Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:
As I have said in the past when Solaris was released, we treat Solo, Group, and Competitive Play as our balance "anchors" for a vast majority of the weapon / Mech / Equipment tuning we do in MWO, but this dose not mean we can ignore feedback from other aspects of the game to ensure that critical issues in those modes don't go overlooked. And its only by listening to the greater whole that we can help both identify and prioritize potential things to what we internally wish to see improved.
I hope you are just trying to be politically correct with the we listen to everyone line, because it is a recipie for disaster. Trying to listen to everyone in a crowd and all you will hear is noise. And this community is one hell of a noisy crowd.
You may “listen” to all input equally, but you obviously have to decide to whom you are going to be responsive too and that implicitly means you are going to have to ignore -at least perceptively so- the feedback from at least some part of that “greater whole” you mention, and that’s fine. Own that.
Let’s look at an example:
When you guys buffed the HGR range, you specifically stated that the range buff was in direct response to input from competitive players. Yet there are dozens of comments on these forums (from even before that buff) from all sorts of players asserting that dual HGR builds are OP and need a nerf, etc. You may have listened and contine to listen to both of these points of view, but obviously and empirically you are ignoring the feedback of one.
Good on ya. Do this more. Pick an audience to whom you wish to cater to and listen to them. Don’t do what you guys have historically done with CW and end up with something no one is really happy with. Instead listen to those who understand the issue and ignore the rest. Alas, I don’t think you guys “listen” to any particular part of the community let alone the whole community as you and Russ have stated (I suspect you listen to whatever you think is right and to hell with what the community thinks...again see the state CW and the written record as to how it got there for example), but if you do, I sure hope for the sake of the game’s future that you are being more selective than you are insisting above.