balance commissary / beta feedback coordinator

[neth]

Its not about disrespect but about your attitude to newbs. There is nothing worse than situation when some new player wants to help somehow, he has ideas and then someone else tells him that he has no right to state his opinion. One person, even pro cant shape the gameplay...why ? Because the gameplay should shape itself. Its not the game making community play somehow, but community making the game. If most people are noobs the gameplay should be enough flexible to allow them to play and make progress. Balancing process needs time and you cant do it alone or even with 10 people to help you, no matter how skilled you are.

I remember times when I had no idea what these weird arrows around the crosshair mean and that running as a spy produces sound. If someone had told me then that i have no rights to say anything that would improve the gameplay in my opinion, I would have left this game immediatelly. No matter what Gawain, you cant play this game alone. We need new players to survive.

I guess this game wants to clone only SOME aspects of CT. I dont want to play a game which differs only with graphics and I dont want to play a game which i can master from the beginning - and thats what you want to do - fit the gameplay so its easier to play for your skill.

[Gawain]

newcomers should be helped in any possible way to improve, but it's a huge mistake to try to adept the game to their skill level. 99% of ideas from noobs turn around their inability to counter a certain strategy/gameplay mechanic or underestimation of the possibilities the game already got.

i'm well aware that the balance process takes a lot of time and players. my point is that with one person responsible for the balance questions, the process can be significantly accelerated.

basic game mechanics like the sound indicator have to be in the tutorial. like i've mentioned 1000times before, a good tutorial, tip of the week, replays from own games and tournaments, a helpful community etc are the crucial points of bringing the newcomers to a point where they understand the basic concept and can develope their own play style; balancing a game for newcomers is just stupid though. the best result we can get is that it's acceptable balanced for middle skilled and well balanced for high skilled teams (yes it's not about solo-skill, it's about team skill).

no it wants to clone the svm gameplay and take ct gameplay as the initial point. the biggest mistake that can be done for ps is trying to create a new game from the beginning.

[neth]

Problem with noobs is that they simply dont read tips. Mostly they play lame, cause they have no idea that something can be used in some way. Look how many noobs in CT dont know how to use visions. I could ask, how is it possible if there are vision tips in the compulsory tutorial before you play the first online game.

[Cyntrox]

I think that the tutorial with an exam map was a good idea - the fact that you could just try and fail your way through it easily with no possibility for failure was not.

OT: One person should never determine balance. Everyone is biased, and even if you got this position you would become VERY unpopular. Why? You wouldn't be able to please everyone, not even near everyone, and with your attitude I don't know if you would even try. No offense.

[Gawain]

i guess i'm already in the doghouse of some people here, but most people don't even know me (=chatting, playing some games together,...) ;D

well the job would not be changing stuff randomly the way i or the chosen person likes it, but asking players of all skill groups about their opinions on the topic, and using the feedback from the newbis for improving the tutorial/tips, the feedback from the middle skilled for the gross balance work and the feedback from the pros (will at least need some months till people become that good) for the fine tuning, eg patches after beta stage. as there is no time pressure (besides our impatience) there will be plenty room to try out new stuff and see what works.
it's important to get the opinion of the majority of players on certain gadgets etc (if they like it or not), but depending on the topic there are better and worse ways to get valid feedback. if you want to get feedback on the camo, you should ask a good stealth team rather than a good aggro team; if you want to get feedback on the tazer, you should ask a good aggro team rather than a good stealth team (+the respective specialized mercs).
it would also be helpful to get statistics which gadgets are preferred, which maps are preferred, etc.
to sum it up, i (or another balance commissary) would have to make some decisions, but the main part of my/his work is to collect and rank feedback from the community and find out which of the popular ideas could probably work out best especially by talking to the right people and thinking conclusively based on my/his svm experience.

[LennardF1989]

I don't feel like discussing this in any way, since it has no point at all (for now that is). You know my statement...

And it's true that we can't do everything ourselves. Ofcourse the topics about unbalancing comes from you guys after the beta, but you have to know that EVERYTHING you will see is most likely scripted (how powerfull is a weapon, how fast you run/walk/crouch, grabbing a merc, killing a merc, EVERYTHING has code behind it which manipulates it in some way, you think the visions are just a simple texture which code overlays? Also think about destroyable lights.)

To make my statement again, even though I dont have played ct for "100 hours", I will most likely get be that time ingame double time, just for debugging, implenting, playing, testing, cheating, whatever.

This is no argument against my noobyness, but please don't make statements like we don't know balancing on our own. I know well enough when a mine/weapon/grenade is overpowered, same counts for other stuff that balances a game.

[MulleDK19]

I don't really know what to say...

So I'll just say  >:(

[T2C LeBron]

LoL i love how people insult people who are making your damn game for FREE.  Some of the PS people are taking 100's of hours of their life into making it.  Just because you played ct matter more then others but most of us especially the ps people have a vision.   It should be balanced through the better and feedback via forums and such with finding a common ground.  People like you ruin it for everyone else and make it so they can't say as much if people would just chill.  They aren't ubisoft they don't have millions of dollars in a budget so please chill.

BTW could i be the xbox Community manager?






JK but i am telling everyone on xbox who still plays ct(a lot actually, i'm making a website to recreate gamebattles for splinter cell ct and will add a link to here its gona be sweet)  despite what you pc people may think of us we love the game just as much and play it a ton even though it is a different game.

[neth]

1. I have nothing against consoles
2. unfortunately this game is not for xbox

[Gawain]

i talked to binary and he told me the dev team was well aware who of them got more experience so i hope im worried for no reason.

what i still consider usefull is giving read-only access to the dev forums for some good players so that if there's a flaw in something it's more likely to be detected in an early stage. it wouldn't disturb anyone and stash away the worries instantly.

[neth]

Gawain, we are all waiting impatiently for revealing new stuff. No need to use tricks like this to get more info :)

[Gawain]

i'm waiting impatiently to play it, not to see details. there's way more entertaining vids/music/art/articles etc on the internet. the only thing i'm somewhat interested besides helping to make this a great gaming experience is to learn something about the development of a game.

[neth]

To play the game were gonna have to waaait for long. Its a pity we dont have any knowledge about overall progress. Im not talking about details but it would be nice if people could know that something is moving forward...

BTW. SCC has been postponed to the 2nd quarter of financial year. It means we wont see it in march and possible delay is 4 months. If its gonna be like this PS can come out first. :)

[Gawain]

i don't give a crap about new ubi games, i won't even play the demo or read a review.

[neth]

well im curious about what they indend to do. Such a long delay could mean that they want to change something drastically...perhaps MP ?