Game Design Opinions On Constant Item Nerfs And Balances.

Hello, Most of you probably know that there has been a lot of toxicity and community backlash towards latest item nerfs, Such as Morph-Stardust & Paradox.
Read more about it HERE.

Normally I'd just change my builds but I've had it by now.
You can not make such massive nerfs or buffs on already existing items in an MMORPG.
A situation was created where you basically can not make a build or release it to the public without the constant fear that it will get nerfed, This is wrong, The amount of times me and a lot of other people needed to change builds regarding this kind of subject is absolutely insane, And this doesn't really effect the economy in a good way either...
I bought a Gravity for 64LE back when it was actually useful, It was one of the best in-game, It is currently worth about 6LE.

How can this be treated or fixed?
I came up with basically the most simple solution- Just make items properly in the first place, Before releasing them.
It might be hard, But is it really as hard as nerfing and buffing items constantly while getting a huge fanbase backlash?

I know, There are still unbalanced items in existence, Which is why instead of nerfing or buffing them one by one, What I personally suggest is to just make one update completely focusing on balancing all of the remaining items.

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I am not a GM, I do not know how they operate, I do not know if they even test the items or try to fit them inside of builds before releasing them.
But I do know this- They make mistakes.
I mean- Come on, How come both Inferno and Grimtrap exist at the same time?
One is insanely underpowered, The over is insanely overpowered, And none has been even touched since their release.
From what I know Salted is the only one who messes with Mythics, So I'm not trying to blame the entire GM team on this, But honestly, It's quite sad seeing items like Darksteel Full Helm or The Courier's Cape that literally no one cares about getting a so called "Balance" while other items in a much worse state are being ignored.

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I love Wynncraft, And I love the Content Team, But this has to stop.

Please keep it civilized in the comments.
I want this thread to do good, Not to turn into an arguement.

[Mutton out]

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yeah, i've become suspicious of how well made these items were in the first place if they're getting nerfed all the time

 

Its pretty hard when there's only 2 dedicated item makers :/

 

Add poll? :D

 

urm, how about actually fixing things that need to be fixed and not "fix" and "balance" unnecessarily
*cough* amadel, *cough* trading of untradables, *cough* elemental defence

If you fix something like elemental defence is there a need to constantly nerf pieces used for defense constantly?
btw hive nerf + stardust nerf is bs (stardust nerf just makes it even harder to use hive armor cos hive armor is also taking a hit)

i'm suprised they haven't touched vaward or prowess yet, crap, i may have just jinxed myself

and instead of saying "Soon(tm)" actually reply us seriously and not make a meme out of it
*whisper* happy players stick around

 

delete that

stop giving them bad ideas

 

Seriously. Ok then let's look through this

is there really that much backlash? I really haven't seen it a ton... even players who used it were generally okay with the nerf...
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So your just not going to change your builds? Okay, good luck
More seriously though, I generally agree with that statement, but there are cases where it really is required. MSD is one of them.

Do you really live in constant fear of your items being nerfed? Are you that paranoid. Also it's like 2 times... once for gravity, once for msd, and those items were far to strong. 2!= Insane

This certainly makes it seem like the meta is bad for the economy, as a pretty common item was going for way over the kind of value you would expect

Ouch. Wow this paragraph. Why don't you just slap selvut in the face while you are at it. You act like he doesn't even care, but do you really believe this? Because it isn't true. "Hard" is an understatement. Even major companies with massive budgets and dozens of people doing this job mess up on this.

Why do you think we have this thread. We need to be careful though, as over nerfing/Buffing helps nothing

I'm also not a GM, so I can't really talk about that. Everyone makes mistakes though...

All of the changes you have seen have come from selvut. While I agree mythics need balancing,they have been balanced early in this update. What we do know is the boots aren't getting a SP change.

Now I personally did use both of those items at one point, but anyways, saying an item is above people balance becouse"nobody cares" is how power creep happens. It's the best time to fix it.

Taurus was buffed. Why doesn't anyone get it.

 

Amadel: Code issue, lootMultiplier doesn't work which is the only way to fix it without completely changing the fight, plus we can't update config to do even that without bringing the entire rest of the update with it

Untradable trading: Code issue, moderators are trying to crack down on it in the meantime

Element Defense: Part code issue, part balance issue. On the code side, -% and - raw combine to make positive element defense. On the balance side, I HAVE been working on it.

 

Is it hard typing with rabbits feet, or does the luck counter the lack of dexterity and you just flail them at your keyboard and get really lucky?
(This is a joke, a little bit, I'm curious).

 

I'm not going to mention anyone, But if you've seen with how much shit Selvut needed to deal with, You'd know the community backlash exists, And very, You can't constantly nerf people's builds and not expect anyone to come out and start being whiny about it, Sure there isn't a ton, But I never said there was a ton, I said there was a lot.
I can understand why you wouldn't know because I don't see you around in Discord a lot, And I can assume you didn't read the last 5 pages of the "Special Warning" thread.​

Glad to know we agree on something, Also this time I did not need to change my builds because I knew this kind of crap was going to happen, I've been prepared, I have about 6 different versions of my current builds to switch to if any nerf happens.

Yes I am a paranoid, But it's not like I'm scard of something that has a 0% chance of happening, And believe it or not I'm not the only one in constant fear because of this.
Also I had to change my build every time for:
-Gravity
-Hive Nerf
-Morph-Stardust now
Maybe it's not insanely a lot but it's still too much.
And remember I did not change them out of my own will, I was literally forced to change them.

Again something we agree on.
This was caused because of Gravity being too overpowered and demanded at the time.

I never tried to attack anyone, Especially not Selvut.
I was merely stating that if so many nerfs & buffs are needed after an item is already released, Maybe the GMs who make items are doing something wrong?
Also I have never seen a big MMORPG do this kind of stuff (Constantly changing already existing items).

What the thread does is nerf/buff items one by one, I was suggesting they fix them all in one go so the playerbase doesn't have to be afraid anymore of builds being ruined and can just make builds without minding future nerfs.

I know all of these changes came from Selvut.
And woo we agree on 3 things, We might actually become buddies.

That is correct, But this kind of items should not be their place of focus in item balancing.

That was my mistake so excuse me.
Sure it got buffed- But you can't deny it's still useless.

 

So if someone like me, bloww, or Gigavern, who wanted to balance items. Decided to apply for gm only to make items, what would their chances of getting in?

I mean if you need Item Balancers/Makers why are you not advertising that? There are quite a few people who would be interested in making items, and I can imagine that the vacancy would be filled quite quickly if you specify that.

 

The thing is, it's an incredibly responsible task that is easy to get wrong. If you see how much someone very skilled at it such as Selvut gets in backlash, you can see it's an impossible task, and I think it has a lot to do with why Salted possibly has issues entrusting people with it. Wynncraft clearly means a lot to him, and this seems to manifest in a desire to have everything done right, especially with something as important to gameplay as item design. Selvut is an incredibly skilled GM with a long history with the server and a great care for the community, it's easy to see why he's so well trusted with balancing items, and Salted doesn't even let him balance the most important items (even when they're completely broken). They also don't want to have too many changes going on at once to popular items (that are usually popular only because they're so unbalanced), but also want to fix the item system quickly. I'd personally rather have a large wave of balances announced at once, that way the backlash could be spread out, especially if it included buffs (but the thing is, with stretched resources, buffs are of lower priority given that useless items have far less of an effect on gameplay than overpowered items) I think a team of item makers within the GM team headed and chosen by Selvut would be ideal, but it's easy to see why Salted might have issues...

 

I'm not going to say much since @Pokextreme essentially said what probably would've said, but I will say this, I think Morph-Stardust's nerf is perfectly justified, why?

-The helmet in general was blatantly overpowered, but it's not the situational kind of overpowerd, this helmet could be used in basically all scenarios in Wynncraft! Making nearly every other helmet obsolete! The only ones that could compare, as far as I know, were Hive Helmet and Cancer, and we all know the general opinion on those two helmets. (Mainly the latter!)

And, before you say "Why not buff everything else instead of nerfing?":

-The helmet was never really meant to be solely be used on it's own, it was meant to be used with the rest of the Morph set, if it makes you feel any better, Selvut has buffed the rest of the Morph Set to make up for Stardust's nerf.

 

What happened to Stardust?

 

Less health, 60 Eledef instead of 100, 2-8SP instead of 3-10

 

OH GOD, 46sp 2/4mr Actually

Rip 2stax :(

 

I never said it wasn't, I said making such OP items that literally need so many changes after the item has already been released is wrong, You either got my point wrong or read about 2 sentences from this thread.

I never said that and I was never going to, Your reply is based on stuff I literally never stated.
And if you do agree on most of Poke's points please read my reply to him so you can see the bigger picture.

Although it is possible you just wanted to just state this stuff and not say it directly to me, It still is my thread so an least you say otherwise I'm going to react like this was meant towards me.

 

I know what I said didn't have much to do with the thread itself, I just wanted to state that the nerf was at least justified.

Concerning this, I'm not going to say too much because I'm tired as hell, but I think this all lies in simple human mistakes, Selvut's great at balancing, but he likely didn't see the OP potential of Stardust back when he was making it, maybe because he was seeing it being used for the Morph set, not as it's own item. If that's the case I wouldn't blame him for that.

 

I feel like part of the problem is that there is no consensus on what 'balanced' is in the community. Does that mean everyone should solo bosses? That no one should? That it should be extremely difficult but still possible with certain items? This makes it so Selvut can't really balance items to a certain standard, only nerf the blatantly OP ones that remove the need for any other items to really exist. I feel like we need to find an item or set of items and balance all the other items from there. Another problem is that there are a lot of unique builds that are possible, even for one element. This makes testing items before releasing them is really hard as it's impossible to find every build that it's usable in.