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Enhancements |
Fluttershy Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011 Posts: 778 From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2013-04-22 07:54  
Enhancements give long time players, or those who pay money, a clear advantage in combat.
I think it's great that people subscribe, buy credits, and donate to support the game, but the way enhancements are implemented is borderline pay-to-win or at least play-5-years-to-secure-your-abilty-to-win-constantly-against-players-with-far-less-play-time.
Most enhancements provide a direct no penalty upgrade.
Many players stress the importance of getting enhancements.
On some ships, like the EAD, it's almost considered mandatory to fit 8 defense enh on it.
In most larger battles, the influence of enhancements is lessened, because the long time players are spread more evenly and both sides have decent enhancements.
The issue mostly comes into full effect on smaller and imbalanced engagements, where you got vet dreads against newbies in unenhanced or minor enhanced cruisers/destroyers.
Have you seen the cruisers that can chase down and out-turn destroyers? They're basically a noob slaughterer, out doing them in every aspect they are capable of. Firepower, Survivability, Maneuverability, Speed, Acceleration, Rate of repair...
It wreaks havoc on ship balancing, and keeps coming up in every balance discussion.
Yes, do tell how your 40 some percent stat advantage brings you great glory and prestige in combat.
Realize that new players have no such things, and get even more stomped than they already do by ship class discrepancies alone.
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The Fridge Chief Marshal Templar Knights
Joined: December 13, 2008 Posts: 559 From: In Your Fridge, Eating your Foods.
| Posted: 2013-04-22 08:08  
Would of been better to reboot the old thread, with, you know, content and ideas on fixing it.
No point discussing the same point twice and all that. [ This Message was edited by: The Fridge on 2013-04-22 08:10 ]
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Fluttershy Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011 Posts: 778 From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2013-04-22 08:28  
Wouldn't that be necroposting? I didn't even know we had a discussion on it any time recently.
Well, some ideas would be to
- limit credits to aesthetics and convenience items.
- Make all enhancements more of a "retool" module, if anything.
Aesthetics would be things like trail colors, hull paint, weapon effects.
Retool modules would be things that sacrifice one stat for another, such as
-25% speed for +20% higher armor hp.
-25% energy capacity for +20% engine and reactor power output.
Note that the sacrifice would be higher than the benefit, so that you can't mix two different kinds to get an overall pure superior result.
[ This Message was edited by: Fluttershy on 2013-04-22 08:28 ]
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Kenny_Naboo Marshal Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010 Posts: 3823 From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2013-04-22 10:57  
The best fix for enh has always been to give a penalty to the opposing attribute that is enhanced.
Eg: Bonus to Defense, penalty to Offense
Bonus to beams, penalty to weapons
Bonus to speed, penalty to turn rate
The next question would be how much to penalize those opposing attributes. Surely we can't give an equal percentage penalty. Some enh, like the blue enhs, are expensive. So putting a heavy penalty will affect player willingness to purchase them.
So perhaps we could work with a 2:1 or even a 3:1 bonus to penalty ratio to still make those enhs attractive to purchase.
eg: Advanced Weap Multi: +6% weap damage, -2% beam damage
Like it or not, the game needs players to buy credits to continue running. And players buy creds because they wanna purchase enhs. If all they have are visual enh that does nothing for their gameplay, then cred purchase will eventually slow down.
In short, paying players need to get some bang for their bucks. Installing enh should ALWAYS give them some advantage over those who don't.
_________________ ... in space, no one can hear you scream.....
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Forger of Destiny Chief Marshal We Kick Arse
Joined: October 10, 2009 Posts: 826
| Posted: 2013-04-22 11:02  
dont quite understand how playing for years puts you on par with people with credits. unless one aims to collect enhancements, players dont get enough enhancements to regularly equip on their ships.
yes, enhancements should not be purely beneficial.
no, enhancements should not be overall degrading.
yes, skill should be everything in a game.
no, this is only a game, dont take it this seriously.
in my view enhancements should provide a net 2-3% increase in stats (16-24% with 8 enhs). this makes minor enhancements obsolete (useless waste of garage space), limited and standard enhs useful (pure boosts to stats) and higher enhs as mix-and-match options.
there should be some reward/utility to using enhancements, or else why will you work for them?
_________________ Forging legends and lives outside till naught remains inside.
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-DBS Marshal
Joined: January 04, 2011 Posts: 204 From: St. Petersburg, FL
| Posted: 2013-04-22 12:44  
You can still get the best of enh players while in a stock ship... Its called skill and opportunity. While in a stock stat the other day, over the course of maybe an hour and a half, I got enough drops to enh my ship pretty well... Also, enh are cheap...
-Shane
[ This Message was edited by: -DBS on 2013-04-22 12:45 ]
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Zero28 Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006 Posts: 591
| Posted: 2013-04-22 14:21  
Befor adding anythign else is added About enh on the ships, like EAD needing 8 Def enh and etc Please, and for the lvoe of god PLEASE
DO REMEMBER THAT THE SHIPS LAYOUT ARE GETTING CHANGED
theres not point of changing anything else before then
really there isn't.....
_________________ 19:33:51 [ZION]GothThug {C?}: "Zero..you are DS's hero"
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Fluttershy Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011 Posts: 778 From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2013-04-22 14:35  
Quote:
On 2013-04-22 10:57, Kenny_Naboo wrote:
In short, paying players need to get some bang for their bucks. Installing enh should ALWAYS give them some advantage over those who don't.
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So you are fully in support of Pay To Win.
It would be OK if you could buy things like prestige gain multipliers, and maybe a perk that gives bonus prestige for kills or something to make it easier to rank up, but purchasing flat upgrades is nonsense.
Sidegrades are fine, Upgrades are not.
-2 to one thing and +8 to another is not a sidegrade.
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