The Energon Pub

[Tammuz]

a working economy in a game is a very difficult thing it either end up with millionaires everywhere, or ev everyone strapped for cash, it will require alot of managing by the staff to make it workable.

[Burn]

It's not just about energon ...

[Absolute Zero]

In pretty much any game you're going to end up with millionaires. I don't really see why this is such a big deal.

[Redimus]

It's not just about energon ...

Ahh well, if it's xp as well, f**k that ****.
I'll go pred, and stay pred until such time as I feel that they no longer need my help, then go con and stay con for good, no matter what.

In pretty much any game you're going to end up with millionaires. I don't really see why this is such a big deal.

The problem is if everybody has more than enough money, then it becomes meaningless.

[Tammuz]

yeah you end up with hyper inflation so anything that carries a heavy price as a means of discouragement or as a negative factor for balancing becomes moot, a meaningless statistic you never really worry about.

just like energon is in this game.

[Absolute Zero]

In pretty much any game you're going to end up with millionaires. I don't really see why this is such a big deal.

The problem is if everybody has more than enough money, then it becomes meaningless.

Only if there's nothing worth buying. There's only a handful of guns worth buying in the game now, and the same for armor, which you only need to buy once in a while. CR Chamber costs go up, but they stay inline with how much energon you're making at a level. There is a reason why the bots lost all that energon when the minicons were added. It was something to buy. Something new and different. HMW's economy would be easy to fix, just add upkeep costs to weapons and armor, and add more veriety of things to buy. And I think probably the most pointless thing done to this game is fixing a broken weapon system by breaking it even more. All weapons at any given level all do the same median damage. OK. So... why do we need 6 or 7 different weapons at the level when they're all the same anyway? Why not just go, ok, here's your level 0 blaster, level 1 blaster, level 2 blaster, so on and so forth. Have the weapons actually be different. A short sword does like 1d6 damage. A long sword does I think 1d8 damage. Does that make a long sword better then a short sword? No, because each has it's own advantages. A light crossbow does more damage then a shortbow, but a shortbow you can do second shot with, while a crossbow has to be reloaded. Instead of crying about how powerful stun is and how it shouldn't be in the game, come up with something that **** counters it. How about shock-absorbing armor? Rammer A hits warrior B. Warrior B's Shock-absorbing armor keeps Warrior B from being stunned. Warrior B's HP reduced by 30%. You don't have to nerf things even more for it to be balanced, you just need to figure out what should balance it. I'm sorry, a mac truck ramming into something SHOULD stun it. It should knock it on it's ass. "Oh, but Paco, I'm using a base alt. I shouldn't be stunned from a truck hitting it, never mind a filthy beast." Maybe your base alt is a micromaster base. There's no size differences in HMW. That lion could be the size of Omega Supreme.

[neliz]

ah, € for mass shifting

[Burn]

It's not just about energon ...

Ahh well, if it's xp as well, f**k that ****.

You silly people thinking there's only going to be two commodities ...

[Tammuz]

i take great offense at that AZ. i did the best i daman well could with balancing the weapons given i was denied any changes a part from recharges, damage values and energon, you want to moan that we should change the game engine, i'll agree, but that was never gonna happen, so being pragmatic i took the best course i could and made the weapons something a little more varied than "battle blades=win"

there are 6 or 7 weapons at given levels and they are different, some will be consistent as hell, some will skip between barely any to a fair chunk in the same mission, some are gonna take a few hits turns to recharge, some won't.

the only place weapons aren't balanced and thus broken is the cost, mainly cos energon in this game is is broken to thepoint of being inconsequetial.


now onto your shock armour solution, that won't work becuase Stun being so powerful will require everyone to get shock armour, which then means stun is now worthless, and as is every armour except the shock armours.

your "micromaster base" analogy works both ways maybe your micromaster mac truck and so forth, anyway whats wrong with stun is that when rammed it checks if the stunee has less STR than the Stunner, if it does the Stunee may be stunned, if it is stunned it's stunned for a random amount of time, often past the entire length of the mission, which effectively means that that one ram has ended the the targets participation in the battle as anything but a meat shield.

what i reckon it should work at is that it should do check rammers STR against target's END and if the STR is greater than END ignore the stunnee's next actions to the diffrence halved rounding up (cuase 5 turns is enough to kill, 10 would be almost certain one ram and it's over territory)

I agree on the weapon/armour upkeep cost.


the problems remain the same even with multiple commodities, Burn even the countless ones we have on earth we still don't have a working world economy,

[Absolute Zero]

i take great offense at that AZ. i did the best i daman well could with balancing the weapons given i was denied any changes a part from recharges, damage values and energon, you want to moan that we should change the game engine, i'll agree, but that was never gonna happen, so being pragmatic i took the best course i could and made the weapons something a little more varied than "battle blades=win"

there are 6 or 7 weapons at given levels and they are different, some will be consistent as hell, some will skip between barely any to a fair chunk in the same mission, some are gonna take a few hits turns to recharge, some won't.

the only place weapons aren't balanced and thus broken is the cost, mainly cos energon in this game is is broken to thepoint of being inconsequetial.

And the weapons still come down to what one will give me the most consistent damage through the fight. That's why mostly everyone runs with Null Rifles with 0 FP. You made due with what you had, I understand that. It's less broken then it was, and that's good. But you have to reconize that it is still broken.

now onto your shock armour solution, that won't work becuase Stun being so powerful will require everyone to get shock armour, which then means stun is now worthless, and as is every armour except the shock armours.

Not everyone uses ram, but still, instead of going "It's broken, it needs to go" it should be "OK, how can we offset this? What can we add to the game that would compliment Ram. What counter effects and what other effects." There's a reason why in games of all kinds, video, and table top, there are abilties, and there are counter abilities. Undead can't be crit-ed on unless you have a feat for knowing how to hit undead, or have a item that allows you to crit undead. Flaming weapons great against someone not immune to fire.

There should be more effects/abilities then stun, to make stun not be the be all end all. And there needs to be ways to counter those abilities. That's why there are really only a handful of effective builds and repair and strafe are pretty much **** until you're a high enough level. Maybe there will be in V2. I'd hope so.

your "micromaster base" analogy works both ways maybe your micromaster mac truck and so forth, anyway whats wrong with stun is that when rammed it checks if the stunee has less STR than the Stunner, if it does the Stunee may be stunned, if it is stunned it's stunned for a random amount of time, often past the entire length of the mission, which effectively means that that one ram has ended the the targets participation in the battle as anything but a meat shield.

See, this is what annoys me about the forums. Did you even bother reading that part of the post? I understand I'm a poor communicator, but still. The point is that there's no size difference for any thing in the game. I used the micromaster base because if one could transform, it would roughly be about the size of a modern deluxe or maybe, but not likely, a voyager class. Without a size chart or ranking, there is no effective way to tell how large the characters are compared to the other characters. You can say your character is 100 feet tall in your bio, but that doesn't mean he is in game. There's nothing in the game code that says the beast factions are smaller then the G1ers. We just say they are because of the canon, which HMW does not follow.

what i reckon it should work at is that it should do check rammers STR against target's END and if the STR is greater than END ignore the stunnee's next actions to the diffrence halved rounding up (cuase 5 turns is enough to kill, 10 would be almost certain one ram and it's over territory)

I think you're going about it the wrong way. You're solving the problem by trying to make it less effective, when you should be solving it by figuring out ways to not make it be the only effect in the game. As long as the only thing you can do to a character is stun them with ram, and then you get a chance to make a few more attacks on them, ram and stun are always going to be broken. Your idea, while sound, will only make it less broken, but still broken.

I agree on the weapon/armour upkeep cost.

the problems remain the same even with multiple commodities, Burn even the countless ones we have on earth we still don't have a working world economy,

There will never ever be a perfect world economy unless people some how stop being greedy bitches and some how communism or socialism suddenly worked. Same thing for a in game. Like it or not, there will always be people with more money. You want to break the game economy, what you do is you make it easier for lower level people to earn money and have their upkeep be lower, then you raise the upkeep for higher, slow their money growth, and give them more crap to spend it on.

[Tammuz]

i fail to see how weapons are still broken (apart from the energon cost).

I'll disagree that strafes **** until your high level. it's actually alot cheaper to make work better.

4strafe will average about 21.5% damage per strafe and you'll strafe about 12% of the time

you need 4ram and 4str to get an average of 21% per ram and a 12% ramming rate


Repair is **** at lownlevels becuase INT doesn't have a secondary boost to performance. not becuase of a lack of "other effects like stun"

it's far easier to remove one unbalanced effect than it is to add a bumload of other effects and get them to balance, i take the simplest solution first, if you can come up with a system that abalnces fair enough but until then i'd rather have it removed. either way works but my ways easier to implement. and the thing with stun is that "a few hits" is hard to quantify a few hits can deal 100% damage or 21% damage, that's a massive difference in the effect of stun especially when it can essentially decide a one on one battle in one hit becuase you have one more point in STR. Stun is effectively a 100% avoid rate against someone for an random number of turns. that's epic, and you can't tell me that has to stay in the game as is, even if there was comparative other abilities, when one thing is uber, i'd rather not fix the game by ubering everything else.

ideally i'd like to have the tacticsdealing only damage, and then a bunch of other crap(minicons and binary bondsmen and powerchip rectifyers, energon chips, cyber keys, etc) giving "feats" and stuff.

[Absolute Zero]

i fail to see how weapons are still broken (apart from the energon cost).

I take it you've never heard the "that weapon varies to much in damage to be effective compared to this weapon at the same level." statement.

Repair is **** at lownlevels becuase INT doesn't have a secondary boost to performance. not becuase of a lack of "other effects like stun"

So, you're saying repair is less broken then ram, because repair's feeder stat does sh!t except for repair? Which actually has two feeder stats, which seems to me to make it a little more unbalanced then the other tactics...

it's far easier to remove one unbalanced effect than it is to add a bumload of other effects and get them to balance, i take the simplest solution first, if you can come up with a system that abalnces fair enough but until then i'd rather have it removed. either way works but my ways easier to implement. and the thing with stun is that "a few hits" is hard to quantify a few hits can deal 100% damage or 21% damage, that's a massive difference in the effect of stun especially when it can essentially decide a one on one battle in one hit becuase you have one more point in STR. Stun is effectively a 100% avoid rate against someone for an random number of turns. that's epic, and you can't tell me that has to stay in the game as is, even if there was comparative other abilities, when one thing is uber, i'd rather not fix the game by ubering everything else.

ideally i'd like to have the tacticsdealing only damage, and then a bunch of other crap(minicons and binary bondsmen and powerchip rectifyers, energon chips, cyber keys, etc) giving "feats" and stuff.

So, take out the effects. Break the other end of the game, so both ends are broken, instead of trying to fix the broken end, and remove customizability and the ability for each character to be different, and don't add stuff to spend money on. Everyone should be running the same or simular builds, no differences, no customization, nothing compelling in the game, less about the stuff that makes transformers different from just being a giant transforming robot. Infact, why call it transformers, why not call it cheap knockoff? That's basically what that boils down to.

Yes, I know I'm being a sarcastic arse. But for the life of me, I can not understand that arguement. Lets not add to the game. Lets not evolve it. Lets leave it as it is and let it stagnate and rot. If things don't change. They die. No where is that more apparent then in things online and in games.

[Tammuz]

the weapons don't very that much.


and what are you on about with repair having two feeders?

and i'm not anti adding to the game, i just want to sort out the basics before adding more. feet on the ground before castle in the sky.

[Wingspan]

Debate

Well that was interesting. How should it be applied to HMW II?

As for the jumping factions - if that's too easy I see that as hampering faction cooperation. Why work with someone so they get them better when they'll just ditch you to be your opponent and not your backup in a month?

But that's more of a moderation / gameplay perspective; if the community doesn't think of the game in those terms than this single perspective should be drowned out.

[neliz]

we can only assume a "loyalty" ranking where loyal players are giving beneficial perks and those that jump ship find them at the bottom rung of their "new" faction and would be treated as such (traitors) mission wise where they are given the great glory of taking point on the battlefield.

And a HMW rank that is synchronized with your seibertron "rank" ... being branded "Traitor" for a couple of months is enough to make anyone think twice about leaving their faction.

[Tammuz]

As for the jumping factions - if that's too easy I see that as hampering faction cooperation. Why work with someone so they get them better when they'll just ditch you to be your opponent and not your backup in a month?

sometimes opponents are harder to come by than allies.

[Psychout]

I think you guys are missing the point that Burn made a few pages back.

...when people suddenly find themselves able to attack their fellow faction members...

There will always be opponents if you learn where to look for them.


I appreciate you guys have not seen anything of the new game yet, but judging it by V1.x standards and traits is pointless.

Yes, you will still control a team of customisable transformers.
Yes, you will still join variations of missions/arena and earn xp to level up.
Yes, it will still be as simple as dumping your minions in the arena if you are so inclined.

Everything else from character creation, to hunting down your alts instead of them just being there, to a game economy, to the speed at which you level up, to having an actual map of Cybertron to fight across will be different. Vastly in some places, slightly in others.

Just don't naively expect everything to be available at the start. A L0 'gestalt' would be of less use than a one legged autobot in an ass kicking contest, that **** has to be earned.

I wont for a second claim that it will all be 'perfect' straight out of the box - professional MMO's take years to develop and this one being created as a hobby - but it will be a shit-load better balanced than this as its been written using a far simpler code than the current game so balancing it wont require a degree in Hadron Collider science level maths, just experience with old-school pen and paper rpg's and an understanding of how these games work. So as long as those who do currently have access to test it actually give feedback on how the game works/doesn't work then it will be awesome.

What i'm saying is, judging it now is a waste of time. Speculate all you want though - some of you have been damn close in your guesses so far...

[Tammuz]

the maths isn't that hard in V1 though. the vast majority of balancing so far has been pulling numbers out of thin air rather than sitting down with pen and paper and actually engaging brain, and most of the guys who've tried haven't actually tried to lean how the game works first.

[Psychout]

That's the point. They didn't all have your skill at maths, the same as you dont have their skill at programming, so they had no choice but to guestimate.

Now, fixes will no longer rely on advanced maths or guessing how the game works as all that will be known from the start so patches become far easier to plan out and prepare for.

I think of it like comparing the differences between D&D's 1st edition and the newest 4th, the mechanics aren't even close to being similar, but the games essence, theme and style are still the same, just more developed. Fixing weirdness in D&D now is far easier and straightforward than it was back in the 70's.

But, again, we'd be fools to expect it to be perfect from the start. But at least this way we have better chance at getting it fixed quickly and properly.

[Tammuz]

I'm not that good at maths psych, i barely scraped an a level in it.

[neliz]

as long as it stays on the level of magic and not mechwarrior i'm cool with it

[Omega Sentinel]

I was going to make a post but Psych actually summed up everything perfectly. Glad to have you on staff

[Psychout]

Mwa ha ha... My take over of HMW is almost complete...

[Judge Chuckachu]

Psych in 09' Cast your votes!

[Editor]

Not sure if this has come up yet.

Will teams still have a maximum of 12 units, or will that be changing?