Gradual Ammo Usage Idea

[WaddletonMcQuack]

Here is a suggestion to buff ammo management for troopers/bounty hunters.

 

Let's use medical probe as an example. Suppose it has a cast time of (for the sake of argument) 3 seconds. In the current system, someone with full ammo using this skill will sit at 12 ammo for 3 seconds, then drop to 9 ammo upon finishing. This makes its effective ammo cost (the cost - the regen during the cast) 3 ammo if you start at full, and less than 3 ammo if you start at less than full. Why? Is this intended?

 

Here is my proposal. Have the ammo be used up during the channeling period. This way regen can begin immediately (assuming fractions of ammo cells can be regen'd). The one issue is that interrupts / pushback could result in ammo being spent with no skill usage. This could be resolved by having the ammo be refunded if interrupted or partially refunded if pushed back past a fraction of the cast time.

 

Examples:

1) At full ammo I cast MP. I cast for 3 seconds, I use 3 ammo, it gets ticked down by 1 once per second. At the end my ammo is 12 - 3 + 3 seconds worth of ammo regen.

2)At full ammo I cast MP. I cast for 2.9 seconds, my ammo has ticked down twice, but at 2.9 seconds I am interrupted by a badman. I now have 12 ammo (the 2 used ammo was refunded, the 3'rd cell was never used).

3)At full ammo I cast MP. I cast for 2.1 seconds and have 2 cells ticked town (one in the first second, and the next in the second second). Then a badman's attack pushes back my cast bar so it's between the first and second breakpoint (say, to where I would have been in a normal cast after 1.5 seconds). I am refunded 1 ammo. Then I proceed to finish my cast and lose 2 more ticks of ammo as I go past 2 seconds and the final 3rd tick at 3 seconds of successful casts.

 

Does this make sense to you? What do you think?

[azhrione]

The problem with this idea is the fact that interrupts exist in the game. Look at Medical Probe, you pay for the ability when it finishes the induction, which means if you get interrupted you just lose your GCD but no Ammo. However if you had to pay for it upfront and were then interrupted you are now short Ammo and have nothing to show for it.

 

I have the feeling that this discussion has happened more than once internally and I think they have come to the best solution. Channeled and instant abilities are for paid up front, inducted abilities are paid for when they finish.

[WaddletonMcQuack]

Simple, just refund the ammo spent.

[azhrione]

Simple, just refund the ammo spent.

 

I do not think it is as simple as that, because it forces server side polling of actual cast time. It would require a fundamental change in how costs and inductions were done for all classes in order to pull this off. One way to think of this is to imagine a card game or a board game, while the actual content of the game may change the underlying rules remain consistent. Triggered effects from inductions or channels needs to be one of those rules, it allows for assumptions in design and balance.

 

Right now the game uses a "completion trigger" for inducted abilities, this is pretty much consistent for all classes. Channeled abilities use a "activation trigger" and these trigger various effects, and you can see there is consistency across the board. For example Charged Barrel happens at the same time that you pay the cost of Grav Round because they are triggered by the same event. Channeled abilities always trigger their effects upon activation, not completion, so forcing it to do both on the same ability would generate additional client and server load. It is not practical from a design stand point.

 

I understand the frustration on wasting potential regen cycles, but I do not think it would be a good idea to radically change the way they are doing it now.

[Freeborne]

Our ammo regeneration will also be a re-balancing game. Especially since the more we have the faster we regen concept is severely slanted..

[azhrione]

Our ammo regeneration will also be a re-balancing game. Especially since the more we have the faster we regen concept is severely slanted..

 

It could be worse though, we at least start with full Ammo. I will not often say this but I really feel for Knights/Warriors in terms of resource management, as their resource system sucks.

[Freeborne]

It could be worse though, we at least start with full Ammo. I will not often say this but I really feel for Knights/Warriors in terms of resource management, as their resource system sucks.

 

Don't feel too bad. I have so many ways to generate focus on my Guardian (DPS) that I'm more cool down limited than resource limited.

[azhrione]

Don't feel too bad. I have so many ways to generate focus on my Guardian (DPS) that I'm more cool down limited than resource limited.

 

I gave up on my Guardian because I hated the resource management so much, pretty much if something was not hitting me I was spamming my basic attack for a few GCDs in order to do anything interesting.

[WaddletonMcQuack]

How do you know how it does or doesn't work? This would be a small but sensible buff. It is not complicated logically and I see no reason to assume its hard to code. Edited June 15, 2012 by WaddletonMcQuack

[azhrione]

How do you know how it does or doesn't work? This would be a small but sensible buff. It is not complicated logically and I see no reason to assume its hard to code.

 

Empirical evidence, go ahead and test it, works the same way for every single ability in the game. You can find a lot of little tell tell design aspects with just a little testing.

 

Logically it may not be complicated, but logistically it does not seem to fit with what they want to do with abilities. Why make one ability work differently than every other ability in the game? That does not make any sense, and if they decide to change all abilities to work with this new Commando boosting change in resource management how does that effect balance with other classes. It is not as simple as you seem to think it is.

 

I think it is fairly safe to assume that it is not easy to change code in an application this large. We can break this down, first you would need to code the change into the underlying ability engine which is probably several million lines of code long and hasn't been significantly changed in a long time. Then you need to test the engine to find any new you created, and you will create bugs, or run afoul of already existing bugs that cannot be easily fixed. If they do what any sane developer would do, their design people have a tool that allows them to modify and change abilities in the engine, and this tool would need to be updated and tested. Then you would have to update the player database with new fields. Character logging tools would need to be updated so that feedback could be measured. Animations would need to be changed as the current animation makes no sense with your suggestion. As you can see this is not "easy to code" and changing of underlying game mechanics should be done with great caution.

[WaddletonMcQuack]

As someone who writes code for a living I can sum up your paragraph as nonsense. And it's not a suggestion for one ability, it's all abilities, it's just that this effects commandos more than anyone else since there ammo break points are so huge compared to ammo capacity.

[azhrione]

As someone who writes code for a living I can sum up your paragraph as nonsense. And it's not a suggestion for one ability, it's all abilities, it's just that this effects commandos more than anyone else since there ammo break points are so huge compared to ammo capacity.

 

Appeal to authority fallacy. While I question your statement that you "write code for a living", I will give you the benefit of the doubt would have you bear the burden of proof in describing in detail not only why this is "easy to code" but why what I said was nonsense. I have been doing large application design and development for the better part of fifteen years. I wouldn't hire anyone who says, "Making this major change into the underlying code of our in production application is easy."

 

Your suggestion would require re-balancing costs for every single class in the game, it's silly.

[oaceen]

Your suggestion would require re-balancing costs for every single class in the game, it's silly.

 

pretty much this is what i thought when i read the proposal.

[The_Old_One]

Ammo consumption is a bit harsh at the moment.

 

The simplest way, in my mind at least, is to: 1) increase the regeneration by a bit; or, 2) reduce cooldown of Recharge Cell and add some more benefit to Cell Capacitor.

 

Commando uses up their ammo too quickly. I suppose otherwise they may be too op. But when the ammo count drops below certain point, which can be fast, the regen rate suffers too. I think the latter part annoys people the most.

Edited June 18, 2012 by The_Old_One

[NeverRose]

Also, turn 12 ammo cells into 100 ammo cells and rebalance the cost of abilities. It would be easier to tweak it too.

 

Atm,. changing cost of one ability by -1/+1 is very significant.

 

It's quite funny though. MP cost is 3, so thats 25% of commando's resources. It's as if sage's heals would cost 150 force per use (not to mention linear regeneration ;E)

Edited June 21, 2012 by NeverRose