Drug$

[Lanze]

Just a quick question. If more than half your body is made up of implants, are the drug penalties not as bad? I just don't see how muscle relaxers would effect you as much if your arms, legs, brain, and heart, and lungs aren't organic to begin with.

[TalonCzar]

This is an excellent and long overdue change. This should make a nice impact on reducing the 'combat tax' for players to duke it out in the streets. Lowering the cred barrier for entry to an average engagement is a good thing.

But this is a game, and games need balance. In the old days, drugs were used to help bring weaker characters up to a reasonable level so that oldbies didnt just win all the time.

But we're not in the golden oldies. And oldbies already shit all over new characters in so many different ways it's not even funny. Drugs do not change that. See Trooper's post.

The more you nerf drugs, the more oldbies will dominate any other character, and thus move the game further from balance

This is a problem with uncapped skill gains and decade old characters. Drugs are totally irrelevant to this point.

If you want people with max stats to win everytime, then so be it, they will. But if you want other characters to have a chance, let them use drugs to bring up their own stats.

If you want other characters to have a chance against oldbies, then the issue of super overcapped stats needs to be addressed. Right now, if you take a 10 year character of the game and pit them against a day one character, the day one character is going to lose the vast majority of time time, just off my own experiences. You give each equal gear, chrome, drugs, etc. and test this all day. Unless the newbie gets amazingly lucky with an early crit, bigger numbers win. This is a stats-based RPG, afterall. Numbers matter.

not to mention bumping up your endurance etc isnt going to stop you from getting beat the shit up by an oldbie or help you dodge their attacks. the tricks to beating an oldbie as a group of newbies hasnt really changed

This +1.

Overcapped dodge and overcapped weapons skills are the biggest offenders here, seconded by simply having bigger health pools due to... well, you know. The obvious. If you take some of the more dodge-focused older characters and pit them against newer characters, I think you'll find that due to overcapping, new characters simply can't even reliably land hits on the veteran.

[TalonCzar]

Just a quick question. If more than half your body is made up of implants, are the drug penalties not as bad? I just don't see how muscle relaxers would effect you as much if your arms, legs, brain, and heart, and lungs aren't organic to begin with.

In my experience, certain drugs are impacted to a greater or lesser extent than others by the amount of chrome you are running. I don't think that the drug in question of this topic was one of the ones that was greatly impacted by your chrome load.

[Rain]

Just a quick question. If more than half your body is made up of implants, are the drug penalties not as bad? I just don't see how muscle relaxers would effect you as much if your arms, legs, brain, and heart, and lungs aren't organic to begin with.

Normal drugs and withdrawals do work that way, the drug interaction penalties happen to predate that code though and don't. I'll address that when I update the system.

I'm actually doing some proper work on drugs because of this change (to get them off the character pulse, give them minimum/slightly more predictable durations, etc), so that should be soon ish.

[dicanomi]

Implying that somehow drug use is exclusive to new characters and oldbies are living peaceful, drug free lives. News flash, drugs benefit everyone. Take drugs today!

You can absolutely still use drugs to up your stats. Now you just have to make a choice between two in particular.

I've used drugs on every new character to fight oldbies. It's an affective strategy. Most oldbies dont consider newbies a threat and don't bother taking drugs.

But my original point was that I thought guts weren't a depressant. They've always seemed more like a stimulant to me.

This is a problem with uncapped skill gains and decade old characters. Drugs are totally irrelevant to this point.

Oldbies didn't even start using drugs til my new character killed their decade old character. Drugs have always been used like that, in all my years of cs. New characters took drugs to fight established characters, and most established characters were too lazy to bother.

So drugs shouldnt be relevant, logically, but humans seldom behave logically and drugs get to be relevant on cs. They always have been.

[Anaphora]

dicanomi Joined: 28 Nov 2006 07:52 anti-drug change

kunoichi Joined: 19 Dec 2018 23:29 pro-drug change
TalonCzar 29 Jan 2018 01:01 pro-drug change

Are you really worried about newbies? Because the newbies speaking up in this thread don't seem worried.

[Kunoichi]

dicanomi Joined: 28 Nov 2006 07:52 anti-drug change

kunoichi Joined: 19 Dec 2018 23:29 pro-drug change
TalonCzar 29 Jan 2018 01:01 pro-drug change

Are you really worried about newbies? Because the newbies speaking up in this thread don't seem worried.

My actual join date is sometime in 2009, but otherwise I think I still count as a newbie in terms of total time spent in game.

[Jack_Spade]

!

[Pennywise]

While I applaud your verbosity, and your flair for the dramatic, remind me what this has to do with $drugs?

[Jack_Spade]

[Timegrinder]

Copy your initial reply out to a new thread in the 'Meta' board, then the posts in this one will be deleted.