The Importance Of Nerfing Vs The Importance Of Buffing, Strange Priorities In The Forums

[Mastikator2]

Balance is important, if you disagree with that premise then the rest of this post is not going to make any sense to you.

But it is important, there needs to be meaningful choices between the 160 weapons we have, it can't just be 1 or 2 weapons that is the correct choice every time.

 

And here's where there's a difference between nerfing and buffing. If one of these 160+ weapons are underpowered and needs to be buffed but isn't then that's 1 less weapon feasible out of those weapons, you still have 159 weapons to choose from, the overall balance of the game is not affected much.

But if one weapon is way too powerful and needs nerfing but isn't then there's only 1 meaningful weapon to choose from.

 

One OP weapon hurts all the other weapons, one UP weapon does not hurt the overall balance of the game, so it's more important to nerf than it is to buff.

 

(and no, what happens 2h+ in T4 survival is not relevant, deal with it)

[SgtFlex]

Totally agree. Diversity of choice is always something to look for, which is why I hate the Boltor Prime. It excels majorly compared to other weapons. I was actually a bit horrified when I heard that new Soma is going to arrive

[BelugaNinja]

Balance is important, if you disagree with that premise then the rest of this post is not going to make any sense to you.

But it is important, there needs to be meaningful choices between the 160 weapons we have, it can't just be 1 or 2 weapons that is the correct choice every time.

 

And here's where there's a difference between nerfing and buffing. If one of these 160+ weapons are underpowered and needs to be buffed but isn't then that's 1 less weapon feasible out of those weapons, you still have 159 weapons to choose from, the overall balance of the game is not affected much.

But if one weapon is way too powerful and needs nerfing but isn't then there's only 1 meaningful weapon to choose from.

 

One OP weapon hurts all the other weapons, one UP weapon does not hurt the overall balance of the game, so it's more important to nerf than it is to buff.

 

(and no, what happens 2h+ in T4 survival is not relevant, deal with it)

 

And nerfing is the lazy way out because you don't have to tweak the rest. Buffing, or generally just neutral changes are the best way to go, because overall, you don't want a butt ton of guns that are pitiful, but a multitude of weapons that are distinct and each feeling satisfying to use.

[Yurilica]

Nerfing is a short-term band aid really.

And when you try using nerfing as a solution to something, it can go very, very wrong.

 

 

Also, there's multiple ways to nerf something that's troublesome.

 

The frames that were nerfed were nothing special.

 

They were nerfed because they were commonly used to farm VIver. But they really weren't the only frames used for that, just the most popular.

 

Now, DE nerfed these 3 frames to nerf Viver farming.

And that was wrong.

 

What DE should have done and still can do is to fix Viver itself.

 

It's not the frames that make Viver farming what it is, they're just tools for farming. They already got replaced with other tools, like Saryn and Volt.

 

Interception spawn mechanics and the tileset used on Viver is what makes it possible.

 

So, solution(nerf) #1: Change the spawn mechanics. Implement a 5 second delay between enemy spawns. Right now, enemy groups on Viver still respawn the moment you kill them, so farming is still perfectly possible. Nothing changed. Implementing a respawn delay would cut rep gain farm immensely.

 

Solution(nerf) #2(that can be used together with #1): Use a bigger tileset for Viver. Makes it almost impossible to farm in the same way.

 

Solution(nerf) #4: Change Viver from Interception to Defense/Exterminate/whatever. Simply change the mission type. Viver disappears. Gone. Poof.

 

 

And there you go. Problem solved, Viver hyperfarming is gone and no frames needed to be nerfed.

 

However, DE simply made a huge mistake in approaching it this time and chose the worst possible solution by nerfing Warframes instead of eliminating Viver.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Yurilica

[Mastikator2]

Nerfing is a short-term band aid really.

And when you try using nerfing as a solution to something, it can go very, very wrong.

The worst thing you can do is overnerf something, which puts it in the same category as underpowered. For example Supra is severely underpowered, it's arguably on par with certain beginner primaries. Yet Supra isn't breaking the game in the same way Viver or Boltor Prime does. Viver and Boltor Prime are big problems and less overpowered than Supra is underpowered. It's simply a fact that anything that is underpowered only hurts itself and anything that is overpowered hurts everything else (which is a whole lot more).

 

And don't tell me that Nerfing is an lazy solution, the alternative is to buff ALL the other 150 weapons, but that makes us too powerful compared to the enemy, causing even more imbalance. Nerfing something that is OP is the only solution to it being OP.

[BETAOPTICS]

I would disagree to some degree. There is a fine line of buffing and nerfing and there are literally thousands upon thousands solutions to change other things to make up for poor balance checks otherwise. Nerfing is the easiest and laziest way of doing it for sure, but not always the best choice to do it. For example, if you keep solely and only nerfing stuff then you might as well make all the guns do 1 damage to every enemy while at it. On the other hand, too much buffing can also be a problematic course of action.

I get why people said that Viver exploit needed to be changed somehow, but that was more of a underlying problem with Viver and interception mechanics as well as the Syndicate reputation flaws rather than the Warframes themselves. And I get that Radial Javelin for example made Excalibur powerful Warframe. But was Excalibur so over powered? Well considering that the rest of his abilities are pretty bad and that how the mechanics now work in his ultimate pretty much makes many builds rather redundant. You now either go in the middle of all enemies to do our ultimate in which it was probably meant to be for sure, but it is unreliable and because enemies do not gather around you mostly, it is even worse than the idea that ability was built around to begin with.

Additionally for example you can just camp out somewhere high and see as many enemies as you can and just have max range and spam it to do pitiful damage numbers on enemies. Or how about Mag? Well almost all of her abilities are now next to nothing useful in terms of utility or damage for that matter. I will not even speak of Trinity and she has been nerfed nearly every patch since her first nerf up to the point wheres might as well be just a passive team energy restore item or health restore item.

But anyhow so what was the issue itself? Well it was the way Viver could be exploited to reap up the rewards. I think that they went into right direction on this regard with the changes on how the interception mode works. It was a clear exploit to spawn enemies infinitive but I think that the mod cap was unnecessary and that it will not matter what they do in that regard because the prime reason people went there was to get Syndicate points that are more or less painfully slow to obtain for some.

I do admit that at times, even the earliest levels take ton of time to obtain, not alone someone who is casual and doesn't play this game hours on end. But that solution they tried will only make it so that people will change from one farming mission to another and we are at the square 0 on that one again. The underlying problem is the implementation and mechanics of the Syndicate reputation system rather than anything else.

I think that the Warframe changes were unnecessary but that the changes in Interception are on the right direction although somewhat flawed and that DE doesn't seem to understand the underlying foundational problem and only seem to see the easiest and quickest and usually the bad ways too in order to fix these sort of issues when their efforts and time could be much more well be used if they gave a little more thought and time on these sort of issues.

Balance, but balance right. Not in extremes as it never solves the issues. It just turns the table upside down and you have problems again, just different ones rather than actually trying to fix the broken leg of the table and solve the issue like it should be. And yes, simply nerfing everything as a solution to all things is lazy. It is incredibly lazy solution to things that would require much more complicated and bigger changes.

Edited November 13, 2014 by BETAOPTICS

[Zarlockk]

I hae only 1 complain so far regarding balance which I faced when doing Viver(I usually do VOids). We have no Impact weapons that would be in high tier =( Sure you can use acrid with full poison build. Sure you can use Boltor/Paris Prime with Magnetic/toxin. But is it right thing? I think no. Only good Impact weapon is Cernos and Jat Kittag. Gorgon and Gorgon Wraith are not good enough so we lack diversity when it comes to Corpus. 

I realised why people were crying Boltor Prime OP when I started doing Viver. Because there is no Alternative to it. We need Impact weapon which would be on par with Boltor Prime, assuming Braton Prime is slash version of Boltor Prime. 

So my point is we need more viable impact weapons.

[Phoenix86]

 I was actually a bit horrified when I heard that new Soma is going to arrive

 

source?

[IANOBW]

Balance is important, if you disagree with that premise then the rest of this post is not going to make any sense to you.

But it is important, there needs to be meaningful choices between the 160 weapons we have, it can't just be 1 or 2 weapons that is the correct choice every time.

 

And here's where there's a difference between nerfing and buffing. If one of these 160+ weapons are underpowered and needs to be buffed but isn't then that's 1 less weapon feasible out of those weapons, you still have 159 weapons to choose from, the overall balance of the game is not affected much.

But if one weapon is way too powerful and needs nerfing but isn't then there's only 1 meaningful weapon to choose from.

 

One OP weapon hurts all the other weapons, one UP weapon does not hurt the overall balance of the game, so it's more important to nerf than it is to buff.

 

(and no, what happens 2h+ in T4 survival is not relevant, deal with it)

 

You are basically glorifying rainbow builds, you know tha right?

[SmokinDevil]

They should of just thrown an invasion on top of Viver....

[Hatzeputt]

It´s not rocket science:

 

Nerfing 1..2...5 things may make them UP compared to the rest but does not warrant a large scale game overhaul.

Buffing the other 155 leads to a power creep which in return leaves opponents too weak which then need to be buffed which creates stupid bullet sponges for example and leads to a large scale game overhaul, i.e. a colossal waste of man hours and money.

 

So from a dev point of view its always better to nerf a few things than to buff a lot since it takes much more work and effort and the potential of messing it up is far higher. Of course to most players nerfs are always bad and buffs are always good since they have no clue what so ever how things are intertwined with each other.  

 

In a nutshell, better to nerf a handful of things than to buff all the rest.

[sedu13]

Nerfing something that is too powerful and is more useful than everything else in the game is important for balance. But DE would rather nerf barely used frames and the AkLato rather than the Boltor Prime :3

[IANOBW]

It´s not rocket science:

 

Nerfing 1..2...5 things may make them UP compared to the rest but does not warrant a large scale game overhaul.

Buffing the other 155 leads to a power creep which in return leaves opponents too weak which then need to be buffed which creates stupid bullet sponges for example and leads to a large scale game overhaul, i.e. a colossal waste of man hours and money.

 

So from a dev point of view its always better to nerf a few things than to buff a lot since it takes much more work and effort and the potential of messing it up is far higher. Of course to most players nerfs are always bad and buffs are always good since they have no clue what so ever how things are intertwined with each other.  

 

In a nutshell, better to nerf a handful of things than to buff all the rest.

 

If thats the case, why didn't they just get rid of Viver?! Or maybe fix the system for earning standing? Would have solved it entirely without having to kill frames.

[BETAOPTICS]

It´s not rocket science:

 

Nerfing 1..2...5 things may make them UP compared to the rest but does not warrant a large scale game overhaul.

Buffing the other 155 leads to a power creep which in return leaves opponents too weak which then need to be buffed which creates stupid bullet sponges for example and leads to a large scale game overhaul, i.e. a colossal waste of man hours and money.

 

So from a dev point of view its always better to nerf a few things than to buff a lot since it takes much more work and effort and the potential of messing it up is far higher. Of course to most players nerfs are always bad and buffs are always good since they have no clue what so ever how things are intertwined with each other.  

 

In a nutshell, better to nerf a handful of things than to buff all the rest.

I think that is a rather big accusation to make based on an assumption that can be debunked by observing what people say and why they say it.

[WingsOfGryphin]

And nerfing is the lazy way out because you don't have to tweak the rest. Buffing, or generally just neutral changes are the best way to go, because overall, you don't want a butt ton of guns that are pitiful, but a multitude of weapons that are distinct and each feeling satisfying to use.

Are you completely out of your mind? Right now i want to curse you down to your family tree, but i don't want to be warned because of some nobody that has a weak understanding of how buffing and nerfing works. 

 

So you're basically telling us that buffing is better than nerfing and developers should buff everything else in the game instead of tuning down a weapon that stands out? Let's buff 9000 others weapons, let's buff all the mobs and let's buff all the warframes resulting into new balance where the overpowered weapon will still feel like it's being nerfed because it doesn't feel overpowered compared to everything else and also forcing devs to do 9000 times more work than it could be done with 1 move for same result....  I'm sorry dude but your logic is in par of 2 year old. 

 

Edited November 13, 2014 by WingsOfGryphin

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

The thing about RPGs is that their items are purposely designed to one-up each other. In a T4's first 20 waves, around 20 or 30 (random number of course) weapons are actually viable. Balance is less of a big deal when games are designed around items rather than skill.

Edited November 13, 2014 by (XB1)ShapelessHorr0r

[vaugahn]

And nerfing is the lazy way out because you don't have to tweak the rest. Buffing, or generally just neutral changes are the best way to go, because overall, you don't want a butt ton of guns that are pitiful, but a multitude of weapons that are distinct and each feeling satisfying to use.

 

Let's use the OP's example here.

 

You have 150 weapons, 149 of which are okay and 1 of which is amazing.

 

So, since you claim nerfs are lazy, we buff 149 weapons up to the amazing level. 

 

But now we have a problem! The game suddenly got a hell of a lot easier. Whatever difficulty we had before no longer exists, so we buff all the enemies.

 

Now everything is balanced! The 1 amazing weapon is no longer above the others, and everything is balanced against the enemies.

 

Do you see the flaw there? The end outcome was exactly the same as if we had nerfed that one amazing weapon, but to get there we had to buff 149 weapons and change the enemies. That's a whole lot of work. Why go through that whole process when you can nerf one thing and arrive at the exact same result?

[Tr1ples1xer]

Not everyone uses only the most powerful weapons, I use a lot of different ones because they don't all work the same, I am a fan of the flux rifle and I have built a slash build, now I know the boltor prime is more powerful but I don't care I love how the flux works and thats it, plus it gives me gibs and that is better than any boltor imo, its not all about power. And with that said I don't go asking for nerfs to every other weapon because people like different things, let them play how they want and F*** your balance. Nerf crying as ruined this game enough please go on till the game implodes it is fun to watch :)

[Tr1ples1xer]

So you're basically telling us that buffing is better than nerfing and developers should buff everything else in the game instead of tuning down a weapon that stands out? Let's buff 9000 others weapons, let's buff all the mobs and let's buff all the warframes resulting into new balance where the overpowered weapon will still feel like it's being nerfed because it doesn't feel overpowered compared to everything else and also forcing devs to do 9000 times more work than it could be done with 1 move for same result....  I'm sorry dude but your logic is in par of 2 year old. 

 

Yes BUFF everything, overpowered is not a word, this is a videogame FFS. If you don't like feeling the power, change game !!

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

The point of a buff or nerf is to improve the viable options.  Specialty items will always be the exception since they are only useful in specific situations (Acrid for example).  Still, these changes did not make other frames more viable, nor did they make Viver balanced according to other missions.  Balance was simply not achieved in this case and the motivation for these changes is blatantly obvious since none of these were problematic before U15.

[perfectStranger]

Nerfing is a short-term band aid really.

And when you try using nerfing as a solution to something, it can go very, very wrong.

 

 

Also, there's multiple ways to nerf something that's troublesome.

 

The frames that were nerfed were nothing special.

 

They were nerfed because they were commonly used to farm VIver. But they really weren't the only frames used for that, just the most popular.

 

Now, DE nerfed these 3 frames to nerf Viver farming.

And that was wrong.

 

What DE should have done and still can do is to fix Viver itself.

 

It's not the frames that make Viver farming what it is, they're just tools for farming. They already got replaced with other tools, like Saryn and Volt.

 

Interception spawn mechanics and the tileset used on Viver is what makes it possible.

 

So, solution(nerf) #1: Change the spawn mechanics. Implement a 5 second delay between enemy spawns. Right now, enemy groups on Viver still respawn the moment you kill them, so farming is still perfectly possible. Nothing changed. Implementing a respawn delay would cut rep gain farm immensely.

 

Solution(nerf) #2(that can be used together with #1): Use a bigger tileset for Viver. Makes it almost impossible to farm in the same way.

 

Solution(nerf) #4: Change Viver from Interception to Defense/Exterminate/whatever. Simply change the mission type. Viver disappears. Gone. Poof.

 

 

And there you go. Problem solved, Viver hyperfarming is gone and no frames needed to be nerfed.

 

However, DE simply made a huge mistake in approaching it this time and chose the worst possible solution by nerfing Warframes instead of eliminating Viver.

 

 

Solution #0

Uncouple rep gain from affinity gain.

Each mission give a fixed rep based on difficulty. The faster you end it the faster you get rep.

Add bonus rep for exploration for non endless missions (hidden caches etc).

 

Leave anything as it was.

End of the problems.

Edited November 13, 2014 by perfectStranger

[Pentastic]

This is dumb. Nobody argues that things should never get nerfed or balanced. People are angry because 3 frames took a hit over a problem that has nothing to do with them, and the payoff is that the thing DE was trying to stop, isn't even stopped.

 

BTW it was great how you claimed to understand the importance of balance and then proceeded to advocate an unbalanced approach to design. And that it's ok for things to be unbalanced...

[ThePresident777]

Fun is the most important aspect of a game, for players.  Fun and balance are not the same thing so balance is not the most important aspect of a game for players.

 

In a game of destruction, power rating controls the rate of destruction.  Rate of destruction is strictly a matter of fun.  Therefore, rate of destruction is not a matter of balance and is more important than balance.

 

Fun is a matter of opinion, therefore, it is a matter of opinion how fun a rate of destruction is, therefore it is a matter of opinion how fun a power rating is.  Opinions differ therefore fun differs therefore rates of destruction differ, therefore power ratings differ.

 

A game is a product to a developer.  The more fun a product is, the more appealing it is.  The more appealing a product is, the greater the demand for the product.  The greater demand for a product, the higher the revenue.  Therefore, power must differ for greater revenue.

 

Different opinions of fun are mutually exclusive.  Mutually exclusive opinions can be accommodated in a product via appropriate separation, such as different missions in a game.  Therefore, different power ratings can be accommodated in a game via appropriate separation, such as levels, conclave ratings, missions, factions, etc.

 

When you buff weak weapons you are destroying game play for players who want a slower rate of destruction, therefore you are destroying revenue from players who want a slower rate of destruction.  When you nerf strong weapons you are destroying game play for players who want a faster rate of destruction, therefore you are destroying revenue from players who want a faster rate of destruction.  Therefore, to avoid destroying revenue from mutually exclusive game states, such as different power ratings, separate accommodations must be made for separate power ratings.

 

Balance is a failed concept.

[-SLX-J3tAc3]

Fun is the most important aspect of a game, for players.  Fun and balance are not the same thing so balance is not the most important aspect of a game for players.

 

In a game of destruction, power rating controls the rate of destruction.  Rate of destruction is strictly a matter of fun.  Therefore, rate of destruction is not a matter of balance and is more important than balance.

 

Fun is a matter of opinion, therefore, it is a matter of opinion how fun a rate of destruction is, therefore it is a matter of opinion how fun a power rating is.  Opinions differ therefore fun differs therefore rates of destruction differ, therefore power ratings differ.

 

A game is a product to a developer.  The more fun a product is, the more appealing it is.  The more appealing a product is, the greater the demand for the product.  The greater demand for a product, the higher the revenue.  Therefore, power must differ for greater revenue.

 

Different opinions of fun are mutually exclusive.  Mutually exclusive opinions can be accommodated in a product via appropriate separation, such as different missions in a game.  Therefore, different power ratings can be accommodated in a game via appropriate separation, such as levels, conclave ratings, missions, factions, etc.

 

When you buff weak weapons you are destroying game play for players who want a slower rate of destruction, therefore you are destroying revenue from players who want a slower rate of destruction.  When you nerf strong weapons you are destroying game play for players who want a faster rate of destruction, therefore you are destroying revenue from players who want a faster rate of destruction.  Therefore, to avoid destroying revenue from mutually exclusive game states, such as different power ratings, separate accommodations must be made for separate power ratings.

 

Balance is a failed concept.

Agreed with this post. Instead of trying to force the game to be a card-based progression system, make mods have a good range that people can tweak to their wants to get the experience they want. Give people the ability to de-rank mods as well. That, I think, is a reasonable part of any wider-ranging solutions in the effort to balance the game out to accommodate the dynamic, sometimes polar-opposite play styles of your very wide and diverse player base.