Game balance is a pretty broad and important topic. And balance server additions.

[Xardias 0]

It seems counter intuitive and inefficient to be limiting weapon balance discussion to an almost hidden corner of the forums. Currently the weapon balance notes are under "OTW general" > "OTW feedback" > "OTW balance changes" and it has like three replies. Ignoring the fact that Open Test World was basically DOA and was already made irrelevant by the recent patch, I believe general game balance deserves its own forum. And weapon balance a sub forum of that. The game's balance over the years has been very lightly touched and there's many facets of it that all needs tweaking, such as, map balancing, weapons, mods, armas, mission objectives, faction bias (LtL/ram raiding), vehicles, matchmaking (I'm looking at you, 4 player groups matched with 4 solo Que players), and probably lots other things too. The balance servers themselves need altering but there isn't really a great place to talk about it. 

Perhaps host polls in the new forum to see what balance changes the community thinks needs the most attention? I didn't see much talk about weapon mods needing fixing but for some reason they are being altered. I might be out of the loop and there's been lots of discussion or it was a decision made without community involvement, either way, a dedicated forum could address both of these points. It could also maybe help prevent situations where a patch intended to help shotguns just completely breaks the meta and then everyone just flys off to gamescom while we just sit here dealing with a poorly executed balance change. I know that Matt addressed this somewhere but I don't remember where I saw it or where to even find it but if he posted his acknowledgment in the balance forums then it could help people be more in the loop of things that can affect how the game plays entirely. 

As far as helping the balance servers, please make them run in anarchy mode (everyone Vs. everyone) in addition to the open conflict so we wont get kicked for TKing. Maybe make a new dialog box that's similar to the Challenges scoreboard (F6?) that we can bring up that displays the current alterations that the server is running. If you are going to be testing two different changes at the same time there needs to be a way we can test both in the same server. There isn't really enough people playing to populate two different servers to test the second variant. You could maybe create a contact that sells (for $0) separate versions of the weapons that need testing, such as, Joker CR-5 A/B or add a separate drop down menu at all contacts that is just the testing variant of weapons. Obviously these weapons would only be available in the testing districts.

I know this is kind of asking a lot and this community will never be happy but these changes could really help us and you, now and in the future. Especially further down the line when you start making bigger changes in regard to the upgrade n what not.

Thnx 4 read, feel free to snark and troll up the joint. 

Edit: I just noticed that Matt's response is right at the top of Social's forum somewhat clear as day, but I still stand by the point. 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Xardias

[kurbstomp88 25]

I feel like people like myself that really only enjoy using shottys are going to get shafted just like when g1 ruined them. a 3 shot kill jg will never compete with a oca in cqc and would still lose to an assault rifle in cqc against people that know how to move. on top of being limited by range

[Xardias 0]

Bumping to add that there are 4 new threads that are balance related on the front page of social now.