SE IV future

[Q]

I am alarmed about the priorities in the SE IV development in the Last time: MM seems to focus more and more on game balance and making hard coded changes to "fix" it. First the engine overloading weapons, then the allegiance subverter and organic armor. Next will be the religious talisman and phased polaron beams. Then what about null space weapons (no counter!), mines and many more that are not really balanced?
Game balance certainly is important for human player games and I understand and respect all concerns about this. But you will with absolute certainty never get a complete agreement about it. Players who loose will always feel that the enemies have unbalanced advantages.
On the other hand, the possibily to adapt SE IV to the wishes of the players seems to be ignored: You want a reliable counter to the allegiance subverter: play without computer virus. You think the religious talisman is too strong: double or triple its size. There are almost endless possibilities to adapt the game balance as you like it. But instead of letting the player using this, MM makes one hard coded change after the other, that disrupt irreversibly the existing balance. You think that is exaggerated? If you have a fleet with the engine overloading weapons as main weapon and after the patch they don't skip shields anymore, you would probably agree. Or if you used the computer virus in combination with the allegiance subverter, which is made completely useless after the next patch, you might be not happy either.
These changes disrupt the continuity of SE IV. If you install a patch into an ongoing game you will get major changes in the game balance and you can't do anything against it. Your only option is not to install the new patch. That's extremely bad in my opinion.
Sorry for the long post and the negative critic, but this might very well kill my interest in the future of SE IV and I am very worried about it.

[ October 13, 2002, 07:23: Message edited by: Q ]