Why Is So Much Of The Metagame Hidden?

[Mansen]

Now don't get me wrong - I love discovering things about games as much as the next person, but this is supposed to be an alpha test, no?

 

Why do players have to datamine for things like ship stats and what the various attributes on ships mean, exactly? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to spill the beans and let the playerbase contribute some informed critique on the balance and wants/needs in those systems?

 

I mean I can't figure out why some seemingly identical ships sold in ports have varying amounts of repair kits, or which of the 6th rater ships is the one for me. Simply because I don't have the information handy, forcing me to make an uninformed choice based on recommendations from other players and other such hearsay.

 

Now I admittedly come from a background of 4X and Grand Strategy alpha/beta testing, but in those games you'd be useless without an understanding of the mechanics of the game. Your feedback would be fairly useless if you couldn't articulate what part of the mechanics were at fault for a specific issue or controversy.

[Ratline]

Feel somewhat the same, it's hard to do meaningful testing if you have no idea how things are meant to work.

[Captain Obido]

I would guess most gamemechanics are not posted anywhere in details, because a lot of stuff already got changed here and there and probably will change in the future.

Also there is some information about different game-mechanics from or confirmed by the devs.

 

And for simple Informations like stats on Ships you could check the wiki:     http://navalaction.wikia.com/wiki/NavalAction_Wikia

And if something is missing there, jst test it ingame and add it.

 

For example, concerning ships speed Jodgi did some nice testing and summed it up in some graphics here in the forum.

[Mansen]

The wiki is horribly outdated.

[jodgi]

Wouldn't it be more beneficial to spill the beans...

I too have had many questions, broad and small. The most important questions have been answered in a timely fahsion, I would say.

I don't think they're hiding stuff on purpose. I assume that they simply don't have "papers" ready for us to digest, they're still working on it and too busy with tuning the numbers to publish them. They cannot be expected to catch all and every question that pops up all over the forums, nor have the time to properly satisfy every single inquiry.

Though sometimes I suspect they want parts of the game to shrouded in mystery, but I'm not sure.

I any case they are very forthcoming here on the forums, they must be best in class in that regard. If you have questions ask them in the "Questions for the developers" thread, if you persist I bet your questions will be answered by the developers or some old hands in the know.

[Lancezh]

The wiki is horribly outdated.

 

There's your reason. It takes time to keep information outlets up to date nomatter their form.

[Mansen]

That's not a reason for the information not being provided though. If the data is easily accessible from the files, it takes a matter of minutes to datamine it - if at all. Doesn't take a developer long to cook together an assortment of the most fundamental information usually found in tooltips every few builds.

[maturin]

Most of the mystery is due to the fact that development of features comes before documentation and tutorials.

 

So far as what mystery remains, well, that's because ships are living things, not machines. And especially not spreadsheets.