1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

[nanoduckling]

From what I can tell the consultation with players was a complete waste of our time, and probably yours too. It was not taken into account. As for this little gem:

"side note, highest ship winrate in the game before this patch."

this tells me everything I need to know about what was really used to inform how balance decisions were made. Statistics are essential when making decisions like this, but ripped devoid of context they are more likely to be a curse than a blessing.

[GurasOguras]

Mobula
-Outer top guns fanned out 5 degrees
-Inner bottom guns fanned out 10 degrees

People say that it's gonna be pain to flank mobula now, but while guns on the closer wing to flanking ship will get their arcs a bit sooner (or lose later), guns on the other side will get their guns aimed later. It's still balanced around sides. What that change really does is make for mobula a bit more difficult to keep it's guns in arc at frontal engagements. I though that brawlmob will be completely broken, but it is still able to get two gatlings, just no longer at point blank range against small ships.

[Omniraptor]

That's why I wanted them to justify the nerf.. Because this change does not address anything close to the actual  reason why people complain about mobula. It just makes close range mob a bit more difficult. Personally I would try removing one of the wingtip guns.

[Dev Bubbles]

Hi everyone,
There are some back and forth discussions on the balance changes themselves, but let me focus for a moment on the process and the point about player feedback feeling like a waste of time.  Like I said earlier, data, especially data from higher level play (matches with predominantly vets) over the course of time, gave us some starting points.  Over each week of testing, we tried out some different ideas.  We tried the drop, and people gave us feedback on that, and the mechanic was removed.  We tried 3 different adjustments to the mobula guns, and people gave us feedback on that, with which we tried to make the best adjustments possible after each week of testing.  We tried a hwacha firing mechanic and people gave us feedback on that and we discarded.  We eventually settled on a change that seemed to be more palatable to most people who gave us feedback in later weeks of testing.  We had a couple of attempts at the harpoon, and people's feedback grew more positive.  We tried playing with squid's gun angle of different guns, and people gave us feedback on that. 

So I'm not quite sure where the impression of feedback not being taken into account arrived from.  I do want to note that, we did get a lot of feedback, and a lot of them conflicting, which was interesting and good in a way, because people have varying opinions, biases, preferences, etc.  But it does mean that we have to try to look for patterns and people's rationale and logic.  We can't be expected to just take someone's point of view and run with it wholesale I think for obvious reasons, and not taking one person's feedback should not be conceived of as a slight.  Meaning, it doesn't mean we don't appreciate it.  This is the burden with us receiving feedback, is that we had to consider all of them, and it was a challenge for us. 

Having said that, I think we can do better with the communications with each round of testing, and do more to preface the changes before we took the changes live.  We have limited means so far to do that, because not everyone access the same information at the same place and at the same time.  So one though may be potentially to do more announcements in game etc.  We're still thinking about what to do. 

I honestly think we've tried to do better (and the process should have been better than before).  We organized multiple rounds of testing, did blind as well as testing with notes published every round, properly logged all feedback, and had weekly meeting with Matt, me, Alex, Eric, Josie, and Mikko at least to review everything and debate.  Different people's ideas and reasonings were brought up and discussed. 

We definitely have room for improvement though, both in terms of the process itself and providing more context.  We'll try to do better. 
Thanks for listening, Howard

[Dev Bubbles]

@Omni, I felt like in the beginning of the process we did, but once again, it just points out the communication gap.  With the changes, we also had to be careful about making drastic changes.  Based on past experiences, it was not advisable to make wild changes, as they would be arbitrary.  I'm not saying that we're more conservative with ideas, but I am saying that we are more careful now than before.  We did try things that were more drastic, ex. the fall etc, in the first two weeks, but those had to be pulled back or discarded, which was fine. 

[nanoduckling]

And just because I suspect that those 11 changes are going to be offered as a counter argument let me explain why I'm not counting most of them.

-Gravity changes removed
Gravity was completely broken. It should never have been in the Dev App to begin with, at least not for a balance patch. Why are we testing alpha stuff in a balance patch?

-Hwacha autofire removed
This was not a substantial problem either way, and the problems with the hwacha have not been addressed. Maybe you get this one, because a few folks had some strong reactions.

-Mobula's arc changes scaled back
From insane to still crippling for interesting builds while not addressing the core problem with the meta mob. The changes settled on here should have been the wacky outlandish "lets try as big as we can starting point", not where we settled.

-Spires turning changes scaled back (was much higher)
The fact we are discussing nerfing the Spire in the first place is a problem. How many times is it brought to competitive games outside of lab/paritan/canyon?

-AI should not fire the harpoon
This was a bug, this is not responding to feedback this is us being your beta testers (that's fine, part of patch testing, but it isn't really listening to us). I'm being generous here and assuming this was not intended behaviour because if it was then I hope you aren't expecting brownie points for removing really, really bad ideas.

-Pyra mass increased
We are having to fix the pyra again because the last set of big balance patches broke it. Listening to our feedback a year after we give it doesn't seem like it belongs on this list. The changes made in these patches were too large, and the changes made in this patch are too large.

-Squid front gun arc put back in its proper place
The fact we are discussing buffing a competitive meta ship is a problem.

-Squid rear gun moved slightly
Why are we buffing the squid at all. It is a competitive meta ship.

-Lochnagar went from 65% back its normal 125%
Breaking the meta with a baseball bat instead of a club hammer.

-Hwacha got slower and almost lost range because of this, but was changed.
The range reduction was a bug wasn't it? And the hwacha is still a problem.

-Reduced screen shake
This one I'll give you.

So out of the 11 listed most either aren't balance testing but are in fact major mechanics changes, buffs or nerfs which are not needed and do nothing to address the competitive meta, are addressing over balancing from last time, or are actually bug fixes. We have one, minor (if important) UI modification on this list. Maybe two relevant changes if I give you removing the hwacha autofire since the community didn't like the idea. I hope you can see why some of us don't think this is a productive use of our time.

So maybe I'm being a bit harsh. This consultation was only almost a complete waste of our and your time.

[Dev Bubbles]

Just one note on gravity change, the faster fall would have been closer to actual real physics, so it was not broken.  We wanted to see if trying that would allow people to get out of locking and arc faster, but obviously that didn't work. 

With trying the as big as we can in terms of changes as a starting point, we did try to be more careful.  This was because in the past, larger changes were generally perceived very negatively, but it's a fair point. 

With the pyra, if we broke it, it was because it was generally considered significantly overpowered the patch before last, and the data reflected that.  We tried not to make knee-jerk changes and wanted to let data collection last for longer.  Too long?  Perhaps, but I don't think people accept knee-jerk changes now. 

I don't believe there was a range reduction bug with the hwacha.   

[Dementio]

I understand that this game doesn't solely focus around balancing toward competitive, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored completely. If you want to buff the Squid and nerf the Spire, because pubs have no idea what they are doing, fine, but don't just ignore what you are doing to the other half of the game, the ones that are actually actively talking to you and playing this game more than once after the sale. If you buff the already good ship and nerf the already bad ship, then for god sake, add some nerfs to the good and buffs to the bad so the other half can still enjoy it.

Over each week of testing, we tried out some different ideas.

And there are a million things you could have done, but didn't even try. Examples are giving the Pyramidion more speed or not actually buffing the Squid's speed or nerfing the Squid's hull, because it being faster should mean it can dodge more. You haven't tried balancing, instead you stuck with the set of your first ideas and no matter what anybody told you, you tried your best to gear your first set ideas to something that would actually work. Ignoring the fact that your first set of ideas could be flawed or that you could be flat out making the good better and the bad worse.

[ZnC]

@Bubbles:
Thanks for giving us your perspective. While far from perfect, I think the balance changes are much better than the previous year and there is definitely improvement. Having put a lot of time and effort into writing feedback, I can understand why some of us feel that our feedback isn't changing anything. This might mostly be due to individual suggestions not being tested as they are, or even seriously considered. We state the problems, highlight core issues, and propose viable solutions which are tailored for them (which, at least for me, were never tested). It can be frustrating when players see changes that are completely different (like out-of-the-world different) than what we propose.

A lot of us are also puzzled by the frequency and magnitude of balance patches. Balance is done by making small tweaks to numbers over short periods of time. From what we see, GOI "balance" patches are big annual gameplay changes that completely shifts the meta like an expansion would. I believe these two are the main reason why people are upset. Thanks for the work however, I know the team has put in quite some effort for this one. I can only hope you guys consider the Rate of Fire reduction idea that I sent in for Lochnagar, just before the patch went live.

[Dev Bubbles]

@dementio, I don't think we've ignored competitive at all to be honest, as a lot of feedback, including yours have been taken into account. 

Right now, you have specific issue with squid and spire, and I get that.  In this case, I do agree that we were motivated by stats in vet matches as well as matches that were predominantly played by vets.  We wanted to get a larger sample size over a longer period.  If this has misled us potentially, we are aware, and these 2 items are things we will be monitoring most closely over the coming days. 

As for trying different ideas.  Granted, we have not tried every single variable that's potentially in existence, surely.  As you guys noted in this thread, we have not been stuck on 1 set of ideas either.  With changes, we had to hold some things constant, and I don't think we ignored the fact that our first ideas could be flawed. 

Well in any case, it's not my place to change your opinion or argue.  I do agree that we have rooms for improvement, and we will look specifically at the spire and the squid. 

Thanks for listening, Howard

[Dev Bubbles]

@zanc, definitely noted.  With balance, in the past, we were more prone to make shorter, quicker, more knee-jerked decisions that were more earth shattering.  Whether they be artemis, heavy flak, pyra, banshee, etc etc, the changes were more drastic, and the cycle of change was shorter.  That was generally perceived very negatively we felt, so we tried to slow things down a bit.  Use data collection to run for longer, try to find trends or patterns.  Ex. with pyra for example, when we looked at the data of both matches overall and vet matches, we saw that, after a perceived nerf, we saw noticeable decline in usage initially.  That's understandable because there was a perceived and real nerf.  So initially usage trended down, and then over time it trended back up, as more people played with it, and eventually reached more of an equilibrium.  If we had not given more time, we might have jumped on more changes right away, and that wasn't the best we felt either.  In this case, have we waited too long?  Perhaps.  It's a bit tough to find that right balance, and we'll try harder. 

[-Mad Maverick-]

Love being able to knock people off arcs again with my PYRA.  Moonshine plus bumpers on a PYRA is a thing again!  I think adding this small change (plus health). While not adding speed isn't necessarily bad.  I obviously don't fly as much right now as I used to but I think that some of you may be trying to fly the PYRA like a modified version of some other boat you are used to.  The PYRA is a very different type of flying style.  Try things out with it that you typically wouldnt with other ships.  E.g. Raming saves lives, it also breaks hulls,  Don't worry about claw because if you missed you're fucked anyway... Things like that.

I'll be flying a lot more often thanks to this patch so maybe I'll change my mind but maybe you will.


Thanks Howard you were right about your predictions for this patch I think.  But to be fair I did say "only if you buff the PYRAs mass will I care about any patches..."

[Fynx]

I do not doubt everyone working on this patch spent a lot of time doing it. What people here are raging about is not that it's done without thinking or without attention, but that it addresses the issue in a weird way. Make sure you know what you're doing: there's a thread in this forum discussing roles of each ship. People might have opinions about those and if you go against it there is a lot of shouting around. Still, in order to make changes that make sense you do have to define what you want to accomplish. If it's every ship being equal to every other ship, used exactly as often and by players from all levels of experience - so be it. Just make sure you announce it somewhere and remove the 'difficulty' tags in ships. Players will rage, but that's entirely your choice.

There's a second thing nanoduckling already mentioned. There's a huge amount of feedback about what is overpowered and what is not used enough. There's an enormous number of ideas of how to fix it being sent as feedback and posted here on the forum. Instead, some other innovative changes are introduced and all that feedback (patch or between patches) is ignored.

I also absolutely understand the difficulty coming from attempts to balance both casual and competitive games. The key lies in understanding what exactly makes matches happen as they do and why statistics look whatever they look like. So far it looks kind of upside down, everything.

The final opinion about what is balanced and what is not and how cannot be made during testing the patches or right now, but it'll appear in few weeks. That's why it's important to create more smaller patches, rather than one huge in a year, followed by rage and hotfixes.

The last thing is that like JubJub I'm happy something is happening, even if it's questionable.

As for the current changes:

Mobula
I'm absolutely sure you tried your best guys. Still, you got one thing wrong: changing the arcs is not leading anywhere. Sniping meta still op. Nothing changed about that. Assuming that was supposed to be the problem, that is.

Spire
Statistics are irrelevant at this point, this ship is just as effective against inexperienced players as it was and worse against experienced players. And that's the exact opposite effect to what should be accomplished. High win ratio in experienced player games comes from experienced players switching from spires when they get hardcountered. I understand the 'difficulty' tag set to 'easy' being a sort of a surrender to the difficulty of balancing this ship.

Squid
I actually like the tilt on the aft gun. It's not a direct or indirect boost, it's the exact opposite of mobula changes - it provides some interesting opportunities (whereas mobula change nerfs the clever ideas and supports the meta).
Acceleration boost was vastly unnecessary though, unless in the next patch 'difficulty' tag of squid changes to 'easy', like in the spire. Like I wrote: decide what you want to do with this ship. If it's supposed to be a 'hard' ship then don't balance it completely around low level games, because it leads nowhere. The strength of a squid is not something low level players use (what MightyKeb already wrote) so by buffing the 'experienced' parameter to make it 'easier to fly' is kind of ridiculous (same in the spire).

Heavy Flak
The intention was to make it used more and more accessible to lower level players. I will respect this approach.

Lochnagar
Broken on heavy guns, but some really interesting opportunities for the light guns. And the blenderfish is officially dead for real this time. I understand that this change was adjusted under the pressure of feedback and I'm thankful for it. It's still broken on heavy flak, so the result comparing to initial reason for this change (ammo for heavy flak) came out a little bit awkward.

Hwacha
I kinda like it. It's still really powerful close range, but it's easier to avoid it medium/long range. This nerf is definitely a step in the good direction, even if it might be not enough.

Pyramidion
Finally. It took a while though.

[nanoduckling]

Just one note on gravity change, the faster fall would have been closer to actual real physics, so it was not broken.  We wanted to see if trying that would allow people to get out of locking and arc faster, but obviously that didn't work. 

You know I'm a physicist right Bubbles? It was broken as a game mechanic, not as a physics simulation. If you want to make GoI a good physics simulation then you need to have all the airships fall from the sky and never take off again.

With trying the as big as we can in terms of changes as a starting point, we did try to be more careful.

Calculating characteristic scales of physical systems is not difficult. It is just simple dimensional analysis. It isn't a matter of being more careful, it is a matter of adjusting systems in a regime where things are still likely to be linear.

With the pyra, if we broke it, it was because it was generally considered significantly overpowered the patch before last, and the data reflected that.

I don't understand why you think this is a reason. Why not nerf the pyras hull by 10% a year ago. Then a month later if it was still dominant give it another 10%. We've had a year where the pyra has largely been a broken mess that adds very little to the game. Would another month or two of pyra meta dominance have been worse for some reason I'm missing?

We tried not to make knee-jerk changes and wanted to let data collection last for longer.

How much power do the statistical models you are using need? Knee-jerk is certainly bad, but the problem has historically been magnitude as well as what seems to some of us as over-reaction.

[Dev Bubbles]

@nanoduckling I have no doubt you forget more about physics than I'll ever know.  All I am saying is that, from a game development point of view, it is not broken.  When you say broken, that to a game dev means there is a bug.  So I was trying to tell you that there was no bug. 

With pyra, I guess it's a difference in thinking on how to approach this.  I feel like a month by month type of shorter iterative adjustment is something I want to avoid.  I don't think that's enough time, but a year is probably too long.  I think the better approach would likely be somewhere in the middle.  And this is a point that some others' have raised as well.  Specifically with the pyra, we did nerf the hull of the pyra slightly.  With the role of the pyra, it was perceived as overpowered the patch before, and the data reflected that.  So we adjusted the pyra.  I think the valid critique of the pyra was the lacking of a more definitive role.  This was something we tried to address in this build.  If we had adjusted the pyra back along the same axis as before, then that oscillation in perception and usage would likely hold true, so with this change, it's more of an attempt to define more of a role.  It seems like it's decently perceived so far. 

Actually, historically the problem has indeed been magnitude, which we've tried to dial down.  Meaning, in the past, we have made changes of greater magnitude, and the over-reaction had been greater.  In this update, I do believe that the actual changes were smaller in magnitude. 

For statistical models, it's really not terribly complicated.  We just want to make sure we don't make decisions anecdotally, and observe emergent patterns, and make sure that when we make a change, we have a way to measure if that change is effective or not.  We do more complex regression analysis for the match system (and I'm sure I'll open a bigger can of worm for mentioning it ).