Opening the balancing Blackbox to the public

"Patch 3720
Welcome to the patchnotes for the 3720 patch.

This patch is a combination of small fine-tuning and changes to game mechanics. It's a relatively small patch stabilising the balance and getting things out of the way so that the focus can (hopefully) be shifted towards SCUs going forward.

Selen, Jester and Bombers are all getting small buffs as a follow-up to previous patch. Mantis icon is changed from a LAB icon to a tank icon as this became an apparent issue with the resurgence of LAB usage after their buff. Shard will now actually hit stuff. Mex build time and build power are reverted to pre-engymod values, making them more efficient to assist and making the choice between using engineers for reclaim and assist more meaningful. Target priorities have been fine-tuned from the last change. Overcharge now kills a mobile shield generator if it depletes its shield.

We wish you good luck and much fun playing with the new patch!

-- The Balance Team"

For what's it's worth there is enough written here so that we can more or less get our heads around why the changes happened.
And for more we can just go and pester Turin on discord I guess.

@randomwheelchair said in Opening the balancing Blackbox to the public:

"Patch 3720
Welcome to the patchnotes for the 3720 patch.

This patch is a combination of small fine-tuning and changes to game mechanics. It's a relatively small patch stabilising the balance and getting things out of the way so that the focus can (hopefully) be shifted towards SCUs going forward.

Selen, Jester and Bombers are all getting small buffs as a follow-up to previous patch. Mantis icon is changed from a LAB icon to a tank icon as this became an apparent issue with the resurgence of LAB usage after their buff. Shard will now actually hit stuff. Mex build time and build power are reverted to pre-engymod values, making them more efficient to assist and making the choice between using engineers for reclaim and assist more meaningful. Target priorities have been fine-tuned from the last change. Overcharge now kills a mobile shield generator if it depletes its shield.

We wish you good luck and much fun playing with the new patch!

-- The Balance Team"

For what's it's worth there is enough written here so that we can more or less get our heads around why the changes happened.
And for more we can just go and pester Turin on discord I guess.

I did read this and I still do not have the answer to the most important question in any balance change: why

Yeah I am a bit confused on the why of some of this too. Bombers and Selens already feel pretty good for the role they play imo and I see them used heavily. Bombers getting even more of a buff feels kind of obnoxious though that's my personal feelings on it and might be a far cry from how strong ladder players feel about it, but getting a reasonable "why" would probably help it make more sense.

The mex change is the opposite of what I've seen a number of people want if I'm not missing something, if it changes anything it just further entrenches and rewards hard ecoing in team games.

Just my personal feelings on it, could be way off but that's where a reasonable "why" comes in. I'd very much like a better reason for the mex changes than "making the choice between using engineers for reclaim and assist more meaningful" because like Bennis said, that sounds like a pretty bs reason. If I can afford it and have an available engineer then that engineer is going to be assisting the mex, if not then the engineer(s) will be reclaiming or doing something else useful. I don't care if it's faster now, it's purely based on if I can afford the assistance or not. Maybe that's because I'm noob, but I don't really think that would be different for better players. Perhaps we'll see some small BO changes on maps with well established meta and builds like Seton's, but it doesn't exactly help healthy gameplay in that situation.

While i thought many of the changes were good (aeon t2 arti is no longer ridiculously better, but also retained its better accuracy; cybran maa might be a bit better at aa; jester is hopefully harder to dodge) i agree with many of the posters here that it would be nice to have more visibility over what is being considered, why changes are made, and why various points that receive a lot of attention from posters on these forums are seemingly ignored. I too was bemused at the mex change, while ive found the com targeting change very frustrating (as it feels far harder to have my com target what i want than before). I accept that im no pro and there will be a rationale ive not thought of/disagree with (due to not being as good a player) for certain changes, but better communication would still be nice.

Bomber change is pretty much because it takes so long for things in radar range to actually show up (new radar signatures only update like every second), so the increased radar range is to make up for it and make things actually show up like it should with the old range.

@archsimkat Makes sense and I didn't think about it in terms of radar being slow to actually show new signatures. Thanks for the clarification on that.

Honestly this is a perfect example of why the "why" is so important - players can learn from it. Tbh I thought that radar was just buggy sometimes and slow to actually show up, but it makes a lot more sense that it's just waiting on a certain game tick for it to refresh. While this isn't particularly useful information in the vast majority of in-game scenarios it is nice to know and there are a lot small details non pros who are interested in learning can pick up from balance changes.

I agree that why these changes are made should be included in the announcements about it. That's excellent information to have.

But if you want to contribute your best method is to join the balance team.

Joining the balance teams requires a majority of the current balance team to agree to making you a member.

If you want an easy way to stay on top of changes, multiple discord bots exist that essentially track GitHub repositories.

GitHub is a complex site, but the bot negates the poor ui by just linking you straight to changes.

If you feel like doing something, I would research them instead of... waiting for someone else to do it

Well the pattern I see here is that lots of noobs or low level thinkers come in here and shit-post about this or that needing to be changed and everyone seems to get a default approach of trashing any post that comes through (because statistically that is a good guess without even reading the post).

Then when people actually raise good points the normal crowd does it's hatchet job and theres more counter-argument than there should be so it stalls or appears on a numerical post basis to be unpopular. Gonna take some special kinds of insight to work around that so hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about and act smartly.