Tanki Online and its Problems

[Loackie 269]

I decided to quit for a while, and I decided to come back. Many of the same issues are still there. Some new ones have been made.

 

Players vs Helpers:

 

As soon as I saw Helpers winning, either the Helpers were good or I was right. It took me four pages of a search term to find something related to the match, and supposedly the helpers were good. If I searched through the hundreds of posts pertaining to the drug reward, I would get carpal tunnel before I could finish. This speaks an awful lot about the community.

 

The Metagame:

 

According to the V-Log multiple times, every second hull is a Hornet. Let me guess, those are the people who complain that Hammer is OP? The reason you don't see Mammy-Shafts or Vik-Thunders or Dictator-Rails have a problem because THE GAME IS BALANCED. (This is speaking post-nerf, obviously)

 

 

How Balance is Made:

 

So after the most recent rebalance (Testing on April 20, 2015, because there was no release thread/it was deleted), there was a poll.

 

Here are the questions: What is your current/favorite hull? What is the best hull? What is the worst hull? What is your current/favorite hull? What is the best turret? What is the worst turret? EVEN IF the questions were not precisely accurate, they are still something along the lines of that, and they are also not a great way to measure player feedback or collect metrics from.

 

Let's say turret X here has Y issue, and is neither the "worst" or the "best". Let's say turret Z is "the worst turret" due to a complete mechanics change. Tell me how the metrics above is going to interpret that. At the best, it's going to say "Turret X is mostly fine, but we need to buff Z, but we have no idea what is wrong with it". Unless machines have some year 20XX mindreading advanced mlg techs, you're not going to get anything really useful.

 

I decided to quit for a while, and I decided to come back. Many of the same issues are still there. Some new ones have been made.

 

Players vs Helpers:

 

As soon as I saw Helpers winning, either the Helpers were good or I was right. It took me four pages of a search term to find something related to the match, and supposedly the helpers were good. If I searched through the hundreds of posts pertaining to the drug reward, I would get carpal tunnel before I could finish. This speaks an awful lot about the community.

 

The Metagame:

 

According to the V-Log multiple times, every second hull is a Hornet. Let me guess, those are the people who complain that Hammer is OP? The reason you don't see Mammy-Shafts or Vik-Thunders or Dictator-Rails have a problem because THE GAME IS BALANCED. (This is speaking post-nerf, obviously)

 

Why is XP "Pro"? What makes it require any more skill than any other combination? If you can't answer this question, I could stop here. The answer: IT DOESN'T. If you want to refuse, you can PM me, but don't use that certain thread as an example.

 

How Balance is Made:

 

So after the most recent rebalance (Testing on April 20, 2015, because there was no release thread/it was deleted), there was a poll.

 

Here are the questions: What is your current/favorite hull? What is the best hull? What is the worst hull? What is your current/favorite hull? What is the best turret? What is the worst turret? EVEN IF the questions were not accurate, they are still not a great way to measure player feedback or collect metrics from.

 

How come the polls are considered unimportant, being overshadowed by everything else? Why are so many of the polls considered unimportant? Not to be a jerk, but I would much rather have a question about "do you still feel like the game is balanced, since you now all have had time to get used to it for a while" rather than "do you watch live streams of battles on our esports channel?" Polls aren't even that difficult to create. I could create one here. LOOK I JUST DID MA LOOK

 

How the community responds to balance (or most things really):

 

You already know the community reacts violently. If you don't wait for a few weeks or so if you want to experience the full effect. If you have common sense and you don't want to do that, this picture is a pretty good example:

 

 

...and I only covered half of everything I could have.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Loackie

[dilsharox 2,395]

true ;)

[general_abrams 424]

The forum is already filled with complaints like this. The "every 2nd hull is a Hornet" statement is probably mostly fulfilled by players on the lower end of the ranks, since Hornet is an extremely common hull at those lower ranks, being cheap and versatile. In higher ranks, the variety among hulls is quite sufficient to keep me happy. :D

 

As to the Players vs. Helpers tournament, the issues with this have already been exposed, and because of them, I believe that the decision has been made to let the CyberSport Administrators/Helpers organize most of the tournament events, instead of the Community Organizers, from here on out.

 

 

I really wouldn't recommend speculating about the "game balance" from a player's biased perspective, nor would I try to lecture the Developers themselves on how it "does" or "should" work. They are the ones with the statistics/data and exact knowledge of the game's mechanics, not us. Since the game is their business, I trust them to at least keep it in "good" shape, else they lose their job. ;)


 

Edited June 19, 2015 by general_abrams

[Loackie 269]

"I really wouldn't recommend speculating about the "game balance" from a player's biased perspective, nor would I try to lecture the Developers themselves on how it "does" or "should" work. They are the ones with the statistics/data and exact knowledge of the game's mechanics, not us. Since the game is their business, I trust them to at least keep it in "good" shape, else they lose their job. ;)" (Windows 8 is weird)

 

If you're going to set up a poll for metrics, you want to make the poll as effective as possible. There isn't a single reason wrong with trying to do that. The most recent rebalance poll was not very effective, regardless of there being bias or no bias. Player input also catches problems that are not intended in playtesting.

 

Player input is risky, but that's the audience you're trying to please. For example, when was the last time someone said twins was too powerful or too weak? A small minority of the EN forum community. (i'd love someone to translate the RU forums for me, i'm not going to learn 2 languages at once) Why radically change it?

 

The only thing I would like for them is to SAY WHY THESE BALANCES IMPROVE THE GAME. Why should X turret have Y stat buffed and Z stat nerfed? Why was Y stat too weak? Why was Z stat too powerful?

Edited June 19, 2015 by Loackie