(GW2) Nerfs needed?
A friend once commented on my posting about nerfs to some Wow content:
"I still don't comprehend the idea of "nerfing" content. Ah well. Yeah, Samantha considers GW combat as a tactical thing. If you fail, see what you did wrong, adjust, and go into it. She's just glad it isn't a timing thing, really, just more of a "what are they doing, let's deal with it" sort of thing."
Well, there's a fine line to be walked between offering challenge and making things accessible. Matching a design vision can be hard, and can be messed up with the slightest tweak sometimes. Major "nerfs" are generally made to increase the accessibility. That comes up when designers want more people to be able to succeed - whether because an encounter was made too hard, or designer priorities change.
Arenanet's not perfect. They may well have just stepped into that. Their initial release of the main encounter in the current patch, which is battling a trio of scattered watchwork knights on the map in order to gain access to Scarlet's massive drill machine to fight her, was "broken." Somehow the credit restrictions were preventing people from getting a reward. So over the last few days, they've made tweaks in order to try to fix that. Along the way, they also changed the design to limit contributions in each fight in order to encourage (enforce) people to spread out and fight all three at once. I totally get that the design philosophy was against a massive group zerging the three in turn, but limiting damage to the bosses to the first 50 people on each that gain a buff has seriously increased the difficulty from "hey I was in an overflow map that actually succeed, cool" to "hmm, my prime server instance just failed the event not that long after prime time and others are reporting the same on the forums."
Will they have to nerf the content to bring it back down to doable levels? Maybe not, technically, but this content is around for all of 2-4 weeks and they've made so many tweaks thus far that I can't imagine they'll leave it as is - and I would argue the current state is a mistake either way.
Edit: Looks like there was an adjustment around 3/11/14 "Reduced the health of each Assault Knight by 25%."
"I still don't comprehend the idea of "nerfing" content. Ah well. Yeah, Samantha considers GW combat as a tactical thing. If you fail, see what you did wrong, adjust, and go into it. She's just glad it isn't a timing thing, really, just more of a "what are they doing, let's deal with it" sort of thing."
Well, there's a fine line to be walked between offering challenge and making things accessible. Matching a design vision can be hard, and can be messed up with the slightest tweak sometimes. Major "nerfs" are generally made to increase the accessibility. That comes up when designers want more people to be able to succeed - whether because an encounter was made too hard, or designer priorities change.
Arenanet's not perfect. They may well have just stepped into that. Their initial release of the main encounter in the current patch, which is battling a trio of scattered watchwork knights on the map in order to gain access to Scarlet's massive drill machine to fight her, was "broken." Somehow the credit restrictions were preventing people from getting a reward. So over the last few days, they've made tweaks in order to try to fix that. Along the way, they also changed the design to limit contributions in each fight in order to encourage (enforce) people to spread out and fight all three at once. I totally get that the design philosophy was against a massive group zerging the three in turn, but limiting damage to the bosses to the first 50 people on each that gain a buff has seriously increased the difficulty from "hey I was in an overflow map that actually succeed, cool" to "hmm, my prime server instance just failed the event not that long after prime time and others are reporting the same on the forums."
Will they have to nerf the content to bring it back down to doable levels? Maybe not, technically, but this content is around for all of 2-4 weeks and they've made so many tweaks thus far that I can't imagine they'll leave it as is - and I would argue the current state is a mistake either way.
Edit: Looks like there was an adjustment around 3/11/14 "Reduced the health of each Assault Knight by 25%."
I get that. I totally do. I think what Samantha was more objecting to was the 'well, we've had this content for a year, we want people to move on, so hey, we'll nerf the content so people can get through it and go do something else'. She finds that kind of idea unacceptable. She can understand balance tweaks. She can understand 'we overdid it'. That kind of thing is fine. But to give some perspective... The Claw Island fight. Let's say next year ArenaNet releases the Cantha expansion, which continues your personal story. They want people to get over there, but they want people to finish their personal story in Tyria, first. So, they reduce the amount of damage the dragon in Claw Island inflicts, and make the fight easier - removing some of its abilities and such. Then they turn around, and make the final battle easier as well. Not too much easier, but noticeable. They make the dungeons a bit easier, so people can just get through them and get their 'sets', then head off to Cantha. The very idea of that being done? Sends my sister into a fury. She sees the concept as completely unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteBecause why have people catch up to their friends any faster or someone who is on their second/third/fifth alt (and GW2 already isn't very alt friendly) get through content they've already seen and done to death that much faster?
ReplyDeleteThen you have your friends come down to your level and help you through the events. They're not that bad - nowhere near as bad as GW1. But for that, you don't need to downgrade the enemies. Actually, I'm laughing that I said 'next year', since that's the next expansion - 2015. :) I think it might be Cantha, too.
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