Several Stalker-related Bugs. Please read dev.
By
Blackleviathan,
Posted on: 2011-05-29 09:19 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Knowing them.... They might nerf fire to it's just as bad as the others instead of making the others better to be like fire mastery or w/e which effing sucks
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Something for ppl to use
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Buffing everything else doesn't work and Posi explained why.|
Originally Posted by Blackleviathan
Knowing them.... They might nerf fire to it's just as bad as the others instead of making the others better to be like fire mastery or w/e which effing sucks
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Buff Everything Else
OK, I am going to spend a good amount of time explaining what this is and why it is bad for the health of your MMO. Like I said at the beginning, balancing MMOs is incredibly difficult because you have SO many things that need attention: What the class/archetype can do inherently. What the powers do. How tough the enemies are. What powers the enemy has. And even what combining any of those does to change it. Lets imagine a world where perfect balance CAN be achieved. In this world, A, B, C, D, and E are all existing in perfect harmony. And then along comes F. F is a little overpowered, by like 20% or so. This wasn’t evident during design because the situation that makes F 20% overpowered involves moving the character in a specific way that never came up during testing.
So what do we do now? In a world where we buff everything to meet F, we have to go in and make A+20%, B+20%,C+20%, D+20%, E+20%. Ok, I’ll stop there for a second. Right now we have done five times as much actual WORK in making things “balanced”, since we touched on 5 things instead of just 1. Ok, back to the examples.
Now everything in the game is as good as F, balance has been achieved. Or has it? The enemies in the game were all perfectly balanced against A, B, C, D, and E, but now they are getting killed 20% more efficiently, and people are levelling 20% faster. Rewards are being handed out 20% more often, and the economy is growing at a rate 20% faster than was anticipated.
Ok, so what’s the next solution? Increase the toughness of the enemies by 20%! Genius. But wait. That escort mission is now impossible if the enemies are 20% tougher. And there are a bunch of abilities that don’t do direct damage that now find themselves useless in a world where the enemies are 20% better. Suddenly F being 20% overpowered has “F’ed” you and the entire fabric of the game is falling apart, all because you didn’t want to nerf F, but raise everything else up to meet it.
Oh, and what if in the whole process you find out C wasn’t 20% better than it was before, but 40%? Do you nerf C, or go through the entire “bring everything up to C’s level” process all over again? Lets say you do. And you do this over and over again. Eventually you’re in a situation where the original values for things are nearly completely lost. You’ve got A+215%, B+225%, C+220%, D+220%, E+222%, and F+230%. The game now is not the one that was so perfectly in balance before, you’ve escalated values so far into the stratosphere that half the game doesn’t even work right anymore.
It’s kind of like a teeter-totter made of wood. If you put two 200 pound weights on it, one on either end, it’s going to be perfectly balanced. But if one end actually has 500 lbs. on it, you are far safer changing the 500 pounds to 200 pounds than you are adding another 300 pounds to the other end and watching the teeter-totter break in half.
Not everyone will agree with this, but this is the kind of thinking an MMO designer has to go through on a daily basis. We do try and find solutions that will please the most amount of people with the littlest impact on the rest of the game and other players. In a large majority of the cases “fixing” a balance problem is easiest done by fixing the problem in question and not raising everything else in the game up to meet it.
I don't agree buffing all AoE to 100% critical chance. Fireball is an odd one. I don't think even Scrapper can critical 100% with it so why should Stalker?
I just want 3 Epic sets to follow the old Patron powers. 50% and critical from hidden. That's it.
I don't play Scrapper much but somebody told me Scrapper can critical with epic powers. At first I thought the bug is there because Scrapper can't critical with epic powers and that's why the dev "Missed" it but now Blaze Mastery can critical, it makes me think it's either a bug or a huge imbalance issue. I see no reason in giving Blaze full critical chance while others can't critical at all.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Could be either of those, Jibikao.
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Originally Posted by Jibikao
I don't agree buffing all AoE to 100% critical chance. Fireball is an odd one. I don't think even Scrapper can critical 100% with it so why should Stalker?
I just want 3 Epic sets to follow the old Patron powers. 50% and critical from hidden. That's it. I don't play Scrapper much but somebody told me Scrapper can critical with epic powers. At first I thought the bug is there because Scrapper can't critical with epic powers and that's why the dev "Missed" it but now Blaze Mastery can critical, it makes me think it's either a bug or a huge imbalance issue. I see no reason in giving Blaze full critical chance while others can't critical at all. |
I always considered the very existence of stalkers to be a bug.
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LOL and that's why it's been several months and nobody seem to have brought this up. They've fixed certain Epic/Patron set issues for other ATs but those don't seem as serious as this one. 3 out of 4 sets can't critical and 1 set is critical too much. Critical damage is a HUGE part of Stalker's design so when those sets can't critical, I consider it a serious bug. |
Originally Posted by Satanic_Hamster
I always considered the very existence of stalkers to be a bug.
__________________ Currently listening to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's an Anthology: the Elektra Years |
I guess only serious Stalker players like me would consider "serious". Most Stalkers out there probably would never see this bug because they have already abandoned them before lvl 40. T_T
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Don't you touch my Fireball..I just got it =/
The Only Token Black Guy
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Originally Posted by Murdok
Your mom's real name is Castle.
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Bug #1
I've submitted several Bug Reports on how some Epic Powers cannot critical for Stalker several months ago. I am not sure if those have been fixed so I loaded up Test Server again. At that time, I've only tried Weapon Mastery. Throwing Stars cannot critical (from hidden, after placate or from natural critical rate).
I just tested Dark Master (scrapper's) and Body Mastery and both of them cannot critical. I've all the attacks under those two sets (dark blast, nightfall, eye beam, etc).
Bug #2
Somebody told me in Stalker forum that Blaze Mastery can critical and Fireball has 100% critical chance, and it indeed says that under the description. The other three Epic Sets don't mention additional damage if hidden.
So I just respec again on Test server and tested Blaze Mastery.
Oh my god. That person is right! Fireball (an aoe) has 100% critical chance and all the other fire attacks like Fire Blast, Char and Ring of Fire can critical. Not only that I believe they can all critical outside of Hidden as well.
I know Incarnate stuff is important but this seems like a pretty major bug to me because I really wanted to make a ninja Stalker with throwing stars but they don't critical at all. I am not sure why Blaze Mastery gets such nice treatment but I believe it's a bug. I can't imagine this is "Intended".
Bug #3
I've always hated the Snipe attacks under Patron for Stalker. Damage is ok but the activation time is beyond ridiculous IMO. Anyway, I was studying the damage difference and found out that Zapp (Mu set) only has base damage of 76 at lvl 50. Moonbeam and Mace Beam have listed damage of 126 which sounds about right to me. I haven't tried Zapp yet but that should be a description error because Zapp has the same activation time as well (8ish second). Please fix Zapp. I don't think many people would take the snipe anyway but still.
One minor thing. I was testing Whirlwind under Super Speed as I've never taken that power before. My Stalker is /Energy. Replusion aura is suppressed when Stalker is hidden but Whirlwind is not. I am sure this is because Whirlwind is not stalker-specific power.
So, that's it for now. This is the last time I post about the same Stalker bugs which I've posted several times. I understand Stalker, as a whole, is very low on priority but these seems like major bugs to me. Those attacks should critical just like Patron attacks. And there is no reason why Blaze mastery can critical while the other 3 epics can't.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.