Swag Yolo's Perfect Plan to Fix Skirmish

[Richard LeMoon]

You, I and the clans are no longer the consumer base. We are the old fogies yelling at kids to get off our lawns, when we are sitting in a public park. How you want the game to play does not matter, unless it is representative of the main flow of income. Muses focus has to be on attracting more players and keeping the larger part of those, not on satisfying the old salts. They need to figure out what those players want. I doubt if the OP is that altruistic.

That is how business works.

[Sparkle Dust]

No, a game like this is dependent on having a regular player base online.  If people buy the game and find 25 people online at any given time the game will fail.  Muse's problem is not getting people to buy the game, its getting people to stick with the game.  The only way to do that is new content and catering to the people who do stick around.

[BlackenedPies]

The Steam forum is flooded with questions if it's worth buying, and low player base is the overwhelming reason cited. It's important to attract new players, but it's equally important to retain regular players - many of whom quit and wrote negative reviews after incidents like 1.4.5

[Schwalbe]

Remind me, what was going on with 1.4.5, now that you mention that? Feel like I missed something.

[KeijoPertti]

Remind me, what was going on with 1.4.5, now that you mention that? Feel like I missed something.

loch was ruined?

[BlackenedPies]

Testing for 1.4.5 occurred over an unprecedented three weeks, with each week met by unanimous negative feedback about two topics in particular: mobula gun arcs and the changes to loch. After the feedback, the mob nerf was increased and loch was made more unbalanced. The release of 1.4.5 showed a complete disregard of player feedback and lack of game knowledge

To be clear, there's an important difference between a bad change and a broken change. Remember the contentious pyra nerf? Truth was, the pyra needed a nerf in pub matches. The forthcoming change was too harsh and took way too long to be addressed, but there was at least a modicum of thought behind it. The mobula gun arc nerf was asinine and broken. It had no effect on the meta, hades art/banshee, and only hurt non-meta builds and pub players whose 50 degree bottom guns no longer worked. Similarly, loch was changed so that it deals higher dps than greased on some guns, and is useless on all heavy weapons - where it was previously vital

Muse was well aware of all these facts as they were flooded with feedback from the three weeks of testing the same failed changes. There were plenty of good alternatives offered for the mob and loch, but week after week nothing changed. I'm unaware of any other patch that took three weeks of testing, or was so overwhelmingly negative

[Schwalbe]

Hmmmm, thanks. Recently I'm slightly out of touch and kind of lost the grip on updates.

[Atruejedi]

Testing for 1.4.5 occurred over an unprecedented three weeks, with each week met by unanimous negative feedback about two topics in particular: mobula gun arcs and the changes to loch. After the feedback, the mob nerf was increased and loch was made more unbalanced. The release of 1.4.5 showed a complete disregard of player feedback and lack of game knowledge

To be clear, there's an important difference between a bad change and a broken change. Remember the contentious pyra nerf? Truth was, the pyra needed a nerf in pub matches. The forthcoming change was too harsh and took way too long to be addressed, but there was at least a modicum of thought behind it. The mobula gun arc nerf was asinine and broken. It had no effect on the meta, hades art/banshee, and only hurt non-meta builds and pub players whose 50 degree bottom guns no longer worked. Similarly, loch was changed so that it deals higher dps than greased on some guns, and is useless on all heavy weapons - where it was previously vital

Muse was well aware of all these facts as they were flooded with feedback from the three weeks of testing the same failed changes. There were plenty of good alternatives offered for the mob and loch, but week after week nothing changed. I'm unaware of any other patch that took three weeks of testing, or was so overwhelmingly negative

So freaking depressing, and I know I'm a broken record, but I'll take any opportunity to post about how I'd revitalize Skirmish.

[Daft Loon]

Half the problem with the loch testing was that the third week was just testing the second weeks changes again after they forgot to actually put the latest changes into the dev app (the testing notes had the stats for what was put into main, but it wasn't actually in the dev app for testing). The final changes didn't get tested, at least not on the saturday when I can make it. Even then it wouldn't have taken 10 minutes of math (2 with a spread sheet pre built) to see that loch gatling with only -40% ammo was enough to make galleon armor look like tissue paper. Instead they found that out in the main game and put out a hotfix putting it down to -60% and ruining it for all the other guns it had become useful for while only moderating the stupidity of loch gatling.

[Solidusbucket]

This topic is filled with a lot of things. I read this forum a lot but I hardly ever post ¬_¬

That loch change was fucking awesome. Killing galleons in one clip with a gat mortar pyra was sweet as shit. Prolly OP but pretty entertaining.

There was a hotfix to alter it.

I do remember a big fuss about the devs stating they would not release the exact stat numbers to the changes they were testing to try to keep the testing neutral or whatever. That shit is stupid. How do you know what to test? With a playerbase of about 30 people testing, how the shit do you expect them to test what you have changed with so many damn variables in this game?


That was my only gripe with testing. . .

No other game has blind testing. It makes sense on paper but makes no sense in execution - especially with only about 15 people testing the game.

My other gripe with the entire controversy on the balance change was that only about 10 people were posting feedback on the forum.

I wish I knew how many people emailed them during testing. Probably like 5.

Honestly the biggest problem with this game is that there is only like 1 player that influences the devs decisions on content and balance changes.

[BlackenedPies]

That loch change was fucking awesome. Killing galleons in one clip with a gat mortar pyra was sweet as shit. Prolly OP but pretty entertaining.

That's not a good thing. Buffed greased can already one-clip buffed galleon armor while being repaired with mallet. There's a tentative agreement among vets not to use loch in matches, and I've seen players called out for using it. It's objectively broken

[Byron Cavendish]

This topic is filled with a lot of things. I read this forum a lot but I hardly ever post ¬_¬

That loch change was fucking awesome. Killing galleons in one clip with a gat mortar pyra was sweet as shit. Prolly OP but pretty entertaining.

There was a hotfix to alter it.

I do remember a big fuss about the devs stating they would not release the exact stat numbers to the changes they were testing to try to keep the testing neutral or whatever. That shit is stupid. How do you know what to test? With a playerbase of about 30 people testing, how the shit do you expect them to test what you have changed with so many damn variables in this game?


That was my only gripe with testing. . .

No other game has blind testing. It makes sense on paper but makes no sense in execution - especially with only about 15 people testing the game.

My other gripe with the entire controversy on the balance change was that only about 10 people were posting feedback on the forum.

I wish I knew how many people emailed them during testing. Probably like 5.

Honestly the biggest problem with this game is that there is only like 1 player that influences the devs decisions on content and balance changes.

Comon man, that's not true. Eric does whatever he wants with balance. I doubt Eric even listens to what Howard says.

Oh and the blind testing thing is an Eric thing. Right before he quit the forums, he got really, really nasty about feedback and decided to make it all blind testing. It's been that way ever since.

[ZnC]

Eric does whatever he wants with balance.

You know I ever once asked in a fireside: "how do you guys (i.e. Muse) make balance changes?". The exact answer I got (from Eric): "gut feel." Sadly, the intricacies of competitive balance is lost on them.

Can't fault them for making a game they enjoy. Can give them a negative review though.

[Richard LeMoon]

"Not recommended for people that expect to get more than a few years and thousands of hours of enjoyment out of the game. 1/10. Would only buy again for the first few thousands of hours. After that, its a slog."

[Arturo Sanchez]

skirmish is not finished.

You won't get high retention until it is.

Instead muse releases dlc that is entirely different but in a state of even more disrepair than the base game since all the work went into the new content (that no one asked for btw-you'd think the failed kickstarter is kind of a hint).



This is the core of the issue. The logic behind this is insane, because to make a new broken game instead of taking the time fix your decent one with FORUMS UPON FORUMS OF SOLUTIONS GIVEN TO FIX THE DAMN THING...

it makes no sense to just redo everything into another broken game mode.