Right now you are arguing about balancing a game that has released a expansion and changed a bunch of stuff vs a game that has yet to leave alpha and getting the numbers horribly wrong
Such hyperbole... SC is an alpha indeed, the inconsequential placeholder balance that gets tuned over time is not a problem, especially for a fresh new feature that requires the whole picture of a WIP economy to balance.
SC already has templated metrics for the many aspects of the game, from an FPS weapon/armor to the ship stats, the mission payouts, etc... etc... So this sort of argument is not reasonable just because they didn't review the shop prices on the very first testing implementation.
Not only is tuning easy for the programmer to do once they get feedback from who is assigned to balance, either that is QA or its own team (like they have now)... SC is one alpha, it only makes sense to make use of it by having initial implementations being balanced over time by both the telemetry they can do and the feedback they get.
I think the process is used to tune the game is fine, the rebalancing will happen either way independent of the effort put on it up-front (pre-implementation), this is not a linear and simple game loop as far economy is concerned.
Right now you are arguing about balancing a game that has released a expansion and changed a bunch of stuff vs a game that has yet to leave alpha and getting the numbers horribly wrong
Such hyperbole... SC is an alpha indeed, the inconsequential placeholder balance that gets tuned over time is not a problem, especially for a fresh new feature that requires the whole picture of a WIP economy to balance.
SC already has templated metrics for the many aspects of the game, from an FPS weapon/armor to the ship stats, the mission payouts, etc... etc... So this sort of argument is not reasonable just because they didn't review the shop prices on the very first testing implementation.
Not only is tuning easy for the programmer to do once they get feedback from who is assigned to balance, either that is QA or its own team (like they have now)... SC is one alpha, it only makes sense to make use of it by having initial implementations being balanced over time by both the telemetry they can do and the feedback they get.
I think the process is used to tune the game is fine, the rebalancing will happen either way independent of the effort put on it up-front (pre-implementation), this is not a linear and simple game loop as far economy is concerned.
No it does not make sense to me. One thing is areas where the general metric is established and re-used, this goes from ship stats to mission payouts to an fps weapon/armor. This is a whole new aspect on a wip economy on itself that requires looking at the whole picture to set a standard for it.
Max, If I said ER was getting fat you would argue he's losing weight....
Maybe it's because I'm more used to it, where the programmer does the first implementation with placeholder
numbers because the most important next step is the testing of
functionality, next feedback is given on stuff like the numbers getting
updated.
For a company that has allegedly been working on their economy for years and with the ships being the central part of the game you would think they would have better data to work with than making it up on the fly, if we talking about ammo prices then it would be totally different.
Keep nitpicking following with exaggerated arguments
I’m using my experience as a prealpha, alpha and beta tester. And no I didn’t have to buy my way into those like some games.
You’re trying to construct a straw man to draw attention away from the issue that CI doesn’t really know what the hell they are doing. Will they eventually get it right? Maybe but they are wasting man hours groping around in the dark.
For a company that has allegedly been working on their economy for years and with the ships being the central part of the game you would think they would have better data to work with than making it up on the fly, if we talking about ammo prices then it would be totally different.
That expectation would only be realistic if the economy on this game was fleshed out enough so that a feature that depends on the whole picture of the economy would be expected to have a solid balance on implementation.
It's inconsequential, stuff as that will continue being revisited as it develops independent on how much time is sunk on theorizing economy details pre-implementation.
I wouldn't do it differently, having a running alpha like this with telemetry and constant feedback provides a more realistic approach to balance, which you can use to adapt your initial design.
What should be gotten right at first, is the designed functionality.
Comments
SC already has templated metrics for the many aspects of the game, from an FPS weapon/armor to the ship stats, the mission payouts, etc... etc... So this sort of argument is not reasonable just because they didn't review the shop prices on the very first testing implementation.
Not only is tuning easy for the programmer to do once they get feedback from who is assigned to balance, either that is QA or its own team (like they have now)... SC is one alpha, it only makes sense to make use of it by having initial implementations being balanced over time by both the telemetry they can do and the feedback they get.
I think the process is used to tune the game is fine, the rebalancing will happen either way independent of the effort put on it up-front (pre-implementation), this is not a linear and simple game loop as far economy is concerned.
It's inconsequential, stuff as that will continue being revisited as it develops independent on how much time is sunk on theorizing economy details pre-implementation.
I wouldn't do it differently, having a running alpha like this with telemetry and constant feedback provides a more realistic approach to balance, which you can use to adapt your initial design.
What should be gotten right at first, is the designed functionality.