Cosgar wrote:No offense, but you have a lot of passive skills that promote curbstomping. RoF and Range increasing through skills encourage a SP > SKill gap, similar to the situation we had in Chromosome.
Thanks for the feedback!
They're not particularly important to the overall structure; I don't have a particularly strong reason for including them. What's important is that the passive skills that are currently duplicated ad nausea (CPU/PG reductions, Rapid reload, dispersion, ammo) every time new weapons are added be consolidated into one place; I hope you agree with this point.
But I'd like to question the opinion that there's anything wrong with what are perceived as "curbstomping skills" such as ROF and range. Are they any different from passive damage increasing skills? I don't personally think so.
I joined in Chromosome. Yeah, we had Sharpshooter proficiency trained peeps with Viziams melting dudes at ridiculous ranges. But I think that was down to the bonus being too big. We were talking a 40% range boost. That's why I toned down the bonuses to a more reasonable 15% Optimal + 10% Falloff, and separated them by range band. They're useful, but with the advent of Absolute range, not the deciding factors in the vast majority of situations (range increases do not scale damage projection linearly).
I don't think they should be seen as skills that promote curbstomping, they're no different than the vast majority of Dropsuit Upgrades core skills IMO (HP bonuses and the like). In fact, I'd argue that all these skills simply reinforce the importance of tactical play.
In the grand scheme of things, some of these bonuses, if tuned right, will affect some items more than others. A rate of fire increase of 15% is most noticeable on an SMG, but doesn't affect a Plasma Cannon or Charge based Weapon at all. A range bonus is less useful, or even pointless on gravity affected weapons like the mass driver but very useful on a hit-scan sniper. I think if both items and bonuses are taken into account, these bonuses will become a powerful balancing asset rather than a curbstomping tool.
It's a long philosophical balance discussion though, so I'd love some back and forth on this particular one.
I'll sleep on it and come back to it tomorrow, hopefully with a more clear mind.
Maybe I should hop into IRC more often too...