Admins attention!!!

I sincerely hope its a bug and not a result of ur sneaky actions. My aug "Aku KoQuii" has transformed its setting from 80 vis to 50. It happened just few hours ago for no apparent reason. Now I have just paid for that aug lots of credits and have just equipped it on a very expensive ship with other very expensive augs and within few hours the aug's setting have magically changed. That's not fair you could've waited for a reset at least. Now I insist on some form of compensation such as (a) restore the aug's setting; or (b) refund the credits i paid for it and remove it from my ship so i can put in something else; or (c) refund the price of my ship and augs so i can buy everything new and start again. In any case, I'd like an explanation asap.

Or atleast give us some damn warning about these kind of things!
I put some Qokujis on a locution, and now i find out that even an exc stealth would have been better than that. So i have just wasted 1.1 bil on a now crappy ship!

Not exactly. 96% and 75% are much different in terms of stealth.... my snowflake is a big hunk of crap now, which, btw, had too high vis in the first place compared to its number of aug slots....

A change from -80 to -50 is a major nerf, not a minor one, in my opinion. The effect on visibility is a change from a vis multiplier of .2 to a vis multiplier of .5 (ignoring aug tweaking, but that doesn't really improve the difference). That is a change of .5/.2, which means it was nerfed by a factor of 2.5, which would be a dealbreaker for many/most people using the aug at all.

Now, I won't argue that the aug didn't need nerfing at all... -80 seems a bit much to me, but changing it to -50 is quite drastic, given the above math.

Now that it has been nerfed, at least lower the vis of snowflake to maybe 6 or so, it was bad before, now its complete shit. And the augs shouldn't be lowered that much seeing the decent size economy on them in game (Tech 10 and costing 500m for some). Now they have stealth the size of a minor stealth of tech 0. TECH 0 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Lets see, waste 400m on a ur ik aug, or spend 10k on a minor stealth. Damn, aint that a tought decision...

Yeah the Ur'Ik augs were balanced because they weren't easy to get. Next thing you know they'll nerf ares athena and zeus, so we can all have a laugh about that too.

Yes, I can imagine it now....

"Selling Zeus aug, 5m!"

"Stats?"

"+10 dam"

Sorry, it isn't if they're equipped onto a ship with all the other aug slots taken.


Unlike shields / engines and so on, they are impossible to unequip - so altering them effectively renders not only that aug reduced, but reduces the availability of both other augs & ship. SS has a unique system in that you have to make a serious choice when you install augs, because they are permanent - the ship and augs become a single unit.

Sorry, but it simply is NOT on in a p2p game to alter something so fundamental with no notice and no chance to change it. In the case of the Ako Koquii (40% elec -80% vis) the aug is nearly always used in the place of a good elec, so the change is hardly important. No-one uses the other firing one at all (it is simply a useless augmenter, unless you're building a very specialised locution). However, in the case of the Qokuji (60% shield 20% damage -80% vis) it is in the "God class" of augs - rendering it a fairly big choice whether to use it or not. It is also almost identical to another augmenter (athena obviously) making the choice between the two even more important to make.

Your 'minor' unannounced change renders two weeks work, a large amount of credits, a rare aug (ares) and an extremely rare aug (zeus) worthless. The Equan is the pilot 20 ship that naturally has a low visibility, so is the only one that people (not only myself) would consider using this aug on. -80% is a very handy additon, effectively making a stealth pilot 20 ship. -50% means that it still is seen by all good players & all AI even with a cloak. Instead of raising its tec level (as you should have done) you chose to reduce it. Without warning.



Sorry, its not on - its simply unacceptable to make such sweeping changes without considering what it will do to the player base. And this isn't the same issue as Fwings, at all - they were a two-a-penny glaringly obvious game imbalance of low level impact, that had weeks of discussion on the forums. In that case, a fairly easy to reach bar was simply raised, effecting only your non-paying players. I'm sure I'm not the only one with the configuration above (I can think of two more) - but, personally, the amount of work & effort (under duress, attack, attempts to ruin it etc) and inability to replace it makes my position in SS pointless. Yes, there are four teams at the moment cranking out pilot 20 ships, but guess what? There's a couple of independants (well, I've a few dependants, but that's different) making them too. They can produce replacements (I've had offers already) but again, the dev team seem to have a fundamental inability to consider the "normal" player, so blinded by Tobal & DWO's shining lights. I find it highly ironic that I most certainly leave a game I've chosen to spend money on & support because of your actions, rather than the player base - that's very, very rare for me. And its not due to the dev team being lazy, or uncaring or obnoxious people: its because they seemingly fail to think things through in terms of impact.


Oh, and if you want to know the next massive headache you'll be facing? Over-production & low level usage of pilot 20 ships. The tec 19 ones are never seriously used for combat anyhow, tec 18 don't even exist and you've got level 350's in Paxes now. (Actually, 241 is the current record). Which means that, again, you'll have the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' - tec 20 ships & god augs for level 350's effectively end this game as any way playable in terms of balancing issues. PvP is ruined (more so than with the current broken PvP rules), AI balancing simply goes out the window (need I say - Copper, Pax, MF Faranji Flowers?) and so on. New players won't stand a chance unless existing players doll out ruin gear for free (which I've been effectively doing). I could easily see this at the end of last uni, but a select few of the player base (and base additions) have easily kept up with strengthening the "uber" AI.


Still debating whether to remain here - its a solid gold product, the dev team seem to be dedicated nice people (although I'd suggest that pm's to bug reports be a little less curt, its a total turn off to report something that the player shouldn't have to deal with and get such dismissive replies), and the core is a cracking one. But its currently got massive problems, that are probably going to get worse. And, no, I'm not talking about Tobal, I'm talking about in game mechanics issues - its 70/30 atm leave / stay - its not something that will be swayed by players (although there are many nice players here along with the yobbos). Basically, I'm not sure if the game can handle the three major flaws I can see atm. Which is a shame, because as an independant project, the dev team deserve nothing but praise - and nice feraris maybe sometime in the future.



We'll see. Giving it a weeks rest anyhow, see if I miss it enough.


[edited for spelling & removed any reference to beta visa vie Nuro's wishes]

my eyes hurt.

Go Tommy Vercetti!!

On topic - I see your point with the aug. It is described as permanent upgrade. nuff said.

Not exactly true bout the thing about beta. Tobal wasn't in beta. Death was only around lvl 40 in beta. I was here for most of beta and am still low lvl. Reason why? In beta, you died, you died, and got the fun of restarting all over again. Not until the game was right about to go p2p was this changed. So would you stop saying "if you weren't in beta you can't do anything" because it is not entirely true at all.

I was actually around level 140ish when beta ended.

Which, coincidently, was 1 month after the no skill loss system was added. Remember cause we built serens with adonis gear which I actually still use. Might not be as good as other augs combos, but its still fun.