Using statistics to balance items

[shubla]

I dont know if devs already do this, but they should collect statistics of how many times some items are eaten/studied/gilded/crafted/built. Then they could look at things that are not used at all and buff them! (Or maybe nerf some things)

There is no point in adding new items if they are just going to end up being useless or then make the old items useless. Foods/gildings/curiosities/containers and all that.
Collecting feedback about balance from the players is difficult and time consuming and does not always yield good results. Not that many players want to tell that some curio is maybe unnecessarily good and things like that.
Setting up some means to collect simple statistics mentioned above does not seem that difficult. And using that data to adjust game balance does not sound that difficult either. The game is in alpha after all, re-balancing things should happen more often. Because things are not balanced.

Stuff like Völva's Wand are just waste of metal, it is an awful curiosity. Takes lot of space, is expensive to make, does not give that much lp.

[Field]

I'm pretty sure devs are perfectly aware of that they are adding items that aren't useful at this stage of the game but can be great. There are cases where the things are just terribad and waste of resources but then again - they couuuld be useful to people filling out their study report if they had loads of int.

Not convinced statistics will help that much with balancing items but who knows.

As a side note. Statistics in the hands of idiots could bring a lot of trouble - like the famous case of issuing helmets for every soldier in WW1 at which point the number of wounded drastically increased :^)

[Attas]

If I recall correctly, jorb mentioned on the last stream that he checked that statistically the straw doll was the most studied curiosity in game. If they know it, they might get statistics of most of the in-game stuff we do.

[klouyd]

Seems to me the devs play the game with all lvl of toons. I'm geussing they get a feel for how things work playing with a noob toon to a highly advanced toon.

[MrPunchers]

I'm pretty sure devs are perfectly aware of that they are adding items that aren't useful at this stage of the game but can be great. There are cases where the things are just terribad and waste of resources but then again - they couuuld be useful to people filling out their study report if they had loads of int.

Not convinced statistics will help that much with balancing items but who knows.

As a side note. Statistics in the hands of idiots could bring a lot of trouble - like the famous case of issuing helmets for every soldier in WW1 at which point the number of wounded drastically increased :^)

The wounded count increased because less people died from having 50 lbs rocks from mortar fire causing avalanches enter their brainium case, thus increasing the number of people in the ER and decreasing the number in the morgue.

[shubla]

I'm pretty sure devs are perfectly aware of that they are adding items that aren't useful at this stage of the game but can be great. There are cases where the things are just terribad and waste of resources but then again - they couuuld be useful to people filling out their study report if they had loads of int.

Not convinced statistics will help that much with balancing items but who knows.

As a side note. Statistics in the hands of idiots could bring a lot of trouble - like the famous case of issuing helmets for every soldier in WW1 at which point the number of wounded drastically increased :^)

The wounded count increased because less people died from having 50 lbs rocks from mortar fire causing avalanches enter their brainium case, thus increasing the number of people in the ER and decreasing the number in the morgue.

So now instead of dead people, you have people that have been disabled, are unable to work and need support for rest of their life! Great!

[MrPunchers]

Injuries weren't that severe, but I'm sure some landed paralyzed or some such. Usually concussions and rarely fractures or sprained necks since the helmets were designed to spread the impact and deflect the rocks.

300px-M1917helmet.jpg

[Field]

That's precisely what I meant. You can't be hasty with judging the statistics without proper analysis.

[jorb]

More big data analysis could perhaps be useful, but it's not something we're naturally inclined toward.