What's the biggest thing we've learned from this recent patch?
Whining = Results
I don't think I need to go into any specifics of why this is a bad approach for the devs (whether intentionally or by incident). It proves that who can whine the loudest will get the devs to change things in their favor. First though, let's look at this most recent patch, and more specifically, the CERLL changes. The PPC changes have been more of the result of actual balance issues (and whining) dating back far longer than I care to go.
- The "proposed and initially implemented" CERLL changes were the result of whining.
- The devs backing off and implementing a "less severe" change to the CERLL was the result of whining as well.
But it doesn't stop there. Remember the drastic speed increase for LRMs? Yeah, those caused nearly non-stop whining. What happened? The devs scaled back the speed.
I'm not complaining about the nerfs though. We all know the popular topics that already get enough attention. No, what annoys me is not the nerfs themselves. It's how there's a convenient lack of "feedback" from the crowd that initially wanted those changes.
For example, where are the threads saying, "Thanks PGI, CERLL is much more balanced now?" Wouldn't it make sense that if a weapon was causing such constant strife within the community that at least someone would make a thread thanking PGI for the changes?
Nope, if you'll notice, there's no threads of that sort surrounding the recent patch. Instead what you'll see, are 2 (possibly more) threads now talking about how OP the Clan ER "Medium" Laser is, and if you look at the people supporting these threads, it's the same folks who have continuously been whining about Clan balance ever since their induction.
It's a classic example of the, "If you give a mouse a cookie," concept. People whined, the devs gave in to those complaints, and the people who whine found something else to whine about. The overall end result I don't particularly care for. I don't care if people are whining for/against Clan mechs, for/against PP FLD, etc. What I care about is the trend that's been started, and the fact that (LITERALLY) not ONE balance change that's been the result of whining has been good for the game. In fact, the majority of GOOD fixes for the game have been from relatively quiet crowds:
- SRM Fix? A large but relatively calm and collected group.
- Awesome? A medium sized crowd that usually expressed their complaints in a sarcastic manner, bringing light to the issue in the form of inside jokes.
- There's gotta be more positive changes, right?
So...solutions?
Well, the biggest solution of them all would be for people to put aside their own egos and personal agendas, but let's not kid ourselves here, that ain't going to happen.
No, the biggest solution is we need more folks not giving in to the bait of responding to these types of threads. I know it seems counter-intuitive to NOT respond to a topic about nerfing something that doesn't need nerfed, but when you look at it from the developer's POV, it makes complete sense. There's a lot of topics to sort through, so the ones they see with the most pages they'll assume are the biggest issues, and when they read those threads, the people who are the most vocal (note: not the calm collected guys) are going to get their voices heard.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - Greg King
Let the small vocal minority keep their topics small and to themselves. Let those who truly care for the real issues of the game get their voices heard. Perhaps if we had a 25+ page thread about the bad geometry on HPG it would seem a bigger priority to the devs instead of a (likely soon to be) 25+ page with people arguing back and forth about ER Mediums?
2
5 replies to this topic
#2
-
-
- 39 posts
Member
Posted 09 August 2014 - 10:44 PM
Here is one idea that no one seems to have mentioned concering the c-erll, what if the build was op but not used very often? We all know the stats for the weapons, so the higher damage weapons that work well together are used more often. How often though, did we come across someone who was boating c-erll? My guess is that there were only a small handfull of players who decided to use as many as possible. Since this number was so low we rarely ever got shredded by the build.
If you look on Smurfy you can see that a direwolf can run 8 erll with a ton of heat sinks and still have room for an LRM10 with ammo. Of course the build is crazy hot but before the nerf, you could fire two lasers at a time and only generate 17 heat. This would net you 22.5 damage if you were able to hold the weapon on target for 1.5 seconds.
Since I don't know for sure if we have seen any stats on what the overheating number is lets just assume that it is 50 for arguments sake. Lets also assume that each second my heat sinks reduce my heat by 1.5 since we know that double heat sinks don't do 2 (If there are actual known values for this I'm sorry but I can't remember currently). So I fire two lasers at a time with all 8 of them in four groups of two. The first shot I can inflict 22.5 damage for a total of 17 heat. The next shot brings my damage potential up to 45 for 34 heat total. I can could then wait for a third shot would bring my damage potential up to 67.5 but would shut me down for less than one second since I would be at 51 heat. So technically as long as I wait roughly 2 seconds to fire again I could stay below the shutdown value and continue to raise my damage potential by 22.5 per shot. Plus of course if I am really in danger I could always alpha all 8 lasers and inflict 101 damage to a mech's center as long as I can keep it on the center torso for the whole time. This is absolutely insane! Sure its hot but 1.5 seconds to inflict 101 damage to the same spot is crazy. To give you an idea as to how fast this damage ramps up everyone 100th of a second would inflict 1.01 damage to the enemy mech.
All the nerf did was make it so that the damage potential for the weapon takes longer to apply, upped the heat, and made it so that the mech carrying it would have to be exposed longer. Personally since I would be on the recieving end of this weapon currently I am all for making the damage take longer to apply. It gives me the chance to either kill or cripple this guy before he kills me.
Just remember that even if a weapon is not used a ton it can still be OP. PGI gets to see all sorts of statistics that we never see. Obviously there must of been some people boating these things even if we didn't see them very often. I would love to see PGI's stats for these weapons before they were nerfed. Who knows its always possible that everytime someone came across a dw boating these they were scrapped really fast.
Math people please correct any mistakes in my math above.
If you look on Smurfy you can see that a direwolf can run 8 erll with a ton of heat sinks and still have room for an LRM10 with ammo. Of course the build is crazy hot but before the nerf, you could fire two lasers at a time and only generate 17 heat. This would net you 22.5 damage if you were able to hold the weapon on target for 1.5 seconds.
Since I don't know for sure if we have seen any stats on what the overheating number is lets just assume that it is 50 for arguments sake. Lets also assume that each second my heat sinks reduce my heat by 1.5 since we know that double heat sinks don't do 2 (If there are actual known values for this I'm sorry but I can't remember currently). So I fire two lasers at a time with all 8 of them in four groups of two. The first shot I can inflict 22.5 damage for a total of 17 heat. The next shot brings my damage potential up to 45 for 34 heat total. I can could then wait for a third shot would bring my damage potential up to 67.5 but would shut me down for less than one second since I would be at 51 heat. So technically as long as I wait roughly 2 seconds to fire again I could stay below the shutdown value and continue to raise my damage potential by 22.5 per shot. Plus of course if I am really in danger I could always alpha all 8 lasers and inflict 101 damage to a mech's center as long as I can keep it on the center torso for the whole time. This is absolutely insane! Sure its hot but 1.5 seconds to inflict 101 damage to the same spot is crazy. To give you an idea as to how fast this damage ramps up everyone 100th of a second would inflict 1.01 damage to the enemy mech.
All the nerf did was make it so that the damage potential for the weapon takes longer to apply, upped the heat, and made it so that the mech carrying it would have to be exposed longer. Personally since I would be on the recieving end of this weapon currently I am all for making the damage take longer to apply. It gives me the chance to either kill or cripple this guy before he kills me.
Just remember that even if a weapon is not used a ton it can still be OP. PGI gets to see all sorts of statistics that we never see. Obviously there must of been some people boating these things even if we didn't see them very often. I would love to see PGI's stats for these weapons before they were nerfed. Who knows its always possible that everytime someone came across a dw boating these they were scrapped really fast.
Math people please correct any mistakes in my math above.
#3
-
-
- Legendary Founder
- 1,102 posts
Member
- LocationManassas, Va
Posted 09 August 2014 - 10:44 PM
But but but...this patch is "Highly competitive player" tested and approved...
#4
-
-
- Bad Company
- 22,783 posts
Member
- LocationClassified
Posted 09 August 2014 - 10:50 PM
OP, I was way ahead of you on that one by about 52 hours:
Quote
And what is the lesson for today and for all time:
Whining incessantly does indeed produce results!
Whining incessantly does indeed produce results!
Edited by Mystere, 09 August 2014 - 10:51 PM.
#5
Posted 10 August 2014 - 12:02 AM
Aresye, on 09 August 2014 - 09:59 PM, said:
What's the biggest thing we've learned from this recent patch?
Whining = Results
I don't think I need to go into any specifics of why this is a bad approach for the devs (whether intentionally or by incident). It proves that who can whine the loudest will get the devs to change things in their favor. First though, let's look at this most recent patch, and more specifically, the CERLL changes. The PPC changes have been more of the result of actual balance issues (and whining) dating back far longer than I care to go.
- The "proposed and initially implemented" CERLL changes were the result of whining.
- The devs backing off and implementing a "less severe" change to the CERLL was the result of whining as well.
But it doesn't stop there. Remember the drastic speed increase for LRMs? Yeah, those caused nearly non-stop whining. What happened? The devs scaled back the speed.
I'm not complaining about the nerfs though. We all know the popular topics that already get enough attention. No, what annoys me is not the nerfs themselves. It's how there's a convenient lack of "feedback" from the crowd that initially wanted those changes.
For example, where are the threads saying, "Thanks PGI, CERLL is much more balanced now?" Wouldn't it make sense that if a weapon was causing such constant strife within the community that at least someone would make a thread thanking PGI for the changes?
Nope, if you'll notice, there's no threads of that sort surrounding the recent patch. Instead what you'll see, are 2 (possibly more) threads now talking about how OP the Clan ER "Medium" Laser is, and if you look at the people supporting these threads, it's the same folks who have continuously been whining about Clan balance ever since their induction.
It's a classic example of the, "If you give a mouse a cookie," concept. People whined, the devs gave in to those complaints, and the people who whine found something else to whine about. The overall end result I don't particularly care for. I don't care if people are whining for/against Clan mechs, for/against PP FLD, etc. What I care about is the trend that's been started, and the fact that (LITERALLY) not ONE balance change that's been the result of whining has been good for the game. In fact, the majority of GOOD fixes for the game have been from relatively quiet crowds:
- SRM Fix? A large but relatively calm and collected group.
- Awesome? A medium sized crowd that usually expressed their complaints in a sarcastic manner, bringing light to the issue in the form of inside jokes.
- There's gotta be more positive changes, right?
So...solutions?
Well, the biggest solution of them all would be for people to put aside their own egos and personal agendas, but let's not kid ourselves here, that ain't going to happen.
No, the biggest solution is we need more folks not giving in to the bait of responding to these types of threads. I know it seems counter-intuitive to NOT respond to a topic about nerfing something that doesn't need nerfed, but when you look at it from the developer's POV, it makes complete sense. There's a lot of topics to sort through, so the ones they see with the most pages they'll assume are the biggest issues, and when they read those threads, the people who are the most vocal (note: not the calm collected guys) are going to get their voices heard.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - Greg King
Let the small vocal minority keep their topics small and to themselves. Let those who truly care for the real issues of the game get their voices heard. Perhaps if we had a 25+ page thread about the bad geometry on HPG it would seem a bigger priority to the devs instead of a (likely soon to be) 25+ page with people arguing back and forth about ER Mediums?
Whining = Results
I don't think I need to go into any specifics of why this is a bad approach for the devs (whether intentionally or by incident). It proves that who can whine the loudest will get the devs to change things in their favor. First though, let's look at this most recent patch, and more specifically, the CERLL changes. The PPC changes have been more of the result of actual balance issues (and whining) dating back far longer than I care to go.
- The "proposed and initially implemented" CERLL changes were the result of whining.
- The devs backing off and implementing a "less severe" change to the CERLL was the result of whining as well.
But it doesn't stop there. Remember the drastic speed increase for LRMs? Yeah, those caused nearly non-stop whining. What happened? The devs scaled back the speed.
I'm not complaining about the nerfs though. We all know the popular topics that already get enough attention. No, what annoys me is not the nerfs themselves. It's how there's a convenient lack of "feedback" from the crowd that initially wanted those changes.
For example, where are the threads saying, "Thanks PGI, CERLL is much more balanced now?" Wouldn't it make sense that if a weapon was causing such constant strife within the community that at least someone would make a thread thanking PGI for the changes?
Nope, if you'll notice, there's no threads of that sort surrounding the recent patch. Instead what you'll see, are 2 (possibly more) threads now talking about how OP the Clan ER "Medium" Laser is, and if you look at the people supporting these threads, it's the same folks who have continuously been whining about Clan balance ever since their induction.
It's a classic example of the, "If you give a mouse a cookie," concept. People whined, the devs gave in to those complaints, and the people who whine found something else to whine about. The overall end result I don't particularly care for. I don't care if people are whining for/against Clan mechs, for/against PP FLD, etc. What I care about is the trend that's been started, and the fact that (LITERALLY) not ONE balance change that's been the result of whining has been good for the game. In fact, the majority of GOOD fixes for the game have been from relatively quiet crowds:
- SRM Fix? A large but relatively calm and collected group.
- Awesome? A medium sized crowd that usually expressed their complaints in a sarcastic manner, bringing light to the issue in the form of inside jokes.
- There's gotta be more positive changes, right?
So...solutions?
Well, the biggest solution of them all would be for people to put aside their own egos and personal agendas, but let's not kid ourselves here, that ain't going to happen.
No, the biggest solution is we need more folks not giving in to the bait of responding to these types of threads. I know it seems counter-intuitive to NOT respond to a topic about nerfing something that doesn't need nerfed, but when you look at it from the developer's POV, it makes complete sense. There's a lot of topics to sort through, so the ones they see with the most pages they'll assume are the biggest issues, and when they read those threads, the people who are the most vocal (note: not the calm collected guys) are going to get their voices heard.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” - Greg King
Let the small vocal minority keep their topics small and to themselves. Let those who truly care for the real issues of the game get their voices heard. Perhaps if we had a 25+ page thread about the bad geometry on HPG it would seem a bigger priority to the devs instead of a (likely soon to be) 25+ page with people arguing back and forth about ER Mediums?
http://www.dudeiwant...ning-bundle.asp
this might have been a better gift than a cake Imperius
1 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users
