Why balance is futile

[doesitmatter]

Where AO went wrong, and why it can't be fixed. Hope you have a drink and comfy chair ready. I may digress a time or two

There was a game called Anarchy Online a decade ago. It had problems, but was a good game. Notum Wars was a great addition to this game. Then came Shadowlands. Now, don't get me wrong, personally, I liked this new world; for me it was a great contrast to Rubi Ka, having a mystic, ancient civilization feel to it, yet still seeming futuristic to me. The addition of a new world wasn't the problem.

The problem SL introduced was new levels, and perks (and resultant corresponding items to match). In one fell swoop, 20 new massive levels (and many perks to go with it) suddenly made nearly everything that came before obsolete. New symbs to replace implants, new armors, new weapons, all (nearly all, anyway) better than what came before. They had made RK, and all things in it, pretty much useless.

BUT, the biggest problem was that these new levels were NOT for everyone! They were only for those who bought sl. So, they also made every player who did not care for SL obsolete, no longer able to compete with massively stronger sl characters. The new levels should have been not linked to the expansion, they should have been universal, and not sl levels. They should have been regular levels. More on the problems that caused below.

So, 2 years later, what happens? They did the SAME thing again with AI!!! Only this time there wasn't even a new world to go along with it. Now only AI weapons and armor mattered, rendering what came before useless once again. Not to mention: whose bright idea was defacing the RK landscape with all these stupid looking, out of place player cities?!? New zones should have been made for player cities only, but that was just icing on the cake. Eventually they opened new zones solely for player cities, go figure. Too bad that wasn't from day one... (I won't elaborate on cities much, and the problems they caused to the gameworld and gameplay, just that they should have been instanced from the start, properly, or given an offworld moon to inhabit, anywhere but where they ended up; anyone with eyes could plainly see they don't belong on RK. As out of place as towers would be in SL... The zones were not designed for them, they would not work, as cities do not work in RK)

Anyway, later still, LE comes out, and they do the same thing yet again, just to a slightly lesser extent. Now there's research levels, MORE perks, more insane overpoweredness, more powerful weapons yet again.... Seriously, dev dudes, did you not learn from the previous 2 expansion debacles?!?

Graphics aside, AO can't be fixed and balanced within this system, ever! What needs to be done is ONE level system - ie: make it level 1-200 again, for the entire population: no sl levels, no ai levels, no le levels, no perks (or less perks), ONE unanimous serverwide system. ONLY then can the world start to be properly balanced. RK mobs, SL mobs, AI mobs, LE mobs should all give xp only, and make it scale properly. If a mob is 20 levels higher than you, then it gives a certain amount of xp - adjusted SLIGHTLY for weaker/tougher mob types. Then levelling can happen anywhere again, no matter what the mob. No multiple xp/sk/axp level structures. How did you ever think that could balance properly to begin with?!

The mistake wasn't adding new content, it was always the way they added new levels to the game, then as a result having to add overpowered items to match it, rendering all that came before useless and obsolete. Not making those levels - content itself could have remained separate - available unanimously to all players was a massive intermingled mistake as well.

Without a complete overhaul, friends, this system can never be properly balanced. The whole levelling system needs to be scrapped and redone, only then can the items and mobs and players be properly rebalanced.

10 hotbars of perks and nanos must go as well, it's all way too much, way too overpowering. Symbiants should vanish as well. Armor needs to have holes in it like the old days. They had it right before SL. The Shadow levels and perks and resulting items are where it truly started to go so very wrong. Yes, I do think it was a mistake removing penalties for death, and lootable pvp as well - you couldn't loot important stuff, that was fine (good, in fact, as losing important items would be bad for business, someone's hard work ruined by a lag spike, bug, crash, or just losing to chance, or a better opponent in that battle, luck of the draw. That doesn't keep customers paying), but it was a nice touch being able to take SOMETHING!

Sidenote about the graphics engine: I know the graphics of the game are NOT going to change much with a new engine, that's not the point of wanting a new engine, people! The old engine was designed for CPU use, graphics cards were still very new, not very popular when AO came out, so the game was designed accordingly to not rely on graphics accelerators much. ALL new computers have 3d graphics acceleration in them now, AO would run a million times better if it used this power. THAT is the point of why the engine should have been a priority, people. The graphics will not change without redoing all the textures. AO is still, ten years later, a cpu intense, hard drive thrashing, game with poor prefetch, and needs to also be redone.

As an old player who loved ao, and played for years during the glory days, the pinnacle of AO's existence, I must say, even a new engine won't bring me back now, it's too late. I do believe AO cannot be fixed, not without redoing the whole levelling/xp/perks structure as noted above. Now with instances making the raids I loved so much obsolete as well, there's no reason to return to AO at all, except nostalgia once a year because I do like to run/fly through the zones of RK and SL that I enjoyed so much time in, once upon a time.

My history: 3 paid accounts, 2 froob ones, former dedicated AO veteran. I can hardly fathom making alts in other mmos, AO was special. Was.

Obviously, these are my thoughts, and some might agree, and others disagree. Balance is impossible within this convoluted multiple levelling structure. The entire system needs a massive level nerf, and complete overhaul. Without this, balance is futile. Yes, I said it.

In other mmos, the most popular question i hear from new players is without a doubt, "how many levels are there? What is the maximum?" Usually, the answer is just a simple number.

Here is the answer in AO: Well, the maximum level is 200. But if you have SL there are 20 sl levels. If you have AI there are 30 ai levels. If you have LE there are 70 le levels.. New player: Huh?!

Before you jump in about noobs, these new players aren't stupid, this convoluted levelling system, however, is.

I've seen other mmos go through complete combat revamp/restructuring for better or worse, and i truly believe this, above all else, is what AO needs first and foremost, or everything else is just useless and futile. For pvp AND pve, bring it all down back to reality. Players should not be gods.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Hear hear.

Some interesting rants.

In light of this, I suggest:

1. remove all SL levels
2. redistribute perks to 1 perk per 5 normal levels, from 1 to 200 (resulting in same number overall of 40)
3. make min damage of EVERY weapon in game 1
4. reintroduce AC holes
5. remove top 3 engineer AC buffs

[doesitmatter]

againI never even thought about it, but removing those levels would remove the grinding pain i have often heard complaints about. I Liked slow levelling, personally, but that was at a time when there were too many teams, and not enough places to level!

Min weapon damage of 1 on all weapons, awesome idea!

The expansions seem always geared to give capped players a new grind, and that seems harmless on the surface, but really, brings about more harm than good. New items, encounters, what not, sure. A new 200 levels (under whatever guise you want to give it, sl 20, ai30 le70), is not kewl, it's too overpowering. It's not a grind you want to put alts through.A level 220/30/70 toon is really rk level 600, and that's just insane. Nerf my high toons all to hell, I should not be able to solo everything (you know what i mean here, most of the game is soloable now, and it should not be).

Instead of adding quicker ways to get to 220/30/70, why not REMOVE those levels completely! No new dailies needed, just raids for items - beast worked AWESOME for years JUST for items, not sk... Think about that... It was a grind, and i'm sure many of you loved those raids like I usually did.

MMO endgame is almost always about pvp nowadays, so extra grinds for xp/sk/ai/le are not necessary, they NEVER were, people would happily grind raids for the pvp items they wanted, which were usually good for pve, too, so it was all good. Instead, they got to grind TO 220, then grind AGAIN for the items, that's where it was all unneccesary... An expansion is a great thing for people to start an alt to explore, it shouldn't be a capped toon additional grind, so to speak.

Items should have bonuses AND penalties attached to them. Say i choose a high damage weapon, the penalty should be my defenses are severely weakened as a resulting balance. It's those kind of choices that make pvp fun for me, and that is how AO used to be once upon a time. Consequences and choices. Challenges make things more interesting and fun.

[Ciex]

He sounds like a raging froob. I dont mind having one classic ao server tho.

[Hanavald]

Anarchy Online rebalancing: brought to you by people responsible for Ranged Adventurers and 1hb/1he Enforcers.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Anarchy Online rebalancing: brought to you by people responsible for Ranged Adventurers and 1hb/1he Enforcers.

doh! nice track record.

[drainbamage]

TBQH this sounds like a bunch of nostalgic nonsense. You have nothing to back up your claims that adding new levels and endgame content is somehow a bad thing other than that you don't like it. Given that population numbers seem to spike up whenever something new comes out, it's probably the opposite. If pointbot zerg Pande was still the endgame, AO probably wouldn't be around today.

In fact I'd say the biggest issue is that in many cases, instead of retiring old content, FC forces people to continue to do it (or have done it in the past) in order to utilize new content. The end result being that Johnny Carbsuit winds up with a laundry list of dungeons and raids he needs to do (half of which hardly ever run outside of org/farm teams) often for just one or two items each.

And while there are definitely issues with how perks are implemented, going back to only having specials would be plain awful. Combat is boring enough already, you want to make it worse?

[heilt-do]

Must say the OP has a very valid point. The history of AO has been full of dev teams sh**ing over each other. AI being the worst that could happen to this game. With the Shadowlevels as second.

But its too late to rebuild game from scratch, AO has evolved now for better or worse this thing cannot be undone from a practical view of things.

Perhaps the only few things that can be undone are:
Instancing all citys, and making GMS Click to buy = No massive hazzle trying to reach Dark Front's city for example (Top right corner of DAV!).

Also Means did mention they plan of making old armor sets, items "up to par" with today standars this could rescue some choice costumization as for armor.

Now balancing the 20 SLevels might be harder, this should have never been done like this (Max lvl should be 300 to balance equipment, and pvp ranges), but perhaps this and all the crap AI brought where selling points back in 2001-2004.

[Manicmouse]

Instancing all citys, and making GMS Click to buy

Bump this. Refresh the large RK maps and get rid of the horrible cities!

[Seoin]

Why all the hate at player cities.. I think they look nice, especially at a distance and when you can see more than 1 of them.

Instancing all citys, and making GMS Click to buy = No massive hazzle trying to reach Dark Front's city for example (Top right corner of DAV!).

And they're only good for travel.. when you're stranded out in the middle of nowhere, where do you look for a way back to civilisation? This is the same problem of reaching DF city but in reverse, you want to hike across RK to get to Bor but not to get to player cities?

Imo put in click to buy and leave cities outside in RK.

[Cogline]

The original post just made me think that being a froob isn't such a bad thing after all. That in itself speaks volumes about this game. Making my way to 200 is a challenge but all those other levels I'll leave to those with the time, money and patience to keep going just to be "uber". If the Expansion stuff had been isolated to within those expansions (such as SL stuff ONLY working in SL including the perk lines) the game as a whole would work better. And before you all start screaming at me SL is supposed to be another world of sorts and sloobs count as paying players.

[heilt-do]

Why all the hate at player cities.. I think they look nice, especially at a distance and when you can see more than 1 of them.



And they're only good for travel.. when you're stranded out in the middle of nowhere, where do you look for a way back to civilisation? This is the same problem of reaching DF city but in reverse, you want to hike across RK to get to Bor but not to get to player cities?

Imo put in click to buy and leave cities outside in RK.

Like it was supposed to be?
Remember its the wildernes, perhaps having some faction sided outpost with a grid entrance only could ease this to a point, add something more territory advantages to factions.

Also citys clustered toghether kill framerates, try raiding on 3 craters, one must reduce view distance to have smooth gameplay.

[Towerblock]

Obviously people are forgetting that AO straight out of the box post Beta was not the best example of a game world either.

Besides, whats gone on here is the same thing that has gone on in other games for the past 10+ years, evolution. Evolution comes at a cost to those that resist change. Change is not always bad, and the evolution of this game while choppy - is still meant for players like us or else we would not still be playing. A game that has no dynamic system of evolution gets stale fast, and then you have no subscribers. No subscribers means no one is funding the game, and then corporate shuts it down due to lack of interest / viability.

Still, a classic server would be nice, for pure nostalgia reasons.

[Otansaanpas]

3. make min damage of EVERY weapon in game 1

crit build ftw

[Kuegen]

The complaint isnt really an issue, I dont think i know anyone paid who is missing one of the expansions. It gives us more to do, some call it a grind i call it playing the game. Say I'm Level 200, yeah I can gimp myself through inf missions, or I can turn on research, get some AI levels, make myself a little bit better. It gives me an advantage over those who just powerlevel to 220 with little research and maybe 2 AI levels.

But you make a really good point, and that is making everything before obsolete. We can look at it this way however, while some weapon may have become obsolete, the new items/power allow a lower level to twink it on.

But think of all the RK content, mercenaries for example, who has any need for azure armor at 220 other than social? Omni AF? Sentinels? They did it right with the biodomes, Kegern's and Jathos' armor that could be enhanced with DB stuff. Old raids are made necessary, this is good.

There is the other problem then that people will need these old raids and new instances, that the population is spread too thin, and it may be hard to get want you want/need.

And I want to keep my 6 hotbars full of stuff I may use in combat. I like mashing buttons and feeling active as I'm fighting, rather than being blatantly aware that im auto attacking.

[MajorOutage]

crit build ftw

Most guns crit mods would still suck.

[Kuegen]

Most guns crit mods would still suck.

yes but youll hit for at least your maximum, in SL there may be no difference, but we're presuming all weapons have a 1 dmg minimum anyway

[If6was9]

Some of the OPs post sounds fine - some of it sounds like a returning vet looking up the sheer wall of levels that came with the expansions... stamping his foot and saying "I'm not going to play!"

Okay, don't play.

Obviously a lot of the stuff Funcom did with SL was intended to sell SL. But a lot of the old RK stuff became obsolete not only because of SL's improvements, or because of SL mobs' armors, but because in the lead up to the release of SL Funcom nerfed the f*** out of everyone's AR, whether they were on RK or in SL. It used to be 2,000 points AR meant 2,000 points AR. Most RK weapons went up to 2400 MBS and that was effective MBS. Even if a soldier hits 2400 AR now his effective AR is something like 1700.

It still pisses me off, even if I'm having a GTFOML moment.

As far as "possibly balancing" everything - Kintaii has posted about the need precisely because of the statflation and uber items and perks that have crept into the game. He did not give me the impression that he thought it would be easy, or impossible.

[Obtena]

Honestly, when someone determines that 7 of the 10 years that a game has existed are 'wrong', I stop taking them seriously because those are the 7 years or less that the majority of the currently playing population take their relevant gaming experience from. That IS the game those people. If it was only the original and NW that the OP says is the pre-'going wrong' era, I'm not sure anyone would be here to have a discussion about it ... game wouldn't have stagnated. I will add a personal opinion here that if anything, to me the original RK stuff is the least attractive part of the game for a whole number of reasons. If it wasn't for the more recent RK content additions, I would see little reason to pay heed to RK content. Indeed, I have leveled a number of characters completely in SL and I'm not alone. IMO, that illustrates just how outdated the OP's perspective is. That original RK content of missions and numerous encounters that is the 'right' part of the game is almost irrelevant in current AO.

Still, if the OP is serious about this thread, it's worth taking into account that there is no absolute definition for balance here, so deeming re-balance futile is a nonsensical notion. Re-balance isn't futility if you expand your definition of it past 'nostalgia'. From MY understanding, tje professions weren't at all balanced for PVP pre-SL either, nor was endless leveling on RK missions an extremely attractive proposition, so some objectivity is clearly necessary. I think FC people are pretty smart. They see how modern MMO's are evolving. I see alot of them moving away from the model where your character gains levels from grinding experience in the same manner until it makes you numb. That's been addressed and it's faster to level than EVER in AO. Leveling is not a barrier in AO, at least not like it was in the past.

There are definitely things about parts of the game that don't 'fit' but to go as far to say they make re-balance futile is just a lack of vision. Can re-balance only be achieved if the system has simple interactions and no additional game elements? Certainly not, so why are the shadowlevels, perks and research a big fail here? I don't see how any of those things prevent re-balance from happening or prevent any player from enjoying all aspects of it, especially if your expectations for what re-balance will be aren't unreasonable. The things the OP says are wrong and make re-balance futile can simply be made to fit in the game.

[Samcon]

Re-Balance is not futile, It is simply a change of how things are currently balanced. Actual Balance IS futile. Does anyone really want balance? I would rather have fun.
I started in 2004 trying out the game for free. Then I got SL. Sure SL was OP compared to RK, but I feel that it was fairly balanced on its own, and gave the professions more definition. Then later I got AI. Other than Atrox genome perks AI was fairly well balanced. Rollback to the day before Lost Eden was released. To me there is where the real problem happened. Skip it, all the research, procs, nanos and VP related content. Right there is your main scource of pointless stat inflation and grinding, it didn't creep in, it mostly happened at once. Maybe keep OFAB armor stats and port it to Tier armor, since its what Tier should have been, except for the nasty color and mesh. Add everything else after except AS pistol as a lot of that content was equipment progression, not band-aids, which is the way things should be. Sounds good to me, and probably a lot of others.

It is my opinion that LE was a very solo content oriented patch, destroyed what balance pvp did have at the time, and really helped lead to the game's current poor state. It was so bad that a lot of it has already changed, or is being changed with rebalance! I say do what needs to be done and scrap it all.

Sure some things would be unequipable or uncastable self buffed, and you might actually see someone play (or team) a Trader or MP too. Remember when you needed buffs to perform at maximum efficency, you felt useful no matter what you played, and every profession had a role? It was never truly balanced, but that was a fun game that you enjoyed being a part of. That is what AO should want to be again.
Now you can play 98% of the current content without a doctor. Even low level content is easymode when properly equipped. Now there is only 2 real professions at endgame, Crat and potential tank.

Im sure everyone has their "I hate this expansion" rant, but im sure most people can agree with Lost Eden = bad, no?
Of course it can't be undone, but we can all have our dreams, can't we?

p.s. Devs can I have a Rollback LE placard please?!