Actually, I've seen games where the slow/defense character pretty much forces the faster/aggressive player to take risks in order to surpass that defense. In Starbound, it may be possible that the only practical ways to get past an enemy shield are to jump around and behind the enemy at close range, or to completely deplete the energy (in which case you might not have enough left to attack much, yourself). We'll have to wait and see just how powerful and robust shields are. I think the real downside is the lack of an active defense option, but you make a good point. I doubt that projectile speed will be a big issue though, except for the very slowest of projectiles. I wouldn't mind seeing that change, and it would help melee quite a bit. I think the only way to go backwards is while attacking in the opposite direction, which is the very definition of kiting. If shield users are slowed down while holding it up, then it seems fair for the ranged users to be slowed down while attacking, too. The softer the better. Soft counters make the PvP world go 'round. Without them, it doesn't feel like your choice of strategy really matters, but if the counters are hard then it doesn't feel very fair. Found it: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/melee-tech-gear.11076/#post-347904 I mentioned that buckler idea before, right? In my thread you activate it by pressing down, but why not just wear special shields on your back? Like, you always have a shield up but it is worn on your back, so you have to face away to block anything. You'd be like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. It would have to be a bit less effective than a regular shield to offset your added strength though, like maybe you lose more energy per block or something. By the way, I just realized that for every sniper who switches to a shotgun at close range, there will be shield users who switch to dual wielding at close range. I still really like the idea of being able to switch weapons during battle, though, and if everyone benefits from it then it is technically balanced, right?
Holding down block can delay energy regeneration, making it easier to chip away at turtling players if it's that powerful. Slow projectiles enforces range limits and grants a little extra reaction time. Or because of its size, it just can't block as effectively, leaking damage and status effects through. Switching benefits gunners more. It's not going to completely change active approach options for a melee user. They're still going to dash in and get the damage they need regardless of style choice. Changing guns completely changes weapon behavior, which just makes them more versatile. Any major gun switching done can't be free if it's even allowed at all. It's also a path to making handguns more than gimmicky SMGs or handcannons. Giving handguns less penalty when switched to (quicker? less weapon-switching energy drain?) or making them emergency weapons conveniently available via hotkey (in a limited weapon slots scenario) makes them desirable without making them as powerful as full-sized guns. And dual wielding pistols would result in horrible accuracy. Because balance and stuff.
I'm really not sure about that. About any of that, actually. I disagree that switching benefits gunners more, especially if melee weapons are as versatile as I'm expecting (sonic slash waves, shockwaves along the ground, weapons that incorporate movement like gloves that make you uppercut with an added jump, etc...). Also, if there is not an airdash or anything like that, then the shield may be the only way for melee to approach safely. I also disagree with the idea that switching shouldn't be free, or even allowed. If it doesn't cause imbalance between strategies or classes, then really the only people who lose-out are the players who stubbornly refuse to switch weapons just because or something like that. It also raises the technical skill ceiling in PvP, and switching weapons to suit your foe in PvE is a wonderful mechanic. I also don't think players will get much benefit from rapidly swapping weapons; they'll probably only swap once or twice per instance in PvP, just like in the sniper->shotgun example. I also don't think 1h guns are gimmicky at all. They serve the same functions as 1h sword-- higher DPS when dual wielding, more chances to proc status effects, higher degree of customization, availability of using shields, etc... It would only make sense if all buffs and nerfs also applied to either all ranged weapons or all one-handed weapons, depending on the situation. I just don't think swapping weapons is something that would be nearly as broken in practice as some people theorize on paper, but I could also be wrong. In fact, to be very honest, I don't think we can or should really talk about what will be broken until we have the opportunity to see what Chucklefish gives us for the Beta, and I definitely don't want to argue about it much until then. It will be so much more constructive to discuss it when we can actually collect data. I'm also starting to just trust Chucklefish so I can stop worrying about it. They're a great team.
Gah! Where's the fun in not butting heads over things? The fear here is being too versatile. There's switching weapons to be more effective (see: the only reason I play pyro in TF2) and then there's covering too many of your own weaknesses. Having to change between long range and short range weapons hurts much less when you only need one at a time. Dual wielded pistols gets awfully close to an SMG in two parts, barring major variation like super video game revolvers. Light rapid-fire weapon occupying two hands. Unless you mean SMGs are also one-handed.
You only have two hands at a time, so you can't simultaneously cover all your weaknesses. You can also only switch between items in your hotbar, and some of those will be blocks and tools. I figure you'll have three types of blocks (dirt or stone, stairs, maybe spikes or something like that) and three types of tools (axe, pick, hammer, or whatever the high tech versions are). That leaves maybe around four weapons, give or take a couple. With those four weapons you might want to be able to cover multiple elemental weaknesses, as well as have an option to hit targets that are behind cover, something for long range, something for short range, maybe one or two to inflict status effects, or something to pierce armor. Knowing when to use each one for optimal effectiveness could be very difficult and add a lot of depth and fun to the combat, compared to simply picking just one or two that you like best. You still have to make choices; it's not like you can take a hundred weapons and always have the perfect one pulled out at the right moment. And while SMGs are made to be used two-handed, I actually was thinking you could take two machine pistols and achieve far more ridiculous firing rates (and that is a little gimmicky, but so is dual wielding swords, tbh). Really though, the fact that dual wielding allows you to mix and match the effects of multiple weapons could be really nifty. For example, if you have a very rapid weapon that has trouble with high defense foes, you could use a weapon in the other hand that inflicts an armor-breaking status effect (maybe acid or something). You could use a 1h shotgun and put something more accurate in the other hand for long distances, or mix-and-match fast and slow projectiles to make it harder to dodge your attacks. Of course, 1h guns also allow a shield. These features don't seem gimmicky to me. ... I think the most broken application of weapon switching that I can possibly imagine would be using multiple weapons to layer up many different status effects (bleed, poison, burning, slow, blind, EMP, armor-break). There are other ways to stop this kind of abuse, though. Maybe weapons only proc status effects every once in a while, and the effect doesn't last for very long.
Unless you have to fight two completely different things effectively at the same time with the same weapon, having to swap isn't that big of a deal. You're not saturated by enemies of varying types constantly like it's Serious Sam. I figure with two mouse buttons available, a single hotbar slot could switch in two separate items into the two mouse buttons. Haven't spotted any evidence of that in screenshots, which makes my RMB sad. Four weapons is enough to cover short, medium, long, and eccentric, which is exactly what I don't like about it. Anyone with a smidgen of tactical sense won't leave exploitable gaps in their capabilities if they can possibly help it. Besides, it powers what I'm about to open a fresh cup of late-night internet rage on. I'm not fond of elemental weaknesses because it just makes a mess of the issue. No problems in PVE because the monsters don't change their own elemental affinities and can be predictably prepared for, but in PVP it's a game of rock paper scissors you have to play on top of the weapon strategy that's already there. Going down to an ice planet without gearing for its ice-element inhabitants is your own fault but running into someone somewhere and having one of your weapons rendered useless because you felt like using a fire shotgun and he felt like wearing fire-resistant armor is neither skillful nor interesting. Frantic improvisation is a great thing in emergent gameplay but frantic improvisation because one of your weapons is arbitrarily weaker or because his mid-range gun can compete with any weapon you have at any range because of a choice you made a long time beforehand is uncontrollable misfortune. And on the inverse situation, there's nothing interesting in dominating because you just happened to have the right element on the right weapon for the guy you just encountered. That was all decided before anyone saw each other. None of this is because anyone chose the wrong tool to use on a screw. It's because they just happened to bring a + screwdriver for a - screw and had to use a chisel instead. Choosing a primary gun and a smaller secondary gun is a deliberate choice of tactical niche. If you take a sniper rifle and someone gets close to you with a shotgun, you died because he's where he needed to be to wreck you. You didn't die just because Lady Luck hates your scoped icicle cannon and sent an ice-resistant berserker your way. Choosing elements is tantamount to a guessing game and being forced to change weapons to bring another element into play just means two players are controlling each others' optimal weapons based on their armor and weapon element choices made long before anyone could even see each other. Might as well just pick four different elements on four generic assault rifles and wear non-elemental armor. Instead of modifying damage directly based on the weapon's and target's elements, the elements could just be status effects with strings attached. Much less frustrating to have your armor-penetrating DoT negated than to have your damage reduced to worthlessness through no fault of your own. I suppose that addresses the original point of 'why use SMGs if you can use dual pistols or vice versa'. The real brokenness is letting a character switch specializations on the fly. Combination status effects aren't so bad if categorical weapon weaknesses still apply.
If there are 2-4 types of mobs per layer, then chances are pretty high that at least one of them will be easier to deal with using a different weapon. I'm thinking of like a giant, slow-moving, high-defense turtle mob that has a nasty close-range attack, so you might prefer a long-range weapon that deals heavy damage with each hit. The same layer might spawn annoying bat mobs that flutter around erratically, so a weapon that fires a sonic wave in a wide area would be much easier to use. Another mob on the layer above might be vulnerable to rapid attacks and moves quickly along a predictable path, so a rapid firing weapon that has a chance to inflict a slow-down effect might be worth bringing. You could make conscious decisions on what weapons to bring based on what mobs gave you the most trouble the last time you went down and why. Anyone with a smidgen of tactical sense will acknowledge how impractical it is to devote all four weapons to different ranges in a game where "long range" is maybe one or two full screen-lengths, "short range" is anything within half a screen-length, and some players will be able to teleport or cross a full screen-length within a second or two. Seriously, the only difference between a "long range" gun and a "short range" gun is that the long range one would have some kind of scope so you can actually see further, and a fast enough projectile to exploit that. Also, with everyone moving around so much, players might not stay within the optimum range of each gun long enough for you to fire more than one or two shots, so it makes a much smaller difference than maybe having more eccentric guns. What I think would be most practical would be something that fires with an arc (or some other way to bypass cover), something with a slow projectile that bounces (for inside tight spaces), something with a scope and a fast projectile (for wide open spaces and extra vision), and then something as your primary weapon for straight-up damage or support (anything from missile launchers to shotguns). That way you have several weapons, each one suited for some niche situation. You could also change these up, because I'm sure there are many niches to be filled. Perhaps a cluster-bomb launcher to rain death on enemies in areas above ground. Perhaps a pistol so that you can use a shield in the other hand. Perhaps a submachine gun that can inflict a useful status effect. Having to choose just one of these might force you to pass up a lot of weapons that are only good in a handful of situations. Your whole rant is oversimplifying element systems. Weren't you the one who said that having armor that is biased either towards blocking rapid weapons or powerful weapons was a good thing that added depth? I think elemental systems can be the same; they don't have to be like in RPGs where it is either half damage, no damage, or absorbed damage (which I agree would be terrible for PvP in Starbound; the Pokemon metagame is entirely based on elemental advantages, but it relies heavily on changing both attacks AND resistances when you swap out your active Pokemon). When I talk about elemental resistances, I mean that all armor should have varying degrees of defense against each element. For example, a piece of armor might have a little more defense against ballistics and a little less against lasers, so those weapons would be a little more or less efficient against that armor. It wouldn't nullify it, but it might just barely be enough to change who has the advantage in battle, or force the opponent to adopt an inventive strategy that uses a different weapon. On the other hand, you might notice your weapons is doing a little less damage than you'd like, but still use it because you are confident that you can still win with your current strategy. Skill would still matter more than elemental advantage. I think this is a big part of our disagreement. To me, the player's specialization isn't determined by their weapon, but by their armor and tech items; that is exactly why you can't switch those things on the fly. "Sniper" is not really a class, not even in FPS games (even TF2 is flexible about it). Instead, the real classes in any game are more like Tank, Damage, Healing, and Support. I will use the Druid and Paladin in WoW to elaborate. There are three skill paths you can choose for each of these: One that grants terrific tanking ability, one that allows you to deal major damage, and one that focuses on healing. While you can turn them into hybrids, those aren't very popular in parties and are nearly useless in raids. You are basically forced to choose one "class" to focus in. While there are arguable differences in the overall quality between Paladin and Druid, my point is that when I'm forming a party I don't care if they are a Paladin or a Druid as long as they are filling the same role. Being able to fill multiple roles just as well as other players who specialize in just one of those roles is broken. Being able to switch between weapons suited to particular scenarios is not. Also, I really dislike the idea of classes being tied to your weapon choice, since there will definitely be situations that will make particular weapons nearly useless (sniper rifles are terrible in any situation that doesn't have wide open spaces, for example). ... Btw, what do you think about AoE attacks? In PvE they need to be balanced based on the assumption that they are used to hit multiple targets, but in PvP they will almost never hit more than one player because they'll be more spread out. Do you think AoE attacks should be designed to still be viable in PvP? If so, then how could that be done without breaking the balance in PvE? Also, feel free to choose one sentence from each section instead of quoting each entire paragraph. The important thing is that I can follow what you are replying to, so if I need greater detail on what I already said I can just scroll back up. I find posts easier to read when they don't have huge quote blocks.
THIS Point taken on screen lengths. Leery about letting everyone have the best guns for different ranges at the same time, though. They're both high damage-spike gunners, so how do you (or would you?) separate a shotgunner from a sniper so someone can't maximize damage with both? Mutually exclusive specialism-enhancing tech items to allow use of both weapons but enhances only one or some other drawback? Ideas from that train of thought: -Tech item that increases damage from shots fired from a full energy bar. -Tech item that increases accuracy at the cost of movement speed (and cooldowns on movement items). If you put it that way. NOTHING TO BE ANGRY ABOUT, YOKUU. It can be done with some sort of PVP-relevant effect without significantly upsetting PVE. Minor stun that briefly prevents blocking? Loss of speed from movement-enhancing techs? Godawful obtrusive visual overlay and ear ringing? Double vision? Temporarily increasing spread or forcibly shifting the victim's aim? If you're fighting in foxholes, I guess.
Or caves. Or any tight place, really. When you're hiding in a tight spot, Mr. Grenade is not your friend.
We're in cinema territory. Grenades only hurt people with little fireballs and game spaces tend to be a bit bigger than that.
People don't stick around in tiny dead-end rooms in PVP. The point is to make explosives uniquely useful in direct combat, not just around corners. Of course, if someone does decide to camp in a closet, sucks to be them.
I think grenades with huge explosions can be balanced; maybe use up almost the entire energy bar. Let's think about how snipers will think and select weapons. They'll want something with a scope so they can see further away. They'll want a fast projectile with high accuracy. They'll be hitting first and taking the target by surprise, so they'll want to front-load their damage. They'd want a damage bonus based on distance because they're already getting free damage in by hitting first before the foe can react and defend. They might benefit a lot from percentage boosts (to both base damage and critical hit chance, if critical hits are in the game) and try to deal all of their damage in that one shot before switching weapons or moving positions. This might result in a naturally lower DPS (higher burst damage usually means lower long term damage), but that would be inflated by the free damage in the surprise round, so-to-speak. They also won't care as much about status effects unless they can get a nearly 100% rate of inflicting it, and firing rate won't be very important. Contrast this with shotgun users. They don't care much about distance or accuracy, and don't need a scope. A slow projectile isn't a huge problem at close range, and it might lower the rank of the weapon, allowing for higher base damage or firing rate to raise it back up to the same rank as a weapon with a faster projectile. They also don't need as high of a firing rate, since they try to pack all their damage in at once when they foe's guard is down. The foe will almost definitely see them coming at closer ranges, so they either need better defenses or they will be trying to force the foe behind cover while they approach. They might benefit a lot from tech that encourages counter attacks by boosting damage after each time they get hit, or when their health is low. Since they use multiple hits they have more chances to inflict status ailments, and firing rate would be helpful because they are more likely to miss during the chaos of melee combat. This seems to benefit both, but benefits snipers more. It also doesn't benefit rapid weapons much at all. I really like it though. Imagine stacking this with an item that increases gun damage if you are in an idle pose just prior to shooting. You could call it the Quick Draw, or something. Maybe it's an ace of spades with a bullet hole in the middle. Novakid themed tech? So... The first tech grants a bonus for full energy. The second tech grants a bonus for being idle/not having a weapon out before you shoot. The third tech adds bonus damage based on distance. Maybe the fourth tech item grants increased scope range, straight up damage boosts, or whatever else might specifically help a sniper. That seems pretty specialized to me, considering shotgun users will care more about defense and mobility, and will want a boost after taking damage or for having low health. This seems like the best one you suggested. What about AoE attacks simply ignoring shields, or bypassing some amount of the shield's effectiveness? It's hard to imagine anything short of Captain America's shield being able to block a missile, and it might work better depending on how the game is coded.
It's too fire and forget. Large blast radius makes it easy to throw and run. I can't imagine waiting for the idle animation being very practical outside of high noon, no matter how pants-splittingly awesome. But a bonus for being a true cowboy... It's almost like a reason to use single pistol over dual pistols. A single powered holster worn on the right with the faded image of a playing card, overcharging any pistol placed inside it in preperation for the one shot that matters. Stacking loads of damage techs vs mobility techs. I like it, except it might crowd out non-combat tech items. The latest inventory screenshot isn't exactly encouraging in this respect. That's awfully straightforward. What about explosions depleting more energy per damage blocked?
Sounds like a legitimate strategy, since they will be vulnerable without any energy left over to use jet packs or shields. It also seems balanced, since people will be firing arrows from behind walls and other shenanigans like that. You could also balance the grenades by pairing larger blast zones with static-timed fuzes so that the player has to carefully gauge where they think the enemy with be. That means they have to be very precise or the foe could just run past the grenade and get into close range, or run back and fire guns from further away. There are so many other ways to make it balanced, I don't see the need to say "no way, not ever" to an idea without thinking about it more. It depends on how long you need to wait to reach idle. The item itself could decrease the amount of time before going idle. There could be a melee-combat version of the item that allows you to practice Iaido... Maybe the card is sliced in half? The same thought occurred to me, but then I realized that those four examples would just be someone totally dedicated to only sniping. They could diversify strategies and put on some mobility techs, or possibly mix tech to boost both their sniping and shotgunning abilities, or even try to make a hybrid melee/ranged build work. By diversifying, they'd be less effective at each strategy individually, but have more versatility. Having to choose between versatility and specialization adds depth. Sounds good to me. It's hard to know the best way to balance it without actual testing.
It's a large area burst. You're throwing away your other ranged capability to make poorly-timed approaches riskier by clicking an area in front of you. The safe way to use it is to use it and run. Well, it is good for clearing out rooms. It's hard to camp in a dead end when your organs start getting perforated. You're still waiting for the animation. Tie it to player action, not inaction. Short of outright camping a doorway, it isn't any use against live players with brains. It could be a bonus for the first hit you land on someone in X seconds. I'm liking how this isn't locking players down a single path.
