24 replies to this topic

[Jun Watarase]

Let's see how people feel about htis.

[Joseph Mallan]

just because they are not doing what each of us suggests does not mean they do not listen. If you have children you would understand.

[OneEyed Jack]

I voted yes, because it's rather evident they listen to the whining. Now if only we could get them to listen to something sensible.

[Victor Morson]

If "They will bestow upon us 60 seconds of XML fixes should we riot too loudly" counts then yes.

Otherwise, a huge no.

[Ari Dian]

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHAHHAHAA.



Really funny...

[Kotzi]

Why should they? If there is no consensus amid the players and thus no major jeopardy of losing money then no. Otherwise balancing is anything they can sell stuff with.

[SpiralFace]

There is a difference between "listening to player feedback," and "doing everything they command."

They listen just like any company listens to their player base. But they aren't going to just jump in and do EXACTLY what the players want because they suggested it.

Take the hit boxes for example. Players identified an issue with the hitboxes, the developers looked into it and agreed, they took the player feedback into mind and split the pelvic area into leg areas, but left the idea to make massive torso sections part of the arms alone.

They are professional designers for a reason. While its easy to claim that "any one can design better then this," its really far from the case, as there is a ton of stuff under the hood that players will never see regarding metrics that the designers track and have a much clearer picture of what is happening then the player base ever will.

They do listen to their player base, but expect them to research issues and make very slow plotting decisions on the matter, not just hear complaints about something and take a sledge hammer to the entire system they've built up.

[Charons Little Helper]

How dare they not do everything that I tell them to do!

[Jun Watarase]

Well lets look at weapon balance....

Pulse lasers have been useless for 1.5 years.

LRMs have ranged from useless to godlike to useless again (largely useless though).

MGs/flamers have also been useless for 1.5 years.

PPCs and ACs were useless for like a year (compared to gauss at least). Now they are OP.

Ultra AC5s went from useless to OP to useless again due to the RNG jamming....

SRMs were OK in closed beta, possibly became too good at one point, then became useless due to massive spread and lackluster damage.

Streaks were never very good unless you boated them in a streak cat (especially due to the damage bug), now they are useless for anything except light hunting, and you still need to boat them. And they are easily neutralized by ECM, especially the ever popular 4x ECM light mech premade setup.

Large lasers were useless for at least 1 year.

ECM, do i need to say anything here....

TAG/Narc?

You only need one jump jet most of the time, especially for poptarting, making it pointless to mount more...

Medium mechs not being able to compete against heavies/assaults (especially in a metagame dominated by PPC/Gauss/AC sniping)

Many mechs not being able to compete against others in the same weight class (locust? dragon? centurion? especially the useless yen lo wang?) including having really terrible quirks like huge CTs or cockpits smack in the CT, etc.....

Most of which were pointed out to PGI but quietly ignored for months...or in the case of things like pulse lasers, till now.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 06 December 2013 - 06:13 AM.

[Taemien]

As they've responded personally to suggestions and concerns I've had. Absolutely. I've seen changes made based off suggestions as well. Whether they read 'my' posts on such things is largely irrelevant. The point is, if you make a valid point, don't bash them in the post, have evidence, don't obviously have an agenda, don't get emotionally charged, and stay constructive. Then you'll probably see a change.

Not always though, and the reason being is as a player, you can never see the whole picture. For example, the whole raven+ecm thing a couple of months ago. All you saw was rage and nerf calls. What actually was happening and most players were blind to, was that the hitbox was bugged. This was fixed, and it helped the situation. But had the players got their way, the Raven would have been changed so that its stock loadout would have been changed to a 81kph mech, and carrying 2 med lasers and a narc and unable to carry any sort of SRM.

The devs have the ability to test things behind the scenes and see what is actually wrong. So fixes can come down the pipe that aren't exactly what people asked for, but they are needed. For the raven, it didn't need a nerf, it needed a bug fix. In addition they make changes based on the future. People don't like ghost heat or gauss charge, but with clan tech coming those will be tools used to balance it (my suggestion to clanners, get used to those two mechanics).

Now with that being said, I'm not going to defend those points, at least not in 'this' thread. I'm just making them to explain why I voted how I did. if you wish to discuss those points on their own merits, do a forum search and find the threads where they are discussed, as not to derail this thread. Plus I don't feel like repeating myself on those issues, so go do the work of using the search function if you're biting at the bits to say something. I've already made my mind, nothing you can say here is going to sway me otherwise.

[Lord Perversor]

Jun Watarase, on 06 December 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

Well lets look at weapon balance....

Pulse lasers have been useless for 1.5 years.

LRMs have ranged from useless to godlike to useless again (largely useless though).

MGs/flamers have also been useless for 1.5 years.

PPCs and ACs were useless for like a year (at least compared to gauss at least).

Sometimes i like to point that spent some other games (specially competitive ones with a broad audience) may shed some light about how things needs to be done.

As example League of Legends fixes, are done largely ignoring community ideas , albeit some fixes and balances are develop in order to adress a perceived flaw in some parts of the game.
Still riot keep fixing and balancing the game not for the overall player/meta player or competitive player, but mostly to make the game adjusted to how they perceive it should be played. And despite to so many years there is some champions who raise and fall just as some items or little tweaks are done.

My suggest it's do not complain about XXX it's not good enough but mostly point at YYY it's broken and useless, then wait for them let's fixing and balancing little by little.

[giganova]

I'll answer that question with the obvious answer to another question: Do you feel PGI takes player feedback into account when implementing 3rd person view?

[Appogee]

Sometimes they do (PPC meta, LRMpocalypse, hitboxes), sometimes they blatantly disregard it (3PV, ghost heat, Gauss charge up).

Ironically some of the bad changes have been because of player feedback.

Edited by Appogee, 06 December 2013 - 06:19 AM.

[JohnnyWayne]

Oh they sure do, but not mine. ^^

[DaZur]

"Balance" = "Concessions"

This is something neither polar extreme is willing to accept... Sadly to the detriment to the advancement of the game.

[Egomane]

Company discussion, not gameplay.

[OneEyed Jack]

And the real reason for so many different sub-forums....

So they can banish {Scrap} to places no one will ever see it.

[Heffay]

I hope not. I hope they use data to determine whether something is balanced, not player feedback.

[Texas Merc]

3ppc 1 gauss for 6 months is your answer

ghost heat was their answer

then 2ppc 1 gauss for another 6 weeks or so

then xml changes and gauss mechanic

so yeah can we remove ghost heat now?


e: and dont say 6 ppc stalker its a terrible build and always has been and the heat changes for the ppc nix that build anyway as well as the 4 ppc anything.

Edited by Texas Merc, 06 December 2013 - 07:28 AM.

[StompingOnTanks]

There are balance issues, but they aren't as bad as most people think.

I think the main issue here is people perceiving some weapons as overpowered when they aren't actually overpowered. Perfect example? Autocannons vs Lasers. Sure, ACs deal pinpoint damage and have a relatively high rate of fire with low heat, but the extra weight and slots they take up and their dependency on ammo are BIG drawbacks that most people overlook. Lasers don't deal pinpoint damage (unless your aim is rock steady) and create more heat, but the lighter weight and fewer slots allows you to mount more of them, plus there are ER and Pulse versions. The reason nobody uses laser boats is because of heat, but I've ran a few laser boats and they do just fine. It's all about firing discipline and DHS, but nobody wants to have patience for that, they want alpha-striking dual AC20 Jagers instead.

My only major complaint is Ghost Heat, I think hardpoint size restrictions would be better instead. I hope they integrate that at some point and get rid of the Ghost Heat {Scrap}.