Do we have ANY ETA on the next balance changes and what they will be?

I would be satisfied if they were just more transparent. I feel like the ME3 forums had a lot of information given to the community by the devs and very informed mods (who were also very active). 

I don't get it why they take so long. Like, what? there's only 2 dudes in the balance team that can work on updates?
And don't try to sell me the "game has been out for only X amount of time, chill the flip out dude, lol" bullshit because that ain't working for me.

We're not asking them to redo the entire multiplayer from scratch, just balance the goddamn powers and weapons. I don't see how that couldn't be done in more than maybe 2 days (day one work, day two test).
Unless they use some weird space magic tables that are a pain in the balls to edit and what not, I'm failing to understand how balance is so hard to work on, then again who knows... At least try something! I don't know, it doesn't have to be perfect in one go, but do something. Seriously, the MP is a joke currently.

You assume that balance can be achived at the flick of a switch. 

That does not seem to be the case. They mentioned on their latest stream convolutely that the game is currently balanced around Bronze, and that most people play it, with fewer doing silver, and even fewer doing Gold. So we also have to keep in mind that we are a (vocal) minority.

So unless you can figure out a magic math formula whereby with one damage value, you can feel "power" across three different hitpoints pools, I wouldn't expect a quick fix.

So we are in fact asking them to redesign it from scratch. You could argue that it should have been thought of before release, and we would be in agreement there - unfortunately that didn't happen, so if you can't live with how things are, take a break and play some other games.

Balancing for Bronze was their biggest mistake. Who's the idiot who thought it was a good idea? That's the worst idea you can have... Now that I think about it, that idiot must be thinking the same way my boss does. He always finds a way to twist, complicate and make things shit beyond our imagination...

So why balancing for Bronze is a tremendously bad idea?

The progression around you needing credits to unlock new things
Now, if we were talking about a few unlockable, that could be easily done on Bronze. The problem is we don't have a few unlockable, there's a shit ton of them.

According to calculations from Proto (http://bsn.boards.net/post/484747/thread), unlocking all UR requires around 10950 Bronze games. At around 15 minutes per game, that's 2737.5 hours. If you play 5 hours a day, it will take you 547.5 days to achieve that on Bronze.

Let that sink for a moment... 5 hours a day for 18 months (a year and a half) for unlocking everything on the difficulty they balanced things around...

And there's gonna be new things to unlock in the future...

Even on Gold, it would require around 2190 games. This translate to 5 hours a day for  109.5 days (3 months and a half).

Either you balance everything around Bronze, unlocks included, or you balance everything around the difficulty everyone's supposed to play after a little while (Gold).


They offer not 1, but 2 higher difficulty tier
The problem with balancing for Bronze is that we're already playing 2 difficulty tiers higher. Everything is still fine on Silver, but the shit hit the fan on Gold. There's nothing worst for a player than feeling powerless. Yet, if MEAMP has teached us something it's that higher difficulties mean your weapons and powers will let you down. All the time you invested in the game means nothing which, ironically, is the total opposite of what an RPG is.

When looking at the future, we all know there's gonna be a new higher difficulty introduced down the line. What do we have to look for by investing ourselves in MP? Feeling even more that our weapons and powers are doing no damage? Feeling we're powerless? Feeling the grind instead of the joy?

Games are simple, players play to have fun. Fun is subjective, but I would venture most people aren't masochist...

What's the solution then?
Since they balanced everything around Bronze, and I will admit everything feels good on Bronze, why not push it to the next level?

Balancing the weapons, powers and explosions is gonna take a lot of time and they're gonna make a lot of mistakes along the way right?

If the weapons, powers and explosions are balanced among each other, why would you touch that?

What they need is base difficulty on the amount of enemies, their damage, their speed, their accuracy, their tactics.

If we feel powerful on Bronze, then let's make enemies more in line HP/Shield wise with Bronze for higher difficulties. It's gonna take a hell of a lot less efforts, and you get to balance every new weapon, power or equipment for every difficulties in 1 shot.

I'm not saying give them the exact same HP/Shield no matter the difficulty, I'm saying give them may 5% to 10% more by difficulty tier and make them more lethal.

They designed the game around player's mobility and yet enemies are damage sponges. How emptying 3 clips on a Berserker on Gold is at any point inline with the mobility philosophy?

If the enemies had roughly the same amount of HP/Shield on Gold, you can easily compensate by increasing their number to swarm you. They can go a bit faster, they can hit harder, they can be a bit more accurate, they can use new tactics. The important thing is, we would feel powerful even if there's a challenge.

One of the greatest addition I've ever seen in a game was the last difficulty in DAIMP. DAIMP had a lot of bad things going on, but that highest difficulty was very amazing. They reworked every single units to add new abilities, deadly ones at that. Yes, they were a bit damage sponges, but damn those new abilities were amazing. The challenge was they could hurt you bad, they were extra speedy, they were mean! This is where difficulty should come from, higher challenge without making you feel powerless.