How are we supposed to be playing the game?
Gat/mortar was overused because it was the safest way to win at the game, by killing another ship. 'Easy' means there is little to no risk involved. You're supposed to kill ships but this strategy negates all the other cool things we want to do with the game like disabling components to effect ship movement. So we've failed you there. Ultimately, this game is about gaining the positional advantage on your opponent to set up your kill. Gat/mortar made kills too easy to set up. Someone with little experience in the game can easily charge in with a gat/mortar Pyramidion and get a kill very quickly. The weapon decision choice collapsed to these two guns. It was too safe to use in their previous balance.
People like safe and will go with what they think is safest. The thinking is important. The decisions collapsed too quickly because this strategy and combination was easy to pull off. Therefore, no more thinking needed to occur. We want more. We want you to always think about your build and how it will interact with your team and the opposing team.
Furthermore, the way that these two weapons were balanced also collapsed gunner skills so you'd only need one ammo... and therefore no need for gunners. The nerf to gat/mortar as a multi-pronged attack.
In general, I want the ship that died to say "Damn, that was a good kill. We messed up and they totally deserved it. I've got a plan for the next time around." This is wishful thinking but you can see how things like former gat/mortar and heavy carronade made this almost impossible at times.
Have I been playing the game the wrong way for the last six months?You are playing correctly. As I said, the decision space collapsed way too quickly. Everyone knew that gat/mortar was the pretty much the most effective thing you could do. It overshadowed ammo choices and gun choices and went in for the kill too quickly. It cut out a lot of designs and ways to play out of the equation. You and everyone else played correctly. I just failed everyone and making this too easy to figure out.
What is the perfect balance we're aiming for? Kills should be tough to pull off. Our matches are between 5-12 deaths when normal FPS rack up kills in the 100's per match. Again, this is about gaining the positional advantage over your opponent. We've designed in a lot of ways you can do that through disabling. We want you to disable. We want you to fly into position. Deny others' positions. Get denied. Retreat. Reform. Only until you execute your build effectively or catch an opponent unwary will you be rewarded with the kill.
Ships should be hard to kill. Point blank gat/mortar, again, negated gaining the position on someone to a great degree.
Where do I go from here?We will keep balancing until we've reached our goals. Nerf, buff, whatever it takes. Options are important. Supporting the decision space so it doesn't collapse so easily is important. Because we're indie, we don't have a QA team. Everyone who was with us since beta knows how much change the balance has gone through. It's been a year and finally it's very close to something that offers numerous valid choices. It will still take a while but we're almost there. Problems will be nipped in the bud and I personally have to thank everyone for putting up with the issues.
I'm not going to lie, gat/mortar was an great way to beat the game and even I abused it a lot. However, it was unsustainable. Lots of weapons, ammo, ships, loadouts, were being forgotten. Ultimately, this means a lot of hard work was slowly going down the drain. Whatever changes that may drop in the future will all be an effort to support the decision space to make the game interesting.
Our goal is for you to be able to choose some guns and cater them to your own play style. Not have the gun or ship dictate entirely how you play. There's enough room with gunner skills, pilot skill, and engineer builds to do this now—again it's really close to perfect. Just think if gat+heavy/mortar+greased was the only viable weapon in the game. The gat/motor was forcing you how to play a certain way—they were telling you to Pyramidion brawl all the time. People use other things because they're bored of gat/mortar... see too much of it, used it too many times, it's not challenging, etc...
To be honest, this is not easy work. The hardest thing is not to piss everyone off so that they quit the game. However, everything is done to improve your experience overall. Again, I strike at the middle ground. I want competitive players, the people who spend the most time in the game, to have experience the full depth of the game has to offer. I want new players to mull over builds and come up with their own creative way to play and explore... hopefully reaching the depths that competitive and veterans are diving and swimming around in.
Not many people get to balance competitive games so I'm humbled to be one of those people. This is my first time doing it so yeah I made a crap ton of mistakes but thanks to everyone here I've learned a crap ton. Obviously, it'll be better in the next competitive game I do (NEVER, lulz)
All I have to say is that I'm really effing glad I don't have to worry too much about balance in Co-op and Adventure. I'll give you those damn gat/mortars then... you'll just have to grind for it puahahahahah.
Again... sign up for Dev App is you have a very big investment in this game and the balance. Getting feedback before the patch drops is... ideal.
