I understand the rage; I feel it too, to some extent. I guess I am so invested in being That Guy Who Asks Questions that I can't stop playing and following the game now.
And in s-block for you weirdos who won't click on links. But you get shitty formatting, so there.
Multiplayer Livestream Summary - 3 August 2017
Still filling in for /u/The_hezy. That lazy bum has a real job or something.
Cribbing from /u/Matobar, since the last stream on 6 July 2017:
Platinum Difficulty was added to the game, and we had our second-ever 11-wave Gold mission!
Weapon Variants and Veteran Ranks were added to the game, greatly increasing the size of everyone's Manifest.
We got the Batarian Scrapper.
We got 2 new maps, Firebases Vertigo and Nimbus.
More recently:
Patch 1.10 went live a few days ago; see the notes.
"Veteran ranks of characters will only drop after all characters of that rarity have been unlocked to rank 10." This alleviates some of the pain of the lootpocalypse.
Bastiaan also wrote that "Weapons have [...] a very small (less than 10%) chance to drop a variant IF you have rank 10 guns."
Regarding URs and progression in general, Bastiaan spoke at length:
Bastiaan: added a lot of progression when we added Platinum, to extend the game for a very long time. Some people liked it, some people didn't. The trick was behind the scenes we were doing quite a bit with weapons and mods to not dilute the pool - there's a very small chance to get a variant weapon once you have maxed weapons at rank X.
With vet. ranks how it was initially implemented, they couldn't do that. Got add'l time from programmers, went in and modified how vet. ranks are dropped. [This was the 1.10 update] You need to finish all chars at single rarity before you get any vet ranks.
Why we added vet. ranks: there was lots of progression for wpns, in the end UR wpns were overpowering everyting else. So they added progression for powers & melee (i.e. the Veteran bonuses).
On to today's updates.
New Stuff
The Batarian Vanguard has been released. He's an Ultra-Rare with Biotic Charge, Annihiliation, and Flak Cannon. And also a fantastic scarf.
The Shorty shotgun (seriously? worst... name... ever...) is also an Ultra-Rare. It fires 3-round bursts.
Shorty X stats (thanks /u/A_moral_Animal): 360 damage, 400 RoF, 15 max clip, 38 accuracy, 23 weight.
Assault Loadout Equipment (+15% AR damage, +15% shotgun damage) is the only new Equipment this week.
The other 3 Equipment items must be repeats which you won't see if you already purchased them. Eventually someone who hasn't played in a while will post what they see.
There's a new Apex mission, Along for the Ride. In Benoit's words -- Batarians came by in middle of a firefight with Outlaws, their ship got busted up, and Apex agreed to help the Batarians. (paraphrased)
The Stream
On the stream today are Bastiaan (lead MP designer) and Benoit (level designer).
Fernando is in chat.
I believe I also heard Sean at some points.
Fernando noted that Billy's death streaks will be tough to reproduce, but they'll do what they can. Nothing was said about reproducting /u/Salsadip 's synch kill on Bronze, though. May 11 - never forget!
Benoit starts off the Along for the Ride mission on Bronze Nimbus vs. Kett.
Today's streamers are: Sinaea
www.twitch.tv/ sinaea // LittleSiha
www.twitch.tv/ littlesiha //
www.twitch.tv/ shackleshotgun (I deliberatly broke the auto-playing Twitch links; remove the space to visit the URLs.)
Speaking about the Batarian Vanguard, Benoit stated that they wanted to make a character who was an up-close detonator with biotics. [Not sure how this is all that different from Asari Adept? - JRandall0308]
We got to Wave 4... and it was an Objective wave! Benoit stated they can do this on any mission difficulty, like the Bronze Apex they are playing now.
Bastiaan: nice to se how balanced game has gotten. success rates for factions and maps are similar.
Some discussion of the changes to Hack. Benoit: "When you take away things that are hard, the game does get easier." However it is a balancing act:
"If you make the missions too hard, you make the accounting team very angry." Interesting! [To me this implies BW / EA wants players to be gaining Credits at a certain rate, and they become upset when the game is too hard which lowers the Cr / minute ratio. - JRandall0308]
The next mission is Silver vs. Remnant with the Hand-to-Hand bonus, which plays right into the Batarian Vanguard's... hands....
Billy stopped by! There was some banter including this gem: "Now that he's no longer a BW employee we have no reason to carry him." Harsh!
There was some discussion about making Platinum harder. Bastiaan challenges us to beat Platinum using only commons, and Benoit challenges us to beat Plat using no stealth. Bastiaan ups the ante: level 1, no stealth. [I'll give it about a week before this is done. - JRandall0308]
There was some joking about drunkenness because Kandros keeps buying drinks for everyone. Bastiaan would love to have a drunk MP character. DRUNKEN MASTER CHARACTER CONFIRMED!
OK, of course it's not really confirmed. This is a joke!
Questions and Answers
Bastiaan said I could post any unanswered questions to reddit, where he will at least take a look at them, and maybe answer a few if he can and has time.
My questions on behalf of BSN:
The #1 category when BSN did a consensus vote: ‘pleas for mercy’ re: the new loot. Would you consider add’l methods to alleviate the ‘grind’? -- ex. increased payouts (even beyond Apex or Plat.), pack discounts or sales, higher double-card drop rates, packs with only chars / wpns (no boosters), etc.
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 we're looking at that using the data we get from game
Because there are now 2x as many UR char. cards to unlock, would you reduce the MF price for the Random UR Character? (currently 960 MF)
Not answered (or scrolled off in chat?)
We like the Equipment rotating through the store, but: will you ensure we get 1-2 new equip. ea. week? And see all new equip. within reasonable timeframe? Rather than truly random.
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 i'll double check, but even at random it should rotate everything through before repeating
With so many more cards, the chance to get ammo as a booster is proportionally reduced. Can we please have an 'ammo only' pack?
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 we've explored more ways to get at specific content through item store, so its something we can keep look into
From 1.06 to 1.09, Assault Rifles got significant improvements, but semi-auto ARs are still inferior to semi-auto pistols. Ex: Sidewinder (despite smaller clip) has better DPS compared to Mattock, Sandstorm, Halberd. Semi-auto ARs need love badly!
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 we can take another look at ARs
Sniper Rifles: currently the URs Valiant, Black Widow, Inferno still don’t feel strong enough for their rarity until close to Rank X. Would you look at the UR SRs again, please?
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 yep, we're looking at these as well for balancing
Will you please add better sorting of weapons & boosters, now that there are so many different types? Perhaps allow ‘group by’ base weapon / booster in addition to ‘sort by’ rarity.
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 hmm good q - we have a few ui tweaks we'd love to do so we can look at this if we can get to that
With so many weapons + variants now, will you add a way to group the weapons in the selection list? Would make choosing one faster when in a lobby.
DiscoBabaloo: JRandall0308 on the ui list
Biggy DX's questions on behalf of GameFAQs:
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo Can veteran rank bonuses be tailored for each character; rather than the blanket bonuses we see now? Characters like the Turian Soldier aren’t going to have much use for Power Combo and Melee Damage, since it doesn’t suit their particular playstyle.
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx we can look into it but likely stay as is at this point
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo Ok. Some ability mechanics do not work consistently off-host. Most notably are duration issues for the Turian Havoks Aerial Engagement and Turian Agent's Visor Extended Duration evo. Does the team know about this.
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx i'll check after this
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo Thanks. Some characters simply aren’t as viable on Platinum as they would be on Gold (or lower) due to so many shielded and armored enemies. The Human Kineticist, for example, has no means of priming said enemies in Platinum (due to Pull/Throws mechanics). Can tweaks to these characters be made to make them more viable in Platinum?
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx will look into it as part of balancing
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo I've always wondered: Why is it that Trip Mine is not included for Combat challenges?
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx will need to check on that, not sure offhand
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo Backlash has an issue where it drops immediately upon casting it. Does the team know about this?
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx will check
biggy_dx: Question to BAASTIAN or BENOIT: Why doesn’t Avenger Strike benefit from power damage bonuses, and could we see the ability benefiting from power damage in the future? At the very least, can her ramping melee damage bonus apply to Avenger Strike?
Bastiaan: (paraphrased) It's a melee attack so it should do melee or powers. It should not do both. It's alrady increadibly OP. [Not sure what is being said here. I may have misunderstood. - JRandall0308]
biggy_dx:
DiscoBabaloo When a host player disconnects from a match, and reconnects during the latter waves, the host will get full match credits but the off-host players will only get the extraction bonus credits. Is the team aware of this?
DiscoBabaloo: @biggy_dx will look into it (its likely they are aware already but offhand i'm not sure)
Yet more questions:
DiscoBabaloo: justicarstef good question for BASTIAAN or BENOIT (does supply pack transmitter only transmit bullets to teammates when using an ammo pack? haven't seen it give teammates power cells)
(I didn't hear the answer to this.)
BlazingLordSoul:
DiscoBabaloo please make plat harder across the board. Kett specifically is too easy.
DiscoBabaloo: @blazinglordsoul we'll keep looking at the match data as part of balancing for this
Bastiaan also noted that while some of the userbase wants really hard Plat. They do like to do that in missions, but the general Plat difficulty they are happy with.
skauron: SERIOUS QUESTION TIME. During one of the may livestreams you (bioware) said that the problem with the audio cutting out in multiplayer was being passed to the Frostbite Dev team. This was 2 months ago now.. so has there been any update on this? is it going to be fixed? and when?
Bastiaan: it's a Frostbite (the game engine) problem. Even if FB fixes it, the fix won't work for MEA due to (diverged code presumably, he trailed off).
Finis!
