Shorty v. Piranha

The initial nerf to the Mattock was pretty comical, but they quickly corrected it, and I agree that their weapon balancing has been almost uniformly excellent. Too conservative for my tastes, but I'll take what I can get.

Not talking about the balance changes, but the overall balance. The core game was never balanced and all they can do now is trying to fix a few things (which they did) - but at the same time they mess up the overall balance even more. Your post about Piranha vs. Shorty is a good example. One of the best URs in the game at launch (Piranha) is worse than some rare weapons. And they didn't even have to touch the Piranha for that, that's how fucked up the whole balance is right from the get go.

And maybe they balance it and imbalance something else by that at the same time because the system as a whole is broken. They might change something and with some kits it's now totally OP but not so great with others... so they might change the skills of that kit (can't even remember how many fucking times I got a notice from the game that some class has been reset again because of some changes).

Introducing S-version of common weapons is another good example... why not just balance the original ones? Oh, of course... everybody already has them and no money can be made from that...

There is no testing, no real balancing... they just change a few things and release another patch. And while I might have exaggerated with the dice comparison it often did feel just like that in my opinion. Now compare this to studios and developers who actually know what they are doing when it comes to multiplayer titles. They might not always get it right either, but they do care a lot more and if they make a mistake they work much harder to fix it.

And please tell me: if the game was anywhere near balanced how come people in Gold and Platinum games run the same few weapons on every kit? 

Because they've been too conservative. They don't want to Rares to overshadow URs or Uncommons to overshadow Rares. (This is a deliberate design choice they clarified several months ago on one of the Twitch streams.) They also seem to be really terrified of burst damage: notice that the best guns in the game are all sustained fire (Hurricane, Rozerad, Shadow) with only the Shorty coming close to burst... and even that is controlled burst, controlled by the 3-shot, er, burst.

They need to loosen things up a little bit and let more guns become viable at the top end of a rarity tier. Like a Rare Assault Rifle Whatever X should be a good damn gun, a Rare Pistol X should be a good damn gun too.

Ruzad (Uncommon!) is the strength they should be going for at X. Very strong gun, with some kind of drawback though.

Basically I think everything other than Commons and the URs noted above needs serious buffage. They are getting there gradually but slowwwwwwwwllllllyyyyyyy.

Did you try the Indra? And people complain about the Valiant for a reason, and it's not bloom.

I'll certainly agree that the Batvan as released is busted, but that's wholly separate from the balance adjustments they've made to existing weapons and skills. I don't know what they could do to fix him without imbalancing other kits, other than a hotfix to reassign him other passives.

I'll also agree that the variant balance is busted, but again, that's as-released content; we've yet to see what they'll do in the next patch or two given use data and player feedback.

Broadly speaking, I don't see the fact that they've taken direction from the most engaged contingent of the playerbase into account as a negative. It still takes work to parse through the large volume of player comments to identify the greatest needs and address them intelligently, which I would assert they've done. We haven't seen to date any wild buffs or nerfs that left us wondering WTF they were thinking - which happened several times with ME3. Even the Examplar nerf you mentioned was, IIRC, a 15 or 20% nerf to one of his cooldown reductions. I haven't even noticed a difference when using him, TBH.

I disagree with the Plat criticism for one simple reason: the game is not balanced around Plat, nor should it be. It doesn't make sense to specifically alter skills or weapons to make them viable on a difficulty a very small percentage of the playerbase will ever play regularly; doing so would break the lower difficulties. Several kits are Plat standouts, a couple just plain suck, and most require considerable effort or skill.

It's not a negative, but it factors out when you're evaluating whether BW knows how to balance things. Most pieces of new content have been wildly off.

Specifically, they should have given the BatVan different passives. Kinda fucked on that now, but they at least could increase his health and shields rather than leaving them at Kroguard levels.

I hadn't, so just ran both those guns so I could see what you are talking about. Neither of those guns are good examples of what I want. I get what you mean but their recoil is purely visually distracting. Their bounce might make me lose my lunch but it doesn't effect my ability to stay on target at all as the reticle goes back to the same spot each time. This is a stupid design. I've shot a lot of guns, very quickly in my days IRL and I've never shot one that's done that. Proper recoil design should force the player's skill to compensate for it in order to stay on target. It's a balancing mechanism. You can have a gun that does more damage but you'll have to burst fire it to keep it under control or you can give up a mod slot and put a stabilizer mod on it. We had this in ME3. The Hurricane was a beast but recoil was a pig. There were reasons NOT to use it. There's no reason not to use it in ME:A. As a result of the poor recoil design prettt much all of the guns feel lifeless and it makes the game feel like I'm just holding buttons instead of shooting guns. Haptic feedback is shit too. This is my biggest issue eith this gamr.

Piranha definitely needs a buff. It's just another one of these guns (within a long list) which is just not worth using over something like the Dhan. It's a shame as it was an absolute beast in ME3.

Right, so can someone good at math and gun DPS and stuff make this point with numbers and charts and stuff?

I got beaten on reddit (rightfully so) for a bad example comparing weapon damage to power damage.

On this topic I would love if we could say to Bioware, "Hey we think the Piranha is too weak compared to the Dhan (or Hesh, or whatever). Here is a link to the math that explains why."

I'll say this for the Krysae - for all the bad, at least it provided the perfect response to the people who screamed that there was no point in balancing an exclusively-PvE game.

We all got to see firsthand how monumentally fucking boring it was to watch a splodeysniper GI kill every spawn from across the map while assuming zero risk. Again. And again. And again. At least one in every lobby, for a while. It was basically a missile glitch you couldn't report with any hope the asshat might get banned.