Actually, it was a classic overreaction to player demands.
As @pantolomin himself will tell you, he led a pretty effective charge in making the case to the devs that Acid was basically useless in the alpha-strike oriented environment that they had created.
So they buffed Acid - and if that was all they’d done, we’d all be cheering them now for making Acid relevant again. Because the Acid fix they created stripped armour in no time and burned Panda flesh from its bones (or shells, or exoskeletons, or whatever they’re made out of).
But that’s not all they did. They made the classic error of thinking: ‘This is a really cool weapon, let’s give it to the Pandas as well.’ And they either compounded that by upping the probability of Acid weapons being fitted to the Pandas, or they got caught out by a really unlucky RNG streak (as any mathematician will tell you, RNGs don’t automatically give you non-repetitive distribution).
The result? The super-acid armour-stripper that they had designed in direct response to player feedback started crucifying Squaddies left, right and centre.
But the Acid was only that powerful in the first place because scores of players lobbied for it.
Cashing Acidgate a classic overreaction implies that they rushed out a change. They didn’t.
It took 6 months before it got close to being balanced, for what of essentially just a few values in a spreadsheet. Snapshot had plenty of time to balance and test it on their own, they just don’t seem to be able to do that.
They f!'d up. They know they f!'d up. They admit they f!'d up, and they don’t want to do that again.
So they are going to consult and test as much as they can before bringing out another major change - and live with some people constantly complaining that they aren’t doing things fast enough.
Doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to get it right. Doesn’t mean there won’t be god knows how many bugs in the next iteration. I have no metric to measure whether the bug-rate we are getting is par for the course or not for a team of c.20-30 people working thru a pandemic to fix and balance the type of game which, according to Samshell’s article above, took Firaxis 10 years and 3 attempts to get right.
What I do know is that the devs are responding to feedback and working as hard as they can to make the game JG wants to make. And I plan to stay constructive and do all I can to help them.
True, but the acid problem was hugely exacerbated because the alteration was released simultaneously with the Blood and Titanium DLC. This ironically demonstrated how vulnerable the new technology was rather than being useful. So the shiny new toys in the game became pointless.
Arthrons with Acid Launchers and Acid Chirons were not introduced in the game until Leviathan, so there wasn’t much balancing to do there.
Also @noStas, this is not a quick-match FPS, where after a couple of weeks the devs can have plenty of data on how the players are responding to a change and evaluate it.
This is a game where even a second or third playthrough takes no less than 30 hours, and usually a player doesn’t get to use, or encounter all items or technologies. For example, on my Leviathan playthrough on Veteran I didn’t meet a single Acid Chiron, and it took me more than a month in real time to complete the game.
If the devs started changing numbers on their spreadsheet every couple of weeks based on players feedback they would only be taking into account a fraction of their player-base.
That’s right, I need 6-7 days to complete a campaign playing Legend depending on first base location and diplomacy for REP 25+ locations.
During that time I can unlock all tech from factions, and explore the whole planet,
I guess that Devs are using Debug tools to skip some steps jumping to specific missions, unlocking tech instantly , getting resources just pressing a key …
I used those tools testing another game, Unity engine, too.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand your point. Yes, they announced what changes would be made to acid on Canny a long time before release, as they usually do (and, by the way, in this case not a single player complained at the time).
Then they released the patch, gathered feedback and made changes. The feedback essentially amounting to all players being upset and different suggestions on how to change it. (for the record, I don’t think any of it merits to be called Acid-gate, as there was no cover up, but that’s a different story).
The devs also started the CC, also in part to have early feedback, so that there are less chances of changes that upset everybody.
Beyond that, I just don’t understand what else you want to happen here.
They are working with the community. That’s what the Canny Tool is all about, that’s why they set up a Community Council, and while I don’t participate there (I spend more than enough time on this single forum, much to the chagrin of my wife) I can see that they are very responsive on the general player Discord feed.
So as Voland says, I don’t understand what else you want to happen?
add:
I am convinced that CC and Canny will not help to avoid bad ratings in Steam and the negative from the “no super soldiers” players.
I believe that an early start to Modding Tools or working closely with Modders will help translate the negative into positive.
add2:
2 chance, without discounts on After “Devs finish and polish” (no more After)
Just because I’m not satisfied doesn’t mean that I don’t respect what the devs are trying to do and all the hard work they are putting in to communicate with us and do it.
Don’t misunderstand a recognition that this game still needs lots of work to turn it into the gem it could be for a lack of trust in the devs and what they are doing.
How on Earth could a mod “fix” PP? Sure, maybe a super-duper fancy mod that does indeed “fix” a lot of PP’s issues (how the entire playerbase would ever agree on this is a notion of pure fantasy anyway, just look at this thread) could come out and everyone that used it loved it, but there’s no way 100% of the player base would ever experience that; not everyone uses mods.
In fact, can you even use them on the current or upcoming Xbox? I only have a 360 and it hasn’t been plugged in for years.
Also, the assertions that Snapshot are incompetent or unprofessional are, quite frankly, just rude and I don’t see what sort of constructive purpose they serve on Snapshot’s official forums. Take that shit to Reddit.
The reviews you site should be taken with a good amount of salt, as a majority of them where based on the original release. At that time, there were a lot of things wrong with the game. Since then, there has been great strides in fixing things many of the reviewers found. Based on the progress and what is planned, by the time it reaches Steam, I foresee even more progress. Of course you are welcome to disagree. I’m just stating my opinion.
Willpower is just a mana with addition of one of the worst morale systems I’ve seen:
There are no intermediary stages: soldier are either fighting at full capacity or frozen in panic.
There are no other factors than companion death that will affect morale (not counting in attacks that hurt willpower rather than health), so even a lone, wounded and crippled recruit is perfectly happy while being shelled by Chiron, pinned by few snipers and assaulted by several crabmen at the same time. You really can’t get any closer to “This is fine” meme.
When several of his companions die and soldier panics, he actually takes a deep breath…and just a turn later he’s back in the “This is fine” mood.
Free aim is surely a cool feature, but more of a fluff on its own. It’s not required to implement limb damage. It’s not required to prevent dreaded misses at 99% chance (and I can guarantee, you’ll have as many of such misses with sniper rifle in PP as in XCOM; difference comes with a) burst weapons, where XCOM got one roll for whole burst while PP has separate roll for each shot which results in much less extremes; b) XCOM is not scaling into 100% shot chances).
Secondly, this system has its own faults too (for instance hitting fast moving objects is just as easy as stationary ones…because everything is stationary in player’s turn).
Factions and diplomacy is really nothing to write home about. Repetitive, abusable, unrealistic (they’re seemingly big boys, and yet PP can literally do everything better). Best thing about them is that they exist (and Kudos to SG for at least trying not going XCOM’s lazy route).
There are many more “sins” but even then, game is not a flop. It’s playable, it’s improving, so I wouldn’t dare to call devs incompetent or unprofessional. They deserve respect for what they’ve done.
