects use a antibiotic.. to
increase your deflection/clear negative buffs there are
bilities which accomplish that.. to bolster your status their are
clothes..

Overall I see people complain and complain about hacker but the tools
to combat how effective they are in combat are present. Collect red
frags and bits and craft pills and boosters.. or have someone craft
them for you if you don't see how useful the coding tree is .. collect
items of clothing with buffs that compliment your characters abilities
or protects it from other abilities.. form teams that compliment
eachothers loadouts.. the list goes on. Some would argue they are
limited to one tree of abilities then you are not playing the game to
the full potential.. the abilities/clothes/items are there for your
character .. it is your choice to take advantage of them.

I will agree that some things in hacker could use some tweaking but
nothing as drastic as most people limiting themselves to just the
operative tree seem to want. Make some of the attack hacks cost more
IS.. make a few certain debuff hacks not last as long. Really there is
not a lot of balancing needed.

**Huslah**

After reading through this thread, I've noticed that a lot of the angles I was going to cover have already been done. That said, I'm writing to basically cast a vote towards whatever I agree with as I feel the "squeaky wheels" out there are getting too much attention from the devs.

I have to agree with many that multi fighting is fine, and removing it is a pretty lame solution to the perceived problem. Tell me if I'm wrong here. Fact - IRL, multiple people attack one person, they will have an advantage over the one person. My interpretation of the whole debate revolving around this isssue is that's what you're saying is the problem with multi-fighting in game... hmmm, ok. Well from what I understand the matrix was designed to mimic the pinnacle of human evolution, the good and the bad. Life's isn't fair and will never be fair. Why is so much effort being invested (or in the case of dropping a feature completely I suppose that would be "not invested" ) to "balance" things and make it fair? Wasn't that one reason some early instances of the matrix failed? I remember something about people not accepting the utopia where there was no violence, no pain, or something like that? Maybe I'm wrong, wouldn't be the first time. I'll have to watch the movies again and pay attention to the architect a little more closely I guess.

On hackers, the only thing I find particularly annoying are the lengthy stun effects. I also find that annoying on all the trees, knife thrower, MA, anything that completely incapacitates the character for more than like 15 seconds should be turned down to that time. The re-use timer on any stun based ability should be maybe four times the length of the effect, ex: 15 sec stun 60 sec reuse. Otherwise leave it alone, hackers need the abils to have any sort of chance against MA's. They do get instantly owned in interlock, there are clothes\abils that will increase your viral resistance and deflection - theres your balance right there - figure it out.

Please give some consideration to players using hacker\other abils against NPC's. It seems like so much of the revision\development going on is tilted for pvp and people who complain about certain aspects of it. Additionaly it seems that we're on track for everything to be as worthless as dataminer and as annoying as coder is now (can we turn some of the charges back up? OR drop some of the frags more frequently? farming sux enough and then to only get one charge for that frag you spent a half hour [sometimes more, sometimes less] to get... that's really annoying). Also please add more servers\infrastructure\bandwidth /whatever you need to alleviate the time outs and crashes experienced by large concentrations of players during live events. That deserves higher priority than balancing anything else in my opinion.

On the plus, mail is nice, thanks!

Pandora's box is a handy feature, thanks again! However, I do have to say that I think an extra inventory page should have been provided for us to carry all the various junk associated with it. How hard is that? Can we have two additional inventory pages while you're at it?

In closing I'd like to say if you're one of the developers and reading this, thanks for taking the time to actively seek feedback from players who cared enough to give their opinion. I hope this was helpful for you, send me an e-mail through the new in-game system after you implement it if you'd like me to elaborate on any of the above points. Otherwise stop wasting time and get back to starting the next live event!

-Believe half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

**Aquatium.**

Thanks Walrus , Archon, i for one appriciate the work involvedin setting up Pandoras, some ppl lately had been saying its past that stage now, but it was simply because of live events really, and many people are back on track with it, theres still many yet to even start this, let alone the players reaching levvels to do it.....

Im looking forward to the chnages and welcome them, hopefully we all will be impressed with the new features.... SMILEY

creoto

maybe i missed something, but wasnt it in the plans to make assassins less rediculously week?

King<FC>

Am I alone in my concern that removing multi-on-one interlock is a bad
move? I think its incredibly innovative (as-is) for a game fight,
and is more like a movie fight scene than any other game on the
market. My interest in this game re-kindled when I first
experienced the multi-on-one interlock. Please devs, lets think
outside the box for a way to keep it in the game and "balance" the
issue in another manner.

Dv01D

Any likelihood of increasing the number of slots in the hotbar?

10 is about as adequate as a one legged dog.

I agree that the IL needs fixing. a 4 on one IL means that those
outside that IL get 4 or more attacks EACH on the IL'd target! Insane.

EDIT:

As for spending the devs time working on lessening the flashing lights,
use your options. Turn them off yourself. I did. Now, I'm playing The
Matrix Online not some crumby Final Fantasy game!!!

Message Edited by Dv01D on 10-14-2005 03:34 PM
Message edited by Dv01D on 10/14/2005 06:34:09.

**Tytanya_MxO**

The ability to have 2 hotbars open at the same time would be a good solutions (and it happens on a certain rival mmo very successfully)

The more I think the more I am unhappy with ditching multi on 1 IL, why not simply boost VD and DR for everyone in IL ie Vd +50 (ignoring the ceileing in the process) DR +25.....that way outside attacks are still possible but their landing rate is reduced?

**GQubed**

Thanks for the journal (not that we didnt think you all were working hard anyways SMILEY

The Pandoras box was exceptional, I loved it and I definately see how
you can continue the arcs! Being able to learn about the previous
versions of the Matrix was something i started playing the game for and
something i thought i would be able to get out of archives, but
regardless it was really nice to see and learn about... thanks.

Sykin

mitez

Am i the only 1 who thinks multi on 1 combat sux

All i see happen when im in that type of combat is attack ... w8 ages... then they are dead

And all u did was just do 1 attack.

I am on a hostile server so when loads of ppl interlock in 1 go i do 1 attack then usually all the hackers and other ppl kill them be4 i attack again. Gd job removing it well done

Also could we have a temp fix for enraged if you have no plans to release the combat revision 2,0 in the NEAR future

**Neoteny**

Well I think we can agree the free fire timer vs the interlock timer is a bit unbalanced. Well that and the fact that in multi vs one interlock, the one is always only fighting the first person to attack them. This means that when a second enemy attacks, you don't get to chose your attack/counterattack/block tactics vs them, putting you at a disadvantage.

I'm a bit confused as to what the dev solution is, though. It sounds like they're going to remove interlock and implement a similar, but new system.

Honestly, interlock is great, and removing it would be a horrible thing to do. The best solution would be to implement equivilant timed counters for free-fire and interlock, allow you to choose a generic counterattack tactic for when secondary enemies attack you (just a second interlock bar with the same/similar tactics, or just use the previously selected action in the normal bar as the counterattack option), and add multi vs multi interlock capability.

Might sound slightly complicated, but I'm sure it's easier than a new system and would make people happier than scrapping what we know and love.

But then again I can only speak for myself :smileyvery-happy:

**krytical**

Lot of good news except.

Why melee free-fire?
We aren't trying to make MxO like all the other MMO's. In a weird way, melee free-fire was needed to save Interlock. When you add additional opponents to Interlock, gameplay breaks. A fight where one Martial Artist has two opponents in Interlock takes around 10 seconds per round depending on the animations used. The net effect is that the Martial Artist has his DPS cut in half, since he only gets to act once per 10 seconds. Meanwhile, the opponents outside of interlock continue to act on a 5-second round. This situation has to be removed in order to balance damage between the combat modes.

Which translates into...

"Interlock is the worse feature of the game battle system, we all know it's useless but we can't really fix it so we are going to balance the situation making free fire useless aswell."

SoftCopy

I understand the mathematical mechanics of why someone in IL is disadvantaged vs free-fire opponents. But even if the free-fire opponent gets two attacks per 1 attack for me, I'm still rolling vs the free-fire every time right?

For example, if I'm IL vs 2 and 2 are free-fire on me, every 10 seconds or so, I'm rolling 6 times, right? Once against each IL opponent (attack the first, block the second) and twice against each free-fire (dodged range vs ranged combat tactics). Where it gets to be unfair is if the free-fire opponents are significantly higher level, and are assured of hitting me. But in that case, I'm never going to win anyway - 1 vs 4 when the level disparity almost ensures a hit on me everytime is not a winning solution, regardless of how many attacks they get per round. It simply speeds up the inevitable.

So why this solution? Why not the solution others have talked about, which preserves 1 v many IL, and balances the situation? If the IL animations are stacked (meaning one after the other), why not stack the free-fire animations as well? Simply, the equation would be, if 2 IL, stack the first two free-fire also, so that free-fire 1 attacks in seconds 0-5, and free-fire 2 attacks in seconds 6-10. If there are more free-fire than IL opponents, then double them up such that the third free-fire attacks in seconds 0-5 along with the free-fire #1, etc.

Add to this the ability to attack multiple IL opponents with any of our tactics AND special moves (I don't expect, nor do I want, to be able to attack free-fire opponents that are 10 meters away - that's just ridiculous). The biggest disadvantage that I see is not vs free-fire - it's against the second IL opponent where I can only block, mainly because this is the scenario that comes up most often. If I can beat my IL opponents faster, and quickly move to address my free-fire opponents, that's a) realistic, and b) fair. That should be the ultimate goal, no?

As a side note- to really make it fair, add an element to free-fire whereby damage from friendly fire is realistic - ie it's ridiculous to think that if someone's shooting at me with a shotgun while I'm in IL, that NO damage is done to my opponents standing right next to me. Even worse is a hacker using an area of effect ability against me. That will make free-fire opponents think twice about blindly just firing away at a brawl without any fear of hurting a team mate.

But I digress, it's clear that this level of gameplay is far beyond what you're prepared to roll out at any point on the forseeable future...

The Leo

Finally some change. Does that mean that we won't have interlock anymore?