The approach on Gatling Gun was very unprofessional

Let me start off by saying this is by no means a rant or a hate post. My intention is to help the devs in future releases of new items.

As you read in the title, I think the approach on the new weapon was very unprofessional. When you introduce a new item into the game you should make it some-what overpowered (as ridiculous as that sounds). Not insanely OP, but to where a T3 epic is worth using in nightmare. This is for 2 main reasons:

1) It's a brand new item. No one will have it max level any time soon.

You won't have tons of complaints of it being OP, rather you will have players grinding the achievement for it or trying to buy it. Once more people get it maxed epic is when you balance it in a way that keeps the item strong but not OP and you don't upset the players who have it leveled up.

2) For profitability. If players who spend more than the average player sees the item is strong and worth having they are more likely to spend to get it before everyone else to get the upper-hand in the game.

When this item was introduced I did not see anyone pearling it. When Repair Bolt came out there were plenty of people buying epic containers to get the item. Even a former-player known as Diet Coke pearled it to max epic the same day. This could have been the same scenario. But instead the item was introduced extemely weak and is slowly being worked on.

Also, it is common for games to give some (5-10) of their players early access to a private server to test the item. So they can get the feedback from someone who plays before releasing the item.

This is coming from my experience on many PvP games. I have been part of many gaming communities and have seen the approach from the developers and the response from the players when new items are introduced into the games.


Note: If you are against P2W you should know profit is what funds future updates.

 

Tbh, I'm pretty sure that this would still result massive complaints on the forum (you know this community ). I feel the situation would kinda be like the railgun was before the close-range nerf. Can't remember exactly how the community reacted back then but I think it's safe to say the feedback wasn't very positive and we had many ragequits.

People who bought pearls to get high level gatling gun fast would be angry because they would feel their purchase just got devalued and the people who were grinding for one would also be angry because the time they spent grinding now devalued.

 

the league of legends does "it": it releases a new OP champion, everyone buys it. And then is riot his nerf with time. Working model!

 

I was really hyped about a new weapon, and not just a new weapon, but an entirely new category of weapon.

It should have been the exciting new feature that everyone was talking about, however, it was completely overshadowed by the agility blunder, to the extent that I actually forgot Gatling Gun existed for a while.

If we, generously, assume that they thought this through, then they should have realised max agility would be controversial (to put it mildly). Perhaps they didn’t want to compound the issue by simultaneously introducing an OP weapon, so they instead rolled it out in its most innocuous (and easy to accept) guise.

This does leave me wondering why they didn’t just space these updates out more? Make this update all about the new weapon, and bask in the excitement, instead of distracting from it with a controversial agililty rework.

I realise they had a bit of an issue with crew training, and how it would all fit, but a better solution might have been to add a new crew member. That would have given them more scope to add more new items in the future, but instead they chose the lazy option.

 

I can understand why they did it all together: Dropping Rudder and Lube left gaping holes in existing training, so it made sense to replace those holes with Gatling gun training in one fell swoop. Splitting them out into different releases would have been much more messy.

 

I don’t think that’s the order in which things happened, at all. We’ve been asking them to fix Rudder and Gearlube for years, and it was never a priority for them.

What I think really happened, is they created Gatling Gun, because of pressure to add content to the game, but they realised that it wasn’t going to easily fit into the crew trees.

Rather than redesigning the crew trees (another thing we’ve been asking for for years), which would have required effort. They, instead, decided it would be easier to just remove something old and replace it. Suddenly they ‘care’ about Grarlube and Rudder! (Just not enough to actually fix them )

 

Also, other devs take balancing, alot more into consideration. Joes right about launching an item, to make it a viable choice. The issue is the amount of time it takes to balance items. 6 months is far to long, to begin adjustments, another 6 months to adjust a little more...

 

Well no one wanna invest in a new wp now since we dont know what they re gonna change it a week later...