Tennex, on 16 January 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:
no cuz there are other systems in place, for organized 8vs8 play besides getting 8 players together and hitting the launch button you know all those secret 8manteams that PGI keep in a basement that they gather ECM advice from. not the beta testers or matchmaking of course no.
I sent a 5 page 'suggestions from the forums' email to design a couple days ago, with multiple links to ECM ideas.
The reason we don't reply about it, is we don't have a definitive change we can tell you yet. "It might be one of these things or maybe something else" isn't going to help anything, and will lead to more confusion than understanding. An 'incremental change' requires we have data to see how it's actually working. If we went off of Mech popularity the day after a patch where a Mech was released, well, you can imagine how accurate it'd really be.
The fact is ECM numbers are dropping - in both pub games (a LOT), and in competitive games (a fair amount - the average is much, much lower than 'all eight Mechs'. Are we looking at changes? Yes. Am I going to post here every time we have an idea in testing? No. Why not? I'd literally spend my entire work day posting changes that occurred from the day before. And most of it would never make it to the live game, and would cause people to choose the ones that weren't used as 'that would have worked instead' (see: Dual Heat Sinks.)
We're not trying to hide info from you - it's just that barraging you with data that, by and large, won't be used isn't a good use of anyone's time. I try to tell people when I am forwarding their ideas, but when you're sending ten at a time, in a short amount of time, it's tough to justify saying "thanks sending this!" over and over, and then getting PM's saying you clearly didn't, because that exact change wasn't used in the next patch.
That said, we do listen, we do look at your ideas, and we do value your info. I try to answer PM's as fast as I can, but again, I'd spend an entire day responding, and then responding to the responses, and so on. We do see, and we do appreciate, and I am constantly forwarding your comments.
I hope you all understand this isn't an attack on you guys, or saying you're all shouting blasphemy. It's, sadly, a time thing. Were I able to clone myself, every single suggestion would get a reply, kudos, and a free bobblehead of me agreeing with your assertions.