Ultimately it will always come down to the BT doing as they see fit for the good of the colony.
Exactly. A team of six people, using stats, community input, and game design parameters to make informed decisions for the betterment of the mod.
I'm just asking them to make informed changes with people who actually actively play.
Only one member of this balance team does not play on a regular bases. The rest play everyday.
Testing can be done on small scale which is what they do. the problem is when you put in a large scale and other elements which i dont think is what the BT does?
Impossibl solution for a small community and an even smaller group of individuals on the BT. What you have failed to consider is time zones. They only way to test on a large scale is to at least play a 2v2, but preferably a 3v3.
With just a 2v2, you need to be able to get 4 of the 6 BT members all together in one game. Take into account real life commitments and time zones, it is just impossible to coordinate. Now imagine trying to do that with the last 50 or 60 changes we made.
Most large changes are tested in our test environment, but that is a single player environment and gives mediocre results at best.
What the community needs to realize is - EiR:R is the the test environment. We balance the best we can using stats and community input (balance forum) then throw it out there to be tested. If it fails, we reanalyze and throw it back.
What becomes frustrating for this Dev team is simple: We put out a fucking mega ton patch and everyone picks the one or two items that are really broken and claim the whole system is fucked.
AVRE and Mortar burst. 2 items out of about 60 changes and the whole balance team is fucked? All the other items that are being qq about are pretty minor.
Mortar burst is not a balance mistake, it was an input mistake.
AVRE - many threads have been created in the community about this unit and no one fully agrees on a single solution. Everyone agrees it needs fixing, but many argue different approaches. Not sure why you think the BT would nail it in one go, but whatever...