“Given the opportunity players will optimize the fun out of a game”
Pretty much true.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s a big deal. But it’s just stupid as a developer to act like this.
I often ask about risk vs reward in these situations. What were they going to gain by acting like this and what were they going to risk by acting like this?
They’re humans, too.
Eh. I went and looked at the comments. Sometimes people get a little lippy and it’s whatever? Shit happens. But basically telling the customer ‘i get off on you crying about this’ is definitely going to cause some issues for the company.
Yeah, that’s a line you don’t cross in PR ever. “Cry more, I like it” is just not the message you want to send.
/Kleenex has entered the chat
Goddammit, enjoy your upvote 😆
Sure? But actions have consequences.
It was the patch that got me to stop playing. Why you would nerf weapons in a non-competitive game rather than make poor preforming weapons viable is beyond me.
It’s akin to Steve Jobs telling everyone they’re holding their phone wrong.
It’s to keep design space open and to minimize developer work.
Let’s say we decide to keep an overperforming gun. It does all the things. It has all the ammo, all the damage, all fire rate, all the reload speed. Now, all future weapons have to be made with that as a consideration. Why would players choose this new weapon, when there’s the old overperformer? The design space is being controlled and minimized by the overperformer. Players will complain if new weapons aren’t on the level of the overperformer.
Now, let’s say we have ten weapons with one clear overperformer. Now, we can either nerf a single weapon to bring it in line with the others, or buff nine weapons to attempt to bring them up to the level of the overperformer. Assuming the balance adjustments of each weapon are the same amount of work, that’s 9x the effort. However, if we assume we do this extra work to satisfy players, now we have ten overperforming guns and players find the game too easy, so now we also have to buff enemies to match. However, the game isn’t designed to handle these increase in difficulty. Players complain if we just add more health to enemies, so we have to do other things like increase enemy count, but adding more enemies increases performance issues. It’s a cascading problem.
I consider nerfs a necessary evil. It’s absurd to ask developers to always buff weapons and give them so much work when they could be developing actual additions to the game. Sometimes, a weapon really does need a nerf.
Thank you so fucking much.
If you want the game to have long term viability, you have to have nerfs. Otherwise in 3 years everyone who has been playing since day 1 has a mech with a gattling cannon that fires nukes and is fighting gods.
Average anime protagonist progression.
*Cough* Warframe *cough*
Making all the weapons overpowered to match ruins the intended difficulty.
This is a dumb take.
If there was a gun that 1 tapped every enemy in the game and had infinite ammo and maybe even auto aimed for you, that would suck a lot of the fun out of the game wouldn’t it?
Would you not want that gun to be nerfed or would you want every gun in the game to become a 1 tap super weapon?
that would suck a lot of the fun out of the game wouldn’t it?
Good thing you get to choose which gun you use. I personally would love that weapon. I’ve got two kids and a full time job. I need a nerf mode. The rest of y’all can use whatever other guns you like. But give me the BFG and let me have my fun.
This game has like ten difficulty options. If you need the BFG on easy mode then you probably are just bad at videogames.
So what. Let me be bad at video games and still enjoy it. Not everything needs to be a side hustle, maxed out, semi-pro, rise and grind. I just want to have a hobby, even if I’m shit at it forever, because it’s fun.
You should try it sometime. It’s a much less stressful and actually enjoyable way to live.
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That’s what the difficulty mode selection is for. If you want an easy One-Shot experience just play on the easier modes. Overpowered over tuned weapons just create assholes in the higher difficulties kicking people out of games for not taking “the correct” load out.
Those of us with a little more time or a little more skill or a little more both enjoy the harder difficulties actually being… Difficult. Imagine that, the correct place to give people the ability to have a Nerf mode is in the difficulty slider which thankfully the developers have done!
Instead of complaining about weapon balance just turn down the difficulty and enjoy your easy experience
Nope, I want a balanced sandbox. If I went into a lobby and everyone was using the 1 tapper (because why wouldn’t they) Then the game would be way too easy and I would have to do closed lobbies and go out of my way to find people that want to run the game without the 1 tapper, just to have fun.
If you’re bad at games you can just play on easy mode.
1 tap super weapon, and introduce a viable challenge to make that obsolete.
But you’ll just get premium war bond weapons from here on out to close the difficulty gap.
The weapons in premium war bond aren’t really good. Also, if it’s a nudge at the premium part being a money grab… I’m lvl 17 and I have the premium unlocked without spend any real money.
This game has like ten difficulty modes.
Did you ever played Payday 2, where powercreep made us go from guns with all the best attachments could maybe kill the toughest enemy in the game in half a mag, or about 15 shots, to the devs needing to implement 3 (technically 4) more difficulty levels with new enemies that were just old enemies with more resistances or 10 times the health as their stock launch counterparts, and those things dying in 2 hits from all the meta build weapons. All because they kept introducing more powerful weapons, more attachments that made launch guns more and more obsolete, and general more power creep through skill tree expansions and entirely new jobs for perks. The player counts for that game dove off a cliff after players realized each DLC was just pay 2 win garbage and even using stuff you could get only from the base game and free updates left every weapon feeling samey with the same tactics being used and things not in the meta utterly ignored by anyone playing end game content. Because instead of reigning in the things that overperformed and broke the balance curve, they just kept powercreeping new items into the game.
The player counts for that game dove off a cliff after players realized each DLC was just pay 2 win garbage
And what exactly do you think is going to happen with this game?
You’re missing the point. Player counts for that game dived because despite fairly regular new content and replay value, the meta and power creep pushed all players into using very similar functioning builds with everything that could be considered an alternate playstyle being so underperforming many people couldn’t even make them work in the 2-3 difficulty range. HD2 has much better variance in maps and enemies, so as long as devs keep the trickle of new content and powercreep under control this game easily has a 6-8 year shelf life. Community will trickle downwards like all games do as they age and new games pop up. But as long as the devs don’t fall into the trap of caving to vocal minority of players demanding any exploits they find stay in the game, we could easily have 100k-200k regular pops a year from now.
I’ve been playing since launch. I played a lot last night. I do not see the problems. I play on hard difficulty. I have a good time whether winning or losing.
There are players that take the game far more seriously than I and honestly they make the game more tense than it needs to be. They make it feel competitive, in that if I’m not doing what they think a “good” player should then I’m unwelcome.
I think the vast majority of complaints stem from these players. I lament that another Call of Duty is not coming out sooner so that the community can diminish into relative obscurity, hopefully populated with like minds that view this as a game and not an e-Sport.
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What a whiney playerbase then
It’s unfortunately a case of developers being required to stay “on mute” because of their inherent power - much like being rich, male, and white.
I play a lot of Dead by Daylight, and many friendly content creators will offhandedly say comments like “If you can’t outrun a Hag who’s not using her traps on Garden of Joy, you should probably uninstall.” It’s an exaggerated sentiment, definitely in a mean spirit; but unfortunately that brand of sarcasm won’t work with everyone, and in the case of most people, they could react with “Well, fine, I don’t care about YOU - surely the developers agree with me.” But people feel MUCH more powerless when developers speak, even if it’s for a topic the community has consensus on. Even Dead by Daylight had its period of outcry when the developers effectively stated through changes “Camping survivors that are downed is not fun and we’d like to discourage it.”
It’s unfortunately a case of developers being required to stay “on mute” because of their inherent power - much like being rich, male, and white.
How does the quote go? “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
Ridiculous comparisons aside, primary issue is that there are basically no upsides and a lot of potential downsides to a developer actively like an ass in customer facing channels.
And feeding the cycle of “clapbacks” isn’t going to do the community any favors.
potential downsides to a developer actively like an ass
Did you accidentally a word?
While I’m very much on board with the equality quote for the white-male thing (If you’re privileged, you shouldn’t be making comments about welfare and employment), I don’t know if that has so much equivalence to being a game dev. In the end, a small team of people are the ones with the control to make and update the popular game, and that power will never be spread among its playerbase.
The thing is, as obvious as it sounds to say “never act like an ass”, conversational spontaneity is unpredictable, and the simplest and fastest way to achieve that is with the directive “Never speak”. I’ve even seen that issue with coding standards - the best way to never be blamed for a bug is to just never put up any code changes. In social settings, if people try to act in ‘honest’ ways, that can involve sometimes speaking in slightly inflammatory ways towards concepts that they think the group should agree are bad. In this very comment chain, for instance, we’ve made metaphors to oppressive patriarchy from controlling white men. (I’m a white guy with above-average income, by the way, and I’m very okay with that comparison)
So, these developers decided to be more vocal than others in the past (think of every publisher that responds with stock “We recognize your concerns and appreciate your feedback”) and, this unfortunately can be the consequence of that. I know it seems plausible to expect them to be perfect, but they’re human - not much different from all other internet commenters. I’d even question whether everyone here knows the full context of the comments that are receiving complaints. Quite often, when people are putting attention on you, they can selectively quote you to make you seem terrible. (“I KILLED EARL MILFORD.”)
If your position is simply “Devs shouldn’t speak outside of patch notes and press releases”, that’s kind of a fair stance, I just want to make sure that’s what you intend.
Honestly, I don’t personally think that developers stop speaking to players directly. But doing so can have consequences, especially if you decide to take a more antagonistic attitude. And dealing with those consequences is the price you pay for more direct communications.
All of this drama is dumb for many reasons. It was dumb for the original comments from players that were insulting towards the devs. It’s dumb for a developer to respond in kind. And it’s dumb that people get so worked up in turn for the developer’s comments (especially the “they should be fired” cries).
But the clear point in the chain that can be severed here is on the developer’s shoulders. We’ll never get rid of 100% of the negativity/toxicity in gaming, but we can limit how much it becomes a part of the community.
