5.3.2

[Haste]

the issue can be with all that though, that as mentioned u can just veto away all balance devs that do not adhere to your principles of "only balance matters", and we would continue getting lack of the fun and user experience in this equation.

Darkwind, bud, this veto doesn't exist. If someone came up with something rad, implemented it, and we shoved it on playtest and it playtested (really) well, it'd just make it into the game. I'm not some boogeyman that blocks progress. In reality, it's checking all those boxes that's the hard part, not getting me to approve something.

Balance isn't the only thing that matters. I don't know why you keep repeating this. The art of balancing a game well is to maximize fun while preserving the required balance. I'm not claiming to have already perfected this balance (hehe), but it will always be the goal. It's also a learning experience for everyone involved -- Discovery never dabbled in using mechanics like components/collisiongroups and inventing all sorts of gameplay around those took quite some time. I think most people can see the potential there, even if the execution isn't perfect (it never is).

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Regarding playtesting, I would personally love to have a "PBE"-type environment -- a public test server everyone can switch to and play on. Playtesting is a very iterative process, and a lot of the time spent on it is literally me updating the test server over and over and sending over files with tiny changes thirty times an hour during a playtest. Streamlining the process and making it easier for people to get access is absolutely something I'm interested in. Again, I don't know where you got this impression of balance being some sort of "walled garden" with limited access. I've given playtest roles to just about everyone who's ever asked and tried to help them to get in. Some people just aren't very technical and find it somewhat tricky to set up a test install properly.

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