Breakin Stuff
Goonfeet
769
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Posted - 2013.05.05 09:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
Due to the unfortunate timing of fanfest, and the weekend before the Devs and GMs get back to real work we have a bit of a problem. Right now, the fire is raging and the angry mob is loading the extinguishers with gasoline with good reason. The timing seems to be that CCP (on the surface) rigged everything so they would not have to officially respond to the outrage that was inevitable with the heavy nerf and some of the HAV stuff.
I am going to put my tinfoil hat away now, because i'm not enough of a douche to suggest that this was the intent, to spring something on the player base and then merrily skip off so they don't have to deal with it until it's too late. CCP has made mistakes in the past but I think that's a conspiracy theory that needs to die on the vine before it really takes off.
What I wish to address is the lack of meaningful communication that could have dodged this particular bullet entirely. We (the players) are well aware that the developers have a good idea where they want the game to be, and they have information we are not privy to.
But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the communication needs to be better. I will use the "Heavy nerf" in the uprising patch notes as my example.
The only piece of information we were given is "range and damage of the HMG has been reduced."
This is information given in a vacuum with nothing to indicate how it is balanced with the rest of the changes in the game overall. if CCP said "base targeting reticle has been decreased to compensate" in addition, or that the HMG has a skill that reduces the bullet spread which makes the current iteration of the HMG overpowered to other equipment?
90% of the problem would have been avoided and the only issue would be a few tryhards who can't stand any nerfs to their favorite toy for any reason had this information been elaborated upon. We do not know how bad these nerfs are. All we know is they come with the removal of + damage skills.
But everyone lost + damage skills, so net gain/loss of zero. But the removal of two high slots also removes a significant amount of firepower adds which heavies are utterly dependent upon to be competitive in the current build. This is a sidelong nerf to the Forge gun as well, which has it's own problems.
But since we only have "damage and range of the HMG has been reduced" we only have to assume that our (admittedly lackluster) primary anti-infantry weapon is now, by this build's standards, been nerfed into uselessness. We have no indication that this is untrue, or why the balance decision was made. We don't even know if it was hit hard enough that skilling into the HMG would be a waste of SP.
And no one is talking to the players to say, for example:
"hey guys, pelase calm down, this is what's happening. The support skills were changed so that when the HMG proficiency and sharpshooter are trained the size of the shrinking target reticle (and thus the bullet pattern) base diameter is reduced. this creates balance issues when thrown against Assault rifles in close to mid-range battle"
Heavies would hate the nerf, but news like this would bluntly shut down all of the rage from the more reasonable player base. people like me would have faith that CCP is actually listening to us when we say "we don't want a CoD style shooter."
But unfortunately the silence is leading people to the "hopefully erroneous" conclusion that DUST 514 is moving into the trend of generic FPS. Doing so takes away from the uniqueness that stands DUST apart from Call Of Duty XIIIZT Turbo and all it's precursors.
Communication is king. It's the lifeblood of the battlefield and information in the hands of rational minds can actually quell a raging mob quite a bit. It's mot much, we don't need full dev blogs, but little snippets here and there would be nice, enough to know that something is being looked at, why it's being looked at and what we believe the solution will be. This crowd is about as forgiving as the EVE forums and overnerfs (real or percieved) will be attacked without mercy by the community.
My suggestion is that CCP have someone who is dedicated release things so that all of the rabid, raging jerkbags (like me) of DUST have enough information to make educated and useful critique rather than "CCP hates heavies, assholes!"
The last example is what we need less of when it comes to providing useful input on the game, and the reactionary, knee-jerk responses to information provided without context will not stop no matter how much the GMs protest that spam threads are not wanted. This is theoretically one of the functions of the CPM, passing along needed information so that the lunatics don't slip the leashes and shackles too often in a mad rage. But the CPM is silent as well.
We're talking angry gamers here, who are slightly more rational and sane than your average religious extremist, or Westboro Baptist parishioner, and rather like the aforementioned groups, they will never stop the rage until they get reasonable, well-thought out answers and reasonable information.
Please consider getting someone to come up with regular communications to keep this **** from staying out of control if you want it to stop. if a dev can't do it, give someone from the secretarial pool a small raise and have THEM do it or something.
TL;DR version: CCP needs a technical writer to translate dev nerd to gamer nerd so people will act like sperging idiots less. |