Read Before Making Balance Suggestions

[HaTe]

I'm a business major and we learn a lot about setting goals. There's a very good acronym that exists that I believe could be highly beneficial to balance discussions as well. For those of you who are familiar with it, the acronym is SMART.

Specific - The suggestion should not be broad, such as "gun needs to be better." Instead, establish what about the gun you believe should be improved.

Measurable - There should be a way to measure the buff or nerf that you are suggesting. Saying "nerf the gun's damage" is not good enough, because there is no measurement. Nerf the gun's damage to the head by 50% would be measurable.

Attainable - Is this possible for the developers to do? Something as complex as "Make the buildings turn green when someone is inside, but only after 15 minutes and only if they still have a timed c4 and if they plan to kill the building" is not attainable. Though we as gamers may not fully understand coding for this game, we should be able to recognize what suggestions are going to likely be the easiest to accomplish.

Realistic - Does it fit into the game well into the C&C universe in an RTS FPS and is it realistic enough to make logical sense? "Have a giant ant-eater come and eat all of the tiberium and then have a space cowboy ride him to the moon" would be an example of unrealistic.

Time-bound - Is this balance suggestion going to take forever to make, or will it be something that can be done in several hours of work? Remember, we're talking balance. So while a vet system would help with the balance, the timeline of that is far into the future, whereas editing the RoF of a weapon isn't nearly as timely.