Muckbeast

What is a nerf? In most of the world, it is a soft, spongy toy like the eponymous Nerf Football. In the world of gaming, a nerf is a reduction in power, utility, or usefulness of a character class, race, realm, zone, item, etc. Nerfs are very controversial because people do not enjoy being nerfed. Unsurprisingly, people often enjoy seeing OTHER PEOPLE get nerfed… especially in PvP or conflict oriented games.

Generally, players think anything of theirs is fine, and many things of their opponent’s is too powerful. Anything of their opponent’s that is weak, is “fine”, and if such people ask to be improved they are told to “learn to play.” This is expressed succinctly and cleverly by the following axiom:

“Hi. This is rock. Nerf paper. Scissors is fine.”

The sad, unfortunate reality is that nerfs occasionally must happen. The problem is, most developers handle this situation very poorly. They do not think things through, they rush the job, and they take no steps to soften the blow. In this article, I will discuss how developers nerf without thinking things through.

Think Before You Nerf… Then Think Some More

Developers need to understand that whenever you nerf something, the ripple effect is going to be huge. Actually, I should call it a tsunami effect. Everyone affected is going to be angry, and some of the people unaffected will also be angry because they might feel you didn’t nerf enough.

Anytime you are considering a nerf, you need to make sure you analyze the ever-lovin’ heck out of the situation. You need to constantly ask yourself “What EXACTLY is the problem with this class/item/etc. What EXACTLY is making it too powerful?” The answer is very often not the most obvious thing. An overpowered DPS class may not be overpowered because it does too much damage. It might be overpowered because the damage is of a type that is not resisted or defended against (solution: give players a way/choice to defend against it). It might be overpowered because that class has too many escape or utility powers, which make the class unstoppable combined with its damage. It might be overpowered because whatever negatives you have given the class are too easily overcome or remedied.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to PROPERLY DIAGNOSE THE PROBLEM. If you rush into the nerf, you are very likely to misdiagnose.

Soften the Blow

It surprises me how few MMO developers make any effort to soften the blow of a nerf. Didn’t any of these people watch Mary Poppins? “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine, go down.” No matter how reasonable or needed a nerf is, the players negative affected by it are going to be unhappy. Even if they agree with the developers about the nerf, there is simply no way to be pleased when your character, realm, race, or class is weaker one day than it was the day before.

How NOT to Soften the Blow

Fixing a couple negative bugs for someone is not a way to soften the blow. Sure, it is nice, but players EXPECT developers to fix bugs. You are rarely going to get much gratitude from players as a result of bug fixing, and it certainly won’t make up for nerfs.

Give Them Something Useful

The most direct way to soften the blow is to give them something else that is useful. Perhaps this is an ability or feature you had been planning to give this group of people for a while, and now is a great time to release it. This gets back to my previous point about not rushing nerfs – if you hold off the nerf until you have some new content to give at the same time, you might be able to completely eliminate unhappy feelings from the nerf portion.

Give Them Something Fun

Game balance or your development cycle might make it impossible to give them something useful. In that case, figure out a way to give them something fun. Either come up with your own ideas, or comb your player feedback systems (forums, email, whatever) for some fun or pure fluff suggestions. Sometimes purely fun things mean more to players than actually “useful” things.

No Matter What You Decide, at Least Try Something

Whatever you decide to go with, make sure you at least do something. Show some effort. Show the players you TRIED to soften the blow. Show them you care about their feelings and reactions to a nerf. Do not make them believe you could care less what they think, and that you heartlessly nerfed them out of some kind of sick joy. When players believe the developers are actually looking out for their interests, and trying to maintain a fun environment, they will forgive a lot of necessary nerfs or balance tweaks.

Follow Your Nerf Assiduously After the Fact

After nerfing something, a developer has a duty and a responsibility to its customers to keep a close eye on the effects of that nerf. Simply releasing the nerf into the wild and just leaving players do deal with the aftershock is irresponsible and downright cruel. Your players are going to be somewhere between mildly annoyed and absolutely miserable as a result of the nerf. You owe it to them to watch it closely and find out if the nerf went father than you expected or intended.

All too often, developers just assume they can count on players to raise a huge stink if the nerf went to far. A sloppy, lazy attitude all too common in developers is that they only need to use their tracking metrics to find things that are too good and too powerful, since players will be far more honest about reporting things that are weak. While it is true that players are more likely to report things that are weak, relying on this depends on your staff having a really good ability to sort through the din of forum posts and other feedback methods. Good luck with that.

If You Need to Nerf Again, Consider Undoing the First Nerf

Everyone has seen this happen countless times. Some class or ability in a game is too powerful, it gets nerfed, it continues to be too powerful, and it gets nerfed again (or perhaps again, and again, and again). Eventually, one of (or some of) these nerfs actually does the trick and results in the ability no longer being overpowered. At this point, all previous nerfs should be reviewed as potentially being unnecessary. Sometimes it is hard to properly diagnose why something is too powerful. Perhaps the ability is getting used in surprising ways, or perhaps when seems like the problem at first is not the real problem. That is fine. There is no shame in admitting that. But do not compound the problem by lazily or stubbornly refusing to re-examine and possibly undoing previous nerfs.

Example:

A certain power seems too strong. In round 1, the damage gets nerfed. In round 2, the cooldown is increased. In round 3, the “real problem” is discovered, that the damage from this power is being delivered untyped, or unresistable, or resistances simply are not working against it. Round 3 successfully makes the power reasonable. The developer should now go back and consider undoing nerf #1 and nerf #2 now that the real problem has been found.