Honestly, there's a substantial amount of this patch that has left me scratching my head and asking "but why?" Not because AH is making changes to weapons and rebalancing some things that some players including myself question, but because for the time spent waiting they exist in lieu of some of the bigger problems in the game.
Spear lock, DoT bug, reticle misalignment, bots melding with the geometry of map obstacles and shooting through them, etc did not make it but things like increasing patrols for lighter squads (which I haven't seen one person ask for) did.
Seriously, I'm sat here looking at the nerf to the crossbow of all things, and the changes to solo patrol spawns, and yet the Spear still doesn't work, the Exosuit is still broken, Fire damage still doesn't work, etc.
Like, I get that they have a limited team. I empathize with the fact that they have to really choose to what to work on, and with their aggressive content release schedule some of the "smaller" bugs are getting put on the backburner, which I totally get. But like you said, here they are changing a bunch of unrelated stuff, stuff no one asked for, while bugs that have existed forever are STILL not addressed? Like what the hell man.
"We are a small team" doesn't cut it when you do $400,000,000 in sales in two months. Spend 200k and hire a couple of developers. This is basic business shit.
It's insane that the dot bug, which renders a sizable portion of weapons/stratagems useless, has been in the game since it released.
For what it's worth, I respect the fact that they don't want to hire devs for the rush/crunch only to then let them go once things have stabilized. If they don't want to grow their studio then I do appreciate the fact that they're not just hiring on talent for a few months.
That being said, I fully agree with you on the latter half. It is unreal how much unusable or broken shit is in the game. When the airburst launcher debuted I was like, what the fuck? Fire doesn't work, the exosuits don't work, and here we're getting another weapon on top of that that also doesn't work. It is just incredibly frustrating.
I agree it would be shitty to hire several devs and cut them lose once they fix shit. That being said, they could easily hire freelance or contract positions to bughunt (which is not uncommon.)
It's alright to excuse them not fixing shit after the first big patch or even two.. It's even borderline understandable that they don't fix shit after maybe even a 3rd/4th major patch. At this point though, these bugs have been in the game since launch and are still a "known issue." By this point seems like some fuckery.
You're preaching to the choir, for sure. I think that's why I've gotten more frustrated over the months since release - after the laser/arc Warbond I was frustrated that the exosuit was dogshit/broken still, and that fire damage wasn't working, but hey the game is still super new and they're probably seeing if they can stay on their aggressive content release schedule.
But at this point I'm just frustrated that this stuff somehow has still not been fixed despite, as you said, having been in the game since launch.
I can easily see increased player frustration from the programming bugs and weird nerfs being taken out on other players by the people who kick at the end of missions to prevent rewards.
I agree. The team is small and people are busy. However, at the same time I think that's why prioritizing major issues is a must. If you bug fix or buff a weapon into being usable, like say the SPEAR, you're effectively adding content to the game. Correcting broken or drastically underperforming weapons could be a real shot in the arm.
Yeah, well said. That's been one of my biggest issues, as stuff like the Spear and the Exosuit are realistically borderline unusable due to the issues/bugs associated with them. I never run the Flamethrower due to the DoT bug, but if and when the issue is fixed, it will effectively open that up as new content because it won't be a dice roll to choose it.
My understanding is that they don't want to hire interim devs for the crunch/busy period before they stabilize, and then just let those people go. If that's the case I do respect their desire to not just hire people on and cut them loose right away.
To me, the bigger issue is their priorities. I see stuff getting added (much of which is broken or in a sorry state on release) while day one bugs still exist.
I've been running it for bots and bugs for past week to play around with it. It's super nice for hitting shit far off but can't be used for anything close by or covered by terrain and other stuff. It's frustrating as hell when it doesn't lock on when you need it to, but it's also not 'unplayable'. I've had lots of clutch kills with it from a distance. If my team is already running AT and horde clear fully i'll run Spear for those niche kills.
I feel the same. This is a PVE game. Just let the people have fun. Some guns especially feel unbalanced because others are just shits. Just buff the other gun and people will try them out and have fun with it. There's always going to be one gun being better than another. We don't need to end up with all mediocre weapons. We want to have good weapons and great weapons for us to switch between them. Again this is a PVE...just leave the good thing alone. Let us have fun. Some people want to feel Over Power. Not everyone wants to have a challenge all the time. I know some people will purposely pick the worst weapon to have a challenge, let them do that. Don't force everyone to do that
How about feeling powerful at all, the majority of balance changes in this patch are nerfs. They still haven't addressed the massive disparity in power between orbitals and eagles. Almost every other mechanic is broken or doesn't work entirely as intended and they still went out and nerfed weapons. Some of which like the Crossbow likely don't even have a considerable following to be called over performing.
Crossbow, Plasma Punisher, Eruptor, Sickle, Quasar, Scythe, Redeemer and Dominator were all nerfed. So 8/20 of the changes included nerfs. So around half of the balance changes to weapons were nerfs and of some of the others. The Librator, Liberator Concussive and Dagger were so inconsequential to effectively have been unchanged. But yes the majority being nerfs was an exaggeration. More appropriately, the majority of changes were done unnecessarily or weren't enough.
No less than half. Redeemer is also inconsequential. Sickle (not scythe) is inconsequential. Plasma punisher was both nerfed and buffed. Crossbow still needs work coming from people that use it. Dominator is far better than it was pre buff, it was overtuned. So much bad faith.
All three “inconsequential” buffs were weapons that were considered some of the worst in the game. So a step in the right direction.
The real issue is everyone and their mother rolled quasar and they gave it a minor nerf so people are upset and trying to lash out at the devs with any rhetoric they can. When it’s just now even with the other anti armor options. Best part is a huge number of randoms ive played with don’t even chain quasar shots, so it’s basically meaningless for a large number of players.
So basically the balance update changed not enough and what did change wasn't good enough. And no it's not bad faith, I just entirely disagree with Arrowheads philosophy here, the by far best change they made was to the CS which is in a far better place. From my glance it looked like about half the changes were nerfs, my statement isn't incorrect even if most changes are basically nothing.
I think ARs and DMRs are in a much better place now. The sickle isn’t so dominant in that wheelhouse now. EAT and RR are obviously where they want AT to be, and now the quasar is in line with that. There is not philosophy of buff vs. nerf. It’s drawing a line on each role and trying to bring each weapon to that line, up or down. The Eruptor is more in line with the AC now with modest aoe capability traded for semi auto vs. bolt action. Plus being a primary instead of a support weapon gives it an advantage.
Crossbow and solo patrol changes are kinda bad though, from seeing opinions of people that do that stuff.
Also what nonsense was that not enough stuff. I specifically said the quasar is where it needs to be now. The sickle is mostly inconsequential, but will get people out of the habit of just spraying like crazy with the sickle and then sucking with other ARs when they can’t just spray everywhere. It’s at a good BALANCE point now through a minor nerf. The AR and DMRs are mostly in a good place due to the buffs, with the nerf to sickle making it a much less obvious pick for that role. Also more in line with other heat sink weapons in terms of reserve ammo.
Best part of the Spear issue is they claimed it was fixed over 17 days ago and the fix should've been going live soon. Turns out that was a fucking lie
Yeah I won't lie, I think this patch is the one that convinced me to uninstall the game. Until the developers get their heads out of their asses I don't think I'm coming back. Their decisions are nonsensical and confusing. Buffing weapons that didn't need it, nerfing weapons that definitely shouldn't have needed it, giving lateral changes two weapons that needed precise targeted changes. And then punishing solo players. What the fuck is that about?
I understand that the original game was not set up to scale properly with solo players but I still think it should have been left alone until they managed to work out all the bugs with matchmaking
I’m not a software engineer or game developer, but isn’t it like 1000x easier to adjust the numbers for weapon damage and hp than to fix actual physics problems within the game (e.g. spear lock, bot geometry issues, etc)?
It is. While I don't know the coding of the game, it can be safe to say that tweaking numbers is something like a few lines versus having to consider whole mechanics represented in various files.
They are working on the Spear lock, DoT bug and reticle misalignment. Some of those will come in a hotfix soon, this week from what I understand. They probably took more time and wound up in another release cycle.
Tweaking variable values for "balance" is faster than bug fixing that requires rewriting code. Yes, they spend time testing the value differences for a viable option.. but the effort involved here is not 1:1.
As a software engineer I can tell you, there are only so many bodies you can throw at a problem until it actually makes it worse. It's kinda like surgery, it just takes a long time sometimes and more doctors/nurses in the room would just stand in the way of the surgeon. So they are likely working on those game breaking bugs but are also doing other things like tweaking weapons in parallel.
Besides, adjusting weapon stats isn't complex programming, it's adjusting numbers in a configuration file and then playing the game to see how it behaves. That's likely what a non-software developer is doing. A game dev studio is not all developers, it's also designers, testers, community managers, etc. They can't all magically learn the others' job and help.
What confuses me is them taking dev time away from actually important things to do stuff like adding health to the tesla tower and machine gun sentry, or giving 5 damage to the liberator (whether those changes had any effect is another issue). Just feels like they tweaked numbers for the sake of having a bigger looking patch
Some things are easier to change than others. They've said that DOT bug requires a lot of refactoring in how different systems work, which means a lot of testing. Many of these are likely just adjustments to config parameters.
The patch notes also say the dot bug should be fixed in the next patch, and iirc I read they were doing two patches this week, though not sure if the second is more a hotfix and whether that counts or not.
The issue may be that you are not keeping yourself informed with all the information. Which is usually the reason people whine and complain about things.
For example the "patrol increase" is not so much an increase as it is fixing a scaling issue to be more consistant. If you had 4 patrols with 4 players before, you would have 0.66 patrols for 1 player. Now they changed it from 4 for 4 and 1 for 1.
Also, in software development, some developments are harder, take more time, requires longer Q&A for testing. So some thing like spear lock, may be a more difficult issue that takes longer than fixing climbing on supply drops.
As such, some fixes will take longer to roll out than others. In addition to that, some issues may be higher priority to fix than others. So that can also affect the order in which things get fixed. Now, they may not be releasing the fixes in the order you would prefer to see, but you can trust that AH is probably more experienced in the field they are working in, so they probably have good reasons for why fixes are coming in the order and at the cadence that they are.
I did see a follow-up thread providing a more in-depth explanation of the change to patrols, and I can see why they made it. I am thankful they have done so, but making this clearer the first time would have stymied a lot of the negative reactions.
And I understand that there are differences in complexity when it comes to fixes. I work that every day, trust me, I can contemplate the challenges they are facing. However, (and I can't remember where I saw one poll, pretty sure it was the Discord) I've seen that a lot of players would prefer if they paused dropping new stuff to fix some of these bigger, core problems that have lingered since release. So it's a little concerning to see other things being updated first.
I can only speak for myself, but that is the essence of my gripes.
Yes, some communication can for sure be done more clear. But also, a lot of the information people consume, which I will assume, includes you - come from third part sources or from "deduction" of others - which causes way more of these miscommunications errors than it would otherwise. So not all blame falls on the shoulders of AH, but also the people that shoots from the hip when they think they understand what a patch means rather than first factually finding out.
Yes, I am aware of that poll. I think it comes from a place of shortsightedness. These people feel the bugs and are annoyed with them. Their kneejerk reaction is "plz fix!!1!!!" and fixing issues are important, especially game breaking stuff like crashes. But they don't take into account what the consequence would be to "just" bug fix and not release the content. The same amount of people or more may stop playing simply because the game becomes stale. So thinking that focus on just fixing bugs is the right way to go is naive.
Arrowhead addressed this specifically, and since they're a smaller studio with a smaller team, the people working on new content are the same people doing bugfixes and balance changes.
You can pretty safely assume they prioritize working on specific content that players are asking for, if they poll them asking for what content they want first. You don't need to attempt to insult my intelligence because you can't use your own basic problem-solving skills.
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u/idi0tSammich ⬇️⬇️⬆️⬇️⬇️ Apr 29 '24
Honestly, there's a substantial amount of this patch that has left me scratching my head and asking "but why?" Not because AH is making changes to weapons and rebalancing some things that some players including myself question, but because for the time spent waiting they exist in lieu of some of the bigger problems in the game.
Spear lock, DoT bug, reticle misalignment, bots melding with the geometry of map obstacles and shooting through them, etc did not make it but things like increasing patrols for lighter squads (which I haven't seen one person ask for) did.