Completed Scheduled PATCH Maintenance: August 17, 2025

I’m sorry if it comes across like I have a personal vendetta against you, Aussie. I don’t know you as a player in game, and you’re probably a cool person. But when you comment “Prepared to argue against ungrateful people bashing BT”, I feel the need to point out that BT’s decisions are extremely controversial, and naturally they’re going to be criticized, especially when it involves removing a core skill, Shadow shifter.

 

I came here to share my hype for my first event on the community, but all I see above is two people fighting over childish ish uhhh


Can’t wait for the server to come back online LOL

 

I mean I obviously post that in jest, but I also have the unique position of having been on the BT so I have an idea of the work put into it, so I get annoyed when people state they’re brain dead or haven’t thought about it at all. When I was on BT I basically didnt have time to pursue the content I wanted to do because of the work I had to do. Being on ML staff is a thankless job that just takes time out of the day, and seeing people blindly criticize just doesn’t sit right with me.

It also helps me see past what is good or bad for me, and consider the reasons for which they decide to do things. It doesn’t always work, and I feel comfortable to say when it doesn’t. I think there is a line between unpopular and controversial, where unpopular is just not liking something that maybe needed to be done, and controversial being changing something unnecessarily.

if people’s arguments were more “I can see it from both sides of view, but I think my position is stronger” I’d be fine with them. But most of the time it’s just “wtf why BT so brainless tell me why you did this cuz there’s no possible explanation for it” it’s not great

also I’m a lawyer so by default I’m a piece of shit

 

If anything it seems to me like one the main sources of criticism towards BT has been the arguable lack of communication regarding their stances and reasoning behind changes.

There's been multiple instances of Pasta filling this void, but (based on my own sentiment and how I've interpreted whatever feedback I saw) the communication is otherwise either absent or condescending. The latter is perhaps understandable given the shitstorm that is regularly thrown BT's way, but might be alleviated if there was any actual communication.

Seeing how, from a player's perspective, it might seem like an easy win for BT to just start partaking in forum discussions more actively, I'm curious what your stance/experience/assumption is on why this has thusfar remained absent.

 

I think I remember one of my first balance patches I was trying to explain something and was just being told “you’re wrong wtf” before I lashed out eventually.

I may be remembering it incorrectly through the lens of my frustration, but I think a lot of the time I feel that less is more for BT. You can try to explain all you want, but bottom line is people wont like nerfs, and trying to explain will mostly result in people saying you didn’t think about it at all

that really sucks because the loud naysayers will cover people who give general feedback. I would rather just read everything, find the posts that give relevant feedback and make a note of the things that I might want to keep track of and evaluate by players in game.

also on the point about time, it just takes time to reply to people, and explaining every thought process is draining.

overall, i think it would be great if BT able to communicate more, but in reality it just doesn’t work that well. Idk how Pasta does it, but he just has the aura to say something authoritatively enough that people don’t just bash him.

 

I'm going to very nitpickily only reply to this part of your comment because I don't have much to say on the rest (though I do appreciate your perspective).

While very understandable, I feel like this makes it incredibly hard for players to gauge whether or not they're being heard or if BT even opens the forums.

Aside from the (mostly fruitful) discussion concerning Buccaneer changes, a lot of recent balance changes have felt sudden, umprompted and not necessarily relevant to topics that were being discussed by people on the forums.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that balance changes should (necessarily) be dictated by what players want or express on the forums, but this approach of silently noting things runs the risk of players feeling unheard and balance changes feeling out of touch.

 

Just to give an example of what I meant by that, when the shad changes happened and people were saying that shads without stance would be awful to play. Pasta in the hotfix round of changes said that they didn’t realize how game breaking it would be for shads. As a BT member, I might have seen a post that and made a note that I might have observe whether that was actually as big of an issue that it was made out to be (it was).

It kind felt like we were talking about different stages of the process, so just wanted to clear that up.

beyond that, i can’t comment on how BT now get their information on what they consider problematic. I do think that some thoughts are gleaned from members pushing the boundaries (I remember a funny story about how a BT member asked a mutual sweaty friend how he was farming event etc and then immediately nerfing that… my friend was like I’m never telling you anything again).

Im sure they do read the forums, but participating is just opening a can of worms. I think most BT members would like to have productive conversations but are just massively disillusioned (and probably for good reason) by interacting with community.

 

Confirms to me nothing has changed from 2021 to now

 

This seems weirdly at odds with the tone that I so very much appreciated in the balance thread that was posted just now. First you (perhaps speaking from BT's perspective) say you guys are going to try to work on the communication, but then this comment seems to fall back in line with the earlier trend.

Perhaps it's just a difference of your stance being expressed here vs balance teams' stance being expressed in the aforementioned thread, but it stood out to me.

 

need 2 play.... shout out everyone working on the patch....

 

continuing to throw a temper tantrum over shifter is genuinely giving me secondhand embarrassment omg. like pls for the love of god no more, we already are seen as the whiniest class rn i'm just sitting here like


excited to fish!!! i can't wait to fish!!! thank u for giving us fish. i am eating poke RIGHT NOW to celebrate

 

yeah this will probably get shifter back, keep going

 

Those things are not mutually exclusive, even if BT decides to try to communicate more, they can still be discouraged from doing so by people bashing anything they don't like.

 

Super excited for the event & changes.
I can't wait patiently for the server to open!

 

hyped !!

 

how do i message you? my recovry email doesnt get sent