Please do not treat the game as a beta anymore
Mendasp
I touch maps in inappropriate placesValencia, Spain Join Date: 2002-07-05 Member: 884Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Retired Community Developer
I touch maps in inappropriate placesValencia, Spain Join Date: 2002-07-05 Member: 884Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Retired Community Developer
I was debating where to post this in the general forums or the competitive play forums, but I decided this was a better suited forum for this.
As we were playing in a closed beta, the teams would keep playing even with clearly unbalanced patches and that was fine, but with the game out of beta I think tinkering with balance on a weekly basis is only going to damage the game and the competitive play, especially when the history of balance changes tend to be very extreme and drastic, taking 3-4 patches to get everything "under control" again.
As people might or might not know, the playtesters do not test balance and just focus on bugs as that's their mission, so balance changes often get released in a "rushed" state and the public gets to experience "the beta" until things get balanced again, but the point is... the game is not in beta anymore.
So what I'd love to see UWE do in this regard is to keep publishing fixes weekly if so they choose, but hold the balance changes longer and have them tested thoroughly before releasing them to the public, this could be done monthly, every 45 days, etc. The point is, they should get very well tested (and with competitive players involved).
And please, please, publish all the balance changes in the changelog as it is very important to know what has changed, most people knew about the crag changes ONLY because people were doing diffs with the lua files to find out what changed.
The game is not in beta anymore so please do not treat it as such, again, weekly patches with bug fixes and improvements are fine, but balance is a very delicate thing, especially now that leagues are starting soon and will be played regularly.
We all want the game to succeed, and if you truly want to make NS2 into an esport, balance should be treated with the importance it deserves.
As we were playing in a closed beta, the teams would keep playing even with clearly unbalanced patches and that was fine, but with the game out of beta I think tinkering with balance on a weekly basis is only going to damage the game and the competitive play, especially when the history of balance changes tend to be very extreme and drastic, taking 3-4 patches to get everything "under control" again.
As people might or might not know, the playtesters do not test balance and just focus on bugs as that's their mission, so balance changes often get released in a "rushed" state and the public gets to experience "the beta" until things get balanced again, but the point is... the game is not in beta anymore.
So what I'd love to see UWE do in this regard is to keep publishing fixes weekly if so they choose, but hold the balance changes longer and have them tested thoroughly before releasing them to the public, this could be done monthly, every 45 days, etc. The point is, they should get very well tested (and with competitive players involved).
And please, please, publish all the balance changes in the changelog as it is very important to know what has changed, most people knew about the crag changes ONLY because people were doing diffs with the lua files to find out what changed.
The game is not in beta anymore so please do not treat it as such, again, weekly patches with bug fixes and improvements are fine, but balance is a very delicate thing, especially now that leagues are starting soon and will be played regularly.
We all want the game to succeed, and if you truly want to make NS2 into an esport, balance should be treated with the importance it deserves.
Comments
Previously, balancing through the public beta build on Steam was acceptable as it was itself a beta and predictably subject to change drastically quite often. This is no longer the case. The current "beta" process that people can opt in through for Steam a few days leading up to release, where they are forbidden to discuss balance changes is totally inadequate for a game being pushed as an ESPORT (yes it is, I'm confused as to why that has been denied on occasion recently). Clan matches are happening every week, with some big tournaments coming very soon. Everyone wants the game to be as good as it can be.
Playtesters test for bugs, maptesters check for holes in the map and problems with AI pathfinding etc, it's time we had well experienced people taking a keener look at the state of the game itself. Let us help <3
<!--quoteo(post=2024462:date=Nov 15 2012, 11:38 PM:name=Scrajm)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Scrajm @ Nov 15 2012, 11:38 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2024462"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They are gonna start with bi-monthly patches now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
More time between patches is good, however as it stands now there would still be no good way to get gameplay feedback before these patches are released. The current playtesting format does not support this.
Id put my hand up
This needs to be implemented very soon, once the hype and novelty of an rts/fps hybrid with aliems exo-robots and flamerguns wears off it's going to become glaringly obvious how unbalanced the game is, particularly in its current state.
NS2 needs a structured and intelligent system for the creation, testing and passing of all balance changes. Most of the changes I've seen since alpha have been very impetuous and haven't felt well thought out. Exploring new game-play ideas is great and fun, but like the OP has so eloquently stated, the game is no longer in beta.
Opinions of the top competitive clans should be VERY highly regarded, almost no other audience understands the weaknesses and strengths of NS2 as well as these guys do. Metered, intelligent and rational opinions such as those of Fana, Squirelli are your best bet for balance advice. These guys have probably played your game more than anybody else, and as a result will probably have the deepest understanding of how to fix problems with it.
Dev's have been great at making the game so far, let the community help you guys balance it, just like NS1.
What was changed about the crag? o_O
I've been suggesting a balance team for a long time.
It would help the balance of the game greatly, it needs that.
Because even though it might say very close to 50/50, there are some things that really needs a change.
These thing are not be easy to spot if you don't play the game much, like UWE themselves.
I agree that the competetive scene is where the advise is to be found, and it doesn't cost a single dollar.
It's balance... not bug fixing. doesn't require 100 play through to know when something is OP.
edit: Seriously though, this seems like the third waste of time. Charlie will consider competitive player's opinions if they're emailed with rational arguments or if he sees a trend in competitive VODs he does not like for the game. So this just seems like (another) waste of time.
edit: Seriously though, this seems like the third waste of time. Charlie will consider competitive player's opinions if they're emailed with rational arguments or if he sees a trend in competitive VODs he does not like for the game. So this just seems like (another) waste of time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Even if no balance team is created, can we all agree that it's not fun to have the game changing every week with seemingly extreme balance changes?
Pretty much yeah, the current PT team does give feedback about certain things. But we simply do not have enough time, with the main focus on getting a stable build out, so our feedback is based on our experience and knowledge about the game, which is plenty of course. Testing out things would require hands on playtesting, instead of basing it on experience. Even the obvious stuff that is good or bad still requires hands on imho...
A dedicated balance team that completely focuses on balance changes would be a good step so they can test out certain builds and changes and give proper feedback instead of the experience and knowledge based, without the proper time to actually test it :)
It's not in beta, so you can't use the beta excuse to make balance changes every week without giving them proper testing instead of eyeballing all the values and then adjusting accordingly. You can do this process internally (or voluntarily - with a steam beta) without potentially breaking the game or making something extra annoying or buggy for an indefinite amount of time. That's the whole point, I didn't even go into specifics for this patch or anything.
Even if it was not a perfect group, it would still be better than what goes on now (one man trying to do it all by himself).
I think even casual pub players could agree that having experienced competitive players discuss and test balance changes would be better than leaving the job to one man who rarely gets a chance to actually play the game himself.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I think it is a waste of time.
In regards to the changes, Mendasp is right. The wild experiments that we constantly saw in the beta do not belong in the live game. The problem with this stance is that there are still big problems that will need some experimenting to fix (onos drops, tres drops in general, skulk movement, alien midgame, mines). I prefer small and quick changes over big and slow changes. IE I'd like to see fade's health bumped by 25 this week, reevaluated and then bumped by 25 more the next week instead of having it buffed by 100 for a month.
I think the key to balancing is not causing wild swings in balance. You can achieve this with small, frequent changes.
I remember testing the beta and having to relearn the game every couple of weeks. Spending hundreds of hours practicing wall jump only to have my time wasted when wall jump was removed. I came to terms with it, and was forever telling people who got annoyed at the imbalance that it was "only a beta".
Well, the game isn't a beta anymore. EVERY build should be as balanced as possible before it is released, i know charlie is busy, but to hear that this patch was released with him giving no attention to balance explains a lot and quite honestly scares the **** out of me.
Either the changes need to be so small that they cant throw the game out of balance too much, or they need to be thoroughly tested by a balance team whose suggestions are given serious weight, or they need to happen so seldom that the community doesn't mind a short period of imbalance every few months.
Forcing people just bought the game to relearn every 2 weeks and put up with a massive imbalance between the two sides is going to turn at least some people away from the game at a time when we all want as many as possible to join, enjoy the game, and advertise it by word of mouth.
People will be much less likely to recommend that their friends buy a game that is currently untested for balance.
The key factors I've seen leading to the dissolving of the community "balance groups" in the past have been 1 to 3 of the following.
1.No or poor leadership. You need one or two people behind it all organising people and keeping them together, or everyone eventually stops participating.
2.No tangible results for our efforts. Having the group officially sanctioned by UWE, given access to upcoming changes with the devs encouraging and taking feedback on board.
3.Direct discouragement from the devs, won't go into this one.
I would say in the end that some people around would still be willing to help, and want to. What it really comes down to is how open to direct, honest and focused feedback the developers are, and if they want that kind of feedback at all.
Also, it'd be nice to see a decent amount of clan/geographic diversity within such a group, and perhaps even a couple of non-competitive players.
I say this because as much as there are (and always will be) dominant strategies, some people/clans play the game quite differently.
Competitive mod's only work in communities with millions of players.
NS2 is simply to small to segregate the competitive community from the rest of the pubbers. You would effectively make them have to learn the game twice should they ever want to step into competitive play, 99% of people will not do this.
FYI, the only competitive mod I can remember working successfully was COD4-promod. Even then, all it did was remove dust from the map, remove the stupid weapons and provide a ready up function.
Balance changes must come from UWE, NS2 simply is not big enough for a promod scene.