Add value to PvE: Solve the Emaljian Bone Tissue Knot by Rebalancing Defensive Values

[GoldenGecko]

What is the Emaljian Bone Tissue Knot? It is the conundrum that the only two materials worth farming are emalj and guard fur. Starvault seems to think the problem with PvE is that we just need more mobs. NO I SAY! What we need is a material rebalance.

An illustration of the problem​

From this illustration, which is pretty close to in game values, we can see that the bone tissue set is only 7% less defense than the ironbone set. The emalj set has 1.4% less defense than the ironbone set. Why are these mobs even in the game if their materials are so useless!

I'm a PvE Bob. I'm not ashamed to admit it. As a bob I know that no other bobs like to do inefficient things. Starvault will never bring in PvE and farming oriented players by adding new mobs. You have to add reason and value to farming. I enjoy farming sulfur and metal in rust not because hitting rocks is emergent gameplay, but because I know what I'm doing is helping my team win. You're not helping your team win if you kill anything other than pigs or bears.

Solution
Nerf vendor armor
Nerf Bone Tissue/Emalj to the current vendor armor values
Keep Molarium/ironbone/incisium as is


Effect
More people will be out in the world - More PvP
Your PvE will actually get tested
Butchery will have more value
PvE will have more value
jungle books will have more value

​

 

[Teknique]

Its good that things are less grindy, but perhaps we've gone a little too far in that direction

 

[GoldenGecko]

Sandbox MMOs have to be balanced around the grind. If the grind is minimal then there needs to be a wipe cycle, low TTK, and no safety for the wealth you accumulate. Why even have a full loot game if there is no such thing as scarcity. Here is how it goes when I kill a player.

Loot armor -> If its not steel/cronite then delete it, because I already have 30 sets worth of ironbone and emalj banked

Loot wep -> Not steel or tungsteel? Not above 80% dura? Delete it. I've already got 30 steel and tungsteel swords in my bank

Loot refining mats -> Delete them because they're probably too heavy for me to carry back to town​

Why am I even looting a player if my next step is to delete their stuff because their items have so little value. Im feelin real good when I kill someone who has a full kit in rust. Even looting a low tier item like a SAR or DB makes me happy. I'm taking their stuff. I want it. In mo2? Eh. Theres not much reason to pvp. Its just RDM. I don't feel anything when I kill a player or die with my full kit, because I know it doesn't have much value.

Is MO2 a sandbox game like Eve or Archeage? Or is it reign of kings. I don't mind either way, but this half and half game isn't going to work for either subset of players.

 

[Bloodterst]

Yeah gearing feels a bit meh.

I think it would feel better if animal parts had a tier feel to it like

Spoiler: this

but better planned ofc.


edit: isnt ironbone way better yield compared to molarium? if so i dont really agree on putting that above mol in tier.

edit2: could also make bone better for pierce but worse slash, teeth better slash but worse pierce to spice it up a little.

 

[[AF]Tyrone]

+1 bone tissue/emalj gear meta sucks. SV shouldn't cater to bitter vets who can only be bothered to be poke for pvp.

 

[MolagAmur]

I agree there needs to be a material rebalance. (even though im afraid of that outcome at this point). As far as scarcity goes...you need to remember this is a beta. You are basically on free farm because majority of people already farmed up what little materials they need and they just log in to PvP every now and then. If the population is healthy when things actually matter...you're going to go through those steel swords and materials much more frequently.

Having said that. I agree the game needs a feeling of scarcity. And it will...it will never be steel though. Thats cron/tung/ogh.

I do want to bring up I would like to see higher tier leathers and such as well. Metals are bis for everything but a mage...which is bland. Mage gear is always so cheap...they need more light-weight high tier materials they can shoot for.

 

[Teknique]

gear needs to be a bit scarce otherwise its dumb.

 

[Morwen]

Although I agree bone armors are OP I think you need to compare them to actually steel gear which is 67 def right? and from 48 bone tissue to 67 now there is difference.

Nerfing bone tissue to the ground might make new players to dont bother with the grind and quit the game.

Being able to get a pig carcass and have some okaish armor (which still is very low on defense compared to steel) isnt bad imo.

I would be ok with SV nerfing bone armors but I dont think increasing that grind will help to the game.

 

[Teknique]

Although I agree bone armors are OP I think you need to compare them to actually steel gear which is 67 def right? and from 48 bone tissue to 67 now there is difference.

Nerfing bone tissue to the ground might make new players to dont bother with the grind and quit the game.

Being able to get a pig carcass and have some okaish armor (which still is very low on defense compared to steel) isnt bad imo.

I would be ok with SV nerfing bone armors but I dont think increasing that grind will help to the game.

Steel to bone isn’t a great comparison due to the stam penalties.

if there was no stam penalty then sure

 

[MolagAmur]

Steel to bone isn’t a great comparison due to the stam penalties

laughs in Oghmir

Also the steel has higher defense with the tradeoff of stamina regen. Isn't that the point when comparing to bone? Or am I being an idiot right now. Its been a long day...

I think bone tissue needs nerfed a bit yeah. I do think that there needs to be an easy route for half-decent armor for newer players. I remember always feeling so bad when I saw a guy running around in Vendor armor. It was literally useless and they spent money on it...

 

[Ibarruri]

It is quite evident that all materials need to be re-released.
Especially the armor.
It is rumored that they could do it soon.

 

[Kaemik]

It's even worse than your graphs show (Well you have the data but it's a bit less obvious in this format). Look at this:




This is scales but it holds true for bone too. If you add up all 3 protection values and divide it by weight you get a stat I call "Protection Per Weight". As you can see in this example with scales, that goes up as material weight goes down.

So there are situations in which lighter materials are arguably BETTER than heavier materials depending on what you were going for.

My proposal, group materials into classes like bone, scale, stone, metal etc.

Make most of those materials tiered. They all have the same weight but higher tiers are straight better. It's ridiculous how good armor made from the pigs outside town is compared to some of the best materials in the game. Particularly high tier bones, scales, leathers, furs, etc.

 

[GoldenGecko]

Wow, thank you for that wonderful addition Kaemik. I hadn't thought about it from the weight perspective. It's a shame to see that data on plate scales as well. A metric ton more work for miniscule gain.

 

[Anachroniser]

I understand why SV balanced lower tier materials to be closer to the higher tier materials, but I think it went a bit too far. The differences are now so minute that tung is hardly preferable to steel in some cases (in some it seems worse even). The greater stam penalty from heavy armor also incentivizes cheap light armor sets and penalizes most every higher tier material. Most of all though is the quality of incredibly available materials like bone tissue emalj and fullgrain leather. They are just about the worst materials in the game. Using them should feel like you're pretty much naked and yet bone tissue weapons and armor are able to kill bears and hunter lizards with ease, and those are about the hardest pve we currently have. In mo1, bone tissue and emalj armor and weapons were comparable to what the vendors offered, sometimes even worse. It should return to that. There should be a notable improvement in gear quality as time per set is invested, and currently that isnt there. flakestone is not much better than emalj and is pretty much on par with molarium despite being much harder to get than either. Ironbone is still incredibly easy to get so long as you have a mount but isnt that much better than the bone tissue that can be gotten in less than a tenth the time. The same holds true for quality leather. I didnt like the extent of gear crutching in mo1. Steel weapons shouldnt feel useless against tung armor. There should be some consideration to wearing tung armor other than whether or not you can afford it. However, this has simply gone too far in the direction of discouraging higher tier mats, especially heavier armor mats and creating almost no incentive to make higher tier materials. The exception is still cron as cron armor is great, but who is going to wear a full cron set out to fight a group of people who are collectively wearing 3g in gear?