Nashira wrote:
Regardless of whether or not the staff possesses a "solid knowledge of game mechanics" (we do), the coding falls to Dulrik alone, and he has a very strong idea of what he wants for his game.
While trying to avoid being a sourpuss (I definitely have been in the past with regard to balance) this is what I meant to say was my main gripe. My impression is that Dulrik has a very strong idea of what he wants for the game, but that those changes are primarily "vision-oriented" and not primarily "mechanics-oriented." As a result, while most of his changes accomplish his thematic vision, they sometimes do so at the cost of making the game less fun and/or less rewarding to play, in some cases noticeably so. Take prone removing stances as an example. I understand that Dulrik viewed hedgehog stance as needing a way to be "disabled" lest it be too powerful, but his method of implementing it completely changed the landscape of the entire game.
Don't get me wrong: I really respect Dulrik's view of the game and I appreciate all the work he does. At the same time, however, this is what I feel to be his biggest flaw. It's not so much that I don't feel like any staff members have a solid sense of game mechanics, it's more that I feel like if there are, their opinion on balance isn't treated with a great deal of weight. One of the threads I linked earlier is a poll thread where 83% of the 29 votes said "Prone should not set your stance to neutral." In that thread, multiple staff members chimed in to say that they didn't like prone removing stances.
That was eight months ago.