Balanced Perk Requirements

[human_gs]

While there are plenty of thread about perk levelling, I wanted to make one about an overall look of the balance changes needed for both for the requirements as for the rewards, but not directly to the weapons.

WARNING: LONG POST

A) Requirements. I don't have anything against perks taking forever to level, but at least they should all take roughly the same time:

1) Some Perks just level way faster:
Even if you don't use any mutator some of them will take a lot more time. For example I levelled sharp very quickly while the commando is taking me forever.
This could be solved by simply taking a test of time spent and changing the number accordingly, but then again not all perks level proportionally in different occasions.

2)Some perks level way faster on some circumstances:
There are different kinds of requirements of which the most common is damage dealt. This requirement changes along with the difficulty: While the damage output of a weapon doesn't change, ZEDs will take longer to fall so before having to aim at a different enemy you will have gathered more damage. Also faster and stronger ZEDs will get at close range and surround you faster, giving you even higher DPS. At last, waves will contain more mobs with higher hitpoints, so you will have levelled more before the trader pause that lasts 1 minute in all difficulties
On the other hand, the stalker body count will take less time on beginner as you rush through waves looking just for easy kills.
Damage requirements are also very easy to fulfil with the bloated mutator since the bloat gets no resistance but still has a ****load of hp.
The last problem can be easily solved by removing perk levelling on these mutators, although allowing usage (I found a mutator for this, but it's updated only to version 1.008 and makes every player have the same level chosen by the admin instead of his own).
However you can't just remove difficulty settings so TW will have to reform a lot of the level requirements (for commando and support I'm taking in account both the damage count and the other one) so they take approximately an X amount of time that varies with the difficulty. For some that means merely changing some values but there are some exceptions:

-Sharp headshots: The description for this one is tricky, for this perk doesn't really count headshots, mind you, but head blowing shots. So no matter the difficulty or damage dealt, there you can only get as many of these as there are enemies. That means that higher difficulties are worse for levelling as stronger ZEDs need softening up before you can blow it's head off.
I thought of counting any headshot like it says on the description but that would only cause players to use other perks for levelling sharp as you have significantly lower head dmg and are able to land multiple headshots on each ZED. So I came up with counting damage dealt to the head. However to make a difference between difficulties only the dmg necessary for beheading should be counted, while extra damage would be useless, making small ZEDs almost useless for levelling as sharp is meant to focus on big ones (despite EBR being able to sweep through anything). Just an idea though, I'm not sure about it would work properly.

-Medic Healing: It's the only requirement that needs allies and it should be that way. It should also be the the only that doesn't depend on difficulty as much as it depends on teamplay as the perk is more orientated. So it should be balanced accordingly to what the other perk take to level up on hard/normal (the "middle" difficulties).

-Stalker kills. This requirement makes little sense for solo as you will end up killing the same amount no matter the perk, but since commando is fairly bad on solo compared to sharp, support or medic with crossbow, I guess it makes some sense as you will take more stalkers than the rest of the team if you can spot them earlier (considered there's not a firebug spreading or a demo nuking everything). However rather than making it a body count, it should count damage dealt to stalkers (only the necessary to kill them like for the SS) so it changes according to the difficulty.

-Support welding: Actually this is pretty balanced right now. The amount of hp you weld usually varies with the difficulty like the healing for the medic, but not proportionally as it depends on your tactics. So if anything, it should be stated a value so it takes a similar time of playing as support than it takes to level other perks on normal/hard difficulty. Test should be taken for both this one and the medic requirement to get a good estimate.

-I also thought that firebug should require damage against weak ZEDs, which are supposed to be it's speciality, but currently he gains a lot of it by setting medium/strong ones on fire as they burn for longer.

I would prefer if the playing time required for perks would be higher but it's much more important to balance it first, then make changes and add new features.

I'll be adding the rewards part later, but I'll just start saying they should be balanced as well and mostly lowered, as player skills are already enough reward for playing. Also the discounts are just ridiculous, all levels should get a minor 30% discount on perk weapons so cheap guns don't become obsolete.

 

[PurpleXVI]

Personally, I find that almost all the requirements make sense... but some of them are just absurd in how much they require you to DO!

I mean, ideally, I feel that for the ones with two different requirements, they should top out about the same time if you play naturally, but they really don't. Sometimes you just barely get any Stalkers at all and, what, if you're lucky there are MAYBE 70-something Stalkers in a single Long/Normal match. Assuming you get them all(which is a pretty big if when playing with five other people, some of whom may be commandos themselves) you have a hell of a lot of Stalkers to kill.

I don't mind the welding requirement on Support but... on most maps, welding is pretty much optional, and on some maps, like West London, there's practically no welding going on in 90% of the fights. So I always find myself having to grind welding at the end of getting my shotgun damage up.

Those two really just need to be adjusted downwards.

Sharpshooter headshots: Just count head-removals even when they're not kills? That'd limit how many you can get, and still mean that it's the headshots that count. I mean, I know I miss a lot of 9mm sharp points because I pop off Clot and Gorefast heads without killing them instantly.

Medic's the only perk I've seen people level up in a reasonable amount of time, Demo also has some issues because you don't get a demo weapon for a round or two, most likely, and then you need to be careful where you fire, and you have very limited ammo compared to the rest of the team. I think the damage reqs. there should be somewhat lower.

Same goes for the Firebug, since a Firebug between levels 0 and 2 is essentially a useless drag on his team. So those levels should breeze past.

Maybe instead of actual welding HP provided for doors, support should get points for how much damage is done to his welded doors(and require less welding) so only useful welds matter, or something?

 

[HaTeMe]

but since commando is fairly bad on solo compared to sharp, support or medic with crossbow

Bad? Commando is good, and also one of the most balanced perks with the exaception of godly stalker kill requirement.

I cant be bothered to read all that but let me give a few comments about "perk leveling balance".

So yes, Sharpshooter is easiest by far, you get level 6 pretty much automatically no matter what perk you play. Hell, you could be leveling commando and be level 6 SS before you are lvl 3 commando.. And like I said, the stalker requirement is just horribly frustrating, I had ALL perks level 6 except commando for months, and I still have only lvl 5 commando then I gave up. Playing solo is boring, and on random pub games those stupid teammates always steal your stalkers. Every other perk levels up quite painfully but looking for and killing those stalkers feels like a job you dont want to do, it was like doing house chores or something, lol..

They should add a damage requirement for SS (with LAR/M14/Xbow/HC) at least.

I guess it makes some sense as you will take more stalkers than the rest of the team if you can spot them earlier

Except that they ALWAYS seem to appear when you are reloading and then some noob picks them up for you. Then you smile, tap his back and say thank you.