351 réponses à ce sujet

[AresKeith]

LeandroBraz wrote...

AresKeith wrote...

DullahansXMark wrote...

AresKeith wrote...

I have nothing against balancing characters and guns, but there were a couple that are questionable

I agree. Sometimes things are taken too far. But the Destroyer nerf, for example, was fine. A slight mechanics change would fix everything that people had an issue with before (turning two-shottys into three-shottys, stuff like that), but a 60% extra clip size was just too much.

Yea I'm ok with Destroyer nerf but the Demolisher nerf, even though its a few seconds made no sense because the supply pylon is more of a support power

there's too balances that aare good at some point, but time change things, and it start to look odd. For example, I agree with the Krysae nerf, but now she is really starting to look underpowered, and needing a little buff..

Hopefully they'll rebuff the Krysae now

[LeandroBraz]

Delta_V2 wrote...

DullahansXMark wrote...

AresKeith wrote...

I have nothing against balancing characters and guns, but there were a couple that are questionable

I agree. Sometimes things are taken too far. But the Destroyer nerf, for example, was fine. A slight mechanics change would fix everything that people had an issue with before (turning two-shottys into three-shottys, stuff like that), but a 60% extra clip size was just too much.

I still have an issue with nerfing a character because it was supposedly too powerful when there are already more powerful classes on the table.  And before anyone says anything, I don't think the GI or TGI really need to be nerfed.

Some nerfs are necessary, like the first Krysae nerf (though I feel the second went too far) and undoing the Piranha buff.  Those weapons were so powerful in the hands of a GI that a halfway decent player could render the game a cakewalk and leave their teammates with nothing to do.  However, I don't think any glaring problems exist today.  I have no problem going point for point with the typical GI and TGI players you find in lobbies.

Maybe they just hadn't the time to look at every single op char, or they don't see as op some stuffs that the community say it's. I think they have their reason to left some stuffs undone, not only nerf, but buff as well, or they just hadn't the time...

[DullahansXMark]

Thank you. I really do appreciate the positive feedback.

[LeandroBraz]

Melgrimm wrote...

Why even release the "copper" chracter if the point is to keep the game all even steven? Why not release balanced characters that don't put all others to shame? OP's version of events makes it seem that Bioware is incompetent.

Or. . .

They are just releasing powerful characters to get people to dump money into purchases, then nerfing those characters after they've made their profit so that people want to dump money into the next big thing. Either way its shaky to defend these predictable cycles of nerfing. I understand that there are some things that the programmers don't foresee, and I don't mind a little evolution, but its a bit aggravating if you've worked hard or paid money to get something that then is worthless in a week.

Testing a character with 15 employees is one thing. Releasing it to the entire community is another. They will never be able to know 100% sure what impact a character will have on the game, or how we gonna use this character. What you are saying is impossible. They just didn't got in their tests that "copper" would unbalance the game, which is completely understandable....

[Silent Indignation]

This was a well formulated argument and a good read. 5 stars.

[LeandroBraz]

BuckshotSamurai wrote...

You used 20 smilies or whatever they are called in your opening post. While I appreciate your effort, it appears really childish. Would suck to have such a concentrated effort at creating dialog stained by that.

Just a fair bit of advice, take it or not.

I actually looked at the thread and thought "troll thread", but them I started to read, and the emoticons made total sense, it make the example easier to follow and understand...

[ParanoidDrone]

+1 would read again.

[ValeriusNaso]

Melgrimm wrote...

Why even release the "copper" chracter if the point is to keep the game all even steven? Why not release balanced characters that don't put all others to shame? OP's version of events makes it seem that Bioware is incompetent.

Or. . .

They are just releasing powerful characters to get people to dump money into purchases, then nerfing those characters after they've made their profit so that people want to dump money into the next big thing. Either way its shaky to defend these predictable cycles of nerfing. I understand that there are some things that the programmers don't foresee, and I don't mind a little evolution, but its a bit aggravating if you've worked hard or paid money to get something that then is worthless in a week.

It is always possible that they didn't realize just how OP the "copper" is. They probably don't have a huge QA staff for DLC, and priority number one needs to be making sure that his skills work, not that they are balanced. It will be easier to tweak a few numbers after release than pushing out a patch to, say, make him stop clipping through terrain whenever he activates a particular skill while strafing left.

In any event, 50-100k players (I don't know how big the playerbase is) will be able to figure out just how broken a character is faster than 20-40 QA (or whatever department playtesters get put in) personnel ever can, just due to have thousands of more hours to put into it. Thousands of monkeys with typewriters banging out the works of Shakespere and all that.

So if they just let us break the characters, and then fix them with balance changes, we can get new stuff sooner than if they tried to get everything perfect on release. And I think we all like new stuff. Especially free, new stuff. (Thanks BW!)

[MajorStupidity]

Great explanation of why nerfing is sometimes a necessary evil, and how powercreep can obsolete older characters that were once amazing without any direct nerf on the old characters.

E.x. stasis: this ability in the demo and during the early months of the game was considered nearly essential for a team against cerberus. Every one was clamoring for the asari characters for stasis and easy BC's. Now though the Asari characters are played alot less and have lost alot of their utility through buffs of other abilities/characters and new DLC characters introduced over time.

Modifié par MajorStupidity, 26 octobre 2012 - 06:15 .

[Kirrahe Airlines CEO]

AresKeith wrote...

I have nothing against balancing characters and guns, but there were a couple that are questionable

I agree. A few I didn't care for, a couple I was like 'and this makes sense how'. Prime example was the two nerfs in a row for the typhoon. The inate penetration being as much as the javelin for an automatic was a little odd but I understand taking it down a bit. Then the next one was a wee bit over the top for me. That was an example of a couple of nerfs, one I understood and the other I didn't.

[KalilKareem]

Dear Bioware,

If you share the views of OP, and I think you do, please consider making this a sticky. This is the best explaination you could possibly get to explain why a continious process of buffs and nerfs is a required and natural part of any non-trivial online game.

KalilKareem

[LeandroBraz]

KalilKareem wrote...

Dear Bioware,

If you share the views of OP, and I think you do, please consider making this a sticky. This is the best explaination you could possibly get to explain why a continious process of buffs and nerfs is a required and natural part of any non-trivial online game.

KalilKareem

agree, but it won't convince people that cry when nerfs happen, they just want the nerf undone and don't care for explanations and reasoning...

[N7 Whiskey]

@ Leandro (and XMark): It was a good read and an especially well thought out and presented explanation. My point wasn't to be taken negatively and if it was, I apologise. I only meant that DXM is a very good writer and didn't need the smilies to illustrate his point. As an older gamer/poster, the use of smilies really does seem, maybe not childish, perhaps adolescent, and could somewhat lessen the mesage of an otherwise excellent topic opener.

Personally, I think we need more discussions like this but sadly it just isn't in the cards. Until such a day, I will continue to help those seeking it and hammerfisting the imbeciles.

[Grunt_Platform]

Thanks for writing this, DullahansXMark! It was a fun read and summed things up nicely.

I... have nothing more to add so have a bump?

EDIT: Actually, I'll add..

I hope we can have more discussions about the actual merits of various buffs and nerfs, rather than people just complaining about the entire balance change system (as if they've never done anything but nerf things).

Modifié par EvanKester, 26 octobre 2012 - 06:42 .

[duffpastorius]

TL;DR

Kidding. I like the balancing of weapons and classes but some of the changes bioware has made are questionable. Like the second typhoon nerf and the random Demolisher nerf. But for the most part bioware is doing a good job.

[neteng101]

TL;DR - If we nerfed people in real life, everyone would be achieving a C average in school. Everyone would earn the same salary regardless of their job.

Ok with nerfing = ok with mediocrity.

That's just stupid!

[SexyGeth]

I'm not sure if i can form an opinion on this until we have adressed the issue with the wizard.

[Jzadek72]

Agreed. I'm tired of the apparent lack of understanding on this forum of balance. The 'it's a coop game' holds little water.

[Zero132132]

This still doesn't address the issue that for the overwhelming majority of the playerbase, these nerfs are completely invisible, and they basically go from "Wow, I finally found a setup that lets me play Gold!" to sucking because their strategy/build is now much less effective. Honestly, I think nerfs are partially responsible for the poor quality of a lot of PUGs, because people used to the gold payout aren't going to go back to a difficulty they can complete competently.

Other thing, though; most players don't play exclusively with victory in mind. The point of games is to have fun. The Copper can nuke everything, but if I have more fun as a ninja, why the hell would I bother with him? Sort of how I feel about the GI. Still clearly the best damage dealer, but I don't enjoy the style of play, so I rarely use him.

[Dark Tlaloc]

While I agree that nerfing to an extent is fine, the issue for ME3 specifically is that the nerfs are creating frustration more than anything else, because the enemies have been buffed at the same time.

Weakening an over-powered character is fine, but if many people find that character to be one of the only ones they're able to successfully use against enemies, then maybe the issue lies with the opponent-side balancing, not the character kits.

The same goes for weapons; I'm fine with weapons needing to be balanced (the Krysae, for example, started out amazingly powerful, to the point where I felt a little guilty using it because I felt like I was killing things too fast for everyone else). However, if most weapons simply aren't particularly effective against high level (let's say Gold and Platinum) enemies, then you shouldn't be looking at nerfing the "overpowered" ones, you should be looking at buffing some of the lesser ones.

So in the end, I'm okay with nerfs to an extent, but only if they PRESERVE the difficulty; not add to it.

[ryoldschool]

duffpastorius wrote...

TL;DR

Kidding. I like the balancing of weapons and classes but some of the changes bioware has made are questionable. Like the second typhoon nerf and the random Demolisher nerf. But for the most part bioware is doing a good job.

The TC nerf was explained ahead of time because they presented data which only they were certain of ( we knew there were lots of infiltrators on Gold, but not sure of the actual numbers ).    Obviously they must have known something about Destroyers and demolishers data meaning that they needed nerfing, but did not share the information before they nerfed - thus making it seem like it was out of the blue.

Bioware seemed like they learned something because of the second Typhoon nerf and Piranha nerfs - don't release a new weapon that is too strong and then nerf it as it pisses people off who worked hard to get it.

I wonder what other data they have that they are not sharing with us that might surprise most of us here.   I have some opinions based on what I see used successfully a lot in my own gold matches, but I prefer not to bring attention to anything that might lead it to getting nerfed, as I believe that bioware will act on their data instead of anecdotal evidence from some of us.

I will say that although all loadouts are viable on Gold if you play on a good team, certain "better" loadouts are much better on a weak team and they tend to get played a lot.   It just seems like they are playing wack-a-mole by nerfing the current favorite go-to class/loadout.

[neteng101]

EvanKester wrote...

I hope we can have more discussions about the actual merits of various buffs and nerfs, rather than people just complaining about the entire balance change system (as if they've never done anything but nerf things).

We've been there before.  People ask for the Disciple to be buffed since forever, but Bioware ignores it.

Someone starts a topic on a Destroyer nerf and it gets done the same week.

Seems like the priorities are really screwed up at Bioware.  The preferred approach I'm sure if you took a poll would be simply to focus on always buffing the less appealing stuff and only nerfing gently in the most extreme of circumstances.

Given the huge power creep on the enemy side as it stands today, there sholdn't be any player side nerfs until they address the enemy side power creep/issues in full first.

And balancing on overuse is just stupid altogether - its anti-choice/personal freedoms, what are we, lab mice?

[Dark Tlaloc]

neteng101 wrote...

EvanKester wrote...

I hope we can have more discussions about the actual merits of various buffs and nerfs, rather than people just complaining about the entire balance change system (as if they've never done anything but nerf things).

We've been there before.  People ask for the Disciple to be buffed since forever, but Bioware ignores it.

Someone starts a topic on a Destroyer nerf and it gets done the same week.

Seems like the priorities are really screwed up at Bioware.  The preferred approach I'm sure if you took a poll would be simply to focus on always buffing the less appealing stuff and only nerfing gently in the most extreme of circumstances.

Given the huge power creep on the enemy side as it stands today, there sholdn't be any player side nerfs until they address the enemy side power creep/issues in full first.

And balancing on overuse is just stupid altogether - its anti-choice/personal freedoms, what are we, lab mice?

As some people have pointed out, from a financial (and, I suppose "popularity") perspective, it's in Bioware's best interests to keep things relatively difficult, hence the nerfs to powerful weapons and classes, and the relative ignoring of weapons and classes that may need more love. The easier the game becomes, the more credits are readily available, which means the less incentive people will have to spend real money on packs in the store.

I'm sure this isn't the only driving factor in the way balance changes are done (I would assume it's about 50% about making money and 50% about gameplay, but I could be way off), but I'm also sure that it factors in fairly strongly, because otherwise, how would they be able to continue to churn out new weapons/kits/maps/etc.?