Top 3 Questions From Mercenary Community to Developers - Odawgg

[kennethdale]

If I wanted to get players into my game I'd say anything too.

 

And I'm sure if I went to Wildstar I'd be happy with the new shiny game. Because it's a shiny new experience.

 

Then I'd go back into the same state I have here, knowing a great deal about the game and knowing its flaws and waiting in a bored way for the next update.

 

Between being bored I would likely spend time being frustrated about balance issues, the lemming rush of players towards the best classes and the developers slow and suspect attempts to equalise classes.

 

Do you know anything about Wildstar? They have been communicating weekly updates on development, features, design goals, having very regular discussions with players about features they'd like, and are extremely accessible at the conventions they've been at. For two years. Before their game is even released. Albeit, the second they have my money in their pocket they could just turn all evil and go "HAHAHA I HAVE YOUR MONEEZ NOW I WILL DO EVIL THINGS LIKE IGNORE YOU!" but I find it hard to believe the amount of work they do when no one is playing the game to communicate is going to be a whole hell of a lot different from the amount of work they do once people are playing the game. If that is indeed the case, they'll lose pretty much all of their subs in the first few weeks so again, doubtful. Bioware on the other hand: Spent two years ignoring players and their thoughts, comments, and concerns decided to pay attention to all of that (from their point of view) "whining" and then before they even got through all of it decided "Nah, f*ck 'em."

 

You know it's bad when they've pushed Kenn over the cynical edge LOL.

 

I'm not necessarily as upset as you but only because I was half expecting this as soon as Eric announced the delay earlier in the week.

 

Besides if you don't laugh you cry.

 

I've honestly reached the point where I am trying to decide if the people who currently work for Bioware are really this stupid or if they are actually trying to get people to stop playing this game. At this point, I'd have to guess its the latter because it just seems completely infeasible that a group of people could all collectively not realize the effect of ignoring your playerbase for over a year, deciding that in spite of their words what they want is one or two cool vanity items and one million horrible ones, telling two entire advanced classes that they need to learn to play, breaking your promise to definitely have answers for the advanced classes this week, then breaking their promise to definitely have answers for us next week all in the name of getting out a patch that they've stated won't have much of an effect on class balance. Its either insanity or a really well executed plan to lose subscriptions. I'll admit I'm still subbed but that is because there is a group of people who rely on me to raid. If that raid fell apart or when Wildstar comes out, I'll be gone. Seriously, they are like rapists who say "Really, absolutely PROMISE we're done with that whole ****** thing. Promise. Now why don't you sleep over tonight?"

 

[EDIT: Really? ****** is cool but r a p i n g isn't?]

[odawgg]

At this point, these answers better be really effing good or the wrath of odawgg will be felt by all

[Phrase]

Do you know anything about Wildstar? They have been communicating weekly updates on development, features, design goals, having very regular discussions with players about features they'd like, and are extremely accessible at the conventions they've been at. For two years. Before their game is even released. Albeit, the second they have my money in their pocket they could just turn all evil and go "HAHAHA I HAVE YOUR MONEEZ NOW I WILL DO EVIL THINGS LIKE IGNORE YOU!" but I find it hard to believe the amount of work they do when no one is playing the game to communicate is going to be a whole hell of a lot different from the amount of work they do once people are playing the game. If that is indeed the case, they'll lose pretty much all of their subs in the first few weeks so again, doubtful. Bioware on the other hand: Spent two years ignoring players and their thoughts, comments, and concerns decided to pay attention to all of that (from their point of view) "whining" and then before they even got through all of it decided "Nah, f*ck 'em."

 

 

 

I've honestly reached the point where I am trying to decide if the people who currently work for Bioware are really this stupid or if they are actually trying to get people to stop playing this game. At this point, I'd have to guess its the latter because it just seems completely infeasible that a group of people could all collectively not realize the effect of ignoring your playerbase for over a year, deciding that in spite of their words what they want is one or two cool vanity items and one million horrible ones, telling two entire advanced classes that they need to learn to play, breaking your promise to definitely have answers for the advanced classes this week, then breaking their promise to definitely have answers for us next week all in the name of getting out a patch that they've stated won't have much of an effect on class balance. Its either insanity or a really well executed plan to lose subscriptions. I'll admit I'm still subbed but that is because there is a group of people who rely on me to raid. If that raid fell apart or when Wildstar comes out, I'll be gone. Seriously, they are like rapists who say "Really, absolutely PROMISE we're done with that whole ****** thing. Promise. Now why don't you sleep over tonight?"

 

[EDIT: Really? ****** is cool but r a p i n g isn't?]

 

I think it's actually that many of them probably don't care all that much. Haven't you ever had a job that you did until something better came along?

[Gyronamics]

Do you know anything about Wildstar? They have been communicating weekly updates on development, features, design goals, having very regular discussions with players about features they'd like, and are extremely accessible at the conventions they've been at. For two years. Before their game is even released. Albeit, the second they have my money in their pocket they could just turn all evil and go "HAHAHA I HAVE YOUR MONEEZ NOW I WILL DO EVIL THINGS LIKE IGNORE YOU!" but I find it hard to believe the amount of work they do when no one is playing the game to communicate is going to be a whole hell of a lot different from the amount of work they do once people are playing the game. If that is indeed the case, they'll lose pretty much all of their subs in the first few weeks so again, doubtful. Bioware on the other hand: Spent two years ignoring players and their thoughts, comments, and concerns decided to pay attention to all of that (from their point of view) "whining" and then before they even got through all of it decided "Nah, f*ck 'em."]

 

No that's ridiculous.

 

But to think that when there's class changes that it will happen any faster or be more effective in Wildstar is fantasy.

 

Open dialogue instead of this badly organised fixed question session here (which looks like we'll only get half of what was promised) is a good thing if they can keep it up.

 

Whether they will let players influence what they are doing any more than developers will here is questionable.

[phat_maban]

Im giving the benefit of the doubt that they are trying really hard not to do a H2F thing again.

 

im also hoping these are exceptional answers as feeling Odawgg's wrath doesn't rate highly on my list of things to feel

[cashogy_reborn]

If I wanted to get players into my game I'd say anything too.

 

And I'm sure if I went to Wildstar I'd be happy with the new shiny game. Because it's a shiny new experience.

 

Then I'd go back into the same state I have here, knowing a great deal about the game and knowing its flaws and waiting in a bored way for the next update.

 

Between being bored I would likely spend time being frustrated about balance issues, the lemming rush of players towards the best classes and the developers slow and suspect attempts to equalise classes.

 

In defense of Wildstar, Carbine has already done a massive revamp of their quest system based off of feedback from their closed beta programs. The Carbine devs seem to be talking the talk and walking the walk (so far).

 

 

Regarding balance, it is still way too early to say with Wildstar. So few people have even played, and the game is not even entirely implemented even on the closed beta servers. Its just way too early to say one way or the other with that game at this point. However, my guy is telling me there are good things coming out of Carbine.

 

 

 

As far as these questions go, I just dont get it. Even a stupidly detailed answer would take someone maybe a day to produce. At the most it should take a week to get these done (every other round was 1 week or less iirc).

 

Honestly, I am half thinking that the devs have literally never played Mercenary/Commando, and had no idea what we were talking about at all. So maybe they have been learning the class the last 2 weeks?

[Zoom_VI]

My guess is they are all in scramble mode with 2.4 so near. Although its not like they couldn't have looked at their calendar and been like "oh look those merc questions come really close to the 2.4 deadline maybe we should make some accommodations for this beforehand"

[odawgg]

Honestly, I am half thinking that the devs have literally never played Mercenary/Commando, and had no idea what we were talking about at all. So maybe they have been learning the class the last 2 weeks?

 

Haha, well if this is the case I'm willing to wait another couple months to let them learn

[CommanderKeeva]

Haha, well if this is the case I'm willing to wait another couple months to let them learn

 

Yeah I reckon they're stuck between having to promise to properly balance these classes and not having enough time/money/tech/resources to actually do so. So on one hand, they can't afford to let us know that they can't do squat about class balance but on the other, they really can't do squat about class balance.

 

Hence, they keep stalling for time in the hopes that some magical solution will present itself, but guess not, it won't. If we're lucky, we'll get answers similar to what Juggernauts got (we realize that pure DPS are more desirable than non-pure DPS but we don't know when we can actually do anything about it), if not, we'll just get the perception problem, E2PH2M L2HYTF make the bosses pay for trying to kill you answer.

 

In either case, I would be the most surprised here if they actually did anything about class balance.

[kennethdale]

Haha, well if this is the case I'm willing to wait another couple months to let them learn

 

"Wait, how much do these abilities cost? And what is this bar under the one for my health. Why does it fill up so damn fast?"

[oaceen]

My guess is they are all in scramble mode with 2.4 so near. Although its not like they couldn't have looked at their calendar and been like "oh look those merc questions come really close to the 2.4 deadline maybe we should make some accommodations for this beforehand"

 

the first sentence of your post made me immediately think of what you described in the rest of it that it made me feel you were reading my mind as i continued to read your post O_o

 

also, with that in mind, i have a feeling we won't get the answers until after tuesday.

i just don't even know what will happen to the universe if we get another 'heal to full' after having waited this long for answers. i went on vacation for a week and just got back, so i haven't been sitting around so-to-speak, but i kind of expected some answers when i came back home today.

[cashogy_reborn]

the first sentence of your post made me immediately think of what you described in the rest of it that it made me feel you were reading my mind as i continued to read your post O_o

 

also, with that in mind, i have a feeling we won't get the answers until after tuesday.

i just don't even know what will happen to the universe if we get another 'heal to full' after having waited this long for answers. i went on vacation for a week and just got back, so i haven't been sitting around so-to-speak, but i kind of expected some answers when i came back home today.

 

If we get heal to full answers, I will be using my questions to troll bioware.

[metalfenix]

If we get heal to full answers, I will be using my questions to troll bioware.

 

Heal2Full will be the answers to the merc's questions, in shadow's case, will be: play like a lone wolf, stealth for the win, and taunt2Full

[venomlash]

While we wait, I'd like to bounce an idea around.

 

Assertion: now that all Bounty Hunters get Hydraulic Overrides, Degauss (talent in the Pyrotech tree) should be removed and replaced with a useful defensive talent.

while(devs.response(questions.mercenary)==null){
       thumbs.twiddle();
}

[NathanielStarr]

I can't help but think if this was a jedi knight or sith warrior we would've already got our answers. Maybe not enough people play merc compared to other classes.

[SpaniardInfinity]

I can't help but think if this was a jedi knight or sith warrior we would've already got our answers. Maybe not enough people play merc compared to other classes.

 

I'm just waiting to see how much they screw up their answers to be honest. I'm personally looking forward to how they explain question #2 specifically while not conceding that they are wrong, since its really the only question I don't see any way to wiggle out of and give a stupid "perspective" answer. I've got my popcorn ready for when they find a way against all odds.

[Zoom_VI]

I'm just waiting to see how much they screw up their answers to be honest. I'm personally looking forward to how they explain question #2 specifically while not conceding that they are wrong, since its really the only question I don't see any way to wiggle out of and give a stupid "perspective" answer. I've got my popcorn ready for when they find a way against all odds.

 

#2 will probably something along the lines of "your not a utility class" which I suppose might be true considering what they said they intended the class to be back at launch.

 

The delay is probably nothing to do with mercs, I'm guess its the shadows because that whole shadow spikyness has been a thorn in BW's side since the nightmare mode release, and sinc ethe shadows are throwing legitimate math at them they have to be very careful or this could blow up in their faces worse that H2F did.

[kennethdale]

I can't help but think if this was a jedi knight or sith warrior we would've already got our answers. Maybe not enough people play merc compared to other classes.

 

Gosh who'd have guesses that someone with a signature that says QQ Warriors and Knights are OP and the rest of us suck would think that. No, its not like they delayed the Juggernaut answers either or ignored the fact that in truth Vengeance dps is one of the lowest of any class in the game going as far to say that if they fixed the RNG issues that plague that spec they'd also have to nerf their top end damage basically keeping them below damn near every other dps. As it stands now they are ahead of only PT dos (tested in live, not PTS), Deception Sin, and Rage Jugg. I realize this is off topic but I posted this for 2 reasons 1) I'm so sick of people claiming that Warriors are just stupidly overpowered when the reality is that the gap between most classes is tiny. 2) That mentality of "If we were just X class then we wouldn't be in this situation" only leads to poorly made comparisons that in turn create hostility between players foe no reason other than you chose x when I chose y. That is so pointless and flat out stupid that it simply must stop. Every class has some serious issues, but for the most part they are all decent at the moment. There are notable exceptions but Merc/Mando is not one.

[odawgg]

Gosh who'd have guesses that someone with a signature that says QQ Warriors and Knights are OP and the rest of us suck would think that. No, its not like they delayed the Juggernaut answers either or ignored the fact that in truth Vengeance dps is one of the lowest of any class in the game going as far to say that if they fixed the RNG issues that plague that spec they'd also have to nerf their top end damage basically keeping them below damn near every other dps. As it stands now they are ahead of only PT dos (tested in live, not PTS), Deception Sin, and Rage Jugg. I realize this is off topic but I posted this for 2 reasons 1) I'm so sick of people claiming that Warriors are just stupidly overpowered when the reality is that the gap between most classes is tiny. 2) That mentality of "If we were just X class then we wouldn't be in this situation" only leads to poorly made comparisons that in turn create hostility between players foe no reason other than you chose x when I chose y. That is so pointless and flat out stupid that it simply must stop. Every class has some serious issues, but for the most part they are all decent at the moment. There are notable exceptions but Merc/Mando is not one.

 

Although I wouldn't compare mercs with mara's, I would compare them with snipers, mara's are stupidly OP, not as stupidly as Snipers. The two pure dps classes have gotten preferential treatment since day one...rarely nerfed, often buffed, opposite of most other classes. All you have to do is look at torparse top 50, enough said.

 

Edit: but yeah it's off topic, I would just add that I agree in partial to your comment on merc/mandos, we are in the upper-middle of the pack, not undesirable, but you have to be pretty good to simply compete

[kennethdale]

Although I wouldn't compare mercs with mara's, I would compare them with snipers, mara's are stupidly OP, not as stupidly as Snipers. The two pure dps classes have gotten preferential treatment since day one...rarely nerfed, often buffed, opposite of most other classes. All you have to do is look at torparse top 50, enough said.

 

Edit: but yeah it's off topic, I would just add that I agree in partial to your comment on merc/mandos, we are in the upper-middle of the pack, not undesirable, but you have to be pretty good to simply compete

 

The issue with using the top 50 is that it only reflects the top parses submitted and in no way reflects how many of each class there are. Lets be frank: more people play Mara or Sniper than any other single ac. Simply based on the law of large numbers, more people playing those classes means more people putting up higher numbers means more spots in the top 50. Especially if you're looking purely at on dummy dps which allows classes that have no execute, provide their own armor debuff, and incorporate large scale aoe to put up non realistic numbers. Theory is rarely the same as empirical evidence but the dps scalars thread seems to mirror a lot of opinions on specific classes. For example, many people have played around with Pyro and come to think of it as pretty decent and according to KBNs numbers it actually should theoretically best out arsenal. Similarly, Wildberry, one of the top shadow dps said in the past that Ahadow dpa (particularly balance) was nowhere near as bad as some had claimed, and that is also supported. Even the devs seem to have a win on the books in that snipers parsing without orbital lose a significant chunk of dps and Annihilation is higher than Carnage for Maras. Conversely, I personally have been fighting to get significant buffs to Vengeance but have been met with others laughing at me saying I need to l2p when in reality they are literally sitting at the bottom of the pack. The issues arise when these start to move into real fights where mechanics get in the way of being able to fully execute rotations and as a result the classes that can recover quickest from those shifts or mechanics get the biggest real world numbers. Those happen to be Carnage Maras and Snipers.

 

As a side note, Mercs in the real world are in an odd place imo. If a mechanic forces everyone to stop dps, this is slightly beneficial for us since it means you can push your heat a bit further and then allow it to regen at no cost for a period as well as the down time basically eating away chunks of time from our overly long CDs. However, if that mechanic requires us to move, we take a much larger penalty that a lot of other classes because we have to save CDs for those movements and then burn a lot of heat during it just to try and keep that dps up. Adding to that issue is the absolute lack of a real gap closer (HO being only 30% makes it pretty irrelevant in terms of moving from one spot to another efficiently). Its an interesting conundrum.

[odawgg]

The issue with using the top 50 is that it only reflects the top parses submitted and in no way reflects how many of each class there are. Lets be frank: more people play Mara or Sniper than any other single ac. Simply based on the law of large numbers, more people playing those classes means more people putting up higher numbers means more spots in the top 50. Especially if you're looking purely at on dummy dps which allows classes that have no execute, provide their own armor debuff, and incorporate large scale aoe to put up non realistic numbers. Theory is rarely the same as empirical evidence but the dps scalars thread seems to mirror a lot of opinions on specific classes. For example, many people have played around with Pyro and come to think of it as pretty decent and according to KBNs numbers it actually should theoretically best out arsenal. Similarly, Wildberry, one of the top shadow dps said in the past that Ahadow dpa (particularly balance) was nowhere near as bad as some had claimed, and that is also supported. Even the devs seem to have a win on the books in that snipers parsing without orbital lose a significant chunk of dps and Annihilation is higher than Carnage for Maras. Conversely, I personally have been fighting to get significant buffs to Vengeance but have been met with others laughing at me saying I need to l2p when in reality they are literally sitting at the bottom of the pack. The issues arise when these start to move into real fights where mechanics get in the way of being able to fully execute rotations and as a result the classes that can recover quickest from those shifts or mechanics get the biggest real world numbers. Those happen to be Carnage Maras and Snipers.

 

As a side note, Mercs in the real world are in an odd place imo. If a mechanic forces everyone to stop dps, this is slightly beneficial for us since it means you can push your heat a bit further and then allow it to regen at no cost for a period as well as the down time basically eating away chunks of time from our overly long CDs. However, if that mechanic requires us to move, we take a much larger penalty that a lot of other classes because we have to save CDs for those movements and then burn a lot of heat during it just to try and keep that dps up. Adding to that issue is the absolute lack of a real gap closer (HO being only 30% makes it pretty irrelevant in terms of moving from one spot to another efficiently). Its an interesting conundrum.

 

Naturally the game will be filled with more mara's and snipers since they are FOTM (more like FOT2Years), only BW has the ability to change that with class balance. I wasn't referring to dummy parses, I was referring to boss parses. I raid with some of the top mara's/snipers in the world and I consider myself a pretty decent merc...It's extremely rare I finish within earshot on 'most' fights...I've come to accept that and embrace my role to off heal/cleanse when a fight (barring dps races) allows for it, but I nor many of the merc community want that to be our permanent role. Why? cuz that's not really what raid leaders want from their dps personnel.

 

There is a middle ground here, I agree that when mastered, "most" other specs can compete and have a place in raid, but you take an equally skilled player playing sniper/mara and it's gonna be 'preferred', period. Regardless of the fact that you are accurate this game is filled with QQ'ers that think their class is **** when in reality it's better than they think when played right.

 

As a side note, Pyro is only awesome right now cuz of what appears to be a bug with the PPA proc, the second that gets adjusted back to tooltip-like game play, they will go back to ****. Let's hope the Devs leave that alone, cuz it actually brings them close to snipers on 'select' fights. The game can never be completely balanced, I think we can all agree with that...there's just some aspects to the merc/mando class that seem silly, those outlined in the 3 questions in the OP, and is fair to say they need a 2nd look at. We're not saying we're underpowered, but we have received several unnecessary nerfs and the only logical explanation is that the devs want the pure dps classes to stand out dps-wise, regardless of what they told the other classes in the recent Q&As, hopefully they make some adjustments, we'll see.......

[kennethdale]

Naturally the game will be filled with more mara's and snipers since they are FOTM (more like FOT2Years), only BW has the ability to change that with class balance. I wasn't referring to dummy parses, I was referring to boss parses. I raid with some of the top mara's/snipers in the world and I consider myself a pretty decent merc...It's extremely rare I finish within earshot on 'most' fights...I've come to accept that and embrace my role to off heal/cleanse when a fight (barring dps races) allows for it, but I nor many of the merc community want that to be our permanent role. Why? cuz that's not really what raid leaders want from their dps personnel.

 

There is a middle ground here, I agree that when mastered, "most" other specs can compete and have a place in raid, but you take an equally skilled player playing sniper/mara and it's gonna be 'preferred', period. Regardless of the fact that you are accurate this game is filled with QQ'ers that think their class is **** when in reality it's better than they think when played right.

 

As a side note, Pyro is only awesome right now cuz of what appears to be a bug with the PPA proc, the second that gets adjusted back to tooltip-like game play, they will go back to ****. Let's hope the Devs leave that alone, cuz it actually brings them close to snipers on 'select' fights. The game can never be completely balanced, I think we can all agree with that...there's just some aspects to the merc/mando class that seem silly, those outlined in the 3 questions in the OP, and is fair to say they need a 2nd look at. We're not saying we're underpowered, but we have received several unnecessary nerfs and the only logical explanation is that the devs want the pure dps classes to stand out dps-wise, regardless of what they told the other classes in the recent Q&As, hopefully they make some adjustments, we'll see.......

 

Oh I definitely see your point and I agree but I think a lot of it cones down to the current design of a lot of encounters that favor Snipers in that they can roll out of effects or even cheese them completely and be back to dpsing in one gcd. Mercs on the other hand have to deal with every mechanic, have very limited options for dpsing on the move, and on top of that can't even move quickly. As a result, on fights like DG, Op9, Kephess, TFB, Dash, Titan, Olok, and to an extent Styrak there is almost a penalty associated with being a Merc DPS since not only can't you move efficiently, you also can't DPS while moving in those fights efficiently. I think that is a glaring issue that the devs haven't had to answer for yet because we focus too much on what this class doesn't do and too little on why they can't do it.

 

I could be wrong but the only fight partially offers a benefit to Mercs is TC since during the laser no one can damage, our debuffs will stay on GF, and we can sit back and regen heat. If I do things right there I've had times where I just couldn't max out my heat without pushing during the laser. Again, this is less of a class balance issue and more of an encounter design issue. I've had an argument with a friend of mine for a few weeks now about whether or not the encounters in this game are interesting and my biggest point is that while the specific mechanics might be widely different, the ways in which those mechanics force us as players to act are all the same: Move out of something, change targets and burn, make sure you don't go into that effect...etc. Its boring.

[SpaniardInfinity]

#2 will probably something along the lines of "your not a utility class" which I suppose might be true considering what they said they intended the class to be back at launch.

 

The delay is probably nothing to do with mercs, I'm guess its the shadows because that whole shadow spikyness has been a thorn in BW's side since the nightmare mode release, and sinc ethe shadows are throwing legitimate math at them they have to be very careful or this could blow up in their faces worse that H2F did.

 

Most likely. I'm pretty sure at this point that the number of people playing Merc and end-game are probably insignificant compared to all the others. I still want to see just how foolish they make themselves sound in the process like "your utility cooldowns have double the cooldown one of the game's best defensive cooldowns (Guarded by the Force)" because you "aren't a utility class". A much more accurate and honest response would be "we had to look up what all of your abilities do in our spellbook because we didn't know what any of them were."

[CommanderKeeva]

So........any chance of seeing the answers before 2.4 a.k.a today? Or are the developers so busy with the launch of the new patch that we won't see the answers until after the patch is live?

[AMightyKnight]

I dont think they are still working on 2.4, It probably was finished sometime last week. But since there wont be any class balance changes (other than the stuff which was on the pts weeks ago) the class dev(s) are most likely working on 2.5 already. Which effectively means they could have answered our questions two weeks ago but chose not to. If i had to guess, considering the working enviroment at Bioware/EA, they are pissed off with the community team for dumping the hole thing on them. After the h2f desaster they got the higher ups to cancel the second round of questions but they were still stuck with us. So we have to wait just because they are devs with some real work to do, not community managers.