Rattati is likely referring to usage statistics.
Apparently, shotguns are popular.

How popular do you think are Breach Shotguns?
More popular than a Flaylock pistol, perhaps?

P.S. I try to play one or two Domination matches every morning, after the boys go to school and before the baby wakes up, it's around 7:30-8:30 Shanghai time. So if you want to kill me, that's where you can find me, but bring your A game, you don't want to be killed by a dev

Let me assure you that we are monitoring the situation very carefully. Every indication is that our Hotfixes are changing the landscape/meta slowly but surely.

We are measuring Kills/Spawn and Kills/Death ratios for dropsuits and weapons, and also Spawns/Consumption and Market Sales data to gauge player preference. Admittedly, most of these balancing and engagement data dashboards have been implemented over the last 3 months.

1) Blaster Tanks - Took a KDR hit, but 10-20%, nothing grievous
2) Seeing Gallente and Caldari Scouts make way for both Minmatar and Amarr
3) Assault Rifles, really amazing actually how closely they perform but we are now seeing some bumps we would like to smooth out
4) HMG Sentinels, also seeing them and HMG efficience go down, but just right down to other suits and the HMG is on par with the Rifles.
5) Racial parity within each frame is something we keep an eye out, and it seems, even though Amarr is touted as the best of the bunch, that they are all on par. Minmatar overall do slightly worse and we will take note of that.
6) Sidearms, we see that they are unbalanced, but the numbers aren't crazy, the Assault SMG is OP, and the Flaylock is UP, but overall, nothing crazy. It's just that everyone grows up with the SMG in their Starter fit and stick with it.
7) Dmg mods needed a tweak and got one, other shield mods in high will need a buff to compete with extenders.
8) Armor plate stacking is definitely on the way out, seeing way more reactives, ferros and repair modules, regulators need a buff.

So again, the playerbase and engagement is actually as healthy as it has been for a long time, and I sincerely believe in making DUST 514 a better game for us all.

P.S. I try to play one or two Domination matches every morning, after the boys go to school and before the baby wakes up, it's around 7:30-8:30 Shanghai time. So if you want to kill me, that's where you can find me, but bring your A game, you don't want to be killed by a dev

Thank you for making so many positive changes to DUST in such a small period of time. It seems the days of one step forward, two steps back may finally be over.

Few points though:

1. I agree, regulators need a buff to discourage armour tanking shield based suits.

2. The Cal & Gal assault bonuses should be changed to something useful; Assaults should have always had bonuses to tank / regen modules. Not to weapons.

3. Whilst the HP that shield extenders provide may be relatively balanced, the fitting requirements aren't. They should be slightly more CPU intensive & cost less PG than plates.

The best HP modules on armour based suits require less PG & CPU (Enh. plates, comp. ferroscale & comp. reactive) than comp. shield extenders. This gives armour based suits far superior fitting capacity w/o the need to sacrifice any HP. The Gal / Amarr assaults shouldn't be able to fit almost entirely PRO If Cal / Min assaults can't - See below:

Gallente Assault - http://www.protofits.com/fittings/shared/0/7125
Caldari Assault - http://www.protofits.com/fittings/view/0/7122

Notice both fits have a STD side arm, BCR & sacrifice 1 PRO module slot. You'll also notice that the two fits are built pretty similarly (High regen / rep, no compromise in MS & all HP mods over dmg mods) Only, the GalAss can still fit PRO nades & PRO hives whilst the CalAss cannot.

4. Tanks may be in a good place in terms of survivability, but there's a definite lack of diversity. We shouldn't be seeing tankers all using the exact same fit, it's boring and defeats the purpose of having fully customizable vehicles. The addition of more vehicle modules or even changing the existing modules could work but it'd be far easier to simply bring back the tanks that were removed. (Tweaking them first ofc)

5. Scouts regen rates are too high, assaults are designed to be the frontline suit and should therefore have the highest regen rates. Scouts already have the smallest hitbox, best EWAR, highest MS & shortest regen delays.

It perplexes me as to why the CalScout has a 67% higher shield regen rate than the CalAssault when the assault is supposed to be the best hit and run class; Not to mention the fact that the GalScout & CalAssault have the same regen rate.

6. Weapon customization.

7. Player market.

EDIT:

Only changes that I'd hope to see in HF Delta would be points 1, 2 & 3.

Rattati is likely referring to usage statistics.
Apparently, shotguns are popular.

How popular do you think are Breach Shotguns?
More popular than a Flaylock pistol, perhaps?

Breach is severely UP as is the Flaylock, so it's not just about popularity, also avg Kills per Spawn per weapon, the shotgun is a healthy bit above all the rifles for example, ranks highest of all the lights actually (except snipers but they are different)

Is there any way you can share in a little detail your thoughts on the Burst HMG and what tweaks if any you feel are needed?

Because that would mean assaults would have the better precision skills than a scout, which is role overlap and that is bad. An assault shouldn't be able to detect the same things a scout can, if you want to have better scans, start spending SP into Amarr scout. You can pick up scouts just fine without removing any hp mods by running an active scanner.

It would take the exact same amount of effort on a scouts part to hide.

P.P.S Shotguns and Burst HMG are OP

Excellent points,thank you. Will take a good look at 4 and 5, 3 my only worry is that players will dual tank if extenders are too cheap. 100% agreement on 1 and 2. 6 and 7, of course I would too, but that is a client side change and not happening in the near future.

Excellent points,thank you. Will take a good look at 4 and 5, 3 my only worry is that players will dual tank if extenders are too cheap. 100% agreement on 1 and 2. 6 and 7, of course I would too, but that is a client side change and not happening in the near future.

Breach is severely UP as is the Flaylock, so it's not just about popularity, also avg Kills per Spawn per weapon, the shotgun is a healthy bit above all the rifles for example, ranks highest of all the lights actually (except snipers but they are different)

The problem is not the shotgun imo, the problem is who use the shotgun.
Scouts with shotty are OP because they can be invisible/see and they can backstab people, that's the only reason why shotgun is so effective, put the shotgun in the hand of every other suit and it will be perfectly balanced.

An Assault is still non-viable, as they can't pick up anything smaller than a dump truck on passive scans, and even then it's only when they're almost right on top of you.

Excellent points,thank you. Will take a good look at 4 and 5, 3 my only worry is that players will dual tank if extenders are too cheap. 100% agreement on 1 and 2. 6 and 7, of course I would too, but that is a client side change and not happening in the near future.

Light Weapon Tier list. Post if you agree or disagree
S Class
Rail Rifle
A Class
Combat Rifle, Assault Combat Rifle, Scrambler Rifle, Charge Sniper Rifle
B Class
Assault Rail Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, Swarm Launcher, Tactical Sniper Rifle
C class
Laser Rifle, all variants of the Mass Driver, Plasma Cannon, Breach Assault Rifle, Breach Shotgun, Assault Scrambler Rifle
D class
Assault Rifle, Burst Assault Rifle, Tactical Assault Rifle. Assault Swarm Launcher
I didn't know how to rate the Swarms or Plasma Cannon. But i think they are pretty good at what they do which is AV or killing for the Plasma Cannon if you are good at killing with it.
I will do Sidearms next. I didn't Count Specialists because you only get lowered fitting costs and it doesn't affect the performance of the weapon.

Breach is severely UP as is the Flaylock, so it's not just about popularity, also avg Kills per Spawn per weapon, the shotgun is a healthy bit above all the rifles for example, ranks highest of all the lights actually (except snipers but they are different)

5) Racial parity within each frame is something we keep an eye out, and it seems, even though Amarr is touted as the best of the bunch, that they are all on par. Minmatar overall do slightly worse and we will take note of that.

We are measuring Kills/Spawn and Kills/Death ratios for dropsuits and weapons, and also Spawns/Consumption and Market Sales data to gauge player preference. Admittedly, most of these balancing and engagement data dashboards have been implemented over the last 3 months.

P.P.S Shotguns and Burst HMG are OP

The data is both popularity and efficiency, the Breach is both unpopular and has worse efficiency than all the other weapons. I think the latter explains the former.

Shotguns also have the issue of the basic being just as useful as the proto... So everyone can use the cheap stuff to farm easily in pubs & keep their costs low... Seen people running basic shotguns on proto suits... they still 2 shot a heavy... .

Which heavy can be 2HK'd by a Basic Shotgun?

P.S. I try to play one or two Domination matches every morning, after the boys go to school and before the baby wakes up, it's around 7:30-8:30 Shanghai time. So if you want to kill me, that's where you can find me, but bring your A game, you don't want to be killed by a dev