Hacker in Interlock?

>revolt_

If you want to go by this then I have to say that hackers never should be the top of the food chain, MrMagno. This game is not The Cyber Wizards Online.

>revolt_

MrMagno · 03/23/2006 09:17:06

Sephiroth+X wrote:

Well if we're going to get into this...

Neo = All MA grandmaster

Morpheus = SMG Specialist / Aikido Master

Trinity = Master Assassin

Neo = All MA grandmaster True! and got his grandmaster *CENSORED* kicked by smith every time exept when he use a hack to "bend the rules of the matrix" and stopped bullets in mid-air with Ballistic Freeze 5.0. And I need not mention his dealings with the trainman. Used his hacks to stop sentinels and the IS cost sent him into a coma. Used Artillerist tree to get to the machine city, but yet again ran out of IS and it cost Trinity her second life.

Morpheus = SMG Specialist / Aikido Master True! and never won a fight with anyone except the twins, even got pwned by lvl 10 Neo in the dojo, and in the end, died a pathetic death.

Trinity = Master Assassin Maybe, but her first scene was hacking, when she met Neo, was praised for hacking, i.e. Neo thought she was a guy. Saved Neo, Morpheus and Key maker from dieing from hacking.

Sephiroth+X wrote:

Why do I say this? Because you never see any of them endlessly roll out of interlock time after time after time and stand in one spot casting spells thinking they're hot stuff.

On the contrary ALL of them ran (rolled-out) more times than not, with the exception of Neo only rolling out from Smith.

Message Edited by MrMagno on 03-23-200609:17 AM

>revolt_

MrMagno wrote:

Neo = All MA grandmaster True! and got his grandmaster *CENSORED* kicked by smith every time exept when he use a hack to "bend the rules of the matrix" and stopped bullets in mid-air with Ballistic Freeze 5.0. And I need not mention his dealings with the trainman. Used his hacks to stop sentinels and the IS cost sent him into a coma. Used Artillerist tree to get to the machine city, but yet again ran out of IS and it cost Trinity her second life.

You. Are. Not. Neo.

>revolt_

MrMagno

>revolt_ wrote:

You. Are. Not. Neo.

>revolt_

And. Neither. Are .You.

>revolt_

No, but I'm not the one assuming he should have the powers of The One v6.0.

>revolt_

MrMagno

uuum....what?

>revolt_

Use your grey matter.

>revolt_

**PBlade**

Slightly back on topic. The hackers definitely need some more "nerfing" in Interlock, the penalty didn't do enough. I think IS costs may need an increase for hackers, and perhaps a reduction for MA, not only does it kill hackers more in IL (as it SHOULD be) but it also puts to bed the MAs complain of not having enough Inner Strength.

Whatever happens, hackers need to be downsized in interlock a little more, i'm afraid to fight them.

>revolt_

Nah, I just think that they should activate the other hacks re-use timers when you use one of the hackers hacks in interlock. Should solve pretty much the problems with hackers in interlock.

>revolt_

**PBlade**

True, I thought about saying that, but I wasn't sure if it was implementable or not.

**Wendigo** · 03/24/2006 08:58:38

MrMagno - Please stop trying to put the movies in MxO terms. There was no hacking in the movies as we now have in the game. Period. You cannot refute this with a thousand examples. The simple reality of the matter is that hackers were needed as a "wizard-class" to balance this game and make it viable in the MMO market. For that reason, I have no problem with hackers being included in the game, but don't try and use the movies as justification for what hackers can and can't do in the Matrix. No one ever used a direct damage/mind blast attack in any of the movies.

Back on topic, I did some testing today after update 14 with my only offensive hacker tree: Howitzer/Destroyer. Using Howitzer/Destroyer against the Stratford Campus Corporate Security mobs, I discovered some interesting things. In interlock I was only able to land one hack attack out of about 10 attempts. This seems about right, but I was not using the oft-mentioned Upgrade Attacks ab, so maybe that should be more closely examined by someone better able. Plague Zone landed with good regularity, but seems to be broken somehow, as it was re-usable after only about 10 seconds, where the effect should last 30 seconds. Outside of interlock, I now understand the complaints about Devastation Field. A long timer = big damage, so I won't say shorten the timer, but I think you should be able to target Dev Field on a spot on the ground. Even Bottleneck Field gives you barely enough time to get off a Dev Field before your target flees the scene, and if you get interupted once, its game over. Leave the timer, and have it target like Smoke Bomb - everybody wins.

I agree that the way to fix this is through clever use of re-use timers. No one wants to deny hackers their ability to fight, but the zero-sum nature of special moves must be considered. If a hacker can use a special every single turn, then they essentially are evading the most fundamental change in CR 2.0. Special move spam forces zero-sum and must be stopped.

In closing I would just like to say that I do not find a "food chain" to be an attractive or desirable feature in a game. No tree or build should simply outclass the others. Everyone should have their strengths and their weaknesses. On a real battlefield there are many sources of unfairness. One army will always be better prepared, with better equipment, superior numbers, and/or tactics. The Matrix transcends this. It is a battlefield of the mind, where the only limit to your ability is your own perspective. Therefore, there cannot be a "food chain", we each create our own reality, and should have an even chance of success with our chosen builds in our favored situations.

Message Edited by The_Wendigo on 03-24-200608:58 AM

**PBlade**

The_Wendigo wrote:

In closing I would just like to say that I do not find a "food chain" to be an attractive or desirable feature in a game. No tree or build should simply outclass the others. Everyone should have their strengths and their weaknesses. On a real battlefield there are many sources of unfairness. One army will always be better prepared, with better equipment, superior numbers, and/or tactics. The Matrix transcends this. It is a battlefield of the mind, where the only limit to your ability is your own perspective. Therefore, there cannot be a "food chain", we each create our own reality, and should have an even chance of success with our chosen builds in our favored situations.

Exactly! However a hackers strength should lie out of Interlock, not within it. Plus a class created with the purpose of being the generic support class of an MMO shouldn't be so stand alone.

Eclipses%60

I agree with most of the comments made here. It saddens me to hear thate ven after a fix was applied to Hackers that they STILL remain a problem. This is ludicrious, the amount of problems one tree can cause a game.

I adovcate an increase cost for the hackers attacks as well to be placed on their abilities when they are drawn into interlock, amd of at all possible, upgrade attacks should take a penalty once a hacker is drawn into interlock. In my opinion, hackers need to concentrate, and it gets substantially harder to do so when they are in close combat dodging fists and flying feet.

Fade2blacK · 03/26/2006 14:24:17

as always the problem IS NOT the accuracy. What makes Hackers and Kung Fu ( yes kung fu too, at least to a lesser extent ) unbalanced is the **bleep** reuse timers. Aikido for instance prevents you from doing more than one move every two turns in interlock, with the exception of the specials that require states.

the big problem lies in:

1) specials are zero sum. Fine with that. But if some classes can perform as many specials as they want back to back and others do not, there will always be unbalance because we would return to the old combat silly interlock. This situation is making all the changes made to interlock go WASTED.
2) If you fail a special you lose IS! not only you take damage but if you were trying to react with specials you drain your innerstrenght! at the end of a special moves combo your foe remains with little IS...and you too. Too bad you just lost 2/thirds of your hps and your foe is untouched. Also hackers have trascurable is cost for their special, and KFGMs have lesser IS costs for their specials than other martials.

I think devs should look at this matter once and for all.
Oh and do not misunderstand me. I love the new combat. I just hate to see it behave as the old one.

Message Edited by Fade2blacK on 03-26-200602:20 PM

Message Edited by Fade2blacK on 03-26-200602:24 PM

**broin**

I agree that Hackers in interlock are a bad idea. Hackers are support class for the most part and should be made such. However if you want them to remain a support class make them usefull as such. Currently even with CR2 it is hard for a hacker to support. Stun durations are extremley low and though I do not like the current stun length I should be able to bump up the duration with ability stats more than 1-2 seconds which is all I have been able to obtain. What needs to happen is make a decision do you want them to be able to deal damage outside of interlock then give them that, do you want them to deal less damage but be a support and have decent debuffs that help the group in whole then give them that. Currently what I think has happened iwth CR2 is that they have taken away the outside of interlock damage and taken away the debuff capacity and given hacker a more level par inside interlock which turns them away from the support class they should be. I know I have taken down a few MA grndmasters insider interlock with my hacker loadout and that just should be possible. I know some of you will say that hackers still do extreme damage outside of interlock but I don't think it is any more extreme than the other ranged trees like riflles handguns machineguns etc. Yes, hackers can get their damage up significanctly with certain clothing, stats, ect. however when they do this they give up the benefits of protection from certain attacks so I think that is a decent balance there. One thing we all need to remember is this they are still planning on redoing hacker after cr2, at least that is what I thought I remembered reading so what we have now is a best address to the problem currently. Anyways that's my small bit of rambling on the situation