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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
Ah, the problem of finding information. That's not a "Discord sucks at this and therefore Discord is shit" problem. That's a "SS Developers don't organize properly" problem.

Historically on the SS forum, there were dozens upon dozens of topics where the developers were supposed to hand out the correct information, or update the original post with regard to new information. That didn't work out so well and some topics became 30 pages long with one or two developer responses INSIDE those pages, so you often had to skim through 70% of the topic before finding the developer response you were looking for.

Not able to log onto forums for a week during a very hot button topic? Oh boy are you in for some fun reading through dozens of pages to find the dev response you were looking for, assuming there was a dev response at all. Maybe the devs didn't even make a response for that topic.


Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:38 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
dreadlordnaf wrote:
I like the SS Discord, it is useful for many things, and not so useful for other things.

The big thing its not useful for is putting forth your ideas for big and significant changes, and allowing a conversation to happen where people can explain their views, and you can easily reply back and explain to them why, AND most importantly keeping an easy to follow and find record of that conversation where others can then see it evolve to understand why the changes ended up where they did or what the motivation behind it is.

Right now now on Discord it is a disaster to try and follow such conversations if you weren't there taking place in them at the moment.

Apparently MF control bots are getting F'd and people with slaves are going to take a huge hit? Trying to find info about this on Discord is a mess, and even harder to ascertain why these changes are occurring or if they are being done in tandem with other changes that balance things out etc. Same with changes to the delquad, resistance, prawn, etc. Hydra gear being removed or nerfed? Who, what, when, where, why, how do I find out about this? Maybe these changes all totally make sense, but unfortunately its impossible to understand why unless you spend hours scouring Discord.

Etc, etc, for every other change where the majority of the conversation happened almost exclusively on Discord where its impossible to follow or determine who replied back to who on a convo that happened in the past. This game already suffers from so much information asymmetry that give players significant material advantages over one another simply from knowing some info that should be easily known to all. This new way of proposing and working through major changes primarily on Discord seems to amplify this problem.

LATE EDIT: To understand what I mean, I thought the fighter rework was a good example of a significant change where the conversation that informed the eventual changed was initiated by the devs on the forums, and because of that allowed a wide universe of SS players to chime in and help provide input on that effort to have it end up in a good place, AND for players to understand why it ended up there.

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:39 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
As for the MF bot nerf.

Multifiring is a very rare stat. Only Gunner class, Berserker class, Hydra gear (which is getting reworked anyways), 2 or 3 augmenters, and a few combat bots grant multifiring.

Because it is such a rare stat, it is an effective 2x damage modifier. Other combat bots, because of how aug math work, do not even come close to the benefit of a MF bot.

Let's take my planned FC tank slaves (slaves that generate hostility to be partially transferred to owner so the FC can hold aggro). They have 300% damage. As tanks. And they're T18. T20 tank slaves will have 400-500% damage. So a SF bot that competes with a MF bot needs to have 300% damage at T18, and at least 400% damage at T20. Also note that MF bots are T13.

The gist of it was that MF bots crowded out every single SF bot period. And to buff SF bots up where they can be a viable competition would require some ridiculous buffing, which at that point would allow players to use slaves with 75% damage of a MF setup, but sustain extremely well and have 3-4x more defense.

So the dev team simply buffed SF bots part way and nerfed MF bots a bit. The only real losers in this change are Shield Monkeys that use MF bots because they get no innate sustain bonus with their slaves, a lot less DPS, and no utility bonuses like speed and range.

Here is Hober's tentative stat changes doc thingy that was posted on the discord. Took me 30 seconds of searching to find it and this set of posts from Hober.

[6:37 PM] Hober Mallow: Alright here's the drill
[6:37 PM] Hober Mallow: The idea to nerf MF bots was my own, they've obviously been the best in slot bots and no other bot was ever competitive against them. This is indicative of them being so much stronger than any other bot that something needed to be done.
[6:37 PM] Hober Mallow: What I originally wanted to do was to give MF bots electric tempering just to give them more of a drawback.
[6:38 PM] Hober Mallow: Then it was suggested to me by another dev to just make the regular bots multiplicative, and I liked the idea.
[6:39 PM] Hober Mallow: That idea was then presented at a meeting, whereupon it was communicated to me that the intention behind control bots was that they worked sort of like augmenters for your combat bots and making them multiplicative pushed them into a position where they no longer fit their intention.
[6:40 PM] Hober Mallow: Yes, I pointed out that +100% multifiring was multiplicative simply because of how it interacts with every other damage stat. Which meant that MF bots were the only bots that straight up multiplied your damage. That did not sway the decision and I was told to just buff single fire control bots (And give MF bots a steeper drawback), and if they still weren't good enough then buff them some more (and give MF bots a harsher drawback).(edited)
[6:41 PM] Hober Mallow: That's about all I can give you about the topic.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xs9OrkdJjqCG-vgSAJ-VCwBusCUQ1Pd_0NN6gDLZ-DM/edit#gid=1285066390


Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:53 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
Bear in mind that the decision to nerf MF bots was set in stone before the devmins decided to do community meetings, which afaik, only two have happened. One of the meetings was about PPS, and I believe the other (don't quote me on it) was about bases.

If you have additional information on how I can turn a pair of ada IXs into "slaves" and bring them along with me to PPS, I'd like to hear it.


Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:57 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
I'm interested to see where this is going, there are to the best of my knowledge quite a few "why would you use any other aug / item / hull when this one > all" which are justified by low drop rates or expense of build.


Mon Feb 27, 2017 2:32 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
will the aug buff for slaves go in same time as the mfbot nerf?


Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:27 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
sabre198 wrote:
will the aug buff for slaves go in same time as the mfbot nerf?

Yes

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:02 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
dreadlordnaf wrote:
The "community meetings" that get hosted to discuss certain topics excludes a lot of player from potentially participating. You go from getting the thoughts and input of a large universe, anyone with an SS account who knows how to use forums to --> only those with Discord AND only those who know of the SS discord (not everyone does) AND only those who can then also be in front of their computer at that exact time ( I can never participate because of this reason). .



5PM at Friday night for me wouldn't be so hard if I didn't have to work to be able to feed my family or even play this game. If I can suggest maybe a vote as to when these meetings are held so everyone has a say or has a chance to participate?


Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:36 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
xmaniac45x wrote:
dreadlordnaf wrote:
The "community meetings" that get hosted to discuss certain topics excludes a lot of player from potentially participating. You go from getting the thoughts and input of a large universe, anyone with an SS account who knows how to use forums to --> only those with Discord AND only those who know of the SS discord (not everyone does) AND only those who can then also be in front of their computer at that exact time ( I can never participate because of this reason). .



5PM at Friday night for me wouldn't be so hard if I didn't have to work to be able to feed my family or even play this game. If I can suggest maybe a vote as to when these meetings are held so everyone has a say or has a chance to participate?


Wouldn't do much. The reason it's at that time is because that's when the person that has planned the meeting has time to do the meeting.

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:05 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
I am down with trying to get dev communications posted in a more organized fashion. The move to Discord was in response to general discontent in the community about communication with the devs, and I think that on the whole it has been a great improvement in that respect. The main downside is as the OP indicated: there is not a good record of these communications after the fact. So the dev team can try to do better about pushing that information to the forum via direct posts or the blog system.

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:10 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
That would be nice, i've found that i agree with the OP about the info mentioned on discord rarely if ever reaching the forums, and skimming it for info relevant to what i'd like to know is a bit much with how much gets said. Searching would be an option, but i-like almost any other sane human being- don't record all several thousand things i need to keep tabs on so that i can just search it.

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:17 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
Posted transcripts on the forums of what was said in these Community Meetings on Discord would probably be a good idea, then those who couldn't attend have a extra chance to discuss on the forum on the ideas/arguments presented.

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:43 am
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
anilv wrote:
I am down with trying to get dev communications posted in a more organized fashion. The move to Discord was in response to general discontent in the community about communication with the devs, and I think that on the whole it has been a great improvement in that respect. The main downside is as the OP indicated: there is not a good record of these communications after the fact. So the dev team can try to do better about pushing that information to the forum via direct posts or the blog system.


That would be much appreciated and I think the blog posts provide a good existing vehicle for pushing a lot of this info out. As an example Max's post above explaining the reasoning and rationale for controlbot changes is the most comprehensive I or probably many others have seen to date, and it is now in a static location that will be indexed by Google and eventually findable through there, and also now has a permanent link you can simply copy and paste to direct people to who want to learn about this issue, which is the nice thing about these forums...


Mon Feb 27, 2017 2:32 pm
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
dreadlordnaf wrote:
anilv wrote:
I am down with trying to get dev communications posted in a more organized fashion. The move to Discord was in response to general discontent in the community about communication with the devs, and I think that on the whole it has been a great improvement in that respect. The main downside is as the OP indicated: there is not a good record of these communications after the fact. So the dev team can try to do better about pushing that information to the forum via direct posts or the blog system.


That would be much appreciated and I think the blog posts provide a good existing vehicle for pushing a lot of this info out. As an example Max's post above explaining the reasoning and rationale for controlbot changes is the most comprehensive I or probably many others have seen to date, and it is now in a static location that will be indexed by Google and eventually findable through there, and also now has a permanent link you can simply copy and paste to direct people to who want to learn about this issue, which is the nice thing about these forums...


viewtopic.php?f=9&t=62894

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Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:54 pm
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Post Re: Devs: Use forums for things where Discord is inferior
MasterTrader wrote:
dreadlordnaf wrote:
anilv wrote:
I am down with trying to get dev communications posted in a more organized fashion. The move to Discord was in response to general discontent in the community about communication with the devs, and I think that on the whole it has been a great improvement in that respect. The main downside is as the OP indicated: there is not a good record of these communications after the fact. So the dev team can try to do better about pushing that information to the forum via direct posts or the blog system.


That would be much appreciated and I think the blog posts provide a good existing vehicle for pushing a lot of this info out. As an example Max's post above explaining the reasoning and rationale for controlbot changes is the most comprehensive I or probably many others have seen to date, and it is now in a static location that will be indexed by Google and eventually findable through there, and also now has a permanent link you can simply copy and paste to direct people to who want to learn about this issue, which is the nice thing about these forums...


viewtopic.php?f=9&t=62894


Thanks, though when I tried to search Discord a bit for this I saw some reference to a community meeting on controlbots that took place after that post. Is that post still accurate? Nothing new came from the community meeting on this topic that is publicly available, but only mentioned in that chat?


Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:19 pm
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