5.3.2

[Dark Chocolate]

feels like, if Haste was a president, people would have probably raised already a Vote Of No Confidence procedure to vote the president out of an office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence

Haste described to me his logic how he designs the numbers for his balance. i see his thinking and understand that anything related to fun is not part of the equation. Or even more like, any fun gameplay is treated as abuse in this equation and counter balanced at every possible level.

Yes. I Vote for No Confidence against Haste for making caps absolute chore to play.
I'd have done it long ago when 5.0 updates started dropping. It's as if the game is punishing us for playing caps.
The absurd cap gameplay deteriorates my taste for an otherwise awesome game and overshadows the incredible work being done by other devs.
I vote to escort him out of the dev office.

[JadeTornado]

snip

Well said. I heard pretty much the same from another dev, and that makes me vote against Haste as well. It might have been better if we had a better testing process and more frequent patches done by various people, but it seems he doesn't want to delegate it. *shrug*

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In a live role playing environment, you are not owed or mandated to be given a duel. Fights develop differently every time and people have varying degree of time to log on their hands or have their own plans.

Cap PVP discord server

[Haste]

i see his thinking and understand that anything related to fun is not part of the equation. Or even more like, any fun gameplay is treated as abuse in this equation and counter balanced at every possible level.

Not that long ago, I spent half an hour explaining to you how -- as an example -- I think the current cruiser rework missed the mark, because after extensive playtesting and balancing, numbers had to be neutered to such an extent that most of the power fantasy and resulting fun was gone. I also explained to you the concept of a power budget, which is really not something I made up. Objectively, if we take a class like cruisers and just remove shield drain from them, we'll be dramatically raising their power level. This will then create imbalances, and require nerfs so cruisers aren't the only viable PvP class. I don't really know what it is about this that you don't understand, but I'm incredibly tired of having to repeat the same points to you time and time again.

I also don't think a patch notes thread is the place to have this discussion. People are welcome to apply to be balance developers and as I've said in that same discussion you (Darkwind) were involved in, I'd like to onboard a developer (or multiple) via another pass at cruisers. And yes, it is likely I would keep more gameplay mechanics than "Zoom out" and "Wiggle slightly while destroying your hands with STS", which is apparently the gameplay some people sorely miss. Doesn't even necessarily mean shield toggling has to remain, or has to remain as much of a focal point. Nothing is locked in, and anyone who's participated in any playtesting knows how much designs often end up diverging from whatever I originally cooked up.

You seem to think balance can simply be sacrificed on the altar of fun, and that that would somehow maximize the latter. It wouldn't, though. You need both, because otherwise you're going to get an incredibly stale game where whatever's broken dominates the meta.

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[darkwind]

Not that long ago, I spent half an hour explaining to you how -- as an example -- I think the current cruiser rework missed the mark, because after extensive playtesting and balancing, numbers had to be neutered to such an extent that most of the power fantasy and resulting fun was gone. I also explained to you the concept of a power budget, which is really not something I made up. Objectively, if we take a class like cruisers and just remove shield drain from them, we'll be dramatically raising their power level. This will then create imbalances, and require nerfs so cruisers aren't the only viable PvP class. I don't really know what it is about this that you don't understand, but I'm incredibly tired of having to repeat the same points to you time and time again.

I also don't think a patch notes thread is the place to have this discussion. People are welcome to apply to be balance developers and as I've said in that same discussion you (Darkwind) were involved in, I'd like to onboard a developer (or multiple) via another pass at cruisers.

:thumbs up:. Yes, i saw your point and balance of thinking.
And you are right that devs should be onboarded by doing work for example at cruisers.

after all, new balance devs should be able to put energy to fixing things. So it is a call to people, if u wish balance being changed, apply to change it.

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.

You seem to think balance can simply be sacrificed on the altar of fun, and that that would somehow maximize the latter. It wouldn't, though. You need both, because otherwise you're going to get an incredibly stale game where whatever's broken dominates the meta.

I do not think that way, surely we need both, but for now we are getting only "the balance part out of it" with sacrificing anything going against it.
I think we can still sacrifice some "measure" of balance to receive fun though. COMPLETE BALANCE and FUN GAMEPLAY sound like impossible things to get at the same time, and some sacrifices on BOTH sides should be made to reach a golden balance. for now sacrifices were 100% only on the fun side for many years at this point. User Experience, user gameplay usage cases that they were happy to play and would not be able to play further with happened changes, it was all VERY neglected for years. And a lot of effort imo needs to be made to undo the happened damage first.

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.

As always when i write any complain i have to suggest a fix of going forward by my own policy:
Perhaps as a way to fix it all that in a quick way now, a bit more transparency to balance changes and writing things planned in advance done being about them even before they are fully implemented?
Then you could save effort on doing all the hard work for changes that will be too much not considering user experience and fun further?
Take example from StarSector, they print their change notes way in advance including balance ones https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index...ic=35147.0
That could give time community to do input, and give feedback before all the hard word you do is put to place to make it all the way for all the ships.

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[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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[darkwind]

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.

Does it? You are balance dev lead. Your vote and opinion pretty much will be for 50% (at minimum.) the only ones mattering in any new balance dev hiring process
The current processes to do any development in Discovery today presume getting applied to Disco team first.

Otherwise if u can try gathering all the feedback from community https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=207817 regarding shape of cloaks, you can try submitting player request with changes at forum proposed. You will receive 2 months silent treatment, zero feedback what is discussed regarding your player request and you will receive ambiguous

After discussion and deliberation the team thinks that a boost to cloaking is not the way forward at present and would be pushing against balance considerations.

There is ZERO transparency, ZERO interactions with feedback to proceed with all that. ZERO discussions what is against the araised points, and how person could MODIFY his request for the request to work. ZERO ways how person could APPEAL to make his possible changes through.
Any person that will TRY contributing in ANY way will just die awaiting 2 months onto attempts of what they suggested.
Any enthusiasm they had to make changes will be dead in two months of zero answers on the ongoing discussion progress.

If we wish CONTRIBUTIONS to work. we need a different level of TRANSPARENCY. at minimum a person should be able to see his own msg of a request he makes and see answers arriving to it before decision was made.
Otherwise it is inifinity trap of a time and effort trying to communicating anything there.
Discovery Team is Multi Hierarchically made system of putting WALLS against input of all players. Against ALL OTHERS even already present in the dev team itself.

I do not believe it is going to work in the way it is established currently. Communication channels needs to be revisioned for that to be possible at all.
Some "Ticket handling" system that allows a person to see its own ticket and interact with dev team should be present for a way to communicate at all.

Player NEEDS to receive any ONGOING progress feedback sooner than before final decision in two month.
multiple INTERACTIONS WITH FEEDBACK should be present for contributions to work.
Players NEED TO KNOW how they can COMMUNICATE (instead of writing to silent wall (of invisibled msgs) with zero visibility until the ambigious final decision)

Since i once again complain, i should suggest a clear visible fix the problem:
i can volunteer in helping establishing such ticketing system.

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[Haste]

Alright, I'm not going to reply to these entire rant posts as this is simply not the place for this discussion, so I'll respond to one final point.

There is ZERO transparency, ZERO interactions with feedback to proceed with all that. ZERO discussions what is against the araised points, and how person could MODIFY his request for the request to work. ZERO ways how person could APPEAL to make his possible changes through.

You are incredibly wrong.

Balance is an iterative process. Changes are made and then tested, and then further tuned as required based on testing. It is extremely rare that we get to just make a fire-and-forget change that gets shipped directly to prod unless it's a very simple and predictable change. People who are interested in influencing this process can do so either as balance developers, but a much lower (near zero, really) barrier to entry would be participating in the playtesting process. You get to literally be there, on voice chat, trying changes and providing feedback. Ideas can be tried out in minutes -- provided they're number changes and not large-scale reworks, of course.

Balance is the department that sends out hundreds of playtest zips of the entire mod where previously something like that was unheard of. "Zero transparency" is such an absurd claim in that context.

Your approach has been to make polls that effectively say "Hey, would you like everything you've ever used to be more powerful and better with no drawbacks (without considering that this might just make the game worse in general)?" You make the equivalent of polls asking people "Hey, would you like free money?" and then point at them and demand change. This is, indeed, not how it works, and I don't see myself ever operating that way. Especially not when it comes to balance.

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[Groshyr]

Alright, I'm not going to reply to these entire rant posts as this is simply not the place for this discussion, so I'll respond to one final point.

Very convenient

[darkwind]

People who are interested in influencing this process can do so either as balance developers, but a much lower (near zero, really) barrier to entry would be participating in the playtesting process. You get to literally be there, on voice chat, trying changes and providing feedback. Ideas can be tried out in minutes -- provided they're number changes and not large-scale reworks, of course.

Balance is the department that sends out hundreds of playtest zips of the entire mod where previously something like that was unheard of. "Zero transparency" is such an absurd claim in that context.

Okay, playtest may indeed the answer. it was not very obvious such concept does exist and players can take part in it.
Some tutorial on getting started into balance dev contribution would be helpful for people to know how to participate in this process
Consider putting just one small document regarding balance dev processes getting started. At least very simple one mentioning what exists, how to communicate and onboard. and "pinned" in some very noticable place as one first pages.

Still in danger of you influencing all the playtesters towards your vision though and vetoing any possible balance that considers having fun though.

Your approach has been to make polls that effectively say "Hey, would you like everything you've ever used to be more powerful and better with no drawbacks (without considering that this might just make the game worse in general)?" You make the equivalent of polls asking people "Hey, would you like free money?" and then point at them and demand change. This is, indeed, not how it works, and I don't see myself ever operating that way. Especially not when it comes to balance.

You have rolled out Balance once again fully to the Balance Numbers only. You should consider sometimes thinking that if person played in specific way, and the gameplay existed at all:
- Cloaking smugglers
- Catching people by trying to intercept them while cloaked
- jump driving trading (to heck with multi jumps of trading ships, u could have left personal jumps present)
- Hyper Scanning coordinates
- playing in combat Capital vessels and using them in even PVE
u should not delete it out of gameplay entirely (or entirely disabling in every way), otherwise game-plays/factions around that will be gone together with players.
If you delete gameplay in every way, the players do not continue trying to squeeze into remaining 5% of remaining usability to item. the game play is just gone. Factions become gone. ( https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...space+scan heck entire faction existed decicated to hyper scanning )

The new cloaking for example completely is not working to even jump scare people. It was difficult already before when u had TLAGSNET access and could ESTIMATE where person will appear and try CHASE the person to intercept him while remaining cloaked.
The current cloaks do not work at all to intercept people on trade lanes, since they run out of energy in less than a single trade lane. and person will just some base quickly instead of waiting for you to catch up with the person near some jump gate where he can't escape.

The problem is, any balance changes should be made with feedback and consideration to not removing gameplays entirely? for now balance changes for years look only pretty much removing possible gameplays entirely.
- Turning all the special equipment Disco had into only cosmetics that u can use for special effect only.
- Disco was special with Capitals, u see how many issues are present in trying to play them now?
- Nerfs to transports, having them the only ones slow as turtles and everything else easily able to intercept them?
What remains after all the balance changes? Snub fighters only?
You see there are people that are completely against playing by snub fighters (especially after removal of all possible noob tubes to defend themselves against aces)
playing snub fighters was historically too much painful, against people that already trained too much to ever defeat them.
there remains no possible gameplays to engage after all the removals to everything except Snub Fighters. People fear to engage in the only remaining snub fighting.

Your balance decisions for years are very difficult to see as anything except Lobbying for Snub Fighters to be ultimate Wunderwaffe (Super weapons).
As it was the only thing probably not nerfed. You claim balance, budget, numbers, and doing everything for the good of gameplay... it is very hard for people seeing as not good for snub fighters superiority and disabling all other present stuff.
And that is the reason why it was easier calling for Vote of No Confidence. your thinking is already established to what is good and bad. Problem is it is not really simple to see it as good for others except snub fighters for some reason.

How can things be even more related fixed? recap of all the mentioned choices:
- Trying to post balance changes before they are fully implemented and released. More transparency. ( taking example out of Starsector book: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index...ic=35147.0 )
- We need balance devs with different views that will not be vetoed by Haste's vision as current balance lead in charge..
- Considering to invest reading/diving into materials how to balance without designing fun out of it.
- Still thinking ticketing system should be remade for author of a ticket being able to see his own ticket

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[darkwind]

I'll try not posting anything further on this thread. it spiraled out of 5.3.2 patch notes discussions a lot out of the way.

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