Perhaps it's time to discuss mercuries, competitive play and general play.

[Calico Jack]

I realise this will be a contentious issue, however I think it needs to be talked about as it is potentially also a divisive issue as regards the community, by saying which I'm not attempting to use weasel words to lend my post gravitas, but rather to say it has come up in conversations I've had with various people prior to and after the patch, (whom I don't feel entitled to speak for) and I've seen one other poster, besides myself, voice the same concern in these forums.


Namely:
People are looking at the changes to the mercury, then competitive play styles and concluding there is a link. How anyone could get that idea is fairly easy to explain:

There area numerous threads in the forums either specifically about mercuries being used in competitive matches or mentioning them being used.

There are the threads concerning testing in the Dev App and point to who is giving feedback, though I will temper this by also pointing out not everyone who has the dev app posts feedback, those that do are merely the most motivated

I also ask that the discussion remain respectful.

[Imagine]

Field gun sticky says hi: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2006.0.html

[Calico Jack]

However discussing this there would be seen as thread derailment.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I honestly don't get what you are trying to say. Is it that mercs got nerfed solely based on competitive play?

[Queso]

The problem with the mercuries, at any level, they were not fun. Sure watching enemies suffer at a distance can be a laugh, but it doesn't last, and the other team is having a terrible time no matter how good they are. The goal of a game designer is to make sure the players have fun. At a low level this means making things clear and satisfying. At a high level this means good balance to ensure players keep coming back and enjoying the depth of mechanics the game has to offer. These two are not exclusive. If the only concern is game balance, make a game of chess. Everyone plays chess all the time. Perfectly balanced, but not a ton of fun to play all the time. Short term laughs the only concern, go play HL2 Deathmatch and fling toilets at each other for half an hour. There however you aren't going to get a nice long lasting experience because there isn't a ton of balance or depth. You can't have a good game with just balance, and you can't have a good game with no balance.

[Pickle]

There is a risk that competitive play is given too much attention when it comes to balancing the game, when it occupies an insignificant and rather unimportant niche of no consequence to the vast majority of players.  General play as experienced by the majority should be the priority over catering to a minority self-styled elite.

But in the case of the Mercury, the problems have been experienced by most players.  Something was needed, whether what we got is right or not is another argument.  And opinions are like arseholes.  We've all got one.  And you'll never please everyone.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Awkm already gave his explanation as well, which I feel is worth quoting here.

This is a repost of something on MAPS.  Serenum said the following about Field Gun changes and below that is my response.

It was fine as it [Field Gun] was.
Sniping was a greatly exaggerated problem, you only need a working brain to deal with it. But no. Whiners win.

You know, I would agree with you here.  To be blatantly honest, the Field Gun has been the bane of my existence since this game went into beta.  It's had so many problems.  It's been literally on the razor's edge since it's inception.  Even without any changes for the past 3 months (let's not count penetration testing since it never made it to production) there's another sudden outburst where there was not a day that went by where we had tons of emails complaining specifically about this gun.  That doesn't even include the banter that goes on here on the forum.

Still, I ignored it also because I thought it was totally fine.

However, during a pickup match with devs my team was completely disabled and kept at bay.  Granted my team didn't have the best overall loadout to deal with the situation, we knew what we had to do and it was very very difficult doing it.  Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have cared because we might have been playing against an organized team.  However, we release passwords to our locked pickup games on global chat and it fills up very very quickly.  I don't believe the enemy ships played together much, if at all, previously.

What this shows that is it's possible for relatively new players to get on a dbl Field Gun Pyramidion and completely suck the fun out for the opposing team.  For us devs, knowing exactly what was happening, it was pretty aggravating.  Imagine how that would feel for an average player or a newbie?  I bet they'd feel helpless and that's not the kind of game I want to make.  I want to have it so with a little planning, you'll a variety of options available to you to deal with the situation.

Veteran players will always expose the nastiest of metas and give me a big headache.  That's fine, though.  Most of the time these strategies do require a lot of work and coordination, but they are evidence that smaller work can be done to mitigate them if they're being pulled off that consistently (by no means am I not recognizing the skill and coordination that veterans have, I just want to give them something fresh to work with).  However, once the metas start trickling down to new players and they can pull them off relatively easily too then that's a good indication of something being unbalanced.  This past few weeks we had TGS/Polaris videos go up and a ton of people in the game.  Even anecdotal evidence from our Teachers claimed that Field Gun was a go to meta and was extremely deadly as soon as had the right loadout and minor coordination.  Not good.

So that's what happened.  Whiners only give me part of the equation and without trickle down confirmation whiners rarely win.

[Calico Jack]

Thanks Admiral Zill I did read that post prior to it being quoted here btw.

TBH what I was really hoping for with this thread was a clearing of air why is it that there is this feeling that the competitive game is pushing an agenda on the rest of the player base, that it's all about being "connected" and being able to casually name drop.

There is a risk that competitive play is given too much attention when it comes to balancing the game, when it occupies an insignificant and rather unimportant niche of no consequence to the vast majority of players.  General play as experienced by the majority should be the priority over catering to a minority self-styled elite.

something more like this  - I'm not singling you out Pickle but you are expressing the kind of thing I mean and I'd like to discuss why there is the perception of two groups in the player base one of which has more clout than the other - because it's been a common theme in discussions around the latest patch.

[RearAdmiralZill]

You probably get that from the fact that a good percentage of competitive players are also the most frequent on the forums/dev app/ones giving real feedback. Not to say others do not, but that's just a theory.

Despite our input, Muse has their vision and they will go forth with it. No boarding for example.

[Plasmarobo]

I think this is a nonissue.

I dunno about the rest of you, but comp play represents about 1% of my actual time. When I complain about something it's across the game. I don't think comp should be singled out as a discrete phenomenon. The game has a skill continuum. Comp just sits from the middle to the edge.

I play comp because it's fun. I play pugs because they are fun. I use the same tactics (minus the silly ones) for both. Granted I usually engineer. Point being I think you guys feel there is some kind of fundamental disconnect between the two. I don't think there is. I think the game is the game, and if something is ruining most peoples enjoyment of it, it needs to be fixed.

The comp players are usually the high skill/high time investment. We just care is all. If someone wants to make a stink, they will do regardless. It's just people venting frustration. Remember: it's easy to be loud. I think we're just experiencing a little turbulence, and I expect things to be calm again in a week. We're an emotional lot.

[Calico Jack]

I think this is a nonissue.

I think it is an important issue because while the issue of the mercury will pass, the other part - the suspicion of the existence a two tier playerbase -  won't unless addressed. Or to put it in clearer terms there is already a belief the player base is divided, which has nothing to do with weapons or competitive play.

[Captain Smollett]

Yeah I agree with Plasmarobo; I like many forum posters play competitively but the majority of my thousands of matches happened in pub play.

We all play the same game, and most of the competitive players play a lot of it and are very opinionated just like the casual players that play a lot of it.

So we're all the same player base, and I'm pretty confident muse looks at the game as a whole when making decisions. 

[Calico Jack]

I'm pretty confident muse looks at the game as a whole when making decisions. 

yes I agree with you on this.

[Sammy B. T.]

I think competitive play acts as magnifying class. Imbalances are magnified.

[N-Sunderland]

Of the observations I've made in balance threads, 100% of them have been based off of experience in PUG matches. Same goes for most other competitive players. If I was basing my concerns off of competitive matches, then I'd have already started a thread rallying to get the buff hammer nerfed. As you can see, I have not done so.