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Sunday, January 7, 2018

Nerfing OP skills in single player games. What are your opinions?

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  3. Nerfing OP skills in single player games. What are your opinions?
St0rmFury  Malaysia1 week ago#1
So I read about The Witcher devs removing a potion's ability to restore health while using stamina draining skills. (yea, I know I'm super late) So players essentially become invincible by popping that potion and start doing that sword whirlwind dance into a group of enemies. 

Imo, it's kinda justified if the feature is clearly not what the devs intended and will literally shoehorn the majority of players into this broken build.
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Stalolin 1 week ago#2
Agreed.
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Frolex 1 week ago#3
if it's extremely OP, a nerf is probably for the best. Although every now and then it can be fun to rofl stomp a game with blatantly broken characters, like pre-nerf knight enchanter and tempest in DA:I
gunplagirl 1 week ago#4
Extremely broken things like invincibility or infinite combos or infinite money, totally agreed. Nerfing a near max level skill because it accidentally procs some bonus effect 25% of the time instead of 10%, not so much.
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Steve Nick 1 week ago#5
Pick-me-ups need a nerf in SMRPG.

They cost 4 gold and restore a party member to full HP from dead.
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St0rmFury  Malaysia1 week ago#6
gunplagirl posted...
Nerfing a near max level skill because it accidentally procs some bonus effect 25% of the time instead of 10%, not so much.

Sounds like Diablo 3 lol
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If they nerf the positives, they have to nerf the negatives too.

The FUGs was the most powerful greatsword in Dark Souls 3, one shotting almost every enemy and doing a crap ton to bosses. It needed 50 strength to wield and weighed 25 units.

They nerfed the damage by a lot but not the weight or strength requirements.
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Esrac 1 week ago#8
I'm in favor of it if the OP skills, classes, characters, etc really overshadow alternative choices. 

One of my few complaints about Baldur's Gate is how much Mages and Sorcerors eclipse the other classes.
gunplagirl posted...
Extremely broken things like invincibility or infinite combos or infinite money, totally agreed. Nerfing a near max level skill because it accidentally procs some bonus effect 25% of the time instead of 10%, not so much.

this
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gunplagirl 1 week ago#10
St0rmFury posted...
gunplagirl posted...
Nerfing a near max level skill because it accidentally procs some bonus effect 25% of the time instead of 10%, not so much.

Sounds like Diablo 3 lol

I was thinking of a hack and slash game similar to it. Though I guess diablo IS multiplayer and whatnot. But darn it the player base already knows how to break the game.
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synth_real 1 week ago#11
Esrac posted...
I'm in favor of it if the OP skills, classes, characters, etc really overshadow alternative choices. 

One of my few complaints about Baldur's Gate is how much Mages and Sorcerors eclipse the other classes.

I get you on that, but that's a problem with AD&D itself, and I don't think they were even allowed to change the rules that significantly. I've totally used Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, and Improved Alacrity to blast out my entire spellbook in one Time Stop before, it's even more hilarious when you fill your level 7 spell slots with Project Images so you can do that 5 times in a row, and then Wish rest to get all your spells back and do it again
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gunplagirl 1 week ago#12
synth_real posted...
Esrac posted...
I'm in favor of it if the OP skills, classes, characters, etc really overshadow alternative choices. 

One of my few complaints about Baldur's Gate is how much Mages and Sorcerors eclipse the other classes.

I get you on that, but that's a problem with AD&D itself, and I don't think they were even allowed to change the rules that significantly. I've totally used Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, and Improved Alacrity to blast out my entire spellbook in one Time Stop before, it's even more hilarious when you fill your level 7 spell slots with Project Images so you can do that 5 times in a row, and then Wish rest to get all your spells back and do it again


That's ALMOST enough to one turn kill a great wyrm prismatic dragon.
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I prefer the Disgaea approach to balance. If something is overpowered, you don't nerf it. You just buff everything else, every other skill, and every enemy so it becomes the new standard. Eventually you get enemies with stats in the hundreds of billions
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i'm still pissed that Bioware felt the need for some reason to nerf Spirit Blade in the DA: Inquisition single player campaign.
Balrog0 1 week ago#16
I think it's a really good idea. I feel like people underestimate how game breaking something like this can be for someone who isn't already super into the game.

I haven't played the witcher to know if this is a good example, but the one that someone posted is:

Steve Nick posted...
Pick-me-ups need a nerf in SMRPG.

They cost 4 gold and restore a party member to full HP from dead.


it is actually really common in older games to see this. like there was an time in the 16-bit era when arcades were dying or something so developers decided to go way into the other direction and give a lot of games an unofficial easy mode button
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DuranOfForcena posted...
i'm still pissed that Bioware felt the need for some reason to nerf Spirit Blade in the DA: Inquisition single player campaign.

The knight-enchanter build was OP as hell. It's the only reason I ever attempted nightmare mode. After you flesh out your main skills it's like playing on easy mode with spongier enemies.
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weapon_d00d816 posted...
DuranOfForcena posted...
i'm still pissed that Bioware felt the need for some reason to nerf Spirit Blade in the DA: Inquisition single player campaign.

The knight-enchanter build was OP as hell. It's the only reason I ever attempted nightmare mode. After you flesh out your main skills it's like playing on easy mode with spongier enemies.

lol yeah, that's called PWNING
#19
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sylverlolol 1 week ago#20
I don't particularly care. Two biggest examples I can think of are this same Witcher 3 example in the OP and DA:I with the knight-enchanter that someone else mentioned

In both cases, though, I never used the builds because I found other stuff more fun so it never affected me. >.>
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Nerfs are a huge pet peeve of mine. I absolutely loathe them. I get used to something on way and then they ruin it(usually the case, they go overboard)and I hate change on top of that. 

Makes me miss the days when developers couldn't do that after a game was released. I've considered playing Dark Souls 3 a couple of times but when I heard they nerf shit all the time and they balance everything around pvp I have no interest in playing.
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kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#22
unless it's something that's extremely in-your-face and completely ruins the game from a balance perspective, leave it imo

if it requires exploring and learning the system mechanics, getting to break the game is a good reward. If it doesn't have an extremely significant effect, then it's fine to leave as a little bonus for people who notice it.
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specialkid8 1 week ago#23
If it's something that changes the way the game plays then it should be fixed. If it's just a random powerful weapon like that sniper rifle they nerfed in New Vegas or something like the ogma infinium glitch that people can exploit just let them use it; it's their game to play.
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apocalyptic_4 posted...
Naw I enjoyed playing as a powerful bloodmage in Dragon age origins.

Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage is where it's at

and adding Battlemage in Awakening
pinky0926 1 week ago#26
The only time this annoys me is when devs ignore important balance issues but go out of their way to fix obscure exploits that are really just fun ways to break the game.

Ok cool so you fixed that really obscure and bizarre bug but what about the fact that it's impossible to be a mage in your RPG end game?
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zado19 1 week ago#27
St0rmFury posted...
So I read about The Witcher devs removing a potion's ability to restore health while using stamina draining skills. (yea, I know I'm super late) So players essentially become invincible by popping that potion and start doing that sword whirlwind dance into a group of enemies. 

Imo, it's kinda justified if the feature is clearly not what the devs intended and will literally shoehorn the majority of players into this broken build.

1000% disagree....

At best make it an option to turn off. They should be fixing stuff that don’t work not stuff that makes you OP. If it’s offline, it’s my choice imo to use OP shit or not
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SGT_Conti 1 week ago#28
kirbymuncher posted...
if it requires exploring and learning the system mechanics, getting to break the game is a good reward. If it doesn't have an extremely significant effect, then it's fine to leave as a little bonus for people who notice it.

That's how I feel. God Eater has some broken-ass bullets you can make, but it requires knowing how to use the editor (or using a guide) and even then, some of them require you to shoot in a very specific way or at a specific area.
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#29
(message deleted)
The one time I hated crap like this was in Borderlands 2. When they nerfed Zer0's damage, and yet they NEVER nerfed Salvador, only because Randy Pitchford favors him. Bull crap...
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Uncle_Drew 1 week ago#31
Frosted_Midna posted...
The one time I hated crap like this was in Borderlands 2. When they nerfed Zer0's damage, and yet they NEVER nerfed Salvador, only because Randy Pitchford favors him. Bull crap...

I never got to use the conference call + bee combo because it was patched before I got to it
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Tmk 1 week ago#32
It depends on the game.

For most games, I'm all for rebalancing, both buffs and nerfs. I like a game more, the better designed it is, and imbalance is bad design. It being single player isn't really relevant. It's about game quality and developer vision/intent, that's all.

However, there are some games that do not really merit nerfs, like really open-ended, freeform/sandbox types of games. Bethesda games for example. Nerfing OP stuff in a game like Skyrim would be dumb since first of all, Bethesda is just bad at game design period, anyone playing one of their games just has to accept that, and secondly the overall endgoal of such a game is to become a demigod anyway, and thirdly, it's a sandbox open-ended game. The more choices of how to play the better.

The specific example with Witcher 3 I'm fine with it. They clearly tried to put a lot of thought and complexity into the mechanics and it's perfectly fine for them to not want one thing to just so utterly trivialise everything else. Not like you can't still be very, very powerful in that game through a variety of different ways. But not quite "mindless invincibility" and that's fine.
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Uncle_Drew posted...
Frosted_Midna posted...
The one time I hated crap like this was in Borderlands 2. When they nerfed Zer0's damage, and yet they NEVER nerfed Salvador, only because Randy Pitchford favors him. Bull crap...

I never got to use the conference call + bee combo because it was patched before I got to it


It was pretty broken back then. You could farm Terramorphous with relative ease.
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Tmk 1 week ago#34
Salvador is just dumb all around. I'm not entirely sure if they didn't nerf him out of favor though, because it seemed more like just inept programming and them not knowing how to fix it. Because a lot of what makes Sal broken, is pure glitches, and IIRC they still exist to a lesser degree in The Pre-Sequel with Nisha's dual-wielding. It seemed to me like they just didn't know how to design dual-wielding guns without messing things up. But iunno...BL2 is really a reprehensible mess of imbalance and bad design choices. :/
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Notti 1 week ago#35
No, no.

All games should get nerfs (and buffs) as often as needed.

And, all games should balance the classes and weapons and skills around PVP exclusively.

"But what about single player campaign balance??" you ask.

Campaign should be balanced around that PVP core.

Bring on the nerfs! (and no, buffs shouldn't be more common than nerfs. If a house has a wooden board that is 2 inches too long, you don't alter the whole house, you cut that board down. You do nerfs and buffs as appropriate. Avoiding nerfs is bad)

"But what about single player only games?" 

IMO, all games are multiplayer to a degree. 

High score boards. Speed running. 

Two huge ways that games that seem to be just single player, can be turned into competitive games. Not even counting the more informal types of competition between friends.

And even ignoring all that, single player should encourage people to succeed with a variety of play styles. Playing an imbalanced game with some OP combination of skills and weapons that trump most other combinations just makes you feel like you're holding yourself back way too much if you don't do it. You have to play in such an artificial way sometimes to avoid the skill at times.

Fix the OP.

Tmk posted...
It depends on the game.

For most games, I'm all for rebalancing, both buffs and nerfs. I like a game more, the better designed it is, and imbalance is bad design. It being single player isn't really relevant. It's about game quality and developer vision/intent, that's all.

However, there are some games that do not really merit nerfs, like really open-ended, freeform/sandbox types of games. Bethesda games for example. Nerfing OP stuff in a game like Skyrim would be dumb since first of all, Bethesda is just bad at game design period, anyone playing one of their games just has to accept that, and secondly the overall endgoal of such a game is to become a demigod anyway, and thirdly, it's a sandbox open-ended game. The more choices of how to play the better.

The specific example with Witcher 3 I'm fine with it. They clearly tried to put a lot of thought and complexity into the mechanics and it's perfectly fine for them to not want one thing to just so utterly trivialise everything else. Not like you can't still be very, very powerful in that game through a variety of different ways. But not quite "mindless invincibility" and that's fine.


I think this is the best balanced view.
(edited 1 week ago)reportquote
charey 1 week ago#36
The problem with an OP skill in a single player game is that it renders every other option worthless and in some cases ruins any challenge the game has. 

Balance doesn’t need to be as tight in a single player game so letting something be a bit better then normal is fine just stay within reason.
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charey posted...
The problem with an OP skill in a single player game is that it renders every other option worthless


Which is why people only play on the easiest setting right?
Why in Fallout everyone* takes guns and choose an amoral play style?
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voldothegr8 1 week ago#39
It's bullshit and one of the big reasons I won't buy Blizzard games anymore, one of the biggest offenders of liberally swinging around the nerf hammer. "Oh the players found a fun build that nukes enemies? NERF IT TO THE GROUND!"
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pinky0926 1 week ago#40
Notti posted...
Tmk posted...
It depends on the game.

For most games, I'm all for rebalancing, both buffs and nerfs. I like a game more, the better designed it is, and imbalance is bad design. It being single player isn't really relevant. It's about game quality and developer vision/intent, that's all.

However, there are some games that do not really merit nerfs, like really open-ended, freeform/sandbox types of games. Bethesda games for example. Nerfing OP stuff in a game like Skyrim would be dumb since first of all, Bethesda is just bad at game design period, anyone playing one of their games just has to accept that, and secondly the overall endgoal of such a game is to become a demigod anyway, and thirdly, it's a sandbox open-ended game. The more choices of how to play the better.

The specific example with Witcher 3 I'm fine with it. They clearly tried to put a lot of thought and complexity into the mechanics and it's perfectly fine for them to not want one thing to just so utterly trivialise everything else. Not like you can't still be very, very powerful in that game through a variety of different ways. But not quite "mindless invincibility" and that's fine.


I think this is the best balanced view.


Agreed. I think if you have to go out of your way end game and collect a bunch of rare items and build your character in a very specific way to get them OP'd, then you deserve it. Don't nerf someone who should be rewarded for their efforts.
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Darkman124 1 week ago#41
path of exile is an example of a game entirely balanced around single player

it works

the key is that by continuously adding new skills, improving weakened ones, and reducing the potency of the ones found to be 'OP', the devs kept that game alive for a really, really long time

it did mean some characters became 'bricked' after an update, like any character whose sole defense was vaal pact.
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P4wn4g3 1 week ago#42
I dont really like nerfs in single player. If they didnt properly balance test it in the first place, too bad. The game is unbalanced. Creativity can and often does come out of the fandom as a result.

Im surprised by the number of people who would rather suffer boring and tedious sections of games to be honest.
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kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#43
Darkman124 posted...
path of exile is an example of a game entirely balanced around single player

it works


I sorta disagree here, later parts of postgame are absolutely ridiculous if you never trade
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Goats 1 week ago#44
I don't mind either way tbh. I can avoid using broken builds if I don't want to, but acknowledge that it might be for the best to remove the temptation altogether yanma
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P4wn4g3 posted...
I dont really like nerfs in single player. If they didnt properly balance test it in the first place, too bad. The game is unbalanced. Creativity can and often does come out of the fandom as a result.

There's no such thing as "unbalanced" in a single-player game.
Nazanir 1 week ago#46
While I understand people can get annoyed by changes made in terms of balancing when it comes to singleplayer, people seem to forget that it wasn't meant to work like that (usually) in the first place.

I remember from Borderlands 2 there was a nerf to a pretty damn strong combo: The Conference Call (shotgun) + The Bee (shield).

The conference call was a special shotgun, it shoots 5 pellets, and after they traveled a short distance, they split up in even more pellets. The Bee Shield, if the shield was at 100%, would deal damage to the next shot fired.

Problem was, the bonus damage applied to each individual pellet, instead of the bonus damage being divided between all the pellets.

So let's say (using small numbers to keep it simple): 25 pellets and and the bee shield adds 100 damage, that would mean 4 extra damage per pellet. But the way it used to happen, was bonus damage per pellet, resulting in 2500 bonus damage. Which made it incredibly easy to tackle endgame content.
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kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#47
Questionmarktarius posted...
P4wn4g3 posted...
I dont really like nerfs in single player. If they didnt properly balance test it in the first place, too bad. The game is unbalanced. Creativity can and often does come out of the fandom as a result.

There's no such thing as "unbalanced" in a single-player game.

there definitely is

ever used the cape in super mario world?
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kirbymuncher posted...
Questionmarktarius posted...
P4wn4g3 posted...
 show hidden quote(s)

There's no such thing as "unbalanced" in a single-player game.

there definitely is

ever used the cape in super mario world?

How does someone else flying over the top of a stage affect your enjoyment of the game?
kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#49
Just because it doesn't effect me when other people do it doesn't mean it's not unbalanced. The cape is unbalanced because it overshadows most other aspects of level design and makes a significant portion of the gameplay pointless
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(edited 1 week ago)reportquote
Questionmarktarius posted...
P4wn4g3 posted...
I dont really like nerfs in single player. If they didnt properly balance test it in the first place, too bad. The game is unbalanced. Creativity can and often does come out of the fandom as a result.

There's no such thing as "unbalanced" in a single-player game.

That's just a flat-out incorrect statement.
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    Pancake 1 week ago#51
    3khc 1 week ago#52
    Steve Nick posted...
    Pick-me-ups need a nerf in SMRPG.

    They cost 4 gold and restore a party member to full HP from dead.

    Not to mention freebies.
    ----
    -----
    Balrog0 1 week ago#53
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    How does someone else flying over the top of a stage affect your enjoyment of the game?


    I dunno, I kind of understand what you're saying, but by this logic all games would be improved by giving players an option to basically win automatically, right? As long as it's avoidable it shouldn't matter?

    Feels weird to me.
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    weapon_d00d816 posted...
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    P4wn4g3 posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    There's no such thing as "unbalanced" in a single-player game.

    That's just a flat-out incorrect statement.

    Orlandu may be vastly superior to Malak, yes, but it's not at all "unfair".
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    weapon_d00d816 posted...
    Questionmarktarius posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    That's just a flat-out incorrect statement.

    Orlandu may be vastly superior to Malak, yes, but it's not at all "unfair".

    Unbalanced isn't necessarily the same as unfair
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    weapon_d00d816 posted...
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    weapon_d00d816 posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    Orlandu may be vastly superior to Malak, yes, but it's not at all "unfair".

    Unbalanced isn't necessarily the same as unfair

    If I have seventeen hammers, and ignore fifteen of them, so what?
    If you somehow have an identical toolbox and tools, why it your concern which hammers I use, or vice-versa?
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    Garioshi 1 week ago#57
    Extremely broken stuff like, for example, infinite ammo or invincibility, should be available for players to fuck around with, but should not count towards any sort of rankings or rewards.
    Balrog0 1 week ago#58
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    If I have seventeen hammers, and ignore fifteen of them, so what?
    If you somehow have an identical toolbox and tools, why it your concern which hammers I use, or vice-versa?


    I mean, what if every level of every game had a portal at the very beginning that let you skip to the end

    You don't need to use it.

    Is this really superior iyo? 

    I'm honestly asking, I have very mixed feelings about this. IMO the point of a single player game is to play against the game state, so every facet of the game is relevant to the experience. I do take the point that you don't need to do any particular thing in a game, though (including play it or play it to win).

    so idk
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    Balrog0 posted...
    I'm honestly asking, I have very mixed feelings about this. IMO the point of a single player game is to play against the game state, so every facet of the game is relevant to the experience. I do take the point that you don't need to do any particular thing in a game, though (including play it or play it to win).

    In the end, it's just a variant on the puritanist rage that someone is getting away with something.
    Balrog0 1 week ago#60
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    In the end, it's just a variant on the puritanist rage that someone is getting away with something.


    lmao

    nah, it's more like there being an easy way to automatically win seriously devalues the achievement you feel from completing the game or moving to the next game state. The whole point of games is to get you to do random, meaningless tasks in order to achieve a meaningless goal. If you don't feel compelled in-game to do the tasks, there is no more game.

    It even extends beyond the game tbh. I feel like adventure games went away and have only had a sort-of resurgence because the format doesn't lend itself to a world where gamers can find answers in like 3 seconds of googling. 

    IMO of course
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    kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#61
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    Balrog0 posted...
    I'm honestly asking, I have very mixed feelings about this. IMO the point of a single player game is to play against the game state, so every facet of the game is relevant to the experience. I do take the point that you don't need to do any particular thing in a game, though (including play it or play it to win).

    In the end, it's just a variant on the puritanist rage that someone is getting away with something.

    I can't speak for everyone but I can't say my feelings on the matter are very rage-like. Unbalanced and unfair and bad are all 3 different things. Something can be unbalanced and still be good, but that doesn't mean it's not unbalanced

    I don't really care if people abuse unbalanced parts of single player games, in fact I do it myself all the time, but that doesn't mean it's not unbalanced
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    Balrog0 1 week ago#62
    kirbymuncher posted...
    I can't speak for everyone but I can't say my feelings on the matter are very rage-like. Unbalanced and unfair and bad are all 3 different things. Something can be unbalanced and still be good, but that doesn't mean it's not unbalanced

    I don't really care if people abuse unbalanced parts of single player games, in fact I do it myself all the time, but that doesn't mean it's not unbalanced

    right

    for me, there is obviously a spectrum here as well. I'm asking about an extreme example just to see if Questionmark feels like there's a spectrum, too.
    He would make his mark, if not on this tree, then on that wall; if not with teeth and claws, then with penknife and razor.
    kirbymuncher posted...
    I don't really care if people abuse unbalanced parts of single player games, in fact I do it myself all the time, but that doesn't mean it's not unbalanced

    There's a difference between unbalanced and "unbalanced", but not much.

    What's the real difference between lawnmowing through SOTN with a Crissaegrim, and curbstomping Zeromus with a bag full of duped Excaliburs?
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    weapon_d00d816 posted...
    Questionmarktarius posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    Unbalanced isn't necessarily the same as unfair

    If I have seventeen hammers, and ignore fifteen of them, so what?
    If you somehow have an identical toolbox and tools, why it your concern which hammers I use, or vice-versa?

    Developers don't nerf and buff things on a personal basis. They don't care specifically what you do, but they make changes that affect the chances that people will experience more of the game. Plus games are more fun when you're at a disadvantage due to a barrier that's further away from your control. If all you have to do is hit up the inventory menu and select a different weapon to start stomping shit, it feels less rewarding using it and feels more tedious having to personally restrict yourself if you're not using it. It's not my job to create the challenge for myself. That's why I'm playing a video game. I indulge in challenges others create for me.
    SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SlG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SIG SlG
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#65
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    What's the real difference between lawnmowing through SOTN with a Crissaegrim, and curbstomping Zeromus with a bag full of duped Excaliburs?

    Not super familiar with your examples here but I'm assuming this is "unbalanced because of design" vs "unbalanced because of a glitch" ?

    in which case I will say there is no difference. Both are parts of the game, as it was designed by the devs, and available for the player to either use or not use based on their preferences (and knowledge of the game to realize it's even an option)
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    Balrog0 posted...
    for me, there is obviously a spectrum here as well. I'm asking about an extreme example just to see if Questionmark feels like there's a spectrum, too.

    Actually, no.
    There's a vast chasm between a developer screwing up and placing a decimal point in the wrong place (or something), and punishing emergent gameplay.

    Hell, Valve exploited the latter into Portal's challenge mode, when testers were bypassing most of the levels.
    Pancake 1 week ago#67
    Both are parts of the game, as it was designed by the devs

    is that really fair, though? if something was unintended, can we really say it was to their design?
    Pancake posted...
    Both are parts of the game, as it was designed by the devs

    is that really fair, though? if something was unintended, can we really say it was to their design?

    No, it's not.
    However, the net effect on the player's end is very similar.

    If anything, SotN's Crissaegrim is a condemnation on overpowered random drops in a single-player game, which is just exacerbated when a game has a multiplayer component (Borderlands, Pokemon, etc.).
    Even then, it's not "unbalanced" in the single-player - it just leads to tedious farming, be it murdering Shmoos in the inverted library, or killing Doc Mercy hundreds of times waiting for that damn Infinity to pop out.

    The anger over Conference/Bee's nerf wasn't that it was "overpowered", but that it made tedious farming almost tolerable. Those couple hundred Doc Mercy kills could be accomplished in a couple hours, instead of a couple days.
    Of course, complaining about "balance" in Borderlands2 is silly anyway, seeing as the postgame quickly decays into little more than "slag/elemental/repeat" tedium.
    Notti posted...
    all games should balance the classes and weapons and skills around PVP exclusively.

    "But what about single player campaign balance??" you ask.

    Campaign should be balanced around that PVP core.

    what the fuck? are you serious?

    Notti posted...
    "But what about single player only games?" 

    IMO, all games are multiplayer to a degree. 

    High score boards. Speed running.

    okay, i really refuse to believe that this is a serious post

    single players games are not multiplayer games. and single player content sure as fuck shouldn't be balanced around pvp. what a fucking joke.
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    Balrog0 posted...
    nah, it's more like there being an easy way to automatically win seriously devalues the achievement you feel from completing the game or moving to the next game state.

    Yes. Someone is getting away with something.
    That's why there was huge nerdrage over the white tanooki suit in various Mario games.
    Balrog0 1 week ago#71
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    Yes. Someone is getting away with something.


    ...No? I don't see how you can think that's what I said. Unless the someone is yourself.
    He would make his mark, if not on this tree, then on that wall; if not with teeth and claws, then with penknife and razor.
    Balrog0 1 week ago#72
    and even then, it's less about whether or not you actually take it in any instance and more about the fact that you can do it whenever you'd like, unmasking the illusion of necessity that the trivial and meaningless tasks might have had otherwise.

    put another way, why doesn't every game just have a button that lets you skip or lets you go invincible? These seem like well-accepted design principles you would want to avoid, but by your logic they only improve the player experience.

    I kind of feel like you might be arguing the point just to argue the point at this point
    He would make his mark, if not on this tree, then on that wall; if not with teeth and claws, then with penknife and razor.
    LordMarshal 1 week ago#73
    Im fine but they rarely buff stuff thats essentially useless. Id feel great if they buffed weaker stuff while nerfing broken stuff to open more options.
    There can be only one.
    Balrog0 posted...
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    Yes. Someone is getting away with something.


    ...No? I don't see how you can think that's what I said. Unless the someone is yourself.

    Let's try another bad analogy then.
    If some magic button existed that assembled Lego sets for you, would it cheapen your experience of putting a set together yourself?

    Balrog0 posted...
    I kind of feel like you might be arguing the point just to argue the point at this point

    Dude, GameFAQs.
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    P4wn4g3 1 week ago#75
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    The anger over Conference/Bee's nerf wasn't that it was "overpowered", but that it made tedious farming almost tolerable.

    That and raid bosses often required it, and many bosses like Badassasaurus Rex were just shit. You can still do this glitch on PC, any weapon that has pellets unlisted on the card gets full damage with the Bee.
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    P4wn4g3 1 week ago#76
    Balrog0 posted...
    put another way, why doesn't every game just have a button that lets you skip or lets you go invincible? These seem like well-accepted design principles you would want to avoid, but by your logic they only improve the player experience.

    Many have built in cheats. You can use them for fun but ultimately people tend not to use them when playing seriously. Though they can help if you cant figure a section out. They can also make it impossible to progress, a particular level in brood war is guilty of this if you use power ovetwhelming.
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    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    I’m fine with whatever the developers want to do. If they intended the game to be played and experienced a certain way and something people are doing is circumventing that then I’m fine with them adjusting it.
    You look EXTREMELY immature when you announce that you're about to ignore someone. No one cares, including the person about to be ignored. Just FYI.
    P4wn4g3 posted...
    Many have built in cheats.

    Not anymore, in the age of cheevos and microtransactions.
    P4wn4g3 1 week ago#79
    Questionmarktarius posted...
    P4wn4g3 posted...
    Many have built in cheats.

    Not anymore, in the age of cheevos and microtransactions.

    Hey Im still a fan of action replay or file editing, though that can be a separate topic.
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    kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#80
    Pancake posted...
    Both are parts of the game, as it was designed by the devs

    is that really fair, though? if something was unintended, can we really say it was to their design?

    well I'm not saying it's to their design, but it's the result of their design, even if unintentional. And I don't see why glitches should be the only ones that you worry about not being "intentional", since overpowered weapons / strats / etc are also often a result of the devs not realizing just how good they are
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    Notti 1 week ago#81
    DuranOfForcena posted...
    Notti posted...
    all games should balance the classes and weapons and skills around PVP exclusively.

    "But what about single player campaign balance??" you ask.

    Campaign should be balanced around that PVP core.

    what the fuck? are you serious?

    Notti posted...
    "But what about single player only games?" 

    IMO, all games are multiplayer to a degree. 

    High score boards. Speed running.

    okay, i really refuse to believe that this is a serious post

    single players games are not multiplayer games. and single player content sure as fuck shouldn't be balanced around pvp. what a fucking joke.


    Very serious.

    You really didn't explain yourself much.
    Notti posted...
    DuranOfForcena posted...
    Notti posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    what the fuck? are you serious?

    Notti posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    okay, i really refuse to believe that this is a serious post

    single players games are not multiplayer games. and single player content sure as fuck shouldn't be balanced around pvp. what a fucking joke.


    Very serious.

    You really didn't explain yourself much.


    He shouldn’t really need to. Your claim is pretty outlandish. It’s like saying 2+2=7 or something. Obviously a strictly single player game with no online or couch co-op elements whatsoever (such as The Witcher 3 for instance) is not a PvP game. By definition it can’t be. No player is directly competing with any other player within the confines of the game. That’s what PvP means.

    Speed running does not count as PvP. It’s essentially a meta-game that’s separate from the actual video game itself. It would be like if you and I decide to race to see who can do better in solitaire the fastest. That doesn’t all of sudden make solitaire a competitive game just because you and I decided to make a competition out of it. Two people can make a competition out of practically anything, that doesn’t make the activities themselves inherently competitive.
    You look EXTREMELY immature when you announce that you're about to ignore someone. No one cares, including the person about to be ignored. Just FYI.
    P4wn4g3 1 week ago#83
    IMO online coop is more in a category of single player than multi, unless the game is an MMO or something.
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    Rika_Furude 1 week ago#84
    should be nerfed even in single player imo

    shit like Zanmato from FFX has no reason to exist
    Illuminoius 1 week ago#85
    it's fine
    i don't like the feeling that a game is only challenging or engaging because i'm intentionally playing it worse than i'm capable of
    Tmk 1 week ago#86
    Regarding Bee + Conference Call, that in particular was just utterly absurd. In fact the way Bee worked initially, which was definitely an oversight (one Bethesda made as well in Fallout 4 with certain legendary weapon modifiers, whoops) pushed the meta so far towards the Bee it was just really dumb. Even with that change the Bee still is obnoxiously vital in many cases for endgame, which comes into another issue with things not being nerfed: when additional content is added there's the risk it is balanced more around people using broken stuff.

    Anything a dev chooses to leave in the game when releasing DLC has to be considered when doing difficulty balance. And other kinds of balance as well.

    I don't think it's a coincidence that things went from being sensibly priced in GTAO, then after the massive waves of people cheating in hacked infinite money and forcing it on as many people as possible, and Rockstar's pisspoor attempts at punishing people for this, suddenly all their new content they released was marked up 2~20x the cost of older content. GTAO became a place where people who didn't buy large shark cards or enjoy hacked money were pretty fucked. The broken imbalanced cheating of various players pushed the player balance, and the developers considered it with additional content.

    Those who suffer are those who do not do things as powerfully and efficiently as possible.

    And some people like doing that, no matter the game. Playing as effectively as you can. And that's another reason a game should avoid being imbalanced. It's annoying to "give it your all" in a game while desperately trying to ignore utterly broken cheese left in the game. Can take someone out of the experience.

    This mindset of "lol just don't use it if you don't want to" doesn't work in all games. Like I said before, in an open sandbox game like Skyrim? Yeah, don't use it is fine. It's so open ended and overflowing with choices, playing such a thing "100% effectively" is kind of not even really...possible, to any reasonable degree. You're just doing whatever you want on a whim. 

    On a more focused game however, it just can get really dumb. Look at a Souls game for example. Broken cheesy imbalance in that hurts the entire structure of the game. There's supposed to be a sense in the game that like, there's no truly easy way out, that challenge you're stuck on isn't going anywhere. You have to rise up, become better at it, and overcome it. If there's an LOLTURBOBROKEN Weapon +10 of Stupid sitting there waiting to be abused you have to choose to ignore, that ruins the whole notion of the game and the permanency of its obstacles.

    A self-imposed challenge isn't the same as a curated one. I don't tend to play a game to do a lot of the work myself in making the experience.
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    DuneMan 1 week ago#87
    Tmk posted...
    Regarding Bee + Conference Call, that in particular was just utterly absurd. In fact the way Bee worked initially, which was definitely an oversight (one Bethesda made as well in Fallout 4 with certain legendary weapon modifiers, whoops) pushed the meta so far towards the Bee it was just really dumb. Even with that change the Bee still is obnoxiously vital in many cases for endgame, which comes into another issue with things not being nerfed: when additional content is added there's the risk it is balanced more around people using broken stuff.

    The first part, yes, an oversight. The Bee still being crucial to end game builds after the patch, nope. In fact the overwhelming majority of long time BL2 players will(and I believe in your case explicitly did) tell you that the Bee is a crutch that actually harms the player. Most people get slaughtered in seconds on UVHM when using the Bee because it's absolute trash as a shield. The Bee isn't meta, it's a trap. 

    Fallout 4 definitely brings to mind the same shenanigans though. Shotguns with Advanced Receivers, for the extra 2 pellets per trigger pull, ramp up Explosive and Bleeding legendary effects to insane levels. The fact that a Bleeding Sawed Off Shotgun can drop at a low level, something in the 10-15 range IIRC, can essentially eclipse all normal weapon progression. Personally I do find the Explosive Minigun fun to use for a bit(as a Heavy Weapon its explosive effect damage is increased by both Demolition Expert and Heavy Gunner- similar to how the Missile Launcher and Fat Man work). It goes back into a box though, just because it's better to give enemies some chance to fight back.

    There is a lot to be said though for balancing around the lower end of the spectrum instead of nerfing the top stuff. If you go back to the Borderlands 2 example, Dahl weapons without red text were trash. The damage was pitiful and you'd have to drill a dozen headshots into an enemy to kill them. It also didn't help that they had long reloads, but having a matching Dahl grip to speed up the reload resulted in the damage being lowered again. If it weren't for red text weapons, like the Lascaux or the Pitchfork, then Dahl might as well not even exist in Borderlands 2. They could do with some buffs to become competitive.
    "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
    Never understood it.

    Who is it hurting?

    It just pushes microtranactions even harder
    ^ Hey now that's completely unfair.
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    Tmk 1 week ago#89
    From what I remember most long-time players just cheated with weapon merging or had people dupe them hacked in perfect weapon stats to get everything they exactly needed to maybe use something else and then tried to tell me that was fair and nothing wrong with it nor did it detract from their perspective on BL2 endgame balance. So fuck that lot.

    For people playing fairly and normally, the Bee is something that isn't very hard to get that greatly helps mitigate the damage spongeness of enemies in UVHM. Killing at a decent pace and dying super quickly is favorable to it taking a year to kill something and you dying at a decent pace because getting into a war of attrition is a bad idea. Then again I guess it depends on what you mean by "endgame build" because if you have the power to have ANYTHING you want at your disposal, perfect. So basically the RNG gives you BJs, you played for 2000 hours, or you cheated, then yeah you can have more options. Getting there fairly you are liable to spend a lot of time relying on the bee unless your character has something else broken to rely on instead, like the walking glitch that is Sal.

    Like what is Gaige even supposed to do when she doesn't have extremely high anarchy in UVHM if not use the Bee?

    But anyway the problem wasn't so much Bee as it was the entirety of UVHM balance and the over-reliance on the slag mechanic to compensate for the stupid damage-spongeness of enemies, worsened by there then being bosses immune or effectively immune to slag while still having inflated health balanced for using slag. BL2's endgame is atrociously stupid.

    And the more time I spent playing Gaige the more it became clear her design as a whole was just really stupidly balanced too.

    It's a shame The Pre-Sequel is tiny compared to BL1 and 2 because they were a lot better at balance.
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    Rika_Furude 1 week ago#90
    UnfairRepresent posted...
    Never understood it.

    Who is it hurting?

    It just pushes microtranactions even harder

    Illuminoius posted...
    i don't like the feeling that a game is only challenging or engaging because i'm intentionally playing it worse than i'm capable of

    and your comment about microtransactions is ludicrous
    how does nerfing a skill push microtransactions?
    seriously unfair, get your shit together
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    Then you suckvat gaming.

    I can't think on a single video game beyond arguably chess that didn't have abusible AI or abilities that were better than others.

    Let alone games that aren't incredibly easy if you're legit trying your best and optimising at every turn.

    Don't limit everyone else's experiences solely because you suck so much.

    May as well argue that they should remove difficulty settings and make all controls tank controls because otherwise you're intentionally playing it worse.
    ^ Hey now that's completely unfair.
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    Rika_Furude 1 week ago#92
    UnfairRepresent posted...
    I can't think on a single video game beyond arguably chess that didn't have abusible AI or abilities that were better than others.

    then you obviously haven't played very many games

    and lmao @ implying "i'm bad at video games" because I don't like having to limit myself to using only balanced attacks because i dont like 1hko bs. you're the one who sucks at video games if you have to rely on that shit to win anything
    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    Yes nerfing things for better balance in a single player game is a good idea. If they are caught and it fits with the dev's vision and they notice something drastically wrong given that they are actually able to do it.

    The game is something they created, I'm playing their game. I am not looking to make my own rules. I'm trusting the devs to balance things like risk/reward because I'm experiencing their vision. It's not my job to cut out portions of the game because there's an extremely powerful weapon and someone else in some other city wants to use it if it breaks the base game. This is why the 'well it doesn't affect you' argument is the most annoying and frustrating thing currently in gaming. 

    An artist who creates a painting and then makes a mistake and adds an extra line has every right to go back and scrub that mistake clean if they are able to do that given their ability to continually interact with their work. Why would I want to be the one that has to do it? Because someone else likes the fact that mistake/ugly line is there? The dev has also agreed it shouldn't be there and its their game. The fact that some other guy somewhere else likes godmode is of no concern to me. I'm not doing the meta-analysis of what cheats to avoid when there's clearly broken aspects of the gameplay because I'm not the one in charge of creating the rules of the game. And I don't want to be.
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    Sativa_Rose 1 week ago#94
    Yeah if it's broken, patch it.
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    kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#95
    Rika_Furude posted...
    UnfairRepresent posted...
    I can't think on a single video game beyond arguably chess that didn't have abusible AI or abilities that were better than others.

    then you obviously haven't played very many games


    I dunno I don't think any game is perfectly balanced. It's just that there's an accceptable level of variation in how good things are before something is really considered unbalacned
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    DuneMan 1 week ago#96
    Nah, it wasn't most long-time players. It was mostly just a few prominent Youtubers who hacked in all of their gear, and waves of short-term players who followed then got bored and moved on.

    As for Gaige, just a base point in her Anarchy skill granted a nice boost to damage without her accuracy totally vaporizing. Her elementalist build is among the weakest in the game though, since Shock isn't nearly as good when enemies in BL2 are largely meat shields; it ends up taking vying for the top spot in TPS though with the beefed up shields. She's essentially the harshest example in the entire game.

    TPS definitely displayed a better understanding of balance. The exponential leveling was flattened, enemy health bonuses were restricted to Badass enemies(making them minibosses like they were supposed to be in the first place), and "when in doubt Butt Slam" could give you breathing room in the middle of a fight. The EOS fight at the end of the Claptrap DLC also gives hope for better Raid Boss designs in the future: going from arena-filling spam in BL2 to stacked mechanics upon mechanics in the EOS fight.
    "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
    Rika_Furude 1 week ago#97
    kirbymuncher posted...
    Rika_Furude posted...
    UnfairRepresent posted...
     show hidden quote(s)

    then you obviously haven't played very many games


    I dunno I don't think any game is perfectly balanced. It's just that there's an accceptable level of variation in how good things are before something is really considered unbalacned

    you're right that no game is perfectly balanced, but there are quite a lot that come within the acceptable level of variation

    one off the top of my head is persona 5
    Rika_Furude posted...

    you're right that no game is perfectly balanced, but there are quite a lot that come within the acceptable level of variation

    Your "acceptable" level is different to everyone else.

    Let everyone have their fun and deal with your own problems, don't ruin fun for everyone else because you suck at games, that's unfair.
    ^ Hey now that's completely unfair.
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    Rika_Furude 1 week ago#99
    UnfairRepresent posted...
    Rika_Furude posted...

    you're right that no game is perfectly balanced, but there are quite a lot that come within the acceptable level of variation

    Your "acceptable" level is different to everyone else.

    Let everyone have their fun and deal with your own problems, don't ruin fun for everyone else because you suck at games, that's unfair.

    Have fun using zanmato to insta kill bosses because you are incapable of beating them legit. Instead of having op abilities, there should be an easy mode added
    Posted with GameRaven 3.3
    P4wn4g3 1 week ago#100
    DuneMan posted...
    The first part, yes, an oversight. The Bee still being crucial to end game builds after the patch, nope. In fact the overwhelming majority of long time BL2 players will(and I believe in your case explicitly did) tell you that the Bee is a crutch that actually harms the player. Most people get slaughtered in seconds on UVHM when using the Bee because it's absolute trash as a shield. The Bee isn't meta, it's a trap.

    The bee is still necessary for OP raid bosses unless you have another exploit to use, like kinetic reflection, bloodsplosion, or bore. Or anything salvador. Oh and some raid bosses are impossible still at OP8. The dragons for example.

    DuneMan posted...
    TPS definitely displayed a better understanding of balance.

    TPS was too easy and incredibly boring. They took balance to the other extreme. Furthermore they patched the game balance glitches that players could exploit, but didnt fix anything game breaking. TPS is a terrible example of proper game balancing, the only things they fixed were the weapon machines and they added the grinder. The class skill trees were better as well, but again they were a bit OP. It was pretty fun running around as Jack with a black hole and killing everything just by running in circles though.
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    (edited 1 week ago)reportquote
    1. Boards
    2. Current Events
    3. Nerfing OP skills in single player games. What are your opinions?
      1. Boards
      2. Current Events
      3. Nerfing OP skills in single player games. What are your opinions?
      Seems unnecessary to me unless there's some form of online competition or something like that. They could just fix it in a sequel. 
      Nothing is going to stop the people who didn't download the update.
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      DuneMan 1 week ago#103
      P4wn4g3 posted...
      TPS was too easy and incredibly boring.

      I'm going to have to strongly disagree on that. The EOS fight in particular is how you SHOULD do a raid style boss: lots of mechanics in play. As for the base game, perhaps butt slams and cryo were too good at their CC abilities... but that's a minor tweak for the games going forward. I don't ever want to see the bullet sponginess of BL2's UVHM with Slag return, absolutely never.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      P4wn4g3 1 week ago#104
      Shadowtp was easily one of the worst bosses in both games, mainly due to his initial cyborg form in the final fight. He was badassasaurus rex, except you couldn't hide behind a door. His other forms were much better though.
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      I kinda feel like if it only effects single player, it should be up to the player to decide. Unless it's a glitch or something. And maybe if they don't want it implemented they can say no until a later time, but any trophy's they could get from choosing to use or abuse it would be frozen untill they agreed to it.
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      kirbymuncher  ignores me1 week ago#106
      itachi15243 posted...
      Unless it's a glitch or something.

      What makes unbalance due to a glitch different than unbalance due to the devs just overlooking a specific combo / action
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      DuneMan 1 week ago#107
      P4wn4g3 posted...
      Shadowtp was easily one of the worst bosses in both games, mainly due to his initial cyborg form in the final fight. He was badassasaurus rex, except you couldn't hide behind a door. His other forms were much better though.

      That form was pretty easy as you could stand behind the pillar arms in the arena. It only sucked for people who tried to hide at the spawning platform, as he'd rain endless volleys of missiles upon the players there.
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      Tmk 1 week ago#108
      A single point in anarchy really wasn't going to make her hit hard enough to make combat reasonable.

      With Gaige, you either get decently high anarchy, or you use a bee, or you go home. In the endgame anyway.

      And that's pretty annoying, because yeah she can deal damage with high anarchy, but she has to get there first. Mindlessly shooting the target dummy isn't always an option in all situations, and is never very appealing.

      I eventually solo'd all raid bosses with her in UVHM and the giant stalker one was just the most total horse shit experience with her considering what it meant when you failed, because you can't just quickly go and get the anarchy back. And yet using a bee, Pete, Hyperious and I guess the...Dexidious or whatever its name was too, even she can deal with those.

      The Bee isn't the ultimate item but what it is, is extremely powerful at doing extreme amounts of damage and is a lot more accessible than alternatives, and that's why people get driven towards getting it, especially since its high damage isn't even overpowering in UVHM, it's closer to "this feels like the damage I should normally be doing". Because it's like, I can use the Bee, or, I can...farm this boss I can't even kill for a 0.1% chance that one of the 3 components for a better build I need drops. I mean I guess the endgame of once you have all the things you want doesn't include Bee as much, but that is kind of the literal end of the game. You'll have long since maxed out, developed a build or two and played for probably over a hundred hours IN the endgame, grinding out the hardest crap there is, before that. In that stage of the endgame, it's pretty dominated by Harolds and Bees unless you're a class with some broken gimmick. Or you cheat.

      This is a problem in a lot of games I've noticed with a large emphasis on grind, because people who don't need to really grind may comment on things or give "advice" from a perspective that ignores the process to get to what they're suggesting. Saying "oh you don't need to use the Bee" is speaking from either the perspective of a character who has something even more broken than it, or someone who has every single conceivable drop they'd ever need to work with. And it's like oh gee really, you don't need the Bee then? Yeah no shit. Now let's talk about the long, arduous process of getting to that point, in the endgame. You have to spend a lot of time in UVHM fighting a lot of BS to get to that point. And what are you gonna use for that long haul? Something that does no damage? Gear that you don't have because it's rare drops from some of the hardest enemies? Or an easily accessible shield that dramatically amplifies your damage in a difficulty where everything is a ridiculous damage sponge?

      And so I reiterate: fuck that lot. You talk about not using the Bee like people are using it in favor of better options, when it's used out of necessity. Or do I need to now explain how shit BL2's drop rates are, how shit the fact things can drop <2 levels even when you're max level. How shit lootsplosions from raid bosses are. Because that is the bottom line. People get into UVHM, and it's a tedious uphill struggle, then they get max level, and they have to grind, grind, grind, to put together a build. The Bee is a pretty obvious choice and mainstay for that journey, in general. If someone's chosen character has something more OP, good for them. That's not gonna be everyone's experience. And you go through that tedious uphill struggle, or you cheat. A lot of people cheated. People argued with me on that board while admitting they cheated that there was nothing wrong with the drop rates or difficulty. When I finally decided to go online and do random coop, almost every single person was cheating or begging randoms to drop them cheated hacked gear. 

      And somehow that's not as bad as what I saw when I tried TPS online.
      I am snazzier, hot, hot rant. Warily slight as.
      Croak rush, OK? Weirder, almighty make out. ::)
      DuneMan 1 week ago#109
      1 point in Anarchy gives her 262% gun damage. Also, remember that she gets stacks from kills. Instead of shooting at a target dummy try running to a spot with Varkids. Tundra Express can get you to 150 stacks with just a few minutes of walking around in the Varkid spawns.

      Raid bosses are a separate issue because they're terrible by design. But make them beatable without requiring all the bullet sponginess and you get the response from that other user, claiming that the game is suddenly laughably easy because you don't need to spend 20 minutes shooting one enemy as they fill the arena with nova spam. I was glad to see that style of boss left behind and absent from TPS.\

      Now if you want to discuss the normal weapons for UVHM, you don't need any Legendaries at all to beat UVHM if you go into at level 50 when it is meant to start. In fact, farming for Legendaries actually makes UVHM harder in BL2 because the exponential scaling on the enemies runs away from the player with each level you gain. So instead you stick to the 'good' manufacturers and proceed through the main game, those being: Maliwan, Torgue, Hyperion, Tediore, and Jakobs. Bandit and Dahl tend to be peashooters, while Vladof runs dry on most characters after 3 enemies killed.

      On the topic of drop rates, IIRC you quit before all Legendary drops were permanently tripled late in the game's lifespan. So the developers got the message on that one as well. 3x drop rates forevermore.

      As for TPS online, I can't comment on playing with randoms. They're universally terrible in all games. I will say though that Wilhelm, Timothy, Aurelia, and Nisha all had builds that stomped the game silly without needing a lot of loot. The Badass Digijacks basically roflstomped everything when specced correctly. Wilhelm would compete with Wolf to see who could kill faster, as Laser Guided was an amazing skill all around. Aurelia was a CC master that kept everything frozen while she popped heads with sniper rifles; anything that so much as sneezed on her was getting frozen. Nisha started off squishy, but give her a good Maliwan Beam and her snowballing damage wrecks.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      Tmk 1 week ago#110
      Dude I played enough to get the loot necessary to solo everything in UVHM as Gaige as well as get everything I wanted. I don't need advice on how to play as her or build anarchy. You're mistaking criticism of how much something sucks as "help I don't know how to do thing" - I know how to do thing I probably know how to do thing better than you. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck dick. Do you even remember the zone Voracidious is in. Do you realise what it means to try that fight as Gaige, and die, and then want to try again, and need to build anarchy again? Do you understand the problem? If you don't recall, here's a brief summary: A lot of fucking wasted time between attempts.

      Also I actually did come back for awhile after the drop rate buff. It still wasn't enough but I played some with that. It's when I finally eventually got a Norfleet. Emphasis on eventually. Though I don't recall if it was actually tripled when I played. I just remember reading they fiddled a lot with drop rates over some time and I don't remember what they settled on.

      I'm also not talking about simply beating UVHM, but getting to max level, and then farming up whatever you want for whatever setup(s) you want to use. I know how the level scaling in UVHM works. I'm not stupid (a fact you seem to never remember every time you talk down to me), there's no need to explain basic things to me in games I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing. 

      Hell even the start of UVHM is pretty abysmal too. Certainly was for Gaige. Could barely kill Bullymongs and the first boss I forget the name of, on that ship, was just absurdly BS. Because Gaige is a one-trick pony and sucks otherwise. There was nothing to do reasonable damage to him without nearly insta-dying from bombardment. You can't pretend like anarchy is an actual true damage increase of the stated amount because of the accuracy decrease the actual effective DPS will be lower. +x% damage isn't +x% damage if you miss far more, can get crits far less, and it also won't mean your survivability is as good as it should be since your long range options are limited to homing projectiles and telling Deathtrap to go way ahead. Like, yeah Anarchy is strong but it's not THAT strong, especially compared to other characters' damage bonuses and how they can stack to absurd levels WITHOUT drawbacks. You can't just look at the Anarchy damage bonus on paper and expect that to be what you get in practice, at least not without very specialised gear choices that aren't exactly a luxury to always call upon, especially by UVHM. It's very fortunate at least Seeker is a reliable get, and Pete is a reliable source for crystals to buy it even Gaige can farm, wiiiiiiith... *drumroll* ...Bee!

      I did everything with Nisha solo so I'm well aware of how she works as well. Pretty straight forward. Activate action skill to briefly become death incarnate. Works well. Very refreshing after Gaige to play as someone whose damage output isn't "some assembly required" every time you die/load.

      And if you want to get fancy, make use of the Tombstone skill, that can make anything crit on enemies. Including DoTs. Suffocation damage. Fall damage...pretty funny, that, actually. She can make someone gasping for air/choking get crit'd from that. Don't want to walk around coffee tables in the dark when she's around. Might just lose a toe.
      I am snazzier, hot, hot rant. Warily slight as.
      Croak rush, OK? Weirder, almighty make out. ::)
      I thought this was about single plater games. Things should obviously be decently balanced anywhere that tries to be competitive like a multiplayer versus game.
      Leleportation: Teleporting away while your laughter breaks physics by lingering when you've already teleported away.
      DuneMan 1 week ago#112
      Tmk posted...
      That doesn't mean it doesn't suck dick. Do you even remember the zone Voracidious is in. Do you realise what it means to try that fight as Gaige, and die, and then want to try again, and need to build anarchy again? Do you understand the problem?

      First, LOL!

      Second, Voracidious is a troll enemy. The developers explicitly stated that they designed that fight as a huge troll to players. It's not meant to be solo'ed. It's the single crappiest thing in the game, and the devs openly admit it.

      So, again, you're using the lowest damage character in the game, i.e. non-Anarchy Gaige, and complaining that you "[c]ould barely kill Bullymongs and the first boss I forget the name of, on that ship" which then undermines your own claim that "I played enough to get the loot necessary to solo everything in UVHM as Gaige as well as get everything I wanted. I don't need advice on how to play as her". You got plenty of advice on how to do things back when you played.

      IIRC around the time the devs tripled the drop rates they also boosted the elemental tree for Gaige. So they understood that her damage output was lagging without at least some investment into Anarchy.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      Tmk 1 week ago#113
      I never said I used a non-anarchy Gaige. I said that her damage without anarchy is worthless (the "buff" to her elemental tree was garbage that did nothing of note), and there's always a process in playing between having no anarchy and getting the amount you want where gameplay sucks. The whole point was people talking about end results without considering the process to get there, and you didn't even understand that.

      Like...wait, do you think I solo'd UVHM raid bosses with Gaige WITHOUT anarchy? I am pretty sure that's not even possible with some of them.

      I'm not even sure why you thought that since I was talking about how annoying it was to have to restack anarchy after dying. That isn't a problem a non-anarchy Gaige would have. And as I said it's especially bad with Voracidious (or the dragons for that matter) because of the shitty walk and lack of good availability to restack it on site.

      Also I got 0 advice for how to play her or "do things" I really don't understand how you have these delusions about me to this day. EVERYTHING people said was stupid, wrong and/or worthless. The community is terrible and your repeated talking down to me, not understanding what I'm saying and just general annoyingness helps reinforce that; it's a wonder after all these years you've not improved at all on how to communicate, that or you're just a subtle troll. Who knows.

      I'd go to the BL2 community if I wanted hacked weapons, instructions on how to exploit glitches like weapon merging to cheat or the latest hot takes from clown shoes who have no reading or game comprehension and are content to mindlessly follow a rail. I'd never go for useful advice there.
      I am snazzier, hot, hot rant. Warily slight as.
      Croak rush, OK? Weirder, almighty make out. ::)
      DuneMan 1 week ago#114
      A single point in the base Anarchy skill is still used on builds that don't want to focus on Anarchy. It adds 262% damage, from a single skill point. That's 3.62x damage. For perspective, on the base difficulty she can kill early bosses in 2-4 shots. Just, literally 2 shots from a sniper rifle. But you wouldn't call that an Anarchy build.

      As for what I think, one only has to go back and look at the old topics to see that you ignored advice and simply railed against 'bad design' simply because you didn't like the advice and thought that you should be able to solo Raid Bosses, which are designed for a team of players. Voracidious in particular was explicitly designed as a middle finger to players. That is NOT a valid benchmark for gauging the difficulty curve of the game.

      But since you're falling back on your tired 'everything you see is a delusion' and 'you don't understand simple words' statements I think this conversation has run its course.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      Tmk 1 week ago#115
      Considering we didn't even really disagree on anything but you argued with me anyway out of a basis of not understanding what I said and a desire to talk down to someone, the "conversation" never should have existed in the first place.

      I also like how you say 'bad design' like oh, no, developers intentionally being antagonistic to players, making broken drop rate mechanics in a loot game, making health-gate mandatory for survival in endgame which in turn creates the counter-intuitive fact that higher max health is actually less tanky, the abundant necessity of HP drain weapons, all of the attacks that do impossibly high one-shot damage no matter what to throw all sense of HP and shield balance out the window, the unavoidable nova spam, hitscan speed insta-kill rocket projectiles, complete mishandling of the slag mechanic, nonsensically overinflated HP of enemies, designing content balanced for multiplayer even when playing single player despite the game having a built in mechanism to rescale things for multiplayer leaving no excuse to make things like that in single player, yeah that stuff isn't objectively bad design.

      Excuse me for not taking advice like "don't play" "use a different character" "don't play solo" "literally cheat" seriously and calling it what it is: useless babble.
      I am snazzier, hot, hot rant. Warily slight as.
      Croak rush, OK? Weirder, almighty make out. ::)
      DuneMan 1 week ago#116
      You can't wave facts away, and most of your complaints are either overstated or just wrong. E.g. healthgate and hp draining weapons aren't mandatory for normal UVHM play. But the devs did decide to roll HP recovery into the skill trees in TPS, which is a smart move. By having it in trees it normalizes the methods and makes it easier to balance around. And, yeah, if you don't get the concept of a Raid boss then that's 100% on you. 

      BL2 raid bosses with nova spam are stupid in terms of design though, and are almost universally recognized as such. 'Hitscan' rockets aren't a thing. If you're talking about Master Gee then that only applies when he has a Maliwan exhaust, as that boosts rocket speed. Since he doesn't attack you until you shoot you can do some recon on him.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      Tmk 6 days ago#117
      When they put a shit load of attacks in the game that do such absurd damage there's no way to even not be one-shot by it, that normalises healthgate from being a nice little obscure safety net to make things less frustrating, and instead becomes the norm. They balanced damage output around making excessive use of healthgate. And since you tend to be bombarded with enemies, you need a quick way to get back over the health gate: HP drain effects.

      That's a fact.

      And don't pull this stupid bullshit of "herpty derp raid bosses are meant to be coop" then don't put it in the fucking single player experience. Don't release a game you can play in single player, but then make the experience overly shitty if you do. That's a failure on their part, not mine, and reflects extremely poorly on how stupid the game really is. And mysteriously, TPS didn't have this problem. What a curiosity. Even BL1 didn't really since that was back before they drank gallons of paint before designing a raid boss.

      Either design a multiplayer-exclusive game, or design a single player game; if you design the latter, feel free to put in various modifiers to scale the difficulty up in relation to how many players are involved. There. Simple, balanced, not overly dumb bullshit. It's entirely on them.

      Also yes hitscan rockets do exist, but thanks for further exposing yourself as ignorant of the game you arrogantly mouth off about. I'm talking about any enemy who can spawn with a rocket launcher. They can spawn with launchers whose projectiles travel so fast you don't even see them and of course the AI has perfect aim and it's fully possible for one of these enemies to spawn and fire before you can even hear them let alone see them and you are just instantly health-gated, or downed if you lacked the HP to withstand it. Because that's how UVHM is balanced: a bunch of dumb attacks that do more damage than the combined total of your shield and HP because they thought "well we have a health gate mechanic, so what does it matter just make the numbers 29483038302 damage!"

      You know, I'm gonna do something I should have done a long time ago and just ignore you. You're worthless, you spout a bunch of antagonistic pissant ignorant BS and you've been very consistently insufferable like this for years, and years, and years, across every board I've had the misfortune of seeing you on. All you do is spout half-truths, arrogantly talk down to someone, not even understand what they are saying and argue over dumb shit. I'm not sure if you do all this intentionally or did you just turn out this way, but either way you're awful and never worth interacting with. Good day.
      I am snazzier, hot, hot rant. Warily slight as.
      Croak rush, OK? Weirder, almighty make out. ::)
      DuneMan 6 days ago#118
      Tmk posted...
      When they put a shit load of attacks in the game that do such absurd damage there's no way to even not be one-shot by it, that normalises healthgate from being a nice little obscure safety net to make things less frustrating, and instead becomes the norm. They balanced damage output around making excessive use of healthgate. And since you tend to be bombarded with enemies, you need a quick way to get back over the health gate: HP drain effects.

      That's not true though in standard UVHM play. E.g. I've plodded through the Bloodshot Stronghold, one of the difficulty spikes in the game, with a blue rarity bolt-action Jakobs sniper rifle before. No need for Moxxi weapons.

      Tmk posted...
      I'm talking about any enemy who can spawn with a rocket launcher. They can spawn with launchers whose projectiles travel so fast you don't even see them

      And I'm telling you that's factually inaccurate. Enemy launchers use the same flight mechanics as player launchers. You can see this any time an enemy spawns with a Torgue-barreled launcher, where you can nearly run literal circles around the rocket in flight. If the rockets are traveling fast it's because they're spawning with the speed accessory, a Maliwan exhaust, or are one of of the generally faster brands like Vladof. So you might want to reflect on your own words, specifically the words "thanks for further exposing yourself as ignorant of the game you arrogantly mouth off about".

      Your last paragraph of ad hominems is also 100% baseless. But it is something you've repeated to people on Gamefaqs over and over, even as they try to help you as was the case in the Souls games years and years ago when it still had a core of helpful players that discussed more than 'git gud' memes. That's why the concept of 'projection' applies wholeheartedly in your case.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      Single player content in a multiplayer game should be decently balanced just like any other multiplayer experience.
      Leleportation: Teleporting away while your laughter breaks physics by lingering when you've already teleported away.
      #120
      (message deleted)
      The fight with Voracidious, I cheat to beat him. I grenade hop on top of the arena walls, and walk ALL THE WAY to the end, and jump off the cliff. You won't die, but you will actually be UNDER the boss. You can hit him from under, and he can't hit you!
      It's more than good, it's alive!
      Warning: May contain stone hat pieces http://i.imgur.com/N6v5qZx.jpg
      P4wn4g3 3 days ago#122
      UVHM assumes the player has the requisite understanding of the game mechanics to beat it. Not long ago my friend and I did a UVHM run with Gaige and Axton, the worst combo possible. You just run with the tricks the game allows. At least UVHM lets you farm loot, you can't do that in other modes for any payoff.

      Also item merging was fixed a while back. Some effects can still be use in unintended ways, but most of that is gone.
      Hive Mind of Dark Aether, the unofficial Metroid Social Private board.
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      (edited 3 days ago)reportquote
      P4wn4g3 posted...
      Gaige and Axton, the worst combo possible

      why is that the worst combo possible?
      DuneMan 3 days ago#124
      A lot of people think that Axton is 'the worst character'. He gets a lot of grenade damage bonuses though, which work for all weapons with splash damage too. So he does really good with Plasma Casters, Torgue weapons, and Tediore reloads. He has a fair amount of fire rate bonuses too.
      "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao
      P4wn4g3 3 days ago#125
      DuneMan posted...
      A lot of people think that Axton is 'the worst character'. He gets a lot of grenade damage bonuses though, which work for all weapons with splash damage too. So he does really good with Plasma Casters, Torgue weapons, and Tediore reloads. He has a fair amount of fire rate bonuses too.

      Teslas are his real strength. Apparently all those grenade buffs apply to tesla damage. But he's so dependent on specific equipment sets, like Gaige, that he's useless without them unless you are doing the running really fast glitch, which even then he's bad in combat. Both character builds are difficult to make work in UVHM.
      Hive Mind of Dark Aether, the unofficial Metroid Social Private board.
      https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/851-dark-aether
      Notti 14 hours ago#126
      @ChaoticKnuckles posted...
      He shouldn’t really need to. Your claim is pretty outlandish. It’s like saying 2+2=7 or something. Obviously a strictly single player game with no online or couch co-op elements whatsoever (such as The Witcher 3 for instance) is not a PvP game. By definition it can’t be. No player is directly competing with any other player within the confines of the game. That’s what PvP means.

      Speed running does not count as PvP. It’s essentially a meta-game that’s separate from the actual video game itself. It would be like if you and I decide to race to see who can do better in solitaire the fastest. That doesn’t all of sudden make solitaire a competitive game just because you and I decided to make a competition out of it. Two people can make a competition out of practically anything, that doesn’t make the activities themselves inherently competitive.


      That's not what I was aiming for Duran to explain. (he seemed to be concentrated on the first point too, not what you tried to explain) Unless you can explain it. Let me re edit my reply so the reply is properly focused.

      @DuranOfForcena posted...
      Notti posted...
      all games should balance the classes and weapons and skills around PVP exclusively.

      "But what about single player campaign balance??" you ask.

      Campaign should be balanced around that PVP core.

      what the fuck? are you serious?


      Very serious.

      You really didn't explain yourself much. 

      How does thinking "PVP should be the focus of class and skilll balance" imply a non serious reply?

      Notti posted...
      "But what about single player only games?" 

      IMO, all games are multiplayer to a degree. 

      High score boards. Speed running.

      okay, i really refuse to believe that this is a serious post

      single players games are not multiplayer games. and single player content sure as fuck shouldn't be balanced around pvp. what a fucking joke.


      K.
      wtf is this shit? don't tag me for bullshit like this
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