What a mess. And this is coming from someone that normally supports Funcom.
The posts here make a lot of good points, but let'slay out the facts and some well thought out solutions without silly threats of cancellations or flames towards Funcom.
Crit scopes will no longer be used for melee weapons at all. UVC is a 24% crit buff, so a martial artist's crit rate (ignoring natural crit and attack rating) is 24%. Another profession using a 15% scope, 7% mop and two 1% globes of clarity also has 24% crit buff. Equal playing field in terms of crit chances, however a soldier's crit damage is MUCH higher than our fist crits and their regular damage is also much higher. And they have the advantage of ranged attacks. I'm trying to avoid even mentioning agents, as with these new changes they will be crowned the king of the critical hit.
And this is all because funcom doesn't want ellts owners to get upset at them.
Solution: community needs to grow up an accept the ellts loss. I'm slightly sad myself as I had saved enough money to purchase a 15% scope, but I understand they were overpowered and needed to get lost. To be truthful, I don't understand why reflect bracers and ellts were in the game in the first place. There's no challenge or sense of accomplishment from going to a shop or looting a chest to gain items this powerful.
If the llts scopes were a bit more rare in the first place then the issue of them being overpowered may never have come up in the first place. Make them a reward for a VERY long and VERY difficult quest or something. I always did think it odd that for a couple of bucks you could double your damage output.
Crits are a powerful thing and either the ellts scopes should have been left alone entirely or removed entirely. There is no middle ground that is going to be acceptable to the majority of players.
You want a solution that works? Here's one: bring back the llts scopes except make their maximum crit factor 8%, the same as the VE scopes. the difference would be in the requirements to use. Tradeskills professions such as traders and engineers would appreciate this, as it would require them to raise green skills that they may have already been using, and other professions such as agents and adventurers and fixers would rely on the perception based scopes. Both would be equal in power, yet they would have different wear requirements. Add no extra stats (i.e. increased speed, attack rating, etc) to the llts scopes, unless you plan on either bringing them back or dealing with the negative feedback form folks unable to acquire the old school scopes.
Is that a better solution to anybody?
As for making the scopes ranged only, I must re-iterate that this is an extremely bad idea. Like I said before, with the right equipment, any ranged profession can reach or come close to the crit percentage of a martial artist using equipment that's already in the game. That's a problem because non-crit MA punches do not do great damage.
If I was speaking just from the perspective of a martial artist (I have two) I would say increase the power of our self crit buffs. But that wouldn't be very fair to the melee engineers, enforcers, adventurers and doctors. Giving them all crit buffs to compensate for the loss of an item that is fine the way it is is not the answer either.
Melee classes should indeed do more damage than other classes because there are alot of risks to playing a melee profession. It takes time to run within range of a rifle user, during which you still take damage and you can be rooted or slowed along the way.
Reducing our damage in comparison with a ranged class takes away any and all advantage to playing a melee class.
If you want to get fancy, make one scope ranged only and one scope melee only. does that sound a bit more fair?
Take the hard road and either remove the llts scopes entirely and put a ql250 VE in everyone's bag or reduce the power to 8% crit and return the llts to the stores. Yes, players paid through the nose for these items and yes, it was their decision to do so. they made the money once, they can easily make it again. then we can put this whole issue to rest.
I understand why Funcom is taking this current plan of action. They want to anger as few people as possible and they feel that keeping the scopes the way they are but changing the way they work is the answer. Another way to think of it is this: There's more melee users on Rubi Ka then there is llts scope owners. Pick which group you want to please and remember Funcom, that it was YOU that said the ellts scopes were overpowered. If they are so overpowered, then why are doing everything in your you can to keep them overpowered? Stick by your guns and bite the bullet. Some of us are grown up enough to understand and accept these changes.
