"When Ambush Comes to Shove" is being tested this weekend!

[Keyvias]

Hey everyone,

We are testing all this weekend and we will be doing a blind and non-blind test.
Balance changes are live in the dev app right now!
After the test is completed we'll release the notes here!

February 27th
11 am eastern- Blind Data Test (Changed PM to AM)
Affected Systems

Mobula
Spire
Squid
Heavy Flak
Harpoon
Pyramidion
Physics related to ship fall
Hwacha

February 27th
1 pm eastern- Change Notes Released

February  28th
12 pm eastern-  Informed Data Test

[DrTentacles]

Are the changes in the client yet?

[Keyvias]

Yup, changed the top text to reflect, feel free to poke around to your hearts content!

[Richard LeMoon]

I hate blind testing. We once tested something for over an hour, assuming that is what was changed, gave feedback, only to be told that nothing had been changed for that part of the game. Very frustrating.

[BlackenedPies]

I hate blind testing.

Me too

Mortar nerfed * 1 / 2 dmg

[Spud Nick]

I think the blind test is desgined to give feedback from gameplay rather than from forums posts. If you see the changes being made you might react to it in a post rather than test the changes itself.

[BlackenedPies]

It's tedious testing what you don't know what you're testing. Tell us WHAT changed even without the numbers. If we know what we're testing it wastes less time

Today with a group we spent too much time guessing what we were testing and without good answers

[Keyvias]

Well this time we have blind and non-blind testing. If you don't feel like blind tests are an efficient use of your time, you're definitely free to just show up for the Sunday one.
From our testing we find that blind tests give much better feedback that focus on feelings and problem statements (harpoon doesn't feel strong enough or hold length isn't enough) where non-blind has players give us "solutions" without including the core problem or what's really bothering them making their feedback hard to compare with other players. Getting sent 5 problems about a gun or 5 solutions to a gun, it's much easier to use the problems to figure out the core issue.

It's definitely hard to find the best testing plan because there are people who are very good at looking at game design and explaining themselves and those that aren't. So we're doing both this time and I definitely say do whichever one interests you or both and give us a compare and contrast if you'd like to.

[BlackenedPies]

Here's the first 20 mins of testing:

I'm informed that pyra hull has been buffed to 1000. No way! It takes 11 greased mortars to kill. Then we test artemis and it takes 5. Huh. Test mortar against galleon and it takes 17 shots... like a greased light flak. Turns out there was a hidden mortar nerf and we just wasted 20 mins without learning anything except that pyra "feels" faster (and I don't call that useful feedback). Does blind testing include blind changes? Because a mortar nerf sounds like pretending the new gat mortar squid isn't OP

The only useful feedback you get is what we can figure out. We've had a week of blind testing and this isn't an efficient process for releasing patches

[Lueosi]

Worst case scenario you need 41 greased mortars to kill a Pyra (550 health) if you have bad aoe connections (even if you get big hit markers all over the place because aoe dmg falls off at 50% radius linearly down to 20% damage). Make sure to destroy all components and shoot the hull far away from balloon. (550/(60*0.8*1.4*0.2) > 40)

Mortar hasn't changed.

[BlackenedPies]

All components were destroyed by burning them out. We tested multiple times against multiple ships

Keb Kamoba Zanc Logic

[Solidusbucket]

I think we are all missing the real point about the mortar here. It is a grenade launcher inappropriately named.

[ZnC]

Well like I mentioned a few times - it's a BUG!

Kamoba and I tested it again, works as intended.

[MightyKeb]

I think we are all missing the real point about the mortar here. It is a grenade launcher inappropriately named.

Why launch grenades when you can launch Mortars?!!

[Atruejedi]

We're here, we're here! Twelve of us are in-game right now... where are the officials!?