317 réponses à ce sujet

[Xaijin]

Hyperionyht wrote...

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."

Except we know from BW, specifically Fagnan on two of the tree instances of severe nerfing were due directly to farming. We have all the facts we need to support the premise. Does that cover every premise? No, nor does it need to. BW has explained why the MP DLC is free, and there plently of other examples of the same model in other games. There's no mystery here.

The issue at heart is, how these models effect the playerbase. It's seems rather cut and dried that the sum effect is extremely negative in the long term.

[himegoto]

Top new on the BSN today.

- BW is again digging their own grave

[bob2.0]

In the arms race between developers and farmers, the developers will always lose. Bioware is currently still losing this war and they don't know why, despite the predictable chain of events as outlined in other posts. And, as in other posts, the unintended consequences of this chain of events is negatively affecting the player base. My own compulsions toward efficiency aside, this game doesn't seem like it has much left to go if the developers keep on going down this road. It's a stupid self-fulfilling prophecy.

The smartest move developers can make in regards to farmers is to just consider them a necessary evil, but still make the necessary changes that reward variety. Increased rewards for U/U/X searching. A small reward for extraction.There will always be farmers and speed runners. It's been shown in this thread that in trying to fight against that behavior, they have only funneled more players into doing it. When no one is having fun playing the game because they're focusing on making a few people play the game as they intend, what do they have left? Obviously their original intent wasn't to make a game that nobody wanted to play, but that is all that's left after an arms race against farmers. And to me, that is failure, because that is not what video games are about.

Burning down your house will very well solve the problem of damaged and aging joists, but that doesn't mean that it's the best or only solution.

Modifié par bob2.0, 08 août 2012 - 05:17 .

[Stinja]

DarthVarner wrote...

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).

Excellent post from OP and DarthVarner and others, especially the link above explaining the to and fro.

i agree with the general idea that you can't stop farming, and it hurts regular players more.  Case in point:  Geth are still farmable on a number of maps by abusing their AI, but in regular gold games they can be a total nightmare, and at a minimum are very annoying with stun-locking and no stagger.
You can farm platinum, it's laughable the devs thought otherwise.  And the best fix there is probably to make the rewards (ie credits) the same as gold, so it's only for people wanting a challenge.  That would kill public random platinum games though.

The game (weapons, enemies etc) should be balanced for normal players the game normally, with extra tough stuff (ie platinum) which most can't complete, and deal with farmers in other ways (eg removing walls or counters).

[whateverman7]

this thread is being proven more true each week bw does the weekly 'balance'...at this point it's obvious bw isnt balancing the game, they're just 'balancing' things to increase the chance of people spending real money....which i understand, since they are a business and wanna make a profit....but a better way to increase the chance of people spending money would be not to decrease the player base, which is what bw is doing....they are taking the fun out of the game trying to make a dollar, which is gonna hurt them in the end

Modifié par whateverman7, 08 août 2012 - 06:05 .

[bob2.0]

whateverman7 wrote...

they are taking the fun out of the game trying to make a dollar, which is gonna hurt them on the end

Diablo 3 is a hilarious example of this in my experience.

Neither myself nor anyone I personally know played the game after week three.

Modifié par bob2.0, 08 août 2012 - 06:05 .

[whateverman7]

another thing: i dont understand why bw and others are so upset at farmers, me3 is a farm setup game...it's an rpg style evolution game and the only way to get better stuff is to buy stuff....which leaves 2 options: grind/farm to get credits or spend real money....

[Drunkencelt]

OP is 100% corrent, amen. Go tell it on the mountain.

[snfonseka]

I agree with the OP and like to point out this nerf cycle will players to farm more. Because when a weapon/ powers become useless/ less effective in a standard game, those players tend to go for a farming match.

[AngryBobH]

Fix farming. Spawn enemies closer and closer to players that don't move around much. When you got primes in the hallway, backdoor and, side door on FBW staying behind the desk doesn't seem all that appealing. Of course that wouldn't fix all farming but, it would be a kick in the crotch.

[Xerorei]

AngryBobH wrote...

Fix farming. Spawn enemies closer and closer to players that don't move around much. When you got primes in the hallway, backdoor and, side door on FBW staying behind the desk doesn't seem all that appealing. Of course that wouldn't fix all farming but, it would be a kick in the crotch.

Want to fix farming, retool the store as not to be a RNG nightmare heavily weighted to get you to buy packs with real money, it's a transparent method and everyone sees through it.

Thing is, if I'm going to spend my hard earned money on something then it's going to be quality and something I am reasonably sure I'll like, I've been proven wrong on the last one by both swtor and me3, after that I refused to give BW any money for anything, and their store is definitely something I'm not going to chip in to, I don't like slot machines at a casino, why the hell would I like them in my video game?

[JaimasOfRaxis]

This has been mentioned ad infinitum, but bears repeating. So long as the pack system is the way it is, then there is an incentive to farm, since there is zero way to guarantee anything you remotely want otherwise. Buying magic space points with real money might appeal to some, but to the rest of us, that kind of expense is just something we can't afford when we're spending money on actually important expenses in life, like housing and food, especially given that the magic space points guarantee nothing over buying conventionally.

To surmise briefly: 

* The pack system sucks, and everyone knows it.
* It incentivizes farming.
* Devs punish the community for farming after farming has been incentivized with heavy-handed nerfs and changes that do little to curtail farming and everything to alienate the playerbase. This is done instead of much-clamored for fixes to underpowered classes/weapons, bugfixes, etc.
* Community gets pissed.
* Devs wonder why community ragequits.
* Cue appropriate music.

Modifié par JaimasOfRaxis, 08 août 2012 - 06:59 .

[Xaijin]

I don't think they wonder why.

I don't think they give any amount of ****s at all in that regard.

The MP staff is small and experienced and will be rotated and re-prioritized into other ongoing stuff just like the rest of the team that initally created the mode in the first place and then moved to other ongoing projects did. I sincerely doubt John and Eric and Manveer were like "I'm staking my job and future on how awesome this mode will be."

It's a surplus mode, and let's be honest, if the ending and gameplay of SP has been as awesome as it was thought to be, most of the people in this forum right now wouldn't be here. Most of the people sticking around love the property, and MP was the last un-wtfdidIjustsee'ed part of it.

Modifié par Xaijin, 08 août 2012 - 07:05 .

[Guiile_Sheppard]

i support this topic ahhaa

[Gerza71]

Farming putting it simply (I prefer grinding because I do work on a farm in real life): A farmer takes advantage of his character and exploit (where the farming comes in) the weakness to the other player or AI to get more xp and fake gold to get a higher rank and stuff little amount of time. 

Modifié par Gerza71, 08 août 2012 - 07:21 .

[anonymous137]

Well said, thank you. Hope someone at Bioware reads this and seriously considers it.

[Grunt_Platform]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

This has been mentioned ad infinitum, but bears repeating. So long as the pack system is the way it is, then there is an incentive to farm, since there is zero way to guarantee anything you remotely want otherwise. Buying magic space points with real money might appeal to some, but to the rest of us, that kind of expense is just something we can't afford when we're spending money on actually important expenses in life, like housing and food, especially given that the magic space points guarantee nothing over buying conventionally.

To surmise briefly: 

* The pack system sucks, and everyone knows it.
* It incentivizes farming.
* Devs punish the community for farming after farming has been incentivized with heavy-handed nerfs and changes that do little to curtail farming and everything to alienate the playerbase. This is done instead of much-clamored for fixes to underpowered classes/weapons, bugfixes, etc.
* Community gets pissed.
* Devs wonder why community ragequits.
* Cue appropriate music.

I don't quite agree with the whole of your thesis (I'm not 100% certain farming is at the heart of all nerfs).. But I do think you make some good points.  The pack system needs to be reconsidered, if not for this game, then for the next multiplayer bioware property.

Game modes need to be considered thoroughly in order to incentivize variety, and active play styles. Camping and farming are their own rewards, and there's limits to how much you can effectively discourage them... except by offering more positive rewards for the playstyles you prefer. The dirt simple "Horde mode +  objectives" system is fun... but I'd like to see something deeper and more varied, who wouldn't?

One note: People keep calling the change to the Cobra Missile Launcher a nerf but it uh... I dunno. For me the missile's better than it was before this "nerf". Being able to fire it that much quicker after switching to it helps. A lot.

Modifié par EvanKester, 08 août 2012 - 07:33 .

[Beezilbub]

One thing I'd like to add, is that the whole idea of discouraging farmers is at it's heart, ridiculous. If we assume that they aren't using the missile glitch, then who cares if they are farming? It's the height of hubris for Bioware to say, hey now, you'll play the game like we say or else. Farmers aren't cheating. They are using their knowledge of the enemy and the map, as well as their own skills to effectively run a challenge. That's not cheating. That's smart gameplay. No matter if you are farming or not, you are going to be spending 20-30 minutes per run. If someone wants to spend those thirty minutes doing the same thing over and over, then fine. No one should be telling them otherwise.

Personally, I don't farm because doing the same map and enemy over and over again bores me. But who am I, or Bioware for that matter, to tell other players they can't or shouldn't do this, if that's what they enjoy. Bioware really needs to back off on this and let players play the game like they want to play it, not how Bioware thinks they should be playing it.

Not quite on the point, but if Bioware spent half the time fixing the ****load of glitches that this game has as they spend on "balancing" it, things would be a lot more enjoyable. I don't accept "this is their first multiplayer game" as an excuse. If you don't have the people capable of fixing the game, then go out and hire ones that can.