Very good points. I worked as a Dev. And most Devs I worked with NEVER read the forums. And most of those who read the forums kept what they found to themselves. The only time most of us heard anything from the forums was when some issue was blowing up so big on the forums that it got some Devs attention and they felt compelled to tell the rest of us about it. It also doesn't help that there are apparently no Infiltrators on the Dev team. (as in people who play the class, not people who have "spent some time in it") However, since they are supposedly focusing on the Infil Class now, it's likely our best chance that they might actually browse the Infil forums. ... but you're right, it's not likely they'll see any of these posts or that they'd really understand them if they did. Proactive balancing on new items is just not the PS2 way. *Maybe* if someone posted a current report like this. But even then I highly doubt it. PS2 Devs like to sell an OP item/unit and then let it rule for a couple months. They even announced that they delayed a planned nerf to the Fury because it had gone up on sale right before the intended change. They want to give buyers of new toys some time really enjoying playing OP with that toy for a while. Yup. I've heard it expressed in the FPS design community that Sniping as a game mechanic creates too much "unfun" in the game for the Sniping victims: surprise sudden death from long range. So I think SOE decided to give players the option to Loadout in a way that nullifies this "unfun" mechanic. I'm not saying I am for or against such game design. I am simply relating what I think is going on. Though in all fairness, it could just as easily be what you suspect: it's broken but no Dev who could fix it is aware or cares about it. Agreed. But PS2 is full of really bad balancing, full of really OP items/units, and I think the Devs have a very narrow understanding of how each class/vehcile is played in the game. I don't think the Devs even understand how to fit some of the units into the game at all, which is why people who play those units often find themselves being alternatively hosed, neglected, misunderstood, etc. from patch to patch. A LOT of Game Development is about being derivative (art, story, design, etc.). Taking something that is perceived to be successful in another game, and putting it into your game. Even if you don't have any idea how to make it fit, and even if you have no idea how or why it works in the other game. PS2 Devs have made attempts to "balance" some Infil guns. But they didn't balance them relative to the OP guns of other classes they have to face off against. So you end up with some Infil guns being designed for roles that are suicide to play. So most Infils skip those guns and stick to the ones that work. (mostly SMG and BA) True. But I don't think PS2 Devs really get that. Or maybe they do understand it, but are ok with it. Since none of the Devs enjoy Sniping as an Infil, it's likely that they don't worry too much about the health of the Sniping game. Also, keep in mind that not all Devs are equal in terms of their ability to change things in game. When I was a Dev I figured out a major balance issue and made a full spreadsheet to show it. Many of my peers were impressed and were glad I'd found it and brought it to light. When I went to the senior Dev in charge of that area, he couldn't be bothered to take a look at the spreadsheet. No changes were made, the broken balance issue was never addressed. But, if there EVER is a time that the Devs *might* take a look at the Infil forums (or ask someone to look it over and report back), it's during the run-up to the Infil update. After that, it's almost guarnanteed to NEVER happen. As a bard playing EQ (another unplayed and totally not understood Class by the Devs), I think we're in for Infils getting very little attention (and what we get will be infrequent, ignorant tinkering attempts), not being understood, bugs not being fixed, etc. On the positive side, any game breaking OP elements that leak into the class along the way will likely be left intact as well. You will explore game elements with the Infil that no Dev will ever know about or comprehend.
Please leave your Hunter Suit and any rifle, submachine gun, sidearm or knife that you carry with you in the designated area. You may keep the NS RDD for a one time payment of 500 Certification points. If you're not interested, please leave it in the designated area as well afterwards, please report to room 404 to be removed from the re-birth matrix. Have a nice day, PS2 Forums Infiltrator Corps
that the devs don't have time to browse forums is somewhat understandable (they are not paid for that), but much less so when they apparently find time to spam reddit and twitter about mlg and ****. Besides i don't see what's so hard in hiring an intern to read forums once a week, create a comprehensive list and nail it to the todo wall under 'bugs' or 'balance'. Do we really have to wait 2 months for some dev who feels like fixing some bug out of boredom to go into the gameplay bugs forum only to discover then what's on the menu? Given the infil update they should be not only reading the subforum, but also actively asking questions when in doubt to get some actual 'backstory' behind the pieces of the inf play. Granted, most likely there would be some conflicting feedback but i think it would be actually much more beneficial than an unified voice. A single data point can't possibly represent views of the wider population with varied playstyles and ideas about the class. Too bad 30m is not long range and sniper is already in the SoL position if *anything* goes bad. What happens when you stumble upon someone in closeish midrange by accident? Him: press LMB to spray (RMB for bonus accuracy), corrections if necessary. sniper: press RMB (3/4? of the movement speed out the window), watch 0.5s long zoom-in animation, scramble to put crosshair at the head through all the flinch, die. While you can argue denying snipers is ok at 75 or 100m or whatever there is no way it is even remotely justified at 30-50m. Each meter closer demanded from the sniper costs him exponentially more effort, especially when cover is scarce and people monitor these 3 puny rocks where he could possibly hide. You clearly hear the cloak farting, how much more of a warning do people need ffs? And i still don't see why only sniper rifles are 'privileged' like that. Where is the anti-PAS loadout?
I would love a suit slot that reduced the amount of damage each bullet did by say 75 - would absolutely wreck these bullet hoses but not affect my bolt-action at all (so the opposite of what nanoweave does!).
While this is likely an inflammatory post and not a legitimate question, I'll answer on my part that I will be seeing what reason comes up this time. The only acceptable reason in my opinion is that they have decided to add stuff that is needed because they realised how poor the originally-proposed update was going to be in solving the problems people are currently having. However, I wont be playing much, if at all, until the time comes when such an update is implemented (if it ever is). It is quite likely Kaisuke7 (the OP) feels similarly.
The infil update doesnt do anything game breaking for the infil. u get camos, a cloak that u can only use pistols with, and a drone thats doesnt do anything meaningful.
Maybe they do that on their own time, and focus on stuff that interests them. I know someone at SOR (Higby? Smed?) posted a while back that they like to power on Reddit because they don't have to censor themselves as much. MMOs post launch typically like to run on a skeleton crew. Paid interns may not be in the cards. Devs are also consistently of the opinion that "they know better", so they often disregard any critical feedback they get from players. (depends on the Dev) Bugs often build up on the appropriate Dev Team's "to do" lists. Often they are too busy and don't get to them. Also, the current method for reporting bugs as a forum post without any category tags is a mess. It would take a lot of extra Dev time to read through them and sort them out, and many posts just don't have the detailed info Devs need to understand, identify, and solve the bug. Bugs need to have a form that players can fill out that gets it to the right Dev Team and give them the exact info they need to know. They also very likely don't have a Quality Assurance group. Bottom line is that we can see it's not getting done. So then we can try to figure out why that is. And usually the answer is due to the same basic things: budget, time, ego, laziness, competence, ignorance, personal preference, pursuing other interests instead, sabotage, ignoring it, don't want to do it, fell through cracks, deemed unprofitable/low importance, bad management, etc. Devs notoriously don't like to directly ask players questions that indicate the players know more/better than them. Most of them think that would be absurd. They do sections in the forums for people to place ideas and feedback, but it's unclear if that is something PS2 Devs use, if it's just some catchall archive if the mood strikes them to browse it, or if it's just a facade designed to soak up player energies and keep them distracted. (the last one I've run into before as appointed custodian of a "next update changes" spreadsheet that I learned months later "there is no next update": I was just there to soak up the feedback so the Devs would not be bothered directly) There have been occasions in the past where Devs appointed a group of player reps, and communicated with them. And this may already be taking place. The problem with these reps, is that they often only represent Outfit play or specific units, etc. If the Devs feel they play the game enough, then they may have no interest in talking to other players or appointing player reps to speak to. I also think they expect the MLG play to show what works and what doesn't based on why "top players" use/do. They might figure why waste time talking to average players when they can just look at MLG play and learn from the experts. People who get Headshot by Snipers have no idea how far away that Sniper was (unless they are in some area that is not exposed to range). So the victims frustration level will be the same regardless of how close the Sniper was. We could just have it provide more info on where the killshot came from, but I don't think anybody wants that. It's definitely a bad situation for Snipers when they are spotted and forced into engagement ranges they are severely outgunned at. Especially if it's during a GU where the cloak is obvious. And it doesn't help that we die to fewer hits and that our weapons are consistently weaker at close-mid range. I proposed a long time ago that Infils be allowed to carry 3 guns like HA do: regular gun, pistol, special weapon (sniper rifle). But that idea wasn't very popular. [/quote] What is anti-PAS? There is if they fix it with stuff you have to buy.
I know about it and it's ******* stupid. if they want to hear they ******* suck i can tell them that without tripping the filter just fine and it will hurt as much all true but if Mustarde (definitely a "top player") wasted his time to create a youtube clip discussing problems with Nanoweave and tweeted Mr. Used-To-Have-Fabulous-Hair directly with 0 response and effect, that's pure unadulterated bs. And in the comments below the clip torokokill, another top tier gosu, agreed with the contents and said NW actually forced him to drop suppressor because the range penalty was too harsh. All the feedback you could possibly want, straight from the horse's mouth. apparently some even think the game is broken and rage when they die with NW5 on >_< anti-****-Action-Shotgun
I agreed with (and was depressed by) everything you said until this point. The Devs hate snipers. There, I said it. It's no secret that they have no dedicated Infiltrator players on the Dev team, let alone understand the subtleties and struggles of playing a sniper. All they see of snipers is a death screen after one lands a headshot on them, that is the extent of any meaningful experience with snipers that any of the devs have. There's no delicate way to put it; they're biased against snipers in general because they, like every other player who doesn't understand the class, hate being killed by snipers and assume that something capable of OHK'ing from an unknown location is overpowered. They take nothing but their own death into account when they reach this conclusion. They never even consider the level of skill involved in pulling off that headshot while they were zigzag sprinting from cover to cover. They assume, like many, many others, that the sniper is a cheap, no-skill cheese class that obviously needs nerfing somehow. That said, they would never allow the sniper to have something even remotely overpowered - or even good! - for long. I guarantee that if the time ever comes that Infiltrators are given something genuinely powerful it would be nerfed in the very next game update, that is if they don't release a hotfix specifically to address the 'issue'. Honestly, they should just remove the entire class from the game at this point. It isn't fair to anyone to keep a class around that they refuse to put any effort into balancing, let alone understanding.
I don't think they should remove the entire class from the game, because they have been moving in a good direction for CQC infiltration, but the sniper rifle just seems kind of tacked on so they can say its there. They buffed nanoweave so that long range sniping became almost useless and they seem to think it was a good change. Like you said, this change is a sign that pretty much the only experience the Devs have with long range sniping is being on the receiving end. They don't seem to understand that currently, the further out you go the harder the shot gets, but the less rewarding it is because of nanoweave. The reason I still play is the sniper community.With all the stuff they have been put through by the Dev team and the rest of the planetside 2 community, they are still awesome people who love the class. It reminds me a lot of the piloting community, but less elitist. You guys have been made fun of, been called worthless, received disrespectful and disgusting hate tells, and been ignored by the Devs. Despite all this though, I still see top notch snipers out there every day silently getting **** done. Its a community I want to see grow and prosper because I think we have a lot to offer to the rest of the PS2 community. They may not like or understand us, but if we continue to grow they can't keep ignoring us. While snipers are in a very strange place at the moment, I think the best way for us to grow and see positive change is to keep being as respectful, humble, and consistent as I have seen so far. If we play the game the way we want to, and grow, SOE is going to notice and hopefully accommodate us.
I can understand that they don't want to be held accountable for posting what they want. And posting on these SOE forums could be any number of headaches for them. And if they won't post here, they likely won't feel motivated to keep up on it. That said it WOULD be in the Devs best interest to read and post in these forums. When I was a Dev, there were only a small number of Devs at our company who kept active in the forums. And when things went south for the company, it was the people who posted that the community knew by name and gave overwhelming support for: Devs being active in forums is a great way to get your name out there and market yourself as a creator in the community. VERY few opportunities like this exist in the gaming world, where most marketing is about titles or development studios, and not individual developers. Heck, I don't even know what rules SOE has with regards to allowing Devs to post on SOE forums as themselves. I am not sure how sophisticated Devs are in figuring out which player is good. I expect a lot of them have no idea. Also, he may not be contacting the right people, or the people he contacts may never bother to pay attention. It's not a good situation, as much for its lack of clarity on the Community-Dev communication, as well as what Dev is working on (or responsible for) what and where there head is on the matter. It seems maybe the best next steps are (1) to figure out who at SOE is working on Infiltrator (update or otherwise) and (2) figure out how to communicate with them. In terms of MLG being a great place to help Devs figure out the game, I have my doubts. Look at the recent "SOE Live: Ultimate Squad Showdown" (USS). The points scoring system doesn't matchup with what is in the game now, so the results you get won't matchup well in relevancy with the current game. In the USS, Infantry gets large bonuses for melee kills, Infantry killing Infantry (with melee, guns, or tools) are worth more than Infantry kill Vehicles, Vehicles killing anything are worth a lot less, and Infantry killing with Grenades or C-4 are worth almost nothing. I DO think Vehicles in the game should get less points for killing Infantry than Infantry does for killing Infantry. Some of the biggest problems we have with farming is because the reward system does not reflect how Devs/Community want to see the game being played. So players hop on OP matchup units and farm the easiest and fastest kills. If the game were tuned so that reward matched difficulty (in terms of unit vs. unit matchup), you would see a lot more players selecting units and playing for the engagement and not just selecting units and playing to farm. (it's not hard to do, just unpeg all fixed XP rewards, and then let them adjust to how successful each unit is vs. each unit group type; even add "bonus XP" for using units/weapons that are decidedly un-OP) SOE's fault. Many players are not stat hounds who read the forums and know about and check gun stats. And the game does not make it clear what NW does. So these players only know by what they experience in game or perhaps some rumor they heard. The game currently does not indicate range on attacks that kill you. So these players probably have no idea why one time they survive a Headshot w/ NW 5 and another time die. Also, if they DO know about NW5, it's totally understandable that that they feel that if it's designed to prevent OHK Sniper kills, then it should save from all OHK Sniper kills. SOE's fault for not being more clear on what NW will do with regards to attacks. Video Games have a long history where some game does not tell its players the parameters and this ends up frustrating the players to no end. Vague explanation text in game and incomplete VR (can't change the NW/loadout of opponent to test on) are recipes for a confusing and frustrating experience. Ah, gotcha. TOTALLY agree. NW (or some other suit) should protect against PAS OHKs. I agree (in general) with your statement that "The Devs hate snipers". Devs don't like playing Sniper and (probably) don't like being Sniped. And so it's understandable that they also react favorably to public outcry against Snipers. And I do agree that if Infils get a broken ability specifically related to Sniper killing, that it will get attention and get nerfed ASAP. But it's in all the areas not directly related to Sniper kills that the beneficial bugs can show up and stack up. Things like the current turret hack, which I find frustrating, but other Infils see as a way to be able to exit Turrets without the opponent being able to target/kill them. These types of "can't be bothered to fix" bugs were much easier to stack up in a game like EQ because it was PvE and so these bug powers weren't really encountered by other players (especially not from dying to them). But even in a PvP game we will likely see certain beneficial bugs stack up over time. And, over the long haul, there should be a good number of these types of bugs showing up.
Do you think having Community Leaders or actually talking to Devs in-game will help get them to understand?
Yeah PAS and BASRs are pretty much the same problem (well more like two sides of the same coin). PAS are made for up close engagements and because of this they are usually always going to be doing their maximum amount of damage which means a OHK, so when capture points are in CQC environments they seem over powered. But from what I've noticed with people who play Infiltrators is that they want to be able to get OHKs when they are doing their least amount of damage, and that's really not fair seeing as how a BASR's minimum damage is always far more than the minimum damage of every other gun.
going to players.planetside2.com is not exactly rocket science Torokokill and Mustarde (#2 and #8 at mattherson) are not that hard to find. Given they main inf i'd assume they know what they are saying without a question. dude, that 550 dmg happens once every 2 seconds and that's with good winds. Compare that to 150dmg every 100ms - 600dmg in 0.4s in hold-LMB-to-win full auto spray mode. Penalty for missing is huge and you pretty much have to fish for heads because bodyshots don't give you much with such RoF. Sniper rifles are supposed to work from outside the comfort zone of other weapons and you have to jump through a lot of flaming hoops for that OHK privilege. If we move to a mandatory 2s+ TTK they are simply not worth it, just as PAS would be without instagib on bodyshot. That the damage degrades by 30% even before reaching their intended operating range is a harebrained design decision.
ABSOLUTELY. Devs are people too. It's kinda overwhelming for a Dev to think about the massive population that is the player community, and many of them don't really know how to interact with the players or do so in a casual way. Being a person and saying hello without being weird about it is a great way to start that connection with them. Any player that builds a relationship with a Dev is going to have a MUCH better chance of being able to communicate their thoughts and get through to that Dev. Introduce yourself with your real name, let them know that you really like the game, and let them know you are excited about the planned changes to the game and all the hard work they put in each GU. Then ask them what area they work on and express your honest (but positive) ideas on their stuff. It's very likely that they will not be the person related to the area you want to change, but that's ok. ANY inroad to the Devs is a huge leap. Value them for what they work on and build that relationship. Over time, they are far more likely to recognize and appreciate you, and are more likely to mention you as a contact if someone in their group is looking to learn more about the Class/Unit you play. Do some homework on the area that Dev works on, and followup as they release new stuff to express your support. Or be constructive and give them feedback on the area they work on. Ask about their job if you are curious or about SOE as a company or living and working in SD. If you see them at a booth IRL take the time to say hello and ask about the same things. Ask if you can get their preferred contact info so you can "ask them any follow-up questions you might have". Don't force the topics you are trying to crusade (unless they REALLY ask for it), but allow the communication to grow over time. Maximum Damage Range is the wrong stat to gauge where a weapon's effectiveness should be. Instead, you should look at the weapons"range of intended engagements". Bolt Actions have max damage at 10 meters, but this is not their most effective engagement range, especially for Bolt Actions limited to 6x -12x Scopes. I would not expect Devs to be looking up player stats on each post to determine that players "cred". Also, stats can often be misleading with regards to that players breadth of knowledge on the class or on that players wanting the same things as other players for the Class (which can be all over the board). Maybe if it listed a players play level and Class/Unit specialty on their actual post, but having to look up each player and figure out what means what is very likely not going to happen.
i suggest players.planetside2.com as a fallback for a worst case scenario of devs living on another planet and collectively having no clue what's going on in their own game. I can't imagine Highby not having idea who torokokill or mustarde are, especially when they are pretty active in the whole twitting business he likes so much. Also if the devs can't be bothered to investigate their own data rich database they have full control over, for 2 minutes with a couple of sql selects that can return any dataset they can dream of, to find out who is worthy to listen to, that means they are not really interested in what top tier players have to say. That's it. Hell, if few months ago i was able to find every inf in top1000 on all servers with their public api i have no real knowledge of and a bit of python i know a bit, they can too. If you are going to revamp the class and it takes hundreds of manhours of work to complete you better have the solid idea of what you want to achieve in the first place so the time and money are not wasted. Few minutes of time to be in the know is not too much to ask for. There are plenty examples of work intensive changes that they made out of the blue, having players dumbfounded as for why and for what purpose. Sure the devs are not omnipotent nor omniscient, but absolving them from any responsibility is not wise either. They have the sole control over the metagame because it's their spreadsheet that decides things. Them having an idea what's going on is not too much to ask for, unless we assume that they should be allowed to churn out whatever **** they want and the metagame will sort itself, somehow, and everything be peachy. If they can't be bothered to read their own forums and listen to top players who committed their time to concoct a thought out feedback, then what do they know exactly and what do they base their decisions on? Dice roll? It's not an indie flash game to justify low bar, if there is a single person on the team whose function is described by words 'balance' or 'designer' he is ******* paid to know these things and not leave everything to happy coincidences.
