Info > Release Notes

1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

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Daft Loon:
Missing from the lochnagar notes:
- -100% jitter changed to -60%

Given that the Minotaur now has 2 shots with loch at 405 armor damage a piece this is probably necessary given the other changes.

Dementio:
Wait what, what changes were untested? I haven't read a single thing that wasn't already in dev app before. Maybe some details about Flak and Lochnagar that I didn't bother memorizing, but everything else has been tested in one of those 3 weeks.

@Muse Why in the world would you think the Heavy Flak changes would make the Spire op? Why do I need an easily disabled heavy gun to kill a ship, when I can put a Hwacha on there that disables the enemy while killing them with a less easily disabled light gun that does twice the damage output (Mortar) or has an explosive damage type as well as shatter to disable enemy guns (Artemis)? Even if it does get OP on the Spire, has the thought occured that maybe the Flak needs to be looked at again, instead of nerfing the one ship that needed a buff even more than the Pyramidion and changing Lochnagar in a way that kills it for the few guns that actually had a use for it? The new Heavy Flak doesn't even work with the new Lochnagar! And the old one would probably still be worse then Burst Rounds.

I also feel like our feedback has not been looked into all that much. The values have basically been the same throughout 3 weeks and only around two things were actually changed in between weeks. Official testing is a nice thing to have, but it was damn redundant. Especially, because, on the dev app forum at least, I have not seen a single person that thought it was a good idea to buff the Squid, nerf the Spire and not buff the Pyramidion's speed in any way. Like, what? I imagine that the guys writing on the forum are the more active ones and actually write emails to feedback@muse as well, and unless they changed their opinion without stating so on the forum, to what degree was our feedback actually taken in? I personally see only one reflection from my feedback: The Mobula's bottom gun changes are back to 10 degrees instead of 15 from the last week of testing, and that's it? Everybody else thought "the other changes are perfectly fine, let's get going"? Three weeks worth of testing and barely anything got changed from the original values? That makes me believe Muse is playing a different game, with a blindfold while liquid happiness is pumped into their blood stream so they wouldn't notice how horrible some, not all, but some ideas are.

Pull that trick a second time, and you have to employ 16 more people to test the changes yourself. Nothing comes from it anyway. Even when I question some of Muse's decisions in terms of game balance and design choices, this effects me personally, because that was 3 weeks of waste.

Keyvias:
@Untested changes
Definitely want to know which ones we missed. I'm pretty sure they were all caught and tested.

@Loch jitter
Fixed, good catch, copy paste error.

@Feedback
We get a crazy amount of conflicting data. Showing everything means people do what happens on the forums already which is someone points to another person saying it as proof that it is fact. We've tried showing numbers before and we were told "how dare we care about the numbers we should focus on what the players are saying."
Going through the data takes a lot of time already from sorting the data for every ship and gun usage to having meetings internally about decisions we've made. Putting out all the data and then having to defend the way we see that data is another step that doesn't earn us anything because there will be people that massively disagree with our interpretation.
You can believe that your feedback doesn't have any effect, but I name 11 changes specifically that would've been in this patch if not for feedback. Is that enough for you to keep testing? That's your decision. As I said I want to improve this communication because honestly the noise between good feedback and bad feedback is very hard to filter.
Do I think we listen to the right feedback perfectly? Of course not, but remove your own feedback from the mix read all the forum threads, then double that and add in people who aren't talking to each other and just on their thoughts. Who do you listen to?
I am not asking for slack or trying to make excuses. At the end of the day a decision has to be made on these things, we have to try to estimate the interactions between the changes to four ships, three guns and one ammo. Do I think we made the right choice? I am sure enough to try it in production, but it can be changed on the fly. If by tomorrow the spire is broken, unusable, and useless, we can change it. We can give it 400 more health, double how fast it moves up and down, make it the fastest ship in the game, or return it to how it was yesterday without closing down the servers for a second.
We want to be more active in balance, we want to finely hone this game, and we want to improve it.
And we're going to get it wrong.
We have before and that's going to happen, but we want to be quicker on fixing it. We want to find better ways to filter noise and get the right people saying the important things.

If we lost some of you for testing or some of you lost faith in Muse Games. I am sorry. Our purpose wasn't to annoy, frustrate, or ignore. It was trying to improve the game. We will keep trying and keep doing everything we can, including improving the testing communication and system.


Examples of data (for Spire)
Spire Winrate by all non-novice pilots: 58.38% +3.16% of the next highest (mobula), +7.88% of the ship average, and +10.24% of ship median.
Spire Winrate by all pilots over the level of 31: 71.52% +1.86% of the next highest (mobula), +4.32% of the ship average, and +5.65% of the ship median.

Examples of emails (for the arguments side not being said here)
"I just checked out dev app for changes and noticed Loch is now '-50% clip size' and back at '+125% damage'. This is a better solution than the ones I proposed! I think you guys are really close to having it right."
"Hwacha, It didn't feel like it wrecked the entire ship as often as usual. This is good."
"First off; Lochnegar viable on light guns? Finally. It's a much needed change"
" Turn decreases will definitely make it easier to dodge behind while brawling. Increasing armour slightly would be a nice change so it can at least survive a little while longer while flanked, especially with the Squid buffs."
"I was already a fan of using the rear pair of guns on the squid so i like the idea behind turning the rear gun sideways"
"You are one step away from making it (Pyra) a good ship"


@Changes made directly by feedback from players (number of changes we made over the weeks of testing so week 1 testing vs release)
-Gravity changes removed
-Hwacha autofire removed
-Mobula's arc changes scaled back
-Spires turning changes scaled back (was much higher)
-AI should not fire the harpoon
-Pyra mass increased
-Reduced screen shake
-Squid front gun arc put back in its proper place
-Squid rear gun moved slightly
-Lochnagar went from 65% back its normal 125%
-Hwacha got slower and almost lost range because of this, but was changed.

GeoRmr:
HE ACTUALLY DID IT THE ABSOLUTE MADMAN!

 8)

now lets just imagine how bad things would be if we didn't tell them anything
plz muse, stop trying to ruin your game - it's a pretty good one

lol nerf the weakest ship in the game

Hoja Lateralus:

--- Quote from: Keyvias on March 18, 2016, 06:58:36 pm ---First and foremost, this is something we're constantly monitoring and are going to be very active on. There was definitely a lot of time between the last balance patch and this one. We'll be releasing the final plans for that communication later. As I hinted on during the fireside stream even a player "elected balance president" to be the singular voice was brought up (and shot down, have no fear.) To help us cut through noise and provide better two way communication. We have a couple plans we're working on and will be introducing to try and make that communication path better.

--- End quote ---

Well, I don't know the details, but I don't understand. People are going to have different opinions about many matters. How are you planning to "fix" this? You can set your priorities or just prioritise based on your personal trust to the player and validity of his/hers argument.


--- Quote from: Keyvias on March 18, 2016, 06:58:36 pm ---These decisions mark a new starting point for us to look at in player feedback, win rate, and personal experience. These are not the final point, these changes are large and I have no doubt outlying cases will arise, but tell us the second you feel them. Tell us when the squid was untouchable to the goldfish or the flakfish has taken over every single game you play (just random examples)

--- End quote ---

So... this means you are just going to drop stuff into game and looks at stats (which may or not be of any relevance at all)? It feels like it.
This is pure theory, I have no data for it; but it feels like vets hop on to other ships, the viable ships, and you nerf them (because since vet play them, they gain more usage and winrate). You have nerfed pyramidion, usage and winrate dropped and now you've decided it's too low, so you buff it again. Squid may have low usage/winrate because it's a hard ship to use (and to crew!) so you buff it up to the point of riddiculousness. After some months new meta will form and for instance galleon will be buffed and squid nerfed.


--- Quote from: Keyvias on March 18, 2016, 09:44:13 pm ---Putting out all the data and then having to defend the way we see that data is another step that doesn't earn us anything because there will be people that massively disagree with our interpretation.

--- End quote ---

Doesn't earn you anything? This... this is extremely sad to hear. On the point of some people disagreeing you are denying any significance of community's opinion. As if the game isn't for people - the people are for the game. Many of us are not asking for all data, just some brief justification.

What are the reasons for individual ship balance changes? I don't understand, especially given negative feedback.

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