Event characters need a change

[larrythecrab]

Currently the way event characters are setup at the moment feel like they are nothing more than walking wooden targets as opposed to being actual threats and people have been saying being an event character now is just not fun at all. I know being an event character is not exactly meant to be fun but they should be a challenge as well and right now event characters just get absolutely slaughtered.

 

There are a few reasons as to why I think this is happening.

More veterans having powerful weapons and easier access to them to.

This is probably the biggest factor that is leading to the balance of event characters going down. More and more veteran players are getting access to powerful equipment that can just stomp event characters and it is now a lot more easier for people to get access to higher damage weaponry such as cyclers and rocket launchers via the more easy quest system. 

Weapon restrictions for event characters.

In the past I would have agreed that this needed to happen but now I feel it is a hindrance . While I can understand that you do not want to be giving EC's the most powerful equipment possible most of the time the weapons that are given barely dent anyone either having terrible stats such as spread, range etc or hit so bad that they may was well be BB guns. Event characters in my opinion should be a challenge not something you can rush at and expect to come out alive.

 

I have thought of a couple of ways that this can be improved to help out and potentially make event characters be able to put up more of a fight.

Ease up or remove weapon restrictions for event characters
This one is pretty obvious since it goes back to the issue where everyone has access to high damaging weapons. Easing up on the restrictions would allow Event masters to be able to equip there characters that can properly put up a fight. Restrictions for certain weapons could still be in effect however if event characters are just getting absolutely smashed the restrictions

 

Have minimum default health of your basic combat EC's increased to be 1000 during high population

I feel like the health for your basic aggressive event character just does not seem enough now and more enough they get dropped before they are even able to do anything once spawned in. having a higher health pool would increase survivability a little without them turning into laser sponges.

 

There are a couple more suggestions that I have thought of but these ones would require more attention/produce negativity nevertheless ill add them and see what you lads think
Change scatter, cycler and smart launcher back to the recharge system
Currently as far as I know you are able to get additional ammo for these guns making them extremely powerful. I think these weapons should go back to the recharge system because it added better balance to these weapons and forcing you to choose when to use them.

 

Reduce scatter magazine size from 6 to 5

There is no doubt the scatter shotgun is currently the god tier weapon to have on the server and that it takes a tremendous amount of time to acquire it meaning any changes such as restricting it during events would be unfair but more and more people have them these days therefore I have been thinking of a way to make it more balanced vs event characters while still maintaining its kill potential and one way I thought of was having so it can be able wipe out one EC in a 1V1 before it recharges essentially changing its magazine size from 6 to 5. The thought behind this was having a powerful weapon to use in a emergency situations such as being in a 1v1 or when your in a sticky situation that requires a target to die quickly in order for you to get out.

 

All in all I would like event characters to be a lot more challenging than they are now. If anyone else have any suggestions feel free to add them here.
cheers

 

 

 

[YaBoiSwift]

I agree with most of what you have to say however the way things were in the past wasn’t fun either. ECs once could have over 1500 hp meaning it would take an entire squad of troopers to kill a single rebel. which makes no sense in rp. further more I think mainly the balance right now is fine 1 trooper or 2 should take one average ec, cis droids and rebels aren’t that strong 

Edited June 17, 2020 by YaBoiSwift

[Verstappen]

I also agree and think the whole system needs change but as swift mentioned it's tricky to do. I'm sure the event team can discuss this as a whole and find some resolutions as its definitely a problem for us to get ec's when it's not fun 

[Jeria]

23 minutes ago, larrythecrab said:

Have minimum default health of your basic combat EC's increased to be 1000 during high population

I feel like the health for your basic aggressive event character just does not seem enough now and more enough they get dropped before they are even able to do anything once spawned in. having a higher health pool would increase survivability a little without them turning into laser sponges.

So the main reason  its not around a thousand in my events is because i feel like a group of ragtag enemies wouldnt have as effective armour as a imperial so shooting them should basically be an insta down, but then again changing it to more higher health would be decent for higher pop

 

 

26 minutes ago, larrythecrab said:

More veterans having powerful weapons and easier access to them to.

This is probably the biggest factor that is leading to the balance of event characters going down. More and more veteran players are getting access to powerful equipment that can just stomp event characters and it is now a lot more easier for people to get access to higher damage weaponry such as cyclers and rocket launchers via the more easy quest system. 

Veterans getting more powerful weapons kind of is a reward thing showing like if you put the dedication to the server you get rewarded although if there were less options for high damaging weapons could be a lil bit easier for EC to cope

 

 

28 minutes ago, larrythecrab said:

Weapon restrictions for event characters.

In the past I would have agreed that this needed to happen but now I feel it is a hindrance . While I can understand that you do not want to be giving EC's the most powerful equipment possible most of the time the weapons that are given barely dent anyone either having terrible stats such as spread, range etc or hit so bad that they may was well be BB guns. Event characters in my opinion should be a challenge not something you can rush at and expect to come out alive.

 

this one is usually based on the theme of events like if there junkers you would give them something from the galaxy scum pack and those are less powerful than something from one of the militarised packs, its more an EM's observation that the EC are having a hard time and getting frusturated and decide whether to change to suit the event or not in some cases a change wont help


An EC should be challenging but cant be way to overpowered without a RP reason such as raiding an armoury but i see where you are coming from and alot of EC do complain about certain regiments because they get destroyed but sometimes no mattter what we cant really counter some people but these suggestions are good and i might take the health and weapon  randomness to mind for my next event

 

[Jeria]

2 minutes ago, Verstappen said:

I also agree and think the whole system needs change but as swift mentioned it's tricky to do. I'm sure the event team can discuss this as a whole and find some resolutions as its definitely a problem for us to get ec's when it's not fun 

We could always just strap a underbarrel to everyones gun and bam

 

[Miracle]

I would love for restrictions to be lifted on weapons, and having health be increased as a whole would also be good. The reason I believe this as right now I feel I enter a battle as an EC and get killed almost instantly especially on ISD third floor as it's the most protected it kinda gets boring spawned in 500 health when they're enemies (imperials) have 500+ with scatter or Z2's.

[Kristofer]

The EM life is difficult.

There is very rarely a good best of both worlds for ECs and players, and I'm saying this through a year and a half of EM experience. 
If the EC's health are too low, the ECs will complain.
If the EC's health are just right at around 1000, players will complain.

This applies to weapons as well.
Players tend to be annoyed if ECs are given powerful weapons, completely ignoring the fact that they themselves have access to powerful weapons such as the scatter shotty and cycler rifle. 

Every EM has their way of running events.
I personally like to give players a challenge and give the ECs weapons that do damage enough for it to actually matter. 

I'll say this once, I'll say it again.
The dislike of high health ECs/ECs with powerful weapons stem from the EC kill quest-line. Players can't kill them easily, ergo not receiving an EC kill for their quest-line.
I've seen players try to cycler rifle a saber-wielder EC mid-way through a duel with an Inquisitor which further lays bare evidence that the EC kill quest-line ruins the RP within events.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Kristofer

[yeff]

37 minutes ago, Kristofer said:

The EM life is difficult.

There is very rarely a good best of both worlds for ECs and players, and I'm saying this through a year and a half of EM experience. 
If the EC's health are too low, the ECs will complain.
If the EC's health are just right at around 1000, players will complain.

This applies to weapons as well.
Players tend to be annoyed if ECs are given powerful weapons, completely ignoring the fact that they themselves have access to powerful weapons such as the scatter shotty and cycler rifle. 

Every EM has their way of running events.
I personally like to give players a challenge and give the ECs weapons that do damage enough for it to actually matter. 

I'll say this once, I'll say it again.
The dislike of high health ECs/ECs with powerful weapons stem from the EC kill quest-line. Players can't kill them easily, ergo not receiving an EC kill for their quest-line.
I've seen players try to cycler rifle a saber-wielder EC mid-way through a duel with an Inquisitor which further lays bare evidence that the EC kill quest-line ruins the RP within events.

This summarises it well. The EC kill questline incentives people to push for kills and disregard teamwork.  I have nothing left to add.

[Dax]

with the op weapons thing I remember the best you could get was a pulse rifle with the 300+ health and only 2 people had a z cannon since there was no lotto and it took yonks to get points. now these day we see people running around with a mini-gun, rocket luncher, op snipers, op shotgun with 300+ hp. ngl it was cancer with having people with hit scan snipers but its not as bad as it is now

[Bailey]

respawn timers everyone gets 100 hp

for legal reasons this is a joke

[Anderson]

As someone who has been an EC a lot I have noticed a decline in quality not due to the EMs but due to the mentality everyone has where you just rush straight towards the enemies trying to get an easy kill (I am guilty of this as well). Probably the most obvious reason for this issue is the EC kills questline, it caused issues when it was added and it still causes issues today, it doesn't just cause issues where people act stupid just to get a kill though, I have also heard and seen numerous troopers not giving a damn during events due to already having their EC kill quest completed and they don't see any point in killing them anymore. The second issue is the high health and op weapons that everyone has, for me personally I have a total of 457 health due to having the booster and other perks from the quest and I also run around with my shock loadout + IQA, Smart Launcher/Cycler and now a Micro GL. I don't feel like I deserve this loadout because of my playtime on the server or for any other reason, I would be more than glad to give up all these things in favour of a more balanced weapons system that could lead to events being more interesting and encouraging more RP instead of just rush shoot die repeat. Now another sidenote I would like to include in here, if we theoretically advanced the timeline past rogue one it could lead to more interesting events as the rebellion would be more powerful and then it would be plausible for them to be a challenge to us and maybe even beat us every now and then, I don't find it particularly enjoyable winning every single event.

[LimeStrider]

Quote

Change scatter, cycler and smart launcher back to the recharge system
Currently as far as I know you are able to get additional ammo for these guns making them extremely powerful. I think these weapons should go back to the recharge system because it added better balance to these weapons and forcing you to choose when to use them.

 

Reduce scatter magazine size from 6 to 5

There is no doubt the scatter shotgun is currently the god tier weapon to have on the server and that it takes a tremendous amount of time to acquire it meaning any changes such as restricting it during events would be unfair but more and more people have them these days therefore I have been thinking of a way to make it more balanced vs event characters while still maintaining its kill potential and one way I thought of was having so it can be able wipe out one EC in a 1V1 before it recharges essentially changing its magazine size from 6 to 5. The thought behind this was having a powerful weapon to use in a emergency situations such as being in a 1v1 or when your in a sticky situation that requires a target to die quickly in order for you to get out.

Ok so this ^ im 70/100. Changing the Cycler back to recharge? And having it set too say? A 1 minutes recharge? Good! Limits it, stops spam fire, stops amo stock up. It should also either be placed further down the quest line or removed.  Smart Launcher? I mean it was never on recharge to begin with. I think it's reload is already terrible... but i also think we should change it for say the RPS-6 then we make that have a 20s reload. This way it doesn't kill regiments that have the lanceher (JT), still provides basic troopers a strong combat weapon, But limits the living hell out of them. 20s in a tight corridor reloading for a single shot when you could shoot your rifle and deal 3k dmg already? Allowing ECs to punish dumb troopers for reloading in combat? Good. But also providing them a safety line. What's this? Rushed by 4 ECs and scarred? 500 dmg rocket to scare the away and pray it hits one. Scatter... scatter.... scatter as a proud owner of one. It is disgustingly effective. The thing hits like a truck, is as tight as a duck and feels great. However. The only people who have these? Long time Vets. I do agree the Scatter is 40/10 op. But it says that Hey! i worked for this shit. Im using it! Get out me way. I would say that the fact it has a endless supply is a bad. Having the 6 shots with the FAT 240 dmg. Feels nice. Having the power to have 600+ of shots... thats gross. Keep the scatter the same however if we could make it own amo type. With only 12 extra shots. That be fine.

 

Respawn timer? Hell no. If it's anything more than 3s.         That will be terrible.

We are talking about combat. Any combat game that's good and uses a gun is fast paced, high damage.

I would say copy BF2 stats only. But that would lead to huge power gaps. And although I agree that YES. Some regiments should be stronger then another. It should be done in a smart fashion.

Ill use a INF. HP? Should be the same as a ST but weapon wise a INF trooper would have equipment thats 5x better. 

Look at a clone trooper with his 1 shot death or 2 shot death in the republic BF2 then look at a Clone Commando.

Look at DT in Bf2 and compare them to STs

If a regiment's gear is to be balanced so it is fair for ECs then it should be based on Quantity. Your not going to give all 20+ people of the same Reg a overpowered GUN.

 

The Servers combat ATM is stuffed. And needs a revise yes. But the topics brought in this post about weapons are not the correct approach. EC limitations? Those should be removed.

[Kamelieon]

Just remove aggressive role play :thumbs up: there is really no pvp strat in this game so all goods

 

dude so many people in this community complain about pvp + weapons and shit, like bruv it’s a role play game go play a game made for/to FPS

Edited June 18, 2020 by Kamelieon

[Theta]

I believe that the current OOC Progression System (Quests, Armory and Point shop) doesn't reward players for dedication to the server, but makes in character progression and achievements nearly meaningless. Like why bother to join Scout Troopers and work your way up to Officer Cadet to get the 200 DMG Sniper, or why bother face the long wait to join the Imperial Commandos Squad to get the Grenade Launcher and Shotgun, or Join Sky Troopers, achieve the rank of SGT and join their limited heavy slots to get the Smart Launcher when all of these weapons can just be acquired through OOC means. There's so many examples that i could list, its clear that having both In Character and Out Of Character progression systems don't work and i think either the Armory or Bonus Gun Perk should be removed.

[Bailey]

2 minutes ago, Theta said:

Sky Troopers, achieve the rank of SGT and join their limited heavy slots to get the Smart Launcher when all of these weapons can just be acquired through OOC means.

I've got two heavy slots open right now and no one wants them because they can just get the Smart Launcher another way.

[LimeStrider]

3 minutes ago, Theta said:

Like why bother to join Scout Troopers and work your way up to Officer Cadet to get the 200 DMG Sniper, or why bother face the long wait to join the Imperial Commandos Squad to get the Grenade Launcher and Shotgun, or Join Sky Troopers, achieve the rank of SGT and join their limited heavy slots to get the Smart Launcher when all of these weapons can just be acquired through OOC means. 

The IC has all special nade launcher which u can only get there  :0  (and its stronger then the armoury 1)

No but straight up remove the bonus weapon perk. Armoury is fine. Bonus weapons need a change or a removal.

 

Join IC

[Storm]

11 minutes ago, LimeStrider said:

No but straight up remove the bonus weapon perk. Armoury is fine. Bonus weapons need a change or a removal.

agreed, honestly to many people can get easy access to the bonus weapon perk if they are just farming for that one skill line. (Do be wishing that the ammo crates didn't give ammo to the rocket launchers and cycle rifles tho and other op weapons.)

Edited June 18, 2020 by Echo

[yeff]

19 minutes ago, Theta said:

I believe that the current OOC Progression System (Quests, Armory and Point shop) doesn't reward players for dedication to the server, but makes in character progression and achievements nearly meaningless. Like why bother to join Scout Troopers and work your way up to Officer Cadet to get the 200 DMG Sniper, or why bother face the long wait to join the Imperial Commandos Squad to get the Grenade Launcher and Shotgun, or Join Sky Troopers, achieve the rank of SGT and join their limited heavy slots to get the Smart Launcher when all of these weapons can just be acquired through OOC means. There's so many examples that i could list, its clear that having both In Character and Out Of Character progression systems don't work and i think either the Armory or Bonus Gun Perk should be removed.

While I agree with Theta to a degree, I would still rather like OOC progression to be kept. That said, the Bonus Gun Perk makes things way too accessible. I'm not even in a combat reg, but after getting the Weapons perk I was able to complete my EC kill quest within two events after hitting level one of the quest. 

I think it is clear that something needs to change. As IHC Theta is able to see how these weapons effect the army and their recruitment. I'm sure some people will complain if something like this happens but I think the best way to solve this is clear, at least from my perspective.

1. Remove the EC Kill questline. Replace it with something else that's difficult, but doesn't push people to rush EC's and disregard teamwork like the current quest does.
2. Remove the random weapons perk or nerf the weapon selection into the ground. Sure, some people will be annoyed but it's legitimately becoming an issue. Personally I have started avoiding events where I know it will be aggressive, as its genuinely frustrating to be popped by a random weapon spawn constantly.

 

[LimeStrider]

1 minute ago, yeff said:

 

1. Remove the EC Kill questline. Replace it with something else that's difficult, but doesn't push people to rush EC's and disregard teamwork like the current quest does.
2. Remove the random weapons perk or nerf the weapon selection into the ground. Sure, some people will be annoyed but it's legitimately becoming an issue. Personally I have started avoiding events where I know it will be aggressive, as its genuinely frustrating to be popped by a random weapon spawn constantly.

 

 

Yo if we remove EC kills. FOR THE LOVE GOD. REMOVE NPC. EC kills are easy to get cause they get nocked down to a 100 hp in 2s. BUT NPC. Never happen and it becomes a race.

 

[pinejack]

Just so you know, if they were to edit any of the quests, I believe it would result in another questline reset. 

I think changing the EC Kills to EC Damage would be better since you can't always get the final killed shot off on them.

Edited June 18, 2020 by pinejack

[larrythecrab]

50 minutes ago, LimeStrider said:

The IC has all special nade launcher which u can only get there  :0  (and its stronger then the armoury 1)

No but straight up remove the bonus weapon perk. Armoury is fine. Bonus weapons need a change or a removal.

 

Join IC

The only thing I would like to see if this did happen is prior warning/refund since prestiging multiple times only to have it removed can be annoying.

[Rook]

Hey @larrythecrab!

Firstly, I really appreciate the effort you've put into this, and I appreciate even more that it's a respectful post. It's difficult to discuss when these posts are just rants.

You've made some really solid points here, and provided some really good arguments. My first promise is that I'll be bringing all of these up with my EMs in a meeting to discuss pros and cons, as well as receiving insight from other management members.

My Initial Response:

As Kris has mentioned earlier in this thread, pleasing the majority of players is a really fine line to tread. We don't aim to please everyone, but my main goal as of recently is to try and be as open and as transparent as is feasible with event changes, so that players know that we are listening. For example, we made a bunch of changes to offships and EC calls in response to community feedback, but the people who are against these changes seem to think I'm doing it "just cause", when in reality it was via votes on my event feedback forms.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the general stance of your post seems to be that ECs are in general too weak, and do not provide enough of a challenge for the player base. Unfortunately, we also receive complaints about ECs being too strong. 

The difficulty is trying to balance having a small number of ECs against a large number of players feel like a fair fight on a macro scale, whilst also having one EC vs one player feel like a difficult, yet winnable fight for said player on a micro scale.

That's the main reason why upping EC health doesn't solve the problem. A 200hp pilot shooting a 1200hp rebel is completely unwinnable, especially if we buff EC guns. While you may think that's a good thing, it's very frustrating for a lot of players. 

My brainstormed solution:

Of course, this has not been discussed nor tested, but my initial idea to do this is to increase EC weapon damage (by perhaps having a buffed weapons pack just for ECs), whilst keeping EC health low. This allows a small group of ECs and a large group of players to be somewhat of a fair fight, but ALSO allows for individual players to win difficult fights vs ECs if they use cover correctly, aim true and avoid damage, as the ECs won't just be unkillable gods.

 

Regardless of what we come to decide, I agree that a change needs to be made! Watch this space :).

[Greyback]

The current issue, as it stands, is that anyone can currently get extremely easy access to high-tier weapons like the Cycler Rifle and the Smart Launcher, which gives the illusion that Event Characters are easily killable and are, as you say, 'laser sponges' when in reality they are, more often than not, actually set up properly to combat the Imperials.

In my opinion, the first thing that needs to be looked at is weapon balancing, as @Rook suggested. There is an exceptionally large arsenal on the server as it is; a few of which are literal pea shooters whilst others can be cannon balls that kill in one to two hits. I would recommend they all be looked at to determine what is actually needed for each regiment, and what Event Masters are actually able to work with from an efficiency standpoint. From there you can begin to determine the base health needed for an EC to be challenging, but not hard enough to kill so as to break immersion.

When it comes to events, Roleplay / Immersion should be the utmost priority. You have to remember that this is a roleplay server, not a Call of Duty style arcade shooter.

Like others have stated, this issue is a very fine line between most players. Make an EC too tanky and people will complain; make them too easy to kill and the EC's will complain. It's also the matter of the fact that some players have access to high-tier weaponry that, I believe, makes most EMs feel they have to compensate for, resulting in high-health ECs, and-or ECs with high-tier weapons but low health. Again, it's a very fine line to find a good balance, but at the same time we need to keep things different so that a standad A280c loadout won't get boring.

I've barely been an EM for one week but I already know the reality of the fact that Events need to cater for both sides. It's easy to up and demand something (not saying you are) without taking into consideration what impact it might have for anyone else playing ; particularly newer players.

One thing, for example, that I aim to be doing is giving my ECs more 'strategic' loadouts, that force them to RP a little more in an aggressive-situation without just running down the hallways. Mostly this results in them having low-health for the RP side of things, but I usually give them more spawns to compensate. If little changes like that can be made a regular thing, it might just change the style of gameplay somewhat.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Greyback

[Verstappen]

In a perfect world i would have every player at 100 hp and ec's at 200. Everyone gets E11's or some special weapons for special regiments like DT. this would make combat better and potentially having a respawn timer similar to the one in Santos. This would be fun but wouldn't happen

[Ramirez]

Someone should create a simple feature in your google sheet (if this is still used). Where you can input the server pop, amount of ECs, maybe EC dps. With a formula create a suitable HP for your event characters, that will be consistent and fair amongst all Events.