Wow, it's been forever since I've posted here. I left after the Loch nerf--it killed my favorite playstyle, but I've kept with Alliance, and fully expect to put time into it, but more casually.
Since this thread is racing, I'll add my two cents--I liked the bit about expectations. My confidence has been severely shaken, and frankly, I don't expect to play Skirmish until heavy changes are made, but I will definitely give what I'd like out of this.
When it comes to new content, I'd expect maybe 3 major content "events" per year. Each content update should include at least two features (New Ship + New Gun, New Faction + New Gun, Ship Ported to Skirmish + New Ammo Type). These can be announced and hyped, and should probably have a sale located around them. This also gives months of time for testing. I understand your graphics designers are strained, however, so I'd be willing to accept two per year. New ship cosmetics would also be very welcome.
Balance where exceptions seem to be most strained between Muse and players. Frankly, balance communicating has always been poor. I am not trying to insult you--I'm simply stating a fact. Reasons behind nerfs and buffs are either unintuitive, muddled, or not communicated at all, player response is often ignored, and you attempt to do blind testing with a far too limited fragment of the guns community. Overwatch, a game with a far larger budget and community also seems to have similar problems with constructive PTR results, so I suspect this has little to do with community size, and mostly relates to the fact that most people who play PTR already have heavy involvement with the game.
That's fine.
What I'd like is non-blind PTR tests to try to catch game-breakingly OP things, then bi-weekly balance patches that adjust numbers very sparingly, rather than wild swings. I'd like the desired effects and concerns that lead to this directly stated, and perhaps "meta breakdown" reports. I would like you guys to be unafraid to revert previous changes if they're poorly received, and not leave guns in "gimmick" territory because they came out unsatisfying (Minotaur). It was overnerfed, and rather than adjusting it's function/numbers, it's been left to stagnate. (One of my favorite things from Overwatch is the ability to analyze that sort of thing.) Internal reporting of deadlines would be nice--I'd say you're not actually accountable to the community, but I feel like there's been persistent tension since I've been a player.
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On Balance Philosophy Below:
Overwatch also tends to balance both around a competitive level, and a newbie level. I'm not sure what Guns balances around, partially because the game has a very odd sets of required skills. There's teamwork, aim, and ease of use, communication between captains and crew, and we have very few "middle experience" players. I believe many of the game's balance problems come from it's biggest strength--Teamwork. There is a heavy limit to how much one player can impact a match positively, as very few guns have a high, aim-based individual impact, and engineering is time management. The closest to a "carry" roll in the game is the Captain. This results in players losing without knowing *why* they lost, as there's little (mechanically) they can do to impact it.
I feel like many balance patches are "band aids" to cover that problem--nerfing flame weapons, increasing gun ease of use, and so forth. Some defy logic, however, such as the loch patch. This also creates the problem where Time to Kill feels very high to inexperienced players, and low to skilled players, as broken builds (on a new player's side) make matches grind forever, and turn engineering into a chore.
The solution to this is not "get gud." The game needs low-skill weapons that also fall off in effectiveness as you get better, and high-skill weapons that require some sort of mechanical skill or teamwork to execute. Ammo can also fulfill this purpose--altering the fundamentals of a weapon to create a different risk/reward. I feel like Lochnagar was a good example of that sort of effect.
As bad for the "teamwork" focus of the game as it initially seems, GOI needs a noob tube, as well. The Hwatcha fits that department--or used to, but it's also fundamentally unfun, as it only involves one gunner, works only on specific ships, and is heavily disable focused. One one hand, part of the engineer tax is learning to prioritize components, but mass ship disable is *far* too easy, and it's counterplay is under-powered. This, like fire, leads to an unfun new player experience.
The number of semi-hard counters in this game needs to be toned down. A match should not be decided by the ship chosen in the lobby. I suggest allowing players to change loadouts mid-match, and lowering the number of hard counters in the game.
I would start incrementally adjusting weapons to push them harder into specific niches, and encourage actual mastery. This gives a reason to continue playing competitively, and gives skills other than "teamwork" to build.
The game should be relatively easy to enter, and dick around with, but have a mastery requirement that takes practice. The Hades and the Lumberjack are the only two guns that I feel are "worth" mastering, and they've risen and fallen in meta.
When I played competitively, I probably wouldn't have liked many of these suggested balance changes, as they diminish the "teamwork" aspect, but I feel like Gun's problems require a hard look at the philosophy of the game's design.
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With that, I leave one final question:
What are the stages of improvement and mastery for each role in the game? How does a player "get better?"
This isn't rhetorical--I am honestly curious. How do you envision a player's introduction to the world of Guns of Icarus going, and how do you see them getting better? (Especially knowing many will not have the time or desire to improve, or find a stable team?)
