Author Topic: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.  (Read 74272 times)

Offline Richard LeMoon

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The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« on: June 30, 2017, 08:53:38 am »
In the coming week (July 3+), just in time for the real life fireworks, you will notice a major shift in our own 'fireworks'. The Experiential Crew, a group of old and new players, masters to casuals alike, has been hard at work crafting, testing, reworking, and retesting (repeat for weeks) a long awaited change to ammo balance in a co-effort with the Muse team. The goal of the changes has been to further define each ammo in its role, rather than the current meta based on the some of the secondary features of each ammo. It is designed to change the mentality of just one ammo 'always' being the right ammo for a certain gun. This has led to a stagnation of the meta, and calls for something new.

This will be the second major update that has large aspects almost completely created by players. The previous effort brought the Nemesis Heavy Carronade to our arsenal. The concept, stats, and function of the weapon were designed by players, while the devs worked hard to create the assets to match our vision. It was an amazing 5 week journey of ups, downs, celebration, and heated debates. We are quite happy with the result.

Following on this succees, Muse has entrusted us with a community generated balance patch at our request. The ammo rebalance will come in two stages. Stage 1 will involve changes to Burst and Greased, the most ubiquitous offenders in the game, Heatsink, the ammo that is rarely used for its supposed main use, and Charged, often collecting dust and forgotten. The following gives a basic outline of the changes.

Burst and Heastsink will lose their extra ammo capacity, and instead focus on their main function. For Burst, this means more damage on AOE per shot, without the extra shots. Heatsink will now remove all fire stacks on reload, and have some of its negative stats removed.

Greased and Charged will shift their focus, literally. Greased has long occupied too much of its bigger sibling's DPS space. Both are DPS increasing ammos, so compete directly with each other while lacking a real distinction in function. This most often leads to simply taking the ammo with more DPS, Greased. The new focus, however, will present a conscious and meaning choice between the two. The new focus of Greased will be short range, high DPS with the addition of high jitter. Charged, on the other hand, will have its focus on slightly longer range targets with the addition of velocity and reduction of jitter. Lesmok and Heavy Clip will not be encroached on, since the changes are minor. Just a little further, a little faster.

We will also have new content ported from PvE to PvP, including a ship, gun, and two new map modifications.

Stage 2 of the ammo balance will come later, after the dust has settled on this one. We are planning on presenting two new ammos. One to fill the +ammo role vacated by Burst and Heatsink, while the other will effectively be the opposite of Lesmok. Incendary and Lochnagar will also be getting very close scrutiny of the next month.

We know there will be people unhappy with the changes, with a lot of "Why....?" questions. The Experimental Crew will do our best to answer those questions.

Offline Red-Xiii

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2017, 01:03:19 pm »
Why work so hard on a game that is literally on life support?  I like the commitment but it sounds to me that Muse is passing the "workload" on to you as they phase out. 


Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2017, 11:01:35 am »
How are changes voted on?
« Last Edit: July 01, 2017, 11:06:29 am by BlackenedPies »

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2017, 11:44:32 am »

Why work so hard on a game that is literally on life support?  I like the commitment but it sounds to me that Muse is passing the "workload" on to you as they phase out. 
Yeah man why try literally anything ever, right? We're all gonna die anyways, so we may as well just burn the video games.  :-\

Offline Red-Xiii

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2017, 12:01:26 am »

Why work so hard on a game that is literally on life support?  I like the commitment but it sounds to me that Muse is passing the "workload" on to you as they phase out. 
Yeah man why try literally anything ever, right? We're all gonna die anyways, so we may as well just burn the video games.  :-\

you missed the point.  its ok. :-\

Offline Nikola Brackman

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2017, 02:00:05 pm »
Interesting, definitely shuffles ammo priorities around a bit.  Charged is definitely going to unseat Burst as the go-to gatling gun ammo at medium range, both because Burst no longer gives it that magazine extension and because even a little bit of range extension helps it interact with light flak better.

I think Greased might still be a top-tier DPS ammo on the Aten and Accelerator, since those two guns are likely to be unaffected by the jitter multiplier and already effectively ignored the speed penalty.  They will continue to enjoy the DPS boost with no downside.  Which is probably a good thing, in a lot of situations those two guns really need that 60% RoF boost to be useful at all.

However, its use on the Banshee and Nemesis is now dead: both of those guns already have pretty noticeable spread, and certainly can't afford 90% more.  Those two will probably want to use extended magazine when it comes out, until then it's between burst (since they do have some AoE worth considering) and charged (both would benefit from the slight jitter reduction).

The changes are quite interesting for Hwatchas.  Burst is no longer the king of Hwatcha ammo: while it does still massively boost its disable power, because its AoE is shatter damage it no longer appreciably improves its killing power.  Likely a tossup between Greased and Charged for killing, I'd give an edge to Charged due to Greased only working at absolutely point-blank range.  The important takeaway for the Hwatcha is this: you now have to choose between boosting disabling and killing, you can't boost both at the same time.

Charged is likely to unseat burst as the preferred light mortar ammo.  While the mortar does have a fair share of its damage in AoE, 25% of the whole thing is more than 10% of half.  The magazine penalty on charged will likely make the damage a closer call, but the real thing that tilts the decision in favor of Charged is the slight range extension that allows the mortar to start firing earlier.  However, extended magazine may be a strong contender when it comes out.

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2017, 06:13:26 pm »
Interesting, definitely shuffles ammo priorities around a bit.  Charged is definitely going to unseat Burst as the go-to gatling gun ammo at medium range, both because Burst no longer gives it that magazine extension and because even a little bit of range extension helps it interact with light flak better.

I think Greased might still be a top-tier DPS ammo on the Aten and Accelerator, since those two guns are likely to be unaffected by the jitter multiplier and already effectively ignored the speed penalty.  They will continue to enjoy the DPS boost with no downside.  Which is probably a good thing, in a lot of situations those two guns really need that 60% RoF boost to be useful at all.

However, its use on the Banshee and Nemesis is now dead: both of those guns already have pretty noticeable spread, and certainly can't afford 90% more.  Those two will probably want to use extended magazine when it comes out, until then it's between burst (since they do have some AoE worth considering) and charged (both would benefit from the slight jitter reduction).

The changes are quite interesting for Hwatchas.  Burst is no longer the king of Hwatcha ammo: while it does still massively boost its disable power, because its AoE is shatter damage it no longer appreciably improves its killing power.  Likely a tossup between Greased and Charged for killing, I'd give an edge to Charged due to Greased only working at absolutely point-blank range.  The important takeaway for the Hwatcha is this: you now have to choose between boosting disabling and killing, you can't boost both at the same time.

Charged is likely to unseat burst as the preferred light mortar ammo.  While the mortar does have a fair share of its damage in AoE, 25% of the whole thing is more than 10% of half.  The magazine penalty on charged will likely make the damage a closer call, but the real thing that tilts the decision in favor of Charged is the slight range extension that allows the mortar to start firing earlier.  However, extended magazine may be a strong contender when it comes out.

Burst was never used on Gat due to lower DPS than regular and no benefits. The mid range ammo was heavy clip due to its ability to maximize DPS to a particular component. For example, if more than 20% of your regular shots would've missed the armor then heavy clip is better. Charged may take over this use on Gat now due to longer max range and slightly lower jitter. Charged Gat DPS is slightly lower than regular, so it doesn't win in damage - only accuracy

Charged Hwatcha does 9% more DPC to hull but burst will still be the primary mid range ammo due to better disable power (and armor or balloon damage). Heatsink would've retained this DPC roll but it's been nerfed to uselessness. Often you want to keep disabling them with burst even if armor is down. If you want to maximize hull damage then the best ammo is heavy clip to ensure all shots hit hull directly. Charged is only better if every shot will hit hull and you don't care about disables

Burst was never good on the mortar. It had a limited and secondary use for pre-firing and disabling, but regular is much better at killing. Charged was a good secondary ammo due to increased DPS. It may become the primary mortar ammo now due to the nerf to greased
« Last Edit: July 03, 2017, 06:23:58 pm by BlackenedPies »

Offline Aethelfrith

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2017, 12:47:18 pm »
I still maintain that burst should have a slightly smaller magazine. The ammo is described as being packed with more explosives, which would make them slightly larger, decreasing the overall magazine size.

Also BRING BACK THE HEATSINK MAGAZINE BOOST. I WANT TO SPAM HEATSINK MERCS.

Offline Corporal Ravioli

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2017, 09:23:25 am »
Also BRING BACK THE HEATSINK MAGAZINE BOOST. I WANT TO SPAM HEATSINK MERCS.

I like the new Heatsink. It embodies the point of this entire ammo patch to begin with.

Before there were too many +/- stats, and the finite extinguish power only partially fulfilled it's intended function. Now it functions like a gunner's fire extinguisher, which I always assumed was the point. Keeping the + turn speed is a very nice secondary function and I'll sometimes take it as an engineer for just that.

But yeah I get it CHANGE IS HARD.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2017, 09:25:55 am by Corporal Ravioli »

Offline Huskarr

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #9 on: July 13, 2017, 09:36:34 am »
I'm just sitting here thinking about these changes when a crucial ammo to this change is still not implemented :(

Offline Richard LeMoon

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #10 on: July 16, 2017, 11:05:17 pm »
Back from my two week vacation. Answers:

Why work on a dead game (basically)? Loaded question.
Has Muse passed the workload onto us? No. These are things we have asked for. In fact, we are generally making more work for Muse.

How are things voted on?
Generally through discussion in Discord, presentation of different points of view, and making options on Trello which are then talked over until we decide which ones to put forth. We used to put votes on the forum, but found it had really low turnout.

Extended Mag is on its way.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #11 on: July 17, 2017, 10:59:36 am »
I don't have time to be part of the community discussions these days, but I would like to see the Trello board. Where is it?

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #12 on: July 17, 2017, 03:49:18 pm »
https://trello.com/b/YJLpPUqW/experimental-crew-formerly-player-counsel

I'd like some sort of vote system since discussions can be abused. For example, when the idea to remove the DPC properties of Heatsink was proposed most players in Discord were against it. Now it's in the game without any explanation or discussion on the forum or Trello. Forum population is higher and greatly more varied than Discord - which only captures a limited subset of the playerbase

If the player counsel is going to ignore the forum then it should at least be posted on Trello so users who don't have the time or will to sit in Discord can still see some discussion. Forum posts are ideal since more players can contribute feedback and ideas
« Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 04:05:04 pm by BlackenedPies »

Offline Naoura

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #13 on: July 17, 2017, 09:39:43 pm »
Here's an idea, @BlackenedPies: Have it go through all three. Discord is a good place to discuss and talk, just spitball and see what comes out. Then it goes to Trello to have a record of the theory and all changes it has gone through as it is discussed and tested. Each and every change is sent to the Forum at least to ask the community their opinion, Yes, No, Write in. After a week, take the forum decision and test again.

So, in a list, kind of;

Discord; Place of just spitballing and coming up with ideas, having a more active discussion on it.

Trello; Record of changes from the community and a smaller scale forum, to be further expanded.

Forum; giving the players a chance to see what the Counsel has thought up, and how the community might react. Let that cook for a week, so a larger portion of the community has a chance to get eyes on it and give their opinion.

Test; Take the Forum decisions, combined with the PC decisions, and try it out. See how the testing crew enjoys.

Repeat as necessary.

Offline BlackenedPies

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Re: The Meta is dead, long live the Meta.
« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2017, 07:20:12 am »
I think that's an excellent idea Naoura