282 réponses à ce sujet

[capn233]

Paladin was the recipient of several damage buffs, and there was a window where it only lagged the Black Widow by ~100/shot.

[capn233]

I quite like the change - you've now got a choice between an actual tactical cloak and massive damage spike ... of course very few people actually use it as anything other than a damage spike which meant it was a nerfed for all practical purposes. I still like duration on my QMI "scout" build though (Tac Cloak + Tac Scan ... tactical!)

 

Well I respectfully disagree.  Not to rehash it at length but there wasn't ever much point to cloak duration, even when it was long, especially considering the context in which the nerf occurred (pre-Shadow and Huntress, which are specialized cases in a way).  Also the SR Damage evo nerf predated the proposed corresponding sniper rifle damage buffs by several months.  And in the end with better ammos and less shield gate the SR infiltrators ended up a good deal better than they were a long time ago anyway.

 

Really this is another example where design problems cannot be fixed very well when your modifiable variables are finite and many of them are only peripherally related to the problem with the power or the weapon.  But then again there were other variables sitting around that they could have manipulated, such as minimum cooldown, time before cancel, and bonus removal delay.

[millahnna]

Paladin was nerfed moreso than the Carnifax. Both used to be great weapons but got left behind by power creep. The Mattock actually once was a great AR option as well. 

 

The mattock still isn't a bad option but my finger cramps up just thinking about using it.

[PresidentVorchaMasterBaits]

i still use the mattock too and i still think it's a great gun.

[capn233]

Mattock broke my mouse.

[BridgeBurner]

I want the old typhoon back.

[millahnna]

I've still never taken my typhoon out of its box.  I think mine is still pretty low level though.

[capn233]

The one that recoils more as you level it up, right?

[crashsuit]

Mattock is good but Mattock + turbo mouse is even gooder.

[BridgeBurner]

The one that recoils more as you level it up, right?

 

The mistake they made was trying to balance a weapon around recoil whilst simultaneously allowing people to max out stability bonuses....

 

With 0.5 recoil (around 70% stability) the gun would still have been very difficult to control.

 

A lot of the left / right deviation which is lost at low recoil values would have made it a real challenge to keep on target if stability bonuses had been capped lower than 100%.

[BridgeBurner]

nothing to see here

[Kristen Schanche]

It's great to see these discussions still going on.  Overall I'm really happy with almost all of the balance changes we made, but of course we know we didn't always hit the mark.  

 

Our most difficult and disappointing times were letting a new piece of gear into the wild overtuned and the Typhoon really stands out for that.  It's pretty tough to see our players having a great deal of fun with something, but know that we needed to bring it down.

 

I think we mostly made the right choices, and it was a real passion project doing weekly tuning on a game we loved for an amazing community.

 

I uh, sure loved the Falcon before we brought it in line though.

[chcknwng]

Well, for one, the TC nerf. I still remember fondly the 8 sec TC with insane damage boost. That was my entrance to Gold, as well as the Warp-Throw Asari Adept.

Never got Typhoon high enough or really liked it on lolpeaesstree to use it pre-nerf. I didn't participate in that. I kinda hated Krysea from the begining, so the nerf wasn't that big a deal anyway.

I do remember them buffing Lift Grenade, because it was already good before the buff. And Phase Disruptor. Totally uncalled for either, especially on Silver.

[TheNightSlasher]

What exactly was the PD buff? Did they increase the damage/radius or something?

[BridgeBurner]

It's great to see these discussions still going on.  Overall I'm really happy with almost all of the balance changes we made, but of course we know we didn't always hit the mark.  

 

Our most difficult and disappointing times were letting a new piece of gear into the wild overtuned and the Typhoon really stands out for that.  It's pretty tough to see our players having a great deal of fun with something, but know that we needed to bring it down.

 

I think we mostly made the right choices, and it was a real passion project doing weekly tuning on a game we loved for an amazing community.

 

I uh, sure loved the Falcon before we brought it in line though.

 

I have to ask.

 

What was the philosophy behind the grenade buffs?

 

I did some small stat taking on the balance changes a while back, and out of over 50 weapons, almost 40 of them received damage buffs. Some very minor damage buffs, albeit, but damage buffs nonetheless, with only a handful receiving direct nerfs which weren't later undone (the vindicator was nerfed initially then buffed to be stronger than it was before IIRC).

 

And if you're playing ball, besides the falcon nerf, which other balance changes did you not agree with or thought could have been implemented differently?

[BridgeBurner]

What exactly was the PD buff? Did they increase the damage/radius or something?

 

They diminished the shield % usage per cast, so you could fire off 5 PDs in quick succession without charging.

[Dunvi]

The Krysae on the other hand is like hitting with the side of a barn.

FTFY

 

It's great to see these discussions still going on.  Overall I'm really happy with almost all of the balance changes we made, but of course we know we didn't always hit the mark.  

 

Our most difficult and disappointing times were letting a new piece of gear into the wild overtuned and the Typhoon really stands out for that.  It's pretty tough to see our players having a great deal of fun with something, but know that we needed to bring it down.

 

I think we mostly made the right choices, and it was a real passion project doing weekly tuning on a game we loved for an amazing community.

 

I uh, sure loved the Falcon before we brought it in line though.

Schanche! Thank you for poking your head in, it's always nice to know you guys are still out there, and for the little reminders of just how much you guys cared about making the game right.

[Kristen Schanche]

I have to ask.

 

What was the philosophy behind the grenade buffs?

 

I did some small stat taking on the balance changes a while back, and out of over 50 weapons, almost 40 of them received damage buffs. Some very minor damage buffs, albeit, but damage buffs nonetheless, with only a handful receiving direct nerfs which weren't later undone (the vindicator was nerfed initially then buffed to be stronger than it was before IIRC).

 

And if you're playing ball, besides the falcon nerf, which other balance changes did you not agree with or thought could have been implemented differently?

 

So the grenade buffs, particularly to things like lift grenade mostly came about because many of the utility grenades never ended up working out the way we had planed them to.  Lift in particular really stands out as a problem, as the game evolved it became pretty clear that it was more and more a game about busting armor and breaking shields.  Even on the highest difficulties, an enemy with no remaining defenses was mostly trivial to get through, health was always our lowest gate.

 

Powers like lift grenade were very reliant on an enemy with no remaining defenses, so the utility of it never really got a chance to shine, by the time an enemy could be lifted, they were basically already dead.  A lot of utility powers got this same kind of treatment, late in the balance changes for example pull had a pretty large amount of damage added to it, and I think everyone remembers the pretty big singularity overhaul that let it shine as a power again.

 

Regarding weapon buffing, a lot of it came from tracking weapon useage data.  Almost every week we'd give at least a little love to the weapons that saw the least use to see if we could bring them into a more broadly viable range.  Many of these never ended up entering normal rotation, but we're still happy that as we went on more and more guns had a niche that people could find for them.  In general we preferred to do buffs to bring up weaker weapons, and we saved nerfs for big balance risks like the Typhoon and Krysae.

 

I didn't disagree with the falcon nerf, I just sure had fun with it the way it was.  We held weekly balance changes with the gameplay team, I represented QA, and we included all of the gameplay guys.  We talked out everything we wanted to do, and usually didn't put a balance change through until we had come to an agreement on it as a group, so there aren't really any that went through that I wasn't happy with.

 

One thing I'd like to have done that I see done very well in games like League of Legends, and that we did only a little of, was having a small writeup with the balance changes that addresses what we meant to do with them, to better help our players understand why we made the changes we did.  I know I remember reading posts after our changes each week that made it clear we didn't always show the community why we did what we did.

 

Hopefully that answers some of your questions!

[me0120]

 

I didn't disagree with the falcon nerf, I just sure had fun with it the way it was.  We held weekly balance changes with the gameplay team, I represented QA, and we included all of the gameplay guys.  We talked out everything we wanted to do, and usually didn't put a balance change through until we had come to an agreement on it as a group, so there aren't really any that went through that I wasn't happy with.

 

I thought you guys did something like this. Some of the nerfs made me wonder if you found a way of using something that we hadn't on the forums yet.

[BridgeBurner]

So the grenade buffs, particularly to things like lift grenade mostly came about because many of the utility grenades never ended up working out the way we had planed them to.  Lift in particular really stands out as a problem, as the game evolved it became pretty clear that it was more and more a game about busting armor and breaking shields.  Even on the highest difficulties, an enemy with no remaining defenses was mostly trivial to get through, health was always our lowest gate.

 

Powers like lift grenade were very reliant on an enemy with no remaining defenses, so the utility of it never really got a chance to shine, by the time an enemy could be lifted, they were basically already dead.  A lot of utility powers got this same kind of treatment, late in the balance changes for example pull had a pretty large amount of damage added to it, and I think everyone remembers the pretty big singularity overhaul that let it shine as a power again.

 

Regarding weapon buffing, a lot of it came from tracking weapon useage data.  Almost every week we'd give at least a little love to the weapons that saw the least use to see if we could bring them into a more broadly viable range.  Many of these never ended up entering normal rotation, but we're still happy that as we went on more and more guns had a niche that people could find for them.  In general we preferred to do buffs to bring up weaker weapons, and we saved nerfs for big balance risks like the Typhoon and Krysae.

 

I didn't disagree with the falcon nerf, I just sure had fun with it the way it was.  We held weekly balance changes with the gameplay team, I represented QA, and we included all of the gameplay guys.  We talked out everything we wanted to do, and usually didn't put a balance change through until we had come to an agreement on it as a group, so there aren't really any that went through that I wasn't happy with.

 

One thing I'd like to have done that I see done very well in games like League of Legends, and that we did only a little of, was having a small writeup with the balance changes that addresses what we meant to do with them, to better help our players understand why we made the changes we did.  I know I remember reading posts after our changes each week that made it clear we didn't always show the community why we did what we did.

 

Hopefully that answers some of your questions!

 

That would certainly explain the sudden appearance of phasic ammo, after OHK snipers were left hanging for so many months after launch!

 

Whilst I mourn the loss of the ridiculous damage the typhoon did and the 8 shot piranha, I would agree that almost all of the balance changes did improve the game (even the typhoon and piranha nerfs), the only ones I still find questionable would be things like flamer range and PD, as two examples.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

[Pearl (rip bioware)]

Alright, so if you were leading the team in charge of balance changes, what would you have done differently (if anything)?

This is an open question, so it's not just for Chris. This should be interesting.

[megabeast37215]

Alright, so if you were leading the team in charge of balance changes, what would you have done differently (if anything)?
This is an open question, so it's not just for Chris. This should be interesting.

Hurricane damage nerf, remove or decrease Talon shield modifier (breaking shield gate and having access to 40% barrel is enough) and/or a weight nerf, Acolyte weight increase (same as Paladin), Wraith weight increase, Arc Pistol damage nerf, Grenade Capacity nerf to 3, AIU health/shields nerf (should be 500/500 base), Reegar armor damage nerf (to 10% instead of 50%), Phantom palm blaster nerf.

Buffs to several if not all rare ARs, Indra buff, Saber buff, Crusader aim delay fix (it is a modifiable variable afterall), Krysae buff, Spitfire buff, Typhoon buff, GPSMG ramp time reduced, Cryo/explosive ammo buffs, Punisher buff, Valiant buff (don't care about paper sustained-DPS numbers.. needs to be able to OSK shielded mooks with a headshot on a sniping infiltrator), Executioner buff, Suppressor ammo buff.

That's all I got for now.. I could do an entire other post on powers.

[Mindlog]

I agree with pretty much all of those changes. I can never decide on the exact adjustment the Harrier needs. Certainly the other AR's could do with some buffs.

 

Paper numbers vs practical numbers is a huge sticking point to a lot of balance discussions.

 

I didn't disagree with the falcon nerf, I just sure had fun with it the way it was.  We held weekly balance changes with the gameplay team, I represented QA, and we included all of the gameplay guys.  We talked out everything we wanted to do, and usually didn't put a balance change through until we had come to an agreement on it as a group, so there aren't really any that went through that I wasn't happy with.

 

One thing I'd like to have done that I see done very well in games like League of Legends, and that we did only a little of, was having a small writeup with the balance changes that addresses what we meant to do with them, to better help our players understand why we made the changes we did.  I know I remember reading posts after our changes each week that made it clear we didn't always show the community why we did what we did.

 

Hopefully that answers some of your questions!

Neat. Never knew the process was that involved.

 

That first statement is the big rub. Sure having something crazy powerful is fun for a few days, but in the long term it has a large negative impact. It can be hard to convince some people that giving up something like that will make the game more enjoyable.

 

Simiarly, communication is what really brings the whole process together. Since ME3 MP I've played other games where that has varied to both ends of the spectrum. At the very least I could always count on finding ME3 MP changes in the same place. That's important. Spitting out a few lines to make the case for a change would also be helpful. Admittedly, no matter how obvious and articulate the argument there will be a very loud group hating it

[TMB903]

I was pretty curious about why the Paladin was nerfed but the Talon was never touched. Considering how shield gate works in this game I think it should have been the other way around. The Talon we ended up with is an extremely lightweight shield gate bypassing death machine.

[megabeast37215]

I was pretty curious about why the Paladin was nerfed but the Talon was never touched. Considering how shield gate works in this game I think it should have been the other way around. The Talon we ended up with is an extremely lightweight shield gate bypassing death machine.

The Talon with AP ammo has bonuses vs every defense AND bypasses shield gate.. and gives 200% cooldown rate. WTF were they thinking?