I want people to notice, just for a second, how the examples of positive feedback do not include positive remarks on the Spire nerf or the Squid's increase in horizontal movement and how the Pyramidion was not considered as great yet.
The handling of controversial feedback is alright, it did apparantly result in more than the total four changes I was expecting and slight changes are better than going all out breaking the game. But I am disappointed that no other stats were touched. With 3 weeks of testing, could you not test to see if maybe the speed buff for the Squid is not necessary after all? Or that the Spire could do with an increase of some other stats if you are dead set on nerfing its mobility?
Because the Muse argues the Spire nerf with numbers, I will argue against a nerf without even buffing anything else on the Spire, by explaining what these numbers mean in the most uncomprehending way I can think of that late during the night. Yes, all the next few paragraphs are relatively random Spire ramblings and irrelevant to my opinions stated above.
They are also a lot of factors regarding win rates. I imagine that people are aware of the fact that you can literally do anything in pubs and still win? That's becsuse people that are aware of that likely communicate with their crew, something that most pub matches don't have. If, say, you take a Spire with Hwacha, Gatling and literally any explosive gun, how do you think people in pub matches fair against that? When I started the game, I ran a Spire with Hwacha, Artemis, Mortar and a Carronade, the killstreak was almost unstoppable. Two years later, I took it again in the Iron Fork of Friday and it had no competition, you would expect people to be able to communicate in there and not get killed by an full explosive Spire. Or maybe they did communicate, but then what could lead to their easy to come-by death? It could be possible that it is the amount of guns of the Spire + Lion Gun OP that makes it possible, but now the Hwacha is nerfed and so is Lochnagar Mine Launcher, which served as effective ram defense for the Spire.
The Spire is supposed to be a glass cannon and the nerf reflects that rather well. But the nerf and some indirect other nerfs change that to a coin flip: It's either glass or cannon. The Spire wins, if it ambushes, if it gets the first shot on people, disables them or kills them outright with more firepower than any other ship in the game. If it couldn't do that quick enough, than the enemy could always easily outmanouver the Spire gun arcs, disables the Spire's heavy gun and everything else for that matter or just kill it first. The Spire doesn't have the armor to compete in any 1v1, you must literally risk your life in order to ensure a kill. And now it is nerfed to when you miss your once chance, there really isn't a second one, because of all the ways any enemy ship could kill you, turning around fast enough in order to shoot before dying, was the Spire's only saving grace, now it can't anymore, or at least shouldn't, because that one survival chance is literally what Muse intended to remove.
Even with the previous Heavy Flak the Spire could get ridiculously easy kills, and nobody called that nerf-worthy.
Also note that the win rates for the Spire are lower when flown by non-novice pilots. Non-novice does not necessarily mean experienced. Imagine your average lvl 15 or 20 pilot that flies Spire against other players on the same level, assuming matchmaking works, he will win these matches, because most of them likely are not that in-depth with the game combat. Their ambushes will fail, if they even try to attempt it at all, their crew will be overwehlmed with the amount of damage they are taking, while being unable to disable the Spire and their pilot does either not know how to or react quick enough to outmanouver the Spire by going up, just a little bit.
Now let's look higher up on the spectrum, at people that know how the game works. And without much explanation, the Spire loses. Everything that worked in the favour of our lvl 15-20 pilot, is not going to work against people that understand how this game's combat works. They will abuse the Spire's weaknesses to the maximum, going above the gun arcs while still being able to hit their hull, disabling their heavy gun and shutting it down in long range, before it can even ambush. It doesn't need to be ambushed to die, which is what the nerf is trying to achieve here, it just needs to face somebody aware of its weaknesses and then any ship can win against it.
Thus, according to my fictional fantasy of my understand of all the playerbase, the extreme variation in skill levels balance the winrate for non-novice players.
"But then why is the win rate higher when the Spire is flown by pilots of the level over 31?": Because matchmaking doesn't work, it cannot work with that low of a playerbase in this game. High level players always meet the "I just came out of novice" guys, if they are not still novices. If the low levels take a Spire, then they lose against higher level players who are capable of abusing the Spire's weakness. If the high levels take a Spire, they will win, because their opponent does not have the same understanding of the Spire or the game in general to combat a high level pilot effectively, especially not if that pilot has a crew on a similarly high level.
What is actually nerfed on the Spire, for the more experienced players, is its survivability in every situation. They need to be able to do something and turning was the one thing they could do. Now what? Spray and pray, #HwachaSavesLives? The win rates are not going to change dramatically, but gradually, so much that nobody looking only at numbers will care about the Spire and then it will quickly stop. The same principle of player (in-)competence applies, no matter the stats of the ship.
