To get started I want to lay out what this is going to be about: I will talk about why I think mid-season nerfs would be good for the game and why a large players think they don’t want them but are likely to actually not dislike nerfs. I will lay out points on why buffing alone does not help and why limiting nerf windows can actually make the problems nerfing things causes way bigger than other approaches.
1: People hate Nerfs because other companies Nerfs killed playstyles
THIS is the biggest factor why people dislike nerfs. You play a game and invest tons of time into a build only to not play at reasonable levels anymore. Your character feels weak and pathetic now and you feel like you wasted your time and need to play that different build you didn’t choose to play because it’s the strong one now. Companies like Blizzard are known for overnerfing things and breaking people’s builds like that.
2: Then why nerf?
Do you get bored by games being too easy? Is getting through normal monos the worst because everything is too easy and a waste of time?
This is one of the reasons why. Nerfing overpowered abilities and items is the best tool to keep the difficulty curve of a game intact. It also helps people who don’t want to use an overpowered ability to not feel punished for doing so or like they’re playing the game wrongly which can also be helped even more coupled with buffs.
3: Nerfs don’t need to be this way
Nerfs don’t need to be large. Especially in a PvE game balance needs to feel right more than actually be balanced. Things can be much stronger and weaker than others and both can still feel great. If an ability is too strong it doesn’t need to be mangled beyond recognition, it can be weakened just enough to not feel like you might as well be cheating. Getting one of your abilities nerfed CAN even make a game more fun, especially if others and weak nodes are also getting buffed. You can now keep playing your 1-button build or actually use that ability that never worked out before!
Nerfs can even keep an ability OP, just less OP than it was before. Kind of like a middleground between full balance and letting people exploit something because they enjoy it.
4: Why not only buffs?
You might have heard of the term powercreep. It’s real and can ruin games. Only buffing things leads to very serious consequences. In LE this would mean grinding Monos until you reach the 10k corruption that has become the new normal. Rushing through the campaign trying not to fall asleep because characters are way stronger than before. Drops being boring and pointless because you’re playing at such a high level, they’d have to nerf drop rates to make them exciting again but you’re past the point where it would matter to you. Every overpowered ability would be the new standard if trying to balance the game and it would quickly turn as boring as doing the Diablo 3 campaign with a full set that just makes you hold LMB and nothing else.
5: Why mid-cycle
So, how do we nerf things without killing them? It’s actually surprisingly easy. We don’t nerf anything down from dealing 1000 damage to 100 like Blizzard because we do it in steps. If 1000 feels like playing the game in toddler mode, we tune it down to 900 and see if that feels fair to the players while remaining strong. As an indie company on Steam, EHG has the unique opportunity to patch the game whenever they want to and I believe this is how nerfs should happen because if nerfs only happen each cycle they will fall into:
6: Inflexibility, the overnerf trap
Have you ever asked yourself why developers overnerf your favourite builds and ruin their games? One large factor that contributes to this happening is that big studios with multi-platform releases have rigid patch cycles. If they have a broken build in a game they need to fix it this month or it will stay broken for multiple more months. This is the reason I think doing nerfs only on cycle rotation is a mistake. Something is too strong in a cycle? Better completely nuke the ability and buff it up later because people don’t mind buffs. If EHG don’t nerf OP abilities hard enough when Cycle 2 comes around, the game would be stuck with the same broken builds doing the same broken things with the same classes on the ladders and everyone would get bored.
This is why companies kill abilities and why not nerfing mid-cycle means that overpowered skills like Healing Hands will most likely be the worst thing in the game post-cycle if mid-cycle adjustments aren’t allowed to happen to make the abilities balanced enough to survive a rotation.
Option B: There is an alternative to avoiding overnerfing and releasing too overpowered skills and items in the form of doing a PTR. This solution has its own problems and moving elements depending on how it’s implemented but I wanted to mention it.
I hope this post was readable (I’m not experienced with formatting) and maybe gave you some insights. If there’s anything I forgot to consider please let me know. I tried to take into account the different playstyles people enjoy while thinking about this and how they can gain/not lose out from good balancing practices EHG could employ.
Have a nice day and thanks for reading!
