Twitchy Questioning 16: The Questions of Darktwitch

Supplies Buffs
questions / proposals to buff First Aid, Ammo, and Revive packs to their ME3 equivalents; proposal to buff Cobra to allow it to bypass shieldgate; proposal to set upper limit on number of consumables (for Rich Volus Uncles)

First Aid Packs: could these please refresh player shield- and healthgate and/or grant damage + stagger immunity (i-frames)? Would make them more useful for skilled play and encourage more frequent use.

Ammo Packs: could these please grant bonus weapon damage? Would make them more useful for skilled play and encourage more frequent use.

Revive Packs: a while back you mentioned these should grant i-frames upon revive, but they don’t. Can this be revisited?

A Cobra RPG will often *not* kill basic enemies, let alone bosses, due to enemies’ high effective HP. Particularly painful on Plat where Cobras can literally only one-shot Breachers and Agent Clones. Will you please revisit?

Would you please allow Cobras to bypass shieldgate? Currently they’re the only explosives in the game that do not.

Compare
www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/6r4n5l/do_they_ever_plan_on_reversing_the_changes_to_the/dl2lofb/

(in 1.09 Cobras had damage reduced but radius increased)
cf. my post about Cobra damage - “Cobras are useless”
bsn.boards.net/post/788452/thread

There’s apparently no upper limit on the number of Consumables a player can own. Would you make one? So we can obtain Boosters once we have a large supply of all four Consumables.



Lobby
Game In Progress indicator, Host Ping indicator, points shown in lobby not matching points scored in game, visibility of kick votes

Any update on a Game In Progress (GIP) indicator and/or a way to tell what wave a game is on from the lobby?

The Host Ping Indicator is a great addition, but it raises a few questions.
Host Ping 1 of 2: What does the indicator mean for the Host? (ex. you receive < 4 bars to yourself)
Host Ping 2 of 2: For non-Hosts, could you explain what the bars mean in terms of latency, packet loss, etc?

The Host Ping Indicator frequently has 4 bars on hosts with ping up to 120ms-140ms, which makes for a laggy game. Will you please tighten the criteria so 4 bars indicates a playable game?

compare XBL Detailed Network Statistics which shows: DL/UL speed, DL/UL packet loss (percentage, > 5% is problematic), MTU (1384 needed by XBL), latency, wireless strength (percentage)
support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/networking/network-settings

We noticed that the points shown in the lobby no longer counts points from medals. Does this have any effect on XP/Cr earned for a game?

Would you allows us to see kick votes on ourselves? Sometimes players use that as a way to communicate ‘please hurry up’ or ‘you’re too low level’ or so forth.



Platinum Difficulty and Objectives
what telemetry Bioware examines, feedback they've seen, mix of enemy types (heavily Armor now), objective questions and suggestions

We’re curious - based on data you’ve collected on Platinum missions: What's working well? What can be improved?

Given the Platinum enemy composition is mostly Armor, this reduces considerably the effectiveness of some characters, esp. Biotics and crowd control. Are you willing to revisit enemy composition on Platinum to improve diversity?

When looking at your telemetry for Platinum, what can you tell us about...
(telemetry 1 of 2) - usage / success rate for certain characters (particularly Infiltrators - are they overused?)
(telemetry 2 of 2) - usage / success rates for weapons (feels like only a few are Plat viable which is boring)

Would you consider making the timer on Devices slightly longer and/or pause the timer while Device is being worked? Currently, it’s too easy to fail this objective - more frustrating than enjoyably frenetic.

Would you consider adding an Escort objective, similar to the one in ME3? (Note: BSN was divided over whether we actually want this, but some people *really* want it.)

Will you ever allow players to choose custom modifiers for mission settings?




Critical Bugs
hard-hitting question about EA Answers HQ being useless; re-request for sep. MP vs. SP bug reporting; re-request for pinned list of known issues; any other critical bugs you suggest

You encourage us to report bugs on EA Answers HQ, but there’s little engagement there from EA_(people). Out of 30 bugs on home screen, only 3 had EA response. What can we do to get some attention?

Also re-iterating our request for separate MP vs. SP bug reporting areas.

Could you pin a list of known issues on EA Answers HQ, Bioware Blog, or somehwere? This would cut down on repeated reports and repeated questions on Twitch chat.



Challenges
why not Melee challenges?; Map Challenges shouldn’t be tied to difficulty; asking them to check if new maps are actually in the challenge rotation

Would you consider a grace period for in-progress Daily Challenges? It’s frustrating when you start a game with ~20 minutes to go, the game takes unexpectedly long, and you get no credit for what is now yesterday’s challenge.

Would you consider adjusting the Map Challenges so they don’t require playing on specific difficulty levels?

Will you add Platinum difficulty Challenges? It would be cool to have red & silver nameplates!

Will you add Melee Challenges? There are Challenges that track almost everything else.

Can you double check that the newer maps (Aqua, Nimbus, Vertigo) are included in the random Daily Challenge map rotation? It seems like they never come up.



Game Mechanics
Questions about how stuff works such as Cryo Ammo, weapon accuracy, hipfire penalties, barrel damage

The damage done by barrels was reduced massively in 1.09. Why?! This was one of the most fun parts of the game!

Cryo Ammo has penalties to the number of bullets it takes to prime certain enemies, but Incendiary and Disruptor Ammo don’t have such penalties. We would like Cryo to be brought up to par with the other ammos.

Is there a cap or point of diminishing returns with weapon accuracy?
Ex: stacking a weapon scope, the Turian Soldier passive tree, Turbocharge, and Fortify accuracy.

Why do most SRs have a hipfire penalty? Shouldn’t SRs do the same damage regardless of whether you Aim Down Sights (ADS) or not?



User Interface / Quality of Life
Note: Lobby-specific questions are a separate category. This category: ‘new stuff’ exclamation points; vet. Bonuses 39% vs. 40%, better audio cues, weapon charging indicators, Bulwark aura visibility, etc.

The ‘new stuff!’ exclamation points re-appear even after you clear them. Can you please look at this? Also can we have a *global* ‘mark all read’ button?

The veteran bonuses max out at 39% which is… odd. Is this supposed to be 40%?

Below are vaguely U.I.-related...

Can you please notify us when balance changes are made? (esp. to char. skills) -- on the blog, in-game, and in Apex HQ. Currently we have to figure it out by process of elimination.
(Ex: several weeks ago, Turbocharge had its cooldown and evolutions changed; and Angara Exemplar’s cooldown bonus was reduced.)

Is it possible to have separate game settings for MP vs. SP? Some players like different graphics settings or keybindings when playing MP vs. SP.

Could you add better + louder audio cues and controller rumble when enemies approach?
(Ex: Wraiths, Fiends, Destroyers, Ascendants are nearly silent / non-rumbly even when right behind you.)

The Kishock has a helpful charging indicator bar. Is this something you can add to other chargeup weapons?

Bulwark when active has a blue aura, which is difficult to see when a Kineticist is in Ascension mode. Could you change one of these to something more easily visible?

For PC players, can you add a "quit to desktop" option from MP? It's possible in SP.



Packs and Drop Rates
Direct questions about how packs and drop rates work. They have been surprisingly forthcoming with this information.

How are items weighted in packs? It seems like at any given rarity, items drop in the order characters, weapons, mods.

Are you willing to reveal the actual weighting of characters vs. weapons in Reserves and Arsenal Packs respectively?

What is the official rarity of Character Respec cards? (Out of curiosity.)



Long-Form Questions
Questions too long to answer in chat but that we hope they will talk about in a future episode. See BSN for details. Vote for this if you want me to propose it to Bioware.

What areas of the game do YOU consider important to address?
(as the developers / designers / producers)

What is Bioware's philosophy in introducing balance changes to a running game? What do you want to achieve for the game, long-term?

Which criteria do you apply when deciding on a balance change?

Which rationale/justification do you take for their balance changes?
Do you review game data from your servers analyzing game statistics?
Do you consider criticism/praise from the player base? If so, how do you know if someone’s feedback is truly representative of a larger portion of the player base?

Are you willing to share any numbers or percentages around players at various difficulty levels, characters and weapons being used (or not!), trends over time, etc?

In respect to Challenges:

Is it possible to adjust 35K points downwards on tech and combat, as it is more time consuming than other 35K point challenges
Can they introduce more checks to ensure that the rotation happens and that the two challenges are combined in a non-repetitive fashion, as this week we had the same challenge duo of Sandstorm/Tech three times (!)
Will they introduce weekly challenges (ie points accumulate over the 7 day period to complete)?

Thank you! I did not read this week's answers, 'cause you said you gonna do other stuff. I'll go read now...

Right, but the answer was basically (paraphrased) that they *want* the 35,000 power challenges to be something people chase and work on for a while. Not something you bang out quickly.

And yes this is somewhat paradoxical given the challenges are only available for 1 day, and people are primarily doing them for the 30 MF. I can only report the answers, not explain the rationale.

1. Personally I think map challenges need to be:

• Bronze (or higher)
  
• Silver (or higher)
  
• Gold (or higher)
  
• Platinum... (or highe- joking)

2. I would actually care about the challenges with an introduction of slick looking red and silver nameplates. the UR outlines and backgrounds are neat.

Now my proposals for questions/fixes:

• Charge weapons: Needs to be changed to a different flavour of a charge-up mechanic, similar to the function of the P-06 burst-sniper in Black Ops 3, or Mei's Ice Blaster alt-fire in Overwatch: You press the button, a certain (sub-1s) amount of time later, it fires on its own. By pulling the trigger you commit to the shot, but you still have a charge timing aspect. Add a sound to the charge-up to enable you to definitely know when the charge is happening, add a beep or something when the weapon is ready to fire again for non-one-mag guns (Lanat/Venom) This would eliminate the frustration of not knowing when you can fire again, and make them behave better in combat.
  
• The in-scope view-kick of the Valiant needs to be lowered as well, it doesn't feel like the firerate is as high as it is due to the visual recoil. I find I space out my shots too much subconsciously.
  
• Energy Drain: I think the rank 5B evo needs to be altered. You get priming with 5A, why not get multi-detonation with 5B? Would make the Exemplar better at dealing with Platinum armour hordes, would also be a nice little buff to the Asari Sentinel should she go Double Throw 5A+6A.
  
• Overload: Needs to debuff shields like Cryo debuffs armour. Say a flat 50% base, then can be upgraded with the 5A evo and 6B evo. More debuff targets but less shield damage overall compared to 5B+6A.

As an aside: I just wanted to say that I really appreciate what you do for this community, as I've only recently made and started to use a uBSN account.

It needs to be worse than the rail amps, though. Also disruptor ammo of any tier is mad OP vs synths and shields.

Yeah, I figure it's probably intentional, just curious whether anyone had asked yet. The priming is still really useful, but the damage numbers are tiny, even for level IV ammo.

No, they definitely said something like that when the challenges launched. Feeling a bit too lazy to go back and dig up the quote but it should be in one of the reddit livestream summaries.

So, we could call them out for this -- "You said challenges should be complete-able within 2-3 games, but then you also said the 35,000 point challenges should take longer" -- but they haven't reacted well to that sort of questioning in the past. Maybe let it drop?

I very strongly disagree with this mechanic for two reasons. First, any mechanic that takes control away from the user is bad (IMO). In this mechanic the user cannot stop charging the weapon once they commit to it, and in this fast-paced game that seems particularly bad. Second, you shouldn't fundamentally change game mechanics this deep into a game's lifespan.

I would prefer to see them fix the existing charge-up weapons (i.e., make the charge-up less prone to interruption) than fundamentally alter them.

Interesting observation and a good suggestion!

I can picture Fernando's chat response now: "That seems way too strong but will ask the team."

Thanks!

I don't believe this has ever been asked. It's of particular interest if/when they start selling Ammo Packs!

Oh, I can't stop now.

We've received a surprising quantity and quality of answers. People focus on the "We're looking into it" answers because of the meme quality, but think about everything we didn't know about the game when it started, all the feedback they've acted upon, and it's surprising.

Given yesterday's announcement I think the ONLY questions that matter are about ongoing support. I don't care that they've said they won't answer them either. We need to pelt them with them. The cat is out of the bag so now is the time for complete transparency on their part.
1) How much longer is the team planning to support multiplayer?

2) The announcement said "no more patches" but then said "no SP patches". Are more MP patches coming or not?

3) The devs had said balance changes are coming but they've almost always been delivered via patch. Are subsequent balance changes going to be done exclusively via hotfix from now on? What's the timeline for these changes?

4) Are the four datamined characters and two guns the last of the content we'll be getting?

5) Yesterday's announcement said the story will continue via APEX missions but this week's story is essentially just "the car won't start and the remnant are acting squirrelly". Since this is now our only source of story progression can we expect it to be a little more in depth from now on?

6) Can we/will we still get Tiran Kandros videos for upcoming kits? I love those vids but we didn't get one for the batarian vanguard.

and my salty question.

7) Why should we invest in and trust that Bioware will support their future titles if they're willing to let their premier title die like this?

I agree with the sentiments above that the announcement makes all but "what we are getting?" Questions irrelevant. The Quarian Ark was the source of character models for the MW races. the chance that the models were created, and will be released in MP sans SP counterpart is tiny, but, well, I'd like to know if Quarian/Drell are off the plate 100%

Erm, that's if they are even planning to talk about Andromeda ever again.

Heh. Disappointment is getting cheap nowadays.

"Cryo ammo removes (or overwrites) the underlying debuffs from powers (Snap Freeze & Cryo Beam) and passives (Snap Freeze the passive & Elemental Tech). Is this intended behavior? Seems like a trap for players who don’t know about the detailed tests done by dedicated fans."

"Incendiary ammo does NOT deal bonus damage to armor, despite what the tooltip says. Is this a bug?"

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Let's call these 'Game Mechanics' for the purposes of category voting.