317 réponses à ce sujet

[ReddBull31]

+1
bump

[DarthVarner]

Strict31 wrote...

 Farming is a motivation. It is not a tangible thing that can be targeted and punched in the balls. Farming can take place on any map against any enemy using any characters. Until you can combat the motivation behind farming, you cannot hope to combat the practice of farming.

It's like a doctor targeting the symptoms of a disease instead of the cause of the disease. It's like Superman wasting his time catching bullets all day instead of crushing the gun that is firing those bullets.

It is not logical.

With that said, are we certain that these nerfs are motivated by Bioware's desire to stop farming? I mean, do we have direct evidence or perhaps a direct quote from a Bioware employee saying something to that effect? I ask because a conclusion without evidence; a premise without support beyond supposition is also not logical.

I bring this up because fishing through 9+ pages is time consuming, and I've got matches to farm--

...er...um...play through. Yes. That's it.

Evidence that many of the changes mentioned in this thread were explicitly due to farming, using the Geth saga as a case study is as follows.  It may be interesting to players that haven't been with us since release:

• Geth originally had a headshot volume on their only true boss unit, the Prime.  This headshot volume applied a 250% boost to damage, making Primes melt in literally two Black Widow or (nearly 2) Valiant clips.  Yes, to a sniping Infiltrator a Prime was roughly equivalent to three, count 'em THREE shielded mooks. As such, they were by FAR the easiest faction to clear on Gold, because their 'effective' HP per wave was cut by about half.  If you were in a good infil team, you never felt pressure except maybe on some objectives; the competition was who would kill the next enemy to round that corner FIRST.
• This problem was recognized, and a Bioware poster noted on the forums that this (Prime headshot volume) was a bug.  However, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the most popular enemy will be the easiest one, and by leaps and bounds this meant the Geth.  It also meant that the specific strategy that would be most effective against the Geth, by far, will be SR infiltrators which can reliably and precisely deliver high amounts of damage to the head volume.
• At first all they did was boost the health of Geth enemies.  This didn't matter to sniper teams; everything had a headshot modifier and TC+SR boosted the Valiant and BW to the point where the limiting factor for killing efficiency was not mob health at all - just the shield gate.  Even after all the nerfs to TC and buffs to Geth, my Valiant with no ammo or rail amps can still twoshot ANY Geth enemy within the TC window save a Prime.  It did, however, make the Geth much, much worse for non-infil teams to deal with - because for those classes, the damage of their abilities or weapons very much DID matter relative to mob health.  The second or third cast, or reload to get a second clip just to down flanking mooks was (and still is) a massive problem for non-infils against Geth. Result?  Everyone moves to playing infiltrators.  This was incredibly obvious and predictible.  The surprising part is that ONLY ~30% of players on Gold were running infils at this time, not more.
• To really fix the problem, required a patch - not just a hotfix.  So instead they boosted the Geth wave compositions considerably and attempted to put pressure on players via making Hunters sprint in cloak.  This did nothing to address the overarching problem of low HP, really (one additional Prime per wave meant just ~2 clips to an infil), and grab-farmers didn't care about the Hunter buffs.  This did, successfully, made the Geth horrible to fight with other comps on other maps; now with 3 Primes spawning turrets in later waves, all with boosted HP, and sprinting flanking Hunters, non-infil comps regularly got overwhelmed.
• Finally, the Prime head volume gets removed (circa Rebellion).  Now infil teams are in the same boat as everyone else vs. Geth, feeling too much pressure from them relative to other enemies.  So the farming moves on - to Cerberus, this time - because Rebellion also brought a fun new toy, an exploding "sniper rifle" rocket-grenade launcher which also apparently has a proximity trigger, so not even mobs behind cover are safe.  Good thing the Illusive Man hasn't downloaded the publicly available plans for the Krysae!  Turns out this sucker with TC bonuses trivialized the only real threatening enemy in Cerberus's arsenal, the Phantom, and provided splash damage to boot.  So everyone moves to farming Cerberus, still on infiltrators.
• Notably what DIDN'T happen the minute the Prime head volume was fixed was immediate reversion of nearly all buffs Geth had received since release of the game.  This should have happened, but did not.  It still needs to.  Badly.
• Inevitably Infils get nerfed HARD "because everyone is playing them!" as a backwards way of toning down the Krysae.  Because of how this was implemented, sniper rifles (already underwhelming and falling out of favor due to high zoom and low stopping power vs. Reapers, and nowhere near as useful on Geth after the Prime patch) are now barely viable on Gold... but hey, shotguns on infils bypass the shield gate and didn't get hit as hard!  4/6/6/6/4 specs ahoy!  Everyone runs shotguns, except some GIs are still able to keep the Krysae relevant if, in a team, everyone AoE bombs spawns on a small map.  

You know what happens next.  Hunter mode gets nerfed, but that isn't enough.  Finally, the Krysae gets the nerfhammer SO HARD we might as well ship the remaining supply over to the Reapers, hoping against hope they might take the bait and actually try to wield them against us.  

Why am I able to sketch this out so precisely?  Because every change was eminently predictible on both sides.  Players gravitated to the most effective ways to dispatch the easiest enemies.  No further statement is necessary to understand the player side, it can all be extrapolated from that right there.  Bioware's responses have also been predictible, either through an "encourage gambling in our store w/real money" standpoint or through well-meaning but misguided analysis of the aggregate data they have available, attempting to balance the game.  

Blizzard realized you cannot fully balance a game.  There will be 'best' builds and other such things that give the game flavor.  Your playerbase will, surprisingly quickly, suss out what these are and gravitate toward them.  The Prime head volume trivialized Geth, and it did need to be patched.  But now the underlying issue is fixed, the band-aids trying to 'fix' the problem need to come off as well.  

So yes, these changes were due to people "farming" or, in less jaded terminology, being as effective as possible.  

By that definition there will always be farmers, so long as there are variations between characters, loadouts, maps, and team comps.  It's the essence of futility to believe otherwise.

Modifié par DarthVarner, 03 août 2012 - 07:22 .

[reaver-101]

aggreed

but the heart of farming is the heart of all hoard game types out there, and that is that camping is a very valid, effective, and reliable strategy to beat this style of game.

i farm and will continue to farm, my friends are the same. however we dont just farm, we will play silver and run around *playing properly* after all its nice to have a more interesting game and to dominate a little bit. the key here is that i couldnt stay interested in this game if all i had was silver wins, and the odd gold. sometimes its nice to play a couple of games and camp it up to run up your credits and buy some PSPs on the offchance you get something decent. because otherwise it will become a chore playing 4 games on silver buy a psp get nothing play 4 more etc

[a-karpen]

A great post, DarthVarner!

[Kiernin]

Iezza wrote...

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

^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Kiernin]

Kuriiiiiii wrote...

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!

I would only support this if this was disabled under random/random. And even then I dont really know if people's efforts should be reduced like this.

[LegacyOfTheAsh]

Man. That was put so well. I never used to farm until recently.

[AndySty]

They could have prevented farmers simply by not making RNG such a pain and making the game such a long grind to get good gear

[ZombieGambit]

*claps*

Good one, OP. Well said.

+10 respect


This needs to be stickied to make sure BioWare reads this.

Modifié par ZombieGambit, 03 août 2012 - 11:48 .

[samb]

DarthVarner wrote...
Evidence that many of the changes mentioned in this thread were explicitly due to farming, using the Geth saga as a case study is as follows.  It may be interesting to players that haven't been with us since release:

• Geth originally had a headshot volume on their only true boss unit, the Prime.  This headshot volume applied a 250% boost to damage, making Primes melt in literally two Black Widow or (nearly 2) Valiant clips.  Yes, to a sniping Infiltrator a Prime was roughly equivalent to three, count 'em THREE shielded mooks. As such, they were by FAR the easiest faction to clear on Gold, because their 'effective' HP per wave was cut by about half.  If you were in a good infil team, you never felt pressure except maybe on some objectives; the competition was who would kill the next enemy to round that corner FIRST.
  
• This problem was recognized, and a Bioware poster noted on the forums that this (Prime headshot volume) was a bug.  However, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the most popular enemy will be the easiest one, and by leaps and bounds this meant the Geth.  It also meant that the specific strategy that would be most effective against the Geth, by far, will be SR infiltrators which can reliably and precisely deliver high amounts of damage to the head volume.  
• At first all they did was boost the health of Geth enemies.  This didn't matter to sniper teams; everything had a headshot modifier and TC+SR boosted the Valiant and BW to the point where the limiting factor for killing efficiency was not mob health at all - just the shield gate.  Even after all the nerfs to TC and buffs to Geth, my Valiant with no ammo or rail amps can still twoshot ANY Geth enemy within the TC window save a Prime.  It did, however, make the Geth much, much worse for non-infil teams to deal with - because for those classes, the damage of their abilities or weapons very much DID matter relative to mob health.  The second or third cast, or reload to get a second clip just to down flanking mooks was (and still is) a massive problem for non-infils against Geth. Result?  Everyone moves to playing infiltrators.  This was incredibly obvious and predictible.  The surprising part is that ONLY ~30% of players on Gold were running infils at this time, not more.
  
• To really fix the problem, required a patch - not just a hotfix.  So instead they boosted the Geth wave compositions considerably and attempted to put pressure on players via making Hunters sprint in cloak.  This did nothing to address the overarching problem of low HP, really (one additional Prime per wave meant just ~2 clips to an infil), and grab-farmers didn't care about the Hunter buffs.  This did, successfully, made the Geth horrible to fight with other comps on other maps; now with 3 Primes spawning turrets in later waves, all with boosted HP, and sprinting flanking Hunters, non-infil comps regularly got overwhelmed.  
• Finally, the Prime head volume gets removed (circa Rebellion).  Now infil teams are in the same boat as everyone else vs. Geth, feeling too much pressure from them relative to other enemies.  So the farming moves on - to Cerberus, this time - because Rebellion also brought a fun new toy, an exploding "sniper rifle" rocket-grenade launcher which also apparently has a proximity trigger, so not even mobs behind cover are safe.  Good thing the Illusive Man hasn't downloaded the publicly available plans for the Krysae!  Turns out this sucker with TC bonuses trivialized the only real threatening enemy in Cerberus's arsenal, the Phantom, and provided splash damage to boot.  So everyone moves to farming Cerberus, still on infiltrators.
• Notably what DIDN'T happen the minute the Prime head volume was fixed was immediate reversion of nearly all buffs Geth had received since release of the game.  This should have happened, but did not.  It still needs to.  Badly.
• Inevitably Infils get nerfed HARD "because everyone is playing them!" as a backwards way of toning down the Krysae.  Because of how this was implemented, sniper rifles (already underwhelming and falling out of favor due to high zoom and low stopping power vs. Reapers, and nowhere near as useful on Geth after the Prime patch) are now barely viable on Gold... but hey, shotguns on infils bypass the shield gate and didn't get hit as hard!  4/6/6/6/4 specs ahoy!  Everyone runs shotguns, except some GIs are still able to keep the Krysae relevant if, in a team, everyone AoE bombs spawns on a small map.  

You know what happens next.  Hunter mode gets nerfed, but that isn't enough.  Finally, the Krysae gets the nerfhammer SO HARD we might as well ship the remaining supply over to the Reapers, hoping against hope they might take the bait and actually try to wield them against us.  

Why am I able to sketch this out so precisely?  Because every change was eminently predictible on both sides.  Players gravitated to the most effective ways to dispatch the easiest enemies.  No further statement is necessary to understand the player side, it can all be extrapolated from that right there.  Bioware's responses have also been predictible, either through an "encourage gambling in our store w/real money" standpoint or through well-meaning but misguided analysis of the aggregate data they have available, attempting to balance the game.  

Blizzard realized you cannot fully balance a game.  There will be 'best' builds and other such things that give the game flavor.  Your playerbase will, surprisingly quickly, suss out what these are and gravitate toward them.  The Prime head volume trivialized Geth, and it did need to be patched.  But now the underlying issue is fixed, the band-aids trying to 'fix' the problem need to come off as well.  

So yes, these changes were due to people "farming" or, in less jaded terminology, being as effective as possible.  

By that definition there will always be farmers, so long as there are variations between characters, loadouts, maps, and team comps.  It's the essence of futility to believe otherwise.

+1
Wow that was a great illustration of how "balance" is a constant battle between devs and players.  Very insightful man.

[Xaijin]

COLZ7R wrote...

@strict31
Aint found any direct proof about biowares motivation for the nerffs but in the infamous tc nerff they stated infs were ok on bronze/silver and the problem lay in gold.
If the forum goers are to be believed( in this case i kinda do) 70-80% of random gold matches are fbwgg farming runs where infs were the main go to class. so that kinda points us in the direction that the nerff was brought about by farming.
If as some have said bioware discount farming matches in their "balancing act" then all they look at for balance is 20% of the least used difficulty, where the "elite" play!
Either way its a terrible way to balance a game

The map design of london and vancouver have plenty of proof. Pick a Krogan vanguard and do london platinum reapers.

Have fun.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

It goes back further than DarthVarner mentioned - it goes back to the first major class debuff, on the Quarian Female Infiltrator, because she was able to properly cause the Geth to focus on something other than her and her allies with Sabotage. That it wasn't really hugely effective at actually killing things was never the issue; the fact that it was useful for assisting farming methodologies was.

A vast majority of the major class and weapon nerfs since day one has been to cut down on farming viability, and all one needs to do to prove this is follow the proverbial trail of bread crumbs.

Over 10 pages in, I find it difficult to believe that the powers that be are not simultaneously aware of this thread and, conversely, of the literally near-unanimous agreement with it. We owe it to ourselves to continue the discourse and analysis, until we help effect change.

[Strict31]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

It goes back further than DarthVarner mentioned - it goes back to the first major class debuff, on the Quarian Female Infiltrator, because she was able to properly cause the Geth to focus on something other than her and her allies with Sabotage. That it wasn't really hugely effective at actually killing things was never the issue; the fact that it was useful for assisting farming methodologies was.

A vast majority of the major class and weapon nerfs since day one has been to cut down on farming viability, and all one needs to do to prove this is follow the proverbial trail of bread crumbs.

Over 10 pages in, I find it difficult to believe that the powers that be are not simultaneously aware of this thread and, conversely, of the literally near-unanimous agreement with it. We owe it to ourselves to continue the discourse and analysis, until we help effect change.

I'm sure it goes back further than he mentioned. But he doesn't present any actual evidence that BW's nerfs are motivated by a desire to kill or curb farming. We're looking at "effect" as if it's "cause."

I think these nerfs are pointlessly dipsh*t, and I think BW is probably a bit redfaced by farming. I think there may be a connection between the two. But...again...beyond supposition...do we have any evidence that BW has instituted these nerfs to combat farming?

I'm not asking for someone to detail the history of nerfs, because I can find that out by looking in the weekly balance thread. I'm asking if we have actual quotes from BW stating that any of these nerfs were made to curb farming.

I don't need to see the booty that crapped out the piece of poo I just stepped in to know I just stepped in sh*t. But this is a bit different.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Well-said, Strict.

[Xaijin]

The issue again, never mentioned, is why.

But as for proof? All you have to do is look at jumpin's video dates. He was the first to show geth-quarian farming, two weeks later after the rampant quarian match explosions, sabotage was jackhammered so badly it had to be rebalanced to work at all above bronze. There were two dev posts at the time that directly alluded to farming by mentioning that the power and quarian class was "consistently overused." (their words, not mine) when forum posters asked why the nerf was so extreme.

The QF race has never recovered, either version.

The base fact that Hunter mode was nerfed, despite the Engineer being pretty well literally balanced, is another clear indication, especially the vision range side, as certain power combos were being saved for certain enemies for constant pre-priming as they entered a camping spot. (such as prox mine>warp>throw which is astoundingly damaging on hp-scaling attacks)

The same statement was used for GI/SI/Cloak issues. Fagnan said the class was being overpicked for specific difficulty/map combos by a huge margin over other classes/races, which directly accounted for changes.

Modifié par Xaijin, 04 août 2012 - 01:40 .

[samb]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Well-said, Strict.

Not really. Darth presented a detailed case, with clear sequence of events, actions of BW and players' reaction.  He based his conclusions of BW's motives on said sequence of events.  
Strict has chosen to ignore the evidence all together. BW will never say they are deliberately trying to alienate farmers, and expecting them to do so is naive. At most they will say "overused" or "unintended consequences" or "misused". Something diplomatic. 

[CheetahZ1]

samb wrote...

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Well-said, Strict.

Not really. Darth presented a detailed case, with clear sequence of events, actions of BW and players' reaction.  He based his conclusions of BW's motives on said sequence of events.  
Strict has chosen to ignore the evidence all together. BW will never say they are deliberately trying to alienate farmers, and expecting them to do so is naive. At most they will say "overused" or "unintended consequences" or "misused". Something diplomatic. 

Basically this. Were not going to get much evidence of Bioware saying they're trying to encourage people to spend money on packs.

This topic is basically meant to formulate arguments and make an assumption to bring another point of view. To show more possibilities of why Bioware is making certain decisions about balancing.

(Honestly I don't have much to contribute, this topic just needs to be bumped as their are very good arguments present that should be seen).

Oh yeah remember the Falcon? How it didn't do good damage, but the stagger on that baby? Like you could be a support role? Good times....

[AC4HeavyWeapon]

I agree, Bioware has completely taken these balance changer in the wrong direction. For example, if Bioware wanted to hit FBWGG instead of buffing Geth, making them unplayable for the average outside of "FARMING", instead they could fix the spawns instead. FBWGG would be harder if the Geth would spawn in the corner or just make them flank. Nerfing weapons are also not being done properly, I can undertand nerfing gamebreaking weapons, but some of these nerfs were unjutified. The Falcon, Sabotage, Reager, Pheonix's, and Krysae are good examples.
The Falcon was good, but not game changing. The Falcon was at the time the best crowd control weapon against anything but bosses, which it didn't hit that well and could have been fixed if by just decreasing damage so it just stuns, but not light the kill feed. Sabotage was broken against Geth, but this could of been fixed easily while remaining good. Bioware could have changed the hack duration or made them immune after the 1st hack, but they did reduce it to one target, but just did too much. The Reager's weight nerf was pointless, the Reager has reasonable range and only stripped shields, but required ammo powers and mods to be effective against armor, but anybody could agree that ammo powers make any weapon good like cryo rounds on the striker or distrupter rounds on the Falcon for tech bursts. The Krysae was broken I agree, but could of been fixed by making it heavier so power classes couldn't just put it on and to remove the fact that it stuns everything from basic troopers to the all powerful Phantom. The Pheonix became playable with the smash buff and allowed it to have synergy with most squads if use of the correct map by a good player who abused line of sight which it is a talent in itself. Platinum Glacier farmers who spam the power through the wall could have been fixed by cutting the damage of smash, and powers of similiar nature by cutting the damage when the powere went through surfaces like by 25-45%.
  Another solution is to make these sub par weapons like the avenger, katana, locust, and eagle have there own niche.  Like for example add the same feature the typhoon shares with other AR by increasing the RoF over the time the player fires, make the weaker shotguns stun reliably like the GPS or increase the pellets they fire, and for the SMGs increase RoF or Damage of the weapons, make the 3 burst SMGs stun every couple bursts, or add some special aspect like you can charge the clip of the SMG before you reload to increase damage and RoF.

Modifié par AC4HeavyWeapon, 04 août 2012 - 02:58 .

[AwesomeDudex64]

Best post in the entire forum, I totally agree with you.

Bioware, quit ruining your game and learn from this man!
------------------
DarthVarner's post is great too.

Modifié par AwesomeDudex64, 04 août 2012 - 02:59 .

[CitizenThom]

Evidence is in the eye of the beholder. (didn't Mr. Kant say something to that effect?)

The evidence in my opinion, lies in the changes that have been made, and those that haven't been made.

But I can hear you saying, "but you don't have Bioware saying the actual words..."

What you mean to say is that you don't have the evidence you are looking for, not that you don't have any evidence that the buffs of enemies and nerfs of enemies follow a pattern of prioritising the prevention of farming ahead of improving the gameplay for non-farmers.

Darth Varner nailed it, although most of my time farming FBWhite has been as a Salarian Engineer. In a way, FBWhite made Decoy viable as a power for me as a player, because it doesn't work effectively when you aren't able to hide behind cover away from the Decoy on most of the other maps.

Decoy seemed so useless until someone figured out a way to make Decoy effective with a farming strategy.

[DarthVarner]

Xaijin wrote...

The issue again, never mentioned, is why.

...

The same statement was used for GI/SI/Cloak issues. Fagnan said the class was being overpicked for specific difficulty/map combos by a huge margin over other classes/races, which directly accounted for changes.

See, it's quotes like this which make me think the "why" behind many of these changes is well meaning mis-analysis of data rather than anything 'evil' to encourage store gambling.  

In my prior post, I extrapolate player behavior from a very simple thesis: players will gravitate toward the most effective ways to dispatch the easiest enemies, and make the observation: "the surprising part is that ONLY ~30% of players on Gold were running infils at this time, not more."  

The relevant question here is simple.  How much of an advantage does one particular class/weapon/spec/comp have to provide, compared to other "balanced" ones, in order to get people to flock to it?  The answer is not much.  Probably less than you'd think (single digit percent or less) - and sometimes the psychological perception is sufficient even if they're equivalent!  In games like WoW, a fraction of a percent of potential advantage for one spec over another is enough to align the VAST majority of players in said class into that exact cookie-cutter build.  

So when you have this situation, why was it surprising that everyone piled into the infiltrator bandwagon?  It was a good wagon!  This doesn't necessarily mean the infil is game-breakingly overpowered (though it was, specifically vs. Geth)... it could just mean infils were doing ever so slightly better than other classes.  Since this is a game where everyone can have all characters maxed and waiting to play in a short period, sharing gear between them, any percieved (doesn't even have to be real - percieved is enough!) advantage SHOULD BE EXPECTED to cause a large percentage of the playerbase to pile in to that class/spec/weapon/gear/comp.

By the very nature of ME3 MP, we are nimble players.  We can switch classes, gear, and loadouts at will - and respeccing is not difficult.  This is great for variety and replayability, and it's one of the big draws of this game.  But now consider: If biotic explosions were hilariously buffed next week, to three times their current damage, would anyone be surprised if over half of the playerbase dropped their shotguns and picked up adepts, vanguards, and sentinels?  I wouldn't be.  You shouldn't be.  And neither should the devs be.

But if all Eric and the devs are looking at is raw data, thinking "holy cow, everyone's playing THAT?!  That's clearly out of hand - we have to nerf THAT!" - the response may not be appropriate.  This is the point I'm trying to make.

Player responses are predictible in this environment if you understand game theory and basic human nature.  At present, I'm not sure our weekly changes are made with this context in mind. 

Modifié par DarthVarner, 04 août 2012 - 03:38 .

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Also quite an impressive analysis.

[Xaijin]

CitizenThom wrote...

Evidence is in the eye of the beholder. (didn't Mr. Kant say something to that effect?)

The evidence in my opinion, lies in the changes that have been made, and those that haven't been made.

But I can hear you saying, "but you don't have Bioware saying the actual words..."

What you mean to say is that you don't have the evidence you are looking for, not that you don't have any evidence that the buffs of enemies and nerfs of enemies follow a pattern of prioritising the prevention of farming ahead of improving the gameplay for non-farmers.

Darth Varner nailed it, although most of my time farming FBWhite has been as a Salarian Engineer. In a way, FBWhite made Decoy viable as a power for me as a player, because it doesn't work effectively when you aren't able to hide behind cover away from the Decoy on most of the other maps.

Decoy seemed so useless until someone figured out a way to make Decoy effective with a farming strategy.

You'll recall there was a decoy/drone targeting nerf for this specific reason, and to this day several devs demurred politely even when directly asked to specify HOW decoy aggro-vacuuming actually works.

[soldo9149]

DarthVarner wrote...

Strict31 wrote...

 Farming is a motivation. It is not a tangible thing that can be targeted and punched in the balls. Farming can take place on any map against any enemy using any characters. Until you can combat the motivation behind farming, you cannot hope to combat the practice of farming.

It's like a doctor targeting the symptoms of a disease instead of the cause of the disease. It's like Superman wasting his time catching bullets all day instead of crushing the gun that is firing those bullets.

It is not logical.

With that said, are we certain that these nerfs are motivated by Bioware's desire to stop farming? I mean, do we have direct evidence or perhaps a direct quote from a Bioware employee saying something to that effect? I ask because a conclusion without evidence; a premise without support beyond supposition is also not logical.

I bring this up because fishing through 9+ pages is time consuming, and I've got matches to farm--

...er...um...play through. Yes. That's it.

Evidence that many of the changes mentioned in this thread were explicitly due to farming, using the Geth saga as a case study is as follows.  It may be interesting to players that haven't been with us since release:

• Geth originally had a headshot volume on their only true boss unit, the Prime.  This headshot volume applied a 250% boost to damage, making Primes melt in literally two Black Widow or (nearly 2) Valiant clips.  Yes, to a sniping Infiltrator a Prime was roughly equivalent to three, count 'em THREE shielded mooks. As such, they were by FAR the easiest faction to clear on Gold, because their 'effective' HP per wave was cut by about half.  If you were in a good infil team, you never felt pressure except maybe on some objectives; the competition was who would kill the next enemy to round that corner FIRST.
• This problem was recognized, and a Bioware poster noted on the forums that this (Prime headshot volume) was a bug.  However, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the most popular enemy will be the easiest one, and by leaps and bounds this meant the Geth.  It also meant that the specific strategy that would be most effective against the Geth, by far, will be SR infiltrators which can reliably and precisely deliver high amounts of damage to the head volume.
• At first all they did was boost the health of Geth enemies.  This didn't matter to sniper teams; everything had a headshot modifier and TC+SR boosted the Valiant and BW to the point where the limiting factor for killing efficiency was not mob health at all - just the shield gate.  Even after all the nerfs to TC and buffs to Geth, my Valiant with no ammo or rail amps can still twoshot ANY Geth enemy within the TC window save a Prime.  It did, however, make the Geth much, much worse for non-infil teams to deal with - because for those classes, the damage of their abilities or weapons very much DID matter relative to mob health.  The second or third cast, or reload to get a second clip just to down flanking mooks was (and still is) a massive problem for non-infils against Geth. Result?  Everyone moves to playing infiltrators.  This was incredibly obvious and predictible.  The surprising part is that ONLY ~30% of players on Gold were running infils at this time, not more.
• To really fix the problem, required a patch - not just a hotfix.  So instead they boosted the Geth wave compositions considerably and attempted to put pressure on players via making Hunters sprint in cloak.  This did nothing to address the overarching problem of low HP, really (one additional Prime per wave meant just ~2 clips to an infil), and grab-farmers didn't care about the Hunter buffs.  This did, successfully, made the Geth horrible to fight with other comps on other maps; now with 3 Primes spawning turrets in later waves, all with boosted HP, and sprinting flanking Hunters, non-infil comps regularly got overwhelmed.
• Finally, the Prime head volume gets removed (circa Rebellion).  Now infil teams are in the same boat as everyone else vs. Geth, feeling too much pressure from them relative to other enemies.  So the farming moves on - to Cerberus, this time - because Rebellion also brought a fun new toy, an exploding "sniper rifle" rocket-grenade launcher which also apparently has a proximity trigger, so not even mobs behind cover are safe.  Good thing the Illusive Man hasn't downloaded the publicly available plans for the Krysae!  Turns out this sucker with TC bonuses trivialized the only real threatening enemy in Cerberus's arsenal, the Phantom, and provided splash damage to boot.  So everyone moves to farming Cerberus, still on infiltrators.
• Notably what DIDN'T happen the minute the Prime head volume was fixed was immediate reversion of nearly all buffs Geth had received since release of the game.  This should have happened, but did not.  It still needs to.  Badly.
• Inevitably Infils get nerfed HARD "because everyone is playing them!" as a backwards way of toning down the Krysae.  Because of how this was implemented, sniper rifles (already underwhelming and falling out of favor due to high zoom and low stopping power vs. Reapers, and nowhere near as useful on Geth after the Prime patch) are now barely viable on Gold... but hey, shotguns on infils bypass the shield gate and didn't get hit as hard!  4/6/6/6/4 specs ahoy!  Everyone runs shotguns, except some GIs are still able to keep the Krysae relevant if, in a team, everyone AoE bombs spawns on a small map.  

You know what happens next.  Hunter mode gets nerfed, but that isn't enough.  Finally, the Krysae gets the nerfhammer SO HARD we might as well ship the remaining supply over to the Reapers, hoping against hope they might take the bait and actually try to wield them against us.  

Why am I able to sketch this out so precisely?  Because every change was eminently predictible on both sides.  Players gravitated to the most effective ways to dispatch the easiest enemies.  No further statement is necessary to understand the player side, it can all be extrapolated from that right there.  Bioware's responses have also been predictible, either through an "encourage gambling in our store w/real money" standpoint or through well-meaning but misguided analysis of the aggregate data they have available, attempting to balance the game.  

Blizzard realized you cannot fully balance a game.  There will be 'best' builds and other such things that give the game flavor.  Your playerbase will, surprisingly quickly, suss out what these are and gravitate toward them.  The Prime head volume trivialized Geth, and it did need to be patched.  But now the underlying issue is fixed, the band-aids trying to 'fix' the problem need to come off as well.  

So yes, these changes were due to people "farming" or, in less jaded terminology, being as effective as possible.  

By that definition there will always be farmers, so long as there are variations between characters, loadouts, maps, and team comps.  It's the essence of futility to believe otherwise.

win

[Xaijin]

this context in mind.

It clearly isn't. Incinerate and Carnage are a perfect example. On paper, the capabilities look extremely strong. Both cause slight incapacitation and DoT. On paper it sounds like you can just lock something into a fiery ball of death over and over, killing them all the while.

Doesn't remotely work that way, and despite people saying otherwise and even posting video proof, they've been buffed twice each in ridiculously tiny increments. Meanwhile I can go over to SP, stick EDI on my team and bust out a version of Incinerate that is just as effective as Energy Drain or Overload. If I argue that in a dev context, I get "but the fire stuff make stunny owies and armor chew happen, it needs to be reigned". I think the fact that it's DoT is retardedly long and it's useless against shield is more than enough, but good luck getting SP Incinerate any time soon, which is a pity cause if there's any power that says "krogan sentinel", it's SP Incinerate.

Baffling.

Modifié par Xaijin, 04 août 2012 - 04:40 .