Nerfing Nanoweave?

If your going to nerf nanoweave the way I see your doing it. You might as well just get rid of the suit slot all together or just give me the option to get my certification points back on all my characters. You guys already nerfed it before making headshots ridiculously overpowered and now your moving to another ridiculous round of nerfs?

Of course with suit slots nano is ran on everyone, because you did the suit slot all wrong with a all or nothing setup. No customization on suit slots to do anything else. So what did you expect the players to do? Take the lesser of two evils and take the only thing worth running, since nothing else works.

Carrying extra grenades, munitions, advanced shield capacitor and such, generally worthless.

I think its funny seeing the 'community' being so upset about this and making silly claims like "Everyone has to use it to stand a chance!" or "Nothing else is worth using!"

I have not used it for ages, the majority of people I am shooting at does not use it either and those that do does not seem much if any harder to kill than those without it but then again I dont count the bullets to kill so I dont notice if it takes 1-2 more than normal when its a fraction of a seconds difference.

Though I would be happy to get a cert refund so I hope they change it enough to warrant it being given, though im not sure what they are planning to do with it, have they said?

Ignoring Boti's kneejerk reactio (and maybe asking him what suit slots people use otherwise if he can see that?), yes nanoweave has been one of the most used slots forever. I did read they were going to nerf it but what were the changes exactly?

I think that nanoweave should be removed and everything get the reductions by default, including for the head. The headshots dealing even more damage by excluding them from nanoweave was a crap decision during the "must make PS2 MLG ready" phase of the game. Like almost all changes at the time it was designed to favor high skill rather than make good gameplay for the general populace. There has to be a reward for headshots, but the reward was made too large by that change.

Then all other suit slots should be made useful enough that each and every one has a good reason to be used. If necessary some slots could be combined and buffed to make them useful enough.

Key would be to avoid universally useful slots. Nanoweave is useful in almost every battle you have while things like ammo, shield capacitors and grenades are niche. Suit slots should prrovide variety, not be a one-size-fits-all category with the occasional snowflake picking something else.

I mean it's great if they make bodyshots more viable to kill somebody (9 shots are ridiculous for such kind of shooter)

I play without nanoweave armor: ASC+ symbiote implant+health regen implant
Sometime I replace ASC with grenade bandolier or flak armor.
This is a good loadout for HA. And no NAR needed

When someone has NW it shows a little icon when you hit them, most of the ones im shooting doesnt have it at least. Some do ofc but I dont really notice much of a difference because there isnt one. Taking one or two extra bullets is a fraction of a second for most weapons.

The majority of the fights im in are not that close where I either win or lose by a tiny margin where NW would matter but most fights at least drain my shields a bit or entirely so in comparison Adv shield cap is very useful all the time just as Flak is much more a case of live or die as well as being much harder to simply GitGud to avoid the situations where it saves your life as its usually from something you are not aware of, a grenade behind you, mine around a corner, ESF diving on you, HESH tank, etc.

Been talking about nerfing nanoweave since I subbed in 2013. It's long overdue and the fact they haven't done it yet leads me to believe they never will. They did nerf stacking with resist awhile ago, but honestly so many other major issues with the game, nanoweave is the least of the issues. I do agree they made a mistake and have over-rewarded headshots. I won't get into detail but if you look at headshot data by weapon across all factions, you will see glaring balance issues.

I mean for example the bug where mines "float" is still around -- I remember that being an issue 5 years ago. It's kind of funny/sad coming back after a years long break and seeing the exact same bugs.

I'm biased because I primary on a TR, but I don't think factions are balanced. I think new players gravitate to new conglomerate, for whatever reason, and they have some of the hardest to use weapons (default LMG is gauss saw) and who knows how many thousands of players that has turned off.

It is always a nice tell-tale sign someone has an ulterior motive if they say "look I dont use it and pretend I have nothing to gain from keeping it like this and oh my subjective experience says its not true!".

A -10% reduction in movement speed, does not stack with shields and only a -10% resistance to small arms fire. Symbiote is also in the proposal with no resistance to small arms fire at all.

Another thanks Wrel nerf. Instead of addressing suit slots to make other areas more interesting. Let’s just destroy the only viable slot being nanoweave.

Nano-Armor cloak + grenade bandoleer with EMP nades is great, as are engineers with flak armor and extra grenades, 4 res nades on medic could be the new meta, but primarily anti-infantry classes will suffer.

Overall, good idea, bad execution. I doubt that 10% movement speed will make much of a difference in a 1v1 or other scenarios, 20% resistance to bullets is still massive, but the speculated Symbiote nerf will probably make the implant irrelevant.

The primary issue with Nanoweave is that since it doesn't apply to headshots, it ends up increasing the effective headshot multiplier of every weapon in the game. Headshots are already valuable, but against someone wearing Nano, they are considerably more valuable.

This is a problem because experienced players have enough practice and training under their belts to reliably land headshots, while new players do not. So all things being equal, a skilled player has a huge advantage against a new player even before Nanoweave comes into play.

Nanoweave just makes that skill gap even wider. That's what's not fun (to me) about it.

For some reason they have never considered letting Nanoweave apply to headshots. That would remove the issue of Nano disproportionately increasing the skill gap.

The skill gap would still be there, but now Nano would no longer inflate it to the extreme degree that it does today. Nano would have the same benefit to everyone regardless of skill level.

"But my sniper loadout!" you cry. Simple enough: Re-classify Sniper Rifles to their own damage type that is not affected by Nanoweave. Or just crank up their headshot multipliers to compensate - they already have a larger than normal HSM anyway. That would let snipers continue to play as they do today, while all other infantry weapons no longer gain a disproportionately high headshot multiplier against players wearing Nanoweave. The skill gap would still exist, but now the existence of Nano would not be actively making it worse.

But since this is the official forums, no one on the team will ever read this; we're all just yelling into the void.

Having a suit slot that rewards you for fighting newbies that aim for the center mass, and does nothing when you're fighting better players that know better, is kind of **** game design. You'll always have at least some amount of less-good players in an MMO environment, so it never becomes not-worth-taking unless you're scrimming on private servers.

Removing the 20% small arms reduction from the game is the first major step to improving NPE and the armor slot disparity.

I do find it amusing to see Big Boys show up to puff their chest without engaging with the actual issue, but that's not worth discussing further.

Because it's literally a matter of getting good in a PvP game. There are an absurd amount of mechanics good players do that bad/new don't. Nerfing NWA for this reason is not a good argument, when everyone has access to it.




As for the nerfs, the Heavy OS nerf was actually good, and i'm a little surprised it came from Wrel. Of course, for anything good there is always something bad, and the movement speed nerf is not only a bad solution, it doesn't even set out to fix the 'problem' of NWA.

As for removing NWA, if they could keep roughly the same TTK through balancing other aspects, i'd be for it. The extra effective HS multi isn't necessary, and if it would shut the nerds up i'd be all for it.

While we're at it trying to change up the infantry game, maybe Wrel will pull his head out of his *** and actually do something about Infils and Maxes.

I would say that 9 bodyshots is great for a shooter like PS2, it may even be too low. Decreasing the amount of bodyshots only makes it easier for people to use the latency system to kill people before they can react and it makes flanking attacks+spray&pray much easier. That is why I suggest to make the 20% damage reduction standard and apply to headshots.

Correct except for this. Early on nanoweave gave a straight health buff which naturally helped against headshots too. Since it helped against everything like explosions as well they changed it to a % reduction of the weapons it was supposed to reduce.
Not sure if it happened at the same time but during the "make PS2 MLG ready" phase the devs wanted to supercharge the rewards for skill and removed the % reduction for headshots.

"Just get good in it" is no excuse to keep bad game design. You can justify everything with that attitude as long as everyone can use it. "NS weapon X is the most powerful weapon in the game and it makes other small-arms obsolete. Lets keep it since its just a learning curve for players to realize they need to pick the weapon".
Your argument does not change regardless of the final headshot multiplier being 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x or even 10x. If nanoweave applies to headshots then headshots are still rewarding your skill, but it reduces the punishment for average players.

PS2 does not have systems to balance skill, its gameplay has to be enjoyable for players even if they go up against superior skilled players, so giving an excessive reward for headshots is bad for the game. Besides that it makes accurate weapons a superior choice in the game's meta, which is bad since inaccurate weapons require more skill to be successful and that is the exact opposite of what your argument claims to uphold.

So only those who still use NW and have everything to gain from keeping it like this are allowed to give their opinion and experience with it, while everyone that is not using it and fighting people who use it are not allowed to say what they think of the current balance?


My ulterior motive is that NW in general adds 2-4 bullets required to kill the user at long range and 1-2 at close range with most damage models which means it increases the TTK by about 0.16-0.32 seconds compared to not having NW in the same situation(HA with 1450 total health).

I can only speak from personal experience but most of my fights are not me winning or losing with barely any health left. It obviously happens but most of the time I either kill the enemy really fast or they kill me really fast so I value the several full seconds of shorter recovery between fights or surviving explosives I did not see much higher than the possible fractions of a second I can get from NW because the number of fights I lose because I didnt have NW are probably something similar to the fights I lose because I had not been able to recover my shield fast enough so its just a net advantage to have fast shield recovery, helps against headshots in the way that I can get hit hard and back off but be back in action very quickly.

Nanoweave has already been nerfed enough, your dead in one shot from a sniper to head and most players already know to bank on headshots.

They are going overboard on this.

You again use subjective situations to describe this.

The average player, ranging from the best to worst, will have a more or less equal chance at killing each opponent. The ranges differ, the weapons differ, the amount of accuracy will differ. But at the end of the day a 20% increase against bodyshots is an important advantage. And bodyshots is something the average player does (which can be discovered by looking at the gradings of fisu for example).
Even the 100 health reduction on the Infiltrator, a mere 10% difference, is considered a big drawback. That is one reason why nano armor cloak is still valuable.

Mathematically its also easy to see the strength of nanoweave. Lets low-ball it and say that 1 in 5 fights are won by nanoweave. 20% of the time nanoweave would have a use. Compare that to shield capacitor which has a 4 second window where its truly effective assuming you are attacked while your shields are recharging, or grenade bandolier which is useful only for specific circumstances. You have to work to make sure those circumstances are actually beneficial, while nanoweave will always give you a chance to survive a small-arms fight and a 20% chance of making a difference for that fight.

Its a no-brainer choice, even if you don't see it.

Nanoweave as a suit slot is not a good idea compared to the other choices, its simply too universally useful. Flak armor is next. That is why I have made suggestions before about making other suit slots more useful and less niche so it can actually compete with nanoweave.

And regardless the argument of "but skill!" Still applies if the headshot ratio is brought back to 2, rather than the nanoweave-inflated 2.5. The idea to change it to 2.5 by excempting headshots was made in order to attract the MLG ready crowd, an idea that failed and the game saw a strong hit to itd population as many average players left due to that change and similar other changes.

Now if the devs are changing the nanoweave anyway you have to ask yourself: what direction should they go? The devs are currently going the direction of nerfing nanoweave and with it shortening the average TTK of all players, excepting the 100% headshot people. I would make the case that we should keep the 20% higher health that the average player has benefited from and is used to. Both because its what people are used to and because it makes sense to keep TTK higher in a game like PS2. It reduces the power of a single flank and spray&pray, making the game more about group actions than a singular player who may or may not have gotten lucky.

What do you mean, "nerfed enough"?

I think that without any major drawbacks, nanoweave is simply too superior a choice. Why wouldn't you add 20% extra health against most weapons and enemies over niche other suit slots?
I dont think the devs are making the right decision with how they are nerfing it, but an attempt to make nanoweave less of a universal suit slot suitable for most fights so we get a bit more variety in our fights is good.

Yes, but you also can't use it as an argument against, as it also applies to any mechanic; for every 'let's keep it this way', there is an equal number of 'this isn't fair'. In the end, every class and player has access to NWA, and are all on equal footing in that regard, so it comes down solely to opinion rather than an actual imbalance.

The lack of variety is a valid argument, and i'd say the only argument that has no counter argument. That being said, simply removing NWA (or nerfing it hard) without balancing the rest of the game around this very important meta mechanic is just as bad as keeping it.

What argument? That the TTK stay relatively the same? If you apply NWA to headshots, I wouldn't really mind, but it would just further enforce NWA as the best suit slot, no matter what. They can remove NWA and either balance weapon damages and/or health, and it would probably be better than keeping it at all.

Yes and no. I don't advocate for further increases to HS multi, and if they could re-balance like above, removing NWA would be fine.

However, it is also incredibly annoying to be dominated by absurd mechanics that are meant to be more or less free kills. It is also a bad precedent to continually add easy and cheesy mechanics, that annoy bad and good players alike, and then nerf things that keep the skill ceiling high.

I think we've had this discussion before, and I really gotta say that you are just going to have to trust me on this. For newer/bad players, sure, the more accurate weapons are better because they already have less than half the ACC % that the lowest good player has (when also accounting for HSR), but the 'inaccurate' weapons are typically the best because their DPS is significantly higher and most fights happen where their less accurate attributes hardly matter for better players.

Range and such can differ but the difference between having or not having NW does typically end up being a 2-4 bullet difference at long range and 1-2 at close range no matter if headshots are involved or not. To me that is a very small margin for error and I would rather have a better bonus and just try to play that tiny little bit better instead so those few bullets are on my side in the fight so I dont need NW.

Adv shield cap is 1 second lower shield delay and 50% faster recharge. Same stuff but said differently, the recharge is more than twice as fast compared to not having it which means that by the time you have half your shield back your opponents shield is just about to start recharging. Same stuff but said differently, thats a ~25% health advantage which does work if they hit your head.

You can use the HA overshield to peek out of cover and reset their shield cooldown/delay with some damage and as long as you dont lose the overshield your normal shield cooldown and recharge is not reset, that can quickly turn into a 50% health advantage.

Taking damage and being able to move or fight at full shield again, 4 seconds faster than without it is a huge upgrade in flexibility. Faster shield recharge is also very useful when being revived.


As for what the devs should do, I think it would be stupid to bake NW into everyone by default because unlike your experience my own is that its far from everyone that uses it. There is a little annoying icon that pops up next to your reticule when you hit someone with it and if 'everyone' used it, I would have gone mad and complained about it rather than just being distracted by it on occasion and I dont think people need to be tankier to bodyshots than they already are because it can already be a struggle to kill someone if you only have 25-30 bullets and they jank around a lot.

Why not make NW just be a copy of NSO repair suit? Health regen without a implant for everyone.
*Edit*
Or perhaps a damage reduction taken from MAX weapons....