A propos des MA's

Par THEKKEHT le 8/8/2001 à 16:02:00 (#442847)

voici une interview a propos des MA's.
Je laisse le soin a qqun de résumer ou de traduire.

E-Interview with Gaute Godager, AO Designer
08.07.2001
Recently a thread started on the Funcom General Board describing, with a decent amount of data, how at higher levels MAs are growing increasingly concerned about their class in terms of damage dealt. Two questions regarding that:


Over level 30, as NPC ACs seem to increase to monumental numbers, MAs increasingly have difficulty hitting for more than their minimum damage (which doesn't seem to even come close to comparing to other classes damage outputs. Your comments? Is this something Funcom is looking at, or are MAs considered "good to go?"
We are working on plans to review the efficiency of the Martial Artists. This is more specific than a 'we-will-always-consider-balance' reply. There will be changes in future patches, although they will be implemented one at a time. The problem with the MA was that during beta, their damage output at lower levels was too high. As a result, a damage output reduction was performed during the beta 3 phase. Unfortunately this affected the higher-level MAs too, and we will simply change the damage output for higher levels in an upcoming data patch.


I guess this depends on the answer to the first question, but one thing many MAs have noticed is that the damage-type addition nanos such as "Corrosive Fists" and "Energized Fists" don't actually seem to be adding the additional damage type (chemical / electrical). Are these nanos working correctly? If they are not, ETA on a fix?
'Corrosive Fists' and 'Energized Fists' don't add damage type; it only gives a bonus to an already existing attack. This means that you will have to have another chemical or electrical attack or weapon to put the additional damage into effect.

A friend of mine is a level 41 MA. He has (buffed with nanos and implants) around 260 in Martial Arts. That should make his MA weapon right now look like this (adjusted for skill-damage modification): 29-70 (40). So, if he attacks monsters with a higher AC than 400 he will, rightfully as has been pointed out, be reduced to doing the lowest amount of damage. (If you are approximately the same level, and do not recognize these numbers, it is because SO many factors come into play). The point is, this is going to change, and the MA will do more "randomized" damage towards monsters with higher AC. The overall damage output might increase too as dual wielding weapons can, in certain instances, do more damage. Note, for monsters with super-high AC, all weapons will have their damage reduced to their minimum.

MAs seem to be getting the short end, because of those points, in PVP. Suggestions here, or Funcom's stance on the MA in PVP?


The general plan for balancing Martial Artists should help on this. PvP, the Martial Artist is supposed to be the "scourge of the nano casters". He is supposed to get a good chance of resisting nanos, and being able to take down nano-techs quickly because he should have a higher chance of interrupting their execution than all others. His weakness will be against Enforcers and Soldiers, that do (almost) as much damage as him, but have more hit points.
Are thrown weapons in the game?


More thrown weapons will be added in a later patch.
MAs seem to get a disparate number of criticals compared to other classes. Is this intended?


They get the same amount of critical hits as others, but are only quite moderate in size. This was intended, as the MA was supposed to be the "steady flow of damage", and not the HUGE crits / low damage types found elsewhere.
Btw, did you know that you could get damage from certain types of weapons in addition to your MA attacks at higher level?? Try experimenting with the typical MA type weapons, and weapons holding "martial-arts" as criteria. I wont spill all the beans, but look around.


MAs class-specific special attacks don't seem to do a significant amount of damage comparatively. For instance, soldiers and others have burst and full auto, whereas we get skills that do relatively low damage comparatively at higher levels with a longer recycle time that, on top of everything else, locks one or more of our skills (such as "Bird of Prey" locking Dimach). Is this intended, and should we expect a review?

This is what is planned: All martial arts special attacks will lock MA skill only. That Bird of Prey (Vanishing into a bright, blue, cloudless sky) locks the normal dimach was NOT intended.

MAs bows seem to be the only other weapon we are geared towards, any idea when the remove-bow / then can't melee bug will be fixed?

This is a known problem that we are working on. In addition, we are considering adding some bows that should make this skill more interesting.
When an NPC casts 'Deprive Skills" or a similar nano on an MA, we stop swinging and are forced to restart combat. ETA on a fix for this?


This is the reason, and this is a bug. Every time your MA skill changes, we internally make a new, better or worse, MA weapon for your character. It stops working, for some reason, when the weapon actually changes during mid-fight. This is a bug, of course, and will be fixed as soon as possible. For the time being I suggest the MAs stop and restart as quickly as possible whenever they encounter this bug. We are sorry about this, and thank you all for bringing it, and other MA related bugs to our attention.
One of the bigger beefs the community has is that MA special attacks over 100 quality level (Attack of the Snake, for instance) don't work. ETA on a fix?


For some of the special attacks, the problem seems to be lacking information about how the attack works and the effect of it. Take "Flower of Life". That is actually a life-tap attack, giving hits, loads of it, back to the MA. But, since it only works at low health, it seems broken to a lot of people. Again, as a part of the big plan we will review it and do the necessary changes, or be sure that information is available.
Seemingly every other class, by virtue of using weapons, knows the stats of their damage dealing implements. Any chance you could clue us in on MAs fist stats?


At the moment Martial Artists will have to learn the damage dealt while progressing through the levels. We have no immediate plans to change this, but will think about it.
Does the "Multiple Melee Weapon" skill have any relevance to a non-weapon using MA?


No, it doesn't. Unless you actually want to dual wield weapons, and use Martial arts attack at the same time. (In fact 3 attacks!) Be careful with this, as it might actually bring your overall damage output down. Look for weapons with an attack time as low as possible, preferably less than 1,3 seconds, as these will stack the best with the MA attacks.
Lastly, now that the game's been out a month, any chance of getting some data on # of accounts so far, average server load for the U.S. Rubi-Ka 1 server, and of course your thoughts on the last month?


The last official numbers (that are about a week old) is that the number of accounts is roughly 50.000.
We would wish that the launch had gone more smoothly, and Funcom employees have been working around the clock to make the game fun for everybody. The most critical problems have been solved, and I feel that the game experience is improving every day.

I am also very impressed by the Rubi-Ka pioneers that have explored this new frontier. Especially the ARK-team has been doing an impressive job. I hope everybody sends some warm thoughts to them for their efforts regularly. With changes based on feedback, additions we are planning to do and the story-line, Anarchy Online will continue to improve as a online gaming experience.

One of the big challenges for us now is to get more information out to you and other fans about what we are doing, what we are working on and what you are able to do in the game. The new Community Manager, Tor Andre Wigmostad, is working on that. I hope the AO-players will see improvements in the communication over the next few days.

Gaute Godager,
Designer

Thanks Gaute!