470 replies to this topic

[Sarlic]

Lefty Lucy, on 09 August 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:

Translated: my group wasn't good enough so we gave up.

What are you talking about? Are you even serious? I certainly hope your not competitive. If your are; then your a pancake with a broken game.

I am going to play competitive again when the title deserve to carry Battletech.

Edited by Sarlic, 09 August 2014 - 07:36 AM.

[Sandpit]

Let me explain this

PIG "we talked to some competitive players"

So the community actually starts asking around...

Oddly enough none of the comp players around here (and sorry the comp players are more readily active on the forums so no, the old tagling og "minority on the forums" doesn't apply to comp players as most of them are either active or have active members on the forums so they're represented AND can recruit) can find a single person that PGI talked to....


So, that leads most to believe they just kicked around their ideas with the NGNG pals

Thus we have "competitive players told us"

[Noesis]

Ever heard of the concept of NDA?

[Corvus Antaka]

The game is not competitive enough to be attractive to the majority of competitive players.

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 09 August 2014 - 08:35 AM.

[Kilo 40]

ITT: people upset they weren't consulted as highly competitive players.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Noesis, on 09 August 2014 - 08:28 AM, said:

Ever heard of the concept of NDA?

A concept most people don't care about in 2014
If PGI consider NGNG competitive that would explain things.

[Sandpit]

Kilo 40, on 09 August 2014 - 08:39 AM, said:

ITT: people upset they weren't consulted as highly competitive players.

No, people are upset because PGI is apparently ignoring the other 98% of the community. Pull your pants up, your ignorance is showing

[Kilo 40]

Sandpit, on 09 August 2014 - 08:51 AM, said:

No, people are upset because PGI is apparently ignoring the other 98% of the community. Pull your pants up, your ignorance is showing

Honey... You're not 98% of the community. Grow up.

[o0Marduk0o]

nehebkau, on 08 August 2014 - 03:56 PM, said:

Fall damage for instance

Yes, the fall dmg seems to be capped, they should remove the cap! Well, I am sure you mean something else but seriously, fall dmg is ok now.

[Steel Claws]

The problem was never PPCs or Gauss - it is the ability to take off small ballistic or energy weapons put bigger weapons in their place. A small/large slot system would have solved so many balance issues a long time ago without nerfing perfectly good weapons into the ground.

[poopenshire]

Qualifying statement:

Ok, I am not in competitive play and I don't plan to be, I am in this to have fun and just play with a team who just wants to have fun. I am the most average player you will find as I drop with both high and low ELO players. Most of you never see me and never notice. I don't need to be noticed, I like it that way.

Topic statement:

I can understand why they cannot say who they talked to and why those people cannot announce who they are. I think these changes were reviewed and probably reviewed with several people. My feeling is that there was more to what they discussed than what you saw. PGI has shown precedent with how they treat NERFs and other mechanics modifications. They always start with a set point say of 100. They see how this balances, knowing that 100 is way too high a setting. After some data gathering they will go ahead and change the setting to say 25, knowing full well that this is way too low a setting (this is by design which I will get back to later). They collect more data at this point. They will them adjust the setting to 75, a large swing back higher, but not fully back to where it was. Now they have once again a data set to compare back to the previous settings. This time they can actually get better idea of how low to put the setting back to such that they are not over compensating. Say 50 this time (remember this is just hypothetical with defined values I made up to illustrate a point). Now 50 gives you good, but not great balance, but at this point good is enough to keep up long term play and data collection for later finer adjustments.

Now, why this method? Well simply put, its a basic Design of Experiment methodology, specifically a Surface Response. Your looking for broad trends and directions to go. A good Surface Response design must include data from both ends of the extremes and a theoretical mid-point that you are trying estimate. This is very common in Six Sigma strategies and is used in many industries, including game design. Further refinement comes in a factorial design later, I am not going into this as I doubt they even know the subtly and nuances of using this type of data analysis tool in a virtual environment.

Does this seem a bit heavy handed? Sure it does.

Does it seem far fetched? No, its a very common statistical data analysis tool.

Is this something that should have been done in Beta or a PTS? Undoubtedly, full open servers are not the place to do this kind of testing, unfortunately though you need a very large data sampling to make it work right.

PGI needs to be more open and honest in their dealings with the players. Define what your doing, tell us your intentions. We know for a fact your LRM modifications in the past followed this method, as well as your projectile speed and AC fire range.

Its very very critical for you to tell us whats going on. You could have saved a ton of complaints and issues from the general population.

[Shae Starfyre]

Its more than likely that the comp players they consulted do not use this forum much, using twitter more, and use NGNG (consultation) website or their own more.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Exactly, you dont balance based off the max lvl players....or the lowest lvl players. you do it based off the middle of hte road average players.

Cuz then the greats will pwn, the noobs will still suck and the average players will, well, be about in the middle, sometimes doing ok, othertimes being meh...

PGI is probably trying to make it so the bads can compete with the goods and well, that will just never happen.

[DAYLEET]

Kilo 40, on 09 August 2014 - 08:39 AM, said:

ITT: people upset they weren't consulted as highly competitive players.

Or people who believed they were good are now struggling to find a weapon that is both the easiest and best at everything under any circumstance and are not happy about that. After all, mwo never was a game about skills and it's slowly changing and the kids are throwing a fit.

[Gas Guzzler]

DAYLEET, on 09 August 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

Or people who believed they were good are now struggling to find a weapon that is both the easiest and best at everything under any circumstance and are not happy about that. After all, mwo never was a game about skills and it's slowly changing and the kids are throwing a fit.

Lolol. Its not about skill when you can see a weapon coming and calmly step out of the way. Interested to hear what you consider skill. LRMs? Weapons that don't go where you aim?

[WmLowFlyer]

Gas Guzzler, on 09 August 2014 - 07:06 AM, said:

So... no word on who the "best players" that they consulted are yet?

There were no "best players" consulted.

Paul made up some numbers, put it live and then Russ realized how bad of an idea it was once in game play and got some interns to undo the ghost heat penalty.

[Psikez]

Chiming in to say nobody consulted TimeLord Psikez.

[Lefty Lucy]

Psikez, on 09 August 2014 - 10:41 AM, said:

Chiming in to say nobody consulted TimeLord Psikez.

You'll probably use your Tardis to go back and be consulted later/earlier.

[Jonathan Paine]

From the patch notes`:
"...had some of the high competitive players look at it..."

I am not surprised that drug addicts supported the game balance changes!

[Bobzilla]

You don't have to be the best at something to understand it. In fact, being in any minority will limit ones view.

The ppc is only seen as a good weapon because energy weapons suck (heat/spread). Broken game mechanics leading to one good choice is making it seem good. Nerfing it's 'competition' (erll) is just maintaining the status quo.