"It's a co-op game!"
"Tckthuhuluwapphffffuputututu!" (which is a translation of the above into an ancient and forgotten language)
These are the common justifications as to why nothing should ever be nerfed. The co-op argument is, in the small picture, a valid point. Why should you want allies to be weaker? But, thing is, there's a much, much bigger picture here, which I'll go into detail on right now.
I. The character-by-character basis
To better illustrate this point, I'm gonna use an example:
You're playing your favorite co-op RPG shooter, Galaxy of Fantasy. At launch, you had the option to choose between
(Ninja), or 
(Bandit). Both characters are equally viable selections, as they both served different roles, but one wasn't necessarily a better choice than the other: it was merely all about how you preferred to play the game. is really fast, and has really high defense. All's good. But one day, GoF introduces the 
(Copper) DLC! is REALLY strong. As a matter of fact, upon release, he's so strong, that he can literally nuke anything just by attacking it. Who needs to move fast, or have high defense, when you can literally kill anything without effort whatsoever? At this point, and are merely novelty characters, meaning they're fun to play around with, but when you actually need a character to do a serious mission with, you're gonna turn to . So now the GoF development team has two choices:A) They can buff
and to the levels of . This way, they're all on even terms.
They can nerf so that he's about on-par with and . Same results as above.Problem with option A, is that if it's selected, the game will suddenly be easier now. Difficulty means nothing! Silver mode is now a cakewalk, and Gold requires so little effort. Platinum can be done if your team is mildly competent.
If they choose B, then not only do you now have three equally viable characters to choose from, but you also preserve the game's difficulty, and by extension, the way it was meant to be.
II. The power-by-power basis
Now that all three characters are just as good as one another, we can take a look at their individual powers. In particular, let's look at
. He has the skills Poison Shurikens, Speed Boost, and Immolation, and his two passives. Poison Shurikens is a nice skill, as it adds on some awesome DoT effects. But Immolation is where it's at! That skill just does so much damage and debuffs enemies so bad, it's crazy! But look at Speed Boost. Only a 15% boost in movement speed for 5 seconds if I max it out? What? Screw that, I refuse to spec into a skill so worthless! So what do I, as a player, do? Spec him 6/0/6/6/6 of course. That's what everyone does. It's the best build for him.The development team takes a look now. After assessing that Immolation's really powerful and Speed Boost is really weak, they now have two options:
A) Increase the power of Poison Shurikens and the speed bonus of Speed Boost to the competitive levels of Immolation.
Lower the power of Immolation to Poison Shurikens' level, and raise the potency of Speed Boost to Poison Shurikens' level.The problem with option A, is that now
is the more appealing option in comparison to and . Why take the balanced characters when I can take the one with three OP powers? And so balance will need to be re-issued.If you take option B though, Immolation becomes a much less viable option, sure, but it's still a good skill, and a very handy one at that. Only now,
has three good skills to choose from, making builds much harder to decide on, making individual players think about it themselves instead of consulting the internet for that "perfect build" for the character.In short, balance is necessary for co-op games just as much as it is for PvP games. Why have options when one thing just destroys the viability of the other things? Balance. It's called that for a reason. Nobody's "out to get you" or "trying to ruin your fun". No, we're trying to help you, actually. Open up possibilities, and all that jazz. We all enjoy the game, and sometimes things need to be taken out of power. Nerfs are necessary, just as buffs are. That's the double-edged sword of competitive balance.
Modifié par DullahansXMark, 26 octobre 2012 - 05:21 .
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