Forum-Appropriate Ramblings By Me

[XCodes]

I just feel like making this post, and there's not a whole lot tying together the ideas in this thread other than I thought about them.

This is just something I feel like doing. Comment, give feedback, share it with DC, whatever, I won't say I don't care but I don't exactly have expectations. This is just something I like to do from time to time in various games.  Also, I have heard someone say "Pressure Point changes in update 9," but I'm not aware of the specifics of that.  If they're doing something else with it then... ok.  Like I said, not a lot of expectations, here.

 

Akimbo Pistols -

 

Make them better and primary.  You nerfed the attack speed on some of them; revert those nerfs, also make their reload 1.2x instead of 2x the reload of a single pistol (your animation is using some kind of quick-loader, anyway), and make them primary weapons.  IMO secondary weapons should be, as they are called, secondary, but weapons like the Akbolto, Dual Broncos, and Twin Vipers with their crazy damage potential and requirement of two hands should promote them, IMO, to primary status.

Ammo -

 

I think every ammo type should have a separate roll to see if it generates out of a locker or container.  This is important because I think we need more ammo types for some of these new weapons, but as more ammo types come into play there should be some care given that existing ammo types don't become so rare that a certain class of weapons becomes less viable, and we should tinker with the ammo types of some older ones.  I also think Scavenger artifacts should, instead of changing the existing generation rules, simply give a ~8% chance that a locker or enemy drops an ammo pack of a given type (or a 32% chance for generation if everyone picked the same Scavenger), separate from normal generation.  So, potentially, you could have 2 rifle ammo packs drop from a single charger, for example (or maybe even 1 rifle ammo, 1 pistol ammo, 1 shotgun ammo, and 1 sniper ammo if everyone picks a different scavenger, although that'd be a really rare event).

Flux Rifle and Ignis should have some kind of "energy pack" ammo.  I can't think of a name better than "energy pack" right now, but it should be done.  It would be as common as Shotgun ammo, drop in packs of 10, have a maximum capacity of 150ish, and have a consumption rate of 2-4 ammo per second (perhaps variable by weapon?).

 

Torid and Ogris should have "Explosives."  It would be about as rare as Sniper Ammo, drop in packs of 5, and have a maximum capacity of 40.

Pistol Ammo capacity should be increased to 240 or so.

 

The Bronco and Dual Broncos should use Shotgun Ammo, and the Lex should use Sniper Ammo.  Acrid should be changed so that it's ammo economy is more in-line with other pistols as opposed to it's current ridiculousness.

 

Melee Weapons and Armor -

 

If you use a melee weapon at a very high level, it's probably one that ignores armor or has neat utility.  That's really not very good for weapon diversity; even though we've got more melee weapons than anything else we've only got about a half-dozen that people settle on as a favorite for anything other than style reasons.  As such, I would recommend an Armor Penetrating stat as a replacement for the current Armor Ignore setup.  Whereby a certain percentage of the target's armor is ignored for melee attacks with the weapon.  Most weapons would probably fall within the range of 20%-40% base, with there being a couple of exceptional weapons that have 50% or 60% base ignore (an ideal stat for single or dual dagger to shine in).  There would also be a mod that increases this multiplicatively, probably with base 6 cost, V polarity, and 15% per rank increased penetration.

Current weapon mods -

Ammo Drum, Shell Compression, Trick Mag - Remove them all.  Between the Scavenger artifacts and Ammo Crates, these mods are pretty pointless.  You could argue that new players with not much money might want to use them, but Tier 1 Void missions are fairly common, really easy, and give more than enough credits to fund the occasional crate.  Also, they might allow new players to instead find a mod that's actually useful (or at least a Fusion Core).

 

Serration, Hornet Strike, Point Blank, Pressure Point - Uniformity. I know that different per-level values are balanced on different mods, but can we at least get these to all go to the same rank?  5, 8, 10, whatever. The fact that Point Blank goes to rank 5 and Serration goes to rank 10 makes a maxed out Hek both a LOT easier to come by and, possibly, not quite as amazing as some other Rifle down the road.  I suppose things kinda work the way they are, but I'm not sure that it's a good thing that they work because of this kind of weirdness.  Maybe I'm just OCD.

 

Fury/Reflex Coil - Combine these two mod effects into Reflex Coil, but create a NEW Fury:
2 cost, - polarity, Increases the speed of stealth attacks (not just attacks while invisible) and ground executes by 25%/50%/75%/100% (additive stacking with Reflex Coil).  - polarity is justified by you not being able to stealth attack or ground execute a single target in rapid succession, this just lets you do it faster and get back to doing something else.

Pressure Point/Killing Blow - Combine these two mod effects into Pressure Point (also, bump Pressure Point's damage scaling), but create a NEW Killing Blow:

4 cost, V polarity, Increases the damage of stealth attacks (not just attacks while invisible) and ground executes by 25%/50%/75%/100%/125%/150% (additive stacking with Pressure Point).

Metal Auger, Seeking Force, Seeker - Change them all to 2 base cost, scaling at 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5/0.6 penetrate, and it never penetrates enemies, just objects.  Not sure it even penetrates enemies now, and with a base mod cost of 10 I don't even care -- too expensive.

No Return and Shocking Touch - For their current costs, No Return should scale at 10% per rank, and Shocking Touch should scale at 15% per rank.  Sundering Strike may be a very cost-effective option for melee weapons, but that really doesn't even make up for the fact that Melee weapons can't really hit weak points.

Melee Channel - It's broke, and I don't really know how to fix it.  Having it scale with base weapon damage is a minimal first step.  There's an entire thread with suggestions about this, so look at that if you're interested.

 

New Mods -

 

Energy Synthesis (Rifle)/Energy Conversion (Shotgun)/Magazine Charge (Pistol) - 2 base cost, - polarity, Weapon doesn't use ammo, just it's magazine size.  Instead, reloading your weapon costs 1 energy per rifle or pistol round, 2 energy per shotgun, sniper, or "energy pack" round, or 4 energy per explosives round, reduced by 10%/20%/30%/40%/50%/60% (linear reduction, does not stack with Streamline or similar effects).  A utility mod for utility gunplay and reducing the number of resources certain players have to care about.  I wouldn't call it good, but I'd use it on occasion and I think it has a place in the game.

Shield Disruption (Rifle)/Shield Smashing (Shotgun) - 4 base cost, V polarity, Weapon deals +15%/+30%/+45%/+60%/+75%/+90% damage to shields (stacks like elemental damage, has no effect vs. health) and prevents the shield from recovering for an additional 0.25/0.5/0.75/1.0/1.25/1.5 seconds after inflicting damage.

 

Shockwave (Melee) - 2 base cost, D polarity, Slam attacks have +10% per rank increased radius and +15% per rank increased damage (max rank 5, stacks additively with Pressure Point).  From what I can tell, the Jump Attack itself and the Slam AoE are dealt with separately, and the Slam AoE damage is almost always quite low, so a dramatic +% damage number isn't a huge deal.  I feel the D polarity is justified by the most common Slam effects being either knockdown or stun, and Frost mods do damage, too.

 

Kinetic Force (Melee) - 6 base cost, D polarity, Weapon attacks push enemies back based on weapon/charge speed (slower weapons push back more), increased by 10% per rank (max rank 3).  Intentionally weaker with Fury.  I don't mean for this to allow any weapon to ragdoll or stun enemies, just for them to maybe flinch and slide backwards the appropriate distance.

 

Assuming the maximum targets number I saw in that google docs spreadsheet is correct, there's one more melee mod I want to suggest:

 

Cleave (Melee) - 10 base cost, V polarity, Weapon attacks strike 25% more targets per rank (max rank 3). For single target weapons, a Rank 1 Cleave allows it to hit 2 targets.  Most multi-target weapons hit a max 3 targets, base, and a rank 3 Cleave will let them hit 6.  An Orthos hits 5 targets, and that goes up to 10 with this mod.

So... that's it.  I think I'm satisfied with this for now.

[Destro6677]

Agreed except for taking out the max ammo mods. I love my max ammo mods.

 

Also, with energy synth, the cost of 1 energy to 1 round is far too high. At least 10 rounds per point of energy for rifles would be necessary to keep low max energy frames in play. Also, energy globes would have to drop far more often than now.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Destro6677

[XCodes]

Agreed except for taking out the max ammo mods. I love my max ammo mods.

 

Also, with energy synth, the cost of 1 energy to 1 round is far too high. At least 10 rounds per point of energy for rifles would be necessary to keep low max energy frames in play. Also, energy globes would have to drop far more often than now.

I don't agree.  It's not supposed to be a mod that's good on anything in all situations, just for small things like using a Bronco lay down a quick burst of damage, to make two weapons that use the same type of ammo (as in another suggestion) a bit more viable, or for someone who wants to play a Sniper in an endless defense.