Nerf in this context translates as "turn a real weapon into a toy weapon". Same concept applies to any item in a game that gets "Nerfed" by the Dev's.)
EQ examples: Circlet of Shadow versus Circlet of Shadows, or "Original" Manastone versus "Nerfed" Manastone, or Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher ~ the quest to get one was removed shortly after the release of Shadows of Luclin.
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If an item is found to be too powerful, it should....
Some examples:
What say you on "Nerfed" items?
If an item is found to be too powerful, it should be changed. All existing items should also be changed. It makes 0 sense to deem an item too powerful, but allow for people to keep theirs.
When news comes out of a particularly good item. Or a new way to utilize an item that is considered game changing, players should be aware of the potential possibility of that item being nerfed. Amd excise caution when deciding to farm or purchase said item.
Most of the items nerfed in original eq were nerfed for good reason. The only one I thought was silly was fungi staff, but I could see why they did it.
It's been discussed several times on these forums in the past ~7 years, but..
IMO:
If an item, skill, spell, object, or similar is unbalanced, overpowered, underpowered, or for whatever reason requires a change/removal? Then all versions of it should be changed/removed, past, present, and future.
Objectively, to do otherwise means there is a lack of integrity somewhere in the process.
And I'll be happy to say it, so my opinion is clear: History has shown that the manner in which the EQ1 team handled some of these situations (especially from Launch to GoD) was a mistake, and should not be repeated.
Personally I really liked the original EQ teams way of handling things. There were a lot of items that weren't imbalanced but just didn't work quite as intended that I thought were really cool to let players who earned them keep the original functional item like Guise of the Deceiver or Rubicite armor.
As always, we strive to avoid making negative changes to items that already exist in game. However, there are cases where a particularly unbalancing error has been made where the item in question must be fixed in interest of maintaining game balance.
"A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations." The fact that items are still to this day being nerfed on classic EMU servers, some twenty years after their release date, says a lot more than I could on the subject.
Change them all. No sense having two versions. EQ did this - some stuff was pulled, some stuff was changed after a certain date, some stuff only worked in some zones, etc.
I think the issue is if someone pays big bucks in game for an item then you nerf it, they could get really mad and quit.
To me it depends on how much effort was put in to get the item. If I spent 500 hours working on getting an item, got it, then it got changed I'd be a little upset. Maybe there could be a way to make up for it if an item a player has already earned gets changed. Not sure what could make up for it though :)
Change it to what it should have been. All versions for all people. An OP item isn't fair to the mobs and part of the VR/Mob collective bargaining agreement requires that the mobs have a fair chance to win.
If it was really hard to get - give the player some equivilant value to make up for the reduction in the item's value but that shouldn't be an issue unless VR is really slow to make the "correction".
stellarmind said: none of the above. keep the item the way it is and slap a fat juicy thicc cooldown on that bad boy. equipped items have a duration in which they can be wielded plus cooldown timer. always made me sad when they nerfed something into the ground. it should be looked at with a boon in disguise for future designs. im a simple man and if its something i love and understand, ill be a happy man. why sap the fun out of a cool item? just limit how often it can be used.
Putting a cooldown on an item that previously didn't, could be seen the same way as changing the item entirely. It's the same concept as the above suggestions and essentially falls into the category of changing the item and all past present and future drops.
On a sidenote, MMORPGs are constantly changing. And the playerbase needs to understand that. Wanting some form of compensation for time spent farming an item that was later nerfed would be the same as wanting compensation for playing a class that was nerfed, everything you do, you should do with caution.
Besides the only times you would spend a massive amount of time farming 1 item would be if it was absurdly rare, in which case you shouldn't need to nerf it, or if it was massively contested, which should send flags to any experienced gamer about the potential future of the item.
IMO:
Change is expected, anticipated, and welcomed in this context.
And you're right, the compensation angle is.. not ideal. Provided people can re-make choices within the existing framework, with respect to Mastery points or similar, I don't think compensation is the right path forward.
Provided the changes are global, universal, immediate, retroactive, permanent and fair, make all the changes you want. :)
Much of the reasons cited in this thread are why I'm a big proponent of temporal/reasonable global caps/limits on ~everything, as a safety net for designers. So the " moss covered twig + haste " scenario (or similar) can't happen again.
Let's face it. Alot of items get nerfed because someone discovers a combination of somethings though experimentation or random luck, and someone else blabs about it because they're jealous or whatever. If they just kept quiet it would not get nerfed. However, often the someone else is a Dev incognito, so, fair play there.
Thing is, if it is a huge advantage it will get noticed so you would have to use discipline to not use it all that often and be careful who inspects you when you are using it because someone will notice and will naturally ask in the spirit of comeraderie especially if they are the same class.
@porygon dun do me durdy like that ;0 the spirit of the item should still remain intact i should define it a bit more say i got a helmet that lets me breathe underwater and increases my perception underwater passively. a dungeon release involving not choking on water. this helmet all of a sudden becomes op in this scenario. instead of redesigning the item or dungeon, like completely removing underwater breathing effect, say i can equip it for 5 min on a 15 min cooldown and cant be equipped again. this prevents gear swapping still feels passivey if it was something really powerful like a gave everyone in my party water breathing for 15 mins pre end game water choking raid, u can still maintain its amazing usage by slapping a 24hour cooldown on it, that way i cab make money farming this one item so raids will have 30 of these bad boys :D
hell if it becomes a core thing to have underwater breathing for some dark myr raid boss, u can even have it where the raid boss has a special interaction with the item! "hoh your raid was smart enough to bring underwater breathing helmet of bubble bobble huh? very well!" tadah trigger special event :D
ya know what instead of changing the item,
have it where the raid boss lets u use the item, but the he destroys it from the inventory :D
kilsin will be proud i figured out how to edit posts on mobile hahah.
Remove these items from the game. Locking such relics in a HUGE museum far away in a neutral place for all eternity. Visitors can stroll through these vast halls in wonder and fear. Cowering in the terrible shadows cast by devastating creations of such super duper immense powah. The museum will be warded with the glyph "42" and be open to the public Monday thru Wednesday 10 to 4 and every other Saturday 10 to 2.
Honestly, if an item is deemed too powerful then it should be brought in line with everything else and changes should be made to new drops and existing ones as well. I don't think that completely removing an item is good practice unless it is just so beyond broken that it needs to happen.
I don't really mind seeing powerful items drop as they can be fun to play around with. Typically the only time I see people complaining about overpowered items is when it affects PvP, races to world-first kills, or it's just insanely broken that it undermines content. I personally don't believe it is a good idea to balance around PvP if your game's main focus is a PvE experience. I also don't really care about world first races. While I don't mind some friendly competition the game shouldn't be turned into an E-sports-like event. The last point is probably the only time that I would complain about an item being overpowered. If an item is drastically undermining your content, or it's allowing players the ability to do insanely game-breaking things then the item needs to redesigned or in extreme cases removed.
This post has been promoted as part of my CM content, please continue the discussion while abiding by the guidelines :)
"Hot Topic - Nerfed Items, what say you? Join our community discussion on nerfing items, examples given in the community members original post found here https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/12952/quot-nerfed-quot-items #MMORPG #CommunityMatters"
Kilsin said:This post has been promoted as part of my CM content, please continue the discussion while abiding by the guidelines :)
"Hot Topic - Nerfed Items, what say you? Join our community discussion on nerfing items, examples given in the community members original post found here https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/12952/quot-nerfed-quot-items #MMORPG #CommunityMatters"
You know that feeling you get when you pass a cop and he pulls put behind you even when you didn't do anything wrong. That's how I felt about this thread when I saw kilsin posted lmao
Little did I know how wrong I was.
This scenario shows why testing is so important. Nerfing items, spells, abilities shows a lack of testing/planning/vision. When it happens it's important that the devs make an announcement...hey we screwed up...(we're only human) and make the change globally. There should not be any "pre-nerfed" things in game.