Tallen Ellecon
KILL-EM-QUICK
RISE of LEGION
1109
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Posted - 2013.12.20 20:50:00 -
[1] - Quote
Before the player market comes out there needs to be a reasonable balance to how dropsuits are skilled into. As it stands now there are a few things that seem completely unnecessary.
Most of the Race and Class bonuses are useless. Most are generic enough that they don't actually help a suit fill out a particular role. All assaults get shield recharge? All logis armor repair? Feedback damage to sentinels? In EVE the bonuses are what made a ship good at it's job, not the module count and PG/CPU. This is half the reason why people overwhelming use logis as assaults, the only assault with a decent bonus is the Amarr assault, but their logi variant has a sidearm anyway, one of the main advantages assaults have. Racial suits that gave bonuses to their races defensive specialty, offensive weapon of choice, or equipment.
Basic frames are ridiculous. They are identical to one of the more specialized versions, just without the bonus. The make someone like me who wants to spend his SP wisely spend over a quarter of a million SP and a suit that I'll never use in order to get into ones they will. It has no bonus that carries over to the other suits either, so unless you just can't wait and you have the ISK it's an alternative. It's not as bad as before when you need to spend over 1 mil ISK just to get a basic logi suits, but it still is a huge SP sink, especially for new players.
As it stands now the weapons skill tree is decent, but there needs to be a separate tree for generic weapon upgrades and modules. Right now damage mods are the only ones to enhance weapons, but there could also be reload mods, which decrease reload time, or ammo capacity mods. There could also be separate skill trees within to upgrade the various weapon types, like plasma, laser, rail, projectile, etc. This encourages people to specialize into one racial weapon class as well.
The dropsuit upgrade skill tree is fine as is, I wish there were more passive bonuses to shields and armor, even if they were small.
Now here is the most important thing and we all know we need it. TIERICIDE
We don't need suits that are superior in every way to another, we need suits that become more and more specialized to favor one or two attributes at the expense of others. Suit skills themselves should be where all the bonuses come from, not the increased CPU/PG and slot count, that's just a cheap way to get a leg up. Let it be like EVE, have the basic suit skill unlock multiple suits at level one, and each suits gains different bonuses from leveling up said suit skill. An assault suit that gets weapon and health bonuses with each level of the basic medium frame, and a logi suit that get a bonus to health and equipment with each level of the basic medium frame skill. Then at level 5 basic medium there can be highly specialized suits. Ones that have major bonuses to one weapon, one piece of equipment, but at the expense of slightly lower stats all around.
This means that the likely winner isn't the one who has the most slots, it's the one who has skilled enough into a particular play style, race, weapon, and means of health, and know how to use them effectively. It also means that maximizing one thing takes a long time, and it become difficult to do if you spread out too far too fast, but everything is still accessible from a basic level. An FPS has to be balanced, and an RPG has to allow growth, so keep all the attributes appropriate enough that though they give a player an edge, skill and teamwork are still the major deciding factors. (especially if I have EVE support AKA uber teamwork)
I hope this could be implemented with the release of the remaining suits (fingers crossed for May) along with an appropriate respec. As for new players, the more content there is the less SP sinks there need to be to keep people occupied. Make it easier to try everything. Specialization is important not only for rewarding dedication to a play style, but it also creates a bond between a player and their character. At the same time, EVE doesn't need the flexibility Dust merc do. 16 v 16 means we all have to be good long range fighters when needed, good cqc when required, AV users, and medics. So setting the bar to usefulness low would bring balance, and setting the bar to maximization very high would keep us vets only slightly ahead.
Tarn chose peace. Tallen chose war. Where is my Gallente sidearm?
SoonGäó514
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