71 replies to this topic

[Fate 6]

Netcode fixes needs to happen before any other balance changes (other than ECM getting nerfed into oblivion). I'm tired of optimizing my Cent-A for 3 SRM6s+Artemis, and then alpha striking a guy 2 times at 20m and getting NO HIT MARKERS. Can't balance the game when weapons don't do damage when they hit people.

Old topic, but tired of ppl saying buff/nerf XX weapon, especially LRMs/SSRMs.

Edited by Fate 6, 17 January 2013 - 10:23 AM.

[Paul Inouye]

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

[8RoundsRapid]

My question is this, Paul: Why was netcode, since it is such an essential part of any online multiplayer game, released in such a shoddy state?

Obviously, I'm no coder or designer, but I have worked many jobs in a professional capacity, and having to rewrite your netcode a year in to development makes it appear that it was just thrown together to begin with.

Wouldn't it have been better for all involved to have done the netcode thing first?

[Alexandrix]

Hey Paul,
you should umm..."accidently"...make mguns do 20 damage per bullet next patch.personally i think it'd be hilarious.You can always hotfix it a couple hours later!


*but only doing that damage to light mechs!! normal damage otherwise!!*

Edited by Alexandrix, 17 January 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[3rdworld]

I wouldn't have accepted responsibility for the balancing in public.

[StalaggtIKE]

8RoundsRapid, on 17 January 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

My question is this, Paul: Why was netcode, since it is such an essential part of any online multiplayer game, released in such a shoddy state?

Obviously, I'm no coder or designer, but I have worked many jobs in a professional capacity, and having to rewrite your netcode a year in to development makes it appear that it was just thrown together to begin with.

Wouldn't it have been better for all involved to have done the netcode thing first?

It was not. IIRC, within the CryEngine, everything is smooth up to a certain speed limit of 100m/s (?). It's once speeds higher than 100m/s are achieved where you run into problems. Holding off the addition of fast mechs might have resulted in less headaches for us. However, what better way to test netcode improvements, than to have mechs capable of challenging the speed threshold?

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 17 January 2013 - 10:57 AM.

[DragonsFire]

8RoundsRapid, on 17 January 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

My question is this, Paul: Why was netcode, since it is such an essential part of any online multiplayer game, released in such a shoddy state?

Obviously, I'm no coder or designer, but I have worked many jobs in a professional capacity, and having to rewrite your netcode a year in to development makes it appear that it was just thrown together to begin with.

Wouldn't it have been better for all involved to have done the netcode thing first?

Paul may or may not respond, but speaking from a developer perspective as well, there are always unintended consequences of real world deployment vs lab/internal testing deployment. That is a huge and frustrating issue in any development cycle, and it goes right in hand with reproducing any issues seen in the real world but not in the lab.

It is incredibly frustrating to absolutely know that an issue exists, and not be able to reproduce it to be able to do a RCA (root cause analysis) and implement a fix, but it happens. I am encouraged by their current approach and I think that things will be working very well when the final product is delivered.

[Esplodin]

3rdworld, on 17 January 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

I wouldn't have accepted responsibility for the balancing in public.

Just one more reason to like this MMO. Personally I'd have made the MG do 4 damage per bullet (decimals, I curse thee!) for every post of hate and vitriol in these forums.

[PurpleNinja]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

Answering this topic was a noble effort, I salute you for that.

[NitroDev]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

You guys are doing a great job on the balancing so far IMO.

Was that too obvious of an attempt at *** kissing?

[3rdworld]

Esplodin, on 17 January 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

Just one more reason to like this MMO. Personally I'd have made the MG do 4 damage per bullet (decimals, I curse thee!) for every post of hate and vitriol in these forums.

I will try not to be critical of our developer overlords less I offend the masses.

[WTChance]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

This has been stated before. That said, thank you, Paul for stating it again. I stopped dipping my hands into code a very long time ago and it was enough to induce rage fueled migraines then. I can't imagine what it is like now. Keep up the good work. Quite a few of us are cheering for this franchise AND the people who are bringing it to us,

[Tarman]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

Thanks for the info. This is the kind of thing many of us want to hear. Even a HLOY CARP THIS TAKES FOREVER is better than nothing. Knowing you're working on it as much as possible is a good thing to hear even if it's a long slog. This mollifies some of my own frustrations about the game that at least you're busting tail on it best you can.

Now about that balancing.... we can take bi-weekly hotfixes, man. Don't be afraid to get aggressive with your tweak timeline, especially on the marginalized weapons systems. I'd rather suffer through a bunch of weirdness every two or three weeks as something gets live-tuned, than the stuck-with-forever-feeling method currently going on.

[Jasen]

Some more answers like this in more of these threads would go a LONG way to chilling out some of the hate...

Thanks Paul!


EDIT: Agree with the post above... more balance tweaking more often would be cool... it is open beta after all... use this time wisely.

Edited by Jasen, 17 January 2013 - 11:08 AM.

[MajorLeeHung]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

Dont feed us that BS Paul! YOU HAVE HAD MONTHS and all you have done is introduce a non cannon and broken ECM, disabled collisions and made light mechs god of the battlefield (and if you dont beleave that look at my game footage for the last week and watch as me and three merc corp buds win EVERY MATCH and abuse it for 2million cbills+ an hour) and pushed us farther down the road tward gauss warrior online with your inability to balance weapons (hence broken *** ECM). You and David have flat out failed to do your jobs. Your netcode guys need to be fired or have there pay cut so that actually DO something and we wont even start about your lack of content, no CW, no good MM, crap mechbay and frontend, 6 month old bugs, or the hundred other things that should have been addressed by now.

/endrant

Great game btw!

[siLve00]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. Both of us are not programmers and you DEFINITELY don't want us playing with netcode. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something. Netcode is our #1 priority on the engineering side of things. The guys working on netcode have touched nothing but netcode. They have nothing to do with game balancing or adding new mechs/maps/items. Their main focus is netcode. i.e. Finding problems, re-writing a LOT of code that is part of the engine and making sure it doesn't break anything back up the chain. This is a VERY long process and not something that is addressed in a few days or weeks for that matter.

sticky that post ^^

[RynCage]

Paul Inouye, on 17 January 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

It is myself and David B. who do the game balancing. I'll let you and the rest of the community in on something.

You seem a bit upset Paul. Also, you and David are awful at your job of "balancing".

[Thorqemada]

Alexandrix, on 17 January 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

Hey Paul,
you should umm..."accidently"...make mguns do 20 damage per bullet next patch.personally i think it'd be hilarious.You can always hotfix it a couple hours later!


*but only doing that damage to light mechs!! normal damage otherwise!!*

Yeah, that would be great, i want to play around with the 4 x ballistic Spider.

[GODzillaGSPB]

I'd go so far and consider netcode part of balancing. Any kind of balance can be thrown overboard when the netcode is bad.

I mean, why are lights so feared currently? Why are they so effective and bigger mechs ineffective against them? Netcode.

So while I agree with the OP, I think this is very obvious and nothing the devs needs to be told. And the second post proves this right I guess.

[Orthodontist]

8RoundsRapid, on 17 January 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

My question is this, Paul: Why was netcode, since it is such an essential part of any online multiplayer game, released in such a shoddy state?

Obviously, I'm no coder or designer, but I have worked many jobs in a professional capacity, and having to rewrite your netcode a year in to development makes it appear that it was just thrown together to begin with.

Wouldn't it have been better for all involved to have done the netcode thing first?

You know.

You should be quiet.

The game is FUN right now. I have many, many hours of enjoyment thus far into this game. Let them clean it up, right now the game IS playable.

Edited by Orthodontist, 17 January 2013 - 11:19 AM.