Oh joy...nerfs. So tired of that in games these days

Console Discussion
1

I truly miss the days where you didnt have to worry about what you are enjoying playing being ruined out of nowhere.

Nothing in the beta or server slam matters that much, its more that this shows that they will be treating this game this way, aggressively balancing everything into mediocrity or that’s what it usually feels like anyways. Or like theyre dictating what we play. Like oh this skill is great, whoops cant have that, its trash now. Onto the next best thing.

I dont think they realize(or care) how incredibly frustrating this can be for people like me who dislike change and being forced to do so. I have austistic traits on this and im sure others do too, its so aggravating.

Enough so that I find myself actively thinking what builds/character can I play to spare myself as much anguish over this as possible. And that really sucks, like bad, that rather than just playing what I want I have to worry about this.

This will fall on deaf ears and people will just say boohoo “cry moar” as people always do but man I can’t not share how it makes me feel.

Balance can be good, but it feels like developers obsess over it and often go too far anymore. Like its okay for a skill to be powerful and fun to use, doesn’t mean it needs to be gutted and not used at all anymore which is a lot of the time what happens, they ruin what people enjoy and suddenly no one is using that skill/item anymore, wonder why? Oh, because its garbage now and not worth using compared to x skill or item. Such a tiresome cycle.

2

Glad you understand. They are trying to balance things. It will happen a lot more in the month and a half between launch and season 1 and likely even after. Not everybody likes it when there are builds that are completely broken.

When the game comes out they will see what works and what doesn’t and make more adjustments. Crying over a dev trying to balance the game is ridiculous.

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3

There is nothing wrong with expressing concern but you have to realize that their intention is not to have a repeat of D3 end game builds where, in some cases, players can blow through the highest level content while experiencing little to no challenge at all.

These meta builds then get copied by everyone and it literally takes away any “thinking” out of building characters. That may be “fun” to you and some others, but those kind of builds are what end up killing these games because most players get bored and leave the game for good.

They are not trying to tell anyone “how” to play the game. They are just trying to keep a certain level of challenge present so players can feel good about accomplishing game content with the build they came up with and continue trying different builds to progress through the game. Usually, the nerfs don’t make a build “unplayable”, but instead make it so you can’t just steamroll everything and you have to actually think about what you doing.

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at least it’s all happening while it’s still in beta and not 1 day after launch.

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Personally I’m not interested in playing a game that is faceroll easy without putting in some real effort to become OP. Too many people are into games for the instant gratification and go straight to the content creators and follow all the guides to make the best build and blow the game away within a few days or weeks time at most.

People don’t play the games enough and take time to learn how builds actually work or how the games core mechanics operate so they can be creative enough on their ow. To make a build. Games won’t be like they used to be back in the day and require regular balancing because there are tons or resources available at your fingertips so that folks don’t have to put any real effort in. Welcome to modern gaming.

I would much prefer if even the meat builds toon a good 40 hours of playtime to start sniffing the endgame but it’s likely we will have players there within 8-10 hours of launch. The joys of instant gratification. It is what it is.

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That’s just it though, they will continue to do it when the game is live. That they’re doing it this aggressively now shows that. I had a slim hope that since these developers working on D4 were different than the ones who worked on D3 where we saw this same thing happen countless times over the years, that they might not be as aggressive about it.

People will continue to find the best skills and abilities, specially once we get higher level and get access to more gear. Then the same tiresome thing will happen.

I just wish they would save it for obviously game breaking stuff, not simply everything that stands out as fun and/useful and powerful.

People like me dont like to stress out over finding a good build, that’s why we like to reference build guides etc so we dont have to stress if our build is good enough because thats absolutely what its like for me, constantly giving myself anxiety over thinking am I doing this right, is this build any good, going with what we know works well by following guides from people who make it their business to know the game well, Wudijo and Raxx for instance. And then these builds get destroyed/seriously weakened by overzealous nerfs.

If this seems ridiculous to people reading this, welcome to what its like having anxiety and diagnosed/undiagnosed disorders like this. Its why I simplify things for myself to remove as much stress as possible.

Also so many assumptions people make about people like me disliking nerfs, that we want instant gratification or an easy game or whatever.

Despite the counltess frustrations of nerfs in D3 I still put over 4k hours into it over the years.

I also enjoy challenges and consider myself pretty decent at videogames, for instance in Resident Evil 4 Remake, I did all the unlockables the hard way because I knew it would be more fun and rewarding.

It doesn’t have to be easy or instant I would just like to be able to use the build/gear I want without always having to worry about it being ruined. Not everything that is nerfed is going to be game breaking, not even close but it feels like they treat it that way. I believe there is a happy middle ground, but rarely does it seem like game developers find it, often nerfing first and asking questions later is what it feels like.

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I reason some of us are frustrated in regards to beta balancing is that all the whinning on “this class is weak” or “nerf this class its op” is because its based on ignorance. They are comparing overgeared and under level characters as some how representative of end game for those respective classes. Its frustrating seeing Blizzard kowtow to that whinning.

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I doubt that is how they decide to nerf/buff something. More than likely, they reproduce the weak or op builds themselves and play the end content. If they see they are steamrolling everything or getting curb stomped, then they make the decision on if they should make changes. The complaints may bring certain things to their attention, but it’s when they can see it for themselves that they choose to act.

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They used actual data. If they didn’t the game is doomed anyways. People just think it was people whining because the people were whining about legitimate problems. Things like permanent invulnerability for necro and sorc, hydra overpowering most spells, the ice blades cooldown build, and barbarian endless rage were all things that needed nerfs. The game will always have rough balancing when it gets into the hands of millions of people. They are going to try and nerf anything that sticks too far up and buff anything that hangs too low.

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I do as well, but learning to manage expectations is also important (especially for us because we have to work extra hard at it). This is essentially an mmo, and as such you should go ahead and brace yourself because changes will be happening a lot.

It did me a lot of good years ago to just realize that “people” like Blizzard are simply stupid when it comes to some things, and balance is by far one of Blizzard’s worst. They demonstrated that clearly with D3 when they started with those ridiculous damage boosts and called it “balancing” lol.

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I’m all for more paths to viability in terms of builds as well. My experiences from early access and open beta had a huge contrast between the 3 classes I did play.

I took a deeper dive into one, the barbarian and had a really rough start but turned into an OP powerhouse after putting together some solid gear and a few legendary aspects without consulting a guide or leaning into WW which has a signature skill of the class throughout the franchise. For sure it will be the most popular build, but I did find another path which worked.

Contrast that to the second class I played, Necromancer. This class was faceroll easy and crazy OP right out of the gate. I was obliterating dungeons without any particular build or gear that synergized well together. This is the class I most wanted to play and the reason I bought D4, but the early experiment is definitely overturned and needed to be reigned in. My feeling is until you get deep into paragon boards any Necro build you cobble together will work leaving many paths to viability.

Contrast that again to Druid which felt like Barbarian early but never really trended up in damage, in fact it felt the opposite. I experimented with many builds to find something that worked and ended up basically turning myself into a tank and turning the game into a war of attrition. The class to me was the polar opposite of Necro and the other class I bought the game to play. This class is supposed to shine at endgame, but good luck getting there.

Barbarian and Druid got some buffs since the first two beta weekends. Saying that nerfs are the only adjustments happening is disingenuous. My feeling is they aren’t done with the buffs to early game barbarians and druids either and probably not finished adjusting the classes that are over performing either.

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People only see what they want to see. Easier to claim there is only nerfs.

But it compounds itself because people are sheepminded in general, as soon someone bleats ‘its weak!’, the herd unquestioningly obeys and parrots the same thing. No sense of critical or independent thinking at all.

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Barbarian and Necromancer are my favorites of what is available currently, Sorcerer too but that one I’d probably play later on.

I will probably start with Barbarian as I usually do in these games and that is the class I had the most fun with in the beta but they’re not safe either, I can totally see them taking something like that legendary power that gives up to 80% crit chance during whirlwind and making it some trash like 20-30%. Sigh

The other reason I decided to play Barbarian first is that I figured the Necro would probably see a lot of changes because they actually felt pretty fun and powerful.

I just wish the devs would acknowledge these frustrations for players like me and hell, reassure us on their intent. It would help if I could post on the PC forum, so irritating to only be able to post on the console forum, seems entirely necessary to separate, it’s the same game right?

14

They have already stated their intent. They do not want op builds to exist in the game. It will be difficult for them to achieve this, but that is their intention.

15

No sympathy for the OP, you have the completely wrong approach to things. Nerfing is needed.

16

Imo, chase items should be able to enable OP builds and that’s about it.

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I play other games with regular aggressive nerf/buff cycles and there is always “the sky is falling” mentality whenever these sort of things happen. What I have generally found in practice is that outside of a couple of rare instances those cycles never really move the top line down by more than 5%.

In fact what happen more often than not is players are pushed in a different direction and end up finding something even stronger. I play ESO everyday and they have been trying to nerf damage for years and the top end continues to creep up.

There is another “nerfing to oblivion” moment happening currently to a specific build there. The community is saying it will be totally useless because the nerfs are too heavy. It was play tested and took 7 while seconds longer to complete the same content on live as it did on PTS.

Still viable, still easy, just not “as” easy.

With that power creep comes increased viability of other builds, however the community tends to dictate what is and isn’t viable at endgame due to meta builds being the most desired with DPS requirements far exceeding what the content is actually tuned to.

18

Blizzard has a history of kneejerk nerfs.

Necromancer in closed beta where not some overpowered monsters. In fact they only had one viable end game build a non summons bone build.

The nerfs were not “we adjusted corpse explosion scaling for a more balanced leveling” instead it was a flat damage nerf.

19

Diablo 3 didn’t start out that way either, it was gradual. Isn’t that how it goes? Over time we become more powerful and more easily able to quickly farm certain content to build up and prepare for harder content?

Also you’re assuming people will quit after we have our fun with an OP build and stop playing, that’s not the case for me and I’m sure plenty of others. I move onto another class and/or build and keep playing, assuming I am enjoying the game. That’s how over the years I put in over 4000 hours into Diablo 3 because I generally just like this type of game and the satisfying progression from turning your character from a weakling to a powerhouse.

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More just heavyhanded I believe rather than kneejerk. With time it should get better.