devtrackers.gg
Thank you for using the meme format Emote at least. :)
The picture is even more complicated than just "a community of two sides" though. We also have in-game d a t a, survey results, and the dev team's intuition.
When players say we made the Gryphon changes in reaction to Reddit, that was not the whole justification. He had spectacular in-game winrates and was a huge topic in our survey data as well.
Similarly, when players said we pushed the CCU live because we only care about competitive players on PC: sure we want to prevent staring contests in tourneys, but it's also a game design preference. We have recognized the need for more offense in the game since very, very early days, and it's been a dev team priority for a while.
We have a holistic approach. So do the "different communities" influence us? Yes. But we never close off a source of feedback, or pick a favorite side. We have one game and we have to make one balancing decision for the build that we have. There is no world in which we would balance two separate builds of the game - including one in which we had infinite resources. I can't think of a precedent for that in fighting games, fighting-adjacent games, or really in a competitive game period.
Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough: if we had two builds of the game we'd have two states of balance for players to express their opinions about. I have yet to find the PvP game where the community said "we can't make tier lists or make feedback threads anymore, it would be pointless."
So please hold us to a high standard and ask us to take the actions you think are best for For Honor. We can listen to dozens of proposed solutions, but at the end of the day we can only make one, and it's never going to be a process that's based on picking a "side." We just want to make our game as fun and healthy as possible. :)
If i need to share my personal opinion, the balancing has been the best since i started playing (16 October 2018). When i started, there were a lot of weak heroes with Boring kits and the game was a lot more focused on the defense side, making it more stale.
I need to say that the devs are doing a great work in my personal opinion, i love all the buffs and rework they are doing instead of nerfing the heroes with more complete kits. I hope they will continue this way! I can't wait to see the next TG, i hope there will be a lot of weak heroes addressed like the last one
Thank you! I think we've come a long way and gone through a lot of Testing Grounds to reach this point. We hope to continue progressing things in this fashion.
Show us the numbers.
You have the numbers. You used to compile matrices of winrates and pickrates in ranked duals and duals and in what skill ranges. People can bicker and bitch about what heros best and what moves are best. Having cold hard numbers will at least point the communities bitching about this and that in a more cohesive direction. Rather than dozens of voices complaining about their own biases and this move and that feat.
Eg: show the number of light parries in low rank duals and 4s compared to higher rank duals and brawls to finally shut up the incessant "light spam" complaints. Show who's feats land the most and do the most damage/kills in a game. Show how often heros land strong finishers Vs heros that are stronger in neutral and dodge attacks (spoilers the latter wins)
Post them in the subreddit and see how many voices rally around one point versus what people belly ache about in the comments
Thank you for listening to my Ted talk
Post them in the subreddit and see how many voices rally around one point versus what people belly ache about in the comments
Just to be brutally honest: the cold hard numbers never did anything to stop any disagreements. Ever. Not that that's really the goal of releasing them, but I've seen a lot of proof that this is exactly what won't happen.
Hey sorry for writing you an essay response but here goes...
I do understand your point. Truthfully, I think that really comes down to the community having very different opinions on what direction the game should take. Which is something, in my opinion, is something that the devs should take a firmer stance on and tell the community what their plans and vision for the game should be. Hero stats and winrates will never stop the divide behind a lot of the community wanting different things. There will always be disagreements in the community and they will always get salty. I dont think trying to fight the communities toxicity is a worthwhile time investment and I don't think that should be the purpose of releasing these stats.
Here's what I think making these posts will do:
-It is such an easy way to honestly and regularly stay in touch with the community and to show the devs are listening and communicating.
-No community has ever complained about their devs being too transparent with their game. The die hard players will still read these numbers and still input their critiques and thoughts regardless.
-Showing the stats behind heros/moves/feats and their changes over time will absolutely put more faith in the community thst the devs are moving I a specific direction and that the changes are working.
-I can't lie, you having "seen a lot of proof" yourself is exactly what I'm talking about. So many disagreements and so much vitriol in the comments come from notional evidence from singular peoples experiences from the game and dealing with the community. Showing Stats with a sample size if hundreds or thousands of games over an entire season is much harder to get upset over. People are presenting their own accounts as fact and getting upset at the game for it and them when some other person calls them out on it the community just calls eachother scrubs and noobs and nothing gets accomplished and everyone leaves thinking their correct and everyone else is an idiot.
-Finaly he community is doing all of this work for you anyway. Community creators like Freeze on you tube have been doing all their own testing and presenting their own accounts of talking with the devs on their channels for years now. Going back to my last point, instead of the information coming from one or two sources having a much larger sample size and multiple sources only reinforces the devs voice and decisions. In addition this takes some of the pressure off them and information comes out susynced and the community gives their opinions faster and more clearly.
I agree with you the community is going to find ways to bitch at eachother. There will always be differences of opinions no matter what the devs say there is always a portion of the community up in arms about something.
THAT SAID. The positives out way the negatives. It makes the devs look good. The large portion of the player base who are die hard and the people that will continue to spend money on the game will be grateful. Finally the feed back from the community will at least be pointed in one direction rather than people talking about how trash one hero is vs another because this one time they played a a match and had a bad time so now that hero is bad/toxic forever no matter what people say.
Thank you for reaching out to the community again and replying to my comments. This is the kind of thing that keeps people playing the game and has been a massive step in the right direction for the games health.
All super interesting points, though I have disagreements with a few of your premises. I'm not averse to doing stats again.
Honestly, if there is a takeaway from the stats overall, it's probably that "simple health and damage are way more influential than people think + Reflex Guard is a drawback, as most people understand."