"The Devs Nerf Things Because of Popularity" -- Well Let's PROVE It!

[SenorClipClop]

"They just hate when we have fun."   "They just don't like us being powerful."

"They just want us to waste our investments."     "Something something slap in the face!"

"The devs nerf things because they are popular."

 

We get these observations on here a lot. I'm personally not convinced*, though. So I'd love to see the community prove me wrong. And here's how!

To do this, let's take a fully off-meta weapon and collectively play it so much that we make it incredibly popular. The devs will then see this overwhelming popularity and, since the devs nerf because of popularity**, they nerf that weapon even though it's not super powerful! This will prove without a doubt that they nerf by popularity.

Essentially, let's do what r/wallstreetbets did with Gamestop stock.

For this task, I am nominating the Stradavar. (Or its Prime if you have it.) I do this partly because it's firmly off-meta, but mostly because it's my favourite gun in the game. I love this gun's aesthetic, sound design and general feel, and it's one of my more-used and more-invested-in weapons. I would personally hate to see the Stradavar get nerfed, and that's why I think it's a good, unbiased nomination for this test. I have only to lose from it being nerfed, but for the sake of others getting to prove their point, I offer this sacrifice.

 Let's prove once and for all if the devs nerf weapons due to popularity. Play the Stradavar (Prime) as much as you can! Skew its popularity super high! And, though it hurts me to say it, get this off-meta weapon nerfed!

 

^{*Btw I think popularity is not the cause of a nerf, it's a symptom. The cause is something being overpowered in some way, to a point where enough people play like there's no point picking any other option, and that's what causes the nerf. Meanwhile popularity just shows the developers the existence of an imbalance. Or, you're not sick because you have a fever -- you're sick because of the flu virus, and the fever is your body responding to that virus. The Catchmoon didn't get nerfed because it was popular -- it got nerfed because it was OP, and the popularity was the playerbase responding to that OPness.}

^{**EDIT: I think I should clarify, based on comments, that I do not believe this statement. "...since they nerf because of popularity" is an opinion I see getting tossed around a lot, so it's set here to be proven true or false by this experiment. "If the devs do this, like some people assert that they do, then X should happen."}

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

People with high dispo Stradavars be like......

[-Kittens-]

You need to theorize less and livestream more, because rebecca and pablo holding up usage charts to the camera pretty much defenestrates your wall of text here.

[SenorClipClop]

Just now, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

People with high dispo Stradavars be like......

Lol, that's me though too. One of my first Rivens was a Strad Riven that eventually, thanks to Disposition buffs, pushed its Crit chance over 100%. Like I said, I have only to lose in this situation.

[Deminisis]

We don't need to prove anything here, and nobody is going to play along with your popularity bet.

Look at Arca Plasmor.

Look at Catchmoon.

Look at Bramma, xoris, and now Kuva Nukor.

If the popularity spikes followed by nerfs isn't telling enough, then there is no help for you.

[Artekkor]

I don't think this will work, but your small text there is correct.

DE correctly assumes that if something is popular - then its for objective reasons, such as extreme damage, AoE potential / crowd control, some other niche function that's just super convinient and solves all the issues in the world.

Which, more often than not, is correct. What was it? Kuva bramma was 60% most used weapon across all of star chart for like a month or something? Sure, we could try to argue its because its a grenade-launching bow and people just find it cool or funny, but we all know the truth that its because it was super convinient for clearing squads of enemies, even at high level content. Same happened to intitial release tonkor. Same happened to Synoid Simulor. Same probably will happen to more guns in the future (its actually happening right now: Kuva Nukor nerf from 4 to 2 extra beam victims has been recently confirmed).

Honestly, i'm just more dumbfounded that DE keeps stepping on the same rake time and time again even though we have muiltiple incidents of this by now.

[SenorClipClop]

1 minute ago, -Kittens- said:

You need to theorize less and livestream more, because rebecca and pablo holding up usage charts to the camera pretty defenestrates your wall of text here.

It does bug me that the devs keep showing usage charts when they talk balance patches and not going further into it. It oversimplifies the issue and a bunch of the playerbase misunderstands because of that.

[lukinu_u]

They obviously nerf things because of popularity for a simple reason : diversity.

If one specific thing is more popular than the rest (being because of strength, ease of use, fun or any other reason), it leaves no room for other stuff.
In this case you either reduce popularity of said thing, or increase the popularity of everything else (through nerf/buff or other changes).

The simplest option is obviously to work on ONE thing (the one that generally get a nerf) rather than changing everything else according to it.

[Aldain]

You want to know my problem?

People complain that DE nerfing strong things is ruining people's fun, but almost nobody uses that logic in reverse to question why weak and supposedly unfun things are left in squalor.

Why are only the strong things deemed "Fun"? Why are weaker things supposedly inherently unfun? Lastly, why do enemies need to be designed to only satisfactorily interact with strong things while weak things are lucky to even get noticed?

[SenorClipClop]

3 minutes ago, Deminisis said:

We don't need to prove anything here, and nobody is going to play along with your popularity bet.

Look at Arca Plasmor.

Look at Catchmoon.

Look at Bramma, xoris, and now Kuva Nukor.

If the popularity spikes followed by nerfs isn't telling enough, then there is no help for you.

That's... my point though?

All the weapons you list shot to the top of the meta before their nerfs. Suggesting that they were nerfed because of their popularity, and not because of how strong they were, is, well, pretty dumb.

[Deminisis]

3 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

That's... my point though?

All the weapons you list shot to the top of the meta before their nerfs. Suggesting that they were nerfed because of their popularity, and not because of how strong they were, is, well, pretty dumb.

Ok. How about Glaive Prime? It can delete anything with millions of damage. The difference is that it hasn't shot up in popularity.

Saryn and Mesa have been regarded as OP frames for years, but usage stats haven't been to where DE feels the need to do anything about it.

[Tesseract7777]

I think this confuses people a lot. 

I see a lot of circular reasoning surrounding this issue.

Yes popular weapons are nerfed, but how did they become popular? Why did they float to the top?

If you say, because YouTubers and other forum influencers said so, that's circular reasoning, because those people had to have good reason for advising it's popular use.

Yes, they use statistics to help them realize what weapons are outliers and adjust as needed, but to say they are nerfing because of popularity alone is a really misleading way to put it.

You are putting chicken and egg in the wrong order. Stuff becomes popular because it is extremely powerful and effective, it doesn't become popular just because. There is a reason.

Useage stats reveal the problem, but the reason stuff gets nerfed is because it is an outlier in power.

The rest is misdirection.

[SenorClipClop]

2 minutes ago, Deminisis said:

Ok. How about Glaive Prime? It can delete anything with millions of damage. The difference is that it hasn't shot up in popularity.

Saryn and Mesa have been regarded as OP frames for years, but usage stats haven't been to where DE feels the need to do anything about it.

That's a faulty generalization of my argument.

I'm not saying "all meta/OP things get nerfed."

I'm saying "when things do get nerfed, it's because they are meta/OP and not because they are popular."

[Tesseract7777]

Just now, SenorClipClop said:

That's a faulty generalization of my argument.

I'm not saying "all meta/OP things get nerfed."

I'm saying "when things do get nerfed, it's because they are meta/OP and not because they are popular."

Like in my post above, I agree. 

Statistics help them identify the outliers, but it really misleading to say the actual reason is because of popularity.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

From my observation, most nerfs are from newly released weapons entering the multi-million player realm, then the hands of youtubers and "quick to create meta" forum posters and then displayed through exploits or overly abused functions. The Rubico prime and Lanka were/are immensely popular but never received nerfs. The Ignis wraith, Glaxion Vandal, Gran prime, etc have all had their tim to shine without any nerfs. 

All in all, CLEAR exploit weapons that 99% of us know are exploited should and do get nerfed correctly. All of the drama associated is nothing more than over the top attempts to stop what should be.

[SenorClipClop]

3 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

You are putting chicken and egg in the wrong order. Stuff becomes popular because it is extremely powerful and effective, it doesn't become popular just because. There is a reason.

Useage stats reveal the problem, but the reason stuff gets nerfed is because it is an outlier in power.

This exactly my point, yes.

4 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I think this confuses people a lot. 

I'm being facetious. It's backfiring a bit as some people have come to comment and it's kinda going over their heads.

[Krankbert]

vor 8 Minuten schrieb Deminisis:

Ok. How about Glaive Prime? It can delete anything with millions of damage. The difference is that it hasn't shot up in popularity.

If you're trying to prove that people who buy into the "nerfs are just because of popularity" meme aren't doing so because they're completely clueless, you're not doing yourself a favor with that example.

[Drasiel]

1 minute ago, Deminisis said:

Ok. How about Glaive Prime? It can delete anything with millions of damage. The difference is that it hasn't shot up in popularity.

Saryn and Mesa have been regarded as OP frames for years, but usage stats haven't been to where DE feels the need to do anything about it.

Glaive prime has shot up massively in popularity but mostly for steel path because it has one of the big things steel path builds look for: incredibly strong slash procs. It also has really good crit stats and works well with condition overload, and it's explosion option is bigger than melee swings and safer than getting in the face of enemies.

Mesa has been nerfed like 3 times already over the course of several years

Saryn has been nerfed, buffed, nerfed, buffed over the course of several years and while strong only really dominates in small tiles where kill speed is king So a lot of interception maps, eso, some defense maps.

So in short DE has been doing things about it or where items excel is fairly specific.

[Krankbert]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb (PSN)GEN-Son_17:

From my observation, most nerfs are from newly released weapons entering the multi-million player realm, then the hands of youtubers and "quick to create meta" forum posters and then displayed through exploits or overly abused functions. The Rubico prime and Lanka were/are immensely popular but never received nerfs.

The Rubico Prime and Lanka were immensely popular in the Eidolon niche and immensely unpopular in the entire rest of the game, like all sniper rifles.

[Drasiel]

2 minutes ago, Krankbert said:

The Rubico Prime and Lanka were immensely popular in the Eidolon niche and immensely unpopular in the entire rest of the game, like all sniper rifles.

just as an aside, I really wish sniper rifles could get the accuracy penalty on hip fire removed. Just changing that would open up sniper rifles to much wider usage. Zoom is so high on them I get motion sickness swapping in and out of zoom.

[Deminisis]

So, Is Glaive Prime not "Meta/OP" enough to merit a nerf? I'm confused.

[Aldain]

14 minutes ago, Deminisis said:

How about Glaive Prime?

Isn't the Glaive Prime currently Vaulted?

I'd imagine that is a big factor as to why its usage stats aren't through the roof.

[SenorClipClop]

7 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Like in my post above, I agree. 

Statistics help them identify the outliers, but it really misleading to say the actual reason is because of popularity.

I have made a footnote for clarity. I don't actually believe the devs nerfs because of popularity, I am simply recasting an often-said opinion in the community as the hypothesis for this experiment.

[SenorClipClop]

1 minute ago, Deminisis said:

So, Is Glaive Prime not "Meta/OP" enough to merit a nerf? I'm confused.

Good question, but I don't know, and it's not a question I'm trying to answer with this thread. I'm just asking the community to help me prove whether or not popularity itself is what gets weapons/frames nerfed, by forcing up the popularity of a non-meta weapon and seeing if the devs nerf it.

(Incidentally though, Glaives are getting a damage nerf across the board in the next patch.)

[Krankbert]

Gerade eben schrieb Deminisis:

So, Is Glaive Prime not "Meta/OP" enough to merit a nerf? I'm confused.

I don't know about the others, but I was mocking the fact that you clearly don't know about the upcoming nerfs to glaives.