Originally posted by Palebane

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Elikal

If developers did their job in development they would not need to nerf, but later they compensate their own failure on the back of the player. Imagine you buy a car and 5 months later after you drive and enjoy your big horsepowers the creators of your car come to you are take out some of the tech and some of the power with the argument "it is unfair to be faster and more secure with your tech gadgets than other drivers". I mean, wouldn't you be fucked up too?

When a company nerfs it means only one thing: they totally borked it and now the gamers have to pay the price. How about: we gamer have patience with your tinkering with our characters when you have patience with us not paying while the game is under "paid beta"?

Often nerfs are just a sudden paradigm change. For instance, EQ2 Paladins were nerfed about 2 years after EQ2 launch. And I thought WTF? And they changed a good tank with some heals to a half-baked healer who also might tank. It was changed ALL THE DAMN way around and for why? Just because after TWO YEARS SOE had the idea to make Paladin a healer instead of a tank. Great.

Or some Companies who recently launch games (*cough cough*) and ONE DAY after Beta realize they have too little content and swing a nerf over ALL POWERS to compensate the lack of content. Man, I can quote so many examples of messed up nerfing, it isn't even funny to be right. Nerfs are made often after games run for years and years? How can it be after a game runs and people played that over and over SUDDENLY some Dev thinks "oh wow, thats OP"?

 

(For someone who is aligned with Cryptic and the nerfs of the powers... man you have some guts to defend nerfs. I really have bite my MF tongue not to just YELL something REALLY BAD. *fumes*)

 

EDIT: And in comment to the poster below me: yes indeed, does it occur to the Devs ONE TIME, that gamers invest into their char and their powers? We build those chars over months and years and suddenly some dev finds no other way to justify is prolongued employment by juggling with powers? Can you honestly tell me many companies just not give in to whining? I have seen it too many times that gamers whine and whine about OP class X and when they whine enough companies swing the nerf to calm their gamers. No man... starting the nerf bat is ALWAYS a loose-loose cycle for all involved parties.

 

Name ONE game that has never had to have its professions/classes/whatever balanced.... Name ONE. You're talking about MMORPGs not singleplayer games. What your saying is pretty much like saying patches = failed development. Get a clue

 

I played Everquest for around 4 years. 2 as a Necromancer and 2 as a cleric and I don't remember any nerfs to either of those two classes. In fact, there were never any major overhauls or class updates that completely changed the way those classes played. And I don't recall ever hearing about any of the other classes needing or getting nerfed/buffed every few months.

google "everquest nerf". Also i dont see why a nerf has to be a huge game changing or major overhaul patch, a nerf can be very small.

So for all of the anti nerf crowd... the common counter point is to buff everything else.

However, you can't compare powers just to each other, you need to compare them to the content in the game.  Developers want a certain challenge at each level and area.  If your OP ability becomes the baseline, not only do they have to buff every other power to have a power/power balance, but now they need to adjust all of their content to make sure that the game isn't too simple.

So let's see... developer time is limited.  One skill/spec is overpowered.

Do you:
(A) Tone that ability down.  A relatively simple fix that affects one skill/table.
(B) Adjust all skills up to that ability and change the content so that the difficulty remains the same.  That change requires a practical rewrite of the game (introducing more OP stuff) and takes tons of time/effort.

If I am a developer, I know what I am going to do.  Buffing everything is a hopeless and unrealistic task.  Think about it logically and you see the complete falacy in that argument. 

I hope the developers continue to nerf (not that I worry that they won't) and continue to maximize their development time to deliver content and other things that I care more about.  Balance is really only important to those that believe PvP in a MMO is some kind of measure of skill as opposed to a function of time and build.

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Palebane

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Elikal

If developers did their job in development they would not need to nerf, but later they compensate their own failure on the back of the player. Imagine you buy a car and 5 months later after you drive and enjoy your big horsepowers the creators of your car come to you are take out some of the tech and some of the power with the argument "it is unfair to be faster and more secure with your tech gadgets than other drivers". I mean, wouldn't you be fucked up too?

When a company nerfs it means only one thing: they totally borked it and now the gamers have to pay the price. How about: we gamer have patience with your tinkering with our characters when you have patience with us not paying while the game is under "paid beta"?

Often nerfs are just a sudden paradigm change. For instance, EQ2 Paladins were nerfed about 2 years after EQ2 launch. And I thought WTF? And they changed a good tank with some heals to a half-baked healer who also might tank. It was changed ALL THE DAMN way around and for why? Just because after TWO YEARS SOE had the idea to make Paladin a healer instead of a tank. Great.

Or some Companies who recently launch games (*cough cough*) and ONE DAY after Beta realize they have too little content and swing a nerf over ALL POWERS to compensate the lack of content. Man, I can quote so many examples of messed up nerfing, it isn't even funny to be right. Nerfs are made often after games run for years and years? How can it be after a game runs and people played that over and over SUDDENLY some Dev thinks "oh wow, thats OP"?

 

(For someone who is aligned with Cryptic and the nerfs of the powers... man you have some guts to defend nerfs. I really have bite my MF tongue not to just YELL something REALLY BAD. *fumes*)

 

EDIT: And in comment to the poster below me: yes indeed, does it occur to the Devs ONE TIME, that gamers invest into their char and their powers? We build those chars over months and years and suddenly some dev finds no other way to justify is prolongued employment by juggling with powers? Can you honestly tell me many companies just not give in to whining? I have seen it too many times that gamers whine and whine about OP class X and when they whine enough companies swing the nerf to calm their gamers. No man... starting the nerf bat is ALWAYS a loose-loose cycle for all involved parties.

 

Name ONE game that has never had to have its professions/classes/whatever balanced.... Name ONE. You're talking about MMORPGs not singleplayer games. What your saying is pretty much like saying patches = failed development. Get a clue

 

I played Everquest for around 4 years. 2 as a Necromancer and 2 as a cleric and I don't remember any nerfs to either of those two classes. In fact, there were never any major overhauls or class updates that completely changed the way those classes played. And I don't recall ever hearing about any of the other classes needing or getting nerfed/buffed every few months.

 

google "everquest nerf". Also i dont see why a nerf has to be a huge game changing or major overhaul patch, a nerf can be very small.

LoL, googleing "everquest nerf" came up with two hits on EQ1 which were from 2008 and a whole slew of other games not related to Everquest at all. Yes, the game is old and there probably were a bunch of nerfs between Kunark and Gates of DIscored, when I played. But I never noticed any of them, and nobody I played with online ever mentioned them either, so yeah, very small nerfs basically go unnoticed, but in other games I have played, they changed many classes core mechanics multiple times.

Originally posted by Verkain

I seriously do not believe buffs are better than nerfs because where does it end?  I mean, if X class is too powerful and you buff Y and Z to compensate, what happens if discover you over did Z's buff and now it's too powerful?  Do you buff X and Y then?  And what if by buffing everyone you trivialize encounters?  Do you then buff mobs to compensate and be back at square one again?

I hate nerfs as much as the next guy but I can definitely see how it can get out of control fast if you buff everyone else instead of nerfing one class.

 

Well the buff/nerf thing is too one dimensional for me.  It assumes that there are only two variables to manipulate to achieve some sort of competitive balance in a game.

Take stalkers in City of Villains.  They had a massive nerf to their assasin strike in Issue 13 in PvP.  Assasin strike became more like giving a friend a punch in the shoulder.  You'd come out of stealth, do an assassin strike, mildly irritate someone and then get ganked.  It was a bad deal.

So what do you do then, make everyone else's damage resistance higher?  Lol, well I think they did that too, which only compounded the stalker's problem.  I didn't play a stalker btw, I was on the hero side (katana/regen, loved a nice close fight with a good stalker).

Here's the deal, stalkers were deadly only if they could come out of stealth and hit someone with a two strike combination.  The more experienced stalkers were good at this.  The more experienced heroes were equally good at evading though tbh.  It was actually very fun, and kept everyone on their toes.  So, for experienced PvPers there was literally no problem. 

The problem was new players standing around a PvP zone whistling dixie while an experienced stalker got in two quick strikes: an assassin strike followed by pretty much anything else.  It felt like a one hit kill (even though technically it wasn't).  Frustrating for a new player?  I'm sure it was; but only the first one or two times it happened.  Then you'd catch on; or you probably shouldn't pvp in MMOs :P.

To help the new players, however, all you'd have to do is add some kind of brief animation after the assassin strike that would delay the activation of a second hit.  A smirk, a laugh, putting your dagger back in it's sheath, anything that would give the newbies a half a second to get their hands out of their pockets and take any kind of defensive action.

Did they need to nerf stalker damage?  Nope.  Did they need to buff others' resistance to damage?  Nope.  All they needed to do was make the two strikes take a tiny bit longer to give the newbies a chance to adjust.

For my part, I got myself a heal so that I could click it in between a stalker's two strikes.  No quick and easy kill on me, if I was paying attention.  Jeez, you could even boost your perception so you could catch glimpses of them when they were coming, or surround yourself with caltrops to disrupt their stealth.  So, instead of just nerfing, devs could have looked at timing, perception, healing and a range of other options to disrupt the chaining together of two powerful hits.

Nerfing/buffing is much too simplistic, and misses any number of more effective solutions to an apparent balance problem. 

Originally posted by Palebane

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Palebane

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Elikal

If developers did their job in development they would not need to nerf, but later they compensate their own failure on the back of the player. Imagine you buy a car and 5 months later after you drive and enjoy your big horsepowers the creators of your car come to you are take out some of the tech and some of the power with the argument "it is unfair to be faster and more secure with your tech gadgets than other drivers". I mean, wouldn't you be fucked up too?

When a company nerfs it means only one thing: they totally borked it and now the gamers have to pay the price. How about: we gamer have patience with your tinkering with our characters when you have patience with us not paying while the game is under "paid beta"?

Often nerfs are just a sudden paradigm change. For instance, EQ2 Paladins were nerfed about 2 years after EQ2 launch. And I thought WTF? And they changed a good tank with some heals to a half-baked healer who also might tank. It was changed ALL THE DAMN way around and for why? Just because after TWO YEARS SOE had the idea to make Paladin a healer instead of a tank. Great.

Or some Companies who recently launch games (*cough cough*) and ONE DAY after Beta realize they have too little content and swing a nerf over ALL POWERS to compensate the lack of content. Man, I can quote so many examples of messed up nerfing, it isn't even funny to be right. Nerfs are made often after games run for years and years? How can it be after a game runs and people played that over and over SUDDENLY some Dev thinks "oh wow, thats OP"?

 

(For someone who is aligned with Cryptic and the nerfs of the powers... man you have some guts to defend nerfs. I really have bite my MF tongue not to just YELL something REALLY BAD. *fumes*)

 

EDIT: And in comment to the poster below me: yes indeed, does it occur to the Devs ONE TIME, that gamers invest into their char and their powers? We build those chars over months and years and suddenly some dev finds no other way to justify is prolongued employment by juggling with powers? Can you honestly tell me many companies just not give in to whining? I have seen it too many times that gamers whine and whine about OP class X and when they whine enough companies swing the nerf to calm their gamers. No man... starting the nerf bat is ALWAYS a loose-loose cycle for all involved parties.

 

Name ONE game that has never had to have its professions/classes/whatever balanced.... Name ONE. You're talking about MMORPGs not singleplayer games. What your saying is pretty much like saying patches = failed development. Get a clue

 

I played Everquest for around 4 years. 2 as a Necromancer and 2 as a cleric and I don't remember any nerfs to either of those two classes. In fact, there were never any major overhauls or class updates that completely changed the way those classes played. And I don't recall ever hearing about any of the other classes needing or getting nerfed/buffed every few months.

 

google "everquest nerf". Also i dont see why a nerf has to be a huge game changing or major overhaul patch, a nerf can be very small.

 

LoL, googleing "everquest nerf" came up with two hits on EQ1 which were from 2008 and a whole slew of other games not related to Everquest at all. Yes, the game is old and there probably were a bunch of nerfs between Kunark and Gates of DIscored, when I played. But I never noticed any of them, and nobody I played with online ever mentioned them either, so yeah, very small nerfs basically go unnoticed, but in other games I have played, they changed many classes core mechanics multiple times.

so what exactly are you debating? Are you saying all nerfs are bad, or shitty companies who poorly implement game changes are bad?

All I know is this. I hope Blizzard doesn't do anything about paladins until my blood elf reaches level 80 and I've epic geared him out. I want to see what's up for a few weeks, please Blizzard!

Originally posted by Thalarius

When I see a nerf in a MMO that am playing, I tend to cancel my account and give reason of you nerfed the game making it unplayable.

If more players did this then the trend of nerfing will be be reduced in such a way that it would be a wakeup call to the devs. Without a subscriber base devs have to go look for work elsewhere. Also devs with a reputation as nerfing devs are usually not hired at all. No big name company wants a dev on the team that has a rep of being a nerfing dev. 

God, I hope this is sarcastic.

The 100% best way to have little to no nerfs, is not not release any additional content (new armor. weapons, classes, zones, races, quests, monsters, levels, skills, abilities etc).

Good read and balanced point of view. Suggestions?

I seriously do not believe in 90% of nerfs that happen to characters.  I truely believe balance can be achieved by buffing others, or nurfing NPCs.  Occassionally a glich, or completely unfare combo situation happens where something is so powerful it could be considered an "exploit" and that is one of the only times something should get nerfed.  Also, another time nerfing is acceptable is when it only effects PVP.

Having your character's best and most powerful power. armor or weapon get deminished is game ruining.  This often causes players of that class, race, school, ect... to re-roll a new character or quit the game entirely.  I think games should be very mildly balanced, but am not a huge fan of balance in general.  I believe that just like in real life an MMO should feature, jobs and abilities that are straight up better than others. 

In the end the victems of nerfs have fun playing their characters pre-nerf.  They, in general do not feel dismayed at their raw power or advantage.  So the game functions in the sense that it is fun for them.  The answer is to not take that away, but to give others a power or advantage that is just as fun.

Originally posted by Frobner

I would like to point one or two things out when it comes to devs and nerfing.

 

Nerfing is ok - as long as its done professionally.  And it has to be consistent - both over time and over classes.

 

Lets take an example of the big guy.  WOW.

Many players are aware that some classes have turned up to be "overpowered" and BLizzard has gone hard in with the nerfing bat.  WOTLK hit DKs and Palas pretty hard.  But that does not tell all the story. 

First off - Who didn't know that a Class that would have both tankinga and high damage in all 3 specs would be overpowered ?  All but BLizzard right ?   And who didn't know that a high dps spec with healing abilty would be overpowered ? Yes - again .. all but Blizzard it seems.

But ... The thing is - it was overpowered in ONE part of the game - that is PVP .   And for that the PVE players that played these classes were paying big time.  This has happened time and time again with WOW.

The other issue is that very often - things are nerfed very suddenly... while other things... when needing the oposite direction - are not dealt with for months -or even years. 

Again - good example of this would be Ret paladins who were, like the devs put it - thought off as lvling spec in TBC - and patch after patch after patch - nothing was done to correct multiple issues that came up.  It directly showed the lack of intrest the developers were showing in their own game design.

But then came WOTLK and things turned 180°.   Even without testing - nerfs were thrown in regularly on Ret palas to balance PVP (and again without thinking of PVE) - or even off other pala specs that got hit even harder cause of the changes..

IN the previous expansion- alot of classes had been hugely overrepresented in PVP for entire duration of TBC - like druids who dominated the Arena healing without anything beeing done to balance it. 

Now... I played alot of classes in WOW - so I can compare the treatment and how the lack of intrest from the developers were really obvious when it was time to act on buffing - but did it in a flash when it needed a nerf - without testing and seeing the effects of other part of the game.  And thats only one class and one spec that has taken the full swing.  

Thats not how things should be done - and it came to the point where I desided a game that had such development team  - does not deserve my sub. 

I think you hit some very good points. First it is unrealistic to buff up other classes as that would take a great deal more time to do than to nerf one or even two. 

On the other hand the truth is or appears to be that the nerfs in WoW are more toward PvP and not PvE. Therefore if you don't PvP or do so very little and don't have good PvP gear then you are going to die and be an easy target for one who does PvP.  So those that PvE get nothing and in some cases neither do the those that PvP.  Of course obtaining even fair PvP gear any more would mean PvPing regular and in all aspects of it.

With all this in mind I sure don't see them going in and bringing all of the Alliance classes up to equal standard so that PvP would be more balanced. I don't understand it maybe they like it one sided and maybe .... I don't know to me just seems unfair. But at the same time it is very important to know and play your class well either way. Taking time to try out different specs and rotation finding what suits you and your style of play.

I had mentioned the Pally which is up and coming and the DK which was recently done. Truely the Druid hasn't been hit all that hard and neither has the Shaman.  Rogues were said to have as well as the warlock but with the constant stun locks of a rogue till you die or are near death and the fears that seem to go on forever I don't see where they have done much in that area IMO. 

I personally think nerfs are often done without much thought. They often nerf one part of the game without rebalancing everything else. Blizzard did balancing well in Diablo 2/Vanilla WoW by balancing EVERY CLASS when changing something that is class related. I'll take for example the latest nerf in WoW, the racial Will of the Forsaken nerf.

I'll just like the 3 racial abilities in the game that are equivalent.

Undead - Will of the Forsaken: Removes Fear, Sleep and charm. 2 minutes cooldown.

Gnome - Escape Artist: Removes all slows and immobilization effects. 1 minute 45 seconds cooldown.

Human - Removes ALL Crowd control (Sleep, Fear, sleep, slows, Immo, etc.....) 2 minutes cooldown, shares a cooldown with the racial trinket.

The gnome and undead are pretty equivalent. WOTF will be more useful against certain classes such as warlocks and priests. Gnome will be more useful against mages, hunters, elemental shamans, druids, etc....

It is almost needed in WoW to have your racial trinket in one of your trinket slot(you have 2) for PVP. That basically makes humans too powerful because they can slot something entirely different in that slot and still keep the racial trinket skills through their racial ability. The trinket is on a 2 minutes cooldown too anyway.

Now let's look at the nerf. Gnome and human remaines the same, will of the forsaken remains 2min CD but now it puts a 45 seconds CD on your racial trinket, basically making the racial useless since it's often used to break out of stuns more than anything.

The thing here is that the human racial was whined about on the forums, but people eventually stopped since it was pointless and human players defended their racial. But human players constantly bashed the will of the forsaken racial and not many undeads backed it up, and you have a nerf.

So basically, they award a nerf according to whoever whines the most.

People lie on forums all the time to get nerfs that swing things in their favor.   IMO there should never be a nerf with out testing anything that is supposed to be OP.   That takes time from a devs other duties though and that means spending extra money that the company wont want to spend.