[Pre-production] Balance Patch: The Emerging Light

Bonjour chères communauté,

vous avez la possibilité de prendre connaissance mais également de prendre part à un travail d'ajustement. Les modifications annoncées dans le sujet ne sont pas définitves, l'équipe de développement et le Game Design souhaitent réaliser ces changements avec vous.

Le topic d'origine se trouve sur le forum anglais, vous pouvez y laisser vos idées et vos commentaires (en anglais).

Merci de votre attention.

Votre équipe DarkOrbit

 

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Balance patches in DarkOrbit have been a rarity. This has allowed a few aspects of balance to get out of control.

The biggest issue though is that some of these areas have been unbalanced for so long that they have become rooted deep within the meta. Despite having a negative impact on the state of the meta itself, many players have grown attached to the ship or formation due to its power.

This patch hopes to shake things up a bit - but not too much. The aim is to alter the balance in PvP whilst keeping PvE almost entirely untouched.

If you are curious as to why some changes have been made, there are dev notes under many of the ships / formations explaining some of the problems the particular subject had and how the changes hope to address this.

One of the biggest changes you will see the pacing of abilities, as the abilities connected with Goliath ships have had their cooldowns extended to either 14 or 15 minutes.
The reason for this is to try and change how abilities are used - instead of players feeling they might as well use it every fight simply because they have it, they should use abilities when they feel they need an edge in a fight they might otherwise lose.

The increased cooldown times also serves as a way to prevent players using their ability more than once in a fight, something which caused a lot of frustration.

During the open beta testing we will be watching carefully to see how this change impacts PvP.
In particular the effectiveness of the Aegis and Hammerclaw ability cooldowns compared to the Goliaths will be watched closely.

The other large change is the impact of Ring and therefore Moth formations in PvP. The Ring had a negative impact to the diversity of viable options within PvP and this impact went unchecked.

A further explanation of this issue and the changes they are being made can be found in the drone formation post.


TESTING PHASE
We will have extensive testing for this balance update with more players involved than any update in the past. There will be 3 types of testing used.

1. Small closed test groups

This group will be hand picked based on players who hold a good reputation in PvP and are able to provide clear critical feedback on many areas of PvP balance.

2. Large closed test group

This will be our First to Fight group, here we will be able to collect a large amount of feedback, both in player opinion and in data.

3. Open beta

With an open beta it will allow us to collect even more data and of course even more opinions, at this stage we are looking to fine tune the patch and get it ready for release.

All in all, this will be a lengthy testing process and we cannot put a date on when this patch will be released.

We are very eager to see your feedback on this topic, especially once you have all had a chance to test out the various changes on a test server.

 

SHIPS

The amount of genuinely viable ships in PvP is limited to a small number. Many PvP encounters within the game, whether it be in a group or solo, end up being repetitive with the same ships being used with the same tactics.

Whilst we understand players have become very used to particular ships and there might be nerves when this changes we feel a change is for the best.

A larger variety of viable ships is very important for creating a more interesting PvP environment - which is what these changes are aimed at doing.

The main targets are the Spectum and Tartarus.
These two ships on their own caused a lot of frustration for the community, in particular the Tartarus.
As a result the Tartarus has had changes which push players to change the ship from a running tactic to one which produces periodic heavy DPS throughout a fight.

The Solace was another ship which caused many issues for players, however the necessity of this ship stems from the popularity of Moth and Ring, further explanation on this can be found in the drone formation post.



AEGIS

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Aegis, A-Veteran and A-Elite.
  • Using the A-Elite abilities
• Passive bonus for A-Elite changed from +5% damage to +5% damage and +5% shield.

Dev notes:
Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Aegis as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviated was an unnecessary complication.




CITADEL

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Citadel, C-Veteran and C-Elite.
  • Using the C-Elite abilities
• Passive bonus for C-Elite changed from +5% damage to +15% shield and +15% HP.
• Fortification duration reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
• Fortification cooldown increased from 360 seconds to 430 seconds.
• Fortification no longer sets movespeed to 0 and will increase reduce the users move speed to 200.
• Incoming damage reduction from Fortification increased from +50% to +80%.

Dev notes:
The Citadel was rarely used as a tank ship for PvP purposes. We felt one of the main reasons for this was the lack of movement whilst using Fortification as players could simply move out of the Citadel's range and it would be left doing nothing.

To remove this weakness the Fortification has received a minor rework. The low movement speed can be combined with the Travel ability to make the most out of the Fortification and prove some much more useful tanking ability in PvP.

Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Citadel as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviated was an unnecessary complication.




CYBORG

• Duration of Singularity reduced from 30 seconds to 27 seconds.
• Cooldown of Singularity increased from 175 seconds to 900 seconds.

Dev notes:
Cooldown increased to be in line with other cooldown changes. The duration had a slight reduction to lower the overall DPS output of the ability, whilst keeping the ship as one of the best overall DPS ships in the game.




DIMINISHER

• Own shield lost upon Shield Leech ending is reduced from -30% to -10%.
• Shield Leech damage bonus increased from +50% to +60%.
• Cooldown of Shield Leech increased from 180 seconds to 840 seconds.

Dev notes:
If a Diminisher's opponent used a backup shield tech and the beginning of the Shield Leech ability then more often than not the Diminisher would lose more shield than their opponent, the shield loss has been reduced to mitigate this.




GOLIATH-X

• Passive bonus changed from +2% EP and +2% damage to +10% EP and +5% damage.

HAMMERCLAW

• Generator slots increased from 14 to 15.
• Speed increased from 290 to 300.
• Passive bonus changed from +20% HP to +10% HP.
• Shield recharge duration increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Healing beam duration increased from 6 seconds to 7 seconds.

Dev notes:
The Hammerclaw suffered from being slower than most other ships in PvP, the increase to 15 generator slots nd plus +10 base speed will allow it to reach the same speeds as a regular Goliath.

The duration of two abilities have been slightly increased to allow the ship to sustain more damage for itself and targeted friendlies in a single fight.



MIMESIS

• Scramble damage bonus increased from +25% to +30%.
• Scramble shield depletion rate reduced from -10% per second to -8% per second.
• Phase Out teleportation distance reduced from 50 units to 35 units.

Dev notes:
The Mimesis remains to be a more experimental ship for players and the main focus on what this ship can and can't do revolves around the usage of its Scramble ability.

The bug of this ability aims to allow various ways of making use of Scramble easier to do, be it having an Aegis partner, backup shield, Diamond or using SAB-50 - just to name a few.




SENTINEL

• Fortress duration increased from 10 seconds to 65 seconds.
• Fortress cooldown increased from 90 seconds to 840 seconds.

SOLACE

• Nano Cluster cooldown increase from 90 seconds to 840 seconds.
• Nano Cluster self heal reduced from +50% to +45%.
• Nano Cluster group heal reduced from +25% to +15%.

Dev notes:
Solace receives some small nerfs to its self heal and some larger nerfs to its group as heal to prevent larger groups consisting only of Solace from being able to extend a fight by a redicular amount, whilst still keeping the role of the Solace.




SPEARHEAD

• Abilities changed to be the same across the Spearhead, S-Veter and S-Elite
  • Using the S-Elite abilities.
• Passive Bonus for the S-Elite changed from +5% damage to +10% damage.
• Mark Target now applies a damage buff based on the amount of members in the group.
  • Mark Target gains +5% damage against the targeted player per member in the group.
  • In a group of 8 players, Mark Target will do +40% damage to the enemy effected by the ability.
• JAMX effect duration increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• JAMX chance of revealing cloaked ships increased from 50% to 100%.
• JAMX cooldown reduced from 207 seconds to 160 seconds.

Dev notes:
Despite having a very useful skill set for group fights, the spearhead is rarely used as the trade off in lack of power is too big if it is being used instead of a Goliath.

The changes of Mark Target allow the spearhead to bring in a large burst of single target DPS to make up for the overall lack that it would typically bring to a group.
JAMX changes boost the usefulness of this ship in typical group PvP.

Abilities were made standard across all versions of the Spearhead as the Elite version of the ships was already better in almost every situation, so the deviated was an unnecessary complication.




SPECTRUM

• Prismatic Shield duration reduced from 30 seconds to 22 seconds.
• Prismatic Shield cooldown increased from 180 seconds to 900 seconds.
• Own damage reduction whilst Prismatic Shield is active is reduced from -50% to -45%.

Dev notes:
The Spectrum has been one the top 3 best ships since its release in 2011, six years of being in-meta and having a very powerful ability. At some points it has also been seen as the only ship to use by many players.

The aim of the Prismatic Shielding changes is not to nerf it so much that the ships is now useless, instead its to make it so the spectrum isn't as good in almost every situation as it is right now.

One of the key problems this ship caused was the time the ability would be up for and the frequent availability - this has been tackled by reducing both the duration and the cooldown significantly.

As a trade-off the laser damage reduction of the user has been lowered to allow the player to be slightly more aggressive when using the ability for its shorter duration.




TARTARUS

• Speed Buff reduced from +40% to +30%.
• Rapid Fire cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 24 seconds.

Dev notes:
The aim of the Tartarus was to provide a speed ship with high periodic DPS.

The big issue was the Tartarus filled one of these roles extremely well, the speed, however the periodic DPS was very lacking and largely went unnoticed.

The way this ship was used caused a large amount of frustration as a good Tartarus player would never die, but their ship was too weak to actually kill anything, so in most circumstances it was merely a troll ship in PvP.

The Tartarus now has 577 speed when the Speed Buff is active, however it can now deal a lot more damage with the Rapid Fire than before, meaning it can put up a good fight with its improved DPS.




VENOM

• Cooldown of Singularity increased from 120 second to 840 seconds.

 

DRONE FORMATIONS

Drone formations are an integral part of PvP - often having a bigger impact in fights than the ships themselves do. A player who makes good use of their formations can often defeat an opponent who has a better ship but poor formation management.

A large reason the drone formation meta has become stale is due to Ring and the consequences it had.
The strong shield it provides means its necessary to begin almost all fights in this formation, however it is so large that people quickly change to Moth as a counter and just try to out-DPS their enemy and ignore the shield and go for the HP.

This pressure to use Moth for most of the fight led to players overusing Solace, a change to Ring will go a long way to solving both the issues with Moth and Solace.


Ultimately, the fact that Ring provides the best shield in the game, resulted in shields actually being much less important in PvP and at the same time forcing in a meta which caused fights to often be repeated in the same way.

Similar to the situation with the ships, the formation changes are aimed to bring in more variety in PvP than exists right now.



CHEVRON

• Rocket damage increased from +50% to +65%.

CRAB

• Speed reduction reduced from -20% to -15%.

DOME

• Shield bonus increased from +30% to +40%.
• Shield regeneration increased from +0.5% to +1.5%.
• Laser damage reduction reduced from -50% to -30%.
• Speed reduction reduced from -50% to -15%.

Dev notes:
A large amount of changes have been made as this formation was rarely used in any areas of the game.
It will be watched closely to see if further changes can be made to the balance of this formation.




DOUBLE ARROW

• Added a +30% rocket damage bonus.

HEART

• Shield bonus increased from +10% to +20%.

MOTH

• Shield depletion rate increased from -1% to -4%.

Dev notes:
A nerf to moth which allows it to still be powerful in PvP for damage output, whilst making the user vulnerable at a much quicker rate.




RING

• Shield bonus reduced from +120% to +85%.

Dev notes:
The shield bonus of ring was done to reduce the amount of time that Ring is active during a typical PvP scenario, this will encourage people to swap out to other formations whilst still keeping Ring in the same role.
In turn this will reduce the pressure for players to use Moth, therefore reducing the pressure on using Solace.




STAR

• A +10% evasion bonus has been added.

 

Bonjour tout le monde

Le joueur Melchior a fait une traduction de ce topic ici, je vais donc mettre en citation ci dessous et un grand merci pour ce travail

et là la suite :