Nerf culture

Kolence

@entrailbucket
Are you sure Sentry was that bad on defense?
I remember getting bombed every now and then by the AI when it got AP in the perfect order early.
Maybe everyone was running Sentry themselves, so the enemy one didn't stand a chance? All it took was 7 green AP with Daken around. At least that's how I remember it. Could be wrong after 7 years...
I did only get Sentry to 12 covers and not right away...
But it was still enough to allow me to hop up to full pvp progression for the first time. 

entrailbucket

The actual Sentrybomb required you to cast his/Hood's powers in the right sequence (world rupture->one black/yellow match->sacrifice->intimidation) and the AI never got that right.  The Daken team was always lesser because it couldn't go off as fast and there was a chance your strikes got matched before world rupture went off. 

You could theoretically lose if the AI pulled a miracle, but we were all full boosting into every fight back then, so it'd require a terrible opening board and a ton of bad luck after that.

Maybe if you didn't have your own Sentry he was a problem on defense?  World rupture alone didn't do enough damage to wipe a 3* team though, you needed strikes out.

Sekilicious

Funny. Bishop would be a pretty good Polaris counter. They should have made him without the stun. 

Akoni

fight4thedream said:

@Akoni: Interesting argument. It begs the question though: What do you consider to be an OP or "broken" character? I only ask because presumably an OP character would check off all the points on your list since they would be head and shoulders above the rest of its tier and would thus be ubiquitous in game. So where do you draw the line?


Nerfs should always be a last resort, when the dev team has reached the conclusion that a character does too much for its tier and viable counters would only be more "broken". 

I would consider a character to be nerf worthy if that character fulfills a role that is far above and beyond what devs expected making it almost impossible for players to counter. Using Polaris as an example, though she can be lightening fast, I do not believe she is overpowered because she is easily countered by players. If she were to have high health, therefore, making it difficult for other 4* players to take her out, I would then consider her overpowered. 

Kolence said:

Yes, I too would like to hear from OP what would be considered broken.

Especially on that 3rd point. How many health (packs) should we expect to lose each fight? 

Some characters I wouldn't call broken on their own, mechanically. But paired with someone else, they suddenly can beat teams 100 levels stronger and win fights twice as fast as the next best thing? Of course everyone has to use that same team then, at the very top. 

On the topic of health packs, some characters are meant to take a little bit of a bruising depending on the team they are on. Sticking with Polaris as an example, I expect to use 1 HP each time I use her. She's just too squishy. For a character like Juggern4ut, I expect to use 1 HP every 3-5 battles. It really depends on how the character is designed. Tanks are built to take a lot of hits.
When going up against tanks or heavy hitters, I expect to use more HP. I'm not saying that burning through HP should be the norm. We're too smart for that. We will always find ways to conserve resources and get more out of what we have. Nerfing a character comes into question when the only way to win against a specific character is to burn through all of your resources.
To your second point, teams complicate things. Okoye on her own is good. iHulk on his own isn't horrible. Together, they are amazing. Are they unstoppable though? I would argue not. In another thread, someone posted all of the teams they have used to beat it that weren't Hulkoye. Ridiculously good doesn't necessarily mean broken. I think a team would have to be even more ridiculous across the board in order to be warranted as overpowered. @Srheer0, for example, referred to Bishop doing a multitude of things off of a passive power. Though devs had a vision in mind for Bishop, he just did too much which required a nerf.

entrailbucket

Akoni said:

fight4thedream said:

@Akoni: Interesting argument. It begs the question though: What do you consider to be an OP or "broken" character? I only ask because presumably an OP character would check off all the points on your list since they would be head and shoulders above the rest of its tier and would thus be ubiquitous in game. So where do you draw the line?


Nerfs should always be a last resort, when the dev team has reached the conclusion that a character does too much for its tier and viable counters would only be more "broken". 

I would consider a character to be nerf worthy if that character fulfills a role that is far above and beyond what devs expected making it almost impossible for players to counter. Using Polaris as an example, though she can be lightening fast, I do not believe she is overpowered because she is easily countered by players. If she were to have high health, therefore, making it difficult for other 4* players to take her out, I would then consider her overpowered. 

Kolence said:

Yes, I too would like to hear from OP what would be considered broken.

Especially on that 3rd point. How many health (packs) should we expect to lose each fight? 

Some characters I wouldn't call broken on their own, mechanically. But paired with someone else, they suddenly can beat teams 100 levels stronger and win fights twice as fast as the next best thing? Of course everyone has to use that same team then, at the very top. 

On the topic of health packs, some characters are meant to take a little bit of a bruising depending on the team they are on. Sticking with Polaris as an example, I expect to use 1 HP each time I use her. She's just too squishy. For a character like Juggern4ut, I expect to use 1 HP every 3-5 battles. It really depends on how the character is designed. Tanks are built to take a lot of hits.
When going up against tanks or heavy hitters, I expect to use more HP. I'm not saying that burning through HP should be the norm. We're too smart for that. We will always find ways to conserve resources and get more out of what we have. Nerfing a character comes into question when the only way to win against a specific character is to burn through all of your resources.
To your second point, teams complicate things. Okoye on her own is good. iHulk on his own isn't horrible. Together, they are amazing. Are they unstoppable though? I would argue not. In another thread, someone posted all of the teams they have used to beat it that weren't Hulkoye. Ridiculously good doesn't necessarily mean broken. I think a team would have to be even more ridiculous across the board in order to be warranted as overpowered. @Srheer0, for example, referred to Bishop doing a multitude of things off of a passive power. Though devs had a vision in mind for Bishop, he just did too much which required a nerf.

You're basically making two arguments here that don't necessarily agree.  First you say that devs should only nerf when a character is so dominant that they literally cannot be beaten by players ever.  We've never seen a character or combo like that in this game, I'm not sure what they'd have to do to make one.  I hope to never see it!

The second argument is that devs should nerf when a character's usage in practice disagrees with their vision.  That's a lot more interesting, though of course we can never know exactly what their vision was.  It seems to me that this would generate a lot more nerfs...players find interesting ways to use characters all the time that aren't necessarily what the devs intended.

SnowcaTT

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/83512/next-to-be-rebalanced-cough-nerfed/p1

Here's one of those "WHO DO WE NERF NEXT" threads, and a common opinion was iHulk.

And look! iHulk practically disappeared, overnight. How? Well, you release characters that completely obliterate the 'problem' characters.

So now we can look at other problem characters - Okoye (still) notably, but BRB and now it seems SW - and hope that COUNTERS, not nerfs, are equally applied as they were to iHulk: make characters that completely solve these 'problems', no questions asked.

Looking forward to the anti-passive character that would fix all of those mentioned here!

entrailbucket

They should just go for it...release a guy that passively reduces the enemy team's TU AP to 0 every turn.

Akoni

entrailbucket said:

You're basically making two arguments here that don't necessarily agree.  First you say that devs should only nerf when a character is so dominant that they literally cannot be beaten by players ever.  We've never seen a character or combo like that in this game, I'm not sure what they'd have to do to make one.  I hope to never see it!

The second argument is that devs should nerf when a character's usage in practice disagrees with their vision.  That's a lot more interesting, though of course we can never know exactly what their vision was.  It seems to me that this would generate a lot more nerfs...players find interesting ways to use characters all the time that aren't necessarily what the devs intended.

I apologize if my wording gave you the wrong impression. I do not believe a character must be "so dominant that they literally cannot be beaten by players ever" to need nerfing. I do believe that battles against said character should be manageable in some degree rather than bordering impossible. When a character is at that border, a nerf might be in order.

Devs of this and other games usually have a clear vision for a character and generally do a good job cross-referencing and play-testing. For this reason, I don't believe we would see many more nerfs. They are human, though, so mistakes can be made. For example, I have thoroughly play-tested components of a game (or so I thought) just to find that it doesn't work as expected once implemented. However, there is a margin of error allotted based on player creativity and as long as it falls within that margin there is no need to nerf. Player unpredictability is part of what makes a game like this fun to develop and play.

entrailbucket

This only takes defense into account, which is a common theme from players.  But can't a character be overpowered on offense?

What about the Sentry/Hood combo from the earlier days of the game?  That combo reliably ended every single fight on offense in 2-3 moves, but was very weak on defense.  All PvP matches during that time could be finished in a minute or two at most, and it was common to see scores in the 4000-5000 point range.   But any team could easily beat Sentry on defense.

Should they have nerfed Sentry?  In retrospect most current players who were around at that time think it was the right move, because the game had become ridiculous.  But many, many others argued back then that he was fine -- since he was easy to beat and played fast, it wasn't a problem.

HoundofShadow

To summarise, it's impossible to make every player happy. The best thing the Dev can do is to make decisions based on the data they have, the metrics they use, their goals for the game and everyone's feedbacks. 

When Gambit final version was nerfed, there were players for it and against it. 

When Bishop was nerfed, there were also players for it and against it.

I think it's fine to exchange ideas, but if one wants to force their ideas on the dev, then it will be an uphill battle.

As far as dealing with difficult to fight opponents are concerned, the community can help each others by recommending how they deal with them. The players who need help can make the process easier by letting them know what their rosters are like. 

As far as skipping is concerned, unless you really have no tools to deal with them, I suggest not to skip and instead practise playing against them. 

Akoni

entrailbucket said:

This only takes defense into account, which is a common theme from players.  But can't a character be overpowered on offense?

What about the Sentry/Hood combo from the earlier days of the game?  That combo reliably ended every single fight on offense in 2-3 moves, but was very weak on defense.  All PvP matches during that time could be finished in a minute or two at most, and it was common to see scores in the 4000-5000 point range.   But any team could easily beat Sentry on defense.

Should they have nerfed Sentry?  In retrospect most current players who were around at that time think it was the right move, because the game had become ridiculous.  But many, many others argued back then that he was fine -- since he was easy to beat and played fast, it wasn't a problem.

That's a very good point. Both defense and offense should be considered separately. Going back to my example of Polaris, although close, she's still not overpowered in my opinion. Her offense isn't full proof, because

1. She needs enough special tiles to land on matches in order for her to get rolling,
2. Her blue requires an average of 3 turns to fire and even that doesn't guarantee she will get rolling,
3. She absolutely demands the right teammates to spam the field. 

With just a pinch of bad luck, she can be downed on offense. (I lose mine maybe 20% of the time on offense.) 

Wonko33

there is no such thing as roster diversity , whatever you do , people will always play the best character, period. It is impossible to make them all equal , people will play the best ones

entrailbucket

Wonko33 said:

there is no such thing as roster diversity , whatever you do , people will always play the best character, period. It is impossible to make them all equal , people will play the best ones

The answer is, apparently, to make the best ones change every week!

Akoni

Wonko33 said:

there is no such thing as roster diversity , whatever you do , people will always play the best character, period. It is impossible to make them all equal , people will play the best ones

This is just the nature of a game like this. Ask any Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, or Yu-Gi-Oh player if it happens there and you will get a resounding "yes". The good news is that if you get enough good characters (or teams), diversity will automatically be created. The newest team will always have some presence since players get bored of teams, but most players will have their tried and true favorites.

Due to the tiers, the teams are concentrated meaning that you will see many of the same teams in your current tier. When was the last time a 5* player saw an unboosted 3* Dr. Strange team? It's rare, because he is a 3rd tier character who has long been over-shined by higher tier characters. Since he is a favorite, you will still see spurts of him, but not often. I, for example, still use my favorite 3* stun lock team of Dr. Strange/Iron Man/Ragnarok. It's a fun team, but I rarely use it because of a solid 4* roster and an emerging 5* roster. 

This is one of the reasons I believe that more characters should be released at all tiers. Ultimately, all players will graduate to higher tiers, but introducing a 1-3* character 1-2 times a year would continue to spark interest at those lower tiers. Again, it's rare that 5* players revisit lower tiers, but it still happens. Beta Ray Bill and 1* Juggernaut is a good example of that.

Sekilicious

The thing is there is diversity at the top of the 4* meta, even if it is Polaris centered. The Rock is Polaris/Grocket,  the scissors is Karnak/Chavez, the paper is Polaris/Medusa(or Sabertooth). You can likely make some boosted characters work if you champed Morbius. I see lots of BRB, Polaris, Thanos (or Dark Beast) on top of the Shield Simulator. If you’re skipping in 4* land. it is because you do not have a diverse enough roster or you’re being hit by boosted 5*, this week paired with boosted Chavez for critical goodness. 

Yeah maybe I never use Talos, but frankly I only used a small number of 2 and 3* characters anyways. I think people asking for nerfs expect 100 4* or 50 5* characters will become relevant if the meta characters are nerfed. 

TheEyeDoctorsWife

entrailbucket said:

Wonko33 said:

there is no such thing as roster diversity , whatever you do , people will always play the best character, period. It is impossible to make them all equal , people will play the best ones

The answer is, apparently, to make the best ones change every week!

Good idea , the devs have been boosting a set of characters every week , what if they also banned a different set of characters every week?
I’d love a give and take balance to weekly boost/ sidelined 

entrailbucket

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

entrailbucket said:

Wonko33 said:

there is no such thing as roster diversity , whatever you do , people will always play the best character, period. It is impossible to make them all equal , people will play the best ones

The answer is, apparently, to make the best ones change every week!

Good idea , the devs have been boosting a set of characters every week , what if they also banned a different set of characters every week?
I’d love a give and take balance to weekly boost/ sidelined 

If they banned, like, OML for a month nobody would even notice.  If they banned Okoye for even a single event there would be riots.

fractalvisions

During the anniversary they have a poll to see what our favourite characters are. Perhaps, just for fun, they could have a post anniversary event where they lock out the fan favourites.

Akoni

fractalvisions said:

During the anniversary they have a poll to see what our favourite characters are. Perhaps, just for fun, they could have a post anniversary event where they lock out the fan favourites.

It would be interesting to see how players react to that. I would encourage devs to do it just for the data.

HoundofShadow

Two years ago, the 5* in Fan Favourite store were Dr Strange, OML and Kitty. So, don't get your hope too high.