Is there a name for the phenomenon when a company or group has access to all of the metrics for a product or good then makes foolish decisions using that information?

Right now Arrowhead can deflect all criticism of their actions by saying "we made this decision based on the numbers" while ignoring the fact that metrics aren't magic numbers blindly meant to be followed, you are supposed to use them to discover underlying reasons for why those numbers exist in the first place.

This patch is a big L for me and a bad omen for what is to come of this game if the devs are making their decisions like this.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why? The changes seem pretty sensible in regards to what was clearly above and below the power curve?

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

For the railgun specifically, it was about the only actually effective way to deal with the multiple chargers the game likes to throw at you constantly. Now you’re pretty much fucked.

Should have brought other options up. Shifted the curve right rather then left.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 months ago

Yeah I just made a similar comment. At the higher levels, you have more tank enemies than are practical to deal with using orbitals and airstrikes alone. The railgun was the only thing feasible to deal with wave after wave of tanks. Taking that away without giving alternatives is a major blow to level 7 and above.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The railgun is still effective, you just have to use the overcharge mode and be precise, they specifically left the overcharge mode at the same damage potential.

They also buffed other weapons, including the flamethrower and the laser Cannon's wieldiness and armor penetration. This is also the very first balance patch, it's not gonna be perfect, it already wasn't perfect, try out some other options and strategies and see how they seesaw the balance. I think if they keep it up they'll get it right.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s not the same potential, though. It takes about 4 unsafe shots to strip chargers leg armor for example. Before it was 2 safe shots. That’s over twice as long and twice as much ammo.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

They specify that to retain the damage output you have to target headshots and "other specific weakpoint shots to maintain maximum damage efficiency". That's a bit vague, but it's not quite a full range damage debuff

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The leg is the closest thing to a weak point that a charger has, though.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Their butt is the true unarmored weak spot, I usually main autocannon and circle around and just blast the butt, once it explodes they start bleeding out and change to a slower animation set

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s not technically a weak spot, doesn’t take weak spot damage. Whereas an exposed leg DOES take weak spot damage

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.run 1 points 8 months ago

Huh, is that info in a sheet somewhere or something? They don't expose that info in-game as far as I know

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

That's what they mean though. Weakspots multiply the damage received. Their only lever without redesigning the way weakspots function is to drop base damage.

The Arc Thrower for example ignores armor but does relatively low damage, however sometimes it will oneshot a beefier enemy when the arc hits a weakspot. Even with the flamethrower it is better to hit the charger's armored leg because that is a weakspot on that enemy.

[–] killabeezio@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

Hard agree. Played a 7 today and it felt really bad. Without balancing other weapons to make them viable, they just nerfed the only gun that can do shit.

I love the autocannon gun, but it's useless against bugs and only good against automatons.

I'll be sitting this patch out. It just wasn't fun to play with these changes.

[–] MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't know if there's a term for that, but imo Rocket League had the same thing going for years. The game used to always queue a team based on the MMR of the highest ranked team member. People complained they couldn't play the game with their super low level friends in competitive play, so they changed it so it would average the rank between team members.

The reason I always hated this change was because an average bronze player can barely compete with an average silver player, and etc through the ranks. If you play in 2v2, then you can have a bronze and gold player against two silvers and the game thinks it's a fair fight. In reality, the gold player is likely going to run circles around both of the silvers while the bronze player barely needs to do anything except try and interfere with the silver team's defence for it to be no competition at all. I can only imagine the problem would have been even worse in 3v3 matches.

At least before when everyone queued by the highest ranked member's MMR, then you had to be selective about who you brought with to make sure they can carry their weight. After the change, they streamlined the smurfing and boosting problems the game already has.

Tried bringing it up in community discussions but the whole community (especially at the time) wanted to do nothing but circle jerk Psyonix's dicks with that same argument: "well Psyonix has the data and you don't, so how do you know this is a problem? They have the data and they made the change so clearly it must not be a problem"