Gathering statistics is usually not the problem, interpreting the data is.
This must be hard from a dev position, but it is also hard from our player position. The devs want to see if the changes made roles more equal, the players react to the gameplay and their own ships changed.
I think many forum dwellers including me try to help - sometimes subjective or even seemingly counter productive - but I agree totally and I think everyone does, that the lag is the first thing which has to go, and should be the main concern; the balance can still go on.
Per-ship-rating, per-ship-statistics have been mentioned.
This probably is beyond horizon and budget yet, but using the gathered data to build up some kind of community tool, where ship stats are viewable in a browser, or even player statistics can be seen or shared on demand, etc. with per ships rating etc. would do wonders in the PR, and may also help people to judge players their own ships better, by actually seeing the numbers, while keeping the game clean of excel sheets. It might also help to put the load away from the ingame servers, if some of the data is accessible over the steam browser or web, and would allow better customization for profiles (corp profile, player profile, rules), or more diverse leader boards, which could even display some kind of per-ship-efficiency.
I have to add, SC is one of the most stable games in the F2P and online play market in-engine, even compared to its sister product, War Thunder. Which is praiseful. I hope you keep the slick design. I hope you upgrade your servers for another 2k players.
As I said in another topic, reading the statistics might not be trivial. There should be an expected disbalance actually, to achieve the right kind of aesthetics in the game, it is not good if the numbers are too even, nor should it be the goal. E.g. plasma should do highest damage amounts, while kinetic should do mostly kills, in theory, imho. But this leads me to what might actually stay behind these debates: I think there is a public secret curiosity, how you actually interprete the data.
About tuning the MM… I think I have a different opinion than most of you guys.
I for one could not care less about fair matches, as in meeting teams with strong players on each side, if there is some kind of “front-system”, some strategic sector conquest playing out. If I can go for trying to break an invasion in sector 5 with strong teams coming in, and big rewards, or choose a balanced skirmish in the rim, with normal rewards, I would go for first until I really crave a fair game and choose the other front after that. Or even play repeatedtly, until my team actually reconquers parts of the sector, by pushing themselves to the limit.
Not really seeing any change, only bigger corps taking arbitrary points, or occupying sectors, even if they dont play anymore, is way more frustrating to me.
Also, I do personally not believe in the sheer possibility of guaranteeing an exciting fair match, all the time, by some algorithm, and find time in optimizing this very cool and geeky and all, but really think, the gameplay being fluent and fun is the most important aspect of the game.
I like the devblog update, and look forward to the next patches.
Also, the mentioned squad of 4. It was answered, but the demand for this is pretty high.
Finally, easing the grind until release would do wonders, especially in T1-T3. We need to push T3 into T4 stronger, or ESB gets bored forever.
Good to hear about the Dreads, too.
I look forward to Capitals.
/r/emtorp/nuke/suicide
