madeking said:
Sundeki said:
madeking said:
Even if it isn't OP It does tell you that not enough instruction is given to new players on how to counter/deal with that class. Sort that pre release and you won't get as many people storming onto the forums complaining about such and such being OP once the game is released. Balancing the game based purely on people who already know what they're doing is a bad idea because that's not going to be the makeup of the real game.
I vaguely remember an interview on this subject with a dev for some game a while ago. He talked about it seemed obvious to the people who tried it internally how you were meant to pick up some item to deal with a boss yet when they tested it on players a huge number missed it and got frustrated which they hadn't foreseen.
Another example I've got for multiplayer is overwatch and reaper. In high ranked competitive gameplay it was continuously getting headshotted and taken out and just never picked while in low ranks it tended to dominate new players who couldn't deal with it. Every time they tried to balance it for high level it unbalanced low level where the majority of players are. Really it was just a poorly designed class.
Point is, just because veterans like me and you can deal with something easily doesnt mean there's no problem, you got to test these things.
Well I agree that there should be
some newer players. But how many newer players are needed to tell you that mechanic x isn't balanced for newer players (or whatever)? As a general rule, the ability to test game mechanics and weed out bugs is going to be greater from more experienced players on average.
As for the metagames surrounding different sections of the community; yeah I understand. But I don't really see how this could be prevented without operating parallel version builds. In Dota 2, in low ranking games, Sniper is generally considered OP, but is otherwise considered underpowered and almost never picked at higher level play. A buff or a nerf would completely break one region (to either always picked or never picked). I don't see how this can ever be prevented, anyway.
I agree about experienced players being better at bug testing, but certainly not balancing. As I was trying to point out, experience is actually as much of a disadavantage in testing because you can make assumptions and deductions based on that experience the majority of players wont, and the experience of the majority of players is what they care about. It will create a balance that will only suit veterans who will be the minority of the player base. Obviously when gathering data the ideal is as many samples as possible. But in terms of percentage you really want to match the demographic for the product while ensuring you are collecting decent data on every subset.
Weve been talking old vs new, but you will also want to divide further than that into new players who like adventure game, new players who like action, new players who like rpg's etc and get a sample from each of these. Then there further considerations like wanting both players with new and old hardware and other such comparisons. That's why these questions are on the form I imagine.
But you need multiple players for each of these subsets and the more you divide the smaller the number and the bigger the margin of error so you want to try to even out the numbers. (I do this type of thing as part of my job although in a completely different industry)
Which gets me back to my original point, if they are doing it this way than questions that fewer people will chose on the form might actually give you a higher success rate
Of course they could just be wanting to reward hardcore members. Who knows.
I have to disagree. Mechanically, a game is only as good as it is at its highest level of play. I doubt many here want to recreate some of the spastic animation head wringing common in many warband duels, but I also doubt anyone here wants the combat to just be a never ending back and forth because offense is terrible due to feint nerfs and animations being TOO easy to read in order to appease casuals. Noobs fighting against other noobs will have fun regardless of how hard and complex the game is. If the worry is that noobs will get slaughtered by pro players, I think the greater opposing worry is that noobs will simply stop playing because of a skill ceiling being way too low, or at least appearing that way due to the difference between an insane player and a new player simply being too small.
Insane players fighting other insane players has to be decisive in a reasonable amount of time, and superior players should be able to kill inferior players in a lower amount of time. At the same time, of course you want the mechanics to be able to assist newer players in killing efficiently if they are creative enough or capitalize on a certain opportunity.
You don't want noobs to just have 0 chance, but you also don't want noobs to be able to survive for like a zillion years due to some kind of crutch mechanic, or something lacking offensively in the game.
A defensive heavy and passive playstyle has to be punishable by aggression and superior offense. The game should promote and reward contesting for initiative and taking risks for the melee combat to be fun and enjoyable for everyone and not stale or boring.
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Feedback from noobs, for the most part, is worthless. They simply do not understand how the game works enough to point to flaws. Normally, they just complain about whatever they die to, and if you listen to noobs 100% of the time you will end up adjusting, reverting, and nerfing everything in the game and yoyoing between different patched states because all changes will be complain about. Veterans can have the exact same problems, but to a much less extreme degree. People who are actually good at the game usually understand how the game works enough to make suggestions that are actually useful and relevant. They understand how changing specific timing windows, or adjusting specific mechanics, or adjusting specific stats would drastically change the game in certain directions. A casual does not.
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The only thing casuals are good for is understanding the general sense of frustration of a game. For instance, in warband the most common complaint about multiplayer is that combat looks like this:
But a noob has no idea how the hell to fix it. A noob has no idea what should replace it and the skill that is lost. All they know is that they don't like it, and that is all their feedback is really useful for.
