2015-04-20 13:19 , edited 2015-04-20 14:09 by DarkEtheereal

Chat statistics

User statistics

Who is involved?

What Happened

The plan for today

AN-94 buff

Continuing Night Vision project

but for the PLD it may be quite a nerf.

Community map update

If you don’t know what the BF Experiences group is, you may notice a new sticky at the top of the General Discussion section entitled “CTE Experiences: BF Experiences Group” [battlelog.battlefield.com]. You should go there if you want to sign up to it, but I’ll tell you about it here anyway.Late on Friday, I started a Skype group called the “BF Experiences Discussion Group”, where players could join to ask DICE LA developers questions.2 developers were present. David Sirland (the CTE producer) and James “Undeadpixels" Kono (The gameplay designer).Unfortunately we only got maybe an hour of time with the developers before the they went home for the weekend, and the developers haven’t been on since then, since they don’t work weekends, but today is Monday!The discussion is confined to text instant messaging. We are not doing VoIP wit the developers, nor are we doing video calls. We’re just using skype’s pretty handy text instant messaging.I just thought I’d share with you some details about what has happened in the group so far.Number of users in the chat: 64Number of user slots in the chat: 300Number of developers added to the chat: 2Number of messages sent: 6195Number of kicks, bans or mutes so far: 0Estimate peak number of active: maybe about 20Number of typos: More typos than the human brain has room for.The following statistics were compiled to a forum introduced sunday morning (BST). Not all the players have filled out this form, especially not the people who joined us late Friday and then became inactive. That could include a lot more Americans.Number of people who completed the form: 32 http://i.imgur.com/vYXwtpP.png [i.imgur.com](Users could select more than one platform) http://i.imgur.com/UsI56lD.png [i.imgur.com] http://i.imgur.com/OYu8cil.png [i.imgur.com]playing CTE at least weekly: 22 (68.8%)visiting the CTE reddit regularly: 24 (75%)Visiting the CTE website or reddit once a week: 22 (62.5%)Never really playing CTE: 0 (0%)This list of players is mostly based off of the same form as above, so only the half of players who filled it in (and gave their battlelog names) are listed (along with 2 DICE LA devs, and some people I’m adding manually).Players are listed by their battlelog names (with developer’s real names going in brackets).T1gge (David Sirland)Undeadpixels (James Kono)Auth0ritymor1208kingtolapsiumspitfiresiemionDOMIPS3GirtabluluYunaSCTheValiantSoulThePronatoCrystaIDragonbasswalrusDingoKillrcemersenSG_All4thlulzC0llisTheLankySoldierNoctyrneSAGAghostfluxDrSquirrelBoy12nX-DendariTGxLegendaryDerAstrophysikerD34th_Pr4y3rShadow6ixDominikTVDEAlonco12XxAGSxXklempfnerDrunkenAstronautElementofprgressMana_SenpaiIn the short time we got to speak to the developers for before they left for the weekend, they said hi a lot, gave some interesting details about what was going on with CTE, particularly the Community map project, but they didn’t have much time to answer many questions, particularly because they had to leave by the time we started seeing high user counts.But that’s fine, they’ll be back today!They did probably read some of the discussion the players were having about various things. James Kono commented on a bit of discussion about grenade balance (but it he wasn’t giving any details of any upcoming changes or anything).And developers reading what the players are discussing is just as important, if not more important than developers talking about what is going on.After the developers left, on saturday and sunday player discussion continued and flourished, drifting from topic to topic as it tends to do in these skype chats.Topics discussed included the Community Map, FAC TV missiles, Grenade balance, SLAMs, PDW balance, Pickup weapons, SRAWs, AA launchers and helicopters, Commander mode, VoIP, Competative BF, and much more!If you don’t think they are the “important issues”, then that’s to be expected, because most of that was just player-on-player discussion, not with the devs.If you still don’t think we’ll talk about the “important issues”, you can always join your self.I got the other users to start compiling a list of questions, suggestions and bug reports for when DICE LA comes online today, so that people think about it beforehand and people can ask questions for those who aren’t present.Currently that document has about 33 entries.DICE LA probably gets into work around 9–10 am PST.That’s around 5–6 am Central European Time.So if you want to speak to the developers as soon as you can, join then.I bet David will probably want to give the chat a solid bit of attention for some time at some point today, since we didn’t get the opportunity much on friday.If I can speak to him before he starts talking, I’ll suggest that we hold off on the intense Q&A till around 11am to 1pm PST, because if we do it too early, some US players might not be around, and if we do it any later, the Europeans will be going to bed.But there’s a good chance that he’ll pop in and out throughout the working day answering a few questions here and there, while not giving the chat his undivided attention.James Kono is a different matter. The gameplay designer likes to chat, but the problem is he likes to talk too much and then he gets behind on his work. Either he won’t talk much at all, or he’ll give into temptation and be around for hour… :DSo that’s good if you've got a balance issue.If I can schedule a time for the propper Q&A to begin, I’ll probably say a few words, state a few ground rules, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3d8EP-HPUo [youtube.com]If that doesn’t happen and things just happen in a haphazard manner, then all bets are off.If you want to get involved, go to the stickied thread mentioned earlier, but remember to read all the information first…I’ve already written a lot, and there hasn’t been too much in the last couple of updates, but here are a few things worth mentioning.The AN-94 used to have a max burst fire rate of 650 RPM (as opposed to the full auto rate of 600). This has now been buffed to around 700 RPM.This is a little due to the fact that people weren’t satisfied in it, and a lot to do with the fact that the sound designer needed the burst rate to be higher to avoid some sort of bug.The FSRM was boosted as an act of compensation.On the subject of the sound, the AN-94 received an improvement to it’s sounds. They’re a little bugged right now, because the burst sound resets to the full auto sound when you die, which can really throw you off, but it’s sounding much better.I’m a lot happier with the performance now. It’s still not an easymode rifle, but it feels like it’s much more pleasurable to use. The AN-94 loses accuracy really fast when you chain bursts at max fire-rate anyway, so it’s got limited effectiveness outside of close quarters when operating at 700 RPMI thought it was worth bringing up the night vision changes again,as they’re still being adjusted.I’m not much of a tank driver, and I don’t use NV scopes on my guns, nor do I snipe enough to know about the PLD, so I don’t feel equipped to know how NV scope users will feel after the spring patch.It will at least be an improvement over current vehicle thermal vision I think,And I’m not sure vehicle users will be 100% happy with it. It’s not like it was pre-patch. It’s been designed so you can see infantry near to you, but it’s harder to see obsticles and know where you’re going, so you can’t just drive around easily in thermals all the time.Apparently the map layout that got chosen for the community map was map “C”. http://i.imgur.com/KWOR34Q.jpg [i.imgur.com]And according to Twitter, Tompen and his team have turned it into a playable map (for devs only ATM) with a minimap that looks like this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CC1ddpmUMAAo736.jpg [pbs.twimg.com]That minimap image doesn’t necessarily reflect the number of trees and non-terrain objects that may end up pasted on the map. I don’t know if the map testers will test will have trees to start with, but that may be something that is subject to change from playtesting (along with capture points, buildings and other objects).The terrain geometry is already nailed down and is apparently not up for change anymore.There’s been lot of talk about the trees, but apparently it has been said “there will be enough trees”.Well, I don’t know what to say about this other than “GO HOME COMMUNITY! YOU’RE DRUNK!”You had one job, one job! Pick the best map out of 3 designs, and what did you do? You picked the worst design out of the three of them. Great job, Einsteins!For the record, I think that this will probably be a good map, possibly one of the best in BF4, but it could have been so much better with one of the other selections IMO. I’m not alone in this sentiment...I heard from a developer that there will be a big announcement about the next part of the CMP on the Battlelog front page on Tuesday (or at least an announcement about something, I think it was the CMP), so check there.