On the Subject of Nerfs

Keeley Hazell

My disdain for competitive PvP in MMOs is well-documented but the sad fact is that left unchecked, or rather when whining little PvP fanboys are pandered to by developers, the side-effects of PvP can spread like a cancer into all parts of a game.

I've been playing a bit of Champions Online recently. I didn't really intend to, and was lured into it by someone who was more enthusiastic, but I thought it would pass the time until Aion, if nothing else. As it turns out it has been reasonably fun. I've seen a lot of criticism of the visuals but I think in practice they're perfectly serviceable. They tend to look pretty bland and uninspired in screen shots, but in-game, with plenty of NPCs wondering around and a fairly decent graphic look it works ok. The main downside so far (by which I mean the mid-teens) is the lack of any central storyline, or really any central hook at all. It is all pretty random "go here, talk to this guy who will give you some standard-issue MMO quests before sending you on to the next hub". I've heard some talk about you designing a nemesis or something later on, but there's no sign of that yet. So it's ok to dip into now and again, but I have my doubts with regard to its long-term success.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. By far the best part of CO is the character design section, which offers an enormous amount of variety. Consequently I have put together a few different characters, some intended to duo, some just fanciful solo fodder. One of the latter category was designed around the "ice" archetype, and at this point anyone with a working knowledge of CO and the various powers probably has a pretty good idea where this is leading.
Essentially there was one ice power in particular which was broken. Or buggy. Or "not working as intended". Since I'm not that bothered about CO I haven't been frequenting the forums or keeping up with the current state of the game, but even I could see this power was over-powered and I even predicted its eventual nerfing. Sure enough, that eventuality came to pass today, and as I confidently waded into to some encounters I suddenly discovered that my trusty "3" key didn't seem to be doing anything. At all. Where previously any enemies foolish enough to get up close and personal were cut down in seconds, now it was me staring at the all-to-familiar "defeated" notice. Of course I had a pretty good idea what had happened, and a quick visit to the forums confirmed it. There was the usual flood of "WTF??" and the accompanying "haha, you deserved to be nerfed" crap.

I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have the patience for nerfs. Either get that shit right the first time (and this particular "bug" wasn't something obscure or difficult to reproduce, it was a blatantly obvious) or suck it down and put up with it. Let's not forget that CO has undergone the usual rounds of closed and open beta tests and is now fully open for business. I will happily accept skill adjustments and fixes during the beta period, because that's what beta testing is for. But now I'm paying to play a character, I'm getting into the swing of it and, dare I say it, enjoying myself, when some ham-fisted dev pulls out the nerf bat and starts swinging. The fact that I could solo that character was a large part of the appeal. The fact is I am no longer enjoying playing that character. To say I would quit the game because of that one nerf would be going too far, but on the other hand that one nerf is also symptomatic of a certain attitude on the part of the developers which doesn't bode well for the future.

The argument is, of course, that the power was broken and needed to be fixed. Even ignoring the fact they only just got around to "fixing" it today, why exactly did it need to be fixed at all? Because of fucking PvP, that's why. Some whiny little bitch took a beating at the hands of someone running an ice build and threw a hissy fit. In fact it was probably a lot of whiny little bitches.
Ignoring PvP, as every right-thinking individual would, why should skills be nerfed in PvE? There's no real reason. After all, despite what some retards claim, PvE is not a competition. What do you care if someone else's character has an easier time than yours? For one thing there's nothing stopping you from adopting their build, and for another it's not like that other person would have an easier time than you playing the build you chose. The notion that it's "not fair" that ice builds might have a super-power (a superhero with a superpower? whatever next?) is just fucking idiotic.

I'm well used to nerfs, having spent several years at the mercy of A-Net's relentless nerf bat. In that time I observed another downside to nerfing, which is that rather than creating a "level playing field" for all the classes, what really happens is the people who get in early enough take advantage of the "exploits" or unbalanced skills or whatever you want to call them and make out like bandits through farming or similar. Then the hammer comes down and suddenly no one else gets that same opportunity. At the height of Guild Wars' success, the super-rich players were the ones who had been around for the infamous farming runs which have long since perished at the over-zealous expense of "balance".

And it always does seem to be over-zealous. Developers never simply "tone down" unbalanced skills, leaving them with some usefulness but without being ridiculous. Instead they tend to crush them into worthless shadows of their former selves. This is what appears to have happened to Frozen Footsteps.

As I have probably pointed out in the past but have no fear of repeating, class balance isn't just a myth, it's something which shouldn't even be pursued. The whole point of having classes in the first place is to offer variety, so to go on to reduce that variety with the apparent aim of making any differences purely cosmetic is backward in the extreme. Of course the PvP brigade don't see it that way, but then you should simply have one and only one PvP class and be done with it. The notion of sharing game play mechanics between PvP and PvE is deeply flawed. Even A-Net approached that same conclusion when they eventually had the balls to give skills separate PvP and PvE descriptions.

Ultimately, after a customary period of loud mourning, players move on, work around the new, gaping holes in their skill bars (and in CO, filling up your skill bar seems to be a very slow process) and start whining about the next flavour-of-the-week build which is currently dominating PvP. I, on the other hand, am simply no longer interested in re-learning a character which I had developed around skills I was comfortable using and which have subsequently been pulled out from under me. So goodbye to my ice robot, and probably CO. It was an interesting diversion, but if you're going to continue to suck the cocks of PvP players at the expense of my game play, you'll be doing it without my subscription.

On the Subject of PvP

Emmanuelle Chriqui

Much as it amuses me to ridicule PvP whenever possible, to say I abhor all PvP would be an oversimplification. Personally I distinguish between two forms of PvP. The style that's most popular and prevalent in existing games is what I call "competitive" PvP. It's all about the ever-popular "pwning noobs". About attempting to make up for your real-life shortcomings by spending time playing some online game to the point where you can beat someone else at it. Woohoo, you are teh leet gamer.
This form of mindless competitive PvP is best demonstrated by the likes of Counter-Strike and other pure PvP FPSes. No storyline, no real objectives other than to get a higher score than the opposition. It's simple to implement and simple for players to understand. It doesn't appeal to me, and it generally attracts an inferior class of individual. The sort of players that feel they have to win at any cost, which is why competitive PvP is usually host to all manner of cheats and exploits, across all game genres.
The alternative to competitive PvP, although it's less appropriate within the context of FPS games, is what I call "role play" PvP. PvP that occurs as a side-effect of the design of the game world rather than forms the motivation for it. This can be as simple as having a game where you can choose to be lawful or criminal, where the goals of those opposing factions generally conflict, where a criminal can advance at the expense of an honest character (as a result of theft, or even murder perhaps) and it is also possible for the honest to advance at the expense of the criminals (bounty-hunting might be an example). The point is that the conflict itself is not the sole or even primary game objective for either side. Instead it's a natural byproduct of allowing for a broad spectrum of career paths within the game, and provides an element of genuine danger which enriches the game world. The trick is to achieve that without allowing griefers to essentially hold the game world to ransom.
Perhaps the most successful of current MMOs that has a genuine role play PvP component is Eve Online. As pretty much an MMO version of the classic Elite, players can follow a range of paths to fame and fortune, whether it's through law-abiding corporate business practice or piracy. The PvP in that case is not some sort of point-scoring exercise, rather players choosing piracy as a career are adding an immersive role play element to the game and are providing a compelling alternative to some AI-driven challenge to law-abiding players.
Of course piracy in Eve will still attract the same sort of educationally-subnormal sociopaths that populate competitive PvP games, but at least it's channeled into an aspect of the game that enhances rather than spoils the game environment for the more balanced and higher-functioning players.
From what I've heard about the almost mythical Ultima Online, that game took a similar approach to PvP with players able to choose a law-abiding or law-eschewing career path which could, but (and this is perhaps the crux of competitive vs. roleplay Pvp) didn't necessarily put those players in direct conflict. That wouldn't surprise me, as UO seems to have got a lot of things right which have subsequently been ignored and misinterpreted by more modern games.
It might seem that some games blur the distinction between competitive and role play PvP but in general if there's any doubt, you're talking about the competitive style. Warhammer might feature PvP set within the context of opposing factions, where the conflict is racially motivated, but the fact is that the races simply provide "teams", and the goal of one team is to pwn the other. In Counter-Strike the teams are terrorist vs. counter-terrorist, but the game is still very much competitive.
I know a lot of people are fans of competitive PvP, as evidenced by the enthusiam for Warhammer, and I freely admit that my preference for the elusive role play dynamic is entirely subjective. Perhaps I just haven't seen competitive PvP implemented in a way that appeals to me, or perhaps it's just that competitive PvP tends to attract the sort of people with whom I don't care to play.