51 réponses à ce sujet

[Danimals847]

I would completely redesign Biotic Charge. Triggering it would send out a short-range wave of energy (think asari heavy melee) and restore your barriers immediately. Instead of sending you flying toward an opponent, it would be a short duration power where for a few seconds your movement speed would be dramatically increased, allowing you to run into enemies and hit them with major force damage. You could also cancel out of the power early similar to Flamer or Tactical Cloak in order to reduce the cooldown. Power evolutions could include increased duration, force bonus, movement speed and blast radius when impacting enemies and still include the existing bonuses to Biotic Charge at rank 6 where you can either have barriers fully restored or not trigger a cooldown.

[Vazgen]

Tactical Cloak - to be toggled like Fortification, but drain shields while cloaked. When the shields are depleted armor emits a shock pulse that damages and staggers both yourself and stuns the enemies. Same thing happens if used when not having any shields

[Danimals847]

Tactical Cloak - to be toggled like Fortification, but drain shields while cloaked. When the shields are depleted armor emits a shock pulse that damages and staggers both yourself and stuns the enemies. Same thing happens if used when not having any shields

So basically you better ALWAYS disable it before your shields run out, since it will damage you when they run out and you will almost certainly die quickly. I agree with the idea of Tactical Cloak being a sustained rather than an active power, but I would say instead of slowly draining shields it should just reduce them by a fixed amount like Hunter Mode. Of course, it would still disable the cloak if you fired a weapon or triggered another power.

[RopeDrink]

I'd simply tweak Decoy slightly.

In its current form, its best used from cover or around corners (with you out of sight) moreso at higher difficulties where team damage can get scattered, over-aggro'ing - And even then, it'll only distract regular mooks and some mid-tier mobs. It's a handy ability, don't get me wrong - But its current state makes it far too situational, which also places one of my faves (Salarian Engineer) firmly in underappreciated niche territory where most other classes would simply do a task better.

 

There are times I've plopped a Decoy in the middle of a fight and mobs auto-attack it just because it was closer, allowing me time to recharge and pick targets off despite being in plain view - At other times, it is just outright ignored by everything even if placed stealthily from cover and I'm nowhere to be seen.

 

Even if the Decoy could retaliate at a measly 10% of the Engy's damage (or something more consistant than close proximity shocks, or 'explosions on death') it would secure a bit more aggro grip - And would also reward the player for actually using it in positions where it can consistantly attack enemies and provide a bit of aggro or minor damage.

 

Best use I get out of it is planting it on dead Ravagers so that swarmers kill themselves on the fake-me for free 35x4pts, when not placing it at team-flanks or side-coridoors so that it can distract/delay oncoming waves from another direction for a minute while the team focus on a seperate wave.

[Vazgen]

So basically you better ALWAYS disable it before your shields run out, since it will damage you when they run out and you will almost certainly die quickly. I agree with the idea of Tactical Cloak being a sustained rather than an active power, but I would say instead of slowly draining shields it should just reduce them by a fixed amount like Hunter Mode. Of course, it would still disable the cloak if you fired a weapon or triggered another power.

There is a slight delay before enemies notice you and the explosion stuns the ones who are close to you. You will not use it if you're almost dead but you will use it to relocate or flank enemies. It becomes more tactical Sort of like cloak in Crysis 2. Firing while cloaked drains your shields faster and depends on a weapon weight. You won't be able to fire more than two shots while cloaked if using a sniper rifle like Widow but will be able to fire around 7 with Raptor (the maximum amount). 

Come to think of it, having the health damage is not a good idea, stagger and explosion is enough. 

It will have great synergy with Defense Matrix shield restore effect.

[Nitrocuban]

Pull, anyone?

[capn233]

Pull, anyone?

 

Heh, why not?

 

As for the topic, too hard to pick a single power because there are so many that stand out.  Also don't know if we are limiting ourselves to SP powers or also the MP set.

 

Anyway off the top of my head some of the worst offenders (SP)...

 

Tactical Cloak

 

It needed some help from the ME2 version, but they went way overboard.  I do not fall in the utility vs damage camp since damage is a utility, and as such I would not have any evolutions effect duration whatsoever.  The problems at launch were predominantly that Cloak gave too much damage for all the cooldown benefits, namely circumventing PRS to an extent as well as giving a free power.

 

First order of business is reducing base damage bonus to something more reasonable like 10 or 20%, then maybe another 20 or 30% at Rank 4.  Change these to "Weapon Damage" bonuses from general damage bonuses.  These would be standard type damage bonuses, not base damage modifiers.

 

Second thing is to remove the ability to cast a power under cloak at base.  Move "Bonus Power" to the second Rank 4 evolution to allow casting a power from cloak.  When Bonus Power is taken, Cloak cooldown uses the longer of Cloak's or the cast power's cooldown.  Bonus Power only allows "offensive powers."

 

Third is to fix the cooldown.  Allow proportional cooldown only if cloak is canceled early via manual decloak.  Firing a weapon or a power under "Bonus Power" gives you the full cooldown (Cloak's or the Power's, whichever is longer).

 

Rank 6 SR Damage (base damage modifier) to 25% as in MP.  The new alternative evolution at Rank 6 would be Power Damage, and would be a 30% standard bonus.

 

Nova

 

Main issue here is that the I-frame duration is too long.  This is easily fixed with a simple bin file edit to a single number. 

 

The other issue is whether or not Half Blast was a good idea.  At the least, the damage penalty should be 50% but probably more like 60%.  Of course this doesn't hugely impact the combo ability, but does reduce the damage more fairly.

 

Marksman

 

In MP the bonuses are still a bit too high, in SP they are absurd.  Especially the accuracy that you can get without increasing the accuracy bonus.  Need to cut out at least 30% of the available accuracy bonus.  You should not be near 50% Accuracy if you take ROF at 4.

 

The evolutions could also use a bit of work.

Rank 4 is fine with Accuracy vs Rate of Fire I suppose.  Just adjust.

 

Drop Recharge Speed from Rank 6 since it makes no sense to take.  Change it to "Weapon Efficiency" or some thing and give a 20%-30% bonus to "magazine size" (even though that should be thermal clip size, but they don't keep their jargon straight in this game).

 

Tech Armor (and other defensive powers)

 

Flip the cooldown so that it has the cooldown when it is activated, not detonated / purged.  Yes this gives you higher alpha damage, but it isn't like they cared for the Vanguard.

 

Could also quibble about the way DR stacks in this game, although it might not be a problem with more sensible values for SP TA, Fortification, Barrier DR.

 

***

 

Anyway that's off the top of my head.  Pretty much every power could use a little tweak.  Just pointed out some bigger offenders, IMO.

[RedCaesar97]

Tech Armor (and other defensive powers)

 

Flip the cooldown so that it has the cooldown when it is activated, not detonated / purged.  Yes this gives you higher alpha damage, but it isn't like they cared for the Vanguard.

 

Could also quibble about the way DR stacks in this game, although it might not be a problem with more sensible values for SP TA, Fortification, Barrier DR.

 

I would put some of the Damage Reduction (DR) blame on how they calculate DR, namely how they decided to give you a -40% DR penalty when out of cover. If that was removed so that you started with 0 DR instead of a penalty, you could drop the DR values of Tech Armor/Fortification/Barrier/Defense Matrix/Blade Armor, Reave, Biotic Bubble, Shield Boost, etc., and then remove or drop the hidden DR values on some melee attacks and Charge.

 

 

Combat Drone:

Due to the changes in enemy AI, the ME3 Combat Drone will never come close to the ME2 Combat Drone's awesomeness, but it needs a re-think. My issues with the ME drone:

 

1. Too slow, plus stops every few seconds (stoppage may be related to how enemy AI recalculates threats every few seconds)

2. Rockets evolution tends to move it behind cover where the rockets will not hit

3. The "Shock" evolution is poorly explained and does not really add anything to the drone. "Shock" says it will stun enemies, but I have never seen it do that. And if it does stun, then stunned enemies will not attacking an Explosive Drone, and the opposite evolution is Shields and Damage which is also counter-productive to Explosive Drone.

 

So how about instead:

1. Increase movement speed by at least 50%

 

2. Possible evolutions:

 

Rank 4a: Attack Rate (increases drone attack rate)

Rank 4b: Explosive Drone

 

Rank 5a: Shields

Rank 5b: Damage

 

Rank 6a: Attack distance (increases the distance the drone can attack enemies from)

Rank 6b: Pulse/Chain lightning (Chain lightning would work like it does now, although I think changing its attack to a pulse in a radius around the drone might be better).

 

3. (Optional.) Make it a duration-based power. some evolutions could increase duration.

[ZipZap2000]

Have shockwave explode violently when it hits a target and keep rolling exploding when it hits other targets as well.

 

Turn nova into a glyph of paralysis that has the same effect as disruptor rounds.

 

Get rid of tech armour completely.

 

Barriers give you increased melee damage.

 

Singularity becomes a miniature black hole like the grenades in Thor.

[capn233]

^^ A shock evolution for drone that primes combos might be an interesting addition.  Depending on your point of view about combos of course.

[Danimals847]

Get rid of tech armour completely.

 

Barriers give you increased melee damage.

 

Why?

[Larry-3]

When I was a Sentinel I wanted my Tech Armor to glow in a violet color. I am back on my favorite and preferred class -- the Adept. I do not know what powered I would tweak on my Adept, but I wish I could use both Defense Drone and Flash Bangs simutanously.

[Darius M.]

I would tweak decoy to be like the hologram in Halo Reach. By that I mean have it continue to run/move in the manner you were when you activated it, and have it do so for a few yards. So if you're sprinting and you activate it, it will then sprint. If you're walking, it will then walk, etc. Rather than just having it appear alongside you and act like a mime. That would let decoy be a defensive OR offensive move. Imagine if you could make a praetorian floating toward you turn around to chase the decoy that just ran past him. Then you could also add passive proximity damage over time, tech priming, or an explosion on "death" to the decoy for a much more dynamic power. In MP, I think they could also have it so that an enemy attacking your decoy = assist. 

[Gladerunner]

Pull is effectively a gimped version of Singularity. 

 

Make it a sustained power that continually pulls people in a large area, which can be aimed. Alternatively, make it constantly fire pulls.

[RedCaesar97]

Pull is effectively a gimped version of Singularity. 

 

Make it a sustained power that continually pulls people in a large area, which can be aimed. Alternatively, make it constantly fire pulls.

So... make it like Singularity then?

[capn233]

The problem with Pull as it relates to Singularity has more to do with enemy design and the encumbrance system.

 

They screwed up the protection system in ME3 so that standard mooks had health, then had higher tier enemies with armor instead of health, or abilities that block powers.  If every target were protected, but you could Pull basically all of them after protections were gone, it would be fine.

 

Encumbrance system also causes the cooldown difference of various powers to become compressed.  This is because encumbrance affecting cooldown is a poor idea in the first place, but also partly because balance changes exacerbated the problem by simultaneously reducing the weight of weapons and reducing base cooldowns of many things.

 

The fact that they turned Singularity into a super power with the patch also didn't help the comparison with Pull.

[Gladerunner]

So... make it like Singularity then?

 

More like flamer or multi-frag.

[themikefest]

Reave. I would just have the power cover a larger radius. Its my favorite bonus power

[Danimals847]

The problem with Pull as it relates to Singularity has more to do with enemy design and the encumbrance system.

 

They screwed up the protection system in ME3 so that standard mooks had health, then had higher tier enemies with armor instead of health, or abilities that block powers.  If every target were protected, but you could Pull basically all of them after protections were gone, it would be fine.

I agree - maybe armored targets could be resistant to physics, ie armor has more weight and thus doesn't float as long/far/etc. but the decision to make armored targets essentially immune to physics defies logic.

 

Encumbrance system also causes the cooldown difference of various powers to become compressed.  This is because encumbrance affecting cooldown is a poor idea in the first place, but also partly because balance changes exacerbated the problem by simultaneously reducing the weight of weapons and reducing base cooldowns of many things.

If encumbrance affecting cooldown is a poor idea, what would you have done? I get that it doesn't exactly make sense on a broad scale, but it is a balanced way to allow any class to equip any weapon. Sure, holding a heavier gun shouldn't make your omni-tool recharge slower, but if we're going to make that statement then we need to look at the entire cooldown system. Why would using a biotic power have any affect on tech powers? Combat powers are a mixed bag, as some of them are weapon-based (Concussive Shot, Carnage) while others are personnel-based (Adrenaline Rush, Fortification). It would probably be ridiculously hard to balance, but in order to have this make sense lore-wise, it would probably look something like this:

 

• Personnel-based powers (all biotics, some combat) would be based on the cooldown as we know it. They would be affected by things like encumbrance, since they are reliant on the user's physical endurance.
• Weapon-based powers could be tricky. Assuming they are actually fired from the weapon as are Concussive Shot and Carnage, it would make sense to have their use apply to the weapon's thermal clip. That doesn't really make sense though, because their performance isn't affected by the weapon. If we say they come from the user's suit then they could have a fixed cooldown time which unaffected by encumbrance, and is also separate from the personnel-based power cooldown.
• Omni-tool based (tech) powers could be on their own separate cooldown, or possibly tied to weapon-based powers by saying that they share a power source (the user's suit). Either way, personnel-based powers would cool down wholly separate from them. Another alternative would be a sort of "MP" system, where instead of your omni-tool working on a cooldown it could be used as frequently as you want as long as you have enough energy/MP/etc.. Instead of providing tech power cooldown bonuses, gear and other upgrades could provide bonuses to max MP or regeneration rate.

 

The fact that they turned Singularity back into a super power with the patch also didn't help the comparison with Pull.

I just started a new trilogy campaign with my level 60 Vanguard with Singularity as my BP. At least they were consistent in ME1 and made biotics completely overpowered across the board! I can spawn a singularity and send every enemy on the field floating helplessly in the air and I can also Lift (Pull's precursor) a small group of enemies and watch as they just keep floating up, up, up - way higher than in ME2 or ME3 - then drop to their doom.

[capn233]

The basic idea of encumbrance creating a Power Recharge Speed bonus is not entirely terrible.  On the basic level you can understand what they were trying to accomplish, namely some balance between power utility and weapon utility on the characters.  I am not using "damage" here because some powers and weapons aren't about damage, they are about CC.

 

The system broke down for many reasons but chief among them was that they did not follow the basic premise required to make it work, namely that weapon weight should scale directly with its usefulness.  It is unclear if why they did not follow this tenet, perhaps they listened too much to cry baby adepts who wanted top shelf weapon damage and power spam simultaneously.  Maybe they just wanted to sell packs for cash in the MP store.  It doesn't matter why, if you don't scale encumbrance with utility the system is already doomed.

 

Similarly, but to a slightly lesser extent, they did the same thing with powers.  Cooldowns for powers are all over the place.  Some mediocre powers have relatively long cooldowns.  Some great powers either have short cooldowns (Singularity), bypass PRS (Cloak), or effectively don't have a cooldown (Annihilation Field).  The latter two offenses are much greater than the first when it comes to destroying the system.

 

Admittedly with the number of powers and weapons it was going to be a challenge to balance them correctly.  But they never seemed interested in sticking with the simple ideas that would have kept the system working.  Many weapons were lightened to absurd levels.  Some light guns were given further damage buffs for no apparent reason.  There wasn't much rhyme or reason except "power creep." It was as if they listened to the fools who though every character needed to run around with PRS of +200.

 

Frankly I did not necessarily agree with the notion that every class should be able to take every weapon.  But assuming that is going to be a goal of the game, you need to implement it differently and punish casters for taking heaviest weapons a bit differently...

 

Curunen outlined an encumbrance system way back in 2011 (post #46 in that thread, it won't link to specific posts in archived threads for some reason).  The gist of it was that you assign a weight to each weapon, and each class also has a weight capacity.  You simply can carry whatever weapons as long as you don't go over the weight capacity.

This simplifies things somewhat as you don't have to worry quite as much about the interaction between weapons and powers since there is no PRS.  Instead, this is taken care of indirectly in that casters start with less weight capacity than combat classes, and have less ability to upgrade the capacity.  Also, it takes talent points to unlock more capacity which means those points are not available to be spent in other powers.

 

The original idea was based around ME2 (since ME3 was in development...) and could be updated a bit.

For the sake of simplicity, I will just address a similar number of weapons.  Weights might be something like this:

 

Predator 0

Carnifex 1

Shuriken 1

Tempest 2

Locust 2

Avenger 2

Vindicator 3

Katana 3

Scimitar 3

Mantis 3

Viper 3

Revenant 4

Claymore 4

Widow 4

 

Base encumbrance for the classes would have been something like this:

 

Adept 2

Engineer 2

Sentinel 2

Vanguard 4

Infiltrator 4

Soldier 6

 

You then pull weight capacity out of the class passive and oppose it to shield upgrades in Fitness.  Melee can then be swapped into the class passive to oppose power damage / cooldown evolutions.  You can gain up to 3 total weight capacity points fully investing in Fitness.

 

This accomplishes several things.  First it means that if you want to take better weapons, you need to invest skill points in Fitness.  If you simultaneously want better power recharge you have to also invest in class passive.  This means you can't fully level all three powers while having good weight capacity, and you can't have weight capacity bonuses if you want max shields.  It also can be used to limit the total number of weapons for MP instead of simply demanding 2 slots, and doesn't force you to take more than a single weapon.

[Danimals847]

Stuff...

 

I agree with you for the most part - the game mechanics certainly favor certain powers, builds and playstyles over others that should be more equivalent in theory. I see what you mean about Annihilation Field; it's a duration-based power with a cooldown that is significantly shorter than its duration. Granted, it would be pretty useless if it was the other way around, as it would mean you couldn't use it to create BEs. Cloak and Flamer bypassing the cooldown was really just a terrible decision all-around. This Curunen guy's idea for an encumbrance system would probably come with its own drawbacks or problems, but it does seem pretty sound on paper. Really though, just doing what you said first and maintaining consistency and discipline with scaling utility against encumbrance would probably "fix" the system.

[Vazgen]

The weight system works greatly for me (because I'm one of those fools who just needs +200% PRS ) but I can see where are you coming from. I think there should not have been bonuses for low weight weapons. Make it this way, with each weapon you carry your PRS is reduced. Allow to not to carry any weapons and have PRS at default value with such a setup. 

I think weapons are scaled quite well, more damage = more weight with a few exceptions which have other drawbacks (slow reload speed of Mantis, for example). We do use a lot of things not as they were being designed. Quick reload trick, explosive incendiary ammo with rapid fire weapons etc.

If you look at purely weapon stats, each weapon has its advantages and disadvantages (except something like Shuriken which I admit, I never tried to make it work). I'm currently running a build with Predator and Scimitar and it works great on Insanity.

ME3 weapons are a huge upgrade from ME2 (where there were only a few guns to choose from) and ME1 (where you just needed to get a Spectre level weapon to be set for the entire game)

[capn233]

The weapon balance as it ended up was mostly influenced by MP and specifically Gold and somewhat Platinum, which is why the balance changes made it even worse for SP in many cases.  Also in SP it is a little different since normally you are limited to level V weapons for a new character, and it takes a while to get all your mods leveled up.  For shotguns, not getting Smart Choke V until relatively late in the game is pretty important.

 

From my perspective I think mostly what you ended up with is a bunch of top end guns that are absurdly light for the damage they do even despite modest drawbacks in accuracy or recoil.  That group isn't particularly small in my opinion.  Of course there is also a vast see of mediocre guns, some of which started light, and many of which were lightened to somewhat make them more appealing.  A great example of the latter is the Revenant, which still isn't very good, but is at least fairly light.

 

One of the few weapons I would hold up as striking about the right balance in power to weight is the Claymore at 2.0.  It can oneshot a lot of mooks, but it is heavy.  It has good but not game breaking DPS (if reload canceled).  Contrast that with the balance changes to the Wraith where it was buffed damage wise until it does nearly Claymore damage, but it weighs less than half at 0.9.  Or consider the other UR "shotgun" the Talon, which is only 0.6 but can one-shot some mooks at short range with correct mods or builds.

[Vazgen]

The weapon balance as it ended up was mostly influenced by MP and specifically Gold and somewhat Platinum, which is why the balance changes made it even worse for SP in many cases.  Also in SP it is a little different since normally you are limited to level V weapons for a new character, and it takes a while to get all your mods leveled up.  For shotguns, not getting Smart Choke V until relatively late in the game is pretty important.

 

From my perspective I think mostly what you ended up with is a bunch of top end guns that are absurdly light for the damage they do even despite modest drawbacks in accuracy or recoil.  That group isn't particularly small in my opinion.  Of course there is also a vast see of mediocre guns, some of which started light, and many of which were lightened to somewhat make them more appealing.  A great example of the latter is the Revenant, which still isn't very good, but is at least fairly light.

 

One of the few weapons I would hold up as striking about the right balance in power to weight is the Claymore at 2.0.  It can oneshot a lot of mooks, but it is heavy.  It has good but not game breaking DPS (if reload canceled).  Contrast that with the balance changes to the Wraith where it was buffed damage wise until it does nearly Claymore damage, but it weighs less than half at 0.9.  Or consider the other UR "shotgun" the Talon, which is only 0.6 but can one-shot some mooks at short range with correct mods or builds.

That's the thing, you can avoid damage mods on high level weapons like Claymore. Weapons like Talon do need mods and your mod slot is taken. Wraith is a good example, but it's also a Spectre weapon and costs a fortune. That's what balances it. I find it great that with the right build and mods you can make almost any weapon shine (didn't try them all). 

At NG+ the balance is thrown away. Mantis X has Widow damage with faster reload and pistol weight. Then again, NG+ in ME3 is not challenging at all, it's just there for more seamless experience when you can use top-level gear right from the start. 

New DLC mods also shifted the balance (Ultraweight materials) to the worse.

 

I hope for a more refined system in ME:Next, think they are on the right track with the weight system, it just needs to be a little better balanced

[Probe Away]

_{It's already been said, but pull is the obvious one.  One option would be to have a rank 6 upgrade that allows it to affect enemies through shields/barriers (like lash), making it worthwhile investing 6 ranks in.  Alternatively, just make it less effective against shields/barriers and armour.  Probably my favourite idea tho would be to make pull's effectiveness dependent on both its level and the weight of the enemy.  E.g. at level 1 you would be able to pull only the basic trooper-level enemies, while at rank 6 you would be able to pull everything except atlases, banshees, brutes, primes, etc.  That way an enemy's protection is pretty much irrelevant, which is how it should be IMO.  Singularity could be similar.}

 

_{As far as weapon weight vs cooldowns goes, I'd get rid of it and go back to a system where engineers, sentinels and adepts simply can't use certain heavier weapons.  They would be able to equip a light sniper, assault rifle or shotgun (e.g. raptor, vindicator, eviscerator) OR both a pistol and a SMG.  An engi with a claymore, saber or widow makes no sense.  The soldier would be able to carry 3 weapons at a time (2 heavy, 1 light), while a vanguard and an infiltrator would be limited to 2 (1 heavy, 1 light).  BTW, when I say 'heavy' I don't mean rocket launchers or arc projectors.}

 

_{Finally, slow arcing powers like incinerate and carnage should have evolutions that speed up their flight, making them harder to dodge.}