When to nerf and when not to - subclassing considerations

SkaiFaith

Assuming the split between casual players and hardcore players is around 80/20, where hardcore refers to players who min/max and use metas to compete on leaderboards at high level...

Devs should consider if a "meta" skill/set is utilized casually by the vast majority of players doing a basic damage and it results in being vastly OP only for 4% of players who do their best to "break" the ceiling.

Things like Oakensoul, Trifocus, Fatecarver... I bet most of the people who uses them do so very casually and not min/maxing at all.
SURE there are hardcore players that create bonkers combinations that eclipse everything but why nerf stuff for the majority of players when it's a small niche of rare cases where they get broken?

"Fatecarver will be on every build" - I was dreaming of this very moment: I have 12 characters of every class and they pretty much all use the exact same build. I created my first Arcanist only 4 months ago and I fell in love with the beam, desiring to have it on all my characters.
Will I build to break the game with an OP beam? No.
Being an Oakensoul user and wanting to implement scribing in my builds too, I will most likely use the beam without any crux. I just want to roleplay Goku with his Kamehameha and throw toy mounts XD

Why should I, and a probable majority of players who honestly don't pay much attention to metas, been beaten with a nerf hammer sucking out the fun from the game and our playstyle because in a small percentage of player cases the skill/set results OP?

What I want to say is: Devs have the data. They know when something is being abused by 50% of the playerbase, and when the "abusers" are 3%. Should always keep in mind those numbers when evaluating nerfs.
Buffs are often much more appreciated and retain more players, IMO.

EDIT: "everyone will use this broken thing!!!" - if in truth devs know there will be like 20 players abusing a broken combo or what, while 90% will use those same things in a non-broken way, let those 20 players have fun their way if this means the other 90% can continue having fun in a fair way without seeing their characters nerfed to death for "no apparent reason".

AcadianPaladin

When to nerf? Once a skill has been around for at least 6 months and any initial growing pains have been adjusted, the answer is a resounding: Never.

I absolutely Hate building my characters upon a foundation of shifting sands.

Freelancer_ESO

Eh, I think you'd find that a fair number of the users of Oakensoul, Trifocus, Fatecarver... are actually min-maxing albeit not to the extend of other players which is a big part of why nerfs to those abilities cause reactions.

I'm not running Oakensoul on my characters because I hate having two bars. I'm doing it because I hate buffing and the buffs provide enough power that I feel forced to have them.

I'm using a lightning staff on my more optimized heavy attack characters because it's better than the alternatives not because I like it.

ESO's had the option to go Kamehameha with Soul Strike for years that players could use on any class and we didn't see it all that often because it wasn't that great much of the time.

I'm not saying the 40% cost increase to Fatecarver and 8% damage buff on the PTS is necessarily a great idea but, I would guess much of it's actual usage is power based.

I think at times it is beneficial to adjust the balance a bit which will sometimes mean buffing things to better to compete with popular options but, it also sometimes will mean nerfing things so people don't feel forced to use them.

old_scopie1945

The problem is Oakensoul/scribing doesn't affect other skills when the nerf hammer is in use, subclassing does.

El_Borracho

When to nerf? Easy. Whenever a skill or set shows up in my death recap more than once in Cyrodiil.

zaria

El_Borracho wrote: »

When to nerf? Easy. Whenever a skill or set shows up in my death recap more than once in Cyrodiil.

so any skill who can damage you, while ignoring builds who require an good ball group to kill.
But I think its mods who drops anybody dying i an encounter like trying to solo an rock *** or tower troll.

BretonMage

I don't agree it's about casual vs hardcore at all. It's about giving everyone the opportunity to reach similar damage numbers without being forced to use that one skill.

Not everyone enjoys beaming. To me, it would suck the fun out of the game if I felt I had to use it (or really any set combination of skills) to stay marginally useful.

It would also be boring to watch 90% of DDs use the same skill. A homogenised Tamriel would be a dull Tamriel.

SwimsWithMemes

Nerfs (in the majority of situations) should be balanced around the top tier of players. There is no point in balancing skills around players who do not utilise them to their maximum extent. What casual play should impact balancing is where there is a desire for their to be more skills that are approximately (as far as they can be, equally) optimal, so that particular playstyles aren't favoured over others.


For example, if you dislike using pets as a sorc, non-pet sorc should be approximately viable to pet sorc. Likewise, Runeblade Arcanist should be approximately equal to Flail Arcanist. This is where data on casual playstyles is most useful. But when skills are overperforming in high level content, they should be brought down (or others brought up) to have multiple valid playstyles that are equally useful. Not identical, but equivalent.

moderatelyfatman

@SkaiFaith
For the casual/hardcore player, try 95/5 as a more realistic representation.
Most of my guildies don't even have a forum account so you'll never hear their opnions here.
Most of my guildies play ESO to chill out doing dailes and never going into vet content. They wouldn't know when something is nerfed unless it's a patch 35 since they mostly do easy content. And guildies are a select group because very many people are solo players with no real interest in interacting.
If you're posting here you're not the typical player.

SkaiFaith

@moderatelyfatman thanks for the tag I totally agree, but I wanted to give a "moderate" indication since usually on the forums talking about a 95/5 split is badly perceived as not being honest/fair.