Eric Fagnan New Multiplayer “Balance” Changes

First off, sorry I closed comments on the other posts. I think enough was said. I have these set to moderate, just because of the negative death threat posts towards Fagnan. I rather just see him replaced by someone experienced.

The new changes seem like Eric Fagnan is setting us up for a big nerf next week, because that’s how he does things. Hopefully not, but once a noob, always a noob. These latest changes are either him trying to make things better, or just a setup. I love how because players won Operation Alloy, they are given something. Makes it sound like if they fail the next event, he’ll nerf/take away something, which makes me think this Fagnan hasn’t learned anything. My guess is the real people that run the show at Bioware or EA told Eric not to do any nerfing so they’d not be so angry they wouldn’t by the Leviathan DLC.

On a side note – the game is really dead. Everyone is either playing the mod/emu whatever you call it, because the number of posts in “that place” is like 9 to 1 on the official forums. Either that or they all went to guild wars 2.

Here’s the latest changes:

August 28, 2012
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Gold and Platinum Difficulties
– Enemy shield/barrier damage gates on weapon damage reduced from 90% to 75%, which means
25% of the remaining weapon damage will pass through to health.

Medigel maximum capacity increased from 5 to 6 due to the success of Operation Alloy

Falcon Assault Rifle
– Encumbrance decreased from [2.0-1.4] to [1.75-1]

Geth Pulse Rifle
– Damage increased from [24.1-30.1] to [27.4-34.2]

Hawk Missile Launcher Power
– Rank 3 damage bonus increased from 20% to 30%
– Evolve 1 shield penalty reduction increased from 15% to 25%
– Evolve 2 damage bonus increased from 30% to 40%
– Evolve 3 missile refire time reduction increased from 25% to 35%
– Evolve 5 damage of split missiles increased from 50% to 75%
– Evolve 6 damage bonus increased from 100% to 150%

Eric Fagnan Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer and the reason we have weekend events, balance changes Operation Olympus

Eric Fagnan shouldn’t be looking at the data mined from the weekend events, trying to see what good guns or character powers need to be worse or ‘nerfed’. He needs to make all the bad guns, bad characters and powers good instead. Most of the guns and older characters are garbage. The players know which guns suck so they use the good guns, then Eric nerfs the good guns. good powers or characters. He’s going about his job completely backwards.

He should approach it like a professional. Look at what Blizzard games is doing and not just with the skills/abilities etc that aren’t good, but people who want to solo. It is a good look at a professional studios way of handling things, instead of the lazy approach Eric Fagnan takes. Also note Cryptic Games, SoE (with DCUO, letting us get raid content through duos is awesome) and many shooters (what me3 is) take the same approach as Blizzard. Here’s what I’m talking about, read and apply to Mass Effect 3.

We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each. But in general we’re looking at unpopular skills and asking ourselves a few questions:

Does the skill have any control or readability issues that would make the skill less satisfying to use? If so – polish the skill more. A good example here is the Barbarian Rend ability – many people don’t use it because you can’t always tell which enemies are affected by the bleed and which aren’t.
Does the skill fill a similar role as an extremely popular skill? If so, buff the skill to be competitive with the popular skill. For example, Bola Shot could be a solid skill, but simply doesn’t have the raw damage when compared to Hungering Arrow, so we’re buffing Bola Shot to be competitive.
Does a skill have a dominant rune? If so, can we buff the underused runes to be more competitive? A good example here is the Wizard Hydra skill. The Venom Hydra is by far the most popular rune, and for good reason, so we are buffing the other runes to make them more competitive with Venom Hydra.
Is the skill a resource spender? In general we have found that many resource spenders just don’t do enough for their resource cost. Here I would use the example of Wave of Light, which is a fairly significant expenditure of Spirit that doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Many damage-oriented resource spenders are receiving buffs in 1.0.4

And then this:

Eric Fagnan Bioware Balance Changes August 8, 2012 & how does this guy still have a job?

Two things, first Eric Fagnan’s Balance changes (nerfs):

August 8, 2012
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Enemy Shields and Barriers
- (Platinum) The delay before enemy shields/barriers start regenerating increased from 4 to 6 seconds

Cerberus Atlas and Geth Prime
- (Platinum) Max amount of shields regenerated increased from 65% to 75%
- (Platinum) Rate of shield regeneration increased from 16.5% to 20% per second

Cerberus Phantom
- (Platinum) Max amount of shields regenerated increased from 75% to 85%
- (Platinum) Rate of shield regeneration increased from 25% to 30% per second
- (Platinum) The force threshold to cause Phantoms to stagger lowered to Gold levels

Reaper Marauder and Cerberus Engineer, Turret, Nemesis, and Centurion
- (Platinum) Max amount of shields regenerated increased from 85% to 90%
- (Platinum) Rate of shield regeneration increased from 33% to 40% per second

Reaper Banshee
- (Platinum) Rate of shield regeneration increased from 16.5% to 20% per second

Geth Rocket Trooper, Hunter and Pyro
- (Platinum) Max amount of shields regenerated increased from 85% to 90%
- (Platinum) Rate of shield regeneration increased from 33% to 40% per second

Arc Grenade Power (Male Quarian)
- Base damage decreased from 450 to 400 to match the N7 Demolisher

Ballistic Blades Power
- Base damage increased from 800 to 900

N7 Piranha Shotgun
- Damage decreased from [70.9-88.7] to [61.7-77.1]

Most buffs are so small they are irrelevant. Let’s be honest here, how many of you use the phaeston, despite it being buffed that much? Here is a list of what changed realistically:
Collector Assault Rifle: i don’t have it, but people say it is still crap.

Falcon: only worth using with ammo.Good for specific purposes though.

GPS: still crap.

Mattock: was an awesome weapon before, even more awesome now.Few people use it because most like their fingers.

Phaeston: still crap.

Particle Rife: crap.

Revenant: good on two classes(destroyer and turian soldier). Worthless on any other class.

Saber: it became really good after the buff.It was decent before being buffed tough.

N7 Typhoon: too risky to use on anything but the destroyer after the nerfs…

Vindicator: must be the worst assault rifle in the game. And they even nerfed it’s weight….

Incisor: worst weapon in the game, period.

Indra: started out as a useless UR, but after being buffed so many times it became worth of the UR label.

Javelin: still okay, but it is not worth using it over the semi-autos.

Krysae: everyone knows what happened to it…

Viper: horrible before the buff, still not worth using over a phalanx.

Arc Pistol: crap.

Carnifex: no difference basically.

Paladin: Much better, actually worth it’s weight now.

Scorpion: still good.

Talon: originally it sucked, but after it got buffed it became one of the best shotguns in the game.

Hornet: useable before the weight buff, decent after it.

Hurricane: it was useless due to the recoil being ridicolous, but it got buffed twice and now it has an awesome dps.

Locust: second worst weapon in the game.

Shuriken: it’s actually good, but many people overlook it.

Tempest: crap on anything else other than a Turian Soldier.

Crusader: crap…

Eagle: this weapon seems like an insult to the playerbase.Really.

Eviscerator: mediocre, does nothing special.

Scimitar: crap.

Reegar: still good at cqc, and the weight nerf barely affected the classes that used it.

Wraith: crap (until you max it, then it weights much less).

Conclusion – Bioware usualy do small buffs that barely change anything (unless it is a UR weapon), then they suddenly buff something significantly, hyping up the players for the next possible big buff, and keeping a good part of the playerbase interested in playing at least until the next changes.

Discuss (but your post may show up late, it’s all moderated.) Maybe 12-24 hours later actually at least until Friday.

Eric Fagnan (George Bush of Video Game Balance) and his “balance” Changes Mass Effect 3 August 8-8-12

This is what he’s posted so far –

Here is a preview of some of the changes this week:

Enemy shield regeneration mechanics on Platinum are being tweaked to increase the delay before shields/barriers start regenerating. Once they start regenerating, however, they will regenerate at a faster rate and up to a higher maximum. This is to give slow firing weapons more time to prevent the regeneration.

Piranha damage reduction.

This guys nuts. I see alot of hatred on so many forums for him, not just the BioWare ones. Even now I’m coming to the conclusion that my “brute force” tactics are needed to break Eric Fagnan, just to salvage what very little good, and I mean VERY little good, is left about this game.

The only positive thing is there’s a great MOD (emulator) out there that has more content than BioWare will ever put out for their game and no nerfs, no forced grouping and no grinding for anything.

I won’t open comments yet. He hasn’t released the actual nerf list.