Nerfing, What's the point

Why are they constantly nerfing things?
Do they really believe it will change anything?

Superior players will always find a way to dominate inferior ones and in so doing unbalance things.It is that way in every rpg which allows pvp.So to balance things they nerf skills/classes. Wait, does that solve anything? No,ppl just find a way around the nerf and continue to be dominant. If you ask me they're time would be better spent repairing bugs, and creating new places to go w/new things to do.

Just my oppinnion and you know what is said about oppinnions.

My guild and I have already solved UW farming and solo griffons since patch, so don't knock it until you exploit it. There's always another way.

Nerfs and buffs is what makes the game fun, otherwise tombs would still be full of spirit spam teams.

Oh and you will get your pve content in the next expansion

What do they say about oppinnions?

That it's like an opinion but with an extra p and n?

Nerfing is done to balance a skill that is too powerful. Some people think you should buff other skills to compete, but it isn't always feasible to do it. Alot of the time, it's just easier to nerf the skill thats overpowered.

Do they think it will change anything? Skill balances change a hell of alot in PvP. When looks like a miniscule change to PvE can ruin an entire teams build. Superior teams don't just use better skills to defeat inferior teams, they use a team build where all of the teams skills interact together to make a team build, not 8 individuals. They use character placement and terrain to their advantage. They make timely use of heals and interrupts, enhantments and hexes.

Being a good team doesn't mean you have found a supremely powerful skill and exploit it, it means you have worked out a set of skills that work together effectively and know how to play the game.

To make people mad. What else?

Pretty sure most the time they do it because enough players are complaining about a skill or something...so to be half arse they fix to to shut them up. Also to balanced the economy maybe.

Skills are not balanced according to how they are used in PvE, so doing to to balance the economy is completely wrong.

2 words to prove you wrong there: Protective Bond

I think 99% of the nerves are good because it makes people think up new builds.

If they wouldn't nerve once in a while, all you would have is 99% of the people only knowing 5% of the skills. Now people will try and find a new build again, making it possible for others to come in a team as well. If spirit-spam wouldn't have been nerved, do you really think IWAY would have come up? (Not that I like IWAY, but it's just an example)

ANet nerfs stuff because it's overpowered. The problem is, they have a habit of nerfing it a bit too much.
Smiting wasn't overpowered. Ether Renewal was. But they went and nerfed everything: Draw, Zealot's *and* ER.

Whilst the 11/10 patch pissed a lot of people off, including farmers, I for one developed a new farming build and I have also recently found an uber un-nerfed farming location... muahahaha

-Adam

Look! It's a lumberjack!
Just kidding... it's grandpa with another fairy tale.

Because they aren't?

EDIT: Amn_En_Trash - believe it or not, farming is still wholly viable. And there's even still unlocked chests around. Bitch less, explore more.

EDIT2: Sanji - I think what people say about oppinnions is that they are like a ssholes. So you were close.

Even if nerfing just leads to people finding different overpowered builds in an endless cycle, at least we get different overpowered builds. Flavors of the month are bad enough, IMO. Would you actually prefer flavors of the year?

Anyway, I tend to believe that each nerf takes us incrementally closer to the platonic ideal of a truly balanced game. Sure we'll never reach such perfection, but that doesn't mean it's pointless to get closer.

I am under the impression that the situation is pretty balanced atm. There is really no one top build atm, I think (IWAY is still flavour of the month because it is so easy to do, but it is not a 'THE BEST' build candidate). I see spiking, in different forms, mesmering, trappers, balanced builds, etc. Maybe we are pretty close to the platonic ideal of a balanced pvp build. However, a situation in which the game is perfectly balanced (such as is the case with Parer, Rock, Scissors) should not endure forever, or the quest for even better team builds will become pointless for top players. Should that situation come into being, however, the new skills and possible combinations that come with the new chapter will bring back the imbalances, I am sure, and the metagame cycle of new FOTM builds, FOTM counters and nerfs by Anet can begin again.

Who here actually believes that ArenaNet responds solely to whining? C'mon, that would be stupid! If that were true, they would have rolled back the AI update. Think a little people... these are professionals.

Skills get nerfed for two reasons. One reason is to keep PvP balanced so that a larger variety of builds can succeed. As it stands, IWAY is pretty easy to kill, so skills involved with the build didn't get nerfed last time. Another reason is to stop solo-farming exploits that can drastically alter the economy. An exploit typically isn't a problem until it because a popular net build.

Flame less, think more. There are farming places... yes, but there are none of those Uber super ultra leet unknown farming locations. There is atleast bound to be ONE other person knowing about them.
So next time, instead of trying to flame me, try to understand the very simple message in my earlier message.

The nerfs force people to get out of a common rut that works and forces them to think of new strategies. This game would probably be pretty boring if it never changed.

Many people misconstrue "updates" with "nerfing" when said "updates" effect gameplay. For instance, the "Nerf to elementalists and AOEs" was really a "Updated AI."

They didn't directly smack AOE's with the nerf-bat, but rather, let the "updates" pinch-hit for them ^_-

--The Shim

No they did it to purposely stop solo farming and make everyone who has a fire elementalist delete their character. I know, one of the devs told me.

Anet doesn't nerf that much. But they buff skills even less fi that is what you mean. The word nerf is usually used with the word farm in any given sentence. They update skills and change them but overall anet's updates center on changing overpowered skills while leaving crappy ones unchanged.

This post is mostly about game theory.

If a game is not balanced, then everyone abuses certain advantages (say spirit spamming).

However if a game is completely balance, then there is no skill involved in the game. An example of this is rock, paper, scissors. After three levels of thinking, you're merely returning to the first level.

Player measure of skill is magnified by imbalance; skilled players compensate for the imbalance and that is what makes them skilled. Without imbalance there is no skill.

May as well face it --- GW was still a long way from being finished on the release date. We are all testers. Frustrating at times, yes, but still a bargain for the money.

Does anyone really expect the "nerfed" AOE skills to be left broken as they are, without being properly adjusted? Expect more changes in the days ahead, as A-net works to get the game "right" before the upcoming expansion. Once they are satisfied, look for the occasional patch, and not the sort of thing that had everyone in an uproar after Nov 10/11.

No one gives a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO about game balance nor do they care about how it's so much realistic that monster run when they take too much damage.

People play video games to have a good time and to constantly adept and come up with crazy builds everyday.

The PvP community disagrees with you.

That was pretty much my point before. However, it is not simply a matter of balance vs skill when it comes to GW. If skills are not all equally good, then it takes skill/intelligence to identify the best ones. If they are all equally good, then it takes skill/intelligence to find the best combo's (individually and for a team as a whole). Obviously not every combo can be balanced in the sense of being equally good. Some combo's & team builds stand out as being better than others. Anet tries to maintain a balance between these, most of all.

Finding these 'superior' combo's takes skill/intelligence. Even when the game is balanced in the sense of there being no 'single or only two or three 'best combo's/builds', skill/intelligence is still needed. In fact, this requires more intelligence/skill than a lot of players possess. And using certain skills, combo's and strategies requires some sort of skill as well (quick reactions for interupting spell, for example). And more importantly, playing as a coherent team requires skill too (some degree of social intelligence helps a lot with that ), and also a degree of cooperative 'skill' (a pure, uncompromising egoist (like a constant PD-defector) will not make for a good team-player.

But even if the game were to be a completely balanced game in the way RPS is, there would still be a use for skill/intelligence. Some players tend to win a lot when playing RPS, because their opponent is not selecting strategies randomly (that is very hard for humans). This means that they have some sort of psychological insight into the pattern of game-decidions followed by other players. In GW, there is the metagame. Knowing that well will give you knowledge of the statistical probabilities of encountering certain strategies in battle, allowing you to formulate answers (counters etc) to these. At that point, the game will become a lot like poker.

Like I said above, introducing new skills will upset this balance and everyone will need to go an find new 'best' combo's again (identifying imbalances and exploiting these). So a situation where the game is like poker for the top teams will not persist, though it may return once all the great individual and team combo's have been found and have become public knowledge.

Sorry for this rather dull post, btw. Some of us are science nerds.

Apparently poker nerds as well. +EV ftw!