Q: Will Omniframes have Certain skills locked behind weight class?

[Dean Cyrus]

I ask becuase if certain omni frame weight will affect the skill types we put on hotbars or will there be genral class starting points like in firefall for from to choose from say if i choose light i would get longshot class, melee class, and some caster class and medium will be healer, assault, and dps and heavy would be speed tank, denfender tank, and slow tank?

i just wanted to ask if we be will skill gated or will we be skyrim choice based for characters and the weight class will only affect health pool, defense, resistances, versatility, and weapon choices?

 

[Ronyn]

I believe you will find your answer on this link.

 

[Dean Cyrus]

I believe you will find your answer on this link.

thank you for the link i had research this page in depth a bit but i just needed a little clarification on the whole way it would work for each weight if there would be a defined role for each arch type build or would we be able to use skill from other weights or would there be cross function weight skills.

But after reading a bit more i found a better understanding of what is to come i just need to read it some more its just that i dont see a mention of what is specail about light and medium only heavy :/

 

[MattHunX]

Light: "Suited for stealth, sniper and engineering tasks. Light omniframes can be customized for loadouts ranging from support to rapid strike, and covert operations."

Standard: "Flexible with well-rounded, multi-role capabilities. Standard omniframes have the option to duel wield weapons. They retain high mobility while providing firepower and protection."

Damn it! That's a tossup, for me.

Hard to decide which one to go for. Prefer all of that.

 

[Terricon4]

All details are subject to change based on testing and experience. If they find giving a tank a healing gun is still balanced and also fun (and doesn't require additional animation/or other working depending on how the different frames vary for said weapon) then we may very well get it. I'm a fan of the almost complete customization styles like Armored Core or Chrome Hounds. You can do just about anything you want no matter how crazy, but realisticly a lot of them while fun, aren't that practical do to weight, accuracy, speed, or other issues.

I recall making an artillery mech in Chrome Hounds that had an insane amount of firepower... couldn't move, it was just too heavy.

Made a light hover chassis with quad sniper cannons... you can imagine how steady the sights were for those off balanced oversized things, and how the recoil was after just a single shot.

More practical was the melee spikes build on a light chassis in small amounts so you had the speed to get up close, or a low speed artillery platform with modest firepower (greater power, less accuracy/longer reloads/slower movement generally), a fast command and control unit with medium armor and only two light machineguns so the enemies had a hard time finding and destroying our command unit (I also had one that doubled as an arty unit and while far slower, could support the team more).

I like options, and if they make their assets plug and play and have some inherent ups/downs for anything you stick on it then we might get more than we expect now. Nothing like making one new gun or game asset and having players be able to use it on hundreds of frame variations rather than ten or something, makes your work go a lot further. For abilities, having a core processing unit that you fit that gives you a boost to the power of all X type of ability would be understandable for example. Yes you can have afterburner on your tank, but don't expect it to fly you nearly as far/fast as on heavy melee frame that focuses on mobility over taking hits, and especially not as much as a light mobility focused frame.

 

[NobodyHereNow]

Nice

 

[Gatestrider_n3Kro]

After the reveal, I have to admit that the system is a bit more restrictive than I initially thought. So, small frame will focus on mobility and dual wield melee, medium frame will dual wield secondary weapon, and large frame will focus on shield defense.

Personally, I don't see the point of imposing such restriction on frames. Reactor size and power should be the limiting factors, along with frame specific augmentation. Equiping everything you want as long as you can carry it would be awesome for customization.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

After the reveal, I have to admit that the system is a bit more restrictive than I initially thought. So, small frame will focus on mobility and dual wield melee, medium frame will dual wield secondary weapon, and large frame will focus on shield defense.

Personally, I don't see the point of imposing such restriction on frames. Reactor size and power should be the limiting factors, along with frame specific augmentation. Equiping everything you want as long as you can carry it would be awesome for customization.

Limiting just the reactor would cause serious balance problems.
An light frame sniper with an 50k watt output of a heavy frame that that you can revert 90% of the power into your offence system. Imagine what serious dmg it start to cause with an massive cooldown on it deadshot ability.

Sure fun being OP but game breaking for the others.

 

[Terricon4]

Ya, you got to mix and match it all with more variables than just power, and design each part with it's own basic limits.

Weight applies to everything from armor type, gun size/weight, all of that stuff. Accuracy recoil can also be affected by speed and frame weight limits, cram too many abilities or an oversized reactor onto a light frame and it might not be that fast anymore.

Also boosting ability recharges is nice, but they should probably have maximum charge speeds before they'd just burn out, so if you have a power shunt sending 90% of power to recharge abilities, no you can't just socket one ability and expect it to recharge virtually instantly since it'd get all that power. If a player wants only two abilities that recharge faster over say three that gives them more flexibility or options then okay, but keep it within reason by basic limits on each item. And not the annoying exponential curve of falloffs type, people feel inclined to game those to still push the limit that little bit, this tends to be less fun than just having a basic reasonable wall in place when building, and also makes balance a lot harder to manage.

Also while the heavy frame might have all the strength in the world, that doesn't mean it could stop on a dime if it loads up on tons of everything. Besides still having a hard cap it will still end up being relatively slow, while also being a larger easier to hit target that can't fly or get around as well making it harder to engage others. A light frame could normally fly up to a kaiju and shoot it's spine easily, a heavy frame might only just manage by default. Load it up a ton and sure you might have an impressive gun with a lot of damage but you just won't be able to overcome all the extra weight within the limits of the jets meaning you can't fight those types of enemies very well. Now if you are just standing at a base with a clear field of vision at enemies charging at you through a valley you may do awesome with that frame. So in this case you can specialize a lot, be good and flexible, but in the end you always still have caps to keep you within reason (that super heavy one still doesn't deal more dmg than a lighter heavy frame with the same gun, it just has the gun AND the armor in it's case).

 

[Rocketeer593]

Aye, hard caps are definitely going to be required for power allocation balancing, and the different frame weights having a standard at which they are very similar in terms of DPS, but having heavier frames having more base durability and power cap with less mobility is ideal as well. I hope this system of three different frame weights doesn't turn out to make the game an unbalanced mess like Tribes: Ascend is currently.

 

[Rocket]

I really like this idea that they might enforce attributes via weight classes. This in turn would require locking some skill sets to weight classes whilst leaving other skills open. Archetypes, in a nutshell. The benefit of doing it via weight classes is that it leaves nothing to individual interpretation. It just needs some boundaries, physics be damned. In fact it's all about boundaries. The same thing that allows us to pilot cars on roads in opposite directions in close proximity without anyone getting hurt.

If that be the case, we can avoid situation like we had in Firefall where the heaviest class was capable of the fastest movement, which should never have happened. And hopefully, it will prevent the same situation we had in Tribes, where the heaviest class could move faster than any other (Mass contributing to inertia, hello skiing) and totally change intended map dynamics (Assuming skilled players. And yes, we had plenty).

You can still have a fuck load of customization and creative implementation within such boundaries. These things are not mutually exclusive.