Losing hope, give me some back please.

[Jaax]

Everyone with a good understanding of PG knows how unbalanced items are, for example an orbital strike does more damage than an aggrobomb, has a much bigger effective range and has a lower cool down. I am not a developer so I don't know how you code these items but I would assume it's editing some number values such as "90" damage, "60 second" cool down etc. The tank class from vega-draconis is completely out shined by storms for many reasons such as the ability to grind cryonite, blue prints and golds much more effectively. This is just an example of at item that has been power crept, I don't believe this would be hard to change from the dev team.

Now I am going to talk about PVE and PVP, these are two completely different game modes in PG, the problem is items in this game are made for PVE not PVP. Lets take the inverter, this item makes you completely invulnerable to enemies for a certain period of time (not to mention the long inverter in sirius). This item is already overpowered just by making you immortal but guess what, it also heals you. Now the heal is not like an RD but in a 25v25 conquest splash damage is going to significantly heal your ship. The problem is in PVE this is not as strong as an ability as in CQs so the developers made it heal, I would suggest we remove the inverters healing affect in conquests.

Another over powered item, the cloud. Once again this item is no where near as good in PVE as it is in PVP. In a CQ one cloud can reduce 25 peoples damage significantly and "recently" the range was buffed; assuming this was because it wasn't very strong in PVE. Again these items need another "mode" when dealing with PvP this is assuming the developers even care or show interest in PvP or PG as a whole anymore.

The oort update without a doubt is the best piece of content in PG since many years, so I would like to hope we still have some updates coming even if it's balancing, bug updates etc. Talking about bugs... lets talk about some.

Many people have reported these bugs, probably 100s of reports have been made, lets talk about white items. A white item happens normally when an item has just come off cooldown and you use it, the item is in a cool down state but does not activate, this is especially hurtful to long cool down items such as magnet, speed actuator, shield etc. This impacts every part of PG from PVE to CQs, it is VERY frustrating especially when you can lose a 1 on 1 pvp to it or lose a fight in a conquest.

Anyway I would love to see a response to this post, if we can get some confirmation about anything instead of being in the dark about future of PG etc. But my last post got 0 responses from any GM/DEV so I am not hopeful. (The post was about PG events). Thanks for listening to my Ted talk

 

[Vesperion]

The Main issue for many items is not just how good or bad they are and more what their original intend was when the game started.

In case of Aggrobomb it was never meant to be an dmg item as it was for the tank class and should drag the aggro from mobs who were hit by it what it did and worked properly. Years back however the aggro system was reworked and in return affected the items that created aggro like bomb and beacon and did get more or less obsolete from one moment to the next as the bomb was devolved to a dmg item with underwhelming effect in compare to storm; sniper and defender.

In theory the aggro items (bomb, beacon and ddroid) could be fixed easily by making it in PvE so that hit units can´t change the target for x seconds (let´s say 60 or 75 seconds). For PvP basically make it basically the same but with a reduced time of maybe just 15 seconds as otherwise big fights would be impossible if the bomb player from each side flies into the enemies and then simply runs away.

In case of inverter maybe not disable the ability at all to heal and just reduce the effect how much it will heal as even in a heated battle clash the amount of AoE attacks is limited for the time it runs. For Cloud during CQ it is of course meant to weaken the dmg of everyone in the what can be rendered useless relative quick if the player who is affected by it simply moves back from the group and so does not affect the others anymore.

Of course it will be tricky if several players have a cloud as less player in the battle reduce the possible dmg output as well but is much less then when the affected player/s stay on the battle and so affect way more players.

Aside from that the only item i so far know did see a change due of player feedback was the leap with an increase of range and reduction of the CD.

 

[Genjiro]

The problem is in PVE this is not as strong as an ability as in CQs so the developers made it heal, I would suggest we remove the inverters healing affect in conquests.

Again these items need another "mode" when dealing with PvP

Hello @Jaax ,

Most of what you have pointed out are valid however I can say with certainty in regards to this suggestion that it is impossible for a component to have a certain attribute in PVE and a different attribute in PVP. Any Dev would say the same.
What could be done instead are balance changes without completely killing the item in PVE like you have mentioned.

We (GM's & Testers) have sent bunch of QOL suggestions to the Dev's which includes balance changes. You can expect them to roll out slowly but surely after the proper testings have been completed.
So please be patient, I hope your other questions will be answered soon.

Genjiro

 

[STAIN]

Games that were released 20 years ago already had different behaviour for different modes including PVP / PVE modes. Can we stop making silly excuses already. Saying any dev would say the same while not having access to game code which i assume you dont have is just next level. I hope your tests will bring future to the game because for the last 9 years your players were doing this job. Testers in PTR's were just a bunch of old players pvping skipping endless cryo grind for ships to see just how broken the game is. Then they were leaving... and they left no feedback... Guess why ;p

 

[Faye]

Games that were released 20 years ago already had different behaviour for different modes including PVP / PVE modes. Can we stop making silly excuses already. Saying any dev would say the same while not having access to game code which i assume you dont have is just next level. I hope your tests will bring future to the game because for the last 9 years your players were doing this job. Testers in PTR's were just a bunch of old players pvping skipping endless cryo grind for ships to see just how broken the game is. Then they were leaving... and they left no feedback... Guess why ;p

uhhh
Someone with a lot of experience and someone who knows how many developers work at Splitscreen...

I just say: don't feed the troll!

 

[STAIN]

I am sorry i took the Genjiro's answer as real one i won't feed the troll i promise.

 

[alewx]

Everyone with a good understanding of PG knows how unbalanced items are, for example an orbital strike does more damage than an aggrobomb, has a much bigger effective range and has a lower cool down. I am not a developer so I don't know how you code these items but I would assume it's editing some number values such as "90" damage, "60 second" cool down etc. The tank class from vega-draconis is completely out shined by storms for many reasons such as the ability to grind cryonite, blue prints and golds much more effectively. This is just an example of at item that has been power crept, I don't believe this would be hard to change from the dev team.

Now I am going to talk about PVE and PVP, these are two completely different game modes in PG, the problem is items in this game are made for PVE not PVP. Lets take the inverter, this item makes you completely invulnerable to enemies for a certain period of time (not to mention the long inverter in sirius). This item is already overpowered just by making you immortal but guess what, it also heals you. Now the heal is not like an RD but in a 25v25 conquest splash damage is going to significantly heal your ship. The problem is in PVE this is not as strong as an ability as in CQs so the developers made it heal, I would suggest we remove the inverters healing affect in conquests.

Another over powered item, the cloud. Once again this item is no where near as good in PVE as it is in PVP. In a CQ one cloud can reduce 25 peoples damage significantly and "recently" the range was buffed; assuming this was because it wasn't very strong in PVE. Again these items need another "mode" when dealing with PvP this is assuming the developers even care or show interest in PvP or PG as a whole anymore.

The oort update without a doubt is the best piece of content in PG since many years, so I would like to hope we still have some updates coming even if it's balancing, bug updates etc. Talking about bugs... lets talk about some.

Many people have reported these bugs, probably 100s of reports have been made, lets talk about white items. A white item happens normally when an item has just come off cooldown and you use it, the item is in a cool down state but does not activate, this is especially hurtful to long cool down items such as magnet, speed actuator, shield etc. This impacts every part of PG from PVE to CQs, it is VERY frustrating especially when you can lose a 1 on 1 pvp to it or lose a fight in a conquest.

Anyway I would love to see a response to this post, if we can get some confirmation about anything instead of being in the dark about future of PG etc. But my last post got 0 responses from any GM/DEV so I am not hopeful. (The post was about PG events). Thanks for listening to my Ted talk

Games that were released 20 years ago already had different behaviour for different modes including PVP / PVE modes. Can we stop making silly excuses already. Saying any dev would say the same while not having access to game code which i assume you dont have is just next level.

After several hours of considering wether to post or not:
That is not really motivating a developer to respond, while you basicly already say: "say what it want to hear or you are some lazy stupid idiots".
What are you comparing PG to; WoW, where you have just about 400 ppl working on a single title, which is a bit different to when you just have about 6 ppl covering up for 2,5 games. Your expectation really needs a bit of a reality check.

There is a difference between PvE and PvP, already within PvE is a diffrence as Vega has just a lot less items than draconis within a ship, so that makes things already not even. the point about oh grinding is different based on the shipclas, well that is kind of natural, because your comparison metrics is based on BP/cryo per time, while ignoring that shipclasses are for playstyle, you prefere certain slower paced but more "secure" then you go with a tank, you want just rage into stuff go with a storm. the i get most by time is something that an experienced player does who is more into result rather than playstyle.

You might not imagine the shitshow happening once players notice items getting nerfed to balance things out; and some items would fefinitly require a nerf, but I totally can. Do you want to throw yourself into the line of fire and take the blame, I don't expect that you will. But we have to wether the storm in such cases, so It is so eassy to complain from the sidewalk not having much of an insight into the systems the assets the source and everything that it includes.
So just a small example, The way tank and storm are setup is kind of backwards, as tanks have lower HP but are using items to extend them, compared to storms with higher hp and no items to extend them. but if you change that it is no like oh i have to change some numbers in some ships, oooooooooooh, no that means you have to adjust the items, the ships and every single entity in the game that is relative to them in case of enemies. so can you tell me how long will this process take when there is just one person to do that job, because I can barley estimate it. with the additional difficutly that you do not have all the data available within an excel sheet to work it out, but have to deal with about 6k of json like files containing various things spread across an exhausting structure of folders. If you do not solve that within a week and have a presentable working flawless bugfree version, it is just a damn lazy excuse for a greedy incompetent developer....
That does not even include the formulas regarind ships and items in the source that also have to be adapted in the same step, as otherwise things are just totally all over the place. So why didn't you already solve issues in a system no single human is capable of overseeing while it was inherited from aobut a dozen of ppl in the past....
I already did something similar for DS which is in case of scope a lot really a lot less compared to PG and it still took over half a year to get it done.

 

[Razor2278]

I have a question, let's assume how much time would be needed to create a new event in the game and with new ships, etc. I must admit that it would be useful for the game to have a breath of freshness, I remember the pg birthday event, it was even cool with new ships

 

[alewx]

With the mentioning of bbirthday event, you are easily over 12 weeks. The more complex the more time it takes. A new ship, somwhere between 2 to 6 weeks depending on how well it turns out with the items in its balancing. Then scripting of missions takes due to demand of high replayability and refreshment per mission 2-4 weeks. And due to extra mechanics that need to be implemented that timeframe extends to beyond my knowledge.

 

[Faye]

With the mentioning of bbirthday event, you are easily over 12 weeks. The more complex the more time it takes. A new ship, somwhere between 2 to 6 weeks depending on how well it turns out with the items in its balancing. Then scripting of missions takes due to demand of high replayability and refreshment per mission 2-4 weeks. And due to extra mechanics that need to be implemented that timeframe extends to beyond my knowledge.

... and some other bugfixes, wishes and magic for the other game... +~ 6-8 weeks

 

[STAIN]

So the real question is... why are we adding stuff instead of focusing on making things that we already have better? Like not releasing any new skills at all with tc release to shorten the times of development *cough cough*... Like what did the release of krygar sol tank reused asset from mars mission bring instead of trying to get quick gold. What the release of new rdx ship bring to the game? Another thing to balance against considering the ship wasnt tested at all. And if it was well XD. When you go online and search for a game and you choose one and you decide to play it do you ask anyone how long it takes to balance or add anything? Yes we got that you have small team... usually smaller team knows better communicates better but it takes longer for them to do anything. We waited long and we are still fine with the time it takes to update anything here. But what you are releasing "lately" is just unacceptable. You are focusing too much on our attitude towards developers or gm's... look at yourself. People still care because they are writing to you... dont you see that? Or maybe it's a problem? Thats why i wrote in my status that writing here is pointless and im not only the one thinking that way.. Im just one voice among others. But like i said it brings nothing but "you dont know the things we do here and how hard it is". We are working too we do know. But we expect better and actual thought about what you are doing here instead going for quick short-term additions to the game that bring gold because ppl still believe it will get better maybe.

 

[Vesperion]

You might not imagine the shitshow happening once players notice items getting nerfed to balance things out; and some items would fefinitly require a nerf, but I totally can.

Best example for this would the Magnet Trap that was changed in terms of the HP and i still remember the heated discussion about the nerf making basically the Chrome "useless" as for some reason the Trap was the item to be in it what is understandable as it was a much better Beacon with an working AoE and having a ton of HP so that for PvE it was one of the best items to have and in PvP was ignoring as hell if several traps were placed.

Hence no one was asking for it the nerf was made and was imo a good move as it was way to strong for the intended purpose it should have.

Aside from that changing items is doable as Leap and Trap have shown it already but require of course time and surely some sort of evaluation of how usefull such a change would be.

I´m not sure currently about Sticky bomb as from my relative old experince from a couple of years back it has (or had if it was fixed) 2 major drawbacks.
1) is that a Sticky can miss if the unit it was placed on uses Aim Scram and decides that the explosion of the Sticky will "miss" so that it deals no damage at all so that it is the only AoE item were an Aim Scram has an effect
2) if the unit that the Sticky was placed on is killed before the Sticky goes off the following explosion may still show but has no effect to any remaining units making it useless as AoE item

 

[Tketh]

1) is that a Sticky can miss if the unit it was placed on uses Aim Scram and decides that the explosion of the Sticky will "miss" so that it deals no damage at all so that it is the only AoE item were an Aim Scram has an effect
2) if the unit that the Sticky was placed on is killed before the Sticky goes off the following explosion may still show but has no effect to any remaining units making it useless as AoE item

About 1 I agree on that the aim scrambler makes it fail and I like it that way.
About 2 Yes that should be considered to be changed the explosion should make some aoe damage even if the "stickyed" target died before the timer runs out

And about the magnet trap I consider it one of the best items added with tau ceti, even for someone that doesn't like pvp

 

[Razor2278]

but when this magnetic trap was weakened in pvp, it was also weakened in pve, and it was well balanced, it could have remained in pve as it was, and in pve, it was understandably very strong, but why it was weakened for pve, I don't know

 

[STAIN]

Its probably because of the way the game works (ingame code) and they dont have these instances separated. In order to separate them they would have to rewrite how the game operates and thats not going to happen.

 

[hektor.barbossa]

There are no bad ship/item ,Only bad players XD
With PG mechanics there no exist balanced what can happy all.
You need nerf one buff other and someone will still complain ...
If one win another lost that mean is balanced XD
If You cant deal with lose maybe is not game for you XD
If you have well chosen ships,organized sq then dont think so bad balanced items is problem.
But if all use same ships well then cant expect much....
For some reasons exist different ships.

P.S
Last buffs Parsecs was great I like it^^
Good Job ^^

 

[Redthorne]

so can you tell me how long will this process take when there is just one person to do that job, because I can barley estimate it.

It seems to me that you being alone on this job plays a big part in that inability to fulfill all of the players' demands.
Have you considered hiring?
I'd expect that you have already, but what reason would prevent you from doing so?

 

[alewx]

It seems to me that you being alone on this job plays a big part in that inability to fulfill all of the players' demands.
Have you considered hiring?
I'd expect that you have already, but what reason would prevent you from doing so?

To fulfill the demands of all the players is just not possible as it comes with opposing favoring demands.

In an ideal situation you would have something that always works like rock paper scissors lizard spock, but with about 46 items and each in about 50 variations, you see where this ideal world just went out the window.

About hiring, that is not up to me and completly out of my responsability.

The scope of the work does not really scare me, if it takes that long it takes that long, but the problem is that you have to deal with diverging things and systems that have grown and eveolved for a over a decade and were done by various ppl with different goals and aimings; all while having a group of players that know this stuff and are on one side demanding improvements but actually hate you for changing stuff they like. it is a just at a point where you only can lose, you can only choose how big you want to lose.
You don't know how happy i am that i'm able to do changes in the hp of like the aggrobeacon because i had to collect all the stuff from various points.

 

[Jaax]

After several hours of considering wether to post or not:
That is not really motivating a developer to respond, while you basicly already say: "say what it want to hear or you are some lazy stupid idiots".
What are you comparing PG to; WoW, where you have just about 400 ppl working on a single title, which is a bit different to when you just have about 6 ppl covering up for 2,5 games. Your expectation really needs a bit of a reality check.

There is a difference between PvE and PvP, already within PvE is a diffrence as Vega has just a lot less items than draconis within a ship, so that makes things already not even. the point about oh grinding is different based on the shipclas, well that is kind of natural, because your comparison metrics is based on BP/cryo per time, while ignoring that shipclasses are for playstyle, you prefere certain slower paced but more "secure" then you go with a tank, you want just rage into stuff go with a storm. the i get most by time is something that an experienced player does who is more into result rather than playstyle.

You might not imagine the shitshow happening once players notice items getting nerfed to balance things out; and some items would fefinitly require a nerf, but I totally can. Do you want to throw yourself into the line of fire and take the blame, I don't expect that you will. But we have to wether the storm in such cases, so It is so eassy to complain from the sidewalk not having much of an insight into the systems the assets the source and everything that it includes.
So just a small example, The way tank and storm are setup is kind of backwards, as tanks have lower HP but are using items to extend them, compared to storms with higher hp and no items to extend them. but if you change that it is no like oh i have to change some numbers in some ships, oooooooooooh, no that means you have to adjust the items, the ships and every single entity in the game that is relative to them in case of enemies. so can you tell me how long will this process take when there is just one person to do that job, because I can barley estimate it. with the additional difficutly that you do not have all the data available within an excel sheet to work it out, but have to deal with about 6k of json like files containing various things spread across an exhausting structure of folders. If you do not solve that within a week and have a presentable working flawless bugfree version, it is just a damn lazy excuse for a greedy incompetent developer....
That does not even include the formulas regarind ships and items in the source that also have to be adapted in the same step, as otherwise things are just totally all over the place. So why didn't you already solve issues in a system no single human is capable of overseeing while it was inherited from aobut a dozen of ppl in the past....
I already did something similar for DS which is in case of scope a lot really a lot less compared to PG and it still took over half a year to get it done.

Obviously I don't know what is going on behind the scenes, but your complaining about how hard it is to edit an item. The problem I have is the thought of when you do edit an item, lets take the cloud. Recently it got buffed to have a bigger range, the problem I have is that it is way to powerful in a PvP environment reducing up to 25 players damage by 20-30% is INSANE and that range is damn stupid. There was absolutely no reason to buff the clouds range from a PvP perspective as it was already one of the top items in the PvP/CQ environment and then you guys made it stronger?. Lets also talk about the new ship the Heron, you have made a ship that takes away every weakness from the materialize, you have an inverter, shield and allies cover that heals you with insane speed so you can disengage from a fight with no chance of anyone catching you. This ship has made fights last a lot longer in general, this is certainly a disadvantage for those without membership who can't fight for 7 years straight, when you combine the heron with other herons oh boy... you are able to mat after mat each other while cycling inverter, RD and shield.

I am not asking you to nerf every item, make u spend 3 months on it, I am saying before you make changes or add ships to think about them in a PvP environment. I don't want to be rude but it doesn't seem like to me at least that these changes are being thought about in a PvP environment.

Anyway I appreciate the response from GMs and developers a like.

 

[Jaax]

Hello @Jaax ,

Most of what you have pointed out are valid however I can say with certainty in regards to this suggestion that it is impossible for a component to have a certain attribute in PVE and a different attribute in PVP. Any Dev would say the same.
What could be done instead are balance changes without completely killing the item in PVE like you have mentioned.

We (GM's & Testers) have sent bunch of QOL suggestions to the Dev's which includes balance changes. You can expect them to roll out slowly but surely after the proper testings have been completed.
So please be patient, I hope your other questions will be answered soon.

Genjiro

Don't you see the problem here? The community is left wondering and helpless about the future of the game. If you're confirming that QOL and balance changes will be rolling out can't we get a post or some information instead of twiddling our thumbs if the game is going to receive any more updates. Don't ask the community to be patient if you're not releasing any information to us.

Regarding different values/how an item works in PVE/PvP saying it's "Impossible" come on, you know you're wrong...