Why the balance forum feels like a waste of my time

1) have you ever heard of the 5 whys? It is a problem solving technique for analysis of a problem. Let's stop devaluing the concern. Why did the concern arise? Because the forum interpreted two apparently unrelated statements as being the same.. Why did the concern propagate? Because there was no clarification or further information from the devs. Until yesterday.

2) now you are doing exactly what I criticised Meta for doing in the OP.

We've just come out of several sequential builds where decisions have been made which harmed gameplay. At the time that change was made, the devs also made comments about differentiating the roles of bots and tanks. It's very nice to rewrite history to make the people who brought up a valid and reasonable concern based on the information they had been given look like idiots. However for that situation to occur a lack of communication and misinformation from the devs was required.​

3. How is it even vaguely hypocritical? Nowhere in my post do I make generalised comments about how people are not engaging me in discussion, nor do I blame others for my poor communication. Let Meta speak for himself.

Edit: Holy crap that cellphone formatting. Glorious.

Simple. It is a waste of your time. 90% of balance discussion here is circular, reactionary, and short sighted. Folks push agendas without much thought to the bigger picture of game development. You have two real challenges - to build a game with broad appeal, and to somehow yield some value from your community, which is a valuable if difficult resource. The PTE builds are a huge step in the right direction, but you can't expect a good signal to noise ratio from the forum. Cherry pick what you can use and leave the rest behind. I'm sure you'll work it out as you're doing well so far. Stay focused on the big picture, keep ignoring drama, and use us as willing test subjects and tainted focus groups. Its only the vocal minority who doesn't understand this.

The problem with your interpretation of the 5 whys is that it relies on cause and effect, which you are attributing in a specific manner. It's much better for physical problems, such as "why did a bridge collapse". It's not so useful for semantic analysis where each person can craft the flow of discourse to their liking.

It's not a catch-all rule for determining the cause of any given problem.

I'm not doing what Meta did at all, I'm attacking you for doing exactly the same. You are devaluing his concerns, and his points made, just because you don't want to admit that at any point there could be a valid reason to his post.

We've come out of several sequential builds where decisions have been made which harmed gameplay - in your opinion and those of several others. The post previously you completely dismissed a vocal minority that made a fuss about the Dox, because they were a vocal minority.

You're a vocal minority complaining about the gameplay.

It's hypocritical because you are devaluing his opinions, and then complaining that he is devaluing yours. If you cannot see that, there's no point me trying to convince you of it. I'm happy to agree to disagree, though if you at all mention the fact that people agreeing with you (about balance, about gameplay, about your posting behaviour, about anything), I'll happily point out that people agreed with me about you being hypocritical. That's the problem with a public forum. Groupthink is far too much of a problem.

Well I agree with how he feels about the gameplay but also agree that he was being hypocritical ( hard to argue with that one )

Five why's is cause and effect. There is a plain and simple miscommunication, quoted at the end of this post, which is the cause. And the effect is that the people disagreed with that change. Including the devs. Notice that that is what Meta's post is doing - he's identifying the effect, but blaming the cause on the forum. When in reality it all comes back to a single sentence he said when deprived of coffee, followed by a month without clearing up that miscommunication in any format.

At no point do I devalue him, or his opinion. In fact I actually actively agree with his overall meaning - that this subforum is fairly pointless. I do disagree with his discrediting and devaluation of others however.

Several others includes the devs. It's one of the reasons the Grenadier bot exists? The grenadier bots was a solution to those issues?

Gorbles. Stop it. PM me.

NOWHERE did I say this. You misread my post.
I said this:

Referring to the small number of people who believed

instead of a replacement. I'm not devaluing anyone's opinion, back off.

I'm commenting on the fact that people interpreted the information they had been given in a logical way. Not a fantastical way.

I am not devaluing his concerns, thank you very much. His concerns are valid, especially the overarching "what is the point of this subforum". It's a question I ask myself, especially with beautiful discussions, not about how shields/armour/experimental units etc. could work, but about how they are not suited in any way to this game because SupCom f***** up.

I am disagreeing with his opinion that those two instances were "overdramatised" and "semantic nitpicking". There is a difference between those concepts. I am not devaluing his opinion because he is a developer, not a player, or because he's American, not a Kiwi, or because he's making a fuss about nothing. I am disagreeing with his argument, and disagreeing with that is not hypocritical. I don't have a right to devalue him. Which I am not doing.

I disagree with the "overdramatisation" because that comes back to this quote.

That quote confirms Meta's quote in this thread as being accurate. He never says "they wouldn't have Dox". He does say the Dox would be changed to be a grenadier.

Yes, I disagree with the "TL;DR Visibility inspires panic" point. Not because I'm devaluing Meta as a person. But because the point that paragraph is making is inaccurate.

Notice how I'm disagreeing because he has misremembered his facts, not discrediting the argument by devaluing him as a person.

It is not hypocritical. Devaluation/Discrediting is not the same as disagreeing. I have every right to disagree with his opinion. I have no right to discredit him. And at no point do I do that.
Five why's is cause and effect. There is a plain and simple miscommunication, quoted at the end of this post, which is the cause. And the effect is that the people disagreed with that change. Including the devs. Notice that that is what Meta's post is doing - he's identifying the effect, but blaming the cause on the forum. When in reality it all comes back to a single sentence he said when deprived of coffee, followed by a month without clearing up that miscommunication in any format.


On group speak - do you not think it's very odd that I have disagreed with pretty much every user on this forum? I disagree with opinions. I do not discredit people.

Is devaluing his argument. Despite your arguments to the contrary. Prove that it isn't, please.

Trying to downplay the panic as "very few people" is dismissing their argument by dint of the number of people making it. You're downplaying their concern simply because only "very few people" mentioned it.

Why do you not see this? Why can't you comprehend what you're posting, and how it affects other posters and their arguments - while seeking justice for the devaluing of your own arguments?

EDIT:

Have a cute picture, go back, read through things again. See how this conversation developed:

Except there is no argument in the whining. The whining is the discrediting and the devaluation of other users of the forum. My whole post is a rejection of his right to devalue and discredit forum users.

There's no dismissal of argument. I've blatantly already responded to the arguments that can be responded to.

TL;DR Everything gets said over and over and TL;DR You can't be all the things to all the people all the time have nothing there to argue. The first is true. The second is an observation which would be very hard to argue for or against because it's what the devs are doing whether we like it or not.

At that point in my post, I've made all the points that can be made. There's nothing more to do but conclude. And so I chose to conclude in a way reflective of the provocative manner of Meta's post.

There is literally no argument that line is devaluing.

Reread my posts.

At no point do I do that. Why the heck would I be downplaying a concern I raised myself? I'm not that insane.

The "very few people" are the opposite group. They are the people who did not make the concern.

Edit: thank you for the cute picture. I do suggest you are the one that rereads the conversation though, to pick up on the instances where you misunderstood. And also the very odd challenge for me to report your post?

What opposite group is this now? You're confusing me here.

You are dismissing those people on two levels. One, that there's very few of them. Two, that their arguments are a conspiracy.

Please tell me what I need to re-read. If I've missed something, I'd rather know explicitly than continue this back-and-forth

With regards to there being an argument in the "whine" . . . you are dismissing his thread as a whine. In it's entirety. This is how your sentence is worded. You do not qualify it with anything. You state that the entire thread is a whine, and not worth your time (geez lawz condescension much).

Gorbles, Kiwi - please enough, you're derailing the thread further. Take it to PMs if you must argue further!

At the moment we appear to be moving to a pressure point where the community is getting frustrated at certain changes and being somewhat knee-jerky and aggressive.

Uber is getting annoyed at the reactions and reception from the community and is probably going to shutdown and stop communicating as much.

Let's all try and take a step back and relax a little. The community thinks Uber keeps making gross mistakes and has the wrong vision for the game. Take everything with a handful of salt! It's been shown many times before and it's still happening now - sometimes Uber makes big changes or crazy changes just to see it play out and see how it feels. It's not a permanent change it's a test! You should take every change just as such because in 3, 6, 12 months from now the state of the game will be utterly different to now. Bear that in mind!

I believe the new PTE is a huge step in the right direction, particularly the reduction in efficiency of t2 mex and the increased cost of t2 units. It is no longer essential to go to t2 because you must get t2 mex or lose. The t2 units may be a direct upgrade to t1 however for their cost t1 and t2 units are very close in efficiency. I personally would prefer 12 t1 tanks over a single t2 tank. 12 t1 tanks are better against mass t1 units and are better at multiple raids in many places. T2 tanks are better against strong targets like vanguards. Ultimately you don't want one or the other, you want a mix of both which I think is great!

tl; dr We're moving in the right direction and everything will change so much a week, a month, a year from now. All these changes are temporary, to test. Let's not react so explosively to one tiny step on a huge path of iteration towards a final game.

The group who misunderstood the meaning of the word 'changed', and made the assumption that the Dox would supplement the Grenadier; rather than taking the change at face value. The sentence you have misunderstood this entire topic . Repeated. Again. One final time.


Correct. Because wording a discussion so it is devaluing is not conducive to a positive discussion. The 'panic' did not occur because the community panicked. There was a miscommunication from Uber. There are positive ways to word the issue, without attributing fault to the forums. And that is still positive if it does turn out that there is a direct quote that attributes where that miscommunication came from.

You'll notice the word 'further' in my reply. Having addressed the arguments without dismissing them, I then said that further development was not worth my time. No dismissal at that point. If I had dismissed the entire thread as being a waste of my time, I would never have replied. Arguments were all addressed with a reasonable discussion.

I once again advise further discussion in PM before we piss someone off.

Edit: Ah ****. Sorry Zaphod.

It's okay meta. Some of us feel that the balance forum is a waste of our time as well.

Welcome to the internet. It is the playground for children, criminals, and the legally insane. The vast majority of the internet is garbage, and what isn't garbage is porn, and what isn't porn is still a cesspool of wild, rabid animals. Don't feed the trolls. Don't bleed for the sharks. A good host knows when to let the forum battles play out, and when things are getting out of hand.

This forum has a goal of seeking free professional feedback. If it seems like a bad idea, it's because one typically gets what they pay for. It's always possible to try digging through the piles and piles of refuse, and rarely some real gems come to the fore. What can I say, "broken clocks" and so forth. If the team has some talented gem diggers then a forum can be extremely valuable, even if it is just as soul crushing as actual gem digging. But it takes a sharp eye to grind a thousand pages of feedback down into useful material- mechanics, interactions, problems and solutions. It's not easy.

High forum activity is good. Angry people arguing every which way is good. Clueless idiots making terrible arguments mean new customers, which is good. Sad developers are bad. Developers that forget their forum hazard suits are bad. Getting angry with the public is catastrophic. Don't do it. See paragraph 1.

I think i know why people freak out. I think they think that the changes on a unit are considered to be near final (like the test on the anchor).

Lots of thinking in these sentences.

In a sense they are, because people expect Gamma to be something more than Alpha 3: The Rejiggering.

Actually, it would be Alpha 3: The Social-ing, since Gamma was announced with the addition of the Uber Bar, but that's just details.

Whenever I post balance feedback, I always try to posit it as "What if it were changed to work like this?" instead of "It has to work like this or I will ask for a refund!" I think most other people posting ideas have a similar mindset, even if they don't express it very well. I think a lot of people just find it annoying to have to type out a disclaimer every time that says "Don't take my idea too seriously, I'm just tossing it out here." It's much easier to just toss your idea out into the wild instead of dancing on eggshells trying word your post just right so as not to hurt other people's feelings who may have different opinions. Also, people often read text in a different tone than the writer originally intended, contributing to misinterpretations.

At the end of the day, people have to realize that the game can only be made one way, and it's not going to please everybody. However, the game will be fully mod-able so that theoretically everybody will be happy in the end.

Another thing that I think contributes to a lot of "forum anger" is that the developers and players live at different speeds. A few days seems like an eternity to a player waiting for something to get fixed, but for a developer to fix something in only a few days is a huge accomplishment for them. People don't realize how long it takes to make changes and how much other stuff goes on in the background.

My Sherlock Holmes honed powers of deduction and intuition are leading me to the shocking conclusion that you might perhaps be finding the huge influx of unfiltered information an inconvenience and may I even vesture so far to say mildly irritating?

I must admit I'm not sure I'd want you're job right now Meta

What I would say is that, at least on some things, I think the community may (?) have come up with a good idea or 2? I guess that's the difference between Uber and other developers- you're willing to wade through all the feed back to find them

I'd like to think that (long) after its all finished you'll be able to look back and think that, yes it was a pain in the ****, but it was worth it!

Hehe this is soo funny!
meta been doing balance for?4 5 6 weeks now? Scathis been doing all the time
Meta "soo much feelings, soo much frustration"
Scathis " aaaa nah pfff Screw it"
Scathis knows how! hulk gogan dont!
Scathis is awesome! u2 meta
Still remember that 1, 1 game where everything was so cool and stuff and he got it on stream aswell, lol

... and the ONLY reason that is true, is because when trolling on the internet, you take away the risk of getting the ever loving **** kicked out of you by the dude you pissed off.

you can get away with much greater cruelty when you cannot be touched.

People yell a hell of a lot louder once you take away the threat of starting a fight you can't physically win...

that being said, the ability to not troll even in the face of net-enabled invincibility is what separates the Altruistic from the *** Holes.

I think the internet as a whole isn't quite as bad as all this...

I participate on a few forums and such, and the majority of people are decent. I think we need to be careful to differentiate between genuinely opposing opinions and trolling. It's ok to disagree with someone (even strongly) so long as you make you're case in a fair and reasonable manor and keep personal insults out of it. I do get the impression that people automatically jump to the conclusion that someone is a 'troll' if they disagree with them

I'd also point out that although the net does have the reputation for 'being for porn' (to quote avenue Q), there is a huge amount of useful resources available as well. I work in product development and the amount of new technologies, suppliers, tutorial information and such is staggering. It makes my job much much easier than if I had to trawl through local business phone directories and such to acquire things I need.

As for the PA forums, we have a large group of very passionate (and experienced) players here and as far as I've seen not very many (any?) persistent trolls (everyone has their off days). I also think that by attempting to consider our input (as contradictory and frustrating as it can be) Uber are creating allot of good karma and hopefully a long lasting foundation for PA to grow from. I honest think the pain and torment will be worth it in the long run!

But, Meta, that's not entirely true. If you give a good response to a question, people usually are able to understand (like you did in this very thread). Sometimes a good or direct answer from Uber is missing for weeks, and that causes misunderstandings. For example, I personally pushed on some topic that I cared of, and when finally(!) I got some reasonable answers, I understood part of the issue and I stopped inquiring that topic (and I started annoying on some other topic but that's just me).

We are individuals, each of us thinking on his own. We can't update each other like computers in a net do. We, as Humans, are slow in reading and acknowledging/assimilating any new data. Specially if that requires changing our positions and judgements.

Beside that, it has been a precise choice of Uber to open and maintain the forum. And I think that in the end, the benefit you get from the Community is priceless (perhaps not from me myself in the specific, but from so many other passionate readers and supporters). Those people here believe in you totally (some time even too much), and they spend on average tons of hours trying to help you improving the game. They surely do not think they're wasting their time. And they're not paid for, on the contrary, they're your paying customers.

Don't you think that that's priceless?

In the end, if yours would be a question, my answer would be that it is really not a waste of time

The problem is, there are people who aren't like you, or just don't read the forums as much, and the result is Meta hearing the same complaints repeated over and over by different people who aren't reading each other's posts.
Plus, some people hear, but don't LISTEN
But yes, I agree it isn't a waste of time, even with all this palava.