Why do you nerf? Why that way?

[Baskakov_Dima]

I play MMORPG since my 10 years, and I have changed mass of them.

The first thing I wonder is that developers rarely give boosts to any class, they normally nerf. It makes always sad when you see, that your favorite class is nerfed. Why not to boost classes, that are weaker?

The second thing is that developers ignore suggestions until they have something suggested 9001 times. What does it result in? Clever player suggests something writing 10 pages of text, he is ignored, and he stops suggesting at all. Second clever player has same ideas - but he finds old topic ignored. He bumps it, sees no answer, writes other topic, is ignored - it is so with all players, who really know, what to suggest. How does it go with stupid people? They just spam suggestion area and once admins agree with them.

The third thing. Admins ignore the fact, that some people don't ever go to the forum. Only developers of World of Tanks (Warplanes also) ignore the whine on the forum, and just gather statistics to make decisions whether to nerf, to boost or not to touch, and HOW. All other developers just mind the numbers and implement them.


So, the suggestions are: 1) Better to boost other classes than to nerf. 2) Better to get more admins to read all suggestions and just gather the ideas for those who make balance. 3) Make stats mechanism, that will help to balance things better.

Thank you for reading that.

[[ptx]]

What makes you think anything at all is that way? Because it isn't.

[Grumbs]

They do buffs and nerfs, how it should be done. Buffing isn't the only solution, you need both nerfs and buffs to balance. If you buff something then something else can get weaker, then you buff that and something else gets weaker and so on

You have to look at how classes work together too and balance around that. Having too many melee doesn't unbalance the mod, but having too much horse ranged or regular ranged can. The reason for that is there is a lack of natural counters for some classes and melee naturally counters itself and is weak against ranged for most of the round time, while ranged is good against melee and against ranged. Its not as simple as buffing their counter because that then unbalances intra melee balance. If shielders became godlike in order to make people think twice about playing ranged then why play without a shield? The natural counter to horse ranged is regular ranged, and buffing ranged would be insane at this point so what do you buff to weaken HA/HX? You end up being left with no option but to nerf things that have weak counters

[Baskakov_Dima]

What makes you think anything at all is that way? Because it isn't.

OK, not so bad, it is true. I mean mostly the reaction to whine instead of to gathered statistics on test server with pros and automatically on public servers.

They do buffs and nerfs, how it should be done. Buffing isn't the only solution, you need both nerfs and buffs to balance. If you buff something then something else can get weaker, then you buff that and something else gets weaker and so on

You have to look at how classes work together too and balance around that. Having too many melee doesn't unbalance the mod, but having too much horse ranged or regular ranged can. The reason for that is there is a lack of natural counters for some classes and melee naturally counters itself and is weak against ranged for most of the round time, while ranged is good against melee and against ranged. Its not as simple as buffing their counter because that then unbalances intra melee balance. If shielders became godlike in order to make people think twice about playing ranged then why play without a shield? The natural counter to horse ranged is regular ranged, and buffing ranged would be insane at this point so what do you buff to weaken HA/HX? You end up being left with no option but to nerf things that have weak counters

I mean, why GENERALLY nerfs.

The counter to horse achers in real life was actually heavy cavalry, I think, as missile cavalry was normally heavy - archers need to move fast while on horseback. So, boost them. Not to godlike level, of course, better to give something like using horse weight against other cavalry. HC became too strong at all? Make Z-crouching, as in F&S with pikes or NW with bayonets, and they will fall on the pike walls of polearmers, who will actually have no boost from that against other infantry, etc. They became to strong? Then we have 15th century with pike walls and squares, congratulations. OK, it was a joke, make ranged more powerful against them, like it was actually IRL - spanish infantry overwhelmed landsknechts this way, using ranged. OMG, bows arrowspam the whole map? Crossbows buff - for the damage, accuracy and ranged. XBOWS WULE MAPS LOL? Then we really can use nerf, nerfing reload speed, so they will become vulnerable while reloading and will have to ask allies to cover them. ETC. You can generally use boosts, it is OK.

[CrazyCracka420]

What makes you think anything at all is that way? Because it isn't.

It is in my experience.  So most of the nerfs over the years just coincided with the most people whining and bitching on the forums over and over and over?  Most of the people who play the game (and most other games are the same way) don't read the forums, and even less share their opinions on the forums.  The loudest whiners on the forums shouldn't dictate what happens in game.  And they don't seem to until their bitching becomes so overpowering on the forums that there's dozens of threads and 100's of pages (mainly by the same 10-15 people) that it begins to look like a major problem for players.  Even though that's 10-15 people out of 100's who play the game.  Most people are able to adapt to what's going on in game, and don't feel that there's major imbalance between classes. 

I think this guy is spot on.

[BlindGuy]

 Only developers of World of Tanks...

No, that's the point when you stop reading this guys posts, ignore all future posts, and if possible mute him.

Worlds of Tanks is utter garbage. Dont use it as an example of ANYTHING, except as an example of how shit you can make a product and still get people to think it is worth their time.

Honestly, really: I played it for a long time, I tried to find something positive about it. But I cannot. It has no form of anti cheat, it has no skill based elements, it has no personalisation elements, it has no physics to speak of.

[Grumbs]

I wouldn't mind seeing some specific cav buffs. They are countered by both ranged and infantry, similar to how infantry are countered.

They have their quirks though that makes it a bit awkward, like bump slash. Ideally cav should be a bit less "cheap" in how they kill people, but stronger when they outclass players. If they nerfed bump slash they could buff other things about cav, like make the horses cheaper, increase damage or range etc. Reason for that is bump slash is not a fair situation for a player to be in imo, its cheap and the weapon intercepts the player in the most unrealistic way imaginable. Its not intuitive, you just get bumped and are dead or severely wounded

[[ptx]]

It is in my experience.  So most of the nerfs over the years just coincided with the most people whining and bitching on the forums over and over and over?  Most of the people who play the game (and most other games are the same way) don't read the forums, and even less share their opinions on the forums.  The loudest whiners on the forums shouldn't dictate what happens in game.  And they don't seem to until their bitching becomes so overpowering on the forums that there's dozens of threads and 100's of pages (mainly by the same 10-15 people) that it begins to look like a major problem for players.  Even though that's 10-15 people out of 100's who play the game.  Most people are able to adapt to what's going on in game, and don't feel that there's major imbalance between classes. 

I think this guy is spot on.

My experience involves seeing the actual unbalancers talk stuff in IRC and seeing what actually happens. Quantity of complaint threads got nothing to do with balancer decisions.

[CrazyCracka420]

My experience involves seeing the actual unbalancers talk stuff in IRC and seeing what actually happens. Quantity of complaint threads got nothing to do with balancer decisions.

From an outside observer, it sure seemed like there was causation between the amount of whine threads and subsequent nerfs.  Not necessarily in the last 6 months, but sure as hell seemed that way in the 2 years before that.

[Teeth]

The first thing I wonder is that developers rarely give boosts to any class, they normally nerf. It makes always sad when you see, that your favorite class is nerfed. Why not to boost classes, that are weaker?

If there is one weapon that is better than the others the easiest way to fix it is to make that weapon worse. You gotta understand that there is no 'buff all weapos by 3%' button. It is practically impossible to buff everything without creating tons of new imbalances, whereas nerfing one thing is very easy and directly has the desired effect. Also, there are no perfect counters in this game. Nearly any class can fight nearly any class to some extent, which means that buffing one class to counter a currently OP class will almost always have spillover effects that again create new imbalances.

[Paul]

The third thing. Admins ignore the fact, that some people don't ever go to the forum. Only developers of World of Tanks (Warplanes also) ignore the whine on the forum, and just gather statistics to make decisions whether to nerf, to boost or not to touch, and HOW. All other developers just mind the numbers and implement them.

[citation needed]

[Adamar]

I think the op means that the mod needs a creative point of view as far as ballance goes. That would certainly be preferable to the buff/nerf/nerf/nerf routine. But many people are blinded by pride, inter-class hate, and overall ignorance, and possible solutions get shunned as a consequence.

[BlindGuy]

Well, current balance system seems to be:

"Hey guys, I just changed all this lot, too much work to waste so Im gonna implement it"

[Baskakov_Dima]

[citation needed]

If considering logical proof, it is impossible to find at least one developer team calculating numbers for boosting/nerfing by gathering stats on public server.

[Grumbs]

This game isn't rock, paper, scissors. Stats only show a certain side to the story. Devs need to observe and take part in the different classes themselves, not relly on stats that don't show the whole picture