126 (edited by BandwagonX9000 2011-08-28 16:41:48)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Robophiliac wrote:

You mean stuffs like the awesome plasma drop nerf?

Or maybe how all the non mission spawns are moving toward these new random mob spawns so new players have a harder time with pve since they can't properly fit themselves to face a specific bot type and will now have bots thrown at them they are not equipped to take?

Ya good stuffs.

IMO the random mob spawns specifically should be an alpha 2 and beta island feature.

The plasma nerf means new corps/players will take even longer to get themselves into competitive levels of equipment and have a harder time re-equiping after death.  I do not see this nerf lowering the prices of equipment much as those who already have money can afford to keep buying stuff at its present prices.  The plasma nerf was unneeded and will only contribute to further decreasing the pvp action as death is now even more costly.

Yes, I mean all that. And also the missions that you apparently forgot. All that is PVE related, and it is balancing. I can make the same argument you are making about plasma with the triangle and I don't think anyone could honestly believe not removing it would have been better for the game. The devs want you to make X / minute doing Y, and is probably balanced with other stuff. If there was enough open market offer prices would go down. Unfortunately there is not so prices will remain with absurdly high margins. And that is the real issue at the moment.

Also you have missed to state the related fact that if you sell the plasmas in beta you will get more nic for your efforts.

For the record I am new, too late to the triangle, and the few nics I have came from PVE.

127

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Hmm if you want some more details: here we go.

- kernel nerf a few months ago (down to 50% ... issue: research)
- nerfing Observers as a whole multiple times since introduction (issue: research and income)
- plasma "adjustment" ... not a nerf in my eyes but still: newer players earn less plasma/older players more plasma
- assault bot nerf (typically a great bot for young players)
- massive increased combat strength for Assault Observers (they roam only on Alpha I ... they're meant to be a juicy target for new players right?)(issue: income, research)
- removal of short range/high damage ammo ... the problem: NPCs are not longer close range combatants (some Nuimgol Mechs shoot at 350m+ ... more than a Kain Observer)

Of course all these aspects affect veterans too but much more the younger players. Btw i meant "relative to older players" in my post above ... not "relation". Language error from my side tongue.
Even the change in T1 mods/ammo isn't a buff. Yeah it's cheaper to produce T1 crap now but more expensive to build T2+ mods (either you ninja mine your epriton or you buy it from market ... for lots of NIC). And ammo costs as much as before the patch ... according to market data.
When i was a small agent of 1 week i already started to kill Observers. It wasn't easy. I lost bots and lots of them i simply couldn't kill because of lacking EPs and damage. But it was one way to play Perp. 1 hour of running the triangle with 2 accounts and you could afford 1 Observer Mech kernel (before the patch). But an Observer hunter doesn't find 1 Observer per hour. So even a young noob could get his hands on tasty Observer kernels.

In general it seems that the Devs tend to swing the huge nerfbat regulary. Without warning and lacking a proper tact. And every nerf is harder the less EPs you have. Nothing of the above mentioned aspects is game breaking but the overall picture leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Obviously I'm not the only one regarding current player peaks. And that's the best indicator when it comes to a satisfied player base.

128 (edited by Annihilator 2011-08-28 19:21:30)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

ok, your fail vision is that:

...they're meant to be a juicy target for new players right?

no, they are not. They have been meant as tough PvE experience to spice up boring macro-farming/mining

that they turned out into farming objects due to imbalanced kernels was the fail.
All the whining about the observers is a result of the implementation of observer kernels.

IMHO they should be removed from their loot table completely.


btw: Assault nerf? there was a HUGE assault boost, and a few smaller ones, and the HUGE one got adjusted later

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Error, you're just showing you don't pay much attention to overall game balance.
Assault robots are perfectly fine the way they are. The old masking setup was a little over powered and other than that they've not been nerfed.

Plasma nerf doesn't seem to have effect the lower end of the scale as much as it has the upper end of the scale. If you're struggling to play and enjoy the game perhaps you and I could have a chat and see if there are any suggestions as to what might help you out.

130

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Alexander wrote:

The old masking setup was a little over powered and other than that they've not been nerfed.

That's exactly what i was referring to. If anything then the Devs have shown that they don't have a sense for balance or the big picture. Reducing from 200 is ok. But increasing it up to 200 in the first place and totally negating the effect shortly after ... right at the time when a fresh influx of new players arrived (EvE bittervets / like me) roll.
(the signal detection was nerfed too, wasn't it?)
Same goes for ECCM mods. ERP/repair tunings. Short range ammo.
Swinging the nerfbat has ruined more than one formerly good game.

Although i have to decline, thank you for your last sentence. I'm already in dialogue with the voice in my head.

131

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

seriously, why are the changes so drastic one way or the other?

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Hang on, what's all this talk of plasma drops being nerfed for new players?
I consider myself a new player, barely 2 months old and I've found my income has DOUBLED since the patch...

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Annihilator wrote:

ok, your fail vision is that:

...they're meant to be a juicy target for new players right?

no, they are not. They have been meant as tough PvE experience to spice up boring macro-farming/mining

that they turned out into farming objects due to imbalanced kernels was the fail.
All the whining about the observers is a result of the implementation of observer kernels.

IMHO they should be removed from their loot table completely.


btw: Assault nerf? there was a HUGE assault boost, and a few smaller ones, and the HUGE one got adjusted later


"Spice up"?? Oh, you mean to make mining a PITA in addition to being boring?... ^^  The idea of roaming Observers is more than a little sadistic, given that miners are not intentioned as combat rigs.  I guess thats included in the over all making mining more "challenging" (to appease certain parties...) mind set.  The game barely has enough players as it is, continued "balancing" is likely to drive players away.

If you can't kill it, don't make it mad.

134 (edited by Jack Jombardo 2011-08-29 07:47:24)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Copine Callmeknau wrote:

Hang on, what's all this talk of plasma drops being nerfed for new players?
I consider myself a new player, barely 2 months old and I've found my income has DOUBLED since the patch...

Taken from http://www.perpetuum-online.com/Changelog:2011-08-25

Change: Rebalanced NPC plasma drops: the set amount of plasma in loot now follows more closely the time it takes to kill a specific NPC.

Means some fast to kill high tier NPC drob less Plasma then before (EW-lights and EW-Mech NPC are effected most espezialy if they drob/use LWF).

But in the same patch random-spawns are included which are fun and lucrativ smile.

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

taken from patchnotes, but not from ingame experience is probably worst base crying out so loud.

AFAIK 1st star lwf fitted light bots are unchanged, and 1st star armor plated npcs are dropping more plasma -> which is a big boost in plasma drops for new player, especially for those doing combat missions which nearly always ask you to kill plated ones!

Didn't notice that patchnote, but wondered why i had 1 Million NIC on my combat agent after doing ~12 Combat missions and selling the plasma...

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

136 (edited by Copine Callmeknau 2011-08-29 22:27:01)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Jack Jombardo wrote:
Copine Callmeknau wrote:

Hang on, what's all this talk of plasma drops being nerfed for new players?
I consider myself a new player, barely 2 months old and I've found my income has DOUBLED since the patch...

Taken from http://www.perpetuum-online.com/Changelog:2011-08-25

Change: Rebalanced NPC plasma drops: the set amount of plasma in loot now follows more closely the time it takes to kill a specific NPC.

Means some fast to kill high tier NPC drob less Plasma then before (EW-lights and EW-Mech NPC are effected most espezialy if they drob/use LWF).

But in the same patch random-spawns are included which are fun and lucrativ smile.

I know there's been a change, why are people calling it a nerf? If anything it's been a boost to plasma drops for anybody not shooting T2L in a stabbed mesmer

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

My initial post about the change was indeed very assumptive and I'll have to go and try some other spawns out.

The night before the patch I was doing some level 3 missions outta Asintec main.  Bounty mission to kill 18 T3L bots.  Total time round trip was about 35 minutes.  Mission payout was 200k and I was making 200k in plasma as well so 400k+ total.

I logged in after the patch and did the same mission.  The overall time was about the same, 30-35 minutes.  Payout was still 200k.  The plasma though now only sold for 130k.  That's a 35% decrease in plasma.

I then went and pulled a few assaults from another spawn and found them to be dropping about 15-20% less plasma.

Both these spawns though do drop/equip LWF and not plates.  So if plated bots are now dropping more and the "adjustment" is simply cause LWF now lowers armor even further I guess it does make sense.

I honestly haven't bothered to try other spawns yet cause I've been reading a few of the Dragonrealm books by Richard Knaak the past few days and only bothered to log in and play for an hour or so right after the patch.  I'll be done with the last book later today so I'll finally get into the game and actually try some other stuffs.

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

I can't confirm or negate my statement but here are my thoughts about this plasma change.

Till this patch it doesn't matter if you kill a EW-light which uses LWF or if you kill a "tanky" one with reprair, armor and resitence fitted. You got the same amount of plasma even if you needed 2 shots for the EW and 5 for the "tanky".

Now plasma is more balanced around true-armor so a Tier 2 tanky can drob more then a Tier 4 EW-LWF. This change makes sense to me and I don't feel it a nerf.
As Tier 2 tanky are easier to handle then Tier 4 EW .... I see it more as a buff to all Rookies.

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Plasma should have always have been based on armour values and while some smaller robots with lower armour values did lose a little plasma it's now at least worth farming armoured robots with less DPS for some new players.

140 (edited by Celebro 2011-08-31 00:31:14)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

After doing a few of the lvl 1s and lvl 2 mining/harvesting and the new transport missions, not much has changed in general there is still too little reward for the time you take just to get there and back and start mining/harvesting, I thought I heard from the devs that travel time will be taken into account and would be rewarded accordingly for all missions.

Lvl 4 mining mission in beta is a joke, mine immentium for 200k nic, for the risk involved it would be better of just mining epitron , I would get much more nic/hour. Only reason I do them (not the lvl4) is to increase relations they are tedious time consuming all in all boring mostly 80% travel.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

that is my problem. why are they revamping a *** quest system into a new equally *** quest system when they could be working on pve encounters, new reset system, etc.

makes no sense to me

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Why are they working to fix the game when they could be working to fix the game?

143 (edited by Goblin 2011-08-31 02:01:26)

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Guy with a cold gets rushed to the ER for gun shot wounds.

Devs here would prescribe the cough medicine first

144

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Celebro wrote:

After doing a few of the lvl 1s and lvl 2 mining/harvesting and the new transport missions, not much has changed in general there is still too little reward for the time you take just to get there and back and start mining/harvesting, I thought I heard from the devs that travel time will be taken into account and would be rewarded accordingly for all missions.

Lvl 4 mining mission in beta is a joke, mine immentium for 200k nic, for the risk involved it would be better of just mining epitron , I would get much more nic/hour. Only reason I do them (not the lvl4) is to increase relations they are tedious time consuming all in all boring mostly 80% travel.

As it is mentioned in the devblog:

While today’s patch will only replace level 1 assignments, the rest of the levels will continuously get the same facelift during the next patches.

I've only done the lvl 1 combat missions myself. At the time you are skilled enough to do them the rewards are adequate imo.
Let's just hope they increase the rewards for the higher lvl missions in the upcoming patches.

Goblin wrote:

that is my problem. why are they revamping a *** quest system into a new equally *** quest system when they could be working on pve encounters, new reset system, etc.

makes no sense to me

Aren't you being a bit negative here Goblin? When comparing the old lvl1 missions to the new ones I find them to be much more satisfying.

...and I'm curious to which extent you've screwed up your char. How much could possibly go wrong? wink

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Snowman wrote:
Arga wrote:

What's the issue, PVE is carebear content anyway, as long as your PVP stays difficult does it really even effect you?

Sorry for late reply.

/me takes deep breath

how does it effect me?.. or rather how does it effect pvpers?

.. well, by sounds of things your not an Eve player, in Eve PvP, or rather 'veterans' tend to hate Carebears because the Devs make changes to the game for keep carebears happy, these changes inevitably effects them,  dumbing down, making things easier... and just making the whole pvp thing shallow.  I'll not sight specifics.

But the biggest part of the big reason that Eve players are so damn angry right now, its because CCP are showing that they are spending almost ALL their resources and the resources to develop PvE content!   Whilst the state of PvP content is in DESPERATE need of attention!

Eve built its success off the back of pvp! and the dedication and loyalty of Eve veterans who have now basically had enough and sick to the core that CCP have for years ignored PvP features that are broken and bugged to pander to the crying, moaning population of carebears.

Faction warfare is a classic example of PvP content that was added... and left, they specifically said that they wernt working on it because of working on 'other projects'

Whats worse is that it all seems to be done to make money for other games!

Dont get me wrong, I like PvE too, anything thats challenging and interactive is great and PO does need a lot of work, its still a new game from an indy team afterall (much like eve was to begin with)  but the more you dumb down content and make it soloable, the more it becomes expected... its a slippery slope.

so far the pve changes are good.. because they encourage group activity and I give +1 internets to the Devs for recognizing that and hope that any pve work continues in that fashion.

And thats why it kinda hits a nerve when players are cropping up trying to make a fuss about dumbing down the game just because they dont have any friends or are socially inadequate.

Whilse NeX style does encourage independence, people still get together in small groups for mutual benefit.. and and sure that style will work for them and that its members still feel part of a whole and not part of a tax income

Here we go again... So, CCP should pander to the *fraction* of the player base that is out numbered at least two to one by CareBears? The literal river of tears I've heard from PvP types in game after game, is that CareBears are "ruining" the game!...  In fact CareBears are what keep many games in business. You do realize that this exercise is about making a sufficient profit to keep the game running, and perhaps expanding?

One doesn't get that, by driving off the greater part of ones player base (which in game after game, after game in the western markets is the hated CareBears). It seems difficult for some people to grasp, but not everyone is interested in PvP.  Hopefully, the Perpetuum Dev's don't give in to the howling, and drive off their own CareBears. Its not six years ago, and games like EVE and Perpetuum are already niche.

Next, forcing grouping also tends to niche a game. Look at the original Dungeons and Dragons online as one glaring example of that. I leveled to cap after launch, but then left because one could do almost literally nothing without a group.

With the introduction of henchmen I've gone back and played the game for a bit.  If Perpetuum goes down the forced grouping path, its bound to lose players who have no interest in such. As for the rest, its less than obvious that people who prefer solo, are "socially inadequate"... ^^ Some simply prefer that path.  As long as a game allows that choice, why should either faction care?

If you can't kill it, don't make it mad.

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Change the "E" into a "P" and the OP nailed it...

Just Sayin
01000110 01110010 01100101 01100101 01101100 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 01110010 01110011
smileneutralsadbig_smileyikeswinkhmmtonguelolmadrollcoolyarr

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Wraithbane wrote:

Things

Niche is the way to go in a saturated market. There is absolutely no shortage of PvE grindfest MMOs. There is a shortage of good PvP MMOs. Would you rather AC risk competing directly with the established WoW and friends? Or would you rather they fill some gaps in an untapped market?

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

PvP in this game doesnt work without PvE backup. You cannot build youre mechs from PvP loot AFAIK, and most PvP nerds are not intrested in mining either AFAIK

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Annihilator wrote:

PvP in this game doesnt work without PvE backup. You cannot build youre mechs from PvP loot AFAIK, and most PvP nerds are not intrested in mining either AFAIK

Pretty much, the game needs balance. It needs a bit of each facet to make it appealing to a broader scope of players so that we can have more dynamics in the game. Farmers, Miners, Builders, PvPer's, take one element out of that list and someone else will have to do it anyway. You need farmers to get research done, miners for resources, builders to put it together, pvpers to blow it up and do it all over again. tongue

Take the long way around back to square one
Today we're just outlaws out on the run

Re: The Dire state of PVE combat.

Annihilator wrote:

PvP in this game doesnt work without PvE backup. You cannot build youre mechs from PvP loot AFAIK, and most PvP nerds are not intrested in mining either AFAIK

HOLD on here...yes you can...its been done...it will continue to be done.

See my sig for more info.

Just Sayin
01000110 01110010 01100101 01100101 01101100 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 01110010 01110011
smileneutralsadbig_smileyikeswinkhmmtonguelolmadrollcoolyarr