Force Drain in duels and in general

[svein_c]

I havent gotten the game yet but if someone uses drain cant u just run over and chop him down? Im Just speculating?

[Kurgan]

Absorb counters grip, lightning, drain, etc.. that's why it's good, and you can toggle it on and off, use wisely and this isn't a problem. Rapping on the drain key all the time doesn't guarentee victory.

 

Incidentally, if everyone is so uptight about a certain player.. why not try voting them off the server when it's clear they won't stop?

[jedialphaknight]

Kurgan, you can't just vote them off, multiple people do it.

 

Here is the thing, DRAIN should do ONE thing, DRAIN, not HEAL that person, if drain took their mana right? then it would be ok..here is why, if the OTHER opponent is LIGHT and they ABUSED heal, and your like damn it this guy is getting annoying, you drain him, he has no mana. I noticed in a lot of servers, people would do like..bare drains, like drain every 5 seconds to get as much health as possible, if you just let drain take mana, then it would be even..think about it.

[Sartis]

I'll say this again, you want Drain to do one thing, prepare for Absorb to do one thing too, right now all of you that are complaining that Drain does two things and how unfair it is. Take a look at your Absorb it protects from force power and gives you force from those powers. There is no logical reason to make drain do one thing other than to make it easier for light jedi to rule the game with absorb.

 

Right now things are slightly unbalanced, you want drain to have time limits, doesn't heal, or heals but doesn't drain or whatever all because it can neutralize your absorb, I have admitted it needs to be tweaked, mostly just cost to use it. On FFA servers I find absorb/drain to be fine. On duel servers well they are somewhat unbalanced but hopefully there will be an option to decied what force powers you want avaible on servers someday.

 

But I would like to see some acceptable suggestions about how to balance Drain/Absorb. Not just going the easy route and saying 'Make it only do one thing cause it beats absorb easily'. Right now Absorb makes you immune to push/pull/grip/lightning/drain, and your talking about neutralizing the only real counter for absorb draining the lightsider while he has it down.

 

But anyways, Making Drain only do one thing is not acceptable. By doing that you start the dark siders after that 'patch' rallying for absorb to do only one thing, then everything goes down hill from there. Most vialbe solution I have seen so far is make drain cost more force per cast

[Hubris]

Originally posted by thrEEpaGe

oh please!!! you arent going to change how drain works..so QUIT WHINING YOU *****!!!

 

since drain requires force power, just use drain yourself, idiot!

 

if you both cant use the force, it turns into an even match....therefore, the better saberist wins, you, by whining, are simply proving that you suck.

 

Did you actually read this thread and see the numerical breakdown? Raven has already asked for what folks think about the gameplay and what needs to be tweaked, Drain as a whole is one of the most universal of these that nine of ten folks who have an opinion agree it needs to be tweaked a bit.

 

Do you wanna play a game where the only force power is drain? Basically boiling down to tons of guns and no high flying shenanigans? Why don't you play quake then? Because once it catches on how powerful drain is, that's what we're all gonna be playing, is quake with different models, because no one is gonna have any force from all draining each other.

 

I and fifty thousand other people bought this game because of the force, it's the only element that seperates it from five hundred other FPSes, if I wanted force less deathmatch I'd be doing UT or Q3A because they did it a whole hell of a lot better. It's the force that people wanna play with.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by thrEEpaGe

oh please!!! you arent going to change how drain works..so QUIT WHINING YOU *****!!!

 

since drain requires force power, just use drain yourself, idiot!

 

if you both cant use the force, it turns into an even match....therefore, the better saberist wins, you, by whining, are simply proving that you suck.

 

Hah hah! So you WERE talking about me in your other rant! Too funny. You won't catch me calling you an idiot though. I let your words speak for themselves.

 

I know that draining your opponent "evens the ground" but MY ORIGINAL POST on this tread outlined an actual example of how Drain is too powerful.

 

More than just exploiting the fact that you can keep someone from getting to you on certain maps, it works when you aren't hurt. That's just bad design. It also has too much power over too many things... in a saber and force only scenario, drain removes ALL of your "weapons" that you have at your disposal.

 

You are also saying "use drain yourself!" Well that doesn't really work if you are LIGHT Jedi, now does it? Absorb doesn't even the score at all... it just helps them drain you of force powers, which is what it is primarily being used for... NOT for healing up (which is what it SHOULD be for).

 

Again, if you are playing with guns as well as sabers and force, Drain is a wash... just pull out a gun and shoot them. In FFA it's a wash because there's plenty of places to just run off and charge up. But in Duel maps with no weapons, Drain is king. I think nerfing it would be a good idea. I'm actually thinking Raven did the game a disservice by having closed testing for the multiplayer. I think it's pretty obvious that there's a problem with Drain, and it only took the current player base 5days to figure it out.

 

Feel free to call me a newbie or whiner or whatever... but I've been breaking games since way before Jedi Knight 1 came out. This one isn't any different.

 

Essobie

[Vanor]

I'm sorta of the mind, that the game hasn't be out long enough to really know if it's balanced or not yet.

 

Yes I agree drain seems to be too powerful. But I'm not so sure it should be tweaked/nerfed quite yet. There could be a very effective strat against it that few or maybe no one has come up with yet.

 

With that said, I do think that there's a simple way to 'fix' drain. If it indeed needs fixing. I haven't played much MP against people using drain... mostly we go into duel mode, and so drain isn't a option. I did experance it playing against a Reborn bot the day I got the game, and I can see why people find it irritating. The bot kept using drain and for most of the fight kept me at like 1 or 2 bars of force power.

 

I think it simply needs to take longer to drain the force power pool, and perhaps more mana to use. I think that doubling the time and mana used might put the right amount of balance on it. That however is only true provided that absorb doesn't regen mana when someone drains you.

 

Here's the basic problem as I see it...

 

Drain vs Absorb.

 

Absorb works against drain, but you will run out of mana faster then the other guy will. And the dark jedi knows full well if you have absorb up or not. So it seems like the light side, is losing 2 mana bars for every bar the dark jedi loses. All this really does is slow down the whole effect. As the dark jedi will just keep 'jabbing' with drain until you can no longer bring up absorb and they will still have enough mana to grip and toss you.

 

As far as the glow for absorb/protection. I really think these were bad idea's. It makes sense for you to glow when the power is active and taking damage... but when your just standing there, it's clear as day you have absorb up and no one will bother using their force powers on you. I do think that level 1 force sight should show this however.

 

The problem with drain, isn't that it does two things, it's the speed of it, and how cheep it is to use.

 

I do agree that healing should take longer, and work like it does in SP... drain your mana over time and give 25 points back. Altho as it is now, it basicly works like a bacta tank does.

 

All the other powers IMO seem right, Absorb is costly and you'll run out of mana to power it quickly, but considering what it does it's fair IMO. But with the glow, no one will target you with lighting/grip/ect... So it's main strenth is negated, all your doing is buying yourself some time. But on the other hand, you may buy yourself enough time to get close and cut them in half.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by Sartis

I'll say this again, you want Drain to do one thing, prepare for Absorb to do one thing too, right now all of you that are complaining that Drain does two things and how unfair it is. Take a look at your Absorb it protects from force power and gives you force from those powers. There is no logical reason to make drain do one thing other than to make it easier for light jedi to rule the game with absorb.

 

Right now things are slightly unbalanced, you want drain to have time limits, doesn't heal, or heals but doesn't drain or whatever all because it can neutralize your absorb, I have admitted it needs to be tweaked, mostly just cost to use it. On FFA servers I find absorb/drain to be fine. On duel servers well they are somewhat unbalanced but hopefully there will be an option to decied what force powers you want avaible on servers someday.

 

But I would like to see some acceptable suggestions about how to balance Drain/Absorb. Not just going the easy route and saying 'Make it only do one thing cause it beats absorb easily'. Right now Absorb makes you immune to push/pull/grip/lightning/drain, and your talking about neutralizing the only real counter for absorb draining the lightsider while he has it down.

 

But anyways, Making Drain only do one thing is not acceptable. By doing that you start the dark siders after that 'patch' rallying for absorb to do only one thing, then everything goes down hill from there. Most vialbe solution I have seen so far is make drain cost more force per cast

 

I totally agree. I like the two things that Drain does, I just don't like how fast it does one of them (the subtraction of target's force power).

 

My solution to it would be two fold.

 

1) Drain can only be used when you are at less than your current maximum health. This means that in Duels, they will have to hit you with something BEFORE you can take their force power away.

 

2) Drain could work just as fast as it does now, but if it encounters Absorb, it works just like Grip or Lightning on Absorb... i.e. it GIVES the Absorber more force power to sustain Absorb. Currently it merely blocks Drain but gains nothing. This allows Absorb to PREVENT the use of Drain until the right time which adds depth to the skill of using Absorb at the right moments.

 

What you have currently is Drain removing some or all of the force power from someone at the very beginning of a round (fixed by solution part 1), or, if it encounters Absorb, just allows the Drainer to sit in wait for the Absorb to run out so they can Grip them as normal with nothing getting in the way. No force power is no force power, no matter how you get there. This is fixed in solution part 2.

 

These are minor tweaks since they only deal with WHEN you can use the power, and what Absorb does when it is hit with Drain.

 

Essobie

[DrNutz]

After reading through all this and trying to digest it I have come to this. I play mostly light, and think that Drain is annoying as hell. It makes it so that you cannot defend against most of the dark powers and you end up trapped and usually picked up and dropped over a ledge. YOUR BAD FOR LETTING HIM DRAIN YOU!!!! I think fair is fair, and this all is fair for sure. It's a game of wits... he who times it right, will win. He who plays more intelligently, will win. The Light Lide of the Force is the defensive side. Our JOB is to defend ourselves against the offensive Dark Side. If you don't have the reflexes to hit absorb, don't fallow the guy who is draining you! I spent a good 2 mins last night with 5 Light Guys running after me who all had no Mana due to the fact that I kept draining them. Try backing off, recharge, hit speed and absorb and saber!

 

I think that the powers are fine how they are, you people just need to learn to use them right. I'm still a newb and won't deny that (but I think that we all are really) and I am still learning. But although it's annoying, it's fun to try to counter it at do it well.

 

DrNutz

[enDless_Deliriu]

I think Darf nailed it on the head with the difference in the path. We won't know if the game is balanced until later on when the Light siders have time to fully develop their skills and such. The light side is stronger in the end, but the darkside has a quicker and easier path to strength (in both RPGs using darkside bonuses is higher until you hit the upper Jedi Knight levels at which point the light side is stronger with a few levels where it's even)

 

Anyhow, so maybe it is more balanced than we think, only us Light side people are still trying to develop the proper counters.

 

 

If anything, to balance it out, I'd say either slow down absorbs force use a little bit, get rid of the glow unless it's actually absorbing energy, OR slow down drain's drain just a little bit.

 

 

Oh and people, absorb does just that, absorb. If you have absorb on and someone hits you with grip, absorb basically doesn't cost a thing as it absorbs that force energy and puts it into your pool. Same with drain (though as is right now I see Drain as winning in the very end).

 

One thing to do (and I beat someone in a duel server a bunch of times with this. They were just doing force drain, force grip) is when you hit absorb you should have enough left for speed. So hit speed, charge them and keep sabering. Keep in close, don't let them get away and keep fighting. If you don't have any force, they can't drain any from you and the fight is at least back to skill on skill.

[Vanor]

Originally posted by Essobie

2) Drain could work just as fast as it does now, but if it encounters Absorb, it works just like Grip or Lightning on Absorb... i.e. it GIVES the Absorber more force power to sustain Absorb. Currently it merely blocks Drain but gains nothing. This allows Absorb to PREVENT the use of Drain until the right time which adds depth to the skill of using Absorb at the right moments.

 

I'd say this is a very viable way to deal with it... If the light side Jedi wasn't glowing like a christmas tree at night.

 

Lets say we're dueling.. You go to drain me I throw up absorb. I get back a little mana from it. You can tell I have absorb up and so simply don't bother draining until I run out of mana to power absorb. I think it would of been better if you only glowed when the power was actualy doing something. Like say you hit me with drain and I have absorb up... Then I'd glow but when you stopped trying to drain, you wouldn't be able to tell if I had absorb up or not... unless you used force seeing.

 

Of course this may still work, even with the glow provided one thing was true.

 

The cost of bringing up absorb + what you'd get back from a jab with lightning/drain would be equale to what it costs to jab with those powers. If this isn't true, then the light sider still loses out, just takes longer.

[Prox Kolari]

You guys have made a lot of good points. A few observations:

 

1) Dark side is a lot like it is in the movies. It's cheap and easy and you don't need a lot of skill to pull it off. Lightsiders have more of an uphill battle, like in the movies. That's admirable, don't you think?

 

2) Everyone wants drain/grip to have counters... force counters? I get the impression everyone is standing there draining/absorbing/healing/gripping. If they're draining you, run up and chop them in half! They're going to resort to grip sooner or later; you have to act fast.

[Sartis]

I like the idea of Drain not working while your at full health, but i think it should still work semi, ie it takes maybe 2/3 or 1/2 of its draining if your already full health, so its still useful while full health to try and stop healing of the light jedi but you will have to use alot more force to get the desired effect, also leaving you forceless if worked right, so bringing it down to a saber fight in the end with no force either way.

 

I also like the idea of absorb taking the force from Drain if its on.

 

Only problem I see with the absorb taking force from drain is it all turns into a key hitting race. hmm

[FWB]

Originally posted by Essobie

 

I don't like that because when you enter games where you can use weapons and force absorb will become all powerful (like it was in JK1) since you can block the pulling of your uber-weapons like the repeater and the flechette.

 

Essobie

 

Perhaps, that's why I'd opt more for getting rid of the glow onstead. However, this brings me to another point. I think force powers should not be useable when you carry a weapon. Or least, that should be a server option. It gives the sabre users an extra kick and you can always switch to your sabre if you want powers.

[Sartis]

I agree I think any force should be moved down one level while holding a non saber, Ie if push is at level 3 its now level 2. I dont see why someone with a gun should be able to wipe out a group of people but still be able to absorb and drain others so well.

[DrNutz]

After reading through all this and trying to digest it I have come to this. I play mostly light, and think that Drain is annoying as hell. It makes it so that you cannot defend against most of the dark powers and you end up trapped and usually picked up and dropped over a ledge. YOUR BAD FOR LETTING HIM DRAIN YOU!!!! I think fair is fair, and this all is fair for sure. It's a game of wits... he who times it right, will win. He who plays more intelligently, will win. The Light Lide of the Force is the defensive side. Our JOB is to defend ourselves against the offensive Dark Side. If you don't have the reflexes to hit absorb, don't fallow the guy who is draining you! I spent a good 2 mins last night with 5 Light Guys running after me who all had no Mana due to the fact that I kept draining them. Try backing off, recharge, hit speed and absorb and saber!

 

I think that the powers are fine how they are, you people just need to learn to use them right. I'm still a newb and won't deny that (but I think that we all are really) and I am still learning. But although it's annoying, it's fun to try to counter it at do it well.

 

DrNutz

[mIRC]

I don't think its the healing factor that makes drain over powered. I think its the factor that it takes away all of your force in only about 2 seconds of use. Drain should really be tweaked. I say that drain should take all of your force away but to do that it should take away all of the users force also.

[aletoledo]

I for some reason play light always, I usually heal naked without heal I suppose. I admit that heal should be toned down a bit.... but in regards to heal and to drain, I think toning down anything in a game leads to a negative reaction. anyone remember the necro (corpse explosion) and barb (whirlwind) reaction in Diablo2?

 

the one benefit though to some form of change would be the other force powers being used more. Raven doesn't have to look past the first randomly chosen server to notice the lack of Rage...even lightning isn't as frequent as you might think.

 

I really haven't died to a drain user...I have gotten annoyed enough to simply stand there during a duel with my saber deactivated waiting for them to heal up so they'll stop drain for a second.

 

Yet I don't mind the double effect of draining me and healing them. I don't even mind too much the time it reaquires to completely drain me, cause I can usually guess when they'll use it. what I honestly fail to understand is why it doesn't recharge my force when I have absorb active?? everything else does, why is drain different?

[Azjn]

Quote Ok , this is really simple , drain is succesfull only if you have mana. So just use all your mana before he drains you. he will waste his mana for nothing and u will use ur mana to do something ... arrgh u get the point

 

Only problem then is they grip you and you have no force to use push to get free

[DannyJAllTheWay]

the only thing that needs to be grasped is the idea that you should use your force powers and not abuse them. the concept isn't that hard.

 

also, i can see that if someone has a problem with force drain, they should also have a problem with force absorb. both powers can carry out two duties. force drain takes away their mana and gives you health. force absorb protects you and gives you mana. i mean, the other person can't use any force powers against them. they can't even push or pull them. isn't that unfair in itself? if that isn't unfair, add on the fact that it gives them mana and you can clearly see that it is unfair. if you want drain to only have one job, you should also be all for the idea that absorb should be watered down too.

 

think about this: if all that someone does is abuse drain, don't they have the weakness?

[Essobie]

Originally posted by enDless_Deliriu

Oh and people, absorb does just that, absorb. If you have absorb on and someone hits you with grip, absorb basically doesn't cost a thing as it absorbs that force energy and puts it into your pool. Same with drain (though as is right now I see Drain as winning in the very end).

 

Wrong and wrong. Absorb simply blocks a grip if you have it on when they attempt it. It only gives you added force if you turn it on in RESPONSE to Grip... but by the time you wait for it, you may already be hanging over a ledge somewhere, or even dead already.

 

Drain does NOT give absorbers more force. Drain doesn't do damage, so it's effect is nullified... but it does not grant the Absorber bonus force power. The only things that aborb gains force power from are as a responce to a grip in progress, or lightning at any time.

 

Essobie

[Essobie]

Originally posted by Vanor

 

I'd say this is a very viable way to deal with it... If the light side Jedi wasn't glowing like a christmas tree at night.

 

Lets say we're dueling.. You go to drain me I throw up absorb. I get back a little mana from it. You can tell I have absorb up and so simply don't bother draining until I run out of mana to power absorb. I think it would of been better if you only glowed when the power was actualy doing something. Like say you hit me with drain and I have absorb up... Then I'd glow but when you stopped trying to drain, you wouldn't be able to tell if I had absorb up or not... unless you used force seeing.

 

 

Well, you can toggle on and off all duration based powers, so if someone tries to use grip on you, you can absorb to get a little force power from it, and then he'll stop using it on you. Right after he quits, you can turn absorb back OFF. If he keeps repeating the process, you lose no health, and keep a full bar of force power.

 

Unfortunately we are talking about Drain... and drain doesn't give anyone force back when they absorb against it. THAT's one of the problems here (and that you can't vote on a dueling server as a spectator... but that's really another thread).

 

Essobie