Balancing in a finished game?

Marcns007

Marcns007
I am not a big PC games player, is it normal to have this much balancing in a finished game?

I have just been exploring in my Asp for a week and came back to base to try out my Cobra, it is now not able to fire the weapons that is once could, it was fine when I left it :mad:

2 type 2 pulses and 2 seeking missiles that's all

Just a little disappointing, as I now have to spend more to get back to where I was before.

I am sure this game should still be classified a BETA.:S
 

Tarman

Tarman
For games that are meant to have longevity combined with multiplayer online, they're not usually classified as "finished", ever. The way that communities utilize these kinds of games requires that they attempt to create an evolving program, that grows over time. This (ideally) keeps the game fresh and interesting even for long time players, and also lets the dev teams release a grander vision over time instead of staying indev forever or having to cut ideas forever.

This can be highly successful (WoW and EVE), or abysmally crash and burn (a lot of others). It's a tough gig, but many games have been around for years and years, and their continued success has been to expand and evolve their gaming experiences. In long term perspective, Elite is just out of the gate. There's a playable experience here but the devs before any of us know how much more they need to expand on everything; that's actually the plan.
 

Midnight-shadow

M
Any game with multi player functionality is going to be constantly balanced. It is the way of things. I remember way back when playing guildwars there was a constant struggle for balance which resulted in weekly balance patches for the PvP. A particular build would be really strong so it got nerfed and then another took its place.
 

TeRRoRiTe

T
Shield banks (not generators) took a pretty big hit, and frankly, they were a bit too powerful. Try disabling/removing any you might have and try again.
 

Feldspar

Feldspar
Balancing is normal in games that continue to evolve, as players have the nasty habit of thinking of new ways of using stuff to their best advantage. As it is I have seen far less balancing in Elite than I have in other online games, but expect balancing to be par for the course in each successive update.

As for Elite being a finished game? It's far beyond being a beta, but there are a few feature that I wish had made it into the game before they released it.
 

Jack Schmit

Jack Schmit
The simple answer is YES, even in online games that have been around for years (just to same one example, World of Warcraft) balance (or unbalance depending on your point of view) on a regular basis.
 

kurush

kurush
That's what you get when playing a game with a PvP aspect. You end up with a bunch of kiddies crying about balance and then things start to get changed frequently :) It will only go downhill from here.
 

Captain N

C
Yes, it's par and course. Expect it to continue as long as the game is live.

That said, huge and sudden changes to balance aren't normally considered a desirable thing. Often a perceived imbalance is just that - perceived - and can be naturally countered by an emerging new strategy that players just have yet to come up with. If developers are too eager to swing the nerf hammer too early and too forcefully it prevents this natural evolution of strategies and counterstrategies from occurring, and tends to encourage players to just complain about things that kill them until they get nerfed, instead of trying to come up with ways to counter them themselves.
 

Rikk

R
The other two games I play mainly are EVE and BF4.

Both are undergoing continuous cycles of balancing. Gamers in general are an inquisitive bunch and often find the stuff that is not working as intended, highlighting the need for balance.
 

VRMan

VRMan
Yes OP, you are correct. What we have here is the groundwork for a great game. Unfortunately, it is going to take at least another year for everything to be "balanced" and for some content to be added to the game. At that time, I would consider it a "finished" game.
Until then, expect world altering changes to happen that will alter basic game playing mechanics.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
VRMan said:
Yes OP, you are correct. What we have here is the groundwork for a great game. Unfortunately, it is going to take at least another year for everything to be "balanced" and for some content to be added to the game. At that time, I would consider it a "finished" game.
Until then, expect world altering changes to happen that will alter basic game playing mechanics.
Click to expand...

I hope that the game will always being developed and never be finished, which means more content and expansion released for as long as possible.
 

zaccheus44

Z
Ziggy Starduster said:
Yep, happens all the time. This is one of the few games where the heads up was giving it probably would do so.
Click to expand...

Yes it does happen all the time, but in well designed games the balancing ends up being very small deliberate tweaks, with Ed it's huge swings completely altering gameplay. It really demonstrates very poor planning and may even be evidence of they don't even know what they want this game to be, they just keep slapping things onto it then try and fix it after
 

FuegoPantalones

FuegoPantalones
You've had a tiny handful of what could be considered 'major' balance changes since release, and only one of those changes affected all ships, weapons, and modules (e.g. the heat mechanics), and it's complete hyperbole to suggest that it "completely alter[ed] gameplay". I'll grant you that the changes may appear drastic as, frankly, there isn't an enormous amount of content to alter, so any change may appear large in scale. But, to imply it's not well designed because of these changes is a bit harsh. No developer can anticipate every possible use case once their game or patch goes live. The best designed development projects rarely survive first contact with the user base.
 

Kubicide

Kubicide
Interesting replies here...

To the OP here's a different opinion: no, constant balancing shouldn't be required if a game is designed correctly at the start. And for what is essentially a single player game with ED: no way. ED is not an MMO regardless of how they try to market it. And even so, MMOs shouldn't constantly need balancing. That's either a misconception or sign of a bad game. They are 'living animals' but living in the sense of getting new content and challenges for players to maintain interest; not living by constant nerfing or buffing of existing game elements.

You are right in that ED is really still in beta. The game went to market with so many things that were untested, unfinished, broken or simply missing and that's why there's constant tweaking and changes taking place. It's not normal.
 
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Vasea Azure

Vasea Azure
I hope they will stop balancing and changing soon. I`m still not sure if I want to jump in and start "real" career since after many updates my trusty Cobra fit suddenly stop working. Or, come on FD, and just tells us we are in gamma test stage still.
 

vjek

V
Marcns007 said:
I am not a big PC games player, is it normal to have this much balancing in a finished game?

I have just been exploring in my Asp for a week and came back to base to try out my Cobra, it is now not able to fire the weapons that is once could, it was fine when I left it :mad:

2 type 2 pulses and 2 seeking missiles that's all

Just a little disappointing, as I now have to spend more to get back to where I was before.

I am sure this game should still be classified a BETA.:S
Click to expand...
For every persistent multiplayer online game I've played since 1995, there are always balance passes done, post launch.
With some, they were massive, and killed the game.
With some, they were necessary, and still killed the game.
With some, they were not necessary, minor, and prolonged the death of the game.

The sad reality is that designers don't think things through, nor do they learn from history. All of the issues with Elite : Dangerous have been seen before, with other persistent multiplayer online games.
Issues related to chat, latency, hacking, cheating, exploiting, persistence discrepancy, loading times, instancing, optimization, artistic style, capacity, server performance, patching the patcher, patching performance, forums failing, more than a thousand new bug tickets opened per day, post launch...
All of that? Been done before, seen before, fixed, solved or mitigated, before. And yet.. FDEV keeps repeating the same bad mistakes of the past.

I'm not sure if it's blind arrogance or just intentional ignorance, but yes, it keeps happening to the point where it's "normal", now.
 

Jorlin

Jorlin
Ziggy Starduster said:
Maybe that's a different reply, because you are answering a different question than the OP asks. Is it normal games balance after release? Yes it is these days.
Click to expand...

not only these days, it was like that about 15 years ago with Everquest...and every onlinegame i played since that (no shooters).

WoW is stiull constantly balancing after years since release...
 
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