Not really a fan. I think it waters down the New Eden feel too much in exchange for easier to balance mechanics. Just my personal opinion.

Not really a fan. I think it waters down the New Eden feel too much in exchange for easier to balance mechanics. Just my personal opinion.

That's not the primary reason, as stated. It's user experience and completely new concepts for players coming from other fps's.

just say yeah/nay and why

Dear players,

after a lot of thought on this issue, I want to get your feedback. Those I have asked, have unanimously supported the idea.

I started thinking about the complexity of adding shield swarm missiles, plus the negative effect on new player understanding of the damage profile mechanics leading me to the concept of:

The total normalization of AV profiles.

I.E. Weapons just apply an X% damage against vehicles. This was done for the first time for Nova Knives with no real issues.

I.E.
Assault Rifles = zero %
Forgegun = 100%

Possibly in near future
Breach Mass Driver = 75%
Flaylock Pistol = 50%
Nova Knifes = 50% (this is the current case)


Pros
Veteran Experience improved, no need to swap between shield AV and Armor AV
Theoretical balancing of AV becomes much easier
Authoring on CCP side becomes easier, allowing more rapid iteration on AV-V balance
New Player Experience massively improved
Eliminates the current imbalance due to faction AV parity

Cons
Lore
Complexity

I believe that an FPS in New Eden should not import overly burdensome game design philosophies, at the cost of enjoyable gameplay, and I think this is one of those cases.

Keep it constructive and civil, just say yeah/nay and why

Fair enough but do they not have to understand the same concepts while fighting infantry?

I suppose I would rather we have better explanations in-game about damage profiles in general, rather than move away from them completely (at least for AV).

Agreed with Pokey, players learning this game already will have to become familiar with damage profiles and having exceptions to the rule will hurt overall learning as the players will have to learn the rules (for infantry) and exceptions (vs vehicles)

My main concern there is that the overall complexity will increase, not decrease, due to players already having to learn the rules, and then having to learn additional exception rules.
Ex:
Current Learning Load: Weapon Profiles vs Shields and Armor
Proposed Learning Load: Weapon Profiles vs Shields and Armor, Except for Weapons X, Y, Z.

That said, without the weapon line up to justify it, the imbalance of Shield vs Armor tanks will always be unbalanced while there exist a large disparity between means to fight 'vs shields' against 'vs armor'. So for the current meta game balance, I think this approach would be more beneficial, but long term (assuming new weapons to balance numbers out long term) the damage profiles should remain.

Indeed. I mean if the concern is player understanding, I don't think dumbing it down is the right way to go. I mean we saw this with CCP Z's plan for character progression in Legion where he basically stripped out much of the freedom we have in the skill system for a dumber more linear system like every other game has, simply because "Its too hard to understand". That was met with massive backlash because it stripped away a lot of what made the New Eden experience interesting.

I think this falls under a similar context in that if the issue is that damage profiles are difficult for new players to understand, I don't feel the best choice is to simply get rid of them, but rather make them easier to understand through proper documentation and explanation. I understand this takes additional resources to do, but at the same time a change that gets the desired effect, is not always the best choice if a better choice also accomplishes the same goal. And like Avallo pointed out, adding exceptions to rules actually increases the learning curve, rather than decreasing it.

Additionally as for the benefit of faster balance iterations, I believe that in most cases you should assume neutral damage when it comes to calculating overall DPS. Damage profile (obviously with some minor adjustments) works itself out in the end. Some weapons will simply work better against certain targets than others....that's how all weapons in this game work, infantry and AV alike. I don't think that it's unreasonable to ask someone to bring the right tool to get the job done either. I mean if I have a Laser Rifle and come up against a heavily armored unit...I'm going to get my ass kicked because I didn't have the right tool for the job. I don't see why AV needs to be different.

I understand what you're trying to accomplish and I think it's a noble cause...but I think you're going about it the wrong way.

Pokey stuff

Rattati stuff

I had a trello card about making the laser rifle and mass driver viable av weapons for min and amarr. A breach laser rifle that has a clip size of 50 with a faster overheat would be worth it the damage to vehicles was upped. It might even make the amarr commando more viable.

I'm actually against normalizing av weapons even with missing assets. I think it would be nice to make current assets fill the place similar to the assault hmg being a potential av weapon.