Recent balancing changes poll.

Mercenary Center Polls
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And in case you haven’t paid attention, the issue was never so much about the order as the fact there was consistently a gross disparity between what he forums say and what the in-game polls say, which is troublesome given that A) we have testimonials of people who just “vote for GS”, B) we can’t validate how many people actually vote in the in-game polls, and C) it’s most glaring on polls about big things that matter to the community. The idea of “I don’t care” being the default option every time was to provide a quick and easy way to remove any possible bias of people just voting for reward.

 

I have no problem with my choice being the least popular, so long as there is no discrepancy between in-game and in-forum voting patterns. Frankly, I don’t think in-game polls should be rewarded at all (or even exist) seeing as there is no form of screening at all; most people on the forums are at least at T3 and have some idea how the game actually works, whereas in game you can (and will) have T1 pilots voting on issues that they have no experience of because they get a reward for doing so.

There will always be a difference more or less between in-game poll and forum poll. Because in-game everyone votes even n00bs that have no idea about the mechanics. In the forum mostly people who care and are dedicated players vote and even go to the forum.

I don’t think the I don’t care option will make much difference.

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And this is why forum votes should carry a lot more weight than the in game ones, but they don’t. Devs ignore experienced players in favour of metrics and new guys who’ll quit before ever reaching T4, then act confused why player numbers drop and social media is full of bile.

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And this is why forum votes should carry a lot more weight than the in game ones, but they don’t. Devs ignore experienced players in favour of metrics and new guys who’ll quit before ever reaching T4, then act confused why player numbers drop and social media is full of bile.

I am sorry, but “balancing” feedback from 90% of english forum population is irrelevant, because that 90% is not taking into account A LOT of things, and very-very often base their feedback on their personal preferences, feelings and desires. So after all, ingame and on forum BALANCE polls are equally useless.

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And this is why forum votes should carry a lot more weight than the in game ones, but they don’t. Devs ignore experienced players in favour of metrics and new guys who’ll quit before ever reaching T4, then act confused why player numbers drop and social media is full of bile.

Because not even the experienced players agree on everything. Like the change on the Shrapnel, some said it’s useless now because it cannot be used against interceptors very well, other say it is fine now.

I personally couldn’t make much use of it with the high latency I’m playing usually.

If there should be a change in votes then the in-game should be separated by players that are in certain ranks and/or certain amount of matches.

Because I do think the opinion of players that just started matters for certain polls. For some of the weapons changes, T1 shouldn’t vote at all because they were not affected or very limited.

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I am sorry, but “balancing” feedback from 90% of english forum population is irrelevant, because that 90% is not taking into account A LOT of things, and very-very often base their feedback on their personal preferences, feelings and desires. So after all, ingame and on forum BALANCE polls are equally useless.

Same is true of the entire playerbase - the difference is the forumites care enough to be active on forums and make their opinions known. No game was ever successful by ignoring its core audience in favour of transients.

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Same is true of the entire playerbase - the difference is the forumites care enough to be active on forums and make their opinions known. No game was ever successful by ignoring its core audience in favour of transients.

just because they active or show their opinion, does not neccesary makes them wise or less ignorant

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But even then you can learn from the discourse. Take the Recon thread; there’s 3-4 different takes on what the Recon “is”, but unlike Metrics, which just tell you the end result the conversations show how people got to that conclusion.

Or, to put it another way, which of these is more useful?

A:

Ten people who say “13 x 4 = 52”

B:

One person who says “13 x 4 = (10 x 4) + (3 x 4) = 40 + 12 = 52”

A has more metric value, but B shows where the answer came from and, more importantly, we can now check for any errors. We learn far more from a single quality source than pure metric data.

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No game was ever successful by ignoring its core audience in favour of transients.

Listening to the vocal minority has never helped anyone either. Besides the core audience is in Mother Russia.

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Listening to the vocal minority has never helped anyone either. Besides the core audience is in Mother Russia.

Yes, and a while back on the 2nd big matchmaking poll I took a nosey on the Russian forums and they were pretty similar to the English ones in terms of what people wanted - yet again, it was the in-game poll that was hopelessly out of whack.

 

We may quibble over specifics, but at the core all the evidence points to both forums having a good consensus on where the core issues lie.

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Let me tell you, this forum is so full of people who not only have no idea about game balancing, but they don’t know about their lack of knowledge either.

 

The fact that you can fly a ship does not mean you know where the game should go for it to be a balanced, enjoyable experience.

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Let me tell you, this forum is so full of people who not only have no idea about game balancing, but they don’t know about their lack of knowledge either.

The fact that you can fly a ship does not mean you know where the game should go for it to be a balanced, enjoyable experience.

But again, that same argument applies equally to people who vote in game. At least on the forums people who are wrong can post their reasoning and others can then see where it is wrong.

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Don’t get so worked up over polls tbh. Any developer basing their game design decisions on polls would be doomed to failure anyway and assuming that these polls are anything more than a community service to make you feel relevant is naive.

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I dunno about you, I gave up on the plasma Arc and switched to a more “Takamina” inspired build. Fast, sustained DPS and a GTFO button.

 

Yeah, exactly the style that should be gone from the game. Low risk high reward is not a good design.

 

And after a year of hiatus, i started using plasma arc again instead of white noise. Of course not in a dogfight. But especially because since the tournament, strong healer-fighter gameplay became a daily thing in T3 evenings it seems, at least, if u got teams.

 

The low risk part isn’t completely true. Actually the thrill of CO is the high risk part.

 

I believe strong solo players often take us away from the big picture: even the best CO killer can be focuskilled. Or torped.

 

I rather have the problem of new players taking the sniper too much and sticking to it for too long to synergize all of them… Engineers missing, or rushing for kills in TDM… And strong gaps of skill in the relativly small playerbase.

 

In terms of tactics, and many discussions seem to include that part between the lines, things are still pretty much in their infancy, overall. Once we are talking only about builds instead of singular ships…

 

 

Funny how the famous argument “Majority of players does not read the poll and just vote option 1 for free gold, skewing the results” did-not come up yet, especially considering that is the option backing up a view of those that like to put that argument every time when it is convenient.

 

In any survey, the questions are relevant, too. It usually takes a second survey to see how relevant the votes really were. In this case, atm. we are at 30% for the first option, which either indicates that:

 a - a thing like voting 1 for the 1 gold is a myth, put back your tinfoil hat

 b - this poll had more actual feedback, so the attendance of 1-gold-voters was smaller.

 

Of course, with your bigger view into the russian community, you see yet another diversity; does not make the valid sounding theory of a paid vote being doomed to corrupted results false. Good example is the weekly reward, which is a nice chart of who can abuse best for the money mixed with players where we know, they actually deserve to be on the top. It’s more work than clicking a button, but the principle seems the same.

Generally, even if greed based decisions are offered to the general population, a bigger part of the people actually cares of what they are doing, even if the abusive people get more news (and cash)…

 

…and assuming that these polls are anything more than a community service to make you feel relevant is naive.

… same applies for companies creating games, so even if the poll is for sure not so important to get upset about it, I would say it is naive to assume, a poll does not have any type of feedback for somebody creating a product.

74

Standardization is bad.

we go from : “I use that and that and that and play different style”

to : “I have mk4, you have mk2. Same standardized loadout. Me > You”

 

This is bad direction IMO. 
Otherwise the changes have shaken the meta and I see some weapons more and more, while I never saw them in PvP before. In expense of weapons that I got used to see in every game, that now are gone …

 

This change is good.

75

I really believe that the current “Game Balancing” is fine as is. 

 

But the MM, low population, and low retention rate really take a toll on us. 

76

Balance is xxxx actually. Gunships have too much survivability.

77

Balance is xxxx actually. Gunships have too much survivability.

 

Wich is funny because game says:

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Wich is funny because game says:

z187718.jpg

 

In the cool-down periods between the activation of the special modules, ALL SHIPS are vulnerable. 

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In the cool-down periods between the activation of the special modules, ALL SHIPS are vulnerable. 

 

They’re still more tanky than any other fighter, as opposed as it should be 

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They’re still more tanky than any other fighter, as opposed as it should be 

 

Gunships are mainly from Empire, and the Empire vs. other factions difference is the only reason why they’re tanky. If you compare an Imperial gunship with an Imperial command, or a Fed gunship with a Fed tackler, two things become apparent:

  1. The gunship always has lower base resistance (because of the gunship penalty)
  2. Some command and tackler modules have almost no cooldown, but gunship modules have a significant cooldown time, so you can catch a gunship unprepared because all its modules are on cooldown, but you can’t do the same with commands and tacklers unless you stun them.

So in a very indirect and longwinded sense, one can still argue that gunships are more vulnerable than other fighters.