Time to review Weapon Allowance? (in General)

(The following post comes with a huge IMO attached. ;) )

Not an easy subject to approach and I know that some consider this to be a huge dead horse. But the weapon allowance was set up when physical damage was smaller. Before the changes to weapon upgrades made huge damage weapons much easier to create.

It makes viewing tanks vs mage very difficult. A tank and a mage of the same PR/MPR on paper are not actually the same size, because much of a tank's power is invisible.

You can fit a hell of a lot of extra power under the hood before it starts to affect pr, and therefore rewards. So tank teams can grow faster in power.

And, if you're looking at the current ranged vs melee debate; if you consider the ELB to be overpowered, the weapon allowance lets you put a huge beast of a weapon on your char, if you only equip a ranged weapon. (Of course, it lets you do the same if you only equip a melee weapon. ;) )


I like tanks and you do need weapons to fight as a tank, so I understand fully that the weapon allowance stops you being penalized for equipping what you need. But as I said, it was introduced before the changes to physical damage last year. Perhaps it should have been looked at in association with that.

If you are interested in having a balanced game, this is the most unbalanced feature of the game. I'm not asking for it to be removed necessarily, but I feel it should definitely be reviewed and possibly adjusted to the current physical set up.


But as I said at the top: IMO.


;)

My suggestion, smaller weapon allowance for ranged weapons and bigger one for melee weapons. Meaning have 2 sets of weapon allowance instead of one.

How about do away with WA and have Equipment allowance.A allowance based on your characters total NW, and as someone stated in a different thread/post, figure out a percentage for tat nw...

I'm now accepting bets for the size of this thread by the time it closes..........

Let us see how this could flow.... Smaller WA...

1. CB2 Cheaper. Wouldn't be needed as much to upgrade weapons.
2. MPR Rich Characters would only get Richer.
3. Slower Growth NUB's and NCB's = harder to reach the top.

Be careful what you wish for.

Adding an equipment allowance isn't a bad idea. +100 db's at 1k mpr almost adds no PR. Resulting in no tank hitting them at that mpr.
Which is strange.
But leave the weapon allowance at it is. Im now using 1/5 of my WA and im still killing everyone. So bigger isn't always better.

"But leave the weapon allowance at it is. Im now using 1/5 of my WA and im still killing everyone. "

Lol, in which case Henk you could afford to have a WA 1/5 of it's current size couldn't you, without it changing anything you do?


;)

"Mikel, 7:03 AM EST
Let us see how this could flow.... Smaller WA...


CB2 Cheaper. Wouldn't be needed as much to upgrade weapons.
MPR Rich Characters would only get Richer.
Slower Growth NUB's and NCB's = harder to reach the top. "


Yes, that's one possible outcome I agree. The return to power of mage teams for instance, and less people climbing high. But you could also look at it like so: tanks have money freed up because of a smaller WA. Can now afford to buy ba and upgrade weapons, providing they are within their WA. Tank teams grow faster.

A smaller WA could actually help tanks, not hinder.

Mikel:
CB2 Cheaper: Would the drop in CB2 price be significant? I don't remember the price of CB2 dropping significantly (maybe a dollar?) after the WA was introduced initially which is surely a more significant change than a correction to the WA amount would be.
Is less $US demand for CB2 really a problem anyway? In economic terms a reduction in demand will cause a reduction in the number of transactions as well as a lower price, frankly a reduction in CB2/USD transactions would please me.

Slower growth NUB's and NCB's: This should read slower growth NUB's and NCB's for big USD spenders who as a rule are the only ones who can currently use all of their WA at high levels - these tanks would move out of the 100% challenge bonus much earlier, others probably wouldn't be affected much at all. Yes non-USD vets with money saved can make full use of the WA on an NCB up to a point but this would impact USD spenders using huge weapons the most as they can keep right up with the WA to very high MPR levels.

To me $75M WA at 900k MPR - Mikels current Weapon and MPR (I assume he is basically on the WA) seems too high.
You have to ask yourself what would a "normal" single tank character starting from scratch with no USD buying/selling be able to afford , if he was putting say three quarters of his cash towards a weapon - to me whatever this NW is should be around the appropriate WA level.
(For what it's worth I'd guess around 40M in Weapon NW but I'm probably way off).

It does not take long to reach the 100% challenge rewards. I'm less than 100k MPR and have already reached that a few days ago. So less than 1 week after I started, I'm already at 100% challenge rewards. But I'm maxing my weapon allocation already which is now 4 million ;)

No, I'm over my WA as it is and I should be back under my WA in about 4 days. I had a chance to insta the the number 3 elb with the number 2 elb and took it of the mind that it would help me later on.<br><br>CB2 has dropped, it used to be $10 per mil now it's starting to fall below 9:1. As a USD spender, that doesn't bother me any to watch it drop. I'm just giving some examples of what can happen if you nerf it too much.

dang it, I wish there was a way to chose between making Plain Text and HTML your default method of posting.

Can't we first agree on how exactly WA is calculated?

Kong Ming - Yes, I'm talking about the point at higher MPR/PR when it becomes too difficult to maintain a consistent 100% bonus and the bonus starts to go down again - this is the point where growth slows and the boys are separated from the men so to speak. By this point those tanks who can afford to keep Weapon NW up with WA will fare better than those who can't. The question is can a "normal" non-USD spending tank keep up with the WA at this point or does he fall behind the USD spending tank who can.

If a "normal" tank spending a reasonable amount of his money earned on his weapon can't keep up with the WA then it needs to be reduced IMO.

I believe it is not because of the WA that resulted in many not able to hit 100% challenge rewards. It is because of the lack of opponents that can give that reward. If you can unequip your tattoo and fight, you should be able to hit close to 100% challenge reward. I tried that and it works pretty well because of the lower PR.

Sacred, I'm pretty good at fighting up and getting good rewards. But they tend to peak at about a million a week. On my last NCB I built up an ELB from base to about x1000; over the NCB period. I used some money to buy some Belegs and pay for ammo and rentals, but that was it. All my other cash went into that ELB.

Aside from USD buying or loans there was no way possible for me to boost that weapon any higher.

That ELB and my old Morg used up two thirds of my WA. I'm a bit of an exception because I do try and fight as high as I can possibly go. Others are starting to do that now, thanks to the challenge bonus being visible. But based on my own experience I agree completely with you.


The downside to a smaller WA will affect those with large weapons already. If you're starting up a char you would have a longer wait before you could use those big weapons again. And if you are a large char using oversized weapons it would affect your rewards some.

But for most players a smaller WA would have no discernible difference.

Sacred Peanut, NUBS can make money at an alarming rate. I know, I did it and with in no time had a ton of gear from that money. So how they spend that money is up to the individual. NUBS can score 500k per day fairly easily and some can actually make money off of their BA. So you figure over 10 days, that's 5 mil, that's a little more than the rate that the WA grows. I made double that per day with a much smaller bonus, so yes I was able to easily keep up and keep upgrading gear constantly before I started sinking USD into the game. Now I have all of this gear and work with what I improve it via USD because I don't have that NUB bonus anymore.

Perhaps Weapons should count the same way as armor.

The PR they add should be based upon the xp of the minion using it.

IE a 20M NW elb on a 1M xp minion will not be as powerful as that same weapon on a 10M xp minion.

Just remove the WA and make the PR added the same as armor. However the PR weighting of weapons should be a bit less then that of armor due to the fact that tanks really do have to have a weapon to do damage.

In this way one could have different PR weights of different weapons. IE a dagger would have much less PR weight then a MH. A SoD would have a bit less PR weight then an ELB. etc.. etc...

Pops, that how would the + and x be calculated for lower levels? evenly?

I would use the NW of the item.

The X and + of the item non withstanding.

Let those using the weapon decide how much X and/or + they want on the item in question.

What about with 2 weapons? Ratio based off of their Individual NW's? Would that mean boosted Ammo becomes useless or would they be exempt?

Had a similar thought myself. Would certainly be a fairer and more accurate representation of their power, right down to letting NW be the deciding factor.

The lower PR weight is a good idea too. I certainly don't agree that a tank should be penalized for needing to use a weapon.

I'm not that much of a masochist. ;)

Ok Mikel I will use your own estimate of 500k per day for a NUB - it seems fair enough.

Your character has been going around 45days and has a WA of around 75M. Lets say a NUB starting playing consistently, buys all BA and hits your current MPR after say 50days (he takes a while to get into the game so loses 5 days on you for whatever reason) . At 500k a day he will have earned 25M. Now lets take off say a couple of mil for a tat purchase and maybe tat insta somewhere along the line, a few mil for armor and give him say 18M to be spent in Weapons - thats 75% of his money, a reasonable amount to put into a weapon I would think.

If he strikes it lucky and happens to have the money on hand when a big NW Morg/Elb comes along he may get a 40-50M Weapon for that kind of money.
Far more likely is that he picks up a smallish Elb/Morg, maybe instas it up somewhere along the line, gets it forged a bit and blacksmiths it as well, for his 18M he will probably end up with maybe 20-30M in Weapon NW, certainly a long way below the 75M WA.

PM - Yeah that would be an option, It would still have its problems at lower levels though, lets say a 50M Elb adds 20% to PR, works fine at higher levels but at say 50k MPR your weapon is probably 100x larger than the average weapon at this level meaning you inflict many many times more damage than the average team for only 20% more PR. Mage teams, especially CoC teams would be screwed to put it mildly as the archers damage dwarfs the damage of mage teams many times larger than the tank.

Every weapon based on the NW of the weapon and the xp of the minion wearing it. Just like each piece of armor.

Ammo-based on its NW.

As subject to the PR weighting.

Seeker will have a higher PR weighting then normal arrows due to 2 main factors: First-Higher base damage. Second-Their special ability.

Coming round to my line of thought at last PM? ;)

Every time I've asked for weapon PR weighting, giving examples of a Whip versus a Morg and how the Morg adds more power than the whip (at any NW, but usually exagerated for effect), your answer used to be " If you're silly enough to upgrade a whip, you deserve no less" (Or close enough to :P )

;)

SP:

The large weapon on a small character again brings up my point of missile damage being too much.

But the same problem is seen when a small MPR character wears a huge set of DB's and only takes a 10k PR bump.

Some things will not be fair/equal. We can only do our best to try to help Jon make things equal.

GL,

In the current system of a blanket WA based on NW, one has to have a whip and a MH count the same.

However, if things change to a PR weighting system, then one can use different weights for a whip and a MH.

Lol PM.

;)

Good going there. You re posted asking for weapon PR weighting (exactly the same thing I originally suggested ages ago, and you disagreed with) without answering my post, while making it look like you did.

That's PR skills. ;)

So, what's changed to change you mind?

Nothing really "changed" my mind.

IMO, I feel the best way to deal with weapons is do the exact same as with tattoos.

Instead of MTL, make it MWL. Max Weapon Allowance.

A given weapon will only function up to a certain x/+ based on the minion using it.

This is what I suggested way back, just before NW/PR came about.

Therefore you would not have a low MPR character using a big weapon.

I do realize there are a lot of complications with this approach, but I believe would be a fairer method of stopping uber weapons on small characters.

I like the sound of Max Weapon Allowance.

But that's not Weapon PR weighting.

That's capping weapons stats on minion size, akin to the Max tattoo level. Nice idea I agree with as well, but different to PR weighting. ;)

You sure you don't work for a political party, or in PR? ;)

GL,

I am giving my thoughts on the systems proposed.

With the system the way it is, there is no need for PR weighting. With a set NW you can have/use on a character, what does it matter if you have a 100M NW whip or a 100M NW MH. They both should function the same as opposed to the NW limit.

With the system of adding PR like armor, then one can certainly PR weight different weapon/ammo according to how powerful they are.

With the max weapon limit type of system, there again is no need to PR weight weapons as the NW of the weapon if the deciding factor.

It all depends on the type of system being used. PR weighting will only work if the PR gained is based upon the entire NW of the weapon.

Of course it matters. Whetehr weapons PR increase is based soley on them, or on the size of the minion using them.

Ignore the amrour style of PR increase.

At the moment, a 100M NW whip soaks up 'x' amount of invisible 'power' from your wepaon allowance. A 100M NW MH soaks up the same 'x'. This is obviously wrong.

A 100M NW Whip does far less dmaage than a 100M NW MH, so should never take up as much PR space.

sclaing down the PR cost by basing it on using minion instead of whole team does *nothing* to change this fact.

If you want PR weighting then, you must agree to it now.

I dont got to agree to nothing.

With the current system there is a "pool" of NW you can use. Not weighted NW, total NW. You want to make the pool a weighted one. Based up how the NW allowance is setup, that is not Jon's idea. And, hold the phone Hell Froze today, I agree with it.

Choose wisely.

Why should a 100 M NW whip matter vs a 100 M NW MH?

The idea behind the WA is to stay under it.

As you said the WA is "invisible". I am fair sure Jon used the WA basing it upon a top 5 weapon. If you are foolish enough to use a 100 M NW whip, your loss.

When the entire NW of the item in question is used to calculate added PR, then I do believe some sort of PR weighting is certainly needed. Like the difference between using DB's and LB's.

While we're throwing ideas around why not a combined Max NW Allowance for Armor and Weapons.

Massive +200 DB's making little characters practically invulnerable to tanks of similar PR for just 10% increase in PR is not fair IMO, yes +220 DB's aren't as effective at high levels where 10% to PR is probably ok, but at low levels where the + on weapons and bonus PTH from the TOA is lower thats alot of reduced PTH for a tank to overcome.

With this system you can still have PR weights for armor and weapons, so that something with say a PR weight of 0.2 adds only 20% of its NW to Max NW allowance.

Wow my typing sucked in that last post! ;)

To try to explain a little better.

Consider two equal NW weapons now. One does twice the dmaage of the other, but both increase PR by 400K (both have the same NW), sucking up 400K of the Weapon Allowance.

We change the system to scaling PR. You tank is on a 4 minion team, so your wepaons now add a quater of their old PR increase (for example). So both weapons add 100K PR.

What is the difference of adding PR weighting to the second option (scaling PR by minion size), to adding it o the first (fixed PR increase by weapon NW)?

"When the entire NW of the item in question is used to calculate added PR, then I do believe some sort of PR weighting is certainly needed."

OK, maybe I'm not understanding you here PM.

You want scaling PR increases based on minion size, with PR weightings *and no Wepaon Allowance any more*?

If so, hell yeah! I'd go for that. I tohught you wanted scaling PR, PR weights *and* the wepaon allowance.

The scaling PR option is IMO far worse GL .

The whole point of the WA was to not allow tiny characters to equip massive weapons without facing huge PR penalties. The weapon PR weighting option would allow exactly that to happen again since a 100M Weapon on a 20MPR character is no less detrimental to PR than the same weapon on a 2M MPR character (both would add say 20% to PR).

I like PM's other idea far better.

True SP. I experienced that effect of the WA.

PM, if you want PR weighting, what's the problem with PR weighting for weapons *and* the Weapon Allowance as is?

I personally like best the Max Weapon Allowance idea the best.

The second best would be PR weighting based upon the xp of the minion using it, like armors.

The last idea I like is the current total weapon allowance.

In ideas 1 and 3 no PR weighting is needed. Sure one can be used, knock yourself out. But it is not NEEDED.

In idea 2, PR weighting is certainly needed.

And yes, there always will be a problem with a huge weapon on a small minion. That is why I like the top idea the best.

No no no no!!!!

We had a equipment allowance and it tanked the market. The problem is NOT that folks are strapping on big weapons, it's that the PR is not correctly represented. No matter WHAT you set the WA to this will be the case. A smaller WA will help some things and hurt others, such as make those huge weapons out there undesirable. The REAL solution is to figure out a formulae that fairly figures weapons into PR.

To illustrate, a tank with an undersized weapon will have the same PR as a tank with a weapon at his WA limit. At lower levels this produces a scramble to find the 'perfect' weapon for the characters size. At higher levels, where there is no practical WA limit this means the tank with the biggest NW has a PR that is totally out of line with the actual power.

I'm beating a dead horse here, but the game needs to compute PR based on weapons stats a lot like what is done for armor. A not so simple function of damage, X, and + should do the trick. As a nice side benefit some of the less desirable weapons may become desirable again if the PR bonus for, say, a dagger, was truly representative of its power (well, probably not, but it would be fun if so).

While I'm at it, armor PR bonuses should factor in other bonuses than magical AC bonuses. A minion wearing a Adam is more powerful than a minion wearing leathers. And a HoC with NO +s should have a hefty PR cost (can you say duh!). Again the current function of PR = MPR + MPR*plusses*plusbonus doesn't cut it. Something more like PR = MPR + MPR*plusses*plusbonus + MPR*'itembonus' would vastly improve armor ratings. Drop the HoC plusses bonus to .1 to be in line with other armors and add an itembonus of 10% to PR. So your caluclation would be PR = MPR + MPR*plusses*plusbonus + MPR*10% for a HoC.

I have already proposed a few formulas in the past but they were largely ignored - thus the dead horse. But here I stand, once again, flogging utensil in hand, hoping to be heard and taken seriously.