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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:
--- Quote ---Mobula
-Outer top guns fanned out 5 degrees
-Inner bottom guns fanned out 10 degrees
--- End quote ---
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.
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