Please Wait 96 Hours Before Panicking about the PTS Changes

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Insignus, Apr 19, 2017.

  1. zaspacer

    Have the Devs work on making their own version of Oracle of Death for the players. Otherwise, the test data is either very poor, very limited, or nonexistent.

    That is incorrect. A unified and strong voice of the community very much impacts Dev opinion and attention.

    I worked at Sigil. I know this to be true.

    And player backlash before even testing something tells Devs:
    1) players have currently built up a distrust of Devs
    2) players don't want their game continued to be messed with in this way
    3) players are riled up and highly negatively emotional
  2. Insignus

    I'm not saying you shouldn't have a strong and unified voice.

    I'm merely saying that said voice should be saying something, rather than just howling perpetual obscenities regardless of what they do, and dismissing and denigrating them as people without pausing to look at what they've done.

    We now have more information about how the changes that are proposed are working and interacting, so we can start making our concerns well known.

    But when they first released the patches, there was a tidal wave of people who clearly hadn't even finished reading the patch notes, which were quite extensive. They jumped immediately to their snow-flake, saw that someone had breathed on it, and then did a GOTOSALT function call on the redditmachine. You had people on the same page of the reddit ranting that rocket launchers had been nerfed to be useless, and that all vehicles were now garbage because rockets were OP.

    Then you have an entire other group of people who don't even want to read the patch notes. They just want nothing to be changed ever.

    Am I happy with the changes? Some yes, some no. Am I willing to dismiss all of them out of hand as garbage? No. Because that wouldn't really be fair to anyone, now would it?

    On the test data subject, yes, I agree something akin to a new Oracle of Death would be very useful. In lieu of that, objective, recorded tests with some basic design and forethought will work.
    • Up x 2
  3. zaspacer

    There aren't a lot of ways to coordinate large numbers in or out of game. The best way to do it is when the patch post goes up. That's just the reality of it. It provides unified voice, tacked onto a specific topic, placed in a specific area, within a short window of time.

    The Devs have established a long and consistent track record. At this point, I don't think the players need to rely on new findings to understand that track record.

    What information would that be?

    The Devs have established a long and consistent track record. At this point, I don't think the players need to rely on new findings to understand that track record.

    Reddit has been a mess for years. Why are you expecting them not to be a mess. Reddit has established a long and consistent track record. At this point, I don't think we need to rely on new findings to understand that track record.

    Wait, that's a bad thing? What's wrong with someone not wanting things changed?

    The Devs have established a long and consistent track record. You don't have to rely on new findings to understand where they are driving to.

    If you feel that someone has kicked you in the teeth over and over, you don't have to make sure they kick you in the teeth again before you get angry.

    How hard is it for them to make/maintain an Oracle? Can you think of anything else in the Dev pipeline that would be as much bang for the buck?

    Objective recorded tests just show you ~TTK in a lab. It's helpful, but it is a far cry from actual big picture data/understanding.
    • Up x 1
  4. DarkStarAnubis

    I don't get it (disclaimer : i am working in the software industry since the nineties - so yes I am an old guy): DBG has tons of ways to understand what the player base wants (bottom-up approach) or can appoint a Product Manager (top-down approach) who'll shape the roadmap of PS2 but it isn't doing either.

    This choice is confusing and frustrating at the same time.

    I have read the (extremely vague) announcement about combined arms initiative and compared it with the changes to armor/AP weapons/MANPADs and unguided rockets announced in the last notes: I am lost in trying to relate logically the first thing with the second but I failed miserably.

    I understand the "incremental" way of doing things, it is not exactly new since the industry has been using I&I methods since 25 years at least, however there is an huge difference between introducing changes step by step with a long-term design in mind and "trying" th ings just to see what happens.

    My impression is that nobody sees a leadership for a simple reason: there isn't!

    Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong in NOT setting a direction for PS2 (not a goal, but a strategy to achieve the goal and its implementation), providing you counter it by listening to the player base (aka your customers) and there are ways to do that:

    Make a general pool about "10 things to change and/or improve" in PS2, collect and collate the results and work on it to set some direction.

    Make periodic and very precise polls about changes proposing alternative ways to achieve a result and letting the majority choose (e. g. to avoid the railjack being OP should a firing delay be introduced or the damage/bullet speed/reload time/rounds in magazine should be nerfed? ")

    Open discussion tables around philosophical questions (e. g. "should logistic have a role in PS2 or all people wants/needs is the Instant Action button? ")

    ... And so on

    At the moment neither choice is clear, and DBG seems to have developed a relationship with its customer base that is similar to the one being developed between a dog handler and his dog where the poor dog (the customer) is beaten and rewarded randomly ("I give you thermals so you can farm kills like crazy! " -"I take thermals back").

    The outcome is an histeric dog (what we are today, jumping at the slightest patch and yelling a cacophony of "Nerf this!" "Buff that!" endlessly).