SimplyTHEBEST Posted:

That would make the hacker do plenty of damage (Most likely too much, if you factor in their close-second-best defense stat), but also rob the Hacker of any sort of unique or interesting play mechanics. We don’t want to do that.

The Hacker needs a buff, but when that buff comes it will be in the form of boosted base damage. The long refresh times are staying.

I agree entirely. The fact that hackers don’t play like a 1,2,1,2,1,2 clbum is one of the most interesting things about them. It does gimp them on speed runs, but ET posted that speedrunning is going to be clbum specific soon so that’s not a concern.

Some attacks perhaps should have their refresh times slightly reduced (putting 404 at a refresh of 4 or 5 wouldn’t end the world), and some should actually have their refresh times increased as a tradeoff for making them better (if avtr was actually an effective attack, but had a refresh time of 2 or 3, that would be just fine).

It would behoove ET to eventually introduce a second hacker combat tree so that they do something other than “attack for damage.” Each other clbum has at least one combat ability that makes them unique: Trolls can temporarily buff themselves, Camwhores can heal, Emo kids get more powerful as they get hurt *AND* they can come back from the dead… Hackers just have fancier animations for their attacks. Since the *only* thing right now that really makes hackers play in a unique way is the long refresh times.

zagerblag Posted:

I think avtr and flipr should be buffed and have their refreshes swapped. Also, it could be nice if Hackers got more varied abilities. I don’t know what you could have them do. Perhaps they could zombie other posters? This could be an Offense boost, or perhaps something else.

I think it would be interesting to have them do the inverse of what trolls do. While trolls have abilities that buff themselves (and hopefully eventually that tree of theirs will be fleshed out), Hackers could have abilities that debuff threads. Alternatively, a sort of “damage over time” ability is something the game should have eventually, and if there’s any natural place to put it, it would probably be a Hacker ability (deploying malicious code on a forum would do damage for longer than simply posting one thing that’s offensive, stupid, or full-of-drama, if you think about it.) Possibly Hackers could also have an attack that deploys some sort of worm that allows them to use somebody else’s computer for a time, which would have the in-game effect as “an attack that restores some PP.”

This is getting far afield, but a neat project for Ep3 development would be to give all clbumes unique combat abilities and mechanics so they do something other than “spam their most powerful attacks.” It would be neat, for example, if Camwhores had attacks that had the opposite mechanic as emo attacks, that is they do the most damage when your ego is full and they cost some ego to use, then buff up the camwhore healing abilities, so the end result is possibly that camwhores might want to spend a turn healing themselves even if it’s unnecessary to do so to simply “pwn the forum.” There’s lots of different directions we could go here.

Okay, here it is, the optimal Hacker Build. I’ve also included where to find the moar files Log in to see images!

Book:

I Almost Had Sex With a Woman: Memoirs of a Hacker Hero

Offense +10

PP +50

Glbumes:

Versnatche™ Earbleeders

Max Sexiness +600

Charisma +25

Offense +18

Defense +12

Hardware:

Beast0r High-Speed Cables

Defense +15

Offense +15

Luck +10

(x4)

Dogreat timesent:

INCIT photos to remove for being patently unfunny.sdoc

Luck +7

Defense +7

Offense +7

Frugality +7

Charisma +7

Suburban Gangsta Paradise

Audio:

pink floyd – darkside full album (ttly syncs w/ wzrd of oz at 2:43 awesome!!!).hear

Defense +30

Offense +30

Amish Gone Wilde

Trident Media – Theremin Edition

MY RIFLE IS THIS BIG

Hall of Faded Fame

Obscure Phobia Support Boards

Picture

Blood Spatter Art.xpeg

Max Ego +170

Defense +7

Offense +7

Max Douchebaggery +170

Geronimo! Official Forums

——————————————————————

Where Da Gold At (Map).xpeg

Defense +7

Offense +7

Frugality +7

Charisma +7

Great Firewall Of China

Internet Movie DoucheBags

Suburban Gangsta Paradise

Zombie Armageddon

Suburban Gangsta Paradise

Program:

useless program that only wastes space.exec

Max Ego +130

Defense +6

Offense +6

Cosplay Central

Dolphin Love

Fanfiction Freaks

God Hates Facts

Society For Creative Historical Revisionism

Teen Mommies

Video:

Riprogrammatori.1995.iTALiANo.cam.DiVERTi.LZ.YViD-iMC.divy

Luck +7

Defense +7

Offense +7

Charisma +7

Max Processing Power +160

Engrish Ressons

Hall of Faded Fame

Home of Male Objectors

From all that, you get 145 offense, congratulations!

WoweeZowee Posted:

The QFT thing may count as trolling, so you might want to avoid that.

Anyway, there are more balance issues than Trolls being overpowered, most of which seem to stem from the .moar file stat boosts:

*The increasing availability of top-tier .moar files has boosted Hacker damage the least, followed by Camwhore.

*Base Damage nerfs greatly decreased the effectiveness of the Camwhore, and the subsequent buffing of the forums (particularly with regard to making Defense more important) resulted in Camwhores being highly ineffective.

*The tying of Defense boosts to Offense boosts in .moar files has caused Emokids to take longer to reach peak Ego, with a result of slowing them down and wasting Tears while waiting.

*The increase in the Base Damage of Trolls and the decrease in the refresh times for their best attacks had them doing the most damage, and the rise of .moar files has noticeably exacerbated that problem.

TL;DR: Camwhores suck balls, Hackers got robbed, CZ won’t let Emokids cry anymore, and Trolls are ****ing beefed-up like the Fist of the North Star.

SimplyTHEBEST Posted:

TL;DR: Camwhores suck balls, Hackers got robbed, CZ won’t let Emokids cry anymore, and Trolls are ****ing beefed-up like the Fist of the North Star.

The question is, when will something be done?

I’m thinking that we might get a rebalance sooner if we come up with a list of changes to bring things back in line.

Well, I’m going to speak about my gameplay, without all this calcullus and stuff…

I’ve been in Hell. Playing as a troll in the beggining was like… Man, can’t even describe it… It was hard, it was expensive and it was lame. I almost dropped this char off ‘cause the difficult was insane. I relied too much in Ophelia (Recipes too, after Ep2 was bought), my stats was lame, haxl was already tired to see me… The whole game started to improve when I got level 25+. And, even so, I was still getting beaten as a ****, could’n even mantain a damn streak.

But, all of a sudden, the things started to get better as I got enough money to equip. And that took VERY long. Only at level 33 I could buy Tumorous Kidney. Versnatche only at level 35.

The fact is: the upping a troll is a damn hell. With my camwhore and my emo, I’ve beaten the game faster, got the best equips even faster and the whole process was a breeze. Unbalanced? May be… But only to compensate the true hell that maintaning a Troll is.

Just my two cents in this awesome thread.

MagusDiablo Posted:

Well, I’m going to speak about my gameplay, without all this calcullus and stuff…

I’ve been in Hell. Playing as a troll in the beggining was like… Man, can’t even describe it… It was hard, it was expensive and it was lame. I almost dropped this char off ‘cause the difficult was insane. I relied too much in Ophelia (Recipes too, after Ep2 was bought), my stats was lame, haxl was already tired to see me… The whole game started to improve when I got level 25+. And, even so, I was still getting beaten as a ****, could’n even mantain a damn streak.

But, all of a sudden, the things started to get better as I got enough money to equip. And that took VERY long. Only at level 33 I could buy Tumorous Kidney. Versnatche only at level 35.

The fact is: the upping a troll is a damn hell. With my camwhore and my emo, I’ve beaten the game faster, got the best equips even faster and the whole process was a breeze. Unbalanced? May be… But only to compensate the true hell that maintaning a Troll is.

Just my two cents in this awesome thread.

You do know how deliveries work, right? Pwning the same forum multiple times in the same day lowers your deliveries, and you might want to take a look at your Luck.

MagusDiablo Posted:

Well, I’m going to speak about my gameplay, without all this calcullus and stuff…

I’ve been in Hell. Playing as a troll in the beggining was like… Man, can’t even describe it… It was hard, it was expensive and it was lame. I almost dropped this char off ‘cause the difficult was insane. I relied too much in Ophelia (Recipes too, after Ep2 was bought), my stats was lame, haxl was already tired to see me… The whole game started to improve when I got level 25+. And, even so, I was still getting beaten as a ****, could’n even mantain a damn streak.

But, all of a sudden, the things started to get better as I got enough money to equip. And that took VERY long. Only at level 33 I could buy Tumorous Kidney. Versnatche only at level 35.

The fact is: the upping a troll is a damn hell. With my camwhore and my emo, I’ve beaten the game faster, got the best equips even faster and the whole process was a breeze. Unbalanced? May be… But only to compensate the true hell that maintaning a Troll is.

Just my two cents in this awesome thread.

To be honest, I’ve played all the clbumes, and found troll to be one of the easiest. Srs. If it was that difficult for you, its not because of the balance, it was because you didn’t know how to manage the clbum. Ture hell? Have you even seen a permanoob?

zagerblag Posted:

Why won’t they let our equipment advantage matter!?

Poor planning, tbh. When Ep2 launched the Hacker was vastly overpowered, and CZ responded by nerfing it down until it was still powerful but more in line with the other clbumes.

Until .moar files launched. With the ability to add +50 offense to every clbum hackers suddenly started to be outpaced by clbumes with higher base damage. Meanwhile, trolls went from being slightly overpowered to being god tier.

Now that we have itembuildr we’re seeing hackers being left further behind while trolls leap further ahead.

Again, I need to crunch the numbers later to issue revised stats based on the usage of the Master Ball.