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[Locklave]

I don't think any of the nerfs in the blogpost put the tempest in a zero-pick condition or unfun to use.
It won't be in a pick-always-with-any-fleetcomp condition, and the system is much more interesting.
The post itself also buffed low-tech by giving it interruptible burn drive and a 2 ability frigate.

I don't think the doom was ever mentioned in the blog either.

They want to pretend like Alex will just drop some mindless arbitrary nerf instead of addressing the specific ships in a targeted way. Because it easier to present a counter argument to nerfs that way.

"-25% to all high tech stats!"
- Said Alex never

The Tempest changes are for example situationally more powerful and generally weaker. It doesn't impact how fun the ship is at all, maybe it's more fun. It's not gonna suddenly stop seeing use, but maybe it won't be half your fleet on a frigate run lol.

[SCC]

I don't think the doom was ever mentioned in the blog either.

I suspect the ship system itself will regrettably be left untouched, while Phase Mastery or Systems Expertise (or both) will be nerfed instead.

[CanaldoVoid]

@OP
The problem is the long term effects of powercreep.

Sure, it may start by making things a bit stronger, battles ending a bit sooner and all but over time this mentality stacks up and battles keep speeding up more and more, ships will be tearing through shields faster, instantly killing other ships all the time, and the game turns into a show of ships exploding everywhere instantly with little to no counterplay involved.

Just nerfing everything has the problem you mentioned, everything ends up turning into a clunky, slow ship that feels like it's dealing no damage.

There needs to be a balance, if a few ships are sticking out they are probably overtuned, if a few are just bad and nobody picks them they should be brought up instead, and if it's something making an entire category of ships OP (say, phase) then that system itself is probably what needs to be addressed.

(That being said the Doom problem goes further than just the phase issue)

Also, as I mentioned before, with the introduction of story points the game will have to make a choice, what will it be balanced around?
No built in hullmods? Then when you start doing it the game will lose all challenge and everything you field will be OP
1 built in hullmod? Then you'll still be OP by placing 2
2? Then you'll be crap untill you start adding them, and when you finally spend millions of XP by placing 2 hullmods on every ship you'll finally achieve the state of normality which you used to have by default before this sytem was implemented, and when you get 3 you'll be OP anyway (worst balance, probably)
3? Well now everyone who's not at late, late, late game, using one specific skill will be underpowered, and when you finally get there you'll just get even.

I'm not looking forward to how this challenge will be solved by the devs. Sounds like a ton of work, perhaps impossible.

[BreenBB]

What zero choice? Is there a Doom in your room that's threatening to mine strike your PC if you were to switch over to midline?

Hahaha.

I agree with OP that nerfing is not really a great answer,

For the people saying that buffing things just causes powercreep, I want to point out that nerfing also cause powercreep, because there's always a some "second best" thing that is overshadowed by the current "overpowered" thing and that once the overpowered thing gets nerfed, then the "second best" thing will simply take its place.

Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Really, I think this is a problem of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail. A better solution to balance is to go sideways rather than buff/nerf

Also, Every mention of things being overpowered right now relates to either the skills, or to safety overrides. Why nerf the ships when these two things seem like more likely culprits?

Thats the reason, nerf high-tech you got overpowered midline, nerf midline you got overpowered low-tech...

And I think there is should be weak and powerful stuff, no equalizing everything to same power level, just for means of progression, powerful stuff just need be harder to obtain, and weaker more available. About hated phase ships, they are only useful as main flagship, mostly because their AI, which is almost always afraid, or get suicidal, Doom can blowup ally or self with mines, they only useful in player hands, so I treat them like some sort of unique ship which is used mostly as diversion unit.

And alot people says what nerfing is easer to do that buffing, main reason why I against that is what combat already feels like a slow slugfest, slow ships always being kited by faster ships, it will make make it even slower. Again skill issue, AI can't properly use new zero flux bonus from Helmsmapship, when Quality Captains mod come out I immediately switched over.

And again, culprit is the skill system, not only what it not very interesting, and rather limiting, and often it gives too big bonuses, especially Derelict Contingent or such, it gives more mines to so much hated here Doom, interesting everybody consider that perfectly balanced, and hate High-Tech only.

[SCC]

And again, culprit is the skill system, not only what it not very interesting, and rather limiting, and often it gives too big bonuses, especially Derelict Contingent or such, it gives more mines to so much hated here Doom, interesting everybody consider that perfectly balanced, and hate High-Tech only.

No one complains about Derelict Contingent anymore, because everyone already acknowledged it as OP and there's no further discussion to be had.

[Kahnmir]

No, because whenever something rears its ugly head in need of a nerf, it tends to be an outlier. You fix the outliers, at least those that contribute against a postive game experience and reinforce bad player behavior. Or whatever the developer doesn't want the player to be doing. If there's still "powercreep" after some buffs/nerfs, then the changes were insufficient. That's another matter.

That's just your opinion. How do you decide what is a positive game experience?

There's no need to dramatize. Not every one of us complains absolutely all the time whenever anything happens. There is a point where complaints can be minimized. It is the job of the developer to recognize feedback that matters and find their own way to deal with complaints that they could never resolve.

Its not melodrama, I've seen this *** in League of Legends; it was utterly bizzare to see a champion get nerfed into the ground and disappear from the meta only to reappear YEARS later because all the other champions got nerfed to the point where they became viable again. It was nuts. There were several instances of that, and I came to the conclusion that just mindlessly hitting things with the nerf bat was just bad game design.

I'm not saying Alex is dumb enough to fall into that pattern, but someone has to counterbalance the guys ranting about how much they hate high-tech, now THAT is being overly dramatic.

Balance is an iterative process. Things can be the same for years, and developers can suddenly feel the desire for change due to a change in focus over time. The best thing about this game is that it is terribly easy to open up the ship csvs and do whatever balance changes anyone could ever want. The question is, does Alex design and balance the game around what he feels, or what we feel? And to what degree of both? For the most part, I don't get personally attached to elements of the game, especially a game in development, mind. Things *will* change. It's a matter of what and when (and how). I always trust Alex to make the correct decisions, whether it is the next patch, the patch next year, or the game's final update. That's the beauty of a game in development. There's always time to do additional adjustment; nothing is set in stone.

I'm not here to argue that no changes need to be made, nor that there are not times where nerfs are appropriate. But I am trying to argue that this particular situation needs a chisel not a jackhammer. Overcorrection seems to be the industry standard, and its lame.

That's not powercreep. Powercreep is when player strength outpaces the challenge that the game can provide. Imagine if every ship was buffed so they could solo doritos and remnant fleets like a doom can. That is powercreep. Anyone that has played mmos or arpgs for a significant amount of the game's lifetime has witnessed powercreep in action.

I'm not going to argue over the meaning of words, you either understood what I was saying or you didn't. Powercreep is a broad enough term that it can be used for what I'm describing.

Ah yes, of course. Because we have no active examples of weaker choices getting buffed. Definitely not an entire blog post about it.

No, it has to be completely one way or the other: either everything gets buffed, or everything gets nerfed.

I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.

[Yunru]

I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.

But I spec'd into passive aggression!?

You proposed a scenario where high tech gets nerfed, so midline stood out, so midline got nerfed, so low tech stood out, etc ad infinitum.

Such a scenario only works in the case of balance only being obtained via debuffs, rather than the mix of buffs and debuffs we have repeatedly seen to be used.

[intrinsic_parity]

It's not like the only outcome from a nerf is that the nerfed item is no longer usable. It's possible to nerf something and still have it be viable (or even good).

Also, I think multiplayer games tend to have more extreme balance conversations because people can get very emotional about what they dislike (particularly playing against it in more competitive games), and sometimes they want to see things they don't like nerfed into the ground rather than balanced. It doesn't need to be that way, you can want to nerf things without fundamentally hating them.

I want to see the doom reigned in because it's not just strong, it trivializes many aspects of combat. The whole optimization aspect of the game is kinda tainted because the honest best answer is always doom, or maybe zigg.

I don't hate high tech or want to see all high tech ships nerfed.

[Tartiflette]

Multiplayer games have way worse balancing than singleplayer! "Here is this month's new gun that is way better than everything else, also you have to buy the season pass to get it, and all its pretty skins are $20 each". "Look at this tank, isn't it good looking? It's also the best tank at it's rank, only for 75.961 totally-not-real-money-coins."

[Locklave]

I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.

But I spec'd into passive aggression!?

You proposed a scenario where high tech gets nerfed, so midline stood out, so midline got nerfed, so low tech stood out, etc ad infinitum.

Such a scenario only works in the case of balance only being obtained via debuffs, rather than the mix of buffs and debuffs we have repeatedly seen to be used.

He's also ignoring the fact that the nerfs are extremely targeted at specific problematic ships and not all high tech ships. Apogee for example is not on the hit list just because it's High tech. The ones making attempts to paint it as nerfs to all high tech ships are the people building straw men in here.

I spec'd passive reckless.

[Kahnmir]

I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.

But I spec'd into passive aggression!?

You proposed a scenario where high tech gets nerfed, so midline stood out, so midline got nerfed, so low tech stood out, etc ad infinitum.

Such a scenario only works in the case of balance only being obtained via debuffs, rather than the mix of buffs and debuffs we have repeatedly seen to be used.

No. No such condition exists. I never stated it in my scenario, nor do I accept it. That is something you came up with on your own, and you have not made an argument on that would be the case; sure, buffs can change the equation, but they do not necessarily invalidate the scenario.

He's also ignoring the fact that the nerfs are extremely targeted at specific problematic ships and not all high tech ships. Apogee for example is not on the hit list just because it's High tech. The ones making attempts to paint it as nerfs to all high tech ships are the people building straw men in here.

I spec'd passive reckless.

I'm sorry, but if I recall the blog post was titled "a tale of two tech levels" not "a tale of specific problematic ships." Perhaps I have missed a forum post somewhere, but Alex hasn't been particularly clear on how many high tech ships are getting nerfed.

You are assuming an awful lot about my position; which is, has been, and always will be that flat nerfs are not a great balancing tool and should not always be the first resort.
I am, for instance OK with the tempest changes, they sound OK on paper, but we will have to wait and see.

I spec'd "get wrecked"

[robepriority]

Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This is the position in question, which seems quite similar to how Yunru understood it.

The blog post has most of it's content covering low tech mechanical and roster buffs - the one hightech nerf is a mechanical change that expands gameplay options.

Nothing in the blogpost suggests excessive flat stat nerfing.

[Retry]

Yeah... maybe before saying you've never said X, make sure you've never said X.

[Kahnmir]

Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This is the position in question, which seems quite similar to how Yunru understood it.

The blog post has most of it's content covering low tech mechanical and roster buffs - the one hightech nerf is a mechanical change that expands gameplay options.

Nothing in the blogpost suggests excessive flat stat nerfing.

Yeah, and Yunru inserted the idea that some how buffs invalidate the entire thesis, when I didn't mention them at all in said thesis.

Look, I think things will be OK -probably, I think that giving low-tech more options is a good way to go about it, but people are right to be nervous when Alex makes comments about using the nerf bat. Its doesn't exactly envision a subtle approach to to a nuanced problem.

Yeah... maybe before saying you've never said X, make sure you've never said X.

Yeah... maybe get some reading comprehension skills.

did I upset some kind of clique here? Is there some forum saint that I've questioned that no one is allowed to question?

[DownTheDrain]

did I upset some kind of clique here? Is there some forum saint that I've questioned that no one is allowed to question?

I wouldn't know about cliques, but some of your comments felt pretty hostile so I'm not surprised that you were replied to in kind.
Not that you're the only one of course, this whole thread could do with a few hugs.