The worrying thing for me is that balance doesn't seem to be particularly
improving. It's certainly a different game from six or eleven months ago, but I really couldn't call it better by any stretch of the imagination. Some weapons have become too weak, some too strong and some have always been cruddy. As we move up to release, shouldn't we be seeing a levelling out of the weapons and equipment, so everything has a place, and nothing is an obvious must-have? Added to that, the new stuff that's come out has a very slapdash feel to it, like it was balanced by means of a dartboard. The ewar items are the perfect poster children for this. We had the release of TAG, NARC and BAP, all of which were very cautiously designed in terms of what they could do--and ended up so niche that almost nobody actually used them. And at the same time, we had ECM, which hard-countered the lot of them plus missiles, and had a big pile of other abilities--including being the only counter to enemy ECM! Regardless of whether ECM was overpowered to you or not, it's impossible to deny it was the best possible way to spend 1.5 tons and two criticals, especially compared to the other ewar gear. Ditto for modules, when you have the very nerfed artillery & airstrikes, or marginal sensor improvements....and then comes Seismic.
It's hard to understand the logic behind these huge swings in power, and it's even harder to understand the reluctance to just sit down and balance this stuff based on feedback. Buff the damage of machine guns for a week, see what the feedback from the beta testers is, and then leave or adjust further based on that. I've never really felt like a beta tester this last year, just a sponsor.
Esplodin, on 21 June 2013 - 06:23 AM, said:
Epic. Communication. Failure.
At every single turn (other then Karl) we have been given fluff, non-answers, snark, and outright fabrications. This forum is littered with awesome suggestions that are routinely ignored - some with math, common sense, and video to back them up. Things happen, and this is one complex game to code up. When the bugs got overwhelming and the lack of progress or even basic acknowledgement of the issues went unaddressed righteous indignation reached a fever pitch, they nuked the forums to quell the rebellion. Of all the crap moves, that has to be the worst. There was an opportunity to come clean and heal the rift, but that was squandered by listening to some white tower PHD and pushing the community further away.
Honestly, people will forgive mistakes and will put up a lot if they still think that the other party is at least dealing honestly. The difference between buggy launch making hate and the same buggy launch being tolerated is bottom line the faith and trust the developer earns with the community. That tank is on empty for a variety of reasons.
One of my other hobbies is miniatures wargaming, and soon the second edition of a rather cool skirmish game called
Malifaux is coming out. The creators have been running an open beta, adjusting the rules each week based on player feedback from the week before. The players feel valued, so discussion is civil and largely friendly, based around presenting logical arguments to the designers for a certain change--and people have even argued to have things in their favoured faction reduced in power for the overall good of the game.
For an MMO example, have a look at these two EVE Online dev blogs:
http://community.eve...base-iterations
http://community.eve...-ship-balancing
Even if you don't agree with the changes themselves, this is how to present information. It's clear what's going to happen, and the reasoning behind why it's going to happen. The reader can see what state of play the devs envision, and how they intend to get there. And of course, the players get to playtest these changes and give feedback. And players who were losing interest in the game because this particular issue was grating on them know well in advance that it's going to be changed, letting enthusiasm brew well in advance.
When I come over here and see the SKILL crowd in full shrillness and people arguing over what the devs maybe kinda meant to imply in this vague Reddit quote, it's like night and day.
4
Huge and slow swings... thanks to strict keeping of the patch schedule
