Rebalancing green mods

[TheHidden-Tember 142]

Hello little orbit!
So since  you started touching mods a bit here are my two cents about how you can improve green modifications.

  Simply put, right now clotting agent is the only real option. Other green mods come with a huge drawback (less speed, less HP, half your grenades) and have the additionnal drawback of NOT being compatible with clotting agent. And this mod has no real drawback, which will put anyone wearing it on a higher playing field than any new player who doesn't have access to mods yet. The fast-paced nature of APB gameplay makes this the best mod for most situations, and with sufficient imagination you can actually imitate the way any other mod works simply by waiting sufficiently between shots or using epinephrine injectors. You nerfed improved rifling 3 because it had no real drawback (yes please don't call the changes anything else than a nerf because it's a nerf.). It is time to do the same with clotting agent 3 which also does not have a drawback. Some people in this thread will probably say "but tembeeeeeer, regeneration takes longer with CA3" to which i reply that if you get hit enough that your fire fight lasts for more than SIXTEEN SECONDS then you deserve to die anyway.

The other unloved mods:

I am personally a big fan of kevlar, but really wearing it in the current meta is just handicapping yourself. Speed reduction is one thing, but the fact anyone can click me to stop health regen for 8 seconds completely negates the health bonus.

Flak jacket seems nice on paper until you realize that explosives will, in fact, kill you most of the time anyway because you got sneezed on earlier. Also the -1 grenade thing means you're stuck to using low yields and they feel bad.

Fragile is mostly fine health-wise coz by using it you assume you won't get hit by enemy fire anyway. but the speed boost is barely noticeable and you can reach a much more spectacular effect by using clotting agent and epinephrine injectors.

My unreasonable suggestions:

Some buffs to non-clotting agent mods.
Kevlar doesnt feel like a good protection and clotting agent gives you the same 1300 health if you just wait between shots or behind cover. Use your A/B testing on OTW to figure out some good numbers but i believe Kevlar 3 should grant up to +45% health so you can at least resist the overdamage of most weapons.

Flak jacket needs a serious improvement too. When i equip flak jacket, i want my enemies to STOP EVEN TRYING explosives. They'd still be able to down me with actual skill if flak jacket granted up to 70% explosive reduction (or 66% maybe.)  What baffles me with the current flak jacket is that getting hit by all grenades of any kind WILL KILL YOU ANYWAY (or stun you in the case of stun nades)

Fragile health is just where it should be although i woyld not mind a 30% health penalty if it meant a 30% speed increase.


All those big numbers might seem well.... big. But you have this A/B testing tool at your disposal to make this game more interesting and give us an impression of choice. Please use it.

Alternative suggestion:
Currently medspray is a consumable which works great with non-CA green mods. However it is a limited ressource and you do not earn enough of them. On top of that new players really don't have easy access to consumables, because most mission rewards will grant you decals at low ranks. So please give us an option to buy and sell consumables or give us better ways of earning them. I would 100% sell my 400 boomboxes to buy 200 medsprays. Edited August 29, 2018 by TheHidden-Tember
adding images

[Lord Cashpoint 269]

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

[TheHidden-Tember 142]

right

Edited August 28, 2018 by TheHidden-Tember

[Railer 8]

3 minutes ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

What this man said.

[crusade 89]

I strongly agree green mods need attention. However, I disagree with buffing non-CA mods first. CA's numbers need to be nerfed. Having health regen start almost immediately after taking damage has always been too much.

Current CA1/2/3 is a reduction of 25%/50%/80% health regen wait time. I would try making it 15%/30%/40% for starters.

And no I don't care if people are upset. The mod is dumb in it's current state, despite it being this way for years. Just because it's always been this way doesn't make it right, yada yada.

[TheHidden-Tember 142]

4 minutes ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

that could work.

[CookiePuss 5378]

Geez they haven't even finished with red mods yet.
Or weapons.

 

Edited August 26, 2018 by CookiePuss

[crusade 89]

4 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Geez they haven't even finished with red mods yet.
Or weapons.

 

They should've started with green mods. CA3 has mostly been the most effective mod in the entire game (car spawner arguably took over pre-nerf).

[CookiePuss 5378]

1 minute ago, Crusade said:

They should've started with green mods. CA3 has mostly been the most effective mod in the entire game (car spawner arguably took over pre-nerf).

I suppose it has been a while since Ive seen anyone use a different green mod, and even then it was likely CA2.
I gotta say, I don't envy LO with this whole rebalance project... so much work to do, and every change effects everything else.
 

[Siamsol 31]

39 minutes ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

Nooooo.

The main drawback of Clotting Agent is increased time to full heal. Base full heal is 8 seconds to initiate, 4 seconds to heal, 12 total. CA2 makes the delay 4 seconds, and increases the heal time to 10 seconds. 14 seconds total. Yes, CA2 says +50% heal time, but it doesn't actually work off of a modifier, it adds a flat 6 seconds, likely based off of the default 12 seconds for the entire process, not just the healing time. So changing default health regen to CA2 means it takes 2 seconds longer to heal from, say, an HVR shot.

CA3 isn't even that great anyway, its use in the meta is overrated. 1.6s to start, 16 to full (+12s), 17.6s total. Almost 6 seconds over base, making it +50% total heal time. That's an eternity. I very, very often can leverage healing without CA to end up taking out entire teams of enemies - they'll rush me expecting me to still be hurt, but I'll have fully healed - and now they're out of cover. And with how often this is the case, I can assure you that there are huge benefits to not using CA at all. In fact, I'll say that CA1 and CA2 are entirely useless and only harm you - the upside of CA3 is minor healing within a firefight to survive an extra bullet or sometimes two, and CA1 and CA2 do not offer that, since you won't start healing at all mid-battle.

As for Kevlar, well, it's a joke mod right now. Move speed penalty limits the best way to manage damage: not being hit at all, and moving to and from cover. I'm not sure that there's a way to make a move-speed penalty ever be beneficial, just like how Heavy Barrel's lowered damage makes it never worthwhile. Flak Jacket is fine. If anything, you shouldn't get 3 low yields in the first place, so Flak Jacket would make more sense then. And I'm sure anyone that has seen me play knows that I support Fragile, so yeah, give Fragile a bit more speed! Edited August 26, 2018 by Siamsol

[crusade 89]

2 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

I gotta say, I don't envy LO with this whole rebalance project... so much work to do, and every change effects everything else.
 

I agree. They don't have the insight of experienced players, either. And how would they even know who to listen to?

To their credit, they have come up with some imaginative ways of tackling the balance. Yes, they were a little hasty in implementation of the latest patch and it's clearly costing them, but at least they seem to be more streamlined and overall more competent than the previous team.

[CookiePuss 5378]

3 minutes ago, Crusade said:

I agree. They don't have the insight of experienced players, either. And how would they even know who to listen to?

To their credit, they have come up with some imaginative ways of tackling the balance. Yes, they were a little hasty in implementation of the latest patch and it's clearly costing them, but at least they seem to be more streamlined and overall more competent than the previous team.

Agreed. 

[YeOldLegends 51]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Don't touch anything else right now. Don't fuck anything up anything else until we get an engine update done. 

[crusade 89]

20 minutes ago, Siamsol said:

Nooooo.

The main drawback of Clotting Agent is increased time to full heal. Base full heal is 8 seconds to initiate, 4 seconds to heal, 12 total. CA2 makes the delay 4 seconds, and increases the heal time to 10 seconds. 14 seconds total. Yes, CA2 says +50% heal time, but it doesn't actually work off of a modifier, it adds a flat 6 seconds, likely based off of the default 12 seconds for the entire process, not just the healing time. So changing default health regen to CA2 means it takes 2 seconds longer to heal from, say, an HVR shot.

CA3 isn't even that great anyway, its use in the meta is overrated. 1.6s to start, 16 to full (+12s), 17.6s total. Almost 6 seconds over base, making it +50% total heal time. That's an eternity. I very, very often can leverage healing without CA to end up taking out entire teams of enemies - they'll rush me expecting me to still be hurt, but I'll have fully healed - and now they're out of cover. And with how often this is the case, I can assure you that there are huge benefits to not using CA at all. In fact, I'll say that CA1 and CA2 are entirely useless and only harm you - the upside of CA3 is minor healing within a firefight to survive an extra bullet or sometimes two, and CA1 and CA2 do not offer that, since you won't start healing at all mid-battle.

As for Kevlar, well, it's a joke mod right now. Move speed penalty limits the best way to manage damage: not being hit at all, and moving to and from cover. I'm not sure that there's a way to make a move-speed penalty ever be beneficial, just like how Heavy Barrel's lowered damage makes it never worthwhile. Flak Jacket is fine. If anything, you shouldn't get 3 low yields in the first place, so Flak Jacket would make more sense then. And I'm sure anyone that has seen me play knows that I support Fragile, so yeah, give Fragile a bit more speed!

You're definitely not valuing the time that CA3 buys you enough. If there is a 1.6s break in an engagement, the PMG is now a 6 shot kill weapon. This is effectively Kevlar 1/2 with no movement penalty. But that's not all, CA3 is the gift that keeps on giving. Kev1/2 is only effective that first time, then you will need to find a 8 sec (+ some change) break in action to reset that effectiveness. CA3 will always ever need that 1.6s break, and it will constantly keep buying you more time if you can keep playing cover properly.

2 minutes ago, YeOldLegends said:

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Don't touch anything else right now. Don't fuck anything up anything else until we get an engine update done. 

Making the changes I suggested is literally just changing a few numbers. They could at the very least put it on the test realm, but it's not a game-breaking new mechanic. It would just be playing the game without CA3 existing. Doesn't that sound enticing?

[Siamsol 31]

Fair enough, I didn't see the comparison of CA3 surviving an extra bullet being like Kevlar with normal speed. Definitely leans towards CA needing a nerf for Kevlar to have its niche.

Though I honestly can't find a way to make Kevlar work - the speed penalty is so harsh that I find it useless for everything but car-surfing. Maybe something radical, like instead of affecting total health, maybe a damage resistance mechanic. There's tons of numbers to play with there, what with flat damage reductions and percentages on top of it. It could be tweaked to be more effective against CQC weapons (flat damage reduction harms low-damage and high-RoF weapons more, which tend to be SMGs and shotguns), making its lower mobility less of an issue for dealing with people up in your face and more of a benefit for stationary weapon types (ex. LMGs). Plus it would be logically sound - bulletproof armor favors reduction of 9mm rounds over .50 BMG, of course. A balancing nightmare, to be sure, but there's potential for a good outcome.

[Clandestine 390]

I'd be fine if they would remove all green mods althogether.

[Lord Cashpoint 269]

39 minutes ago, Siamsol said:

Nooooo.

The main drawback of Clotting Agent is increased time to full heal. Base full heal is 8 seconds to initiate, 4 seconds to heal, 12 total. CA2 makes the delay 4 seconds, and increases the heal time to 10 seconds. 14 seconds total. Yes, CA2 says +50% heal time, but it doesn't actually work off of a modifier, it adds a flat 6 seconds, likely based off of the default 12 seconds for the entire process, not just the healing time. So changing default health regen to CA2 means it takes 2 seconds longer to heal from, say, an HVR shot.
 

The default regeneration has two main downsides to it which makes it inferior to Clotting Agent 3:

1) The regeneration is only quicker as long as you don't get hit at all during the healing time. Even if a nade scratches you for 1 damage with default regeneration, that still means you have to wait another 8 seconds to start healing again.

2) Default regeneration is only faster when you have taken a very large amount of damage. Clotting Agent 3 will get you back to full health quicker in most situations.

The green mod situation isn't really balanced at all as it stands - but default regeneration is so much more painful to play with, that nerfing Clotting Agent would only serve to make the game worse.

[BlatMan 711]

1 hour ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

CA3 takes way too long to recover full HP. I don't use a green mod. The only one worth having is flack jacket, but it limits your grenade capacity, so it's still a downgrade for those who don't have low-yields.

[crusade 89]

18 minutes ago, Siamsol said:

Fair enough, I didn't see the comparison of CA3 surviving an extra bullet being like Kevlar with normal speed. Definitely leans towards CA needing a nerf for Kevlar to have its niche.

Though I honestly can't find a way to make Kevlar work - the speed penalty is so harsh that I find it useless for everything but car-surfing. Maybe something radical, like instead of affecting total health, maybe a damage resistance mechanic. There's tons of numbers to play with there, what with flat damage reductions and percentages on top of it. It could be tweaked to be more effective against CQC weapons (flat damage reduction harms low-damage and high-RoF weapons more, which tend to be SMGs and shotguns), making its lower mobility less of an issue for dealing with people up in your face and more of a benefit for stationary weapon types (ex. LMGs). Plus it would be logically sound - bulletproof armor favors reduction of 9mm rounds over .50 BMG, of course. A balancing nightmare, to be sure, but there's potential for a good outcome.

It's difficult to say how to improve Kevlar. I would aim at CA3 first, and work from there. Because without CA3, maybe suddenly Kevlar will be viable. But if it's still not, you could just lower the sprint/run penalties.

Your suggestion sounds cool in theory, but as you said, it would probably really distort the balance.

9 minutes ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

The default regeneration has two main downsides to it which makes it inferior to Clotting Agent 3:

1) The regeneration is only quicker as long as you don't get hit at all during the healing time. Even if a nade scratches you for 1 damage with default regeneration, that still means you have to wait another 8 seconds to start healing again.

2) Default regeneration is only faster when you have taken a very large amount of damage. Clotting Agent 3 will get you back to full health quicker in most situations.

The green mod situation isn't really balanced at all as it stands - but default regeneration is so much more painful to play with, that nerfing Clotting Agent would only serve to make the game worse.

I think having about CA2 as the max Clotting Agent would be fine. CA3 is too much in it's functionality. Yeah, everyone is use to it, but it's just too forgiving.

1 minute ago, MrsHappyPenguin said:

1 hour ago, Lord Cashpoint said:

Clotting Agent 3 is the superior green mod for a number of reasons. One of the greatest downsides of the other green mods is that it prevents you from using Clotting Agent 3.

Honestly they should make the default regeneration the same as Clotting Agent 2, make Clotting Agent 3 just "Clotting Agent", remove Clotting Agent 1 and make the current default regeneration its own green mod for whoever wants to use it.

CA3 takes way too long to recover full HP. I don't use a green mod. The only one worth having is flack jacket, but it limits your grenade capacity, so it's still a downgrade for those who don't have low-yields.

The point of CA3 isn't the full HP recovery, it benefits from intelligent aggression and winning out on trades with a narrow time frame between multiple engagements.

[CookiePuss 5378]

40 minutes ago, Crusade said:

You're definitely not valuing the time that CA3 buys you enough. If there is a 1.6s break in an engagement, the PMG is now a 6 shot kill weapon. This is effectively Kevlar 1/2 with no movement penalty. But that's not all, CA3 is the gift that keeps on giving. Kev1/2 is only effective that first time, then you will need to find a 8 sec (+ some change) break in action to reset that effectiveness. CA3 will always ever need that 1.6s break, and it will constantly keep buying you more time if you can keep playing cover properly.

Making the changes I suggested is literally just changing a few numbers. They could at the very least put it on the test realm, but it's not a game-breaking new mechanic. It would just be playing the game without CA3 existing. Doesn't that sound enticing?

Speaking for myself, I had never considered this.
But the more I think about it, the more I like it.
I really hope LO considers your input.

[Dopefish 248]

As already mentioned, CA3 currently let's you regen enough for one or two extra bullet after the brief use of cover, rather than having to back off from the encounter entirely to heal. It's a playstyle that suits APB's faster pace better, which is the reason why CA3 is the current meta. It's still viable to not use CA3, but that's more suitable for long range engagement with safer use of cover, and thus more niche.

Making default character regeneration work the same as CA3, would lessen the gap between new players, and higher ranked one, aswell as act as an indirect buff for the other green mods. The description of the mod even says "Coagulants in the bloodstream cause any damage taken to regenerate itself faster, after the initial delay", which implies the opposite of the current effect. This would make the other green mods alot more viable.

@LO_Beastie, I would suggest the following changes to character regeneration and clotting agent:

Default (62.5hp/s, 17.6s total)
1.6s health regen delay
16s health regen time

Clotting Agent I (80hp/s, 14.9s total)
2.4s health regen delay (150%)
12.5s health regen time (78.125%)

Clotting Agent II (125hp/s, 13.6s total)
5.6s health regen delay (350%)
8s health regen time (50%)

Clotting Agent III (250hp/s, 12s total)
8s health regen delay (500%)
4s health regen time (25%)

[crusade 89]

1 minute ago, Dopefish said:

Default (62.5hp/s, 17.6s total)
1.6s health regen delay
16s health regen time

Clotting Agent I (80hp/s, 14.9s total)
2.4s health regen delay (150%)
12.5s health regen time (78.125%)

Clotting Agent II (125hp/s, 13.6s total)
5.6s health regen delay (350%)
8s health regen time (50%)

Clotting Agent III (250hp/s, 12s total)
8s health regen delay (500%)
4s health regen time (25%)

Have you considered the other mods and systems in place before considering such a change? Kevlar with effectively CA3? Flak Jacket with CA3? What about Med spray? 

[Fortune Runner 796]

clotting agent takes too long to heal? You have med spray use it......

[vsb 6171]

4 minutes ago, Fortune Runner said:

clotting agent takes too long to heal? You have med spray use it......

med spray doesnt affect regen time, it just forces regen to start immediately

[Poperon 141]

5 hours ago, YeOldLegends said:

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Don't touch anything else right now. Don't fuck anything up anything else until we get an engine update done. 

I think they should, really. We need more chaos and mayhem. Red mods and Shotguns aren't enough.

Don't be limited to green mods, please mess around with purple, blue and orange mods... and don't forget to weaponize civilians with OSMAWs and OPGLs. Amen!