Posts made by Matolius

@thetruepilliger in general I agree w @b4njAx on this. I'm probably actually on the other side of him a little. I like a number of your ideas, but imo all of them together is too big a nerf. Which of your ideas to pick really depends on what you want Makutu to be in the end. For me, Makutu should be a defensive disruptor, so I really only see two problems with him: (1) the cheese, and (2) the insane damage. I tend to think his abilities (uppercut, leggit) wouldn't feel as broken if he wasn't disrupting and then punishing you on top of the disruption. He should only be able to do one or the other (imo, disrupting but not punishing). Problem w uppercut is not just that it stuns. W the right combo, it basically takes a number of fighters out of the fight. THAT'S what it shouldn't do, imo.

Aside from the cheese fix, I favor one simple nerf: significantly reduce base damage for regular combo sequence attacks and barge. Makutu should not be able to 1v1 absolutely anyone, as you said. Picking Makutu should mean you're choosing to be a utility tank who peels, disrupts, and helps sustain, but still has to rely on your DPS to do some actual work after you peel and disrupt for them. Switching to huaki with buffs and damage mods should make you do decent damage, not be a god. I don't know the exact right number for the damage value nerf, but it should be sizeable.

@thetruepilliger - If the devs ever do more game modes I think oddball would be a cool map modifier. Hard to do voluntarily in custom queues, but easy enough to code. Seems like a super fun idea.

@b4njAx - You're the hero we deserve.

Thanks for posting this, @x-AmberPrice. 100% on point.

@b4nj4x7581

I'm a little skeptical of dual-slot mods, and I might prefer to see more characters instead, but if they do the balancing right I guess it could be a good avenue for more content.

Otherwise I think the rest of these ideas are awesome. I particularly like the favored map mod idea, which could give players another kind of currency to fight for and accumulate, and it's always nice to be able to customize your experience. If they add more map mods like the ones you suggested, even better!

@thetruepilliger

+1 to all this. Good ideas.

Honestly, they could also just make 1 of a number of different mods a part of her permanent passive kit. Making either the infusion or replication mods permanent would boost healing either in bulk or over time in a fight. I hesitate to say it, but the adrenaline mod seems to basically be mandatory for her survivability, so as an alternative they could just build adrenaline into her kit as a passive, which would do nothing to boost healing directly, but would add survivability and free a mod slot.

Just ideas, but bottom line I agree, and I think a lot of players agree, Miko needs a small targeted buff.

@thetruepilliger

So I know this is super old now, but I just had a total light-bulb moment. Ninja Theory DOES have maps already that could be used for a short, intense game of payload escort: the small linear maps in the tutorials!!

There are lots of great posts already outlining the need for general matchmaking fixes, instituting a casual queue for newer players in contrast to competitive, setting thresholds on backfills so they don't happen at the ends of games, etc. I won't rehash those posts here and I understand why those changes might take a little longer to come down the pipeline given their complexity, but here's a pitch for a small, presumably simple fix that could, I think, realistically be in the next patch or two: just don't allow anyone below level 10 to backfill. Period. It's not fair or helpful to anyone involved. It makes it less likely new players will have a positive experience, and it makes it less likely the team receiving a backfill will get a productive teammate. So just give everyone a grace period to a certain level. If 10 isn't the right number, just pick whatever level is the right number.

Thanks, @Rebel-Tetris. I continue to appreciate your engagement here and all you and the team do to support players and a positive environment. I continue to appreciate all the work on the game itself, too, of course :-).

I do want to just try to clarify, though, that while it's clear there are things that can be done, and are being done, to address problematic behavior after the fact, I hope you and other devs reading this thread are really hearing that the underlying suggestion is to build incentives into the game itself that promote positivity and discourage problematic behavior before it happens. Add some carrots in addition to the sticks.

Muting and blocking chat are certainly useful tools on an individual level, but they're also reactive rather than pro-active tools and they prevent full engagement in the game for those who choose to rely on them.

While I'm sure you can't make any explicit commitments on this thread about what devs will or won't do in the future on this issue, I remain hopeful there's somebody at a company like NT, which really did show profound and enormous sensitivity and empathy with a title like Hellblade and with the Insight Project, who has the willingness to consider the importance of building positive psychology into games as a fundamental QOL feature.

@FAITH12 I wish I could say the same, but unfortunately that hasn't held true in my own experience. There are a lot of great games, but still too many w toxic players.

One more idea to add to the list of things devs might consider to address the overall problem here: just remove text chat.

Text chat is nice in theory. I did use it one time (out of hundreds of games) to (sort of) successfully get a teammate to wombo combo with me. And one time (out of hundreds of games) another player asked a teammate or I to switch characters for better team comp. But on the whole it isn't really that valuable during gameplay (especially if you're playing on an Xbox controller where it's super clunky to type), and I'd give up what value it does have to eliminate one significant venue for toxicity and make it so things like this can never happen. Just flesh out the ping system a little more with some extra communication options instead, and for more complex communication you could potentially use the same mechanism chat currently uses but to access a pre-selected list of messages ("Someone please switch to tank," etc). If people really want to chit-chat they can mic up.

The only time I really use text chat meaningfully on the regular is post game, just to say "GG." So just add a couple post-game buttons we can push to send "GG" and other positive things to teammates, or to both teams.

@Surrtan

Ah, didn't realize they were one and the same. That explains.

Not doing a very good job of smurfing since Xion is still top 20 at least...

@ShadoWawker

SX is actually one of the top players in the game, often top 10 or so on the leaderboard. I think they make BE YouTube tutorial videos w Joreyo (channel Xion Joreyo - definitely recommend the videos for pointers). Guessing they often play in a 4-stack w other top players too, which helps with win ratio.

Certain mod combos really do allow Daemon and some other characters to do insanely high burst damage if you have the skill lvl Xion does.

Anyway, I doubt there's any cheating going on there. Anything is possible I suppose, but that seems like a heavy accusation to direct at one individual on a public forum. But FWIW, the team at NT really does look at all the reports when players submit them, so I'm sure someone will review your submission.

@thetruepilliger

Definitely agree in principle and props to NT for trying, bc I hate microtransactions, but I do wonder sometimes if making the game F2P is a better model for building the necessary player-base.

I wonder if there's a middle ground: game is F2P, no microtransactions, but a one-time payment of $30 (or whatever) unlocks all the skins/boards or something. Still have to play for mods.

Or could pay to unlock all mods and still have to play for skins, not sure, but you get the point.

I already have a lot of mods/skins/etc I want, but I'd pay the one-time price just to support NT if they made it F2P to build the player base.

I'm sure this has been talked about somewhere, but I don't see a post on it so figured I might as well. If it's redundant spam, my apologies.

Custom queue was a great addition, but doesn't really serve the need for training with or teaching a friend or two. Making the dojo multi-player would go a long way toward helping gamers bring new friends into the game, and it would help promote teamwork and better in-game experience. Would love to be able to practice with friends.

@Surrtan +1 to that. It's definitely not the most user-friendly reporting system. Even just the fact that you can't report anyone after the post-game timer ends is an issue that makes it harder to report toxic behavior. The countdown isn't all that long.

Not to pile on, but I feel compelled to share just so everyone knows they're not crazy:

I'm a pretty mediocre player, and I normally wouldn't even be the type to focus on leaderboards, bc I'm just not that good and I don't expect to be. But I have been paying attention on BE just because I've been reading so much about the leaderboard here on the forums. I've consistently come in around 12700 in the rankings for the last week.

Well, I just played one game, solo queue as always, and LOST... and then I jumped to 744 on the leaderboard.

Neither of those numbers are typos. 12700, and then 744. I went up nearly 12000 places after one game - one LOSS.

So.... yeah. Something is a little wacky? I won't complain about it if I'm actually that good somehow. Maybe I was just in newb purgatory somehow until the system could rank me. That would be cool with me. Lol. But it definitely doesn't make sense. Not unless 12000 people bailed on the game during my playtime. Was there a mass exodus I didn't hear about? Maybe it's a glitch?? The same usual suspects seem to be up at the top of the board, so it doesn't seem to be a system-wide thing. I'll fill everyone in if it reverts back somehow. I can only expect that it will at some point.

Yep.

@x-AmberPrice - I definitely agree with the idea that more players would go a long way toward better matchmaking, but I think it's interesting to note that poor matchmaking is precisely the thing many posters higher up in the thread suggest prevents the game from retaining more players. So there seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg argument there. I don't know if there's an objective answer out there, but it seems like it could be framed as an empirical question.

I wonder if NT has done focus groups or any particular data analysis to assess reasons for the size of the player base. It certainly could be the way the game was marketed (as you suggested in contrast to Valorant, for instance), or just a couple of bad reviews, etc. But as much as I agree with your thoughts about the importance of gamer mindset and as much as I like your ideas about a casual queue, it does seem to me that the folks pointing out issues with matchmaking are pointing to very legitimate possibilities for why this game didn't stick for other gamers. They might be right that matchmaking changes would attract more players.

As much as I agree, too, that player level is not causally related to skill level, it may very well be the case that they're statistically correlated in this particular game. Or, (more likely IMHO, but I don't know details about how the MM works in BE) it may just be the case that a purely SBMM system, or too-heavily weighted SBMM system, is being tricked by a small sample size of games played into viewing lower-level players as more highly skilled than they actually are. In either scenario, folks looking at games with high disparities between player levels and complaining about that is precisely what you'd expect to see.

Maybe none of that is actually the case, but we can't rule it out without knowing the MM formula. If it is the case, then one fix might be your casual queue idea, which would be great. But if the player base is too small for casual queue it's also truly possible that weighting player level just a little more in the MM would accomplish the same goal. I'll bet NT is already looking at it, but if they aren't I at least hope they'll review the mechanics of the MM and crunch some of the data to find out if players here are pointing them to a real issue. It's worth review.

Good reporting here, @Surrtan. Thanks for this. I imagine it can get to be a bit much at times when everyone on these forums is constantly pointing out the issues with the game and talking about what should be better without explicitly acknowledging that the whole reason we offer such criticisms is that it's a great game to begin with and we're addicted to playing it. So definite props, and huge thanks, to all the devs and NT overall, and hopefully all our conversation on here is productive for them.

@thetruepilliger - I don't think that's pretentious at all. It's an important observation for anyone thinking about possible game-modes and got me thinking outside the box a little about what aspects of payload are actually important and how to replicate them on BE. I agree payload escort would be pretty difficult to replicate on BE, even though I love that particular mode in other games. I do think it might be possible, however, to replicate what I view as the core elements of payload - those core element being the first-past-the-post victory and the checkpoints that segment play into distinct phases, ensuring you don't waste time on a losing game.

This element of not wasting time on losing games, in my view, is the best thing about payload. For all the talk about issues with the matchmaking in BE (perfectly legitimate, so not meaning to undermine that here) I think a core aspect of the problem is just the wasted time. If you get paired with a bad team and you know early on that you're being crushed, you're forced to either take the leaver penalty or just waste time on a game that you know is already lost. (Yes, yes, comebacks happen, but that's not the point here.) On payload escort games, in contrast, because of the multiple checkpoints, if you lose it's over quickly. If the opposing team made two checkpoints, you instantly lose after you don't make the first one and you don't have to keep fighting it out. If you made half a checkpoint, the opposing team instantly wins as soon as they make it past your distance marker and you again don't have to play through a drawn-out loss. You take the loss, and you get to reshuffle right away into the next game, try again against a different opponent, and there's no angsty questioning about whether to quit.

Here's a completely unpolished (emphasis on that, completely unpolished) idea for how to replicate that time aspect with the maps that already exist in BE as a variant of objective control:

1. Only one objective is active at a time, starting w the once closest to Team A's base and ending w the one closest to Team B's base (if proximity is applicable on the map, like in aqueducts, otherwise they're all equidistant so doesn't matter).
2. Team A's goal is to capture each objective, and Team B's goal is to prevent Team A from capturing.
3. Slow down the objective capture drastically. Instead of standing on the objective and taking control as long as someone else isn't on it, and then starting up the point-counter, make it take 2 minutes (or whatever) to control an objective. If you're standing on it, you start to gain control. If the enemy is on it, they wind back any control gains you made.
4. You have X amount of time to capture each objective. If you succeed, you move on to the next one. If you fail, you switch sides and become the defense.
5. After Team A gives it there best go, switch sides and Team B does the same. Whoever captures the most objectives wins. If equal numbers, comparisons go to partial capture percentages (equivalent to distance measure on payload). If still equal, go to overtime and reduce the timer, etc.

You get the idea. Again, I'm completely making this up so haven't put thought into how it would interact with character dynamics on BE and there may be some flaws. Maybe instead of a slow point capture it's that you have to destroy three successive boxes w a certain number of hit-points, one box on each objective, and Team B has to defend them, w win comparisons coming down to who did the most damage in time allotted if the objects aren't fully destroyed. The overall point is that what's great about payload is the first-past-the-post aspect and the segmentation, which makes it feel like fighting hard is always worth it.

I'm definitely a fan of some of the new map modifiers BE added in with the latest patch, which makes it clear they're thinking about this kind of stuff. So hopefully that bodes well for more options down the road.