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.
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.
Your 'thesis' doesn't mention buffs because the existence of a nontrivial number of buffs straight up disproves it by contradicting any notion of an endless cycle of nerfs, and your claim that buffs don't "necessarily invalidate" said thesis is nothing but petulance.
Were it modified to describe the actual past and predicted scenario of some things getting nerfs and some things getting buffs (not even necessarily in the same amounts), it would have read like:
High-tech gets nerfed and low-tech gets buffed, then... then what? Is midline still the predicted outlier, or low tech? Or do they end up balanced with each other and HT is now the outlier in the other direction, so HT gets buffed and nothing gets nerfed? And after we've applied this cycle of balance changes, the endless nerfs prediction diverges even further from what actually happens.
Somehow a cycle of "some things get nerfs and some thing get buffs" hardly sounds as horrific as a cycle of things only getting nerfed.
Well, if Yunru had (politely) made this argument I may have conceded that he had a point and just taken my ball and gone home; because my original statement did not factor in buffs at all and was assumed a very specific scenario which I will admit I did not elaborate on much. Quite frankly I didn't expect it to cause people to lose their *** minds otherwise I would have. But instead he just said my statement was disproved by the existence of buffs (which do not, and you're wrong about this) without making an argument. Given how rude you are and how I've also been rudely dogpiled, I will instead point out the flaws in your thinking as a middle finger to you in particular, and I will do so in excruciating detail, also as a middle finger to you, in particular.
So first some givens:
* Alex has made a few offhand comments about nerfing hightech outside of the blog post not all of which I have seen, but as far as I know, he has only gone into specifics about the tempest and has not been very clear on how other nerfs will be approached
* I am not and have never made comments about dooms, which seems to be the source of a lot of this.... hatred. I was not evaluating them in my thesis because I frankly just don't *** use them. I am much more concerned with ships like the tempest and the playstyle of high-tech in general, which could very easily be made garbage if not handled gently.
* This thesis deals primarily with flat nerfs/buffs, I have already said I approve of the tempest changes, and have argued for sidegrade changes
* My main concern is not that nerfs are never warranted, but that they are frequently overdone, also I am really concerned why so many people seem to HATE hightech and are emotionally invested in doing so, as is illustrated by how out of control this discussion is getting.
*perfect balance is unachievable. Some things will simply always be better than others.
Thesis version 2.0 "I'm actually trying this time." or "why you're wrong and your father was a hamster" edition, if you prefer.
Games can get into a cycle of endless nerfs because in many way "power" or how good something is in the game is relative amongst the game elements. In otherwords, a ship is only good or bad depending on how good or bad it is relative to other ships. This causes changes in numbers to have an affect similar to squeezing a waterballoon, wherein if you squeeze it, the water simply shifts. likewise, the relative "power" of the ships changes, Ergo when something gets worse, something else gets better, even though only the nerfed ship is changed.
Regarding how buffs affect this, There are two scenarios to consider them under; which is where your thinking does not work because you seem to consider buffs under both scenario's simultaneously, which does not work and is contradictory.
Scenario 1
if we theorize that flat buffs = flat nerfs in their impact on the game, then the according to the theory the cycle simply gets shifted, since you are still just squeezing the waterballoon.
spelling it out for you: the relative strength of the ship is still changed, and making something better makes something else worse. Essentially, because the "power" is all relative it turns into something of a zero-sum game. This is what you almost understood from my original thesis, and made some decent points regarding it, mainly that buffs can potentially counter nerfs. but this is very difficult to do if you are simply shifting the waterballoon (now you're squeezing two points of the waterballoon!) rather than making a structural change.
But because you are petulant or simply wanted to score internet points (or both), you moved the goalpost and shifted to:
Scenario 2: buffs =/= nerfs
In this scenario it is theorized that buffs fulfill a different role from nerfs, and is where the idea that buffs cause powercreep most likely comes from.
This gets really complicated because you have to go into specifics about how nerfs and buffs actually interact with each other, if at all. But I've run out of patience and time though so wrapping this up:
Scenario 1 does not disprove the thesis at all. But you seem to want it both ways in your assertion that buffs somehow disprove my thesis.
Bonus:
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."
Imagine having an entire blog post and still trying to read deep meaning into a Literary Reference title.
Do you talk to people like this IRL? Perhaps you're a Sperg? Would explain a lot.
Anyway, Think I'm done with this thread, too many of you are just here to score internet points rather than have a discussion.
