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 ]

[Arkcon]

I agree. For quite a while early in this game's run people were spending their time making the AI more challenging. And developing tactics that would work against various threats a human would mount.

Now, the urge is to achieve some perfection of balance so that advantages are perfectly countered.

I submit that these two points of view are mutually exclusive. And I don't understand why the second one seems to have won some sort of effort on MM's part for hard code changes. I really think people should carefully read Q's post. It really points out a number of ways in which the balance can be altered without a hardcode change.

The transition from developing more interesting tactics to trying to cripple another's exploitive tactics was not a smooth one. Although it was a long time in coming and not as noticeable at first.

A while ago, the first cryptic message came. I hope someone remembers it. Someone said to be certain before a PBW game that all rules were worked out or some such foo. There were a few more Messages on "PBW etiquette". These Messages had no real content. I distintly remember Geo saying something to the effect that this sort of thing can't be perfectly achieved, so some flexability is required.

So, I say again, who got spanked, so badly, by whom, that hardcode changes are needed?

[ October 13, 2002, 11:44: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[geoschmo]

You guys are blowing things way way out of proportion here. Really. You are totally overreacting.

If you look at the sum total of the Last several patches it's almost completely about adding features and customizability. Second priority has been fixing bugs. But the overwhelming trend has been towards adding flexibility.

The two specific cases you cite are bug fixes. The fact that you don't agree that they should be done is noted, but many people will say that these bugs were long overdue for being fixed. Everybody has their little list of quirks about this game that they feel shold have been fixed at one time or another. And Malfador takes just as many complaints from players about not ever fixing these things as he does from players complaining when he does finally fix one.

Who gets to decide when the game is "finished"? And no more changes get to be made? Is any game ever finished?

Even if you don't agree with them, they don't change the nature of the game all that drastically. You shold just adapt and move on. The game is still a great game.

Geoschmo

[Q]

Geoschmo I estimate you and your opinion very much but your statement that "these are bug fixes, get over it and adapt" seems a little bit too simple in my very humble opinion.
I don't want to argue about the definition of a bug but why was the skipping shields of engine overloading weapons a bug?? And then are the shields skipping of shield disruptors and weapon overloading weapons also bugs?
The argument that the crew conVersion is not realistic if there is no crew is of course valid. But if you build (and that's what you can make the AI do) a ship with crew and master computer and you destroy the master computer why is the ship still immune to the allegiance subverter? And why can a ship where the crew quarters have been destroyed (but never had a master computer) still be converted?
And why did MM remove the possibility of the allegiance converter to act on units? A possibility that was never used in standard SE IV. I was just an possibility for modders.

I don't say that SE IV is bad or MM does bad work. But you can't deny that in the Last time there have been things removed from the game in an irreversible way. And that's the point I am worried about because it goes against the major advantage of SE IV: it's flexibility and variety.

[geoschmo]

Q, I am not arguing that these changes don't take away some of your choice. Obviously they do. And I am not going to get into a debate over whether or not they are valid changes. We could go around and around on it and argue both sides of it and would get nowhere. If you don't like the changes, by all means email Malfador and let him know about it.

What I will agrue though is your and Arkcon comments that these two relativly minor changes some how show some change in priorities or are some sort of overall effort to "balance" the game. They simply are not that at all. Malfador gets emails all the time from fans with suggestions. Someone at some point suggested these changes and Malfador was convinced enough to make the change.

If you disagree with these changes, please email Malfador and suggest something else. Nobody here knows anymore about thier motivations and reasons for doing things than you do. That's all I am saying.

Geoschmo

[spoon]

I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

[ October 13, 2002, 20:46: Message edited by: spoon ]

[Nodachi]

Arkcon, you're implying that there is some sort of conspirisy going on. I just don't see it. While I too am unhappy with some of the changes coming I wouldn't dream of faulting MM's intentions. I believe that MM is just trying to make his game better, as he has always done. To suggest otherwise is absurd.

[oleg]

Originally posted by spoon:
I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

I agree with both spoon and Q - see, it is possible

Relentless play balancing by MM is more than welcome but if it is possible to achive by adjusting values in data files rather than hardcode changes than I would vote for "softer" approach.

[Jmenschenfresser]

Sounds like these problems would be solved if MM introduced multiple damage types to some limited extent.

However, I can see some point to this. There is a line somewhere between expansion and revamping. After a while you just have to take your hands off of what exists and move on.

I'm not for stopping the tweaks, but we've all gotten used to the game as is--exploits, bugs and all. Time is better spent adding things or expanding what is instead of endlessly changing values.

I don't mind the changes that much, although the engine weapon was a fave of mine for defensive purposes.

[spoon]

Relentless play balancing by MM is more than welcome but if it is possible to achive by adjusting values in data files rather than hardcode changes than I would vote for "softer" approach.

That's my preference too. There seems to be very little fine-tuning done by MM, and I think that's too bad. I'd like to see every weapon have its place, and for every facility to be worthwhile - something that can all be achieved by simple data changes...