devtrackers.gg → Outriders

[2021] Outriders – Mod Buffs, Latest News and Known Issues – September 2nd


over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another Dev News Thursday.

https://preview.redd.it/l0ox1jpgn2l71.png?width=2058&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9703633a3aba6a66a9630dc403f20adb7a3522c

Index:

  • General News
  • Weapon Mods Buffed
  • Topic for Discussion: The Weapon Mod-Meta
  • Patch News
  • Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

General News:

Our upcoming patch is unfortunately still not ready for release – however, we have managed to bring forward and release a small number of buffs that were planned to be implemented later on as part of a wider rebalance. We have been able to make these changes today because they involve on backend balancing, rather than changes to game-code.

The below buffs have been implemented as part of today’s maintenance event. No download is necessary for them to take effect.

Weapon Mods Buffed

  • Winter Blast has had its AOE range increased to 5m (Previously: 4m)
  • Ultimate Anomaly Surge has had its damage increased by 37% (From base 25 to 34.25)
  • Claymore Torrent has had its explosion damage increased by 110% (From base 30.6 to 64.26)
  • Ultimate Storm Whip has had its damage increased by 40% (From base 23 to 32.2)
  • Strings of Gauss has had its damage increased by 162% (From base 24.5 to 64)

Topic for Discussion – The Weapon Mod Meta:

You may notice that a few of the above mods falls within a very particular category of mods:

Most of them are “single-target” or “cleave” mods, meaning that their damage potential is limited to a single enemy or a small group of linked enemies. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll refer to these mods as ST Mods. This contrasts with “uncapped AOE” mods (such as Moaning Winds), which deal damage to an unlimited number of enemies in their respective (and usually larger) AOE radius.

  • The current mod-meta in Outriders currently centres around 3 “Pillars”.
    • A) General AOE damage mods
    • B) Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta
    • C) Fortress

Today’s buffs are only our first steps towards addressing those aspects of the above mod-meta which we deem to be unhealthy for the development of fun and varied builds in Outriders. We will be making changes in future that will be aimed at disrupting the meta, but doing so in a way that opens up many more fun options and alternatives for players.

Below is an overview of how we see the current situation.

Pillar A: General AOE damage mods

  • According to our player data and community observations, there is currently an over-reliance on AOE damage mods, which is most likely the result of the way most enemy encounters in Expeditions are structured. Players usually face hordes of enemies against whom such AOE mods are the most efficient method of playing.
  • One vs one or smaller mob group encounters are rare enough for the AOE mods to still do enough DPS to overcome these encounters, even though ST Mods would likely be more effective here.
  • This means that there is a strong under-reliance on ST Mods, which is further exacerbated by some of these ST mods generally under-performing.
  • Storm Whip is an excellent example here, as its previous damage potential strongly under-performed, meaning few players chose this mod over other, better alternatives.

While originally developing the OG Outriders mod experience, we had envisioned that players would ensure that both of their weapons have fundamentally different mods. These would allow them to deal with and tackle different scenarios and encounters using a variety of weapons and methods.

This brings us to the next two Pillars, B and C. We believe (and think that you’ll agree) that the current meta that involves B and C has fundamentally stifled the need to run anything else. There is little incentive to experiment with other mods when these will always be more powerful.

Pillar B: Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta

  • Moaning Winds is one of the most dominant “active” mods currently in use.
  • For anyone unaware, one of the most potent mod set-ups in the game right now is to stack the Moaning Winds mod on multiple weapons and empty your magazines. Then run into a clump of enemies and cycle through your weapons, triggering this “on-reload” mod and its substantial damage multiple times in a very short space of time. Some players are able to trigger Moaning Winds three times in the space of a 2 second window.
    • This combo is especially effective in single player, where enemies cluster around a single, rather than two or three players.
    • Note: The above is over-simplified, but the intent is to mainly explain the concept.
  • Moaning Winds is therefore vastly out-performing its intended potential, making it one of the best “active damage” mods in the game while also inviting a rather unorthodox playstyle.
  • A single Moaning Winds mod by itself isn’t necessary a huge problem, it is mainly the double and triple stacking of it that is causing an unnatural shift in expected playstyles.
  • Overall, Moaning Winds is a big topic and deserves its own discussion thread, which we will open in future, along with historical context about how Moaning Winds came to be.

Pillar C: Fortress

  • The third and by far most problematic pillar is C: the Fortress mod.
  • The way Fortress currently works usually provides a passive and consistent 43% damage increase to damage the player inflicts.
  • In essence, take your normal damage and apply the calculation of x 1.43 to it. That’s it – that’s the mod. No gameplay loop, kill or damage event or special situation required.
  • In the current DPS oriented endgame, all players will naturally be trying to maximise the damage they are able to output, so the existence of Fortress in its current form essentially blocks a mod-slot.
  • By not combining Fortress with your chosen primary mod, you may well be sacrificing DPS, which is a philosophical question we’re not comfortable with you needing to face. We want you to have a free choice of multiple different combinations, without feeling that you’re missing out because you didn’t choose Fortress.

We also continue to be very aware that a timer based Endgame is part of the problem in that it forces a DPS oriented build, rather than a survival or just pure “fun” build.

These are the current challenges that we believe the Outriders weapon mod-meta is facing today. Today’s Buffs are only the first steps to remedying the situation and we are starting with a partial look at Pillar A. We will discuss Pillars B and C and the best ways to tackle them in future.

Note that we are also working on changes to certain under-utilized Legendary Armour Sets. However, as these changes will also required code-work, we'll talk more about them closer to their release.

Patch News:

Our latest patch is currently undergoing the usual test-cycle, but we wanted to share some highlights of the upcoming fixes and changes with you already today.

Please do bear in mind that our current testing is still validating the below fixes so some of them may not be 100% guaranteed for this patch. Also note that this is not an exhaustive list and is still subject to change as we pass through the testing phase. The final patch will include more fixes and improvements.

  • Further improved the visibility of the Brood Mothers Surge AOE skill limits.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing players from reviving themselves and other players after using the Trickster's Borrowed Time skill.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause the game to stutter when engaging Crawlers in battle during Expeditions.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause players to stutter when entering the drained lake during the third enemy encounter in the Scorched Lands expedition.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented secondary characters from picking up Journal Entries if they had already been collected on a different character.
  • Resolved an issue that would force matchmaking privacy setting to default to "Open". The privacy setting should now remain "Closed" when set. This should help further reduce AFK matchmaking.
  • Added an AFK status for players on friends lists.
  • Changed the behaviour of the Devastator's Impale, so that the game will detect impaled enemies as dead even before they disappear.
  • The Devastator's "Reflect Bullets" skill will now protect from Sciathan projectile attacks.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent Devastators from being able to consistently dodge if they had the Auto Reflect mod active.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause client shots to sometimes deal no actual damage to enemies.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Technomancer's Plague Sower set bonus to not proc consistently.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Plague Sower and the Cannonball Legendary Sets to not retain their set bonus after a transition.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause certain mods like "Grand Opening" to not proc if the player was on their last magazine.
  • Crash Fixes
  • Other minor bug Fixes

Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

Note 1: This is not an exhaustive list of things being worked upon. This is also not a list of patch notes for the next patch. Upcoming patches will address issues that may not be listed here.

Note 2: “Investigated” means that we have been able to successfully reproduce an issue on our dev environment and are currently looking at the root causes of said issue. If we have not yet been able to reproduce a specific issue, it may not be listed here, but that doesn’t mean we’re unaware of it.

  • State of Stadia
    • Today's General News update also covers Stadia as a platform we are continuing to work on.
    • Stadia still needs to be brought in line with other platforms with regards to fixes, bug resolutions and crossplay support.
    • We are continuing to do this work on aligning all platforms, but do not yet have a definite date for when this will be possible.
    • We appreciate that this work is taking longer than expected and do apologize for this.
  • Xbox problems related to signing in
    • A previous patch significantly increased Xbox sign in times for the vast majority of players. However, a small number of players appear to be affected by a secondary issue, which can cause them to do "alternative account sign in" workarounds.
    • We are investigating this matter and are in touch with a few affected users to investigate their accounts in order to identify the issue
  • Mods and Resources may be lost
    • This issue appears to be quite rare, making it very hard for us to reproduce it and identify it's cause.
    • For anyone affected by this, we recommend getting in touch with our Square Enix Support Team (sqex.to/support), who now have appropriate tools to be able to grant you specific mods and resources that you may have lost. Our support team will also be able to gather the appropriate information to aid us in our investigation.
  • The Moaning Winds Mod does inconsistent damage when a Player is either a Host or a Client
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch. The resolution should ensure that Moaning Winds does the same damage as it would in a solo player session.
  • Enemies within the Endless Mass skill have an inconsistent Hitbox
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Sprinting with your Sprint option set to Hold (instead of Toggle) may cause the player character to drift to the side
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Certain enemies, especially Alphas, may break out of Frozen CC as soon as they are damaged
    • Issue being investigated and will be resolved in a future patch
  • Certain Mods not working (properly or consistently), in particular when you’re the client during multiplayer sessions
    • Issue under review following multiplayer improvements
  • Using the Tier 3 Armor Mod "Pain Transfer" with either the Tier 2 or the Tier 3 "Damage Link" mod drastically reduces framerate.
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Technomancer Turrets may fall through the ground
    • Issue being investigated
    • There are a few different causes for this, including map specific areas (Mountain Outpost) as well as circumstance specific (such as aiming too closely at your own feet).
  • “Damage Blocked” Stat on Expeditions results screen occasionally appears inconsistently or abnormally low
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • A cutscene during the "The Mentor" Questline may not trigger, meaning players cannot progress past this point
    • Issue currently being investigated
    • Temporary Workaround: In your lobby, change your story checkpoint to an earlier one, then re-attempt this quest.

Recent Informative Dev Reddit Comments & Threads:

Other Helpful links:

External link →
over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another Dev News Thursday.

https://preview.redd.it/l0ox1jpgn2l71.png?width=2058&format=png&auto=webp&s=d9703633a3aba6a66a9630dc403f20adb7a3522c

Index:

  • General News
  • Weapon Mods Buffed
  • Topic for Discussion: The Weapon Mod-Meta
  • Patch News
  • Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

General News:

Our upcoming patch is unfortunately still not ready for release – however, we have managed to bring forward and release a small number of buffs that were planned to be implemented later on as part of a wider rebalance. We have been able to make these changes today because they involve on backend balancing, rather than changes to game-code.

The below buffs have been implemented as part of today’s maintenance event. No download is necessary for them to take effect.

Weapon Mods Buffed

  • Winter Blast has had its AOE range increased to 5m (Previously: 4m)
  • Ultimate Anomaly Surge has had its damage increased by 37% (From base 25 to 34.25)
  • Claymore Torrent has had its explosion damage increased by 110% (From base 30.6 to 64.26)
  • Ultimate Storm Whip has had its damage increased by 40% (From base 23 to 32.2)
  • Strings of Gauss has had its damage increased by 162% (From base 24.5 to 64)

Topic for Discussion – The Weapon Mod Meta:

You may notice that a few of the above mods falls within a very particular category of mods:

Most of them are “single-target” or “cleave” mods, meaning that their damage potential is limited to a single enemy or a small group of linked enemies. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll refer to these mods as ST Mods. This contrasts with “uncapped AOE” mods (such as Moaning Winds), which deal damage to an unlimited number of enemies in their respective (and usually larger) AOE radius.

  • The current mod-meta in Outriders currently centres around 3 “Pillars”.
    • A) General AOE damage mods
    • B) Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta
    • C) Fortress

Today’s buffs are only our first steps towards addressing those aspects of the above mod-meta which we deem to be unhealthy for the development of fun and varied builds in Outriders. We will be making changes in future that will be aimed at disrupting the meta, but doing so in a way that opens up many more fun options and alternatives for players.

Below is an overview of how we see the current situation.

Pillar A: General AOE damage mods

  • According to our player data and community observations, there is currently an over-reliance on AOE damage mods, which is most likely the result of the way most enemy encounters in Expeditions are structured. Players usually face hordes of enemies against whom such AOE mods are the most efficient method of playing.
  • One vs one or smaller mob group encounters are rare enough for the AOE mods to still do enough DPS to overcome these encounters, even though ST Mods would likely be more effective here.
  • This means that there is a strong under-reliance on ST Mods, which is further exacerbated by some of these ST mods generally under-performing.
  • Storm Whip is an excellent example here, as its previous damage potential strongly under-performed, meaning few players chose this mod over other, better alternatives.

While originally developing the OG Outriders mod experience, we had envisioned that players would ensure that both of their weapons have fundamentally different mods. These would allow them to deal with and tackle different scenarios and encounters using a variety of weapons and methods.

This brings us to the next two Pillars, B and C. We believe (and think that you’ll agree) that the current meta that involves B and C has fundamentally stifled the need to run anything else. There is little incentive to experiment with other mods when these will always be more powerful.

Pillar B: Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta

  • Moaning Winds is one of the most dominant “active” mods currently in use.
  • For anyone unaware, one of the most potent mod set-ups in the game right now is to stack the Moaning Winds mod on multiple weapons and empty your magazines. Then run into a clump of enemies and cycle through your weapons, triggering this “on-reload” mod and its substantial damage multiple times in a very short space of time. Some players are able to trigger Moaning Winds three times in the space of a 2 second window.
    • This combo is especially effective in single player, where enemies cluster around a single, rather than two or three players.
    • Note: The above is over-simplified, but the intent is to mainly explain the concept.
  • Moaning Winds is therefore vastly out-performing its intended potential, making it one of the best “active damage” mods in the game while also inviting a rather unorthodox playstyle.
  • A single Moaning Winds mod by itself isn’t necessary a huge problem, it is mainly the double and triple stacking of it that is causing an unnatural shift in expected playstyles.
  • Overall, Moaning Winds is a big topic and deserves its own discussion thread, which we will open in future, along with historical context about how Moaning Winds came to be.

Pillar C: Fortress

  • The third and by far most problematic pillar is C: the Fortress mod.
  • The way Fortress currently works usually provides a passive and consistent 43% damage increase to damage the player inflicts.
  • In essence, take your normal damage and apply the calculation of x 1.43 to it. That’s it – that’s the mod. No gameplay loop, kill or damage event or special situation required.
  • In the current DPS oriented endgame, all players will naturally be trying to maximise the damage they are able to output, so the existence of Fortress in its current form essentially blocks a mod-slot.
  • By not combining Fortress with your chosen primary mod, you may well be sacrificing DPS, which is a philosophical question we’re not comfortable with you needing to face. We want you to have a free choice of multiple different combinations, without feeling that you’re missing out because you didn’t choose Fortress.

We also continue to be very aware that a timer based Endgame is part of the problem in that it forces a DPS oriented build, rather than a survival or just pure “fun” build.

These are the current challenges that we believe the Outriders weapon mod-meta is facing today. Today’s Buffs are only the first steps to remedying the situation and we are starting with a partial look at Pillar A. We will discuss Pillars B and C and the best ways to tackle them in future.

Note that we are also working on changes to certain under-utilized Legendary Armour Sets. However, as these changes will also required code-work, we'll talk more about them closer to their release.

Patch News:

Our latest patch is currently undergoing the usual test-cycle, but we wanted to share some highlights of the upcoming fixes and changes with you already today.

Please do bear in mind that our current testing is still validating the below fixes so some of them may not be 100% guaranteed for this patch. Also note that this is not an exhaustive list and is still subject to change as we pass through the testing phase. The final patch will include more fixes and improvements.

  • Further improved the visibility of the Brood Mothers Surge AOE skill limits.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing players from reviving themselves and other players after using the Trickster's Borrowed Time skill.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause the game to stutter when engaging Crawlers in battle during Expeditions.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause players to stutter when entering the drained lake during the third enemy encounter in the Scorched Lands expedition.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented secondary characters from picking up Journal Entries if they had already been collected on a different character.
  • Resolved an issue that would force matchmaking privacy setting to default to "Open". The privacy setting should now remain "Closed" when set. This should help further reduce AFK matchmaking.
  • Added an AFK status for players on friends lists.
  • Changed the behaviour of the Devastator's Impale, so that the game will detect impaled enemies as dead even before they disappear.
  • The Devastator's "Reflect Bullets" skill will now protect from Sciathan projectile attacks.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent Devastators from being able to consistently dodge if they had the Auto Reflect mod active.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause client shots to sometimes deal no actual damage to enemies.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Technomancer's Plague Sower set bonus to not proc consistently.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Plague Sower and the Cannonball Legendary Sets to not retain their set bonus after a transition.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause certain mods like "Grand Opening" to not proc if the player was on their last magazine.
  • Crash Fixes
  • Other minor bug Fixes

Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

Note 1: This is not an exhaustive list of things being worked upon. This is also not a list of patch notes for the next patch. Upcoming patches will address issues that may not be listed here.

Note 2: “Investigated” means that we have been able to successfully reproduce an issue on our dev environment and are currently looking at the root causes of said issue. If we have not yet been able to reproduce a specific issue, it may not be listed here, but that doesn’t mean we’re unaware of it.

  • State of Stadia
    • Today's General News update also covers Stadia as a platform we are continuing to work on.
    • Stadia still needs to be brought in line with other platforms with regards to fixes, bug resolutions and crossplay support.
    • We are continuing to do this work on aligning all platforms, but do not yet have a definite date for when this will be possible.
    • We appreciate that this work is taking longer than expected and do apologize for this.
  • Xbox problems related to signing in
    • A previous patch significantly increased Xbox sign in times for the vast majority of players. However, a small number of players appear to be affected by a secondary issue, which can cause them to do "alternative account sign in" workarounds.
    • We are investigating this matter and are in touch with a few affected users to investigate their accounts in order to identify the issue
  • Mods and Resources may be lost
    • This issue appears to be quite rare, making it very hard for us to reproduce it and identify it's cause.
    • For anyone affected by this, we recommend getting in touch with our Square Enix Support Team (sqex.to/support), who now have appropriate tools to be able to grant you specific mods and resources that you may have lost. Our support team will also be able to gather the appropriate information to aid us in our investigation.
  • The Moaning Winds Mod does inconsistent damage when a Player is either a Host or a Client
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch. The resolution should ensure that Moaning Winds does the same damage as it would in a solo player session.
  • Enemies within the Endless Mass skill have an inconsistent Hitbox
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Sprinting with your Sprint option set to Hold (instead of Toggle) may cause the player character to drift to the side
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Certain enemies, especially Alphas, may break out of Frozen CC as soon as they are damaged
    • Issue being investigated and will be resolved in a future patch
  • Certain Mods not working (properly or consistently), in particular when you’re the client during multiplayer sessions
    • Issue under review following multiplayer improvements
  • Using the Tier 3 Armor Mod "Pain Transfer" with either the Tier 2 or the Tier 3 "Damage Link" mod drastically reduces framerate.
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • Technomancer Turrets may fall through the ground
    • Issue being investigated
    • There are a few different causes for this, including map specific areas (Mountain Outpost) as well as circumstance specific (such as aiming too closely at your own feet).
  • “Damage Blocked” Stat on Expeditions results screen occasionally appears inconsistently or abnormally low
    • Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
  • A cutscene during the "The Mentor" Questline may not trigger, meaning players cannot progress past this point
    • Issue currently being investigated
    • Temporary Workaround: In your lobby, change your story checkpoint to an earlier one, then re-attempt this quest.

Recent Informative Dev Reddit Comments & Threads:

Other Helpful links:

External link →
over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by LostLobes

Glad it's being updated, but some warning would have been nice.

Apologies - normally you should be getting a maintenance warning a few hours in advance. Not sure why it didnt trigger that far in advance today.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by augm

I know the triple stacking of moaning winds is not being used as intended, and honestly as a speedrunner I would LOVE to see that meta broken, but please be careful in how you do this. I could see nerfing this setup destroying a huge core of the games player base.

Beef up the other aoe mods, and buff things in accrodance with gun swapping. A moaning winds nerf could be fatal the the community I love.

I would LOVE to see that meta broken, but please be careful in how you do this. I could see nerfing this setup destroying a huge core of the games player base.

We're being very careful with what we're doing here. We identified MW as an issue a long time ago and have always had the "easy" option of just doing a simple numbers nerf. But we're trying to avoid doing that.

That's why we're also spending time laying out the options in advance and letting you know the direction we're going in.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by zerocoal

I hope they are planning on doing a rework to fortress and not just a simple % decrease. I don't really have any ideas on what it could be changed to to make it interesting, but here's hoping they get creative.

Moaning winds doesn't even really need it's numbers recalculated either. Maybe switching it so that having the same mod on multiple pieces of gear will share the cooldown but I can see that causing some other mods to become less powerful as well. A target cap could be interesting, but a target cap won't stop you from instantly blowing 900k out of a broodmother.

I don't mind the mods staying as powerful as they are, I just don't think they are very fun in their current incarnation.

I hope they are planning on doing a rework to fortress and not just a simple % decrease.

% decrease would be the easy way to fix this. But it would be painful for everyone involved. We don't plan to go that way if we're able to avoid it it any way.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by Fresh-Cup3729

I think this is a great start to improving the QOL for outriders. However as you have stated above. The major issue in my opinion and I feel many of the core players left will agree. The time based endgame while it’s fun and great for finding the best DPS builds. It does not allow for playing with different types of builds.

I feel if there was another game mode on top of the timed end game, this would entice more players to try build variety.

Again I think this is a great step in making outriders better but I do NOT feel that these meta mods are the sole reason.

These Meta mods are meta because of the timed end game. Yes please keep the buffs coming but please do not try to make changes to these meta mods as they are the only viable way to successfully complete gold timed end game runs.

I personally feel that even with these buffs to the ST mods it still doesn’t give enough incentive to steer players away from these meta mods as again it comes back to timed end game.

Please don’t take this as an attack just personal feed back.

Always appreciate the openness in what’s going on and all the hard work.

Please don’t take this as an attack just personal feed back.

Not at all :) I appreciate the response and can't disagree with what you're saying.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by WetDreamRhino

Hi community manager! Just wanted to say thank you! These changes, and especially the explanations, are awesome! I love how you simplified it down to three pillars and explained why changes are happening. Well done!

Thank you for the kind message :) The Pillars concept was the best way I could find to describe what is essentially a very complicated and connected mesh of issues - Glad to hear it makes sense!

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by shotmaster217

It just me or are the %’s bloated compared to any other developer patch notes? For example, storm whip damage going from 23->32.2, any other developer would put “damage increased by 40%” not 140%. In most games a 100% buff means double damage. Mathematically if they said “damage multiplied by 140%” I would be okay but saying “increased” should mean double damage.

I see what you mean - I've made the edit to make that clearer.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by Elora_egg

This is actually a fairly good weekly post! Wasn't expecting discussions like these, but i want to share my two cents as a constant off-meta player. (Big big fan of boulderdash and eruption, more specifically, even in t15)

As said in this post, the problem isn't at all running a singular copy of the mod, and this means that the actual problem is directly tied with quick cycling. I really want to ask though that it doesn't get nerfed in the process however. Ravenous Locusts is an example of this system at its peak - utilising all your tools to maximize damage. Moaning Winds is only problematic due to the fact that especially with anomaly power setups, bullets don't do damage on their own. Adding %anomaly to firepower conversion doesn't fix this either. Even with the golem set, it just seems like most weapons are completely underpowered even with firepower. (This excludes bullet abilities)

Even with pre buff ultimate storm whip, it effectively multiplied my damage per second with my guns by 10 times, but it still wasn't a great option. If shooting weapons was something that benefitted the player without firepower or mods, then quick cycling wouldn't be as strong as it is. If weapon hits gave us more returns, (eg. a 20% cooldown reduction for a second) then moaning winds would stay exactly as strong, but just with much more competition.

Fortress however is much less problematic imo. If running a second damage mod was as beneficial as fortress, (which may just be the case with these buffs) it would only be used with stuff like shadow comet or ravenous locusts, general mods with long cooldowns. Still though, this will mean massive power creep. If fortress was a 35% buff that was harder to reach, i still think it'd be good, so nerfing is justified here.

This said, I would like to ask: What was developed/intended to be the best options originally? Because I'm not sure what the ultimate goal is here.

What was developed/intended to be the best options originally?

Generally speaking, I don't believe there were any plans for single "best options" overall. The plan was to have all classes be equally viable and with different skill combinations per class as well. For the most part, I believe we've managed this, especially during the story gameplay, where class selection breakdowns are very similar (there is no single over-picked or under-picked class).

Equally, I think that those players who choose to play outside the meta have also found that there are plenty of viable alternatives that can still post gold times in Expeditions. You dont NEED Fortress, MW or Bullet Builds to complete all the game content at the highest levels, but they certainly make things a lot easier and faster. And them being seen as the meta will naturally mean many players gravitate towards them without wanting to experiment with other alternatives.

Without meaning to steal the thunder of future discussions, Moaning Winds was actually designed as a very specific niche mod for clearing low level mobs, also specifically tuned towards multiplayer. It's current "nuke" playstyle, especially in Single Player, was quite unexpected.

Similarly, Fortress was designed with a very specific build class in mind (Bruiser classes unless I'm mistaken), but for various reasons it's become something that is universally applicable to most build classes.

Both of these mods are in decidedly unforeseen situations now.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by FamousSession

Do you always release patches on Thursdays?

Thursdays or Tuesdays normally. I chatted a bit about it on the link below.

Patch Release Days Explained - Why previously on Fridays? (May)

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by station4318

Do I not understand math or do those percent increases not work out right?

Super helpful on the pillar talk. Feels good to hear you say the format of endgame has an effect on lack of disparity.

The percentages were wrong - I conflated the "new damage %" with "% increase in damage". I've fixed that now!

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by RedPayne415

I'm on PS5 and the ultimate storm whips damage is still the same as it's tier 2 version. Wtf?

I'm on PS5 and the ultimate storm whips damage is still the same as it's tier 2 version. Wtf?

The T3 mod has a shorter cooldown, so it effectively does 100% more damage in a specific time frame.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by PaulOaktree

" Ultimate Anomaly Surge has had its damage increased by 137% (From base 25 to 34.25) Claymore Torrent has had its explosion damage increased by 210% (From base 30.6 to 64.26) Ultimate Storm Whip has had its damage increased by 140% (From base 23 to 32.2) Strings of Gauss has had its damage increased by 262% (From base 24.5 to 64) "

When you increase something by 100%, that means that the "end" value will be the double of the "original" value.

When you increase something by 200%, that means that the "end" value will be the triple of the "original" value.

You have to reduce all your percentages by 100% for them to be correct.

I hope that the people that wrote this post, have NOTHING to do with the people that make/adjust the codding. Even though, if it was the same people, it would actually explain A LOT.

As to the changes themselves, all good.

As to the discussion of the future changes, it also seems a very positive approach to some of the issues, and I'm curious to know more details about them.

As to the specific Mods talked about, I'm going to speak a little about Fortress. Fortress is a really strange Mod. It says that we get 43% Damage buff, depending on our Armor, but Armor makes absolute no change (that I can see), to the damage we get. It should simply scale with our Armor. The more Armor we get, the more damage we would do. Change it to 50% (or any value that you think is balanced) of our Armor added to Firepower AND Anomaly Power (ex: having 100k Armor, would grant us 50k Firepower and Anomaly Power, and having Armor buffs taking it to 150k Armor, would grant us 75k Firepower and Anomaly Power).

You're right - the percentages were wrong. When transcribing the notes I conflated the "new damage %" with "% increase in damage". I've fixed that now by knocking 100% off each one. This is also why I ensure to have the base number changes in there as well, so that it's a bit clearer.

over 2 years ago - /u/thearcan - Direct link

Originally posted by -Certified-

Just curious Toby, did fortress every get used that way in play testing before release?

I mean sure once the games out and thousands of people play the game, the meta gets defined quickly but as soon as I saw the mod and the fact it's basically a stat stick I knew everyone would want to use it as it's a flat damage boost for no effort.

Someone posted an idea in another thread, make it so you need a higher armour value to get maximum return on it and so the middle trees (which probably need abit more damage to help anyways) for most classes would also benefit from it. Just give a smaller amount at say 50k armour and you need say 100k+ to get the full 43% bonus as an example. This also means that defensive mods could be used to then push armour values for the full bonus.

Obviously keep going with the buffs/mods and legendary sets and hopefully the balance will settle abit and more mods being used.

The history of Fortress is a bit checkered - at Launch it didn't appear to be that much of an issue. It only really became the issue it is today when we re-balanced the Armour which greatly increased the Armour Values on Gear, which in turn made it far easier to proc the max Fortress effect.

There may also be some funky stuff going on with Fortress in backend calculations with regards to how quickly it can achieve its max potential. Those miscalculations only made their way in post-launch.

Us fixing that broken calculation would be seen as a "huge nerf". Just as changes we made to the Bullet Skills were a nerf, even though the Bullet Skills were only performing the way they were because of a fundamentally broken calculation that were never intended to be in the game.

From what I've understood from the team, Fortress being a stat stick overall wasn't seen a huge issue during our initial balancing passes pre-launch, because at the time it didn't appear to be fully viable for everyone. It was a mod for a specific build class such as a Bruiser but wasn't necessarily viable for Glass Cannons.

On top of all of this is the fact that the game includes 300 mods, meaning that when changes are made something is always bound to slip through. Unfortunately in this case, that was Fortress with the Armour rebalance.

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