On Game Balance and Nerfing

[Thrym]

Hello everyone, Thrym here!

I'd hereby like to adress the community about a topic which I have found very confusing over the last months.

We all know NWN is not balanced.

Mechanically speaking, we have good options, we have so-so options, we have outright bad options, and we have options which are nothing but traps for new players who think it sounds awesome.

We keep talking about this on the forum after all, heh.

Now, here on the FRC forums, I frequently seepeople going 'this and that is to strong! Nerf it!'.

This makes me, both as an NWN player and a Pen and Paper DM always go:

'What?'


Really, people.


We have good options. You see that word? Good options.

These are things that make your character be awesome fighting stuff.

These are the things you look forward to getting on your level up!

And yet, all the time, people want the good options to become so-so options.

A so-so option is mechanically perfectly balanced, but you know what? It's just meh! Yes, meh. You can't express so-so much better.

A so-so option is something you're gonna pick next level because it's better then the bad options and looks more useful then the other so-sos, but you don't actually look forward to getting it.

It seems to me that, for some reason, people who post here on the forum are intent on taking all the good options and making them so-so options.

And as both a player in NWN and a DM in Pen and Paper, I just can't wrap my head around the why.

Let's think this through for the moment: Wouldn't you rather have a meaningful choice between multiple good options, instead of lustlessly selecting the next so-so option?

Then shouldn't it be our design goal to turn bad and so-so options into good options, instead of constantly trying to nerf the good options to so-so level?

Instead of constantly wanting things nerfed, why not try to get stuff that is too weak boosted up to par?

Nerfing something should be a last resort for stuff that is broken, not good.

Why not take a more positive approach?

If you nerf player one's favourite option to the level of player two's, you make player one unhappy, and if player two is happy about that, he should be ashamed.

If you boost player two's favourite option up to par with player one's, you make player two happy, and player one will most likely not get sad about it either.

So, really: What's up with all the call for nerfing? Should we not be concerned with making suboptimal choices good ones instead of good ones mediocre?

Just some food for thought from my end.

[EDM Neo]

*applies the Neo stamp of approval*

[jensmann]

Well said, i agree to 100%.

[Aseanamous]

Right, I agree. I also don't see a whole lot of point in nerfing things because it makes little difference. Once one thing is nerfed... another thing will become the new strongest, most powerful build, and then that'll have to be nerfed, and so on. If someone wants to have the most powerful build, they will have it. The only things that should be nerfed are things without any counters... for example: Bigby's Forceful Hand.

[ancientempathy]

Well said Thrym...

To me you're just saying people need to enjoy the game for what it is ;D

[archangel00]

For everyone that agrees with Thrym:

Do you agree with the spell changes, PrC's only being allowed to start after 10 levels of a base class, etc made on this server?

[minion]

alright... there's a lot of positivity to agree with here, but i think one of the reasons "balance" suggestions tend to attempt to scale things down is that that is the direction that most of the changes that have been made so far go. some, but comparatively few, things have been made -better- options than they were, and many, many things have been made "more balanced (read: nerfed)" from what they used to be or what they started out as.

this is not a complaint, i agree with many if not most of the changes that have been made, but this is an effort to suggest why "more positive" changes aren't suggested: they're seldom (if ever) acted on, while everything from spells to classes to items get slowly scaled back from what they once were and/or started out as. my guess is that, whether it was conscious or intentional on anyone's part, most of the "nerf this" suggestions were merely a recognition of the overall trend. an effort to suggest something that seemed more likely to be acted upon, if you will.

again: i'm not complaining about anything. i'm just hoping to give a little perspective (with the further hope that i'm not putting the wrong words in people's mouths).

personally, in the spirit of this thread, i would love to see the duration of Death Armor changed to something like 2 rounds a level, or even better, a flat minute or 2 minutes, or something relatively short but useful. the spell is not very useful at any level, but is especially worthless when you first get it, since you're both "squishy" and the spell barely lasts longer than it takes to cast. this is true of the spell most everywhere i've seen it in NWN, not just FRC, so i'm not trying to whine about how FRC has dealt with it, just a constructive suggestion in the realm of "making a poor option better."

[Deleted]

May 12, 2010 11:39:10 GMT -5 Thrym said:

Then shouldn't it be our design goal to turn bad and so-so options into good options, instead of constantly trying to nerf the good options to so-so level?

Instead of constantly wanting things nerfed, why not try to get stuff that is too weak boosted up to par?

I think that in general & where possible this design perspective is superior to "lets nerf the stuff that is too powerful". But in reality, it is not that simple. The best path depends on the exact situation that is being balanced & how complex it is to raise up other things in a balanced manner.

If a particular ability is really really powerful, then it's far easier and has less impact to other abilities to push that one ability down some, rather than give every other ability a large boost.

For example, lets consider Isaac's greater missile storm. This is agreed upon as one of the most broken NWN spells & is mod'd on most servers. If you did not change this spell to be less powerful, here's what you'd have to consider doing to make it more balanced:

• Give all classes more hp (and all npcs) so they are not one-shot killed as often with this spell.
  
• Make all other lvl 6+ wizard spells that are outclassed by it do more damage so they remain viable alternatives to casting IGMS.
  
• Possibly increase the damage potential of some other classes to balance the increased damage potential of wizards.
  

Would you rather that huge list of changes be made instead of nerfing IGMS so that it is just as powerful as other lvl 6 wizard spells?

[Lokarn]

I was going to post and try to sound funny and tell you all to shut up, but I don't think text will work for the effect I wanted, so instead I'll just say.




CHILL OUT!

DMs have enough crap to do, let them do that, then when they ask us if there is anything they can do to make the game more fun for us, we can ask them to nerf us. *Nods*

[EDM Neo]

May 12, 2010 17:05:17 GMT -5 archangel00 said:

For everyone that agrees with Thrym:

Do you agree with the spell changes, PrC's only being allowed to start after 10 levels of a base class, etc made on this server?

I suppose I should have made a longer post to make my opinions more clear... so, yeah.

To this, I point at:

May 12, 2010 11:39:10 GMT -5 Thrym said:

Nerfing something should be a last resort for stuff that is broken, not good.

Most of the spell changes were to nerf something that was outright broken (far, far more powerful then other things of comparable level) for the play environment, like hours/level weapon enhancements, 24 hour summons, heal/harm, IGMS, hours/level control undead, etc.

The rest were to make weak or boring spells more interesting, like the buffs for regeneration/monstrous regeneration, and the custom planar binding summons.

I don't necessarily agree with -every- change from the base rules... for example, as you mentioned, I've never understood the justification for needing to reach level 10 to take levels in a PrC... but most of the spell changes I feel were well justified, and I agree with the sentiment that most future changes should be to strengthen uninteresting or underpowered things, or to nerf still untouched but absolutely broken things, like Bigby's Forceful Hand.

[ancientempathy]

My own thoughts echo Neo's post.