Wasn’t “echo” or whatever already being used since 2012/2013, as shown on the SD youtube channel? Why was it needed to be reimplemented?
Is there anything better about the new system to monitor player behavior?
Also what players will it target for balance?
Will it include players lower level than… level 15-20?
Will it track games without friendly fire enabled?
Will it track games that include more players than just 5vs5?
Overall I’m sure it’s a great system to slowly tweak the balance between the higher skilled and those new to the game, to maybe lesser the skill gap between the skill floor and the skill ceiling.
But this is not really needed considering the process of development of this game.
It’s only delaying the needed balance at the end game level of solo and team competitive environment.
Unless it’s a smurf account, the data of accounts below level 20 is meaningless.
Casual games won’t include the data that is needed for balance. It can only provide the player trends, stuff that players prefer and abuse in a game type without friendly fire.
Even the lower ranked competitive players won’t provide the data that’s reliable enough to balance around.
The only data that will actually matter is from high ranked players and from tournament games.
I understand that SD doesn’t want to trust the community with the balance suggestions, but at the same time SD doesn’t have the skill in gameplay to balance it from their own experience.
So instead they work on the “echo” 2.0 now to have “cold hard” data they can use as a source to balance around and claim that “this was the best choice for balance based on data”.
Cause let’s be honest, a pro could destroy a casual server with the worst merc and gun vs noobs who try to abuse the top meta picks. Games like that wouldn’t provide any useful data at all.
None of this data will really matter if it will target all the players and both casual and competitive, as the majority of the data would most likely be from casual 8vs8, where the low levels can provide data, on how to score less that 20% accuracy with any gun and get lost in every map, while the high levels “happen” to get lots of kills without even having to depend on cover at any part of the map.
At least I’m happy they promise us balance patches, which will hopefully break the burst rifle meta and get the ball rolling, but I’m not sure I should be too excited since they should also release the next merc before December.
! No more hybrid mercs please. Just have a merc focused on one role and try to keep those balanced.
