317 réponses à ce sujet

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Look, I've learned from the last couple of weeks that there is one, overpowering reason for nerfs in this game: that it has gotten too easy to farm a setup of a certain level/enemy setup and ergo allow players to get so-called "easy credits." Whilst FBWGG is the best-known example, it's far from the only one. In each case, the biggest and most obvious nerfs are mostly applied not out of genuine balance concerns, but rather to deal with characters and players farming with certain setups for the aforementioned "easy credits":

* The Quarian Female Infiltrator was among the first targets, since Sabotage and poor enemy coding meant that farming Geth on gold was comparatively easy. Sabotage has been fixed and re-fixed a half-a-dozen or so times now, and only now properly can be considered a good ability again.

* FBWGG was the most common farming setup (and still is). Geth got their infamously-awful mega-buff that resulted in Geth Rocket Machinegunners, stunproof Hunters that shoot whilst flying, and Pyros that shoot through walls, but it didn't stop farmers one bit.

* Geth Infiltrator was the most common "power" class used to farm due to versatility; Geth Hunter Mode got toned down, followed by all Infiltrators getting a blanket nerf to Tactical Cloak (a "fix," mind you, which can be argued accomplished little - DPS builds continued to go DPS, and support infiltrators got screwed with a 25% shorter duration, and, as most Infiltrators ran damage, the key offending builds continued to dominate).

* Missile Glitch and its fix. Nothing else need be said.

* Krysae was nerfed as it was the most common "power" weapon used to farm Platinum (indeed, the first players to Solo platinum did so with Krysae Infiltrators. Hell, the first players to beat Platinum were Krysae Infiltrators).

* Stomps on Gold and Platinum were specifically in response to players reliably clearing those difficulties.

* Typhoon was cut down in effectiveness twice consecutively, along with the main class that used it. The result is a gun that is only viable on the Destroyer and became utterly pointless on the other power-light and cooldown-immune classes that could cram it on, such as Quarian Engineer, Krogan Soldier/Sentinel, Demolisher, Human/BF3 Soldier, and so on.

* Smash was nerfed specifically due to players spamming it on Firebase Glacier for Platinum runs (source: Bioware Staff).

I appreciate that this is being done with the interest in trying to keep some level of control over rampant farming, but the simple fact is that - Krysae nerfs aside - the bulk of these hit the community infinitely harder than it did the actual Farmers. More to the point, these nerfs have not done anything to curb farming whatsoever. On top of this, we are now entering a metagame wherein balance fixes are being performed around the farmers, and not the actual playerbase, and that, to put it simply, is lunacy. Does anyone here honestly think that players who were farming Glacier with Smash are really that plussed that Smash got nerf-batted in response to their antics? No, they'll mutter a bit, and go looking for some other way to endlessly farm easy credits to max out their manifests.

The sad thing is that this has been going on for months, and explains literally every questionable balance decision that has been made in regards to this game.

Let us journey back to the early days of ME3, where Sabotage was widely considered the easiest way to farm Gold. When the Female Quarian Infiltrator's ability was nerfed, this did not dissuade players from using the Quarian Infiltrator to farm, since she was still fairly effective if used right, but her use tapered off in favor of other Infiltrators.

Geth remained popular, however, for farmers, because they did not have the bullsquid that was instant kills, nor did they throw psychic invisible grenades that wipe parties out and have perfect accuracy. What resulted was teams of veteran players farming Gold using whatever tactics they could find: Clustering on Firebase Glacier, bunkerstorm on Firebase Ghost, the desks at Firebase White. Later, the Geth were buffed dramatically (and many would argue game-breakingly) specifically in response to players farming them on Gold.

The point is that this is endless carrot-and-stick chasing. Players are going to farm - so long as this game uses this enfuriatingly, widely-documented-as-poorly-designed store system with all of its infinitely complained-about problems, people are going to actively seek out the most efficient, utilitarian way to secure easy credits and get things unlocked. This is human nature at its finest, and it's a testament to ME3's enjoyability that the game has endured despite this. I understand that slowing this down, at least, is a priority, since players getting credits the proper way means less people purchasing magic space points, but in the end, there's a very basic question to ask about these fixes:

Who is suffering more when a weapon or ability is made less-viable, the Farmers, or the actual Players?

The answer is abundantly clear: It's the players. From the newbie who, against all odds, gets a shiny ouchie-bang-splat ultra rare in his very first Premium Spectre Pack - only to find that weapon considerably less shiny once the weekly balance fix gives it a righteous kick in the scrote, to the veterans who are farting around on Silver with a few friends, it is the bulk of the playerbase, and, most assuredly, not the Farmers, who form the lifeblood of this game, and who, ultimately, will suffer the most when a weapon, ability, or class is nerfed into oblivion. This is not to say that occasionally, fixes are not necessary - The Missile Glitch fix was a long time coming, and I challenge anyone to tell me that the Krysae was anything but a godlessly powerful rape-cannon when it was first released.

A friend of mine (who happens to be amongst the highest-ranked N7 players in the world) once chimed in and said that this current cycle of basing fixes on weakening farming methodologies, no matter how much it nerfs and destroys, will never, ever, at any point in time, be successful. His reasoning is both logical and concise - not only will the playerbase continue to find methods that work to reliably gain easy credits, but there are literally over a dozen relatively obscure setups that are more than capable of reliably handling any difficulty or situation and which, due to their obscurity, are as likely to be nerfed as Commander Sheperd is to die of natural causes. More than this, team skill will always be a factor - players who can coordinatre and work well with others will always find ways to make it through, even if they have to fight naked and armed with the projectile weapon equivalent of nerf bats, and they will find a way to reliably extract credits doing so.

This cycle of fixes focused on Farming methodologies, rather than actual need, has got to stop. If a build or the like is overpowered, by all means, deal with it - but nerfing things into oblivion specifically because they were effective at things has got to cease - especially because, all-too-often, these so-called fixes are poorly-implemented and break more than they fix.

A good example is the Typhoon - once an excellent weapon for literally ALL power-light and cooldown-immune classes, like the Krogan Soldier/Sentinel, Quarian Engineer, and more, it is now pretty much only remotely viable on the N7 Destroyer. This is extremely bad design and totally counter-intuitive. After the last "fix," no one was clamoring for the Typhoon to be made less-efficient than the Phaeston on several classes.

There are other, infinitely more pressing things that need to be worked on, that are a dozen times more important and pressing to this game reaching its full potential than a bunch of pissants farming Platinum due to Glacier's horrible map design (something not the players' fault no less). The game is plagued with underpowered, dead-end gear, weapons, and class options, and the bulk of the playerbase would love nothing more than bringing these to the point where they're actually viable. Fixing bugs and improving class viability should be a huge priority, and there is a giant stack of them to fix, but it hasn't been done yet (as much due to QA testing as anything else, but the last "fix" didn't improve any of the bugs on-record for months either, so frankly, the point still stands).

Focus on the players. Not the farmers. The farmers aren't the ones who are getting hurt by handling the metagame this way.

[Iezza]

This is gonna be a long read. Gonna enjoy this.

[I will frag you]

Agreed. Severely disappointed with the new Tactical cloak, and shotty infiltrators are still better. Give us more sniper only bonuses, please.

[Iezza]

Good read. Agree with everything.
The typhoon - destroyer nerf was unnesecary, and limits the destroyer to the phoon, and the phoon to the destroyer.

[LordDeathkeeper]

 Couldn't have been said better. I'll never know the joy of using what was once the typhoon.

[P51Mus7ang]

Very good read and I concur also. I am of a very strong opinion that the new smash nerf had a lot to do with farming on Plat.....while I don't I do have a few friends that do camp, from what I understand there is more than one map, so they get....135,000 credits for 25 min, I received a text from one fellow, due to the change they now only go to round 6 in plat, second objective then die...pretty sad as this is skewing Bioware's numbers, it has to. And if the first objective is not what they want, they die and start over....kind of crazy but.......I am personally against this kind of game play, but it's just my opinion, I will not tell others how to play, I will make suggestions if you are on our team and leave it at that.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

LordDeathkeeper wrote...

 Couldn't have been said better. I'll never know the joy of using what was once the typhoon.

I'll try to describe it.

Long before I got any N7 classes, I was blessed - my first Spectre Pack contained a Typhoon. I immediately packed it on my Krogan Soldier,  and for a time, felt like a god. The Typhoon went with me everywhere, my first legitimately effective LMG that actually felt like one. It was a dream come true, like a viable version of the Revenant.

Do you know how you felt when you first got a Phaeston after so long using the Avenger? How it made your eyes water by how fun that felt? Or when you got a Cerberus Harrier, and finally, there was a rifle that actually felt like an assault rifle? The Typhoon was like that, only for Machine Guns.

Its loss will be deeply lamented by the Krogan community, and its loss mourned by many a Quarian Engineer, Human Soldier, and N7 Demolisher. It will be missed.

[Curzyfish]

Are people really complaining about stomps? They should have been in gold / plat from the start.

[Mezantine]

Spot on

[Stinja]

Agreed.

You won't stop speed runners or farmers, but you will make things rougher for everyone else.

[RoZh2400]

Good read. Definitely could have been made shorter. Please separate the second half so it's not a wall of text for easiness on the eyes.

+1

[Iezza]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

LordDeathkeeper wrote...

 Couldn't have been said better. I'll never know the joy of using what was once the typhoon.

I'll try to describe it.

Long before I got any N7 classes, I was blessed - my first Spectre Pack contained a Typhoon. I immediately packed it on my Krogan Soldier,  and for a time, felt like a god. The Typhoon went with me everywhere, my first legitimately effective LMG that actually felt like one. It was a dream come true, like a viable version of the Revenant.

Do you know how you felt when you first got a Phaeston after so long using the Avenger? How it made your eyes water by how fun that felt? Or when you got a Cerberus Harrier, and finally, there was a rifle that actually felt like an assault rifle? The Typhoon was like that, only for Machine Guns.

Its loss will be deeply lamented by the Krogan community, and its loss mourned by many a Quarian Engineer, Human Soldier, and N7 Demolisher. It will be missed.

I take it your like me and want a LMG category? :3

[Kuriiiiiii]

Here's what you do.

Played FBWGG in the last hour? You get half credits from that map.
Played it again in the last hour? Another quater taken off.

Played against Geth in the last hour? Half credits (If you play against cerberus or reapers the timer resets)

DIVERSITY!

[DrDueces]

amen, ironic how ive seen messages like this all over the place and yet bioware continues to nerf us and buff the enemies. Interesting how they listen to their "fan-base"

[Flambirex]

It's ironic that all the changes designed to eliminate farming are driving people towards farming, in order to 'beat the system'. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad for the players.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

The sad part, noble MalMilchek, is that there is a way they can have their cake and eat it too - it's Valve's Mann Co. Store model. Let players try their luck with credits, or spend their hard-earned IRL money to get what they actually want for a change. Everyone's happy, since players get their items, Bioware gets their money, and everyone's for the most part happy. Then we can buy hats for our Krogans and Kneesocks for Asari, and then they can make some real money.

Anyway, I've gotten off focus and completely distracted myself by thinking of Asari and Quarians in Fishnets. Where was I? Oh, right.

Do I expect them to change things to actually maintain the dignity and respect that made ME3's multiplayer great? Absolutely not. But if I can help open a few eyes and get a few people thinking on why the metagame focus being on Farmers is, for lack of a better term, a stupid fawking idea, then maybe, just maybe, something may shift in a better direction.

It couldn't hurt.

[Boog_89]

Fully agree, I have 6 ultra rares so I was extremely happy when I actually got the typhoon and I loved using it, I have not played since the nerd but I dont see the point in nerfing things in co-op games. My typhoon was supposed to be awesome its the latest ultra rare weapon and should be epic.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Flambirex wrote...

It's ironic that all the changes designed to eliminate farming are driving people towards farming, in order to 'beat the system'. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad for the players.

To quote my aforementioned friend who I quoted for this article:

"It doesn't matter. They can nerf every single weapon, class, and ability I use often, and I'll still be able to pack a Tempest ont a Turian and Solo gold if I so choose. They're never going to stop this, so it'd be nice if they stopped trying and instead worked on getting things done."

[Moxy_Pirate]

thems a lot of fightin words

[Beerfish]

I have no problem with the balances at all. Farming or not, if one weapon and or class is getting used WAY more than the rest it should be balanced and farming is overrated as far as how much it adds to the telemetry data. Tons of people play on bronze and silver and do not farm. It's also a fallacy in most cases that such and such a gun or class is now useless after a nerf.

Funny that all the big speed run winners at the highest levels are all Infils. As long as they are buffing things that need to be buffed while doing their nerfs I don't have a major problem. Typhoon nerfed, Indra buffed. Now everyone loves the Indra again.

If no balancing takes place then you may as well eliminate half the classes and half the guns because people will NEVER use them. I don't have the typhoon but I won't shed a tear that I never go the chance to use it 'at its full power'.

[SierraGHOSTN7]

I actually don't get the farmers. Why farm?
You'll get the money and the items. Maybe it'll take more time, but you'll get it. It's just missing this game's point, to have fun. Spamming powers is dull. I actually hate spammers.
But, playing this game is much more fun than farming.