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.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Sergalius:

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

Totally nothing to do with lack of direction and pay2win, eh?

[MrHollyw00d]

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"

My thoughts exactly.. This is a perfect articulation of how a lot of people feel i think. I use a gun or setup because it's FUN to use. If players are using a specific setup or "META" more than others, then BUFF everything else to make it as exciting to use. Don't nerf the fun into the ground. It's such a lazy way to balance a game IMHO.

[Urmanin]

Notice how defenders of nerfs are all suspiciously silent about the newly added quasar cannon, an infinite ammo rr with no backpack. That does what railgun did better. Really makes you think.

[Jozsefirst]

Originally posted by Urmanin:

Notice how defenders of nerfs are all suspiciously silent about the newly added quasar cannon, an infinite ammo rr with no backpack. That does what railgun did better. Really makes you think.

I haven't been able to play the game since the Quasar dropped. (It was international holiday for the last couple of days afterall)I've seen some people defend it claiming how the charge to shoot time hinders it's performance to the degree that it can remain a balanced alternative to projectile based AT weapons but I'm yet to see if that's actually true.

[JaCRO]

Originally posted by Azure:

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.

They had it locked in in first 2 weeks of release.
Then they started to tinker and use Players as live test subjects.
Now when players realise the bullS**t and how they are treated,they are starting to change it back bit by bit. Loosing players cos general player base takes time to register the un-Fun gameplay.

[GONDAL]

Originally posted by Urmanin:

Notice how defenders of nerfs are all suspiciously silent about the newly added quasar cannon, an infinite ammo rr with no backpack. That does what railgun did better. Really makes you think.

Whilst I don’t want this thread to devolve into “this gun that gun” arguments, and would rather it be on the merits of nerf/buff and the problems of only buff mentality, I shall entertain this question:

Quasar cannon has a laborious charge time and reload that leaves you extremely vulnerable to hunters, brood commanders, and bile spewers. Arguably, what made RR so powerful was its ability to take out heavies whilst running and gunning, as mobility is king against bugs. So, you are sacrificing the most valuable resource of mobility to efficiently take out heavies.

Remember, hunters and spewers > heavies in bug matches and the ability to kite them whilst also taking out heavies is what makes a gun overpowered.

Hunters and spewers tend to get the final kill, and they require heavies to cover them to advance on the party, so the entire bug strategy falls apart with guns like pre-nerf RR. This doesn’t occur with quasar.

[Archfiend]

Only buffs is a better line of thought then whatever it is the devs are doing as currently it seems they are actively going out of their way to make the game unenjoyable.

[Jozsefirst]

Originally posted by Archfiend:

Only buffs is a better line of thought then whatever it is the devs are doing as currently it seems they are actively going out of their way to make the game unenjoyable.

I think we have a different idea of what it means for a game to be unenjoyable

[Reanu Keeves]

No balancing is needed, just more enemies

[Kormit the Frag]

destiny has the issue of 'more hp = difficult' which is unfun, boring, frustrating, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and they nerf guns in pve because they are strong in pvp bc they are incapable of separating the sandboxes even though theyve proven they can.
bungie also dont just nerf things into balance, they either leave them as is, powercreep them, or nerf them into unusable levels.

[Neon Samurai]

I think the main issue with nerfs is they almost always go way too far and nerf the item into oblivion. Which is more or less what happened to the Railgun. It went from being overpowered to pretty much irrelevant as they did too many different changes at once.

The other issue is players and devs don't always agree where the balancing line is, and that it is very difficult to balance across different weapon types.

Also destiny 2's big problem is that they were balancing around PvP, and not separately for PvP and PvE. This resulted in them ruining countless weapons for PvE because they were too strong vs players.

[Urmanin]

Also I like the warframe example because sure, the powercreep is there, except:
1) The most powerful stuff is locked behind long grinds and basically beating all quests in the game
and more importantly
2) The addition of much harder content which actually requires you to be on top of the systems to play, like the steel path and netracells
What arrowhead is doing is nerfing weapons while increasing difficulty every patch. This one included. Have you seen the gunships yet? Becasue flying detector towers with devastator rocket salvos that hunt in packs (arisen) are what this game really needed right now, hwen one of the main issues of the game is that you die far too easily in a game with limited lives.
Reminder that in hd1 you had NO timer, NO limited lives, and you were also harder to kill. And instead of nerfing dominant weapons, what arrowhead did at the time was add more difficulties and such.

[Average Democracy Enjoyer]

There are some weapons who needs desperately a buffs, like the plasma shotgun, the beam weapons, the shield stratagem (ballistic one) and such

It will be cool to see people actually use everything, instead of confortably going for the meta.

[Soji]

Nerfing based purely on usage rates is just as bad, either way this games sandbox is at the whim of a nebulous vision from arrowhead

[Urmanin]

Originally posted by Average Democracy Enjoyer:

There are some weapons who needs desperately a buffs, like the plasma shotgun, the beam weapons, the shield stratagem (ballistic one) and such

It will be cool to see people actually use everything, instead of confortably going for the meta.

That's a line of thinking that will never actually work in reality. People will always, and I mean always, as in 100% of the time, gravitate towards a meta. There has always been and always will be a meta in games like these. Even in singleplayer games there is a meta. You better believe Ultrakill has a meta for what's the most effective at killing things fast.
Trying to fight "the meta" by nerfing things repeatedly has never worked. Not even once.