317 réponses à ce sujet

[samb]

curly haired boy wrote...

really noticed the geth buffs while on my asari adept the other day. geth now have some stupidly-high health pools, all because of FBW farming. i don't know why they never patched the map - in any of the DLC updates - to just always spawn stuff behind the desks. that lets you skip the buffs AND skip the nerfs.

hell, you could just REMOVE the map in a patch and it'd solve the problem.

Have you been reading anything in this thread?  If FBW was deleted it would be glacier. Farmer will farm, that is a big part of the metagame, how to make money the most effective way. 

[artificial-ignorance]

I agree. I really hated the tactical cloak duration change - it penalizes team players...

[The Makr]

I agree with the OP. I would add that the nerfing of classes/weapons actually promotes farming. It forces more and more players to play it safe and farm rather than actually have fun, be aggressive. If more classes were made viable and Ultra-Rare weapons were actually allowed to be badaz then yes you'd prolly still have farming, but more people would not have to do that and the farmers might see that hey 2 people in this lobby are running around and actually surviving a good bit. That's a bit more fun than sitting behind this desk. Get rid of the microtransactions, make us pay for the DLC, and concentrate on making the game fun, and not on punishing farmers, which just causes more farming!

[Hyperionyht]

Strict31 wrote...
And the claim here is not simply that nerfs have taken place, which is all that Darth has factually demonstrated, and which we all already know. The claim is that nerfs have taken place for a specific reason. Without confirmation of that reason, all we are left with is bias.

Personal testimony is the least accepted form of evidence in court because of its epistemological limitations. People lie. They lie a lot. The only way to credibly inductively determine a motivation is to examine one's behavior (of which speech is but a small part) for patterns, which both the OP and Darth have done. Their view fits the evidence very well. If you aim to refute it, attack their interpretation of the evidence they cite.

It's difficult to argue against OP's post, and this makes me sad. "The love of money is the root of all evil."

[Buckapocka]

Here is the damn truth! I agree with every single word that JaimasOfRaxis wrote here! You should send this to the devs, maybe somebody will listen! This is a good game even with all these annoying glitches bugs "balance" changes, etc. But if Bioware would listen to the OP, this game could be pretty fuarking extremly fun to play...

[AppealToReason]

They focused on the farmers because these boards were full of people complaining about how this and that need to be buffed nerfed to combat it.

[Oz not Ozzy]

Kasrkin wrote...

When the farmers migrate the newest FOTM shooty game, where will that leave the rest of us?

Stuck on a slow boat to Rio... without an omni-tool!

[sparkydeltorro]

Great read. Agree with pretty much the entire thing.

People farm in all games where you earn credits. It was the same in Halo Reach - people were farming commendations on particular section and they put a stupid credit cap to stop people earning too much of an imaginary currency,

WHO CARES ?

If that's what they want to do, let them go over to their corner of the internet and farm until they unlock everything. They are cockroaches that will survive every nerf and change.

[Clayless]

This is, without a doubt, the best OP I have read in quite some time. Arguably all year.

There's nothing I can say that you haven't already OP.

[Zero132132]

If they do base stuff on user statistics, as they claim, farmers should REALLY start downing on wave 10. It actually makes sense, too; most gold and platinum games are farming runs. If it's done based on user statistics, those are what will skew those statistics.

[DarthVarner]

Zero132132 wrote...

If they do base stuff on user statistics, as they claim, farmers should REALLY start downing on wave 10. It actually makes sense, too; most gold and platinum games are farming runs. If it's done based on user statistics, those are what will skew those statistics.

Oddly enough this may vary by platform.  When playing with friends, I usually do not extract (and my games tend to be shorter).  But at least on PC, in pub games, generally people try and try and TRY to extract.  The amount of consumables I see wasted on wave 11 is really amazing... particularly considering I'm telling them not to waste the stuff as they do it!

Regarding interpretation of statistical data, you might want to check out my post on page ten.  Others have found it to be valuable insight.

I'd like to clarify that post slightly.  I was NOT saying that all of the changes were unwarranted.  Before the Prime head volume was removed, the developers / balancers were severely hamstrung and they did what they could within the context of what was hotfixable.  But after the Prime volume was fixed... that stuff needed to get rolled back, and it wasn't (and still isn't).

However, I do regard the harsh sniper and duration nerfs to TC, Hunter Mode (my poor GE, I hardly knew thee), and the most recent hilarious nerf to the Krysae to be over the top - to the point where they have severely impacted what once was a fun, inclusive community surrounding the harder matches.  I present my case in this earlier post, which is also worth your time.

Modifié par DarthVarner, 06 août 2012 - 05:42 .

[bkthree]

 Agreed 100%, and I really hope Bioware reads this, as it reflects a huge majority of players' opinions on this matter. Obviously, since there's 12 pages of "Agreed" posts now.
...Why do we still have the Vanguard glitch? Missle Glitch gets fixed instantly due to easy money. But a game breaking glitch that gets no money and has existed since RELEASE doesn't get fixed, why? Because it doesn't get easy credits? 

[Golvellius]

Why call playing to win farming?
It's not players fault that more maps aren't viable because they lack proper defensible positions.
If they wanted more variety in the game then they are going about it all wrong.
Instead of nerfing players they should be nerfing the factions and fixing the maps that people don't fight on.
The only thing this approach is going to do is remove people from this game and possible future games in the series because they know the game will just continually ramp up the difficulty level to exclude them.
Your only player base will be a bunch of crusty elitists, with tight wallets, who no-lifed from day 1, and will quit on the drop of the dime.
Good luck with that.

[Clayless]

I'm bumping this because it needs more recognition.

[DarthVarner]

Bump for great justice, and in complete agreement with zhhk's video linked in the "Eric Fagnan and to other Bioware Employees: I would lIke to Continue to Play MP" thread.

[JLoco11]

Agreed with a great portion of this... also well thought out compared to the ' y u nerf bioware?' threads from children.

One counter point that Bioware would make (although I completely disagree with because this post offers enough supplemental evidence) is that farming rooms make up a LARGE portion of rooms.

Whether U/U or farming is the top choice is only known to Bioware, but if they were to do a breakdown of map by map/enemy by enemy analysis, FBW/G is the dominant room.

So, the unfortunate side affect of having to "balance" the game is to look at the most popular room choice of playing.

Again, I completely agree that the nerfs affect U/U games more than farming, but Bioware will point out that those are the games most commonly played with ease.

[wraith27]

This thread is awesome. 100% agree with OP.

Just imagine...if every weapon and class could be viable, and then with all those weapon choices people could even have variety within the same character. How bout this week, instead of a Piranha nerf, we get a Locust buff?

[Eugenesys]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

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.

WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREED

When i used the Revenant in SP, i so wanted it in MP.
I religiously saved up for my SPs / PSPs when i was still in Bronze / Silver and once in a while, will pop an SP
But when i got it in MP, it  sucked balls..
Its as good as firing rubber bullets ( no consumbles used )

The typhoon came along and when i got it, it was GREAT.. Something what a machinegun should be . Packing power to the punch. Post nerf, useless. Even on a destroyer, it became the new Revenant.

I'm not sure when i tire of MP, but the constant cycle of promotions and weak weapons is beginning to tire me.

What i, and other player want, is the game to be enjoyable.
The vanguard is not almost a totally unplayable class for me ( WHEN WILL THIS BE FIXED )
The Fury is going the way of the vanguard
Rio, which happened to be one of my fav maps, is buggy
Invincible enemies love to ruin games
Randoms joining a PRIVATE match, and being unable to kick them, is @#$%^^
Uncommon/Rare gear being rarer than Ultra Rares ( so if there is a Ultra Rare Gear, it will not be worth to get them coz it will be as hard as UBER RARE to obtain them... )
Ultra Rare stuff being underwhelming for the effort it takes to acquire them ( HELLO, they are UR, not common )

To whichever staff will read these, FIX THE MAIN PROBLEMS FIRST, then the nerfs.

I enjoyed the SP for the relatively minor problems it gave but the MP experience is buggy to say the least...

[.458]

Most threads run out of useful posts earlier on, this one is still saying things that are truly helpful. So...
bump!
+1

[JaimasOfRaxis]

I'm bumping my own thread here, but not because of my own contributions to it - I am doing so because with the impending balance changes, there's some things that need further discussion and analysis.

First of all, we're going to ignore for a moment that the current balance focuses (which seem to be focus on nerfing the Piranha and altering shield regen to, functionally, make Platinum negligably harder), and, functionally, focuses on what this thread has said all along - that balance priority is heavily slanted in favor of slowing or reducing farming than it is in actually improving gameplay in any meaningful fashion. There is a few reasons why we're not going to be jumping on that in this thread, but key amongst them is that we don't know what else, exactly, will be in the balance pack, so we'll have to reserve judgment until it actually arrives.

That said.

What  does need discussion is that the thus-far-slated perceived inability to take care of issues in a timely fashion is exactly what's resulted in a gradual hemorrhage of some of the most vocal parts of the playerbase. There is, after all, a reason that this thread, uniquely, has predominantly filled with a near-unanimous agreement of the analytics we've done therein.

Any regular user of the forums has seen a lot of people here on the boards rage-quit, and whilst it's only a miniscule shred of the actual playerbase, it is still potentially cause for alarm - a "niche" title like this game needs its community - that literally is a centerpiece of the game actually doing well. Alienating that very community is not going to encourage its remaining members to believe that the best interests of the game itself are at heart.

The ironic thing is that the ball, as it were, is in the Devs' court on this one. There is every possibility that the concerns brought up by me, DarthVarner, and the countless more in this thread could be addressed and handled with both care and foresight. Here's to hoping that more stable hands and minds prevail, and that, in the long run, we see ME3 become even better for it.

It certainly beats the alternative.

[Gerza71]

Okay I give up. What is farming?

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Okay I give up. What is farming?

"Farming," in this game's terminology, means finding the so-called easiest/most cost-effective class/weapon/ability/map/enemy force configurations and repeatedly playing them in order to maximize credits extracted for minimum effort. In the past, this behavior was largely limited to playing relatively "light" match-ups such as facing Geth on Firebase White using the Female Quarian Infiltrator, since she was capable of disruption and damage spiking as well as long cloak distances for objective-capping. As time advanced and DLC content hit, players evolved tactics to fine new ways to "easily" get credits as various means to make things simpler were locked onto and dealt with.

The crux of the issue - and indeed, of this entire thread - is that rather than focus on actual balance concerns (I.E. the fact that this game has a veritable weapons-locker full of classes/abilities/weapons/etc that are functionally non-starters), the developers appear to have focused all their resources on finding the so-called "easiest" ways to beat Gold and Platinum difficulties, and nerfed these into the ground as opposed to handling the aforementioned balance fixes that players have been actually wanting for several months.

The result has been a metagame that is increasingly unkind to the "regular" players (I.E. the ones that actually play and enjoy the game), and one that has not really done much to stop players from finding ways to farm various enemies on Gold and Platinum difficulty. Putting it simply, by focusing so hard on stopping farming, it's gotten increasingly difficult for the rank-and-file players to deal with things, since difficulty has ramped up expotentially as these farming methodologies have been "fixed." It is made worse by bugs and further balance issues implemented by these very anti-farming procedures (such as how game-breakingly awful the Geth in general are to fight now due to a literal arsenal of bugs).

[Gerza71]

So why dose the map matters like Firebase white.

I know that the geth are pain like those pyros and the prime they are pretty hard to knock down even on silver. I found that the carnifex1 and the M-99 Saber (my new best friend I got from last night) can knock the pyros with the overload down with ease.

I no good as a Infiltrator and the vanguard but with the others I good at it. (well not that good)

In map I move around a lot and I am no camper. I stay at one spot for 30 seconds then I move.

I am a hoster that plays on random maps and AI. I slow in reacting. I do play fair.

When a player goes down I 'pick them up'. Sometimes it get me into trouble like there is AI is around trying to kill me. Pick the player up or rid of the AI or run off when it gets too hot to pick the player up.

[spirosz]

Spot on.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

Gerza71 wrote...

So why dose the map matters like Firebase white.

Map is a factor because some maps are more defensible than others. White, as an example, has multiple counters that can be grabbed over, lots of hard cover (which funnels enemies down specific access routes), and a number of areas with limited fire vectors which cuts down on things like Ravager sniping, which every player ever has complained about. Maps with good defensive terrain are important to players - they're why competent teams can survive effectively.

The newer maps, it needs be noted, are much less defensible, and have much less terrain that allow for grabs. They also generally have much larger fields of fire (beneficial to the enemies, not the players), and are generally very open, which makes it infinitely harder to funnel enemies down specific access routes.

For some clarification, here's a list of "good" and "bad" Maps:

Good:
Firebase White - counters galore, hard cover, access routes that make sense, harder for players to get Zerg Rushed.
Firebase Dagger - good map flow, less counters but lots of hard cover and excellent terrain for veteran players.
Firebase Glacier - small map with specific access routes. Tight quarters makes it a fave of Biotic classes. Lots of Hard cover and counters.
Firebase Giant - High ground players can use, lots of counters, Hard Cover galore,  big map.
Firebase Vancouver - Good variable terrain with mix of tight and open areas, lots of counters, good hard cover.

Bad:
Firebase Hydra: Open as hell with few counters and virtually no hard cover. Prepare to be harassed by ranged units at all times.
Firebase Condor: Has counters but tons of open terrain. Bad map in general, favors enemies much harder than players due to exceedingly poor defensive terrain and dozens of potential enemy closing vectors.
Firebase Goddess: It's Condor, but worse. Virtually no counters and tons of open terrain rounds out this map's problems.
Firebase Rio: Tons of cover that does not actually provide cover. Linear and has huge firing lines.
Firebase Jade: Has counters but has giantic firing lines that flagrantly benefit enemies over players. Lack of Hard Cover doesn't help.

Modifié par JaimasOfRaxis, 08 août 2012 - 04:15 .