I don't have much to say on the specifics of the class stat rework, as it's a departure from how class balance was approached for a long time, which can be frustrating.
What I disagree with is the implication that starter classes were made to be explicitly stronger than everything else. More versatile? Absolutely- their weight represents that. But to say that every other stat is better too is just wrong. It could be a figure of speech on your part, which fair enough- nuance doesn't come across text very well.
A bit of criticism that I have taken out of this conversation is that my push for new players to be able to enjoy the game right out of the box has taken valuable dev focus away from giving non-starter classes better-defined niches and a more influential gameplay presence. In that regard, I agree it is a zero-sum game: but don't mistake what I'm saying for overall regret about the time spent improving the new player experience. I believe it was absolutely necessary to provide a more enjoyable "hook" for new players to get involved.
I don't have much to say on the OOC suppression side of things, other than that the intent of that enforcement is to get people to make posts (like this one) on the forums. Complaining in the server sours the mood for everyone, and really is not a good look for the community.
You can make the argument that "well, just solve these problems and people wouldn't complain in the first place"- I understand the allure of that argument. But it ignores the fact that humans have a negativity bias. When no problems can be found, they will look for them. The "background noise" of arbitrary complaints (while ideally every complaint should still be listened to), obscures very important conversations that the forums are much better equipped to handle.
Staff do not wish to be personal PR agents that relay every bit of feedback, they also have their own gameplay and responsibilities.
Last bit is on your part calling me "big brother". This is something I have been unable to formulate a proper response on- given your opinion on the matter seems to already be set in stone. I tried my best to be forthcoming and honest about my expectations from officers, without being unrealistic or unfair. I've left a direct channel of communication to me if you or other officers ever feel you can't meet them, and my interviews are overseen by prominent faction members to ensure I don't overstep my bounds.
Despite all that, if you still feel you can't open up to me, and that you'd be censored or punished for any disagreement: I don't have any solutions for that.
(1 Dec 24 at 2:21am)[DEFN] Sentinel Wrote: Right, so:
I don't have much to say on the specifics of the class stat rework, as it's a departure from how class balance was approached for a long time, which can be frustrating.
What I disagree with is the implication that starter classes were made to be explicitly stronger than everything else. More versatile? Absolutely- their weight represents that. But to say that every other stat is better too is just wrong. It could be a figure of speech on your part, which fair enough- nuance doesn't come across text very well.
Couldn't agree more, you should not start out weak as shit, People forget that Perks and attachments make a HUGE difference, and the grind for that can be hard.
When players like me play RF pvt I have over 200k worth of credits into the kit, Perks, Weapon attachments, armor ect.. New players wont have this. This is not saying that the class is OP with said things, its just a reminder that new players wont. Do I think other classes are much weaker than RF / Union in comparison? 100% but that isent the topic of this post and just because something is strong, nerfing it is not always the answer,
(1 Dec 24 at 2:21am)[DEFN] Sentinel Wrote: Right, so:
I don't have much to say on the specifics of the class stat rework, as it's a departure from how class balance was approached for a long time, which can be frustrating.
What I disagree with is the implication that starter classes were made to be explicitly stronger than everything else. More versatile? Absolutely- their weight represents that. But to say that every other stat is better too is just wrong. It could be a figure of speech on your part, which fair enough- nuance doesn't come across text very well.
New players wont have this, nerfing it is not always the answer.
I think this highlights a disparity at the given moment in the interaction between highly specialized classes and pure generalists with high carryweight: for example, trying to unironically play SWORD before the most recent shotgun damage change was extraordinarily punishing and even ambushing the foe from behind or playing passively and letting a UNION/RF push into your shotgun did not guarantee even a trade - whereas, UNION/RF may well hold W into these situations where they have absolutely zero right in being successful and succeed nonetheless. Let's also say, they aren't successful and they die - whaddya know, they're alive again before some classes can even reload, while I get to wait ten seconds to ineffectually, impotently stand still with my automatic shotgun (because moving even while ADS'd butchers your spread) and get a quick burst to the head and back to the map screen.
It raises the question: why bother? This is an objective focused gamemode, and being able to out muscle the other side by frequency of spawns and effectiveness at every range dulls much of the appeal of playing a close-quarters class due to the fact that unless you're equipping no armour and an inventory weapon: you cannot defend yourself past fifteen meters, you take twice as long to spawn. The benefit? You get seven carry weight, a shotgun that barely eeks out an advantage in close-quarters and a throwable to band aid the matter of fact you are harmless past the aforementioned range.
I see more and more people disenfranchised with that state of affairs opting to play anything else; or, much more noticeably due to frequency: a vastly superior whitelist with the ability to be lethal at all ranges, have two separate health pools (one of which does not kill the user when it reaches zero) and have a utility to force people (or snipers) to move or eat a grenade. And to be fair, why wouldn't you?
There's no sense in obliterating the first whitelist for being too flexible, or AR's being too prevalent; however, the matter of fact is that other classes need to be brought up to a competitive standard in comparison otherwise they'll just be put into a dustbin and forgotten wholesale. How is a CO going to convince a new player to join their division when it very well could be a complete downgrade from the very first class they were given?
(1 Dec 24 at 2:21am)[DEFN] Sentinel Wrote: Right, so:
I don't have much to say on the specifics of the class stat rework, as it's a departure from how class balance was approached for a long time, which can be frustrating.
What I disagree with is the implication that starter classes were made to be explicitly stronger than everything else. More versatile? Absolutely- their weight represents that. But to say that every other stat is better too is just wrong. It could be a figure of speech on your part, which fair enough- nuance doesn't come across text very well.
A bit of criticism that I have taken out of this conversation is that my push for new players to be able to enjoy the game right out of the box has taken valuable dev focus away from giving non-starter classes better-defined niches and a more influential gameplay presence. In that regard, I agree it is a zero-sum game: but don't mistake what I'm saying for overall regret about the time spent improving the new player experience. I believe it was absolutely necessary to provide a more enjoyable "hook" for new players to get involved.
I'll answer each paragraph individually, as the topic is branched into 3 different subtopics.
Couple things I wanna say about this:
- The NPE (New Player Experience) approaches
- What different NPE approaches attract
From the approaches presented, its either:
[ A ] - You are given a lot of power so that you don't feel overwhelmed and decide prematurely to quit. vs [ B ] You are weak now, but you have the possibility of growth through different subdivisions.
~ This ( [A] ) is an approach I disagree with for several reasons, the first I'd like to point out is what kind of player it attracts. There's an argument to be made that if the NPE is not immediately fun, the average modern day player will just quit due to not having a good time on their first impression. I think one of the key causes to this is the fact we're living in an age of "dopamine addicts" who are incapable of doing an activity that doesn't immediately reward them. The way I see it (correct me if you disagree), giving in to this sort of player (who admittedly are the majority of gamers now a days) will only provide short-term activity, as they'll inevitably bore themselves (sooner than later) and seek their next dopamine hook, and quit the server. All the while it grinds down the experience of the dedicated community who've been playing for months if not years, and will stay for the long run (unless life gets in the way, as has been the case with many). My second point of contention is the premise, or at least the notion, that the NPE consists primarily of PvP, such is the main focus of "New Player Experience" discussions, that being, how they perform in combat against other classes. This (rather shallow) premise completely leaves out all of the unique aspects of CvR that a new player experiences, namely the classes they can potentially join. I've played on countless other servers during the times I was taking breaks from CvR, and none of them had such unique and varied experiences in terms of class gameplay like CvR has, and that comes across strong for the new player. At least from my experience, I remember joining up the server back in 2018, UNION had a weak SMG that could barely outgun the average rebel, but my mind was stuck on all of the different subdivisions that were explained to me during training, I wanted to try everything out and see how each performed, and during that "division hopping" time I not only got to experience various gameplay styles, but different communities and group experiences. Being in a squad of ECHOs with CmD Albedo taking points was completely different from being in an APC as a KILO helping people go to points while laughing and joking with an 01 who was driving, and that was completely different from interrogating and guarding people in the cells as a JURY side by side with other NPU subdivisions. Again, I'm talking solely on my own experience, but my NPE wasn't focused on "rather or not I can kill rebels easily as a UNION", but rather discovering the HUGE social world that CvR provides. After 6 years of CvR the community feels much smaller, but that's solely due to "shrinking world" effect, the new player doesn't see the CvR community in the same way we oldheads do, and I feel like most of their NPE is inevitably centered around discovering this "new world" contained within the server.
It took me a long while to come around to my current approach to the new player experience. I'm entirely in agreement with you that starting off weaker provides motivation to improve, but gaming simply isn't that anymore.
You make a great point that while of course we need to adapt to appeal to the majority of gamers, I should try to not put off people who already enjoyed the server.
Which, is exactly why forum posts like these are important- it provides a "check" on the ideas and efforts that are being undertaken.
It's not all bad though: now we have a stable "baseline" for the new player experience- we just need to improve the experience of everybody else further. Which is a lot more exciting to me (and I imagine to others as well), since it means new ideas and concepts, cool gadgets, etc.
The grappling hook, among other things, is the start of me working to enrich the experiences and utilities of the non-starter classes.
Other grievances, like the very fast respawn time for starter classes, are being addressed in near-future updates
I don't have much to say on the specifics of the class stat rework, as it's a departure from how class balance was approached for a long time, which can be frustrating.
What I disagree with is the implication that starter classes were made to be explicitly stronger than everything else. More versatile? Absolutely- their weight represents that. But to say that every other stat is better too is just wrong. It could be a figure of speech on your part, which fair enough- nuance doesn't come across text very well.
A bit of criticism that I have taken out of this conversation is that my push for new players to be able to enjoy the game right out of the box has taken valuable dev focus away from giving non-starter classes better-defined niches and a more influential gameplay presence. In that regard, I agree it is a zero-sum game: but don't mistake what I'm saying for overall regret about the time spent improving the new player experience. I believe it was absolutely necessary to provide a more enjoyable "hook" for new players to get involved.
I don't have much to say on the OOC suppression side of things, other than that the intent of that enforcement is to get people to make posts (like this one) on the forums. Complaining in the server sours the mood for everyone, and really is not a good look for the community.
You can make the argument that "well, just solve these problems and people wouldn't complain in the first place"- I understand the allure of that argument. But it ignores the fact that humans have a negativity bias. When no problems can be found, they will look for them. The "background noise" of arbitrary complaints (while ideally every complaint should still be listened to), obscures very important conversations that the forums are much better equipped to handle.
Staff do not wish to be personal PR agents that relay every bit of feedback, they also have their own gameplay and responsibilities.
Last bit is on your part calling me "big brother". This is something I have been unable to formulate a proper response on- given your opinion on the matter seems to already be set in stone. I tried my best to be forthcoming and honest about my expectations from officers, without being unrealistic or unfair. I've left a direct channel of communication to me if you or other officers ever feel you can't meet them, and my interviews are overseen by prominent faction members to ensure I don't overstep my bounds.
Despite all that, if you still feel you can't open up to me, and that you'd be censored or punished for any disagreement: I don't have any solutions for that.
When players like me play RF pvt I have over 200k worth of credits into the kit, Perks, Weapon attachments, armor ect.. New players wont have this. This is not saying that the class is OP with said things, its just a reminder that new players wont. Do I think other classes are much weaker than RF / Union in comparison? 100% but that isent the topic of this post and just because something is strong, nerfing it is not always the answer,
I think this highlights a disparity at the given moment in the interaction between highly specialized classes and pure generalists with high carryweight: for example, trying to unironically play SWORD before the most recent shotgun damage change was extraordinarily punishing and even ambushing the foe from behind or playing passively and letting a UNION/RF push into your shotgun did not guarantee even a trade - whereas, UNION/RF may well hold W into these situations where they have absolutely zero right in being successful and succeed nonetheless. Let's also say, they aren't successful and they die - whaddya know, they're alive again before some classes can even reload, while I get to wait ten seconds to ineffectually, impotently stand still with my automatic shotgun (because moving even while ADS'd butchers your spread) and get a quick burst to the head and back to the map screen.
It raises the question: why bother?
This is an objective focused gamemode, and being able to out muscle the other side by frequency of spawns and effectiveness at every range dulls much of the appeal of playing a close-quarters class due to the fact that unless you're equipping no armour and an inventory weapon: you cannot defend yourself past fifteen meters, you take twice as long to spawn. The benefit? You get seven carry weight, a shotgun that barely eeks out an advantage in close-quarters and a throwable to band aid the matter of fact you are harmless past the aforementioned range.
I see more and more people disenfranchised with that state of affairs opting to play anything else; or, much more noticeably due to frequency: a vastly superior whitelist with the ability to be lethal at all ranges, have two separate health pools (one of which does not kill the user when it reaches zero) and have a utility to force people (or snipers) to move or eat a grenade. And to be fair, why wouldn't you?
There's no sense in obliterating the first whitelist for being too flexible, or AR's being too prevalent; however, the matter of fact is that other classes need to be brought up to a competitive standard in comparison otherwise they'll just be put into a dustbin and forgotten wholesale. How is a CO going to convince a new player to join their division when it very well could be a complete downgrade from the very first class they were given?
I'll answer each paragraph individually, as the topic is branched into 3 different subtopics.
Couple things I wanna say about this:
- The NPE (New Player Experience) approaches
- What different NPE approaches attract
From the approaches presented, its either:
[ A ] - You are given a lot of power so that you don't feel overwhelmed and decide prematurely to quit. vs [ B ] You are weak now, but you have the possibility of growth through different subdivisions.
~ This ( [A] ) is an approach I disagree with for several reasons, the first I'd like to point out is what kind of player it attracts. There's an argument to be made that if the NPE is not immediately fun, the average modern day player will just quit due to not having a good time on their first impression. I think one of the key causes to this is the fact we're living in an age of "dopamine addicts" who are incapable of doing an activity that doesn't immediately reward them. The way I see it (correct me if you disagree), giving in to this sort of player (who admittedly are the majority of gamers now a days) will only provide short-term activity, as they'll inevitably bore themselves (sooner than later) and seek their next dopamine hook, and quit the server. All the while it grinds down the experience of the dedicated community who've been playing for months if not years, and will stay for the long run (unless life gets in the way, as has been the case with many). My second point of contention is the premise, or at least the notion, that the NPE consists primarily of PvP, such is the main focus of "New Player Experience" discussions, that being, how they perform in combat against other classes. This (rather shallow) premise completely leaves out all of the unique aspects of CvR that a new player experiences, namely the classes they can potentially join. I've played on countless other servers during the times I was taking breaks from CvR, and none of them had such unique and varied experiences in terms of class gameplay like CvR has, and that comes across strong for the new player. At least from my experience, I remember joining up the server back in 2018, UNION had a weak SMG that could barely outgun the average rebel, but my mind was stuck on all of the different subdivisions that were explained to me during training, I wanted to try everything out and see how each performed, and during that "division hopping" time I not only got to experience various gameplay styles, but different communities and group experiences. Being in a squad of ECHOs with CmD Albedo taking points was completely different from being in an APC as a KILO helping people go to points while laughing and joking with an 01 who was driving, and that was completely different from interrogating and guarding people in the cells as a JURY side by side with other NPU subdivisions. Again, I'm talking solely on my own experience, but my NPE wasn't focused on "rather or not I can kill rebels easily as a UNION", but rather discovering the HUGE social world that CvR provides. After 6 years of CvR the community feels much smaller, but that's solely due to "shrinking world" effect, the new player doesn't see the CvR community in the same way we oldheads do, and I feel like most of their NPE is inevitably centered around discovering this "new world" contained within the server.
You make a great point that while of course we need to adapt to appeal to the majority of gamers, I should try to not put off people who already enjoyed the server.
Which, is exactly why forum posts like these are important- it provides a "check" on the ideas and efforts that are being undertaken.
It's not all bad though: now we have a stable "baseline" for the new player experience- we just need to improve the experience of everybody else further. Which is a lot more exciting to me (and I imagine to others as well), since it means new ideas and concepts, cool gadgets, etc.
The grappling hook, among other things, is the start of me working to enrich the experiences and utilities of the non-starter classes.
Other grievances, like the very fast respawn time for starter classes, are being addressed in near-future updates