Messages

16

Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

« on: March 19, 2016, 12:13:41 am »

Hi Omniraptor, I've been prepping for GDC and at GDC (I'm in transit at the airport right now, so please excuse the short replies).  In short, what you asked for we did.  Whether people agreed with our starting point or not is a different matter, but with the overall communications, we did try to do what you suggested.  There are a few issues here with the process.  One is that, it's really hard for us to reach everyone.  Even with 4 weeks of testing and announcements, a lot of people don't know until today.  So finding a better method to make people aware is an issue that we'll need to do better.  The other thing is obviously how we account for, integrate, and replied to player feedback.  With feedback, we actually got a lot.  And as to be expected, they were varied.  People have different play styles, perspectives, natural biases etc, so it's natural for opinions to canvas a spectrum.  What we did do, was to log everything, read everything, and tried the best we could to figure out the issues and pain points.  Granted, our starting point was data.  We did look at different usage rates and win rates of different builds, ships, for different levels of play.  But we didn't end with data.  With balance it's definitely not easy for us. 

To you and Dementio's points, a lot of the stats of ships are interwoven and complex and there are a lot of variables affecting win rates and usage rates, and therefore difficult to hold things in constant.  We made an attempt at it.  Also on the point about looking at data, we do look at how things trended.  So it wasn't a short term horizon that we were looking at.  I do want to note that. 

As for now what, we will use today as a baseline to monitor, and if we see issues, we'll do our best to address them. 

17

Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

« on: March 18, 2016, 07:19:45 pm »

Just wanted to make a quick point about testing.  We have been testing the balance changes for 4 weeks now, each time with a team review of ALL the feedback that was submitted to us post each round of testing.  And the pyra changes have been in dev app before release.  We'll of course try to do better with outreach, but we have limited means of reaching everyone during testing, so we are limited in that sense.  Thanks, Howard

18

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Newbies & Experimenters Gametype

« on: February 15, 2016, 06:29:57 pm »

@Dawson, this is a pretty awesome idea!  This does sound a bit like one of the new game modes we've started to prototype for Alliance.  Hopefully with the Alliance difficulty set right, people practice without the pressure of it being a DM.  But we can also look to integrate something like a Alliance match more tightly with practice or tutorial.  Right now, we're building a new set of tutorials as well, but the 2 things can be complementary I think. 

@Hamster, you can do 1 ship right now, and we've talked about having AI ships in practice.  That's definitely a possibility, especially for Alliance. 

@Jazzhand, the way we're designing is that, what people do in Skirmish can also have contribution towards faction progression.  This detail we're working out still. 

Thanks!  And great thread and discussion!  Great job everyone for being constructive, keep it up!

19

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Fully Customizable Ship Components

« on: February 09, 2016, 12:47:05 pm »

@dementio, you'll see skills follow this idea.  ship parts we're holding constant so far, but it is definitely possible to make them upgradable as well. 

20

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: JonTron plays GOI...

« on: February 07, 2016, 12:50:11 pm »

No worries Schwalbe. 
And I totally get your point. 
We already shared the video, and we'll try to do better with captioning next time. 
Really all we can do is to show new players how the game plays and be as helpful as possible.  And report the bad apples of course. 
For that I would love to get you guys' help to do that. 
Thanks!  Howard

21

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: JonTron plays GOI...

« on: February 07, 2016, 12:27:15 pm »

Since I'm being quoted, and my email reply is being posted here, I might as well answer here hahaha.  There's no arguing.  I was just simply mentioning what happened or what's happening.  Like I said, this is JonTron's authentic video and his humor.  We don't have control over what he does, and in general we do not influence how youtubers edit their videos or perceive the game.  With the new players, we'll try our hardest to make them feel welcome and help them.  And if you guys are willing to do the same, that will be very helpful.  Thanks!

22

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 08:16:38 pm »

Byron, ok noted.  We'll look at that as well.  While I definitely wish we had gotten more feedback sooner, definitely better late than never.  So still very appreciative of everyone's feedback today.  We'll get cracking on improving this next week.  Thanks a lot! 

Happy Halloween everyone!  Be safe and have fun! 

23

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 06:49:16 pm »

@urz, yeah totally get you about the flow.  With the label of launcher, we labeled it really looking at what content we want to display, and less about it being an executable vs a client scene for example.  And to your point, we should not have called it a launcher and should have followed more strictly of convention in this case in terms of flow.  I personally didn't really think the wording matter as much, but I was clearly wrong.  No need to speculate here.  I do think that, we implement based on what we think we need.  I think for what we are trying to do, the implementation itself serves the purpose, but the flow and presentation can be better for sure.  Thanks!

24

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 04:19:54 pm »

@zanc, I don't think having that option is good, because then we'll have no way of notifying you directly if the game is down when you are trying to get in game. 

And interestingly, I just assumed that you guys are giving us feedback even when we don't need it or outside scope   I know I'm making a joke but it's actually pretty true  based on past test sessions.  So I'm responding based on this context, that since the launcher is unavoidable, and that we get feedback on everything all the time, if there was some serious concern or dislikes about the launcher, we would have known about it during 8 days of testing period.  But no matter, this is besides the point.  The focus really should be, let's collect the feedback you guys have, and let's move forward and improve the screen where makes sense. 

Thanks everyone.

25

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 01:40:38 pm »

@Ceres, yeah because workshop and dev app are separate apps, the launching of those are controlled by Steam (that screen is Steam's). 
The screen offers 2 advantages right now.  One is the communication of community events and news, and the other is the communication of server downtime, which we think is pretty valuable even though it doesn't happen often (fingers crossed). 

26

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 12:49:08 pm »

Yeah, we talked about it as well.  Calling it a launcher isn't the greatest either.  Noted.

27

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 12:43:36 pm »

@DrTentacles Noting this down as well.  Thanks!! 

28

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 11:59:28 am »

Sure, we'll do better with test notes I agree.  But, in this case, there would have been no way you guys could have missed this.  If this is say AI commands, I get it.  But this is a screen that you could not have avoided, and you know it's new.  So not sure what to do there.  Also, of the times when you guys give us feedback, it's been usually independent of whether something is releasing or not.  It's usually the case where we get feedback on things that are not releasing as well.  So, my point is, let's do try to give feedback earlier if the goal is to help us make things better.  Thanks guys.

29

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: The "Launcher" Is Located In A Very Odd And Confusing Place

« on: October 30, 2015, 11:57:58 am »

@Anakin
- Press play as in press play from Steam?  Or press play from that screen?  If from the screen, it is an extra security thing we're doing. Given what happened, felt like the trade off of a little bit more wait vs extra security is acceptable.  But we can try to audit the process to see if we can make it more efficient. 
- Gray nothing is a good point.  We'll note it. 
- The full screen logo resides client side. If that is a bother, we can try to adjust it. 
- News from 2005 is a typo.  We'll fix that asap. 
- Personally I think War Thunder's UI here is a tad busy, but that's subjective on my part.  Yeah we can try to add more info and adjust layout in the next rev of design. 

It would be great if you could give us feedback earlier.  With this screen, we would have had time to make adjustments during testing. 
Thanks so much!  Howard

30

General Discussion / Re: Any other longtime supporters feel like they were lied to?

« on: October 23, 2015, 11:17:28 am »

I actually know the Depth devs.

Depth/goio crossover content pls, chivalry style?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=391159354&searchtext

Oh we talked about that actually.  Would be really cool, but it takes a bit of work and logistics to make that happen for either of us.  I do want to start doing more of this with other devs though.  It's cool.