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Author Topic: Metrics  (Read 2784 times)

frag971

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Metrics
« on: June 19, 2013, 12:25:07 PM »

What do you think about including voluntary metrics in the game? A system which the player agrees and have EVERYTHING in the game recorded, archived and sent back to Alex so he can analyse and interpret how players play the game. For example he may find out that there's a button or a window or tooltip that noone uses in the fitting screen, or that players keep turning the map on and off constantly and that would inform his design decisions for a better game.

Just to be clear. This would be a statistical anonymous tool that would track user interaction to notice discrepancies and suprise behaviour as explained above.
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TJJ

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2013, 12:47:16 PM »

Cool idea.

Though obvious caution has to be taken when interpreting statistics of any kind.
Otherwise you make ***-ups like Windows 8's Metro.  ;)
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Faiter119

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2013, 02:15:09 PM »

Good idea, Minecraft does this, though Im not sure if they have used it for something.
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Thaago

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2013, 02:47:05 PM »

I think this would be helpful, but I'm not sure if the amount of time it would take to program would be less than the amount of time it would save! :P I've never designed a metrics tool, but you would have to have hooks for it wherever you wanted reported: those in turn need to all be programed (or at least passed to a registry or something). Not too bad to implement from the start, but it sounds like a nightmare to add in.

I would love to see the statistics this generated though! I wonder if everyone else spends as much time refitting ships as I do...
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ArkAngel

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2013, 03:13:16 PM »

But Isn't something like this kinda moot? I mean isn't getting information from the suggestions and general discussion basically do the same thing?  :-\ If Alex also added something like that it would take a lot of time to implement I would think. Time that could be used for working on more important aspects of the game.
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Reshy

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2013, 03:42:10 PM »

Would be useful at least during the alpha and possibly beta phase where balance is very much out of proportion.
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Gothars

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #6 on: June 20, 2013, 11:03:13 AM »

I doubt that setting this up and evaluating all the data would safe time in the end.
Besides, it can't measure the most important thing, how much fun someone is having in a given situation.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2013, 11:18:05 AM by Gothars »
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Reshy

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2013, 11:29:32 PM »

I doubt that setting this up and evaluating all the data would safe time in the end.
Besides, it can't measure the most important thing, how much fun someone is having in a given situation.


It can actually help though, if everyone's only using capital ships and cruisers and completely forsaking fighters or frigates that would be reported and would hopefully cause a change in the balance towards a more mixed composition.
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frag971

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2013, 09:40:34 AM »

I doubt that setting this up and evaluating all the data would safe time in the end.
Besides, it can't measure the most important thing, how much fun someone is having in a given situation.


It can actually help though, if everyone's only using capital ships and cruisers and completely forsaking fighters or frigates that would be reported and would hopefully cause a change in the balance towards a more mixed composition.
Or worse - noone uses half the ships, to sugest making the less used ships mre appealing. Like everyone always goes to two or three ships and ignores everything else, that sugests nerfing or improving other ship's intership mechanics. Or noone using a module, buff it. Or people almost always die when engine is on fire (new mechanics to mitigate that) or fighters die to this PD on this ship much more often (nerf it or buff other's).

Metrics usually doesn't make a dev change big mechanics but helps tremendously in finding suprising data from player behaviour and that would inform (not decide) developement in balance and mechanics.
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Reshy

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Re: Metrics
« Reply #9 on: June 24, 2013, 10:46:10 PM »

Finding trends such as what class of ship they prefer to use, what tech level they prefer, what skills they invest the most/least in, what ships are typically casualties, etc. would be very useful information in pinpointing imbalance issues still inherent in the game.  One of the largest issues for me is the fact that pound for pound larger ships are just better.  Onslaught versus 4 lashers?  Please.  They have no chance. 
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