[2019] Patch 24.4.0 - Mesa's Peacemaker not working anymore as intended

Hey hey,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I don't have an answer for you just yet, but we are investigating what's going on here.

We'll keep you posted as soon as we find out more.

Thanks!

-Bear

 

Hey Tenno,

Peacemaker is already a strong ability and the use of Arcane Velocity simply turned that up to 11. While this change was not intended, after some internal back and forth we have made the decision to keep this change. We feel that the two combined makes the already top tier Peacemaker over the top. It still works with Peacemaker, Peacemaker simply cannot trigger it.

We will be editing the patch notes to reflect this.
 

24 minutes ago, xRufus7x said:

I want to point out that the current implementation of arcanes with exalted weapons is consistently inconsistent. Please decide if you want them to work with exalted weapons or not and update them all accordingly. Personally, I would prefer they did as it makes it much simpler to figure out what is going to impact your abilities but if you are going to continue on this path of one off exceptions please add in game language to their descriptions that they do not work with exalted weapons.It is getting harder and harder to track all of these exceptions and how their interactions work.

I will relay this back to the team. Thank you for the feedback.

Hey folks,

There are a lot of passionate feelings about this, and it warrants revisiting. Before we get too far into the next steps, I want to thank you all for your feedback and your thoughts. A reminder though; decisions we make on some things are not set in stone. When something seems right to do on a given day, down the road it may need to be reversed.

When the problem was first brought up, we initially saw it contained to a single Arcane + Ability. Given the level of Peacemaker and its already strong position, the change seemed warranted. However, this mainline update has had an effect on multiple Exalted weapons and builds and it is these inconsistencies that are causing us to look at this again to figure out what actually happened here.

I can’t give you an answer on what is going to happen going forward today, there are simply too many spinning plates, and looking into the effect of each Arcane on each Exalted weapon is going to take time to see what's broken. Be assured though that your concerns are heard, but we need to approach it correctly.

I will keep this thread posted with updates as I get them.

Thank you, and as a reminder, please keep the discussion civil.
 

10 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

Now there's another topic at hand, which is: Is Arcane Velocity the issue here? Is it Peacemaker? Or is it perhaps the dated damage and resistance/armor system that has been in dire need of a look up (and Steve seems to have started to look at)? Do we have enough high end content to use these "over the top" builds? What we have is enough, do these have issues on the power/level scale (do the higher level enemies die too fast, is there any downside to them not dying too fast)?

2

There are a lot of vectors here to investigate, but the main point of our looking at this issue is specific to the cases of Arcanes interacting with Exalted Weapons across the board. No one here is out to ruin fun, but as you can probably tell, the change made to Peacemaker - as well as other Exalted weapons - was a bit more far-reaching than initially thought. We do listen to you, and we do take constructive criticism seriously.

1 minute ago, Boboberto said:

Yes, by making  changes without telling, then saying it was unintentional, theen saying it was too strong, theeen saying it was intentional from the beginning. 

I get that you are implying that we are somehow being dishonest here, so let me make sure this part is clear.

- Some change introduced with Mainline (still undetermined) caused the issue with Arcane Velocity being proc'd on Peacemaker.
- Initially, the change seemed contained to Peacemaker and that was deemed an acceptable if unintentional 'nerf' (as posted).
- Report surface that a larger problem is occurring with Arcanes across the board and their interaction with Exalted Weapons.
- Internal testing confirms this is so and so the issue is reopened and a wider discussion is had about Arcanes and Exalted Weapons.
- Dev is testing the results of individual Arcanes and abilities in an effort to better make things more consistent, based on the feedback on this thread and other locations.

Given the size of our updates, some things do slip through that cracks, that is sure. There is a lot of process behind this (including triage) and as stated, some changes need to be reverted for the greater good, or perhaps even wide-sweeping reform may be required to fix the previously undiscovered issue. We are currently in the stage of assessment. There is a concern, and we are responding to it.

Okay, so I have an update for you all:

This is a copy of what is going into the patch notes later today...

Quote

Arcane Change/Fix:
As often happens with Mainline - unexpected bugs popup. In the case of last week's 24.4.0 Mainline Update, we quickly received reports that Arcane Velocity was not working on Mesa's Regulators. Considering Mesa's popularity, it's no coincidence that this was noticed right away. We want to go into detail about what happened between Thursday and now, what's being fixed, and what next steps are:

From Thursday to today:
1) Between Thursday and now - we've had issues internally on intention, which are typically the hardest to communicate when we're also trying to diagnose a bug. As of now, players know we may intend to keep Arcane Velocity from working while Mesa is in Peacemaker
2) Between Thursday and now, many other prior-functioning Arcane + Abilities broke as well, leading to further confusion on intention.

What's being fixed:
Today we found the bug that caused this issue - a single fix intended to let Dispatch Overdrive work on Garuda's Talons indirectly broke many Arcane + Warfame Ability functionalities.

1) We have Restored Arcanes not triggering from Exalted weapons across the board by reverting the change made in Update 24.4.0:
Dispatch Overdrive now applies to Garuda’s Talons when equipped.

Next steps:
While players have restored functionality now (i.e Mesa + Arcane Velocity), it won't be a true solution if you don't know the dev teams intention. We unintentionally broke some arcane interactions and let it ride when we shouldn't have. We're fixing that today! We do think there are some balance issues remaining but it is not our intention to use side-effects to solve.

Balance is a conversation that we constantly have, and we see you having as well. For some people the answer is don't nerf things, buff everything else. This is the path of least resistance for us, as most of the player base is happy when we buff, and angry when we nerf. However this has a few side effects that impact the game as a whole. First, with more damage, the time to kill on enemies is lowered and the value of Crowd Control declines even more (Vauban?!). Higher max damage also means that players with the latest bells and whistles can easily kill bosses in an instant, and overcome any challenge with ease. The more your play, the easier the game gets!

So far we have been kicking the can down the road, accepting power creep and its consequences on the game - and often this game is a 'kill all the things' based game. We've mostly done nerfs on things that could be automated, required no player interaction or removed options from the game by making all other choices bad. We will continue to wrestle with this, but the most important part is when and if we decide major balance changes are needed, we will let you know and it will be the result of a lot of consideration. Design changes like this need to be more tempered and considered.

Thanks for hanging in there through all this confusion. Six years in and we are still learning how to do this.

TL;DR - We found the issue that caused the initial problem, and it is being reverted so that Arcanes will indeed work with Exalted weapons - including Mesa's Peacemakers. However that does not mean that down the road, there will be another look at balance but for now, the change is getting removed with the intent of reviewing Arcanes down the road and trying to decide on uniformity. It's all in the spirit of evolving development.

Thank you all for your patience, and feedback.