121049-rough-seas-ahead

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Also, very rarely do theorycrafters want an I-WIN button. They want a fun, interesting class that can compete with others in whatever aspect they choose to play it (heal, tank, dps).


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Let me explain what I mean by the bottom portion of my OP. Some changes made to classes are a no-brainer. Changes like what we see coming with Warriors in Drop 4. A lot of the upcoming changes are necessary for PvE balance, arguably the main thing that WildStar has going for it right now. Without these changes PvE imbalance would remain, which isn't good for the game. Changes like these, to an extent, don't need to be tested really. Any feedback about these changes will likely be something along the lines of "I don't have everything I used to, complain complain complain". Let me be clear that I don't want changes like this to be disputed, nor should they be asked whether or not they are necessary. Going off that same model of the upcoming Warrior changes, what should happen is testing. Testing in the sense that perhaps maybe a certain ability would be better tuned at x cooldown to better flow with the synergy of another ability. This is the kind of testing that often gets overlooked. Maybe not this exact scenario, but there are plenty like it where a little bit of listening to valuable feedback would go a long way. Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware that in order to get valuable feedback from these forums you may have to sift through miles of garbage. But I ask you, what is more valuable for this game -- dedicating 1 day a week to sift through mud for gold, or ignoring the gold exists and leaving someone else to capitalize on it? I reiterate. Class direction is something better left up to the Class Leads and developers, but fine-tuning that direction and picking the paper the map is printed on can and should be a group effort.


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Wait, what? The very definition of a developer means they ARE better equipped and have access to data and information that allows them to very precisely make better decisions for the health of the game than players. Player input is important from a "fun" perspective, and Carbine has always been very transparent. But players don't have the information to experience to make calls about balance when they can't see the bigger picture.


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I understand where you're coming from on this, but that's my style of writing. It's how I normally express myself in written form (and often verbally). It's how the American school system taught me to do so. If I was simply conveying facts and data, my OP could have been summed up in about 4 lines.


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However, the balance is most games suffers because the devs don't listen to players who have metrics to back them up. I've yet to see a game that has excellent to perfect balance. I have yet to see a game that has good to excellent balance. I have seen many a class get butchered because devs did not listen. Hardcore gamers treat gaming like a second job and many excel at more than one class. To say that they can't see the bigger picture and are only relevant when it comes to the game being fun is being short sighted.


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Well, that's actually pretty easy. In Alpha/Closed Beta/Open Beta, you have far fewer players than you ever will at Launch. Hell, until Open Beta hits you directly control how many people are playing your game and providing feedback. Launch opens the floodgates and now everyone and their brothers are giving feedback, and instead of focused groups doing focused play, everyone is everywhere and calling out the myriad issues that every MMO will have at Launch and far beyond. It's unlikely the devs aren't listening. It's far more likely that less people are being listened to on the virtue of there being TONS more people giving feedback.

As I said earlier, that system may have already been fixed internally, but not vetted for this build. If Drop 4 is within the next 2-3 weeks, the "final" internal build was cut weeks ago. The only things that will get fixed at this point are showstoppers (crashes, economy-destroyers, performance-destroyers, quest/zone blockers, major graphical glitches, map-outs ((which are falling through the map and dying)), and other massively-gameplay-disrupting bugs). Is that ideal? No. Will the definition of 'showstopper' vary from dev to dev, and player to player? Wildly. All we can have is patience. This kind of stuff isn't 100% in the hands of the people making the content; its distribution falls to the Production team and the Publisher's demands on deadlines. Drop 4 is going to land when NC/Carbine Production demands it land, whether it's filled with all the things the dev teams feel necessary or not, AND whether all of its bug fixes are in or not. I promise you that at least two of the hotfixed issues that come in each hotfix after Drop 4 have been fixed for weeks and didn't get vetted for the due date.


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In PVE* (Vic gave the PVP version) It was more like, people spent hours and weeks getting gear only to find that the slots weren't optimized (since they were random) and the piece was essentially useless. It isn't fair to players to have them spend that much time and effort hoping against hope that their piece of gear will drop from a boss that takes a huge amount of effort to down, only to troll them with bad slots that make the piece effectively worthless. That's prettymuch fixed with the fluxes, though it is expensive.


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Ugh... if there's one thing I hate about modern MMO's it's the excessive amount of min/maxing that goes on. I'll never understand why devs HAVE to put in rune slots or enchantment slots or whatever on pieces of gear to make them 'useful'. The gear itself should be useful enough! The rune slots should only provide bonuses, not be essentials. And of course, the raiding guilds are part of this problem too. Why take along a Warrior with a piece of gear when you can take another Warrior with an identical piece of gear but with a whole +10 more grit! That's like, a whole 0.25 seconds of tanking he could do! Yeah, I know grit is a poor stat, but that example type of mindset is way too common in the game. It's the moment when a game becomes a math problem that I just start shaking my head I personally think Carbine should scrap the entire rune system and replace it with cosmetic enhancements. We already play in a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid universe. Why not have a set of runes that, instead of providing buffs to invisible stats, can create a visual effect to turn your sword into a mystic shattered levitating crystal blade with flaming chainsaw teeth? That would at least ensure that everyone with the same gear started on equal footing and help to keep people from rage quitting because they got an Insight slot instead of a Brutality one. It might also help please the same people who love housing and crafting, at it gives them even more things to customize for their characters


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