>> Tank's tweaking <<

[Downsizr]

OK Tank is now working as intended in the first place.
And none is using it except 2 hardcore role-players.

If I can voice the sadness of my fellow enforcers I would say that we are not pleased to be unable to use the Tank armor.
Everyone and his brother have explained that we don't understand why Tank has penalties when Decus coat don't. Given that these armors have the same stats.

Let me put a few points straight here :

1°) Putting a penalty on nano pool or nano skill for professions that are rather weak with nanos in the first place AND that at the same time are heavily relying on nanos (Mongo, Challenger, Essence, ...) is not possible.

2°) Preventing Enf / Sold from having a back slot armor with good AC (penalty on tank, thinking of nerfing Decus) would be the end of any tanking.

3°) Having incredibly high AC is required for any profession engaged in combat without a pet. One would believe that tanking professions would need a better AC than other professions. But honestly there is no real distinction here. All the prof have access to a variety of armor that gives the same stats. Only difference being the self buff that some prof like us Enforcers, have to equip armors.

4°) Armor types are dull in their specs. Even if there is some minor variations in Chem AC / Range AC / Melee AC / ... this is pretty much the same thing. We are not playing and saying 'wow I need to shift to Chem armor now or I will be toasted'. No adaptation is required. Unless you try to boost some AC weaknesses by implanting specific clusters, and realize that they would replace more important ones.

5°) Putting penalties on evades is also not possible. The only use of the uterly inefficient Battlesuits is ...making creds at shops with them.

If I go back to Tank that should be so distinctive of tanking prfessions, it's obvious that they can be erased from the game databases or tweaked into interesting gear.

An idea I had was along the lines of the Chemical Mausser :
don't touch their specs but make them tradeskills items so that we can add 1 faded + 1 bright + 1 shining cluster on them.
We could then balance in our way their disadvantages.

Still, softening their nano penalty to something that we can compensate would be welcomed. Something like +5% or +10% to all nano costs would make more sense.

Damn... I hate these robes.

[___________Manchilde]

What Gumm said.....please let me take off my "Man-Dress".....I would give a pretty penny to be able to wear tank again and still be useful

[_____________Barakon]

Alas, although they said they were improving it, we will all have gray hair by the time they implement it...

[_______________Archu]

The problem is like Gummi said, the need of nano progs. Because all professions are "casters" heavy armor with casting penalties does not cut it. Maybe give battle suits and tank armor a pfor req and remove the silly penalties.
A MA IRL would never wear tank armor, a battle suit or even a coat because it makes moving your feet harder. In AO you need to wear a coat or tank to have high enough AC. Too bad the tank and battle suits are useless so now everyone including "the caster classes" (If such things even exist in this game) use decus coats if they are solitus/atrox/opifex.

[_______________Intra]

Originally posted by Archu
A MA IRL would never wear tank armor, a battle suit or even a coat because it makes moving your feet harder. In AO you need to wear a coat or tank to have high enough AC.

sorry to disagree. samurai often wore armour (yes it was specially designed). I am a MA in real life and we wear a thing called a Hakama which looks like a black skirt. it makes it more difficult to move in, but you get used to it. it also hides alot of your movement which gives you extra vital moments in a combat situation.
but this game is far from RL, so it is besides the point.
just thought I would share though.

[____________Cyblade7]

Why? Why I ask. Why did they nerf tank armor???

Who whined/complained/moaned to nerf tank armor? Find them and imprison them!

<shakes head in disgust>

BUMP!

[____________Rockpitt]

You said it Cyblade7. I was playing back in the day when tank got nerfed (I was playing a low fixer so I didnt wear it personally). Oh the whining and crying about how Soldiers and Enforcers are uber and no else has a chance in pvp! Nerf Tank! That's the ticket! My personal opinion is that was the non-Str/Sta classes whining (because coats weren't particularly numorous then). Well guess what? As the server population got higher, coats started showing up. What gets me is why no one is complaining about those too. Back armor and no penalty at all! What's up with that? The only thing that nerfing tank armor did was make everyone, who wanted to wear back armor, look the same. Actually, nerfing tank was very short sighted on Funcom's part, since they knew they had coats in the game and that players would eventually discover them as an equal substitute for tank.

I'll offer a solution. Remove the nano penalty from tank and reduce the AC of coats. Now, the player has to choose. High AC/evade penalty/run penalty vs. Low AC/evade/run speed. No real right answer here, just personal preference matched to the way you play the game.

[Downsizr]

Originally posted by Rockpitt
I'll offer a solution. Remove the nano penalty from tank and reduce the AC of coats. Now, the player has to choose. High AC/evade penalty/run penalty vs. Low AC/evade/run speed. No real right answer here, just personal preference matched to the way you play the game.

Well as an enforcer I would rather have a malus of 500-1000 pts of AC and be able to cast 3 Mongos in a fight. There is no balance between this nano penalty and AC.

You have to understand that ACs have to be incredibly high to make a slight difference in combat. Recently I equiped a Nano Helm just because it looks cool on my Atrox. This is crippling my AC of 400 pts. And there is no real difference for me in a fight.

A nano penaly of 5% on casting would make some sense. Not what we have now. The Tank armor have not been nerfed, I am ok to follow the official point of view here : they fix like intended.

They are just labeled : "Please don't touch".

[Xaielao]

BUMP.. BIG BUMP!!!


Who in there right mind decided that a cloth over-coat should have the same or better AC bonuses then Tank Armor without any side effects? I mean come on!!! It's the very reason everyone and there brother wears an ugly redish dress that sells for 80k at QL30. That REEKS of imballance.

The best suggestion I've heard so far.. lower coat AC bonuses Raise Tank bonuses. (The nano I could care less about.. for Enforcers it's important but not for Soldiers.. until lvl100+ our nano's are the worst in the game.. hands down.)

My soldier wears light tank armor... because I flat out REFUSE to wear a coat. It goes against every grain of my soldier-attitude.


Solitus Soldier 92 (made 92 tonight.. w00t)
Flowers Tech/Light Tank
Hellspinner Shock Cannon

Edit: The Hellspinner is off a boss mob in the Cyborg dungeon. See "the little bit of lovin.." thread on the Soldier forum for stats.

[__________NicholaSix]

/me Point's finger at NTs

They were the ones complaining that soldiers could cast an MK that required more NP then they had when increased by a factor of 2.

Here is a short list of nurfs you can point a finger at NTs for as far as the soldier class goes.

1. Weapon switching delays. Now no one weapon switches at all because of the bugs associated with doing it that were created by FCs typical implementation of new code.

2. MK Recharge, weapon switching no longer while MK is up.

3. Burst nurfed 2 times (3 times really but the last time they nurfed it, it seldom did more than a normal shot, in fact it frequently did less than fling shot, so they had to fix it, everyone was screaming bloody murder).

4. Full auto nurfed 2 times. Once after release and once in beta.

5. MK nurfed from 75% reflect.


Personally, I think the NT class has the brightest future. Yes they have some problems now, and yes they aren't next in line for a fix, but I bet in 6-8 months they will once again be one of the toughest classes. They have the largest contingency of complainers in the game, and if they don't get buffed, I bet they will get everyone else nurfed down to their level at some point in time.

Someone tossed out a theory, in these RPGs play the weakest char at launch and you will be the strongest before too long. This guy was explaining why he had chosen to play a meta. He was right. My longer term view, play the class with the largest group of whiners, at some point in time they will complain their way into the best spot.

[Tboo]

Maybe Funcom is specifically trying to get everyone wearing Decus coats because it has something to do with plot? Maybe the spirits of the old Senpai and Hanshi empires will come and possess us and we'll end up in a big battle between the Senpai coat wearers and the Hanshi coat wearers, with the folks who stuck with tank armor or backpacks as the neutrals?

Or maybe tank armor needs to be substantially better.

[____________Rockpitt]

Well Gummizluv my comparison wasn't between nano and AC. My suggestion is that neither coat nor tank have a nano penalty. The comparison is normal run speed (Coat)/penalized run speed (Tank), penalized AC (C)/High AC(T) and normal evade (C)/penalized evade(T). I think it's safe to assume no one really cares about the run speed. Now its up to Funcom to work out the balance between AC(T) and Evade(C) so the player has a real option as to which type of back armor they would like to wear.

Ideally, balance is achieved when 50% of the players say they like AC better and the other 50% say they like Evade better.

[Downsizr]

OK Rockpitt my misundedrstanding.

Now :

Someone tossed out a theory, in these RPGs play the weakest char at launch and you will be the strongest before too long. This guy was explaining why he had chosen to play a meta. He was right. My longer term view, play the class with the largest group of whiners, at some point in time they will complain their way into the best spot.

That is quite intersting theory.

Douglas Adams wrote in one of his book that if people would undederstand the meaning of life, the world as it is would cease to exist and become something even weirder.

Another theory says that if enough people start to belive something it becomes real.

This last theory and the ones about NT are the same. They can be verified if you look around you.

Frightening uh ?

[__________NicholaSix]

OMG I guess I kind of inadvertently committed an act of plagiarism!

It is scary, but in a way it's to be expected, Funcom wants to please it's customers so that it can make money. The only way it knows what its customers want is from what they tell them. Therefore the most vocal group will be the most represented group.

It's very much like the stock market. People don't by or sell stock in a reaction to news; they do it based on how they perceive others will react to that news. Funcom won’t adjust game mechanics based on their observations; they will make changes based on how they think others will react to the changes.

[Cosmik]

You've got a good discussion going on here guys. As was said, Tank Armor is now working an intended but does intended necessarily mean w00t? Well, that's up to you, but if something is better than intended then that will certainly be looked at. So, I am sending this thread to the designers to read over. I'll grab em by the ankles and shake em upside down for information too.

[Downsizr]

Thanks.

Just don't go in any technical talk, ask them to log at Athen whompah and check what ppl have on their back.

[__________NicholaSix]

LOL you guys are going to get coats nurfed now and tank is still going to be teh suk =[[[

oh well cest la nurfs

[____________Ejeckted]

ok, if Devs are actually reading this,
it's worth reposting the numbers.


Q200 Hanshi Primus Decus Armor Coat

MeleeAC by 1000
ProjectileAC by 1000
EnergyAC by 1000
ChemicalAC by 625
RadiationAC by 250
PoisonAC by 875
FireAC by 875
ColdAC by 875

no negative side-effects.



Q200 High-Quality Heavy Tank Armor

MeleeAC by 1000
ProjectileAC by 1000
EnergyAC by 1000
ChemicalAC by 250
RadiationAC by 250
PoisonAC by 250
FireAC by 875
ColdAC by 750

NPCostModifier to 100
RunSpeed by -50
Duck by -50
Dodge by -50
Evade by -50


why does a coat provide better AC and have no negative effects,
when inferior tank armor doubles nano cost and lowers evades and runspeed?

edit:
here is a better thread (one of many) on the same issue:
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...&threadid=7766
(oh, just click it. .)

[Xaielao]

Thanks for the reply Cosmik.. and for talking to the devs about it. please report back on what you can 'shake' out of them .

Please also realize that there is no way that.. in a game or reality.. a long piece of material, died and shaped into a dress.. is going to provide better AC then thick, plasteel (thats what it looks like lol) Tank armor. I can SEE the negatives of Tank armor.. it's bulky as hell.

My suggestion isn't to nerf Man-Dresses (aka Decus coats) but to instead increase the armor protection of tank armor.. even if only bye 10%. Make it something people want again.

[____________Ejeckted]

Originally posted by ULTRA1
LOL you guys are going to get coats nurfed now and tank is still going to be teh suk =[[[

oh well cest la nurfs

all items, all choices, should have equal pros and cons.
that's balance.

there should be reason to consider tank vs coat vs cloak vs backpack.
and there should be a reason not to wear anything on your back at all.

equally balanced choices lead to diversity
which is good for roleplay and gameplay.

i know i've posted the ideas already but . .
if i was a Dev, dreaming up this stuff for the first time,
these would be my initial thoughts on these items.
(partially mirroring ideas that did, or almost-did, make it already)


nano-cloak,
intended for int/psy users, a penalty of -2 nanopool per QL
(-400 total for QL200) would make the choice to wear a coat
something the player would actually have to weigh out.
more AC vs more nanopool.


decus-coat,
this item provides is intended for agil/str users,
so my first idea would be some sort of -agility
modifiers since moving in a thick robe would be
more difficult, but since it requires 'agility' to equip
this might be problematic. IMO, the nanodelta modifier
would be a better suited penalty for a coat
used by mostly by MAs and Agents etc
(ie, less casting-dependant professions)
as it would force you to consider the benefits
of more AC vs the con of more expensive nanocost.
but double cost is just rediculous!
an extra 25% would be more than enough to
make you think twice about it. and then players
using it are presented with another choice,
whether to sacrifice some ncu space for a
recompiler to make up for the nano-delta . .


tank armor,
heavy heavy stuff, providing the best AC,
intended for the tanking professions.
penalty? -1 to all evades per QL.
so QL200 would give -200 to evades.
this forces the decision, does the player
wear the tank and pump even more IP
into evades to try to make up for it?
wear the tank and hope the added
AC makes up for increased crit frequency
due to the -evade modifiers?
or not wear it at all and chose evades over AC?
i would throw in a -0.5 per QL runspeed too. (-100 @QL200)


backpacks,
the idea was great. give backpacks modifiers.
alright. but how about modifiers players actually care about?
some examples:

+5 (basically a free level) to all nanoskills

+8 int/psy, +8 str/stam, +8 sense/agil, +8 agil/str, etc
to help wear better armor.

+50 runspeed and +25 evades

+100 to all weapon inits.

+10 to all primary weapon skills

+25 nanoresist and +50 nano init.

+20 all tradeskills

+ncu (in various QLs)

these packs could also be swapped in and out
for different occasions, assuming you have the adv skill.

the penalty of the above items?
having to invest a lot of IP in adventuring,
(at least 300 pts so players need to spend
IP and cant do it all with a temporary implant set,
also prevents packs being equiped/overpowered
at lower levels) and sacrificing the additional AC
of back-armor.


and the advantage of going without any of it?
no penalties. no IP cost.


so.. doesnt a system like this make more sense?