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

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

Lol wow this just totally proves my reply to you in my post. The dev team have said themselves that they nerf because of popularity. It's been proven many times over. Pretty sad that this is the culmination of 6 years on these forums. What a waste of time and space in regards to other people's actual pertinent ideas and valid complaints. Bravo for the bait post mate.

[LoneWolf9989]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk said:

Lol wow this just totally proves my reply to you in my post. The dev team have said themselves that they nerf because of popularity. It's been proven many times over. Pretty sad that this is the culmination of 6 years on these forums. What a waste of time and space in regards to other people's actual pertinent ideas and valid complaints. Bravo for the bait post mate.

You're ignoring that there's generally a reason that things become popular

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

1 minute ago, LoneWolf9989 said:

You're ignoring that there's generally a reason that things become popular

You're 100% correct, but that also doesn't mean that they nerf everything that's super powerful. I'd give examples but I'm sure you're aware of many op off meta weapons. If not, idk, ask someone in your clan. 

[Urazz82]

Yes, DE does nerf according to popularity more often than not but being popular doesn't necessarily mean something will be nerfed.  I think something becoming extremely popular will cause DE to investigate and if it got popular because it's OP, then it's definitely going to get nerfed.

 

Condition Overload, Blood Rush, and Kuva Nukor combined created an OP combo that dominated over everything, including other melee builds.  I was not surprised to see those things nerfed.

[LoneWolf9989]

1 minute ago, (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk said:

that also doesn't mean that they nerf everything that's super powerful.

Because they don't know of them yet. To quote something that was said by a member of DE staff(I can't remember who specifcally), "The community latches on to something for a reason"

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

We also have to consider power creep. Personally, I'm the type of player that thinks the best way to avoid a weapon from holding a monopoly, is to give it competition, so we should revert all past weapon nerfs, and have some sort of ridiculous meta where Arca Plasma's shoot Glaive energy whips that chain enemies through walls and hit for headshots in large AOE's that proc Corrosive Gas that does DOT, and you can coptor around with it, and I don't know... uh its auto lock on, and homing, and you need to introduce a new colour for a new tier of crits. Magenta crits, because this level of crit is impossible in nature!! 

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

1 hour ago, LoneWolf9989 said:

Because they don't know of them yet. To quote something that was said by a member of DE staff(I can't remember who specifcally), "The community latches on to something for a reason"

Is this seriously your arguement? They don't know of them yet? Who do you think makes these weapons as strong as they are? Who designs, and supposedly, tests them??? The nukor was out for over a year, do you think it got more powerful after they released it? Or did it get more popular? The answer is that it got more popular. I don't even see how this topic is even up for debate honestly. 

[Tiltskillet]

Kestrel is definitely getting nerfed due to it's extreme popularity. 

It is known.

[Aldain]

Just now, Tiltskillet said:

Kestrel is definitely getting nerfed due to it's extreme popularity. 

It is known.

Either that or they're about to drop the PHATEST Kestral Prime on us.

[Tiltskillet]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Either that or they're about to drop the PHATEST Kestral Prime on us.

[(PSN)thowed]

When's Wukong getting nerfed?  I'm tired of seeing him and his nothing contributions to missions.

[Krankbert]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk:

Is this seriously your arguement? They don't know of them yet? Who do you think makes these weapons as strong as they are? Who designs, and supposedly, tests them??? The nukor was out for over a year, do you think it got more powerful after they released it? Or did it get more popular? The answer is that it got more popular. I don't even see how this topic is even up for debate honestly. 

Recently, I said in another thread that I think people overreact to nerfs because Warframe is the first and only online game they play.

"The devs must know of everything that would be unbalanced in advance because they're the ones putting it in the game" is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think that.

Frankly, "the devs must have tested that" is the kind of thing that makes me think you haven't played a whole lot of Warframe either.

[Leqesai]

8 hours ago, LoneWolf9989 said:

You're ignoring that there's generally a reason that things become popular

Of course there is a reason... there is a reason for everything... what are you trying to say?

It isnt rocket science, my dude.

Weapons in warframe become popular for two reasons: killing potential and time since release.

New weapons with strong killing potential skyrocket in popularity. The popularity of these weapons drops when DE nerfs their stats and/utility. This generally occurs around the time that more content is released and another weapon fills the spot of the former most popular weapon.

It is this cycle that keeps people competitively searching for new weapons.

Take kuva bramma for example. Still extraordinarily powerful, popularity dropped considerably when it was nerfed. The same will happen with kuva nukor and the same will happen with thr next popular weapon.

Old weapons are rarely the most popular because veteran players tend to use very powerful builds on new weapons, which generates interest in the casual demographic, which in turn results in adjustment to the weapon stats if DE finds that the performance of the weapon is disproportionately skewed.

Stropha, as another example, is the strongest melee weapon in the game by a healthy margin. Yet it gets little attention by DE because it is not super popular. Especially since the glaive rework has dramatically shifted the playerbase away from stropha and redeemer in general use situations

[Fallen77]

My god... feels like people are crying so much more lately...

I'm wondering, are all those leaps of logic and mental gymnastics made because all those people are completely unable to aim at slow moving targets and thus afraid they might have to learn one day ?

What happened to the time when games decided the conditions in which we'd take on challenges ? As opposed to crying whenever the slightest thing changes the playing field in the slightest of ways...

[(XBOX)Unholyphoenix99]

13 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

"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."}

Well said. I like this idea.

[SenorClipClop]

12 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Here's how: Watch a devstream, where they tell you all about their usage statistics, show you charts, and tell you exactly why they nerf things.

 

12 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

I'm looking for them to explain that the relationship between usage stats and the decision to nerf something is correlation, and not causation. A lot of people don't seem to get that.

 

[Kaotyke]

I remember they Nerfed the disposition of the VIPER Rivens long ago...

[Graavarg]

12 hours ago, LoneWolf9989 said:

Because they don't know of them yet.

No.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding about the reasons for nerfs in Warframe. DE does know, and so does knowledgeable players that continue to use very powerful but "UNPOPULAR" weapons, of which there is quite a lot.

DE nerfs things with a focus on DIVERSITY, not op power. The power also comes into play in a secondary capacity, since the reason for such an overblown popularity is usually "power". Occasionally there is an additional reason as well (like the "aargh, I am going blind from Bramma explosions"-reason).

What generally happens is that some extrovert youtuber/redditer puts out a great weapon/build and then the huge unthinking mob copies it to tap into that "power", and then it overtakes most other weapons in usage stats => DE nerfs it to make more space for other solutions.

This is a great way to handle the nerfing, since it still leaves ample space for players to create powerful weapon builds. A horrible way would be if DE ran all the weapons through an "OP analyzer" and then changed the stats to make every weapon the same as all the other weapons in the game. Actually I am pretty sure DE does analyze all weapons this way, but they just leave the options/stats on the table for players to use freely in the Warframe sandbox. It only becomes a problem when too many players starts playing too much with the same tool.

You don't need a great intellect or all that much deep insight to "get" this. On the other hand, what does that say about all those crying their hearts out over "cruel and horrible DE nerfs"...

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

6 hours ago, Krankbert said:

Recently, I said in another thread that I think people overreact to nerfs because Warframe is the first and only online game they play.

"The devs must know of everything that would be unbalanced in advance because they're the ones putting it in the game" is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think that.

Frankly, "the devs must have tested that" is the kind of thing that makes me think you haven't played a whole lot of Warframe 

Where are you getting these quotes from cuz i never said that. I actually said "they supposedly test them". So good job at taking someone else's quotes and to attribute them to me so it fits your narrative. I've got over 4k hours in the game, how many do you have? You're the same troll that got owned in my post cuz you didn't know about things that happened in the game 2 years ago and tried to claim i made them up. Is that why you're so upset? Have i said something else that has hurt your fragile feelings? Why the hard on for me?

[Krankbert]

vor 15 Minuten schrieb (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk:

Where are you getting these quotes from cuz i never said that. I actually said "they supposedly test them".

I was paraphrasing.

vor 18 Minuten schrieb (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk:

You're the same troll that got owned in my post cuz you didn't know about things that happened in the game 2 years ago and tried to claim i made them up. Is that why you're so upset? Have i said something else that has hurt your fragile feelings? Why the hard on for me?

I‘m sorry, I don’t remember any of it. For you, the day Krankbert graced your thread was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.

[(PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk]

1 minute ago, Krankbert said:

I was paraphrasing.

I‘m sorry, I don’t remember any of it. For you, the day Krankbert graced your thread was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.

Paraphrasing with quotes? Why not just use my quotes? Oh i know it's because then you wouldn't have been able to make your snarky comment so you just "paraphrased" so it would match with your narrative. 

And oh what a surprise you forget being made to look like a fool. You walk around in a haze of amnesia most of the time don't you? You're punching above your weight class here chief, find someone else to annoy. 

[Krankbert]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk:

Paraphrasing with quotes? Why not just use my quotes? Oh i know it's because then you wouldn't have been able to make your snarky comment so you just "paraphrased" so it would match with your narrative. 

And oh what a surprise you forget being made to look like a fool. You walk around in a haze of amnesia most of the time don't you? You're punching above your weight class here chief, find someone else to annoy. 

Dude, I don’t know who you are. You’ll have to be more specific.

[Fl_3]

It's not "popularity" as in people enjoy using it, it's popularity as in the amount being used by the population. There is a high population of Kuva Nukors in the game, it is the most popular secondary.

Numbers not people enjoying it. (although. the 2 do go hand in hand)

Our beloved community manager likes to use certain terms unaware that not everyone works in advertising.

It's not our fault that she's really bad at communicating with people, because if she wasn't she would use terms that everyone understands without other people having to explain them to them for her.

[SpacewalkerX]

if everyone that reads the forums were to do this we may change the usage stat by almost one percentage point.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

4 hours ago, (PSN)JaxsonHammerkawk said:

Where are you getting these quotes from cuz i never said that. I actually said "they supposedly test them". So good job at taking someone else's quotes and to attribute them to me so it fits your narrative. I've got over 4k hours in the game, how many do you have? You're the same troll that got owned in my post cuz you didn't know about things that happened in the game 2 years ago and tried to claim i made them up. Is that why you're so upset? Have i said something else that has hurt your fragile feelings? Why the hard on for me?

The essence of video game forums.