Im aware of both things. It was really just a small point about focus.
Maybe the existance of the document does not really mean a thing. To me it suggest that nerfs were / are important for the CC. I personally think maybe too important. But is not that it matters.
To me the important is that stuf such as pacing and progression is starting to get attention, which I think is good. And it was about time.
There are members of the CC which have different views on what and how to balance the game. It’s not kind to lump the whole CC as a unison voice based on one document that was basically built by 1/4 of the council. You are viewing things from the outside with no vision of the whole.
Let me explain it. Evidence for an hypothesis is a fact that is consistent with such hypothesis and supports its truth value. A strong evidence is one that is consistent with the hipothesis and incompatible with opposing ones.
In this case, you can actually build a sylogism.
Feedback is worthless implies necessarily that feedback is never addressed. As feedback has been addressed, the hipothesis “feedback is worthless” needs to be false.
This is called reductio ad absurdum. Which u can only dispute by claiming feedback has never been addresed.
I could also tell you that devs have actually personally replied to me once, which is enough to demonstrate your conclusion of they never paying atention to the community outside CC, false.
I also could tell you that if what you said is true. And devs pay atention to CC. The fact that CC are in this forum, shows by definition that u are wrong, as that would make the forum useful even if only to talk to CC. Which actually shows your claim to be self-contradictory. Which also makes it false by definition.
I could go on and on. The fact is you are simply wrong. And it does not help that you are not willing to reflect on your position or how unfair is to frame it in such hostile and aggresive way.
Yeah, but it is not. 
Nerfing player won’t increase tactical challenge; it will just encourage exploting the tools even more, the thing we wished to avoid in a first place. I am all ears if it is about making the game more tactical, but simple (or complex, doesn’t matter) one-side nerf won’t change anything. Balance in that matter is beyond repair, the point without return was already reached more than year ago. You would have to take a huge step back, nerfing both PP and pandas (and factions) and throw away (not just nerf) some of both sides skills. Because otherwise all you do is shifting metagame, not making the game any more tactical.
There is a grain of truth in what both say. And u are both wrong.
Nerfing is a balance tool, that can be used to remove outiler abilities. But by just using nerf, the only posible balance is to equalize all abilities and weapons to the weakest one. And if only are interested in nerfing one side. Then u end not balancing at all. Everything u end up doing is uping difficulty. Which is something that already has happened. That balance aproach will noy improve the game after a certain point, it can’t.
Also saying balance is imposible without starting from cero is as wrong and as an extremist approach as the other is.
Balance requires by definition taking what does not work, and tune it. Make the stuff that is too weak stronger, and the stuf that is too strong weaker. Saying this is imposible to do is absurd.
None of the two extremes helps. I dont think is so hard, just lets not be black and white thinkers.
No one said it is impossible. But if you think SG will do it you are the one who is absurd here. Game has reached the point of no return not because it become so imbalanced; it reached it because SG position is that it is like that by design and a feature. Game won’t be tactical, you can forget about that as this is not a target of SG. Period. Rest is just wishful thinking (not a rare thing here).
… So… u are saying: of course it is not impossible. It is just impossible in practise because its imposible for SG to do it…
Well… yea… thank for the non clarification .I guess.
Have we waken up today and decided to be all extremists? Just because? Its now my corner is right and everyone is the enemy for everyone suddenly?
Here is a secret, truth is often in the middle, and in a community being an extremist is never useful or helpful.
Also please stop spamming depreciative sentences about the devs. Please, I want to have a conversation, like may others here. With those kind of comments, u are making harder to have a pleasant talk.
If “you will not put your dick into a shredding machine” is equal to “it is impossible to put a dick into a shredding machine” then yes, you’re welcome. If not…
Like what now? That the PP isn’t tactical TBS and won’t be, by design? Game was more tactical in early backer builds and become less and less tactical each iteration and that has been discussed shitload of times before release, and even less tactical each fix and DLC (constant power creep). We have never had a revamp of anything bigger than changing how rage burst work, and you are… what? Expecting that “nothing is impossible” and they will revamp the game to be a tactical TBS next year? Because I have no proof they won’t? Give me a break…
And to think otherwise is extremism?
If I can’t have a civil honest conversation, I will rather just not have one. Take care.
I have never been more honest here. In fact, throwing off the civil part allowed me to say exactly what I feel, without social restrictions.
Depends on what and how you nerf.
Well, that’s what I’m talking about: change the stuff that makes the challenge trivial so that it doesn’t do so anymore. It’s about making all abilities/items useful, without making any of them too useful.
It’s not rocket science, but as ‘useful’ and ‘too useful’ are subjective categories, when you try to get a group of people to agree on what is the one and which is the other, you end up with something like “skill rebalance proposal” 
Remember the “Nerf everything” (or something like this) topic? 
Nerf, especially one-sided, won’t change much - it may make game harder, but the game won’t be any more tactical as it isn’t very tactical in core mechanics in a first place. We would need a revamp of few core mechanic, something we both know won’t happen. And if it would even be an option to have such changes, we would have them over year(s) ago, not after 3 DLCs. Game is and will remain balanced around skill metagame, not tactical approach (unless modded, but we have to wait for development to end to even consider such invasive mod to be even remotely stable and maintainable).
Edit: Found few relevant topics (I may or may not stand by my ideas there, the topics are outdated and my ideas were wishes for a different game) to remind you, as we have been discussing it more than once already:
Yes, they are. Balance is hard. And is subjective.
When your only aproach to balance is nerf the player, sooner or later u cross the line. I should not have to said that, is obvious.
Balance by definition is about equilibrium. But Games are just more complex than an actual balance, and adding weight to one side alone just will not work outside of simple problems.
Lets face ir, many here and specially the CC are veteran hardcore players who want to have a challenging realistic, tactical experience. They know everything about the game, and they mastered every ability combination, squad composition and optimized tech progression. They want more game and they feel the advantage that they obtained by mastering the game reduces they enjoyment.
On the other extreme, a much numerous group of players is extremely frustrated on how unfair, and difficult and innacesible the game is even on lower difficulties.
A lot of people sits on different places on that line, and have other priorities as well. Ones related with pacing, progression and fun.
Now conversation about balance is mostly monopolized by just one voice. And has just one aproach to balance: lets nerf the player till the game gets hard enough.
Personally I don’t use exploits, and despite having a lot of experience with the game. I think its stupidly frustrating at times, too repetitive and long, too obscure about some mechanics, so punishing at times that it encourages save scum and cheese… And so on. I think that some abilities weapons and classes now are so weak and unispired that I just never use them. Those would include for example Muttogs, vehicles late game, Mind Control, Rage Burst, overwatch, viral weapons… Other stuff which I used to have a lot of fun with, like the flamethrower, was nerfed too hard. From its OP but is awesome to use, to I dont feel like using it anymore.
So when I see that Nerfing the player is the only or at least main solution proposed by every balance problem in the game. I dont like it because you are making the game worse for me and probably for a lot of people too.
I don’t have any problem with an insane difficulty setting, or having difficulty options that make the game borserline impossible. I have an issue when one some players claim the only valid solution for everyone is nerfing.
The game is not trivial for me, so when people says the priority in balance is to remove tactics that trivialize the game. This is not true for me, i dont use tactics that trivialize the game. And still the nerfs affect the way I play, and the tools I use. Cause they affect everybody not just the people that abuse some mechanics, or abilities or weapons. Also the people who just use them.
Nerf has its place and should be used. But is not the holy grial and it wont solve most of the gmes problems, much less now after so much was nerfed already. And buff should be used as well. Now is the time to buff and redesign underwheelming abilities, not the time to keep nerfing till the ones that remain in the room and playing the game are that first group of players, everyone else vanished.
Fortunately for me, SG seems to be aware of the complexity of the issue (most CC too), and is addressing deeper and more diffficult problems. Unfortunately, in the forums the conversations is still focussed on calls for Nerf, exagerations and black and white discussions.
Yes, balance is hard and is an issue that can only be addressed with nuance.
If we mean the same thing by “tactical”, I don’t agree, but I’m pretty sure we don’t mean the same thing.
Looking back at those discussions, I think a lot of this stuff has been addressed, a lot of it through nerfing, and mostly successfully. Some of the current players who have started playing with YOE, have difficulty believing that it was very common for missions to end on the first turn, before the opponent even had a chance to move.
Unfortunately, the call to nerf the player is mostly due to the weakness in the game’s AI. As the enemies do stupid things and don’t use all of their strengths against the player. It seems that the devs have boxed themselves in with their code for AI. This the calls to nerf the player and beef up the enemy strength.
With this I have to agree. AI is really easy to cheese sometimes. And the game would benefit a lot of a better enemy, friendly and civilian AI.
Enemy grunt AI is however not that bad. There is a lot of pathfinding issues with big enemies, problems with civilians and friendlies, and problems with some behabiors and abilities of the enemy.
Nothing that cannot be fixed. However, in some ways I think is also true that the game encourages players to exploit enemy AI, not because is too easy, but the opposite.
I think I have made clear enough from the start that this is not the sole approach:
In this specific situation it doesn’t make sense to buff other abilities/items to bring them to the same level as the OP item. The only other conceivable approach is to buff enemies, but I hope I don’t have to go into why this is a bad idea.
It’s not monopolized by any one voice on any forum, not here, not on Discord, not in CC and not among devs, AFAIK.
The aim is not to increase difficulty, it’s to improve balance. Items that are OP make other options unnecessary. Tactics requires choice, optimal solutions remove choice.
Good balancing is a prerequisite for creating proper difficulty levels. I wish you had played the game on (Epic) release and followed the progress from there, because then you could see how balancing (a lot of it, nerfing the player) and making the game easier on lower difficulties goes hand in hand (the game was much more difficult on lower difficulties and had terrible balance).
OP items obscure real difficulty of the game, because they allow the player who has access to them to deal with situations that are otherwise impossible, which leads to some players finding the game very hard because they didn’t stumble on the right meta. Remove this meta and the real difficulty emerges.
To return to the topic at hand, players who got aligned with NJ and Synedrion, and gained access to Advanced Lasers may say “what Sirens? What Scylla? what difficulty? The game is a piece of cake, use DIII against the one, Scorcher on the other”, while the player who didn’t will be complaining about Sirens on Rookie that MC his whole squad before he can do anything about it and invincible Scyllas. (and this sort of conversations I see quite often on Discord)
It maybe an issue about perception (due to many people frustration). It may be an issue on what changes have taken priority on the past, it may be an issue related to CC balance aproach (being asingle issue nerf propossal). It may be an issue with general statements from such as the general approach to balance is nerf, it may be an issue about people claiming in other posts the game is too easy for any player on legend…
People exagerates, and perspectives get distorted.
I feel, and I’m not the only one that nerf has taken too much of a priority. Which is not totally unreasonable giving the history of the changes with the game.
Now I’m sure you feel its unfair, and I’m sure a lot more than nerfing has been discussed and is being discussed.
From the outside the picture looks different, the game has been very difficult and frustrating for a lot of players for months if not years. And very little has been done to address that. Or to address other isues the game had. OP things, exploits and habilities on the other hand, have been addressed in every patch. And some times they have gone too far.
I think some of us, have reasons to be concerned. The nerf everything meme, has been arround for ages on this game. And only now we are starting to see some real intend of going beyond that.Which is good. But the issue was not something made up.
I understand is frustrating to hear the same things again and again, and that most CC are not just focussed on it. But the concern does not come out of the blue, for many the focus of balance changes has been for too long too focussed on that.
And yes it is needed. But there are big issues that have been unaddressed for too long and issues that do not require nerfing but buffing the player. That is where the concern comes from, and it is a legitimate place.
You blame CC because massive nerfing, you are biased as well.
Ambrose patch notes:
" * The cost of late-game faction research is lowered by approximately 35%.
Increased the maximum strength for the player’s soldier to 35.
Increased the chance of enemies dropping items on death."
what are those to you?
We have demanded again and again in the Councill the improvement of mid game and you can enjoy part of the outcome, but anything that doesn’t align with your reasoning you forget about it.
More changes are coming, that’s for sure, I will agreed with some of them, and I will not understand many of others because the Council is not the only voice and devs don’t think just in “hardcore” players.
If you know perfeclty what issues are having the community with PP , just make a list and any councillor will share with devs, it is not so hard.
I’m aware Im biased too. Which is fair to say.
Thats why we are having a discussion, so we can se each other perspective and that there is some truth on both sides. So we can get to a more nuanced aproach in the future.
Is not that why we are here talking after all?
Edit: And yes I know I can propose stuff, I have made tons of proposals. And I’m really active in the feedback tool. Some may say too much. But still we are a community and to discuss is one of the most important things a community can do. To enrich each others perspectives and opinions.
Edit2: I also know a lot of changes have been made outside nerf. The actual complain should have been something like: “I think nerf has gone too far and has taken too much of a priority, and maybe should be moved to the back sit now, after most of the big concerns have already been addresed.” But I think is also fair to say the point was carried more or less in a fair way, and that is not a made up issue.