Removal of Charge from commons is probably for the best, though it would be sad to see it go, I think maybe in compensation, some new rare weapons should be produced, one for each class (let's say the multi-target weapons - Vjaya, a new shotgun and a new Talis) just to keep things a little more interesting on the unique items front and to not completely rob the charge-addicted.
While I'd love to add more weapon variety to the game, that is not something I can accomplish with the tools I currently have. I already have a long list of things I need/would like access to and while this issue features on that list there are other things I am currently prioritising.
Charge itself is a poorly thought out and infinitely abusable mechanic that only serves to detract from the game rather than adding anything of worth. Sacrificial specials will still exist, they will just use resources that aren't infinitely renewable and can't be stockpiled to the extent that the "sacrifice" is mostly irrelevant, at worst leading to more grinding simply to make money rather than playing the game, adding to the game's downtime much like mag feeding does.
To be perfectly honest the only reason Vjaya still exists is because it occupies an important part of that weapon type's progression and because the cost involved is much higher.
All rares that had charge have been replaced with an equal if not greater number of rares with other sacrificial specials, including some very powerful 12* weapons. Hopefully this can be viewed as not a removal as much as a re-balancing of Charge itself.
Removal of those specials and keeping ice? Probably not best, I'd say re-formulate the specials, maybe to function more closely way weapon elements did in PSU/PSO2, where the special attack will do the base damage + a % of the element damage based on the tier (burning, blazing / storm, tempest etc) which can allow for more diverse physical combat and not require MST to deal "just any damage whatsoever".
By Ice I assume you mean freeze specials. Generally the power of crowd control specials, including freeze, will be much lower than in original while remaining useful and requiring more specialisation to keep them relevant (such as the v50X units.) However since I'm not currently able to change the potency of CAST traps this will remain an issue high on priority list until I find some way to change their mechanics.
On the same vein, making fundamental changes to core game mechanics is just generally not something I can currently do. I am not a programmer you see and most of my work is done through tools provided to me by the community (mostly Soly tbh though ;3) so if in any way you can enable me in this regard that would be extremely helpful. Until then however I am going to make the best with what I currently have available to me and look into ways to extend my reach.
I don't think the complete removal of materials is such a good idea, I'd probably go more towards a reduced importance, maybe by further limiting how many a character can have used on them total and lowering the amount of bonus you can gain of any one stat by use of materials, so that by capping a per-stat raising, you prevent stacking everything onto a single stat and you can also spin it into preventing maximum use on all stats, for example, you could uniform it over all classes (except CASTs for MST and TP who will need a slightly different table) where each stat can have up to 20 materials put in maximum, BUT you only have a max total count of 90 (out of the 120 that would have otherwise been available to use on the non-HP/TP stats)
This is an interesting idea, however I still remain doubtful as to the importance of materials themselves as a mechanic. Especially since their exact functioning is never explained in-game, this serves as only yet another mechanic to trip up newer players or those that don't care to do research outside of the game, something that ideally would never be required but is unfortunately sometimes necessary depending on the game and it's depth.
Mags are a very good example of this, as there currently does not exist a way to "respec" your mag choices, which in original was also compounded by their asininely complex feeding stat distributions requiring exacting amounts of certain items to achieve an ideal mag which is not something you are likely to ever learn simply by playing the game.
While I cannot solve this problem entirely I can attempt to minimize it by removing certain mechanics that can be removed (such as materials) and providing easy to find and understand guides on mag raising, as well as simplifying the feeding process itself.
I will think on it some more though, and perhaps try your solution, however material mechanics would need to change as well as there currently isn't a way to restrict materials on a per type basis apart from HP/TP and then everything else being in separate pools. From what Soly has told me, this type of change would need to be server side and a total pain the ass as a result.
It's a good idea to re-work this, but don't overdo it, you might accidentally render class choice obsolete by doing so, especially if some of the other re-balances somehow happen not to work out as planned, for instance, you're almost turning a RAmarl into a FOmarl who can use bazookas and rifles and HUney into a FOney with giant swords, daggers and a Vjaya!
This is my prime concern with all of my changes in Reborn. The goal is more choice not less, and raising any single class above the rest is an obvious obstacle to this.
Addressing these specific concerns, there will always be a reason to choice a force over RAmarl when it comes to techs as they have no restrictions while RAmarl still has quite a few, while said FOney cannot use greatswords, daggers or partisans at all, and would be extremely ineffective at doing so with their paltry lowest-in-the-entire-game ATP, in-fact preventing them from using higher tier weapons that they do have access to (such as double sabers) due to never reaching the ATP requirements.
If this remains a concern of yours I would like it if you looked over
my spreadsheet and proof read it for any inconsistencies. There are probably a quite a few as the scope is quite wide and multiple eyes will help keep me on track.
Rethink your removals, because you might find yourself at a stage where you simply take too much away and don't put any equivalent functionality back in to make up for it. Go more in the direction of reductions in areas where you feel something is needless or too much.
Sometimes a reduction of a mechanic is not a complete solution for the problems it poses in the same way simply removing it is. Restrictions in games are often the things that make them
more interesting rather than less as it forces you out of your comfort zone and encourages you to adapt.
However I understand your point, PSO is a dead zombie game with no new content in the foreseeable future outside of projects like this that take time and, ultimately, may result in a reduction in total content rather than an increase which is damaging to the overall experience. I do have future plans for things like the addition of additional quests when I finally get round to learning Qedit, but for now my focus is on quality and not quantity.
Its partly why I decided to re-balance Blue Burst despite it being probably the least well balanced of the various versions of PSO. However it has more base content to work with that will mitigate this issue and mean less work later down the road.
Hopefully...
Either way, I'm not about to go cutting things anywhere and everywhere, each of my removals was a result of much personal thought and debate with my IRL friends as well as input from the community. Much like pruning a plant they should lead to a healthier game overall.
Again a fair point for the most part, though I would argue that there is no confusion or frustration with irrelevancies, people tend to just understand that at some point a particular setup become obsoleted with proper setups slowly becoming more geared towards other things, I just think that having the mid~late game option for a different method of higher risk and reward damage output would only serve to keep some of the diversity in the game And the point about the charge vulcans is lost in the fact that you're scrapping those anyway.
It is good to trust your player base to figure it out on their own, however good game design shouldn't require such an understanding although in reality its probably unavoidable especially in games with so many asymmetric options and values such as ARPGs.
However arguably since in original Mechguns were so important to basically every class their removal should lead to more variety and not less, and opens up players to try all of the other weapons their class has to offer. I may consider this in the future though when I see how the new ATP/DFP dynamic shapes up, Mechguns may already be far less potent than they originally were.
Thematically it still seems weird to me a swordsman would ever dual wield sub-machine guns. That seems very much like something only a Ranger would do to any real effect, no?
I feel the idea of techs being in any form weaker than a physical attack should be just null, as again, there is a resource cost and a bigger risk of being hit for using them with their slow casting times as well as physical aftercast cooldown before you can even move, especially problematic early game with techs like Gifoie which stop you for a long time with a minimal offering of range.
While i'd love to agree with this wholeheartedly there is one issue I cannot ignore: Shifta, Deband, Jellen & Zalure. These effects are so powerful that groups in original PSO would take a class which is, when you break it down, fundamentally useless in pretty much every other way, being a FOmar or FOmarl.
Since there are two types of Force, the ones who use weapons and techs and the ones who focus entirely on techs, these types must be balanced against each other as otherwise you would only ever want one of those types of force.
So if I made a FOney's techs more powerful than what a FOmar could do with a saber or double saber, what reason is there for FOmar to exist? They certainly don't outperform a FOney's techs after all.
Chalk it up to poor class design on the part of SEGA, I'm just doing my best to balance the current setup as best I can. And the only feasible way I can see to do that is to establish Force as a support class who's primary role is support. This is also true to the original design of Forces.
And as such their ability to deal damage needs to be limited by their own ability to support themselves. In Reborn A Fomar solo has about the same ATP as a HUcast solo when they cast Shifta, a FOney solo does about the same amount of DPS with techs as both of them. However when said FOmar casts Shifta on that HUcast things become very different. So Force damage is balanced around the baseline of the main DPS classes before they are buffed. Otherwise they would do more and Forces would be the new Hunters or the new Rangers.
I can get them very close to their damage, but it cannot exceed it, and techs cannot exceed the damage of the other Force's limited physical potential.
Beginning to see the issue here? Forces need to occupy a very specific part of the group dynamic that is somewhere between the two extremes of Hunters and Rangers. Anything else would lead to them being too powerful or completely useless for anything other than S/D/J/Z spam.
The only other option would be to remove Foney's and FOnewm's ability to support with S/D/J/Z, which I imagine would not be a very popular decision, I myself would also dislike this for that matter, but also is problematic for encouraging group diversity (less classes that provide support rather than more which was the original goal) and mechanically as Foney has hard coded support bonuses as part of their class.
Overall I think the current solution is the ideal one, Techs do very relevant damage and have unique interactions with monster defenses, as well as completely ignoring monster EVP, allowing them to deal with harder content far sooner than any other class. They also have incredible reach and can hit far more targets consistently than any other weapon in the game. To balance all of these very powerful and useful effects Tech users are generally much more fragile and unwieldy to avoid them completely steamrolling content.
The issue of Tech speed is also somewhat mitigated by making V801 a much easier to obtain unit that appears far earlier, much like battle units for physical classes.
I think maybe something more in the reaches of a 30% cap might be friendlier, and really, REALLY well sought after if you make the 20+ range really, really rare to get hold of.
Now this is something I can get behind completely. If I were to make the 20+ values of a similar rarity to the new 13* rarity items it would provide even more reasons to keep hunting for upgrades. This is probably something I will introduce at some point.
Vjaya would also become useless, although I wouldn't necessarily call that a bad thing.
