Regarding Nerfing and Changing Economics | Forums

[npavcec]

These things needs testing, you can't just wing it, even if you feel it's an easy call.

I absolutely agree. Thats why I always suggested these kind of changes to be done when the meta is relatively stable, not during the issue of a new expansion, which basically always shake the meta very much. The balancing needs to be an ongoing process at some set pace (lets say, one card change per week or two), and these changes should be directly propagated through global meta (not VIP servers) so thousands of games make the meta settle faster and each card to find its niche as fast as possible.

Now, when the new expansion is fresh (+ just partially available to lots of the playerbase), many people think that there are alot of problematic cards soely because the meta is unknown - so pretty much every win condition may arise suspicion, even from the most experienced players. To avoid that - make a habbit on gradual and paced balancings with good documentation (something like JK's post about new starting system), and then you don't have to worry about economics and player's retention. Heck, there is always a solution to throw some wildcards if some super important epic is going to be nerfed to people who are proven seal buyers. Everything can to be done, and it can be done properly, professionally.. there is only one question that remains.. do you (as a dev office of DoC) have the will, knowledge and the manpower to pull it consistently and on the long run.

Me, personally, I am very happy with the cards you make with each expansion and general gameplay mechanics. Most of my objections are on the front of technicalities (no client graphic setting, buggy chat, lots of deck builder bugs (hidden duplicates!), bad client ergonomics, etc.).

[Havenworld]

Even though I am not a game designer, I really think balancing the game to everyone's satisfaction is near impossible, if not impossible, even if many more people at Ubsoft or anywhere else work on it. And so trying to control the game meta through nerfing creates more problems than solving them, inevitably destroying some heroes and decks with which some players love to play.

As Cosmic Balance was a pretty good event card for those wanting to defeat Masfar, I'm sure there are cards, and if there aren't, designers can create a new card that can counter any card that is deemed too strong. This card does not need to be more powerful and more expensive. It just needs to be able to deal with the card in question. And let the players decide what cards to play. Again, nerfing frequently, I think, hurts the game more than helping it.

I guess everyone here, including myself, loves DoC, and so, I say to everyone, Good Luck!

[Xyx0rz]

I think there is more than one reason to nerf:

Power
A card is so good that you either play that card or lose. The solution is very obvious; nerf the overpowered card.

Some people advocate the release of "counter" cards. I have never seen this work out well. The counter is either too weak or too narrow. Or, it's overpowered itself, making the cure worse than the disease.

Meta
A Rock-Paper-Scissors meta is the worst possible meta. Any poorly balanced meta will eventually devolve into one "deck to beat", one "anti-deck" and one "anti-anti-deck". A good meta has many more viable decks. The solution is not quite as obvious as with the power problem. The imbalance might not be caused by any particular card but can be the result of a certain faction, spell school or strategy getting a critical mass of good stuff. In that case, a card that isn't overpowered will have to be nerfed to restore balance.

Another approach would be to buff some clearly crappy cards.

Frustration
Having cards be really good is one thing. Campfire is really good, but it doesn't need nerfs because nobody comes onto the forum to complain about Campfire. But some cards are just utterly horrendous to play against even if you still win most of the time. Immolation, Empowered Spell, Creeping Darkness, Anastasya, Boneyard... all these cards have the potential to drag the game out and frustrate the living hell out of the opponent. Even if they're completely unplayable at top tiers, they're still destroying the game at lower tiers. You can say "but Jkk says Creeping Darkness is bad", but that doesn't stop any beginners from quitting the game in disgust after their fifth ***-whuppin' at the hands of that card. I think the solution is, once again, obvious; nerf the offending card, even if that means you nerf it into the ground.

[Portios86]

Frustration
Having cards be really good is one thing. Campfire is really good, but it doesn't need nerfs because nobody comes onto the forum to complain about Campfire. But some cards are just utterly horrendous to play against even if you still win most of the time. Immolation, Empowered Spell, Creeping Darkness, Anastasya, Boneyard... all these cards have the potential to drag the game out and frustrate the living hell out of the opponent. Even if they're completely unplayable at top tiers, they're still destroying the game at lower tiers. You can say "but Jkk says Creeping Darkness is bad", but that doesn't stop any beginners from quitting the game in disgust after their fifth ***-whuppin' at the hands of that card. I think the solution is, once again, obvious; nerf the offending card, even if that means you nerf it into the ground.

The frustration factor is something that I have been thinking about recently.

In duel of champions, it seems that top players support frustrating decks and cards because they are beatable, provides diversity, can be countered by a couple of strong top tier decks, don´t work very well at highest elos...
It also seems that devs like this kind of card, every expansion they try to give us some new super frustrating cards or strategies, they even put some of them in base set 2 just to be sure that we could have frustrating (and diverse) decks.

The problem I see with this, is that the average player doesn´t seem too happy about those cards, decks or strategies.
Even if I think that lack of advertising is the main reason of this small community, I´m also quite sure about how unhealthy they are for community size.

While we could say that "a diverse meta is a better meta", which I agree, we could also say when diversity (in deck archetypes and strategies) isn´t well balanced, it makes a worse meta.

I could understand players leaving just because otk makes your slow decks unplayable. People frustrated due to cards like workforce, inmolation, now Anastasya, perhaps Akane with new tsunami...

I think we could have a bigger community in a more basic meta, where otk and weird combo decks and stall are just fun decks, not good decks.

To sum up, in a meta where every archetype is viable and we have some diversity, but standard, even generic decks, with a nice curve of creatures and some spells and/or fortunes, are the best by far and are balanced compared to similar decks from other factions.
That would be almost heartstone, I know, a bit deeper and more diverse, and I know it looks a bit boring mostly for top players, but perhaps it´s time to put a limit for the most frustrating strategies.

Now that chain casting otk was removed, I´m not exactly happy to see Anastasya, inmolation, mass rage, the new tsunami...and it´s not just for me, I like playing those decks too some days, but I think about new players and low elo players.
For example, new and low elo players complain about necro beeing too op at low elo and extremely annoying to play against. What if we try to redesign the faction a bit, even if it´s balanced at high elo or even up?
I mean, in this example, what happens when you tell to the new player that he can fight necro easily with top and expensive decks? When we say that necro isn´t popular at high elo...What is the player going to do?

a)he plays necro even if he doesn´t like the faction.
b)he grinds like mad to get a top deck and climb elo.
c)he spends a lot of money to get the top deck.
d)he uninstall the game and says to his friends "don´t play this awful game".

Perfect balance is impossible, I know, but perhaps we should be really careful with frustrating cards. I think they can be funny and playable (which means that you can even win games with that), but when they counter popular decks (antideck),a whole archetype, or have a 40% win rate or so...well, it´s worse when those cards and decks are strong, or even worse when perceived as strong decks.

[Starwatcher1625]

Portions, Portios ... I think that's alot to ask for from developers that gave Ice Spear to water instead of light with it's lol Sunrise or Air with it's lol Blast of Wind, gave Ur-Jabaal's Minion & Bound Succubus to Inferno while giving Haven lol Wolf Priest and lol Lesser Glory, and finally had the audacity to give the new Haven hero the absolutely crap Light + Air School to Haven ... Again.

<--- the resident broken record

[Imonothep]

Having cards be really good is one thing. Campfire is really good, but it doesn't need nerfs because nobody comes onto the forum to complain about Campfire.

I complained about Campfire. It's a perfect example of a broken card and incompetence of balancers.

[ocean127]

i like your atiitude but still i find that made more strong card is not an option for made game balance becasue when you made new card stronger for balance you will do it over and over agian and it will be no ending.

and i agree that no card should be neff soon at less not a lava spawn the problem is bound succubus not lava it self it just be the best one drop for t1 at the time i playing agesit deleb quite a lot and see that the problem wasn't lava spawn anymore the real problem is bound succubus.

and neff only came when hugh amont of people complain about it so it save quite a lot of ppl from quit most of the neff they doing

but now game just start like 1 week after SOB coming so i ppl didn't face a lot of card or deck from SOB and can't have it yet

we shall wait and see after this

[Xyx0rz]

the problem is bound succubus not lava it self it just be the best one drop for t1 at the time i playing agesit deleb quite a lot and see that the problem wasn't lava spawn anymore the real problem is bound succubus.

The only reason you die to Bound Succubus is because you lost so much life to Lava Spawn. If you're still at a healthy life total when Bound Succubus shows up, no problem.

Bound Succubus is just a slightly better Sahaar Skirmisher.

[Khobai2012]

Balancing by adding more powerful cards is silly. We dont need more powerful cards, we need less useless cards.

We already have hundreds of useless cards. How bout buffing them instead? Create some new deck archetypes to diversify the game and move it away from rush and crippling decks.

[banduan]

Some good points in the OP, and in the thread overall. Ultimately, the issue of nerfs, buffs and meta boils down to resources.

There are two main reasons to nerf:
- Overpowered: A card has an effect so powerful the card or deck dominates, or forces the meta to be restricted to a narrow field of the dominating deck and its counter.
- NPE: A card has an effect that is powerful but can be countered by players capable enough to understand its weaknesses, but the learning curve to achieve that understanding is too steep.

The former is much easier to identify than the latter which ultimately requires a judgment call, but both need data to properly implement. Data needs time and time is money. Ideally, to properly balance a set you set up a team of developers and start designing sets months in advance in batches of half a year's worth or more. If you don't have this, you just have to unfortunately use actual play to collect the necessary data.

Why don't you just nerf anyway? Because as OP states, it's not fun to have your cards nerfed. And it's not great to have a set full of useless cards. We already complain of sets with too many useless cards. It's also not fun to have perfectly fine cards nerfed due to overreaction well before the metagame has settled and enough data has been collated.

Why don't you just print more powerful cards or counters? Continuously increasing power in following expansions is called power creep, and it gets out of hand real quick. Power creep diminishes the value of cards printed before, and long term players see this as a sign that whatever they invest in the game will not hold its value for long. For F2P this is deadly, it makes players not want to buy anything.
As for printing counters, if it was that straightforward then the cards considered for nerfing aren't actually that powerful. If the cards are powerful enough, a silver bullet counter would only be as good as when yo draw it, while a more utility counter might affect other cards you did not want easily countered.

Why don't you just buff other cards? Because buffing other cards is nerfing other cards. The metagame is a dynamic thing. Also, there's always a chance buffing a card can make it overpowered, and all this while you never solved the issue of the card you wanted nerfed. The only way you can tell is by... collecting more data. And you'd rather spend time collecting data on checking if certain card are too powerful.