Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 design director David Vonderhaar is ready for balancing criticisms to come in. Treyarch’s title has been out less than a week, and Vonderhaar knows plenty of users will lambast him with messages about unbalanced weapons when playing online.
”There’s a lot of instrumentation in this game, there’s a lot of data logging, so I know exactly what the power band of a weapon is at all times,” he said.
”I can combine how something feels with how it’s actually behaving. I know, I know this is going to happen: a million people are going to Tweet me and tell me that the (for example) ‘PDW 57 is overpowered, Vonderhaar what are you doing?’ What I’ll do is I can go and look at the math and I’ll go ‘Actually, you know what dude? You’re just good with it. Have fun, because the math says that it’s not overpowered.”
Vonderhaar indicated most people claim guns are overpowered as an emotional reaction.
”Like not because someone said it was, or because I felt it was, or because you sent me an angry Tweet because you got killed by the SRM Shotgun one night 17 times so you’re mad. The data will tell me the truth,” he said.
”I’m just going to kill people with facts (with) this game when they come over and go ‘This thing is OP.’ I’m going to go ‘Actually it’s not OP, you’re wrong.’ I’m not going to yell at them or anything, I’m just going to tell them the truth. I don’t have to hide this stuff from people, just drop knowledge bombs on guys. It’s gotta be done. What people are doing is reacting emotionally, and I’m like a really emotional guy so I get it.”
Math is a wonderful thing.
