Why “no nerfs only buffs” is bad balancing

[GONDAL]

This line of thought leads to a positive feedback loop in which weapons are progressively powercrept until enemies are completely unthreatening. Then, in response, they buff mobs too which makes the game even more tedious than the pre-buff state.

Repeat iteratively until you get Destiny.

So, the better way to go about balancing is to have a reference base line of power, and balance all weapons and mobs by that baseline, using both nerfs and buffs as needed. That way, positive feedback in the development cycle can be avoided and a more concise experience can be better curated.

[Sergalius]

Destiny 2 died when they started nerfing PVE guns, not only PVP\Gambit ones

[M200Chan]

Originally posted by Azure:

Repeat iteratively until you get Destiny.

While I was aware of the theory of why you don't just increase power levels, what did Destiny do? I only played the first game's beta on the Xbox 360.

[Irier]

It's not true, look at other games on the same engine, vermintide and darktide.

When the player base perceived a weapon as too over powered and not fun they just refuse to play with those players, but they don't stop those players from having fun.

Look at elden ring, they give unlimited power options and yet players will self restraint and try other builds sure some might abuse an op weapon but it's not going to become the meta when it's too strong the gameplay becomes boring.

Right now the guns are under performing for their kill to fun ratio. And everytime a weapon hits that ratio and becomes fun more players agree it's fun and play with it too, the devs see it as op instead of fun and knee jerk nerf.

Best example the pointless rail gun nerf, nerfed for being brainless, while at the same time the flame thrower had a higher time to kill ratio on chargers, and the arc had a similar time to kill with 5 charger shots to the head.

Then they added in the quasar and the eat headshot fix and you will see both of them being used with a higher time to kill than the previous rail gun nerf.

Rail gun was hard and fun to use because you had to hit the same leg twice then switch weapons to finish it off and felt good for accomplishing it smoothly.

Now you can just pull out rr, eat, quasar, maybe the one that can't target and just sneeze showing the the rail gun nerf was pointless with these new buffs that were needed.

Grenade stun nerf knee jerk.
Arc thrower distance knee jerk
Slugger nerf knee jerk.

It's not making them more balanced just more tedious and lowering the time to kill for the weapon that had a good time to kill ratio for the amount of enemies the first patch decided needed for "difficulty"

[GONDAL]

Originally posted by M200Chan:

Originally posted by Azure:

Repeat iteratively until you get Destiny.

While I was aware of the theory of why you don't just increase power levels, what did Destiny do? I only played the first game's beta on the Xbox 360.

Insane powercreep. Yes, they do nerfs too, but the iterative buffing far overpowers the nerfs. A good example of the effect of this with destiny is how new exotics are progressively more powerful, and along the same time axis dungeons get progressively more insane.

This is theoretically fine if you have the powerful stuff, but the practical effect is that everything outside whatever is most powerful is effectively nerfed to hell on the new content even though you are effectively doing an Only Buffs balancing approach

[Aldain]

Funny that Destiny is what always comes up when Warframe (as much as I love it) is a better example of what power creep does to core game design.

Even funnier is that the Warframe community has the exact same reaction to even the smallest reduction in power as we're seeing here.

[Grimwagon]

do you even read the patch notes?
apparent you didn;t understand them
"Reduced" means to make smaller or less in amount, degree, or size
when you see that word next to Slugger your first clue should be visible

kinda make yourself look like an idiot tbh

[GONDAL]

Originally posted by Irier:

It's not true, look at other games on the same engine, vermintide and darktide.

When the player base perceived a weapon as too over powered and not fun they just refuse to play with those players, but they don't stop those players from having fun.

Look at elden ring, they give unlimited power options and yet players will self restraint and try other builds sure some might abuse an op weapon but it's not going to become the meta when it's too strong the gameplay becomes boring.

Right now the guns are under performing for their kill to fun ratio. And everytime a weapon hits that ratio and becomes fun more players agree it's fun and play with it too, the devs see it as op instead of fun and knee jerk nerf.

Best example the pointless rail gun nerf, nerfed for being brainless, while at the same time the flame thrower had a higher time to kill ratio on chargers, and the arc had a similar time to kill with 5 charger shots to the head.

Then they added in the quasar and the eat headshot fix and you will see both of them being used with a higher time to kill than the previous rail gun nerf.

Rail gun was hard and fun to use because you had to hit the same leg twice then switch weapons to finish it off and felt good for accomplishing it smoothly.

Now you can just pull out rr, eat, quasar, maybe the one that can't target and just sneeze showing the the rail gun nerf was pointless with these new buffs that were needed.

Grenade stun nerf knee jerk.
Arc thrower distance knee jerk
Slugger nerf knee jerk.

It's not making them more balanced just more tedious and lowering the time to kill for the weapon that had a good time to kill ratio for the amount of enemies the first patch decided needed for "difficulty"

When RR was dominant, every single helldive match had full lobbies of RR shield pack players, and it was literally impossible to match with anyone using literally any build comp. So, it’s not as easy to just avoid people using the overpowered stuff, and people don’t avoid the overpowered stuff out of principle.

Also funny how you mention Elden Ring, as Fromsoft are infamous for nerfs, with sword of night and flame and hoarfrost stomp being big examples of things nerfed to oblivion in ER

That said, this thread should not be about specific weapons, but the overall flaws of the “Only Buffs” balancing approach and why it should be avoided.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Azure:

Also funny how you mention Elden Ring, as Fromsoft are infamous for nerfs, with sword of night and flame and hoarfrost stomp being big examples of things nerfed to oblivion in ER

Oh god I remember when that patch dropped, you'd swear the world was ending.

[Terminal Desolation]

The Dev's "No Only Buffs" policy is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

They have nerfed 3 weapons entirely without reason, and buffed pretty much everything else the players have asked for.

They have admitted that they nerfed the Breaker entirely based off usage statistics that did not indicate a higher success rate. They just thought the gun was too good at being a gun, because it was one of the only ones that actually felt good/fun to use. So they nerfed it.

The railgun was nerfed because it was performing too well at killing chargers. Then Arrowhead buffed every other stratagem so it was better at killing chargers. Even if the railgun was never nerfed, it would only be okay right now because we have such strong heavy-killing options now, all courtesy of buffs.

The latest nerf to the slugger was completely out of the blue. I haven't seen anyone complaining about it. My guess is they saw it was getting used frequently, like the Breaker, and said that's enough of a reason to nerf it! How dare players use one of the only good guns, better make sure it's as ineffective as possible! Only good gun allowed is the Sickle now. Buy that Warbond, Helldivers!

The devs haven't been nerfing anything that was actually problematic because nothing was actually problematic from the start, unless you count the player base. They've been paying lipservice to their "policy" but let's be real, with the massive amount of buffs they've been doing, it's clear that they didn't have a good grasp on how to balance this game when they released it and they're entirely playing it by ear, zero testing.

[~KeNnEtH~]

Originally posted by Irier:

It's not true, look at other games on the same engine, vermintide and darktide.

When the player base perceived a weapon as too over powered and not fun they just refuse to play with those players, but they don't stop those players from having fun.

Look at elden ring, they give unlimited power options and yet players will self restraint and try other builds sure some might abuse an op weapon but it's not going to become the meta when it's too strong the gameplay becomes boring.

Right now the guns are under performing for their kill to fun ratio. And everytime a weapon hits that ratio and becomes fun more players agree it's fun and play with it too, the devs see it as op instead of fun and knee jerk nerf.

Best example the pointless rail gun nerf, nerfed for being brainless, while at the same time the flame thrower had a higher time to kill ratio on chargers, and the arc had a similar time to kill with 5 charger shots to the head.

Then they added in the quasar and the eat headshot fix and you will see both of them being used with a higher time to kill than the previous rail gun nerf.

Rail gun was hard and fun to use because you had to hit the same leg twice then switch weapons to finish it off and felt good for accomplishing it smoothly.

Now you can just pull out rr, eat, quasar, maybe the one that can't target and just sneeze showing the the rail gun nerf was pointless with these new buffs that were needed.

Grenade stun nerf knee jerk.
Arc thrower distance knee jerk
Slugger nerf knee jerk.

It's not making them more balanced just more tedious and lowering the time to kill for the weapon that had a good time to kill ratio for the amount of enemies the first patch decided needed for "difficulty"

I have the same view.

I am really finding the game more and more tedious, and less and less fun.

I am sure there are people who enjoy the current state and like it the updates but I guess I'm just not one of them.

[Brother Bigot]

The hmg is supposed to be an anti medium armour weapon

That is so gimped in every way it’s completely outclassed by the auto cannon I have yet to have a single game where I’ve seen a single person use it since its addition

But arrowhead though it needed the one thing that really made it unique it’s insane firerate setting needed to be removed
Amazing

My main problem is that they’re so afraid of having weapons that outclass others they just slap them with insane detriments to their use that the weapon can’t even preform in its intended role.

[GONDAL]

Originally posted by Terminal Desolation:

The Dev's "No Only Buffs" policy is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

They have nerfed 3 weapons entirely without reason, and buffed pretty much everything else the players have asked for.

They have admitted that they nerfed the Breaker entirely based off usage statistics that did not indicate a higher success rate. They just thought the gun was too good at being a gun, because it was one of the only ones that actually felt good/fun to use. So they nerfed it.

The railgun was nerfed because it was performing too well at killing chargers. Then Arrowhead buffed every other stratagem so it was better at killing chargers. Even if the railgun was never nerfed, it would only be okay right now because we have such strong heavy-killing options now, all courtesy of buffs.

The latest nerf to the slugger was completely out of the blue. I haven't seen anyone complaining about it. My guess is they saw it was getting used frequently, like the Breaker, and said that's enough of a reason to nerf it! How dare players use one of the only good guns, better make sure it's as ineffective as possible! Only good gun allowed is the Sickle now. Buy that Warbond, Helldivers!

The devs haven't been nerfing anything that was actually problematic because nothing was actually problematic from the start, unless you count the player base. They've been paying lipservice to their "policy" but let's be real, with the massive amount of buffs they've been doing, it's clear that they didn't have a good grasp on how to balance this game when they released it and they're entirely playing it by ear, zero testing.

I suspect they are balancing guns not on use rate, but win rate by team composition. This can sometimes be a trap, like in the case of Warthunder balancing, however, it can be well informed if analyzed well. As AH isn’t very transparent on this process, we can only guess.

[ijones72(ninja08)]

Honestly, it looks like the games being power crept regardless rn. update after update weapons get crazy buffs.
Dominator, a weapon that did pretty ok in the past, which only looked meh compared to slugger, got buffed more than *50%*.
like, the buffs we get patch after patch are already power creeping the game to hell tbh.

[Riggs]

There is zero to gain by making weapons less fun to use, period. Buffing is 100% a better way to balance over nerfing.

[Jozsefirst]

I dont understand why people think there is such a significant difference between PvE and PvP gun balance, there is still a power scale that must be carefully balanced to keep the gameplay enjoyable.

The phylosophy of only ever buffing things ruined not one but two of my favorite games: For Honor and R6S (No, I do not care that people still play them, both games have practically lost their core fanbase who got the game early and neither of em are anything like they were marketed to be originally, losing vast amounts of credibility and goodwill in the process.)

It also upset the balance in mainstream PvE titles such as Payday 2 where the constant buffing of the players in the form of perks and dlcs made previously existing equipment completely redundant and everything but the highest difficulties feel like a walk in the park. Meanwhile those highest difficulties were bats##t crazy with enemies tanking multiple magazines of AR calibre rounds and putting you down in just 1-2 shots.

Long story short, tipping the balance in either direction significantly bounds to result in chaos, the devs understand how difficult the default experience is intended to be and they should use every tool at their exposal to make sure their game stays true to that vision.

The argument that "no player is on the other end of your op weapon so nobody suffers" is dumb as dirt