A No-Nerf Approach to Balance

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But now defense gear is less effective proportionally, and players get their gear they've worked so long for weakened, even if the numbers on it stay the same. Want to scale that too? Now attack stats/gear are relatively weaker. And since we wanted to reduce TTK, maybe that was the goal. But as much as "only raising every OTHER stat in the game, and leaving one the same" doesn't have the psychological effect of "seeing numbers go down", the loss of relative effectiveness which was the point , will still be felt. The class, ability, gear piece, whatever it may be, still got nerfed. Player who use it will still experience that nerf. All you've achieved is some of the less calculative ones not understanding WHY they suddenly suck, or exactly WHICH thing was nerfed, so they can adjust their build. And of course, since they have to change literally everything else, increasing the chance that the devs missed something, that has now been incidentally nerfed (or even completely destroyed, because it wasn't intentionally managed). And the worst part? Especially if you got hit by the accidental stealth nerf? A lot of people who weren't affected aren't going to believe you. Not everyone thinks these things through, and certainly not everyone has the awareness and patience to do the math, especially if it's a subtle, emergent interaction.

A global buff to everyone but you is still a nerf. It's just a deceptive one that hurts you without revealing itself. (Sometimes to you, sometimes to others.) And that can be a lot more dangerous than "ugh I gotta fix my build now", and "yeah but that was kindof unfair before" or "sucks, man".

I think the most viable solution to this problem is to make sure that you as a developer have a clear and specific vision of what you want your combat to be like, and then clearly explain that vision to your community, and get a lot of hands-on feedback from players on whether your early iterations live up to that vision.

Whenever you make one thing stronger, other things get weaker by comparison. There's no way around that. It's why the process of tuning a game is called balancing. The question is how to get your balance as close as possible to the ideal from the beginning, and how to make sure players understand the decisions you make, and can help you make good ones, or have something to focus on other than "the devs hate me" when those decisions affect them negatively.

By getting your vision out there clearly, and letting players point out to you where your work doesn't match your vision, you gain several very important things:

- People can catch your mistakes.

It's easy to get lost in arguments or contemplations of "well maybe that's what the devs intended..." when something feels off, but if they set clear expectations for what they want the experience to be like, you can immediately tell them "this isn't working, and here's the part that's wrong", and that means they can fix it faster, and cleaner.

- People can know what is a mistake.

If you get over-nerfed, or someone else gets over-buffed, you don't have to be salty. You can look at it and go "there's no way this matches the vision". You can complain. But more importantly, know that your complaints will probably be taken seriously, that it's not just you, and that the nerf (or buff) will likely be adjusted.

- People who don't like the game's intended style can just leave.

You don't have to waste time trying to figure out if you're going to get nerfed in the next patch, or if the last nerf was a mistake. You also know not to waste your effort trying to get them to change the game, if you don't like the VISION. This results more applicable feedback because your community consists of people who want the same game the devs do, and know how to target their feedback at that, and both players and devs waste less time and energy.

- People know what to TALK about.

They know what things are problems, and can provide suggestions that suit the vision, without having to guess what that is. There's a lot of brainpower out there. Don't let it go to waste.


I play another competitive PvP (non-MMO) game which has periodic balance patches. Something they've started doing in the last year or two, is explaining what their vision for how a particular character/class should work, and how the changes they are making are supposed to bring the character back in line with that vision. Whether it's a buff or a nerf, (and sometimes the technical details that are tweaked can be really eisoteric) it's easy to understand it in context. Even if it hurts you, you can understand why the change was made. (And sometimes, the community as a whole can decide they screwed up, and push back.) I feel like this is a step forward in giving players a way to process the negative experience of having their style nerfed.

At the end of the day, a nerf's a nerf, and players will notice. Trying to hide them in various ways won't help. The goal should be to make sure the vision is clear, so that changes can be interpreted in context. So that people don't get caught up in bad expectations. So that people can expect buffs or nerfs in the future if something doesn't live up to the vision.

There's no way around nerfs, but there's a lot you can do to build trust in the developers, and make sure that people who are hurt by new changes have a framework to process them, a way to feel heard, and a clear vision of the game that they can rely upon to think about the future.