Why do live service games only Nerf?

The finals

I quit Siege but still follow the content creators, you’re right it’s so exhausting constantly having nerfs. Siege made some decent changes recently, but overall there are so many Ops that aren’t worth using compared to better ops

I so agree with more nerfs than buffs. We get better at the game, everything gets buffed with us. Yhe nail that sticks out gets the hammer, and it's far easier to nerf one feature vs trying to buff 9 others to meet it.

I’d rather balance. Overpowered is fun at first, then it gets old quick. Remember launch Blackbeard, Lion, Ela? Overpowered and not fun to play against. This creates a stale game where one side will not have fun anymore.

Developer adds a character. In ubisoft's case, an obviously overtuned one (I believe that's intentional at this point).

Then they wait until people overuse it and promote the overtune ("don't play it of you dont like it, bro") so there's a massive discord (that's marketing).

Then they nerf it back to stone age, and add another. Repeat the cycle.

Weird when you make attackers have to take unfair fights they will struggle love it or hate it frags kept the defense honest

Its a hard thing to balence and fun is always whats important in a game for me. Nerfs can be good but some feel unnecessary. Twitch and zofia are a good example with recoil. I mainly play on console but i love booting up my pc just to play twitch and zof because the recoil aint as noticable. Solace and fenrir both need a nerf in my opinion but not in the way ubi is looking at. So players and devs will always disagree on changes made to help the game sacrificing enjoyment.

making it impossible to cook nades is just shit. idc about any reasoning behind it.

Who playing siege again xd Come xdefiant lmao

The game has to be fun above all else, I think any buff or nerf has to bear that in mind. That said in Siege’s case they really do need to give attack a blanket buff like more clock time or reverting nade cooking.

Easier to drop 1 rather than buff the total, but I agree nerfs feel bad. Warframe does tend to buff buff buff but also it's PvE

I think part of is that, if a character is overperforming, its generally easier to nerf them compared to buffing multiple operators without also making the buffed ones overpicked, nerfing is generally less disruptive

I always wondered that too.

The reason to nerf is just to sell the new content and keep the powercreep in balance. You just need to look at cardgames like heartstone, where balancing is a bigger problem at all.

R6 should buff some operators/take the nerfs back again, because they wouldnt be this good anymore, when the new one exists.
I always change my main-defender, because they nerf him/her. Some nerfs are fine, but some just sucks. Sometimes its destroying the whole theme of the operator.
I want the shotgun back on mozzie.

I think in valorants case it's a good desicion, because you can't switch your agents between rounds but what I like in siege is that if your enemy plays someone and is pretty good with that operator like in a Blitz rush you can adapt and play lesion. same with old blackbeard, jackal and montagne. they have all good counters and that is what separates good from bad players. buff their counters and let the player make the strategies

Tactical shooter LmAo valorant is just Fortnite without building ability

Simple:

People are stupid enough to only use the broken shit or make things broken as shit, nobody enjoys the game for fun, they only exploit and ruin the game for everyone else.

This is a HUGE problem with the two best new games right now, Helldivers 2 and The Finals. It is very confusing because the player bases are frustrated with all the nerfs

As a company once said,
It’s Nerf or nothing…

so what your saying is Nokk needs her Silent step back.

i think the devs are (mostly) right with this one. As for example siege, the defenders have to be nerfed, hell no do the attackers have to be buffed.

Imo looking at the amount of nerfs and buffs is wrong, what matters is resulting state of the game. if something's OP it affects the state of the game in a negative way and it has to be changed. It's ok to have 10, 100, or 1000 nerfs in a patchnote or in 10 patchnotes in a row, and it's ok to have as many buffs, what's important is the resulting state. It doesn't matter how many nerfs siege devs do, what matters is do their changes make the game better.

The comment that I really felt was the valorant dev saying that they nerf so that abilities aren't too impactful. I've always felt that hero shooters are best in their infant stages and that they always end up turning into cookie cutter games where abilities don't matter and the dev basically said that was intentional. I don't understand why they have this mindset that people choose to play class based games to have the classes not matter. I would love a siege like game with almost no guns but still first person. I love the idea of so many moba games where abilities are your entire loadout so changing characters completely changes the game but don't like the top down click to move playstyle.

Maybe there should be a tactical fps game that is bare bones and simple? None of the fancy character abilities or extravagant designs. Ready Or Not is a good example of this and is successful to say the least.

Cod has this problem. Every gun feels awful

comment of all "TIME" 5/23 1834

im fine with nerfs as long as they are warranted example lion on release needed nerfs but sledge didnt need to lose his smg and become a 3 armor it didnt feel bad being killed by a sledge so why change him

I know no one is seeing this but can you make a vid on afk farms, they ruined ranked

Helldivers 2 has had a HUGE issue with over-nerfing primary weapons and idk why but it seems like devs are more interested in balancing rather than fun (balancing less important for HD2 as it is pve not pvp)

I'd love to see more buffs in siege but the problem is the community just complain about everything. Like when they reworked shields and made them feel much better people were saying shields were "OP" and required no skill. Remember the time when they gave ying her candela back and everyone lost their minds.

1. Lower the noise suppression for your mic
2. I get the point but sometimes especially with siege since it's the only game live service i play they make somethings i don't understand fundamentally, like the rework to nades
3. You need as a developer to make parameters to every category of things (characters. Weapons. Gadgets) to the potential of it and the possibilities.

In my opinion for people to fall in love with siege again this is what needs to happen: No more ability nerfs. Abilities and their interactions are a huge part of the identity. Instead, nerf the killing potential of all guns. Increase recoil dramatically, especially when moving and lower magazine counts to limit random prefires. We should be trying to increase the duration of gunfights. Slow down movement speed as well. Focus should be on creating new gadgets like ladders, battering rams, ammo boxes, etc. Introduce new destruction maybe full floor or even roof entry points etc. New maps that mimic real life locations like police stations, court house, malls, airports, churches, etc. not this cheesy bat cave crap. Focus on single player/ co op content instead of map training and all that boring stuff. Bring back night variants and even add other map modifiers to make games different. Rotate hostage into ranked or a completely different mode. It's just sad the lack of creativity in gaming and we the consumers let them get away with it because we are so concerned about our rank and buying cosmetics that we refuse to hold them accountable and play something else or not buy anything. The game is 9 years old things need to be changing more and if you want to onboard new players then make a new freaking game that we all go back to square 1 on.

I would say I understand , but when ya nerf a character to the point that the community even stopped playing them, i think its time for either 1. a full rework, or 2. Buff them.... prime example everyone can come to a consensus that on siege, blackbeard was wildly popular , but op so they nerfed, and nerfed, and nerfed, and nerfed, and nerfed, and nerfed, and now 1 bullet breaks shield, teammates bullets can break shield, he has no situation where he has an advantage, "well he can survive 1 shot for free" but his guns don't allow him time to survive and fight, ya got the assault rifle with what 25 bullets? I think, Dmg isnt insane, and reload takes forever, His single-shot has good dmg but low fire rate, also ends up screwing him when he is going against guns with high rates of fire. So in alot of cases Ela, Twitch, Ash, Nerfed bc they were op to the point of challange, needed nerfs, blackbeard nerfed so hard that he is no longer a viable options, gadget sucks, guns suck compared to other operators, his shield makes him slow, have to manually reload with his shield, i mean its just so bad

It doesn’t explain why some operators like Nøkk are so bad after nerfs. Giving her a 2.5x would be a very minor buff, but make her at least somewhat better. Still, probably irrelevant.

I feel like Fortnite’s recent meta/balancing is a good example of power creep negatively affecting the gameplay, the bolt sniper and auto shotgun have dominated the meta despite any attempts to make viable alternatives and there is constantly a mythic/special item in rotation that is broken.

i think elas scorpion should be buffed to do more damage than all smg im pretty sure its the longest smg in the game so it should shoot them 9mm at a higher velocity

Even besides all the fun factors this is a definitely a bad answer to the balancing dilemms for tactical hero shooters as abilities are MEANT TO MAKE THE GAME MORE TACTICAL. Needless to say it works especially bad for Siege, but for other types of games in general buffing counters and less powerful options gives players MORE GAMEPLAY OPTIONS OVERALL which literally balances out the roster and gameplay options more often than unnecessarily nerfing tons of things will, as it often takes away/weakens gameplay options making the rosters power less spreadout and therefore balanced.

And that's why siege became just shooter.

I think live service games nowadays only release less and lesser content than it was lmao

I mean, they could just buff stuff with MODERATION. I don't think that is so damn hard to do, all they have to do is literally use their creative minds little bit. Same goes with the nerfs, they don't have to make things "unfunny" to use and completely rubbish. I think it is just lazy, to say that "if we buffed every agent/operator, then the gameplay / gunplay would suffer." It will not suffer if you guys buff and nerf stuff with moderation, not by making huge leaps or removing stuff. I think Operation Deadly Omen is a great example of this, they brought good old acog's back to Siege, but there's a twist, we can't aim as fast with those sights like back in 2016-2017. They don't have to remove the whole damn thing from the game. If something doesn't actually work like Ash's flashbangs or the SMG11, or Jäger and Bandit's acog from Siege, they could just rework the stuff they use, or the whole character. Yes, it takes time and hard work and resources, but it is essential for the game. I'm pretty sure there is not a single person on this planet, that does not appreciate hard work put on to something. I think, that if they remove stuff from games - that will make the gameplay suffer more, than those things being in the game. It is the game developers duty to make it balanced, but also their duty that the game remains fun to play. It is not the gamer's fault that something is broken, so don't punish the gamer about it.

I blame pro league

Live service. Mechanics in BG3 and Cyberpunk was nerfed and they're single player games.

I hear and understand the dev. It makes sense the way he puts it, yet I can't find the fun. From experience as a player, every time a game tries to nerf things out it just end up being the most boring and predictable gameplay. It's often times a downgrade from what it was. I've especially felt it on R6S. CSGO might have been the least problematic one I've ever played, I don't remember if there even were balancing patches?

Also my biggest argument would be that say Bo2 or BF4 lasted fairly long and barely had any changes outside of new content. Had fun for years on these games and yet nothing was ever changed. I never had that moment of logging on after a long day, hop in a jet and realize that I'm now shooting blanks. In modern days live services I log on to play my fav weapon just to see how bad it's gotten. R6S took it a bit further by not only nerfing but removing core mechanics that I really enjoyed, but that's another debate.

What my takeaway is, is not everything needs to be E-Sport ready. Prioritize fun. If people can't do tournaments based off fun then fuck 'em.

They are way to many operators that are barley usable in siege, there is just no reason to play them/they have better alternatives, specially on the attacker side.

Sledge -> ram or buck
Glaz -> kali or any dmr tbf
Zero -> any intel

And some are barley usable or have just no good use cases imo:

Blackbeard
Nøkk
Zofia (1 speed to slow)

And probably many others as well

While i do like the slow and tactical approach and i do understand the nerf mindset for longterm game health, Ubisoft can't use these arguments if they keep adding better alternative operators and leaving the original hanging.

Also they keep lowering hard to learn techniques, ofc that makes the barrier to enter way lower but also ruins the skill progression.

And my last point:
Ranked 2.0 is an absolute joke, eveyone starting at the bottom is just an illusion, if you solo que in your first ranked match while being a diamond in the season before you're not gonna get someone who's playing their first copper match.
Or at least you shouldn't

We heavily need placement matches back. Since we already have a visible and a invisible mmr...

Ranked is no fun. "Starting over" every season just to climb back to platin or emerald or even higer is no fun. It makes the progression in your skill feel less valuable.

I'd rather get placed platinum after my placement matches and fight my way into Emerald instead of going from copper all the way into plat and then maybe get into emerald.

The only nerf we need is to limit the turn rate for mouse uses and that’s it everything else it fair game

Yeah, all the nerfs took the fun out of many of the favorite characters in Siege. Especially removing passive abilities that were unique to some characters. It was made to "streamline" the game more but all it did was to make the game more bland and the same all over. Nerfing away abilities, powerful characteristics and even the environments have just made every match the same. The price of balancing too much is that there are no outliers in players knowing different strategies. Every strategy becomes the same and it's just rinse and repeat. Earlier years in Siege you could see many different strategies due to many players learning some new cool ways of playing that game and synergize between characters and gear, but now, since everything is basically the same every match, it gets boring after just a few matches.

I see the point of it, and i don't mind it that much.
But i really really wish if those nerfs and buffs would serve to shake things up.
i'm pretty sure that in every live service game there are like 4-5 characters who never EVER change their tier or popularity after nerfes or buffs
be it on the top or bottom end

it can become really stale and boring when even after nerfs you still see the same 5 characters being played because people might cry about how they destroyed their precious thing,
but they are still so strong that they remain head and shoulders above everyone else in the roster.

I want these changes to shake up the meta so that people are forced to learn new things, forced to learn that x character is now a threat that you have to adapt to and not just minor changes where the same character you perfectly know is now SLIGHTLY weaker but does the same thing so you play the same way against it.

This video summed up hell divers 2 balancing perfectly, coreross absolutely nailed it.

Almost like a balancing fatigue and heavy dose of confirmation bias from the community of a live service games.

Unfortunately when you nerf things more than you buff things you essentially reverse power creep your game.
For example, In Rainbow Six Siege assault rifles used to have fast ads speeds, really high damages, and low recoil, smg's were faster firing with lower damage, and LMG's were considered meme weapons that you'd use to throw. High damage medium fire rate guns with slow ads time and reload speeds, after a few nerfs to the ads speeds and angled grip, LMG's were just slightly slower than assault rifles with a bigger magazine and more damage. This then led to the LMG's becoming stronger than the Assault rifles and they were eventually nerfed. Rinse and repeat this a few times and now the secondary smg's and the BOSG previously a meme weapon is becoming very powerful.