Do the Devs understand their own game?

Ptolemy
105 posts Member
edited February 2016
TLDR at bottom
While im largely in favour of the recent updates, with a few exceptions, the way it has unfolded is rather odd and quite funny.

In the initial patch notes, we saw a lot of UI/visual bug fixes, and very little meaningful change. Most people thought the meta would stay the same, and rightly so. The changes to Poe did very little, not addressing the only issue which was his turn meter reduction, and many people were unhappy about that.

Then, out of nowhere, leader speed abilities were fixed. This caused a massive change to the range of viable PvP teams, which is great for the meta, and also indirectly nerfed Poe, as he was an issue only at meta PvP, and now there were many more ways of countering the Poe glass cannon teams due to having more characters that could go before him.

Then, Poe's stats were nerfed, most importantly he was brought down to 142 speed, with the other stat changes being fairly inconsequential. But from how speed was working at the time, 1 speed was a massive change, as now all 'turn 1' chars went before him. This caused a fair bit of outrage

But then(again, not in the patch notes) speed was FINALLY fixed(despite players knowing the way it worked for eons, dev's apparently didn't) and speed tiers were eliminated. This was another gamechanger for PvP, and it also meant that Poe's stats nerf meant stuff all. 143 or 142 speed, now didnt matter much. Had Poe still been at 143 speed, this would have been a huge nerf, as he would no longer have been able to go ahead of the faster turn 1 chars.

Whats funny is that the actual Poe 'nerfs' were insignificant, and are unnecessary with leader abilities and speed fixed. In particular, nerfing Poe by 1 speed is hilarious when that 1 speed no longer would matter.But these meta-revolutionising gameplay changes were somehow omitted from patch notes, while we got a full rundown on all kinds of insignificant visual fixes

Had everything been fully communicated, we would have avoided the forums fiasco of earlier. Or, had the devs actually understood the implications of these mechanics changes, they would have realised Poe did not need nerfing, the changes indirectly brought Poe well back into line

TL;DR : The pitchfork mob of earlier was a direct result of both EA/CG not understanding the crux of the Poe issue, how their gameplay fixes to speed and leader ability affected the issue, not communicating these gameplay fixes at all, and the sequence at which various updates/fixes were released. We also had 2 now completely unnecessary nerfs of Poe, and the community would have told the devs they were unnecessary long ago if we were aware of the mechanical changes to speed and leader ability


Post edited by Ptolemy on

Replies

  • The pitchfork mob would be out no matter what they did. To many neckbeards emotionally invested in this game.
  • You pretty much nailed it.

    It's either incompetence in regards to not realising how the speed change would effect the meta or incompetence in regards to remembering to tell us about the change to speed or a direct misleading of the community for whatever reason they had at the time.

    I don't know which one is worse to be honest. I actually hope they lied to us on purpose as I would rather have competent liars than incompetent honest devs.
    My name is cosmicturtle333, aka CT-333, aka Threes.
  • The -1 speed nerf is most likely to the change in gear and not to nerf him further. The change in speed looks like to how they initally wanted to speed to work, but hadn't programmed right at first. Now they changed it and will monitor if this is better than the speed tiers. Same for speed leaderships.

    I think they do understand their game. Communication and writing patch notes could still use a little bit of improving, but they are improving and that is what matters.
  • @cosmicturtle333
    Sadly Im inclined to think its a combination of all three. Even if they didnt know how the speed change would affect the game, had it been in the patch notes people would have realised its effect on Poe and the meta. And i dont see how any amount of incompetence could amount to forgetting to put the 2 most major gameplay changes in the patch notes

    The whole thing is just the biggest cluster**** one could imagine
  • oTradeMark
    393 posts Member
    edited February 2016
    Enrico wrote: »
    I think they do understand their game.

    I'm going to have to vote no on this. You can look back almost a month ago and see that a developer wrote back then that speed in the game functioned exactly as they describe the new method working.

    That tells me that the developers intended speed to function in exact order rather than "tiers" on turn 1 but they didn't know how their own game worked and so it wasn't touched until Gear 8 Poe brought so much attention to speed tiers.

    I will agree on them improving though. It seems like they take 2 steps forward and then 1 step back... which is still progress in the long run.
    GamingUpgrade.com - Gaming Guides | oTradeMark - YouTube Channel | Team iNstinct - Guild
  • Welcome to the world of Capital Games, fellas. o:)
    "Mockery: Oh, Master, I love you, but I hate all you stand for! But I think we should go press our slimy, mucus-covered lips together in the cargo hold!"
  • Basically this. I think the speed change is really bad for the meta, but the Poe nerf (despite me wanting a refund for the character) and Leadership changes are good. Now the coin flip will be between QGJ's or Dooku's instead of Poe.
  • l3end3r wrote: »
    Basically this. I think the speed change is really bad for the meta, but the Poe nerf (despite me wanting a refund for the character) and Leadership changes are good. Now the coin flip will be between QGJ's or Dooku's instead of Poe.

    Dooku and even QGJ are a lot easier to handle than Poe.
  • Ptolemy
    105 posts Member
    edited February 2016
    l3end3r wrote: »
    Basically this. I think the speed change is really bad for the meta, but the Poe nerf (despite me wanting a refund for the character) and Leadership changes are good. Now the coin flip will be between QGJ's or Dooku's instead of Poe.

    The nerf itself though, does almost nothing-You could revert his stats now and it would change little.I dont think things will be that bad- having a QGJ Maybe kill one enemy ahead of the other team doesnt do too much. Certainly i think losing out on RNG here will be overcome by human vs AI advantage. Poe was only bad because he caused the whole team to move first
  • The problem is way more systemic than the way speed works or the stats of Poe or QGJ, offense is way too lethal in this game to make things interesting. The current meta is just all about piling as many fast hard hitters as possible. It doesn't matter if you nerf QGJ or Ackbar, someone else will just fill the spot of optimal speed and damage combination again. They really need to look at the value of defense in this game because as it stands it's pretty redundant and toons that are based on a defensive concept will never become meta as long as this isn't looked into.
  • J0K3R
    2286 posts Member
    Is there a place to read in more detail how the speed works?
    May the force be with you. It shall free you.
  • oTradeMark wrote: »
    Enrico wrote: »
    I think they do understand their game.

    I'm going to have to vote no on this. You can look back almost a month ago and see that a developer wrote back then that speed in the game functioned exactly as they describe the new method working.

    That tells me that the developers intended speed to function in exact order rather than "tiers" on turn 1 but they didn't know how their own game worked and so it wasn't touched until Gear 8 Poe brought so much attention to speed tiers.

    I will agree on them improving though. It seems like they take 2 steps forward and then 1 step back... which is still progress in the long run.

    This pretty much sums up the game's timeline. It's better than release...I'll give em that for sure.

    The only things that were really upsetting about this update after the smoke cleared were:

    1. The utterly useless shard shop.
    2. The obvious mismanagement or confusion on the part of the devs as to how this game works (What???).
    3. The fact that I had been calling for the TM reduction on Poe to get removed for weeks as the viable fix, and then this update made ANY nerfs to Poe an overstep (That's a personal one).

    From which I concluded:

    1. Chromium packs are no longer worth buying, because of the uselessness of extra shards (and the probability that 4/8 drops will be extras).
    2. Calling for nerfs is largely pointless, because the player base and the devs are either playing different games, or somehow see entirely different numbers and results when they play.
    3. Asking for notes ahead of time is pointless, as devs either don't understand how the game is going to change (see #2) or are actively releasing misleading information.
  • The problem is way more systemic than the way speed works or the stats of Poe or QGJ, offense is way too lethal in this game to make things interesting. The current meta is just all about piling as many fast hard hitters as possible. It doesn't matter if you nerf QGJ or Ackbar, someone else will just fill the spot of optimal speed and damage combination again. They really need to look at the value of defense in this game because as it stands it's pretty redundant and toons that are based on a defensive concept will never become meta as long as this isn't looked into.

    Oh i totally agree with you.Armor and resistance are just the most laughable stats in the game, what is 200 Armor when meta chars hit for 5-10k. I would love to have got in to the whole speed/damage being the only relevant stats, as well as some other things like the already poor keycard battles being made laughably pathetic, but if i did the post would have rambled even longer, i just stuck to the astronomical screw up which was the implementation of this update
  • Triqui
    2790 posts Member
    edited February 2016
    I agree that with speed prperly working as the devs thought it was working (which was not the reality), any other Poe's nerf is unnecessary. A simple "Poe is overprmerforming now, because speed as a whole is bugged" would had suficed. But they couldnt say that because they didnt know speed was bugged. Even they went ahead and told (in reddit) that team instinct speed guide was not correct (which it was, at the time), and that the forum, besides toxic, was spreading misinfirnation

    Then we had the whole Poe nerf debacle. They fixed things they literally didnt know were broken. That's why the change is not documented. When they tried to solve turn 1 leader speed bug, they fixed whstever was not allowing speed to work as intended, and destriyed brackets and "turn 7" in the process.

    They should hire Team Instinct as plsytesters. Or even better, release how the mechsnics "should" work, so the community can test it
  • DanTom
    975 posts SWGOH Dev Team
    edited February 2016
    It's a harsh truth but there will always be shakeups to the meta. The alternative is a very stale game and ultimately, cookie cutter everything. The nerfs and buffs are part of the flow of any multiplayer game. Busting out the pitchforks is going to get us nowhere.

    Now, ea/CG really needs to get on the ball for upfront communications and then stick with it. Surprises like the Poe nerf are going to really hurt the game long-term and obviously anger the player base. Beyond that, they need to figure out the value premise a bit better so that the only real advantage to the whales is a time one (potentially large) when too much is hidden behind a very large paywall, then it doesn't get tested en masse very well and makes the balance harder (less data to work with)

    There will always be an "op" build/hero but games that try to keep it fresh, stick to release notes and maintain the value premise at the low end will survive better.

    I know that whales make up a large chunk of the financial sheet but I don't think many of them would be upset if they were only a month or so ahead of the curve. Whales will always stay ahead as long as content is released regularly.

    I know it is an ignorant opinion but it just seems like if the whales are say 5% of the game and the "middle" spenders are 20% that lowering the price of the packs would increase the "middle class" of the game and may tempt a few out of total f2p. The profit loss from whales would be balanced out. This is probably bad logic and/or a dream but it seems logical to me. When we release our products at work (web/mobile apps) the target is those that spend at the lowest tier. We then support the bigger spenders with more personalized support and overall, spend fewer resources on them.

    But, just a dream.
  • Guys i still can't believe the devs didn't know how the speed worked in this game .. It's impossible..
    I think they knew there was an issue since the launch of the game , but they didn't inform us because they were monitoring the problem and they didn't know if it was necessary solve it or no..
    Then came Poe with all his speed and set of skills.. Clearly devs didn't know how the meta wuold have changed with this single charachter (even at 3*) and so, as an answer, they have decided to fix all the speed bugs Ande nerf Poe..
    I think this is the story behind the curtain..
    Anyway i still can't comprehend why CG doesn't explain the core mechanic of the game,( again probably because they didn't know how to act?) , and , first of all, why they didn't inform us a week ago of these game-breaking changes..
  • Indeed.

    With the speed changes there was no need for the other nerfs to Poe.
  • With how the events have unfolded I would be surprised if the devs do enough play testing before the changes go live, seeing how they seem to be winging it on the game balancing as sequential changes are redundant within the same patch.
  • ilyanor wrote: »
    Guys i still can't believe the devs didn't know how the speed worked in this game .. It's impossible..
    I think they knew there was an issue since the launch of the game , but they didn't inform us because they were monitoring the problem and they didn't know if it was necessary solve it or no..
    Read the reddit post. It clearly said that things that could not happen were happening.

    Then they "fixed" leader speed, and they wrote snother candid reddit post were they implied they fixed it while trying to do something else.

    Then they broke QGJ, applying the buff twice.

    They know how it was supposed to work. But not how it was working
  • I think the changes they ultimately made are fine. But i am angry that the patch notes were so misleading.
Sign In or Register to comment.