13 réponses à ce sujet

[T04stm4n]

Just release your DLC as scheduled and let it be.

You cant keep tinkering forever and anytime you nerf something alot of people get angry at you.
Not a good way to keep customer loyalty.

For every point you earn witha  good balance change, you lose 10 for a bad one.  You can't win.

This isnt an MMO and doesnt desrve such scalpel-like alterations.

Quit pissing us off we already like your game don't keep misjudging our enjoyment.

Edit:  If this game had PvP I would be much less adament because player versus player requires this sort of attention.

Modifié par T04stm4n, 24 octobre 2012 - 06:40 .

[Kristen Schanche]

Most console game right now don't have the ability to iterate balance as fast as we do, which is why it hasn't been seen much. The first one that started doing the thing that we're doing now was, I believe, Monday Night Combat, and it was a really innovative way to push data in a way that let them make balance changes without a certification process.

I think we'll probably start seeing this kind of heavy balance tweaking more frequently now though as more and more games pick up that it can be done this way. As for the PvP vs PvE argument, we still think that a balance environment is the most fun environment to play in, even if you're not playing against other players. Seeing every player play the same kit with the same gun in every game isn't fun for most people.

And we never nerf based solely on 'this kit is getting played too much' but that is a nice indication that maybe there's something out of balance with it that we should assess. If that happens then we spend some time having a serious look at that kit, assessing the numbers, testing against other kits, and deciding if some of those numbers are a bit higher then we should have initially set them. All our nerfs are in the interest in making sure the game is fun for more then just the people using the strongest kits.

And as a final point, I can assure you that the weekly balance changes have no impact on any future projects.

[Kristen Schanche]

whateverman7 wrote...

Chris Schanche wrote...

Most console game right now don't have the ability to iterate balance as fast as we do, which is why it hasn't been seen much. The first one that started doing the thing that we're doing now was, I believe, Monday Night Combat, and it was a really innovative way to push data in a way that let them make balance changes without a certification process.

I think we'll probably start seeing this kind of heavy balance tweaking more frequently now though as more and more games pick up that it can be done this way. As for the PvP vs PvE argument, we still think that a balance environment is the most fun environment to play in, even if you're not playing against other players. Seeing every player play the same kit with the same gun in every game isn't fun for most people.

And we never nerf based solely on 'this kit is getting played too much' but that is a nice indication that maybe there's something out of balance with it that we should assess. If that happens then we spend some time having a serious look at that kit, assessing the numbers, testing against other kits, and deciding if some of those numbers are a bit higher then we should have initially set them. All our nerfs are in the interest in making sure the game is fun for more then just the people using the strongest kits.

And as a final point, I can assure you that the weekly balance changes have no impact on any future projects.

ok, that's what i dont understand: why does it seem yall are getting upset with the choices people are making in regards to playing the game? by that i mean what characters/weapons are used, what factions they fight against, etc....isnt that the point of choice? wasnt that the reason yall gave us so much variety? to let us decide what we wanted to use and how we used it?....

you say yall dont wanna see the same kits/weapons being used so yall make changes, but that doesnt make sense either...reason being, that isnt happening....i've put a lot of time into public games (95%+ of the time i've played this game has been in public games), and what i've seen is the opposite of that...i've seen many variations of kit/weapon combos....that's another reason i dont understand the changes for 'balancing' purposes

The main thing I was trying to make clear now is that too many people using it is /not/ the reason we balance it.  If everyone is using something, and it turns out the reason is just because it's fun, not because it's too much better then a lot of other kits, we'll leave it the way it is.

But a lot of people playing something does give us a good reason to take another look at a kit and decide if it's so popular because it's just the best option.  The goal is not to leave any kits in a state where someone goes 'I want to be a shooty guy...well, I could play the human soldier because I like their skill set, but accept that I'll be doing less damage then if I played a Destroyer.'

There are a lot of reasons we don't just buff every other class up to that point either.  If we decide something is too good, then make everything else too good to meet it, then the enemies have to go up, and we have essentially done the same thing as nerfing it in the first place but with a lot more time and work.  That and it's really just not feesable to go through and rebalance every kit in the game up all at once.

[Kristen Schanche]

T04stm4n wrote...

upinya slayin wrote...

T04stm4n wrote...

Just release your DLC as scheduled and let it be.

You cant keep tinkering forever and anytime you nerf something alot of people get angry at you.
Not a good way to keep customer loyalty.

For every point you earn witha  good balance change, you lose 10 for a bad one.  You can't win.

This isnt an MMO and doesnt desrve such scalpel-like alterations.

Quit pissing us off we already like your game don't keep misjudging our enjoyment.

Edit:  If this game had PvP I would be much less adament because player versus player requires this sort of attention.

go make a sandwhich

I would..but a week later I'd realize I had too many slices of turkey and not enough cheese.  I would nerf the mustard content by 35% because I like mustard the most therefore it is OP.  Gotta balance that sandwich even though it was so delicious to begin with.

It may have been delicious but it probably wasn't healthy.  Cutting that mustard was a good call, you should probably assess the mayo too.

[Kristen Schanche]

Part of the reason we continue the balance changes is because we keep releasing new content, some of which throws that balance off. Things that may have been balanced in the previous multiplayer climate may no longer be in the current one. I suspect that sometime after we stop releasing new multiplayer content, the balance changes will probably slow and then stop, but we've got a bit yet even just considering the weeks of kits ahead.

The 10-15 of us here that make up the gameplay team, both devs and testers all put in extensive amount of time testing anything that we make. But it's just the reality of the situation that all of us testing these things every day is never going to expose as many problems as the number of active players in the game all the time will. We balance new content to the best of our abilities but there's no shame in us admitting that we don't always get it right the first time, and sometimes not the time after that.

Halo 3 doesn't change for the reason I mentioned before, they don't change because they can't. The patch cycle is prohibitive of that. I hope that Halo 4 includes a system like ours, that more and more other games also have now, that will let them more rapidly iterate on their multiplayer. (I'm not trying to toot our horn here, we're certainly not the first dev to be using this method, but there are quite a few who aren't yet.) Guild Wars 2 is already beginning to go through regular balance changes, like all MMOs do, and I suspect that will continue.

[Kristen Schanche]

I think the Hawk missle launcher shield thing is the most "weird" balance change it's very painful it's just too big

Snip!  This one is a buff, not a nerf.  The changes from 25% at 40% at Evolve 1 means previously, when you purchased evolve 1, the shield penalty was 25% normal then base.  Now it means evolve 1 makes the penalty 40% lower then base.  Taking this evolution means that the Hawk is even less harmful to your shields then it was before.

Also thanks Volkai7, I had cheesecake at lunch though, I don't think I should have a chocolate bar right now!

[Kristen Schanche]

Zero132132 wrote...

Chris Schanche wrote...

Most console game right now don't have the ability to iterate balance as fast as we do, which is why it hasn't been seen much. The first one that started doing the thing that we're doing now was, I believe, Monday Night Combat, and it was a really innovative way to push data in a way that let them make balance changes without a certification process.

I think we'll probably start seeing this kind of heavy balance tweaking more frequently now though as more and more games pick up that it can be done this way. As for the PvP vs PvE argument, we still think that a balance environment is the most fun environment to play in, even if you're not playing against other players. Seeing every player play the same kit with the same gun in every game isn't fun for most people.

And we never nerf based solely on 'this kit is getting played too much' but that is a nice indication that maybe there's something out of balance with it that we should assess. If that happens then we spend some time having a serious look at that kit, assessing the numbers, testing against other kits, and deciding if some of those numbers are a bit higher then we should have initially set them. All our nerfs are in the interest in making sure the game is fun for more then just the people using the strongest kits.

And as a final point, I can assure you that the weekly balance changes have no impact on any future projects.

One thing I don't get, though... has anyone posted an explanation of why the Devastator mode clip nerf was made? I think most in the community are just baffled by it, although if you provide a concrete reason you might get more pissed off people trying to explain why it's wrong.

Honestly, though, I think a lot of us would be a bit less angry if we had some idea of why something that out-of-the-blue was done.

A big part of it was the fact that the ammo buff on the Destroyer was just too strong.  One of the levers we can pull when designing and balancing a gun is clip size.  While we already have to plan around the assault rifle capacity mod, the Destroyer was a whole extra layer.  Whenever a new gun was being blanced, or an old one reassessed, we have to balance it both against the Destroyer's potential massive clip size, as well as against every other kit.

This could easily lead to making a gun either too good on him, or not good enough on a lot of others.  We have plenty of other balance levers to pull on guns, but we weren't happy with how strongly the Destroyer forced our hands on this one.  We still like the unique flavor of massive clips on him, and in internal playtesting, he still feels pretty great with the lower total mag bonuses.  But this change brings him a bit more in line, as well as allowing us to be more free with our weapon design.

[Kristen Schanche]

count_4 wrote...

Chris Schanche wrote...
it was a really innovative way to push data in a way that let them make balance changes without a certification process.

In case you're still lurking this thread a little:

I always wondered how exactly you do the changes. Do you have the client temporarily download some balance files that override the coalesced/patch-bins or does the game get the new values from the server whenever a new match is created (overriding in-memory so to say)?

And, either way, why did you a) create completely new wave sets (by adding a 2 to the name) and some new enemy entries (again by adding a 2) instead of using the balance system with the retaliation patch? 

Thanks in advance.

Roughly, it involves using .inis to store certain data on the server, that forces the game to query and replace the base game ini files while in multiplayer.  I don't know a whole lot about how it works exactly, but that's part of the reason it's MP only, we can't garuntee that players playing single player are going to connect online, and we'd like the experience to be fairly consistant for all of them.

[Kristen Schanche]

This thread has migrated a bit away from the original topic anyway. Try to keep it on the original subject, which is why we perform balance changes so frequently. I think the original poster actually made a very good point in that it's hard to feel like the play environment has stabilized. But that said for now we're going to continue our weekly changes.

Any discussion about specific changes should probably stick to one of the threads that has already been created for them. Thanks for the topic T04stm4n, I think it's a good one and worth discussing, even if we aren't going to change it at this time.

[Kristen Schanche]

Hiero Glyph wrote...

Chris Schanche wrote...

Part of the reason we continue the balance changes is because we keep releasing new content, some of which throws that balance off. Things that may have been balanced in the previous multiplayer climate may no longer be in the current one. I suspect that sometime after we stop releasing new multiplayer content, the balance changes will probably slow and then stop, but we've got a bit yet even just considering the weeks of kits ahead.

Wouldn't balancing the new content against the existing content prior to release be a better strategy?  If any balance adjustments are needed you can always alter the new content after release.  The way you are balancing things now is counter-productive as all of the existing content needs to be tweaked as opposed to only the new content.

We do that of course, but we're a small team and on a time limit.  We make a massive number of balance changes internally to all this new content, and some of our balance changes to non-Retaliation content before Retaliation came out were in anticipation of its existance.  But as I mentioned earlier in this thread, there will always be things we don't catch.  We're only human, and there are a lot of changes that 10 or so people wont see that will really blow up in visiblity when the new content goes out to our sizeable playerbase.

[Kristen Schanche]

najzere wrote...

Imagine if all the time this team put into weekly balance changes had been devoted to investigating and fixing bugs. Maybe the latest patch wouldn't have taken months to drop.

Those two things have very little impact on each other.  Please don't mistake our efforts to keeping the balance of the game in check and fresh with ignorance or lack of dedication to the existing bugs.  The process for getting the two different types of fixes live and out to the player is very different.  We would love to have bug fixes out at the same rate as balance fixes, but that isn't a realistic situation right now and is largly outside of our control.

[Kristen Schanche]

Eckswhyzed wrote...

najzere wrote...

Imagine if all the time this team put into weekly balance changes had been devoted to investigating and fixing bugs. Maybe the latest patch wouldn't have taken months to drop.

Imagine if design and programming were two separate teams?

Imagine if bugifxing wasn't just a matter of throwing more people at a problem?

....oh wait.

Back on topic: As upinya slayin said: If you relied so much upon one class/power for your enjoyment, maybe you need to reconsider your relationship with multiplayer. Maybe you might complain about 'ups and down' if you played sniper infils, then the Krysae GI, then Reegar Kroguards, then Piranha GIs, then only the N7 Destroyer.

The more classes you play, the less likely you are to be hurt by any nerfs. Or you can be like me, and only play the GI and enjoy that playstyle so much that no nerf can ever take that away from you.

Okay guys, I have to drop out of the thread to go let the rest of the balance team know that Eckswhyzed is having too much fun with the Geth Infiltrator.

[Kristen Schanche]

nicethugbert wrote...

The specific changes and the motive is what bothers me more than the frequency. The game is loaded with cheapness which seems to be sacrosanct. It took forever for Drell to get much needed attention and what they did get was a day late, dollar short. This game needs a lot of work and the balance changes thus far have been relatively minimal.

I agree with this, but there are a few cases where we feel that we may have gone too far all at once.  The original Falcon change comes to mind, even if we're happy with the 'caster gun' role it has settled into now.  We've burned ourselves and our fans a few times with changes that were too big all at once and our goal is to be more iterative now.  In cases where a change doesn't go far enough, we'll keep reevaluating and tweaking till it gets to the right place.

Lets see how those Drell changes shake out over the next few weeks first.  We wanted to change them before but some of their bonuses were directly tied to another races, we needed to unhook that with the patch before we were finally able to give them these buffs we've been wanting to.

[Kristen Schanche]

Drayce333 wrote...

The only reason the devs are trying to be such a open book with multiplayer is because its the only way they can save face after the series destroying ending, DA2 disaster and the TORtanic. They know they have screwed up to much at this point and need better PR to attempt to redeem themselves.

Don't fall for it people, and make sure never to preorder another bioware game or buy them at release if you can't return for a full refund. As you can see they still love to screw over the players every now and then.

While we acknowledge that the ending did not resonate with all players in the way that we hoped it would, none of us feel that we have anything to 'save face' from.  I'm here open and honest on the forum because I genuinely love the product we put out in ever way, and I want to make sure anyone who has questions has a place where they feel like they could potentially get some answers.

I spend a lot of time playing this game at home too, and I've been a fan of many other games where it's been difficult or impossible to get dev responses.  Us staying open and available for comment like this helps make our community a better place.

That said, this comment was pretty off topic from the main thrust of this post, there is a place for this conversation, but it's not in this thread.