A Secondary Defence

[RimorRage]

There are some professions who have 2 (or more) forms of defence in the game, usually one in the form of a perk defence and one in the form of a nano defence (I'll leave you to name them). However some professions have more than two (I think we all know which) and there are some professions who barely have one (again I think we all know which)

What does everyone think to the idea of every profession have ONLY TWO forms of defence? For example, would people prefer it if you were hit-able/perk-able/cast-able until you use your first defence, lets take coon for example, then once coon is out you have a second defence until it is up again? lets take heals as the second.

Would people prefer this? This meaning more survivability, solo ability, longer duels etc.

Or would people prefer every profession to have only ONE form of defence, so you would get heals or coon but not both. As this would mean, the success of your pvp (and pvm to an extent) would be based on your timing/strategy/usage of your defence (but you would probably die more often)

Discuss. :-)

[crattey]

Eh, that's similar to just deleting all professions but one.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

too hard to rebalance such a variable.

like, if you were to just ¨remove¨ one of advies defences, which would it be¿ coon, acro or heals¿

but then you´d throw all the balancing done so far to the wind.

[RimorRage]

I'm not talking about just removing one, I mean restricting professions to having just two OR just one, and I don't mean in reference advy's alone I mean all professions. But in the case of advy's give them either coon and acro and no heals, coon and heals and no acro or acro and heals and no coon. Get it?

I just wanted to know what people would think about this idea/template being applied across the board (but obviously not with just coon, acro and heals being the 3 defences.

[RimorRage]

Eh, that's similar to just deleting all professions but one.

I don't understand what you mean, maybe you don't understand what I'm trying to say.

I'm getting at having the varied forms of defence we have in game at the moment but restricting each profession to having just two of these available or just one.

[Vgman01]

There are some professions who have 2 (or more) forms of defence in the game, usually one in the form of a perk defence and one in the form of a nano defence (I'll leave you to name them). However some professions have more than two (I think we all know which) and there are some professions who barely have one (again I think we all know which)

What does everyone think to the idea of every profession have ONLY TWO forms of defence? For example, would people prefer it if you were hit-able/perk-able/cast-able until you use your first defence, lets take coon for example, then once coon is out you have a second defence until it is up again? lets take heals as the second.

Would people prefer this? This meaning more survivability, solo ability, longer duels etc.

Or would people prefer every profession to have only ONE form of defence, so you would get heals or coon but not both. As this would mean, the success of your pvp (and pvm to an extent) would be based on your timing/strategy/usage of your defence (but you would probably die more often)

Discuss. :-)

The problem isn't soely the number of defence's but also how powerfull those defences are. Take for example sold's. As much as people complain about ams its pretty easy to counter, just run him off till its over. Now if solds had something like a self buff for 50% reflects that they could keep up at all times they would be much more difficult to kill.

Now take advies, if coon ws reduced to a 1k dmg absorb and dof/limber was reduced to +50/+150 evades and their heals where reduced to ma quality no one would give them a second glance.

And lastly offence is also a form of defence, if every defence in the game is brought in line with every other form of defence the only diffrence betwean classes will be the damage they can pump out. In other words the highest dmg proff will always win out.

Every one having the same number of defences is just kind of... bland.

[-Klod-]

I think advies should also get reflects. Oh, wait...

[Xtremtech]

I'm not sure that you can clearly separate stuff out in this way. So, an Engi has buffs for AC, Reflect and Special Blockers - does that count as 3 'defences' already? Bioshielding also gives them actively used perk specials that include Cocoon, Heals and Shield AC - do they alone count as 3 things? Does an Engi with buffs and Bioshielding already have 6 'defences'?

Then you have questions with professions about hostile active defences, such as debuffs and crowd control. Does an MP damage debuff or a Trader drain-type debuff count as a 'defence'? Does a root, blind or snare count as a 'defence'?

And then... what about item buffs? Does an MP with Shield of Zset count as having used up 4 'defences' because the shield includes AC, Reflects, AAD and NR buffs? But what do you do about all the MPs who aren't using it? Equippable profession specific defences like these can make a huge overall difference to defence... but that doesn't necessarily mean you can balance based on them - because they're balanced through other means. In the case of Shield of Zset, it's balanced by having crap offence while using it.

You could never define a specific way to actually separate out a number of 'defences' for a profession... and as somebody mentioned already, there's also the relative power of those defences. It's overall unworkable.

X

[alderwaran]

imho every profession has a set of defenses, some more active like debuffs, alpha power, roots, snares, blinds, stuns and heals or passive like blockers, reflect, runspeed and evades.
all of them can be quite powerful and all of them can be fu into oblivion if you meet the wrong opponent (stone-paper-scissor mechanics i mentioned in another thread).

question is are you willing to pimp your defense at the cost of your offense?

[mr_road]

I think advies should also get reflects. Oh, wait...

and roots and blockers. oh, wait...

[RimorRage]

Some good points given

I guess I was more thinking along the lines of active defences and perks. Almost all professions seem to have a perk defence and a nano defence, but some professions are left out and other have access to more.

I was thinking more along the lines of giving every profession one active perk defence and one active nano defence, (or having either one nano defence and no perk defence or one perk defence and no nano defence).

I guess I was thinking more about my pvp experience against soldiers in particular, before their ams is up and after it is out they are quite vulnerable and its interesting to watch how different soldiers pvp and how their timing can be the difference between a win and a loss. This seems to also be the case with enfos and NTs also to a degree.

I was thinking what the game would be like if this was the case for all professions?

[Xtremtech]

This is essentially the rock/paper/scissors Vs relative equality across the board discussion, of which you'll find lots of thread examples in a search. Put briefly, AO is built so that different professions have different strengths and weaknesses which they need to make the best of... but some people feel, like you, that everybody should be roughly equal in defence and offence with the thought that this would tend to emphasise skill more.

The broad idea in AO's PvP is that a given profession may find itself weak against nano attacks - and so be susceptible to NTs, Crats and Traders for example... but they may also be strong against evades based attacks and so have their opportunity against weapon specialists. Similarly, offensively, some professions might be strong on crits but weaker on perks and so find that they're more able to hurt some professions than others. Part of the reason that AO is designed this way is also that AO devs like to balance more toward team play (which many would say should be the basic paradigm of MMOs where you're involved in multi-player interactions)... so the idea is also, that profession weaknesses can be balanced out by other members of your team to some extent... so by retaining profession strengths/weakness, they are also encouraging team PvP play.

It's actually more complex than this, because there are further subdivisions between weapon specials and perks and because of the differences between static, active and hostile based defences (like debuffs). There's also differences between normal and crit attacks, alpha Vs more damage over time oriented, nukes Vs DoTs etc. There are also differences between how strong different professions are against different evades, or how good they are at damage mitigation Vs Healing Vs evading damage in the first place.

This complexity presents difficulties, in that balancing a more complex system like this is more difficult and so is rarely up-to-date. Also, trying to maintain a rock/paper/scissors approach when you have 14 different professions with many of those professions having various sub-builds that are viable, leaves an awful lot of different options and variations to be calculating. The end result tends to be that certain professions tend to have the greatest advantages over the largest number of professions... and then become flavour of the month professions which most players then play - while some professions are just weak against too many professions and end up hardly being played.

The opposing position is an approach like you suggest, where everybody basically has a similar level of defence to all types of attack and a similar level of offence in all main areas. But many people feel that this kind of approach lacks variety and doesn't really fit with the basic paradigm of AO. They might say that it removes the variations between players and tends to make PvP more formulaic (often using comparison to PvP in other games). At the same time, the closer the skill-sets are to each other across professions... and the more equal offence and defence are - the more actual playing skill is likely to be the main differentiator between players... which for many people is a prime motivator for PvPing.

It's a tough discussion that goes deeply to the heart of what PvP play should look like. In general though, the devs still maintain a general approach of promoting strengths and weaknesses for professions in particular areas, as a way of maintaining variety and making the skills system meaningful and keeping class distinctiveness. There's also still a basic desire in the dev team to promote team PvP, with different professions supporting each others strengths and weaknesses. So essentially, AO still takes as its base the rock/paper/scissors type approach.

X

[mr_road]

Some good points given

I guess I was more thinking along the lines of active defences and perks. Almost all professions seem to have a perk defence and a nano defence, but some professions are left out and other have access to more.

I was thinking more along the lines of giving every profession one active perk defence and one active nano defence, (or having either one nano defence and no perk defence or one perk defence and no nano defence).

I guess I was thinking more about my pvp experience against soldiers in particular, before their ams is up and after it is out they are quite vulnerable and its interesting to watch how different soldiers pvp and how their timing can be the difference between a win and a loss. This seems to also be the case with enfos and NTs also to a degree.

I was thinking what the game would be like if this was the case for all professions?

some proffessions defense comes in the form of an offense. eg. crats and c, traders and drains and cc, shades and their kill speed.

some proffessions defense is effective against all or some sources of incoming damage. coon has a weakness to big specials, DtN has no weakness apart from a "short" duration, heals is a defense again all damage, reflects have a weakness to NT's and time, evades have a weakness to nukes / procs / dot's / regular damage / low checking perks / AS / sneak attack / spammed specials, NR has a weakness to spammed stuff, CB and low checking stuff.

some proffessions defenses can be disabled: stuns or init debuffs or nano skill debuffs for heals, reflect rippers for reflects, evade or AAD debuffs, NR debuffs, stuns to delay the use of other active defenses.

then there is the issue of some proffessions having more than one effective defense.