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Post by grävling on Jul 5, 2012 5:50:22 GMT -5
The following issues I think have left the game unbalanced, compared to where it was before since the arrival of the new weapons and the enabling of armour, and Female 2 who can only shoot. So I am comparing before and after the 7.0 release. Note, I think the 7.1 release and subsequent are wonderful -- it is just that large changes leave implied spaces . Changes in behaviour that nobody intended, but just ended up like that.
1. Vokked Hell Hunds and Alpha Hell Hunds show up a little too soon. They often show up before the plain cyan-and-blue Hell Hunds (who are a lot easier to kill). The net result is that you can die before you have purchased the gear you need to kill them, especially if you begin your journey by taking jobs from Vinny the Rat and Tuck Jr, who can give you lots of XP for very little cash. They often show up after you have bought one of (hard armour/2 decent guns) but before you can afford the other, and by the time you meet them, you badly need both.
2. The 'out of bullets' graphic needs to take into consideration the HPX 59 and its size 14 carbine. I keep running out of bullets in the middle of a fight. Now I carry an extra clip in my backpack for this purpose, but I'd like it if I could be reliably informed that I am running out.
3. The 'out of bullets' graphic needs to take into consideration what weapons you are currently equipped with. I don't care that I have 50 pistol rounds in my cyberloader when all I am wielding is automatic bullet using weapons. When my auto ammo dips below a certain level, I should get the out of bullets message. And this is the case when I am weilding 2 weapons that take different sorts of ammo. When I am getting low on either, I want the message -- you are getting low on ammo for at least one of the guns you are wielding -- none of this 'well you had plenty of pistol ammo for your lightfire in slot 2, so does it really matter than your cyberloader has no auto ammo left for your rifle in slot 1?'
4. Kraken Jacket (Y 12950) + nano ready medkit (Y1200) == immortality as long as you can keep buying the medkit. (I think this is the cheapest nano-ready armour available in the NBZ, let me know if I am wrong about this.). This leads to a playing style where you go directly for this, and then take corp escort jobs at somewhat over the replacement cost of a medkit a job. You factor in the cost of dying at least once, and still come out ahead. It's boring. I have fixed my problem by refusing to use the nano-ready armours, but still ....
5. Bribery. I think that only characters with a very high level of negotiation or threaten should get a chance to talk or initimidate themselves out of fights. Actually, I think that this is something that Faces should get quite often, and the others only when they are very high level in negotiation or threaten. Moreover, I think that the basic success level for 'does the negotiation work' should be a whole lot lower. Even if you do things perfectly, I think that you should end up in a fight 66% of the time. Evading should be *easier* than negotiating.
If your negotiation is perfectly successful -- 'we get the drift' -- you should get an XP point. Otherwise, no. 1 XP for 100Y is dirt cheap.
What more do we have? What things are truly bothering others?
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Post by absimiliard on Jul 5, 2012 9:10:23 GMT -5
Well, I'm using "Quick Reply", but I suspect it's lying.
I will refrain from commenting on when the dogs show up as I almost always play the strongest game I can from the start. That definitely means exploiting the early game "not killing you yet"-ness to your best. I still die a fair bit on the way to immortality, so I don't feel like nerfing myself. As a result I don't see the xp/n-Y ratios you do, and I'm not sure my commentary would be useful, different data-sets ya know.
I will solidly agree that the cost of immortality being 12kn-Y plus 1.2kn-Y per death is too low for my tastes as well. It still leaves an early-game gap during which I can die, but once I have that cash a gap that used to exist is closed. In my opinion that closed gap was "Wow, I can probably survive fleeing a corp encounter, but I can't fight one and if things go south I'm dead anyway." During that window, which is a long time for my style (avoid fights and courier a lot), there's a fascinating impulse to be stupid and run corp jobs for the cash; doing so means I'm ducking in and out of corp-land, racing from target to the nearest data-port, and all the while my adrenaline is up and my pulse is quicker because I know damn well that I have no business being where I am, and if I survive it it's all the more thrilling.
As you can guess this is the stage during which most of my characters die. I simply can't resist putting them into stupid and risky, but not hopeless, positions. Most everyone dies of this adrenaline-seeking behavior on my part, but every now and then someone becomes immortal. Shortening that window of risk before immortality doesn't appeal to me. I would support the idea of having nano-medkits save you results in trashing both the armor and the med-kit. That cost-level would be tough to keep up at an industrial level, but still allow the occasional "doh" to be survived. (and it would widen my window of vulnerability again)
But I play on Brutal and like to have characters die (arguably a lot), so let's temper my opinion with a bit of acknowledged bias, much like Gravling's in this case.
I like the idea of requiring either very high negotiate/indtimidate for a non-Face to get the chance to use them to get out of fights. Faces feel weak to me currently, there's a lot of drives towards non-combat skills in a Face but many Face missions result in fights, so I feel like Faces could use some love.
I strongly respect a generally non-fighting playstyle as a valid choice, and Faces getting the chance to talk their way out of street-fights more easily than others feels "right" to me. I think I differ in that I'd like the odds of success to be fairly good, provided you get the chance to talk your way out of it at all. (and in the "not mentioned in this thread, but related" category I'll note that 100 n-Y is ridiculously cheap for anything late-game but isn't terribly nasty even early on)
For my own twicks I'd just say that I'd like to see a bit more for the non-killing CKs. But I suspect Faces/Hackers/Agent-X's will all get much better as more content is finished, so I'm keeping my powder dry until then. The appearance of negotiate/threaten missions and the chance to talk your way out of more street-level encounters pleased me quite a bit, and is (I believe) indicative that there's more non-killing-stuff stuff coming in the future.
-abs
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Post by grävling on Jul 5, 2012 12:26:11 GMT -5
I will solidly agree that the cost of immortality being 12kn-Y plus 1.2kn-Y per death is too low for my tastes as well. It still leaves an early-game gap during which I can die, but once I have that cash a gap that used to exist is closed. In my opinion that closed gap was "Wow, I can probably survive fleeing a corp encounter, but I can't fight one and if things go south I'm dead anyway." During that window, which is a long time for my style (avoid fights and courier a lot), there's a fascinating impulse to be stupid and run corp jobs for the cash; doing so means I'm ducking in and out of corp-land, racing from target to the nearest data-port, and all the while my adrenaline is up and my pulse is quicker because I know damn well that I have no business being where I am, and if I survive it it's all the more thrilling. Now doesn't that sound familiar.  I could go with that, if non-faces found it sufficiently difficult to get the option to talk their way out of fights. But this 'hand over all your money -- oh I guess I will settle for 100Y' stuff needs to be changed, indeed. |
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Post by absimiliard on Jul 5, 2012 13:22:02 GMT -5
I could go with that, if non-faces found it sufficiently difficult to get the option to talk their way out of fights. But this 'hand over all your money -- oh I guess I will settle for 100Y' stuff needs to be changed, indeed. I think some of it might be the dichotomy between "all your money" and 100 n-Y, which even early-game isn't even close to "all my money". For me there's also another minor issue of me thinking nu-Yen are credits in a system, not physical chips, but that could just be my impression. Regardless, 100 n-Y seems remarkably cheap for fight avoidance. (especially given that all it takes to rack up 100 n-Y in doctor's fees is 4 HP of damage, and that's trivial to obtain in anything like a fair fight) The amount would seem more reasonable if it was at least tied to something more aware of who you are, like based on how much n-Y you have or (better) have it based on where you are. -abs |
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Post by grävling on Jul 5, 2012 13:37:06 GMT -5
I think that anybody who successfully mugged me would want to take my gear to a pawn shop for considerably more than 100Y in payout...unless of course the mugger wants to keep the gear as being substantially better than anything he or she owns, which is also likely.
I think that I would be happier if the 'talk your way out of a fight' option didn't have a 'bribe' component. If you were successful at talking your way out of a fight, then you pay nothing and get an experience point. If you weren't you get a fight. Being silver-tongued (good negotiation skills) and having good rep in the zone should count towards talking your way out of a fight, and maybe being intimidating might factor in as well.
On the other hand, if your rep is seriously negative in the zone, then I think you should always get a fight. Your opponents might only have had the idea of having a pleasant evening mugging strangers when it started, but once they recognise you they know that your head on a platter will be worth more than anything you can offer them.
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Post by absimiliard on Jul 5, 2012 13:44:43 GMT -5
I like the idea that talking your way out of a fight should involve either a fight or success. You raise a good point about the "bribe" really being a failure, in a sense.
On the other hand I can easily see that if I have a nasty rep and a ton of heat some street-thugs suddenly recognizing that their "mark" is in fact one of NBZ's premiere assassins might mean they let that CK walk, especially if that CK is good at negotiate/intimidate. So I can still see a non-fighting resolution creating a (for me) believable story.
But 100 n-Y is just silly. Either it's a big amount of money for the mugger, in which case they're too weak to be preying on even a newb CK, or it's "nothing" to them as well. (in which case they're mugging me why?) And, given the cost of CK gear for any reasonably kitted CK, it's a trivial amount in comparison thus, again, it seems low.
Having just bitched about the details of it, let me re-iterate that I like the encounter a lot in general. I'm very pleased that there are more ways to deal with encounters than just "kill it" and "flee it". (not that most of my CKs do anything other than "flee it", I'm very much an escaping sort of player)
-abs
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Post by grävling on Jul 5, 2012 13:48:46 GMT -5
Yes, I can see that being seriously intimidating -- where a strongly bad rep in the zone -- might work for you. But I see instead of 'let you walk' a 'flee in terror' outcome there. Maybe we replace the 'bribe' button with 'challenge' and 'negotiate'? Or do we need shorter words to work on all devices? |
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Post by absimiliard on Jul 5, 2012 13:54:10 GMT -5
Oh sure, that'd be much more satisfying as a result text. Though if Cory & Andrew were interested I'd offer "They drop their stuff and flee in terror, leaving a small puddle of urine on the street beneath where they once stood." myself.
I'll admit I also "creatively interpret" a lot of texts in game, I'm always running some sort of story in my head so when a negotiate job succeeds I'm rarely just remembering that I didn't get into a fight in favor of coming up with some little story in my head about what was said and who was there. So when the text says "let you walk", I might well be seeing that and in my head saying something different.
-abs
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Post by grävling on Jul 5, 2012 14:18:20 GMT -5
Gear can play a role in whether you are intimidating enough to have your enemies flee from you. A lightfire doesn't scare anybody. But cyberclaws ...
Lord of Syn said it:
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Post by fallen on Jul 5, 2012 22:25:23 GMT -5
#1. fixed for the next release.
#2. I don't understand. Please explain again?
#3. This is CK-245, which has been on the defect list for a while. We will try to get to it soon.
#4. Watching this thread for more good suggestions.
#5. We are steadily trying to enable more cool lifestyle options for non-combat characters. A lot of that will be wrapped up in a real Encounter re-write and special abilities for Face / Agentex. Still BETA =)
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Post by grävling on Jul 6, 2012 1:59:48 GMT -5
explaining #2 again
I'm using the HP 59X a lot. It goes through a lot of bullets in a fight -- at least when you are a bad enough shot that you miss a lot. The end result is that i quite frequently run out of bullets in the middle of a fight when using it -- and I practically never do so when wielding 2 mk 251 rifles, or 2 raptors, or 2 lightfires -- something that has speed 1 or 2 vs speed 4.
I am not sure what the algorithm is for printing the 'low on ammo' graphic, but I think that it should warn me earlier -- when I have many more bullets left -- if I am wielding a sub-machine gun.
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Post by toss on Jul 6, 2012 4:27:02 GMT -5
#4 IMO we just need to raise the price of nano-ready medkit up to 2k or 3k (or even more) leaving the price of armors as is. I think that legolized immortality should remain available in the mid-game, but using it should be undesirable for the players.
And anyway the price of the top-level medkit comparable with the price of good guns is reasonable IMHO, cause nano-MK is quite a sophisticated high-tech device, isn't it?
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Post by grävling on Jul 6, 2012 5:20:03 GMT -5
Well, the price of a Yakashima Gakaxy-HyperZ top-of-the-line hacking deck is Y342560. I suppose that if the medkits cost that much I wouldn't mind. ;D
I think we are going to have to disagree about this one. Because precisely what you like -- mid game availability of immortality -- is precisely what I hate about it. If I had wanted this ability, I would be playing on crazy instead of brutal. The way things are now, there is no real motivation for me to play after I have been able to afford such armour and gear., which I can now reliably do before I have reached even 40 XP.
By the way, my fastest immortality is:
Forsythia the Face
Female I
Survived 4 days, 13 hours 3 minutes.
Sandbox Brutal
XP Ready[0]
XP Spent [20]
Body 2, str 3, ath 3, braw 3, dex 2, stl 0, firearms 2
Mind 3, Int 2, elec 0, hacking 0, percept 2, neg 4, int 1
equipped with:
MT Taser unit
lightfire
kraken jacket
2 nano ready medkits
1 stim pack
no implants
and the Yakashima NV2-TactCPU 2 job computer.
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Post by fallen on Jul 6, 2012 7:54:30 GMT -5
grävling - "The way things are now, there is no real motivation for me to play after I have been able to afford such armour and gear" ... indicates that raising the price is unlikely to fix the issue for players like you and the other hard-core gamers. It may delay the immortality point, but it doesn't fix the root cause. Thanks for the re-explanation of the ammo thing. Basically "low ammo" does not take into account "rate of fire" which may mean that you are lower than you think (consider the rate you burn through bullets).
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Post by absimiliard on Jul 6, 2012 9:57:10 GMT -5
Hey Fallen,
Just my $.02, but I don't mind that there is an "immortality point". I just would prefer that it relate to having gotten enough XP to have the skills and stats needed to survive anything, anywhere, rather than just being "Hey, I got 13k, let's go buy the suit and the medkit".
So, for me, the point wouldn't be to try to remove the point of immortality, even on brutal, but rather to just delay it a bit longer. In thinking about it a bit more I'm fairly sure it isn't even the entry point, 13k, that is at issue. I think it's that the cost per death is just too low. If the cost was high enough that you basically got one "by" on doing something stupid that you shouldn't have and then had to recover that cost over time I'd probably be happy. (which isn't to say that I might not ignore the possibility anyway, since I do play brutal for the adrenaline of risking my time, which is what a CK really is, an investment of my time) But at under 2k a death it's just ridiculously cheap, enough so that brutal really .. . . isn't.
If you don't want to address it by raising the cost of deaths, because it would impact those people playing on lower difficulty levels, could you at least remove the nano ability from brutal as part of the difficulty level?
My attraction to brutal play is the possibility of losing everything you have, once characters become immortal they rapidly pale in terms of my interest in them. (to the degree that I generally only fire them up for testing something out) While I can ignore the nano-gear and just not buy them, I don't like nerfing my playstyle artificially. (for down that road lies being a scrub)
And, having just bitched vociferously, I think I'm going to cease debating this topic. I don't really have much to add, I think I covered everything about nano med-kits that I can think of. Besides, the game's great either way, and in the end it's a pretty minor thing. (certainly not worth raising anyone's blood-pressure over)
-abs
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