We'll attempt another style overhaul, for now just the announcement to explain the goals and principles behind it.
Mandatory Goals:
Regardless of what else is decided, these are things that will happen as the current situation can more or less be called buggy.
Style requirements will be changed
The client automatically applies the requirement indicators based on the used style icon and we consider it very much desirable to have those indicators match the actual requirements, to keep consistency this will mean taking the live requirements and chains.
Style Chains
Streak avoidance makes 3+ chains even more difficult to hit than they should be. We consider the streak prevention to have greater value in general and therefore we will cap positional style chains at 2. That is pretty much the case for almost all style chains with the live requirements (and aside from consistency a big reason to go there).
This would leave us with 5 more chains that have 3 parts, after evade in cstrike, after evade and parry for svg and the pa and bs1 chain. Here we’ll probably go with making the 3rd style an alternative follow up for the opener with increased damage and/or alternative effects to reward speccing higher.
Switch to the more accurate style damage formula
This could reasonably be done without noticeable changes to the current damage at common spec levels. In technical terms, we will move away from the approximating single growth rate per style and towards the base value + per spec gain value per style.
Variance
Especially because of the formula switch we’ll disable melee variance again a couple days before the style overhaul actually happens and will keep it disabled, aka always set to 25, for some time to better evaluate the style values. After the evaluation phase variance will make a return, however, it will then be a limited form: instead of rng 0 – 50 it will only be rng 15-35 or 20 – 30.
Overhaul
Then we come to the actual overhaul and the guiding principles for it:
Ideally, for any given class choosing between weapon lines should come down to personal preferences with each line having something unique that’s nice to have but not mandatory.
Styles having class specific differences should be embraced, especially if it's either thematically fitting for the class or due to the class usually having an entirely different playstyle. However, there shouldn't be class specific differences just for the sake of having class specific differences.
While the overhaul will unquestionably have an impact on class balance, it's not the driving force for having one in the first place.
It might be worth it to at least evaluate some unusual mechanics to achieve the basic style / weapon line requirements. For group viability that would usually mean positional snares, ideally back positional. For solos that would usually mean reactive stun and/or haste debuff.
The evaluation would most likely take the form of short tests to get actual feedback.
To be perfectly clear, these extras - class specific style effects, having something unique per line or alternative mechanics to provide the basics - are just there to not have the lines end up as exact copies of one another that just allow you to wield a different cosmetic item called a weapon (or to hit a different resist type) but even that would be an improvement over the current state.
UPDATE:
Initial first phase available here: https://playphoenix.online/charplan/styles.html
Please ignore everything except for styles and their effects on that charplan, the other parts may or may not be up to date.
The initial phase should cover the mandatory goals while also doing some effort to make more lines usable for many classes. It's expected that there will be something will have been missed or just plain wrong. Please report such issues here in the thread.
UPDATE 2:
Overview for easier style comparisons: https://playphoenix.online/charplan/style_overview.html
Mandatory Goals:
Regardless of what else is decided, these are things that will happen as the current situation can more or less be called buggy.
Style requirements will be changed
The client automatically applies the requirement indicators based on the used style icon and we consider it very much desirable to have those indicators match the actual requirements, to keep consistency this will mean taking the live requirements and chains.
Style Chains
Streak avoidance makes 3+ chains even more difficult to hit than they should be. We consider the streak prevention to have greater value in general and therefore we will cap positional style chains at 2. That is pretty much the case for almost all style chains with the live requirements (and aside from consistency a big reason to go there).
This would leave us with 5 more chains that have 3 parts, after evade in cstrike, after evade and parry for svg and the pa and bs1 chain. Here we’ll probably go with making the 3rd style an alternative follow up for the opener with increased damage and/or alternative effects to reward speccing higher.
Switch to the more accurate style damage formula
This could reasonably be done without noticeable changes to the current damage at common spec levels. In technical terms, we will move away from the approximating single growth rate per style and towards the base value + per spec gain value per style.
Variance
Especially because of the formula switch we’ll disable melee variance again a couple days before the style overhaul actually happens and will keep it disabled, aka always set to 25, for some time to better evaluate the style values. After the evaluation phase variance will make a return, however, it will then be a limited form: instead of rng 0 – 50 it will only be rng 15-35 or 20 – 30.
Overhaul
Then we come to the actual overhaul and the guiding principles for it:
Ideally, for any given class choosing between weapon lines should come down to personal preferences with each line having something unique that’s nice to have but not mandatory.
Styles having class specific differences should be embraced, especially if it's either thematically fitting for the class or due to the class usually having an entirely different playstyle. However, there shouldn't be class specific differences just for the sake of having class specific differences.
While the overhaul will unquestionably have an impact on class balance, it's not the driving force for having one in the first place.
It might be worth it to at least evaluate some unusual mechanics to achieve the basic style / weapon line requirements. For group viability that would usually mean positional snares, ideally back positional. For solos that would usually mean reactive stun and/or haste debuff.
The evaluation would most likely take the form of short tests to get actual feedback.
To be perfectly clear, these extras - class specific style effects, having something unique per line or alternative mechanics to provide the basics - are just there to not have the lines end up as exact copies of one another that just allow you to wield a different cosmetic item called a weapon (or to hit a different resist type) but even that would be an improvement over the current state.
UPDATE:
Initial first phase available here: https://playphoenix.online/charplan/styles.html
Please ignore everything except for styles and their effects on that charplan, the other parts may or may not be up to date.
The initial phase should cover the mandatory goals while also doing some effort to make more lines usable for many classes. It's expected that there will be something will have been missed or just plain wrong. Please report such issues here in the thread.
UPDATE 2:
Overview for easier style comparisons: https://playphoenix.online/charplan/style_overview.html