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Passive suggestion
rinkster
Member Posts: 3,549 Arc User
The proposed changes to rep passives has been explicitly stated by Hawk as a means to contain power creep.
Problem is, as the PvP specialists have indicated, it does the opposite.
Skilled min maxers can see a buff, which means the change actually increases the gap between a new VA and a vet VA
The problem is that, without a massive further rewrite (nerf) of the passives, it's impossible to balance 16 traits with each other.
Seems to me that the solution is simple.
Tier the passive slots.
So, we don't get to choose four out of all sixteen
Instead we choose one of the four tier one passives, one of the four tier twos and so on.
If the aim is to control power creep, this change would enable that.
However, as things stand, it fails in its stated aim.
Problem is, as the PvP specialists have indicated, it does the opposite.
Skilled min maxers can see a buff, which means the change actually increases the gap between a new VA and a vet VA
The problem is that, without a massive further rewrite (nerf) of the passives, it's impossible to balance 16 traits with each other.
Seems to me that the solution is simple.
Tier the passive slots.
So, we don't get to choose four out of all sixteen
Instead we choose one of the four tier one passives, one of the four tier twos and so on.
If the aim is to control power creep, this change would enable that.
However, as things stand, it fails in its stated aim.
Post edited by rinkster on
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I'm not sure how it would be easier to split Traits into four tiers and balance them than it would be to balance them as a single tier.
Er....we don't have to sort them into tiers, as theyre already sorted that way.
The passives are gained tier by tier already.
All this suggestion means is that you can't pick more than one of the passives gained at each tier.
For instance at the moment, at tier four nukara we have to choose between two passives that use aux to boost either attack or defence.
We have to choose, because having both would be seriously op for a heavy aux build.
This is sensible game design, but the new system bypasses that check.
Making the new passive slots tier based reinstates it.
Eta realized I missed your point. Mea culpa
Balancing four elements is easier than balancing sixteen. Fewer variables to account for.
Okay, just to be clear here then - are you saying...
You couldn't pick both T4 Reo Traits from the same Rep as part of your four space...or...you're only going to be picking two Space Rep Traits period?
Balancing 16 Traits means creating a single X Trait and balancing the 16 against that.
With 4 Tiers, you'd have to create the A Trait, B Trait, C Trait, and D Trait. You'd have to make sure each of those are balanced in some form of hierarchical manner. Then you'd have to decide which of those Tiers a Trait should fit in and balance it according to the base Trait for that Tier while making sure it maintains its relative positioning compared to other Traits. As any new Traits were added, the same decisions would have to be made.
Or you just balance new Traits vs. the X Trait.
edit: Cause there's really just T1/T2 Ground, T1/T2 Space, and then there's the T3 Active rather than Passive - that could be Space or Ground depending on the Rep track.
From a single given rep?
Precisely.
Means a newly minted VA has to get to Tier four in two reps to fill all the slots.
Which is quicker progression to parity than it is now, while still retaining some incentive to run more than one rep.
And, as already indicated, mitigates against power creep.
Okay, that makes sense. Basically a person couldn't single Rep to get 4 and be done. In order to fill their 4, they'd need at least 2 Reps. Basically, it would main the current exclusion. You can only take one of the two passives. As the new system stands, you could take both...
With 4 Tiers, you'd have to create the A Trait, B Trait, C Trait, and D Trait. You'd have to make sure each of those are balanced in some form of hierarchical manner. Then you'd have to decide which of those Tiers a Trait should fit in and balance it according to the base Trait for that Tier while making sure it maintains its relative positioning compared to other Traits. As any new Traits were added, the same decisions would have to be made.
Or you just balance new Traits vs. the X Trait.[/QUOTE]
Not really.
Thing is, hierarchical tiers isn't necessary.
As things stand, a fully repped toon has unlocked four traits at each tier for space, and the same for ground.
So under my proposal, the devs just need to make sure that a given group of four passives are balanced.
The groups could be made vertically progressive, but thats not necessary.
Think of it this way.
Is it easier to divide rice into four portions equally, or sixteen?
But you're not dividing rice, you're measuring rice.
So you'll take the amount of rice that you want, set it aside - and - compare all future amounts to that amount.
So is it easier to measure the rice against one amount or two amounts?
Cause you'd have the T1 Space/T2 Space. What separates them? How is T2 better than T1? You'd have to maintain that for all future T2 Space. In deciding to add something, you'd have to decide whether you want it as T1 or T2. Since you'd be adding two, you'd have to decide which one is T1 and which is T2. You'd have to create two versions of each one and attempt to balance them until you made the decision of which would be which...unless you were adamant that one would be T1 and the other would be T2. Then you'd just have to balance them each against their respective tier's template.
If there was no tier, then you just need to balance them against a single template - not worrying whether one is T1 or T2.
1) Will these new changes allow a BFAW Scimitar to get 100k DPS?:eek:
2) Will Infected space elite be completed in under 60 seconds?:eek:
Base CrtH: 2.5%
Base CrtD: 50%
1:20 ratio
Weapon Specialization CrtH: +2%
Weapon Specialization CrtD: +25%
1:12.5 ratio
Weapon [CrtH]: +2%
Weapon [CrtD]: +20%
1:10 ratio
ATVL: +1.6%
ATVE: +8%
1:5 ratio
Current T2 New Rom: +3%
Current T2 Dyson: +10%
1:3.33 ratio
Proposed T2 New Rom: +5%
Proposed T2 Dyson: +20%
1:4 ratio
Shouldn't there be a standardized ratio for the value of CrtH/CrtD?
Because we can also throw Accuracy in there as well.
Base Bonus Accuracy: 0%
(not much to compare there, lol)
Targeting: +15% (requires 18000 SP vs. 27000 SP for the +2% CrtH/+25% CrtD)
18k SP would get +1.7% CrtH and +21.2% CrtD
15% vs. 1.7% vs. 21.2%
Weapon [Acc]: +10%
10% vs. 2% vs. 20%
Proposed T2 Undine/Counter-Command: +15% (+3%, can 5 stack)
15% vs. 5% vs. 20%
Things are pretty horribly balanced all around in that sense, eh?
I see your point, my analogy was far from perfect.
The concern i have is that not all traits are created equal.
Not in terms of number crunching, but also player utility.
The problem with balalncing all 16 traits on a numerical basis, is that it doesn't address those utility facets of the passives.
The current sytem does.
By providing mutually exclusive pairs on each rep, OP combinations can be excluded.
The problem with the proposed system from Hawk is that those OP combinations, synergies between balanced numbers, are now allowed.
Thus, if the passive slots were designated by tiers, then OP combinations can again be excluded.
@spacebaronline
Thats the basic idea. Try to limit the more OP combinations of passives already identified by min maxers.
If you look through what they have identified already as cookie cutter combinations, they use multiple traits from the same tier.
Because its not the individual passives per se, its the synergies.
1. Will only increase tanking and damage dealing
- As stated, "8 nickles becomes 4 dimes". It seems most rep passives will be pretty much doubled in strength. In PvE, where surviving isn't an issue, this change hands 2 flat damage boosts and 2 stronger bumps to critical chance and damage. In PvP, this just makes instakilling and tanking better.
2. Being able to change rep passives outside of combat favors those with cloaks, even more for those with battlecloaks.
- While this has little effect on PvE, this pretty much can be a game changer in PvP. If that antiproton resist rep passive goes through, don't bother bringing AP to the fight (as an example).
What's worse is the blatant failure from a game design perspective. It's claimed that this was a move for balance, when in fact it makes balance worse. In addition, it's claimed that they just realized adding rep on top of rep is a problem. They knew when they first pitched this, but were too lazy to implement such a system from the start.
The only thing that really needed a nerf/revamp was Romulan Placate, which has now been obliterated into a worthless passive that no one will use.
In PvP perhaps. But even there, not everyone has an Emergency Power to Weapons or Engineering Time handy all the time. It requires someone to notice in time and spend a power. I don't think that will be completely ineffective.
In PvE, however - enemies rarely have something to repair disabled subsystems, they just gonna stop firing for the full duration, which will probably help some people more than the old placate did, which was overwhelmed by the massive damage players can deal anyway.
I bolded the important bits from the dev blog. So basically, new placate will shut down weapons for only 4 seconds and is then will not trigger again for 20 seconds.
PvE: Since it's a pure DPS race only, there will be no need to select this. Again, if one can't survive an STF, or kill things quickly in an STF, it's an existing build problem, not a problem reps can fix. Expect posts of increased DPS and potentially less powerful ships doing 1 man STF runs (if this goes through as proposed).
PvP: This is a useless ability since plenty of ships run Engineering team already. Also there's little need for KDF/KDF aligned players to select this since Feds have plenty of subsystem disable resistance. This is why you pretty much never see phasers on a warbird or BoP.
And I'm not too convinced that only ET will clear this. I imagine they'll release this and EPtX abilities, batteries and Miracle Worker will still fix subsystem disabled. An oversight like this wouldn't be out of character. And really, the disable should be cleared by things that already say in their tooltip that they fix "x system disabled".
Again, not saying old placate is a good thing; just saying new placate is utterly useless for both PvE and PvP.