Ask Symmetric a CR2.0 question.

BrightEye

Am I missing something, or did coders (item/ability coders) take it in the shorts with CR2.0? I am willing to give the new combat system a fair shake, but in reality I liked the "crafting" piece of the game more than anything else... the fighting was just to give me the ability to craft stuff. So now I log into my coder to find that:

1) It appears that Reason no longer buffs your various coder abilities.

2) All of my nice coder gear has been nerfed

So is the intent that noone should be able to do well at coding stuff that's above their level in difficulty? Or decompile it for that matter? I'm stunned...

JTrace, lvl31 coder/hacker

**Symmetric**

BrightEye wrote:
Am I missing something, or did coders (item/ability coders) take it in the shorts with CR2.0? I am willing to give the new combat system a fair shake, but in reality I liked the "crafting" piece of the game more than anything else... the fighting was just to give me the ability to craft stuff. So now I log into my coder to find that:
1) It appears that Reason no longer buffs your various coder abilities.
2) All of my nice coder gear has been nerfed

So is the intent that noone should be able to do well at coding stuff that's above their level in difficulty? Or decompile it for that matter? I'm stunned...

You are correct in that many items that buffed crafting abilities were nerfed down to lower bonuses. Most items that granted 5-10 points towards crafting/coding now only grant somewhere between 1-3 points. Decompile Skill items were also toned down, but not by as much. The high-level items are difficult to decompile, so be sure you have as many +Decompile Skill items as possible.

Also, you are correct in that Stats no longer affect coding skills. Now, your coding skill is primarily determined by the level of your crafting ability, and then by any clothing that grants additional bonuses to coding.

Items are meant to be a bit more difficult to code now. The highest-level items (those that require level 50) can have a coding difficulty of up to 55. The only way to remedy this is to find a "booster dish" (satellites that emit green waves) and try coding near them, as they increase your coding skills.

**Roukan**

Symmetric I have problems against gunman. I have a high resistance but no matter what I do I can rarely ever dodge their bullets. I think it's cause I have a level 25 hyper dodge. But it happened on the QA with a fully leveled one, I had the same stats as I do now, and I have the same clothes.

It not make sense! RAWR!

BrightEye

Arrrgh. Wonderful. So, out of curiousity, do the SigBoosters still just give a 1-3point boost to your skills?

It seems strange to me that a combat enhancement pretty much demolishes a non-combat tree, almost as a "sideswipe". Well, demolishes it as a tree you might consider specializing in, anyway.

IMHO, with CR2.0, you might as well not try to differentiate yourself as a crafter. Sure, you can hunt out the best buff gear, but so can every other player in the game, even if they choose to be a crack gunfighter or martial artist. Everyone who bothers to level out their crafter tree and bothers to pick up crafter gear will have the exact same capabilities. Contrast this to the combat abilitysets, where 2 players who have the same abilitytree and the same gear might not have the exact same capabilities due to how your stats have been populated. And sure, I'm aware that not everyone is going to bother to fully level out the crafter abilityset, nor go find all the crafter gear, but enough do that my top-notch crafter just became another mediocre character. Forget trying to get a comprehensive code library, and crafting items to sell to other players. More like than not, everyone who bothers with the abilities is going to just make it for themselves. After all, they'll be just as capable of crafting it as you are, so why bother buying?

Don't get me wrong, crafting certainly wasn't a means of leveling quickly in the old version, nor was it a fast way to make $information. But things I crafted *would* eventually sell on the market, and if you were smart about your prices you could make a bit of $i. I'm guessing this will make the market for player-created items almost totally disappear. It seems like crafters get no love, in any of the MMORPGs. <sigh>

/rant

-JTrace

**Symmetric**

Roukan wrote:
Symmetric I have problems against gunman. I have a high resistance but no matter what I do I can rarely ever dodge their bullets. I think it's cause I have a level 25 hyper dodge. But it happened on the QA with a fully leveled one, I had the same stats as I do now, and I have the same clothes.

It not make sense! RAWR!

As was mentioned before, you're still going to get shot a lot. The removal of zero-sum combat means you're going to get hit a lot more often, especially with free-fire attacks. My only suggestion is to put more stat points into Perception and keep Hyper-Dodge active (and leveled to the max). Then, just wear as much armored or enhanced clothing with Ballistic Resistance buffs as possible.

**Symmetric**

BrightEye wrote:
Arrrgh. Wonderful. So, out of curiousity, do the SigBoosters still just give a 1-3point boost to your skills?

More like a 5-point boost.

It seems strange to me that a combat enhancement pretty much demolishes a non-combat tree, almost as a "sideswipe". Well, demolishes it as a tree you might consider specializing in, anyway.

IMHO, with CR2.0, you might as well not try to differentiate yourself as a crafter. Sure, you can hunt out the best buff gear, but so can every other player in the game, even if they choose to be a crack gunfighter or martial artist. Everyone who bothers to level out their crafter tree and bothers to pick up crafter gear will have the exact same capabilities. Contrast this to the combat abilitysets, where 2 players who have the same abilitytree and the same gear might not have the exact same capabilities due to how your stats have been populated. And sure, I'm aware that not everyone is going to bother to fully level out the crafter abilityset, nor go find all the crafter gear, but enough do that my top-notch crafter just became another mediocre character. Forget trying to get a comprehensive code library, and crafting items to sell to other players. More like than not, everyone who bothers with the abilities is going to just make it for themselves. After all, they'll be just as capable of crafting it as you are, so why bother buying?

Don't get me wrong, crafting certainly wasn't a means of leveling quickly in the old version, nor was it a fast way to make $information. But things I crafted *would* eventually sell on the market, and if you were smart about your prices you could make a bit of $i. I'm guessing this will make the market for player-created items almost totally disappear. It seems like crafters get no love, in any of the MMORPGs.

/rant

-JTrace

Crafting is very fun in MxO, and the ability for everyone to be a crafter (instead of having to specialize like in other MMOs) is what makes it unique. Yes, it's true that pretty much anyone that wants to invest the time and money leveling up their coding skill and code library will no longer have to depend on others for getting stuff, but it's all part of the economy. There were so many items added with CR2.0, that coders and non-coders alike are going to be spending a lot of time looking for the new stuff. If you find something good, decompile it and put it up for a reasonable price on the Marketplace. Odds are someone else is looking for it.

Now if only people wouldn't charge 10,000,000 $info for new items on the Marketplace... :robotmad:

BrightEye

Symmetric wrote:

BrightEye wrote:
Arrrgh. Wonderful. So, out of curiousity, do the SigBoosters still just give a 1-3point boost to your skills?

More like a 5-point boost.

It seems strange to me that a combat enhancement pretty much demolishes a non-combat tree, almost as a "sideswipe". Well, demolishes it as a tree you might consider specializing in, anyway.

IMHO, with CR2.0, you might as well not try to differentiate yourself as a crafter. Sure, you can hunt out the best buff gear, but so can every other player in the game, even if they choose to be a crack gunfighter or martial artist. Everyone who bothers to level out their crafter tree and bothers to pick up crafter gear will have the exact same capabilities. Contrast this to the combat abilitysets, where 2 players who have the same abilitytree and the same gear might not have the exact same capabilities due to how your stats have been populated. And sure, I'm aware that not everyone is going to bother to fully level out the crafter abilityset, nor go find all the crafter gear, but enough do that my top-notch crafter just became another mediocre character. Forget trying to get a comprehensive code library, and crafting items to sell to other players. More like than not, everyone who bothers with the abilities is going to just make it for themselves. After all, they'll be just as capable of crafting it as you are, so why bother buying?

Don't get me wrong, crafting certainly wasn't a means of leveling quickly in the old version, nor was it a fast way to make $information. But things I crafted *would* eventually sell on the market, and if you were smart about your prices you could make a bit of $i. I'm guessing this will make the market for player-created items almost totally disappear. It seems like crafters get no love, in any of the MMORPGs.

/rant

-JTrace

Crafting is very fun in MxO, and the ability for everyone to be a crafter (instead of having to specialize like in other MMOs) is what makes it unique. Yes, it's true that pretty much anyone that wants to invest the time and money leveling up their coding skill and code library will no longer have to depend on others for getting stuff, but it's all part of the economy. There were so many items added with CR2.0, that coders and non-coders alike are going to be spending a lot of time looking for the new stuff. If you find something good, decompile it and put it up for a reasonable price on the Marketplace. Odds are someone else is looking for it.

Now if only people wouldn't charge 10,000,000 $info for new items on the Marketplace... :robotmad:

Hmmm... can't say I'm really in agreement with your statement about what makes MxO unique. It's not that everyone could be a crafter (or anything else) *instead* of having to specialize, but rather that everyone can be a crafter and *not have* to specialize. I know that seems like splitting hairs, but it's not. What I'm referring to is that if you choose to primarily go for the gunfighting theme, you're going to (even now, in CR2.0) concentrate on certain attributes. If you're going for the melee theme, you'll likely concentrate on a different set of attributes. Likewise, with a Virologist or Patcher. Before, if you wanted to be an ace crafter, you'd focus on a specific set of attributes (mostly Reason). In this way, characters were specialized (and differentiated).

Regardless of your focus, you could still choose to create and upgrade any tree in the game and do something other than your focus. For example, JTrace was primarily for crafting, but when I wanted to mission I could load up Virologist or Patcher (depending on the need) and go to town. I might not be (and wasn't) as good as someone who specialized in those roles, but I could do OK.

The combat foci still get this ability to specialize or differentiate themselves. You can still upgrade your attributes (stats) in specific ways to strengthen your abilities in your chosen focus. Crafting? Nope, don't see how, other than deciding to find every piece of crafting specific equip in the game (something that any gunfighter/melee/virus focused player can do) to give you the edge.

So I guess the moral is, either decide to create a combat focused character and just do the crafting as completely secondary (maybe focus on picking up items... oh, and holding on to them until you have a reasonable chance of decompiling them, since you're going to wiff a *lot* more than before), or... give up on the game. I don't know if this was what the Dev team and SoE intended, but it's certainly what I'm coming up with. Myself, I'm not sure what I'm doing. My last 60 day timecard starts on the 4th. Guess I have 64 days to decide.

I hope you can forgive my poking at this as I am... its just that me == bummed... I was really enjoying the existing crafting system... in fact that was making me choose to play this game over EQ, CoH/CoV, and AO. Not sure the combat in this game has what it takes to keep my attention.

Heh. I guess I should post something about this somewhere the Devs will see so they'll at least know that one crazy person sees the non-combat modifications as a bad thing... unlikely to make any difference, but I'm guessing that most people aren't even thinking about the crafting side of stuff yet... not many of us focus on the non-combat (or combat support) side of things as I tend to.

-JTrace

Firbolg

I hear ya, JTrace. I see this mostly as a positive, though, since I'm not a dedicated Crafter. The few that are get a beatdown, but everyone else gets a nice boost.

It's a common trend in MMOs now - the specialized crafter is being removed as a focus, probably because there wasn't enough interest in the community as a whole (even though some specific people had huge amounts of interest). Same thing happened in SWG, in WoW, etc. EVE Online and UO are probably the only ones out there that have a real focus, and even in EVE you can get any skill eventually, and your stats aren't that different.

Still, with all the new stuff, there will be the potential for the great Code Swaps of beta and the early days to come back - masses of crafters meeting in the Church in Mara to trade items and codes, etc. Then once everyone has them, it'll slow down again, then come back again when new stuff hits. But really, that's the life cycle of the crafting in any MMO....

hiperborejai

Hello, Symmetric.
I have two questions for you:
1) what does the "initiative" attribute do? (Yes, I read all FAQ's and forums, and "Initiative affects the Accuracy of all Interlock Abilities." still doesn't explain anything to me).
2) what do the Combat Tactics boosters do now? I tried using them, and it seems that none of the attributes/influences/stats change (at least nothing changes in status>bonuses window).

**Symmetric**

hiperborejai wrote:
Hello, Symmetric.
I have two questions for you:
1) what does the "initiative" attribute do? (Yes, I read all FAQ's and forums, and "Initiative affects the Accuracy of all Interlock Abilities." still doesn't explain anything to me).
2) what do the Combat Tactics boosters do now? I tried using them, and it seems that none of the attributes/influences/stats change (at least nothing changes in status>bonuses window).

1. Initiative determines how successful you will be at landing a special ability in Interlock when your opponent also has a special ability queued. For example, if both you and your opponent have an Extreme Flying Kick queued for the next round of Interlock, the player with the higher Initiative bonus is going to successfully land their attack. Special moves are still zero-sum, so Initiative determines who attacks and who gets hit in that case.

2. As far as I can tell, Tactic Boosters give a bonus to both your Accuracy and Defense scores. I haven't found TBs to be that effective anymore, though.

hiperborejai · 04/08/2006 04:53:31

And if I use special ability, but my opponent uses ordinary attack, do I still get bonus to land it successfully for my Initiative score? If yes, how big is this bonus?

Message Edited by hiperborejai on 04-08-200605:53 AM

**Symmetric**

hiperborejai wrote:
And if I use special ability, but my opponent uses ordinary attack, do I still get bonus to land it successfully for my Initiative score? If yes, how big is this bonus?

As far as I know, Initiative only comes into play when it's a special move vs. a special move. When it's special move vs. regular move, it's strictly your accuracy score vs. your opponent's defense score.

**Alphaea**

Interesting, so that's why all those MA's can string together 462 specials in a row in interlock...aha!

Is there anything that influences the length of upgrades? Been running around with UM for a bit and it's hard to keep a full team all upgraded all the time.

Message Edited by Alphaea on 04-19-2006 11:52 AM
Message edited by Alphaea on 04/19/2006 10:52:40.

**Symmetric**

Alphaea wrote:

Is there anything that influences the length of upgrades? Been running around with UM for a bit and it's hard to keep a full team all upgraded all the time.

As far as I know, no. The only influences that increase timers are ones for downgrades like Stun and Blind. Upgrade influences appear to only affect the actual percentage bonus granted by an upgrade, and that's dependent on the target's stat points, and not the buffer's.

**Alphaea**

Figured as much since I couldn't find anything that actually influenced that particular item. But just because I can't find it doesn't mean it isn't there! Thanks El gran Symmador.