Little defence about nerfing heroes

Still wrong example, because I never said you SHOULDN’T be mad about this.

Here’s more accurate example:

You get Lamborghini Aventador. Week later you get info - sorry, you get Lamborghini by mistake, you should have got Audi A4. Week later car transporter comes to your house, takes your Lamborghini and leaves Audi. Your anger is understandable.
2 days later some guy asks you how your Audi is like, because he want to buy it themself.
Should you tell him how Audi works or should you tell him it’s worthless trash because you had Lamborghini?

The game mechanics are mature enough and there are enough financial resources being provided by players to adequately create heroes before they get into beta much less a paywall summons gate. This is not the first time they have been irresponsible regarding hero power and responding with a nerph. It likely won’t be the last nerph either.

The ToS does allow for it. That also allows for ending the game permanently in one minute.

A better vehicle analogy might be using pickup trucks with the bed and towing capacities. A Ranger versus an F250.

This applies to all heroes in your roster. Even Gargoyle’s will dwindle in potency over the next year.
That is… unless you are @JekylandHyde
If you are him then even S1 are still as strong as gargoyles. But for everyone else…
All cards have time limits…!

In Telly’s case, @Guvnor did some excellent tracking to show she remained even after the third nerf. Which adds credence to @CL_Fire point.

If you all want to allow creeps to run wild, and become stronger and stronger.
Faster and faster…
Become ridiculously strong…
You reduce the time limit for usage in all the rest of your entire roster…

You would harm thousands of dollars that you already invested…
just to spend more on the next big creep…

But CL_Fire would have you not blame SG
Therefore this thread is destined to get swallowed up by all the short-sighted
Practically blind…
Dumpster fire threads


Meanwhile…
its a question of how:

In regards to trust…
But also, that must be balanced with
Why… should you summon, if the next portal does NOT have "exciting and desirable" heroes.

Threading the needle between creeps and broken, has become next to impossible within all tiers as they currently exist

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LOL that is a better analogy… However everyone forgets the custom work you put in to your F250, the time and resources to jack it up, put larger tires on it, get a camper and the new larger hitch for towing, only to have them swap out your F250 for a Ranger, but they put your custom tires, camper, hitch and lift kit on the Ranger, worked great for the F250, not so much on the Ranger. It’s not the same and doesn’t work like you expected it to work after you put all those resources in it.

Lots of people put time, food, iron, emblems, aethers and recruits in to building up pre-nerf Kalo, only to have him swapped out for a different model, the new Kalo and things don’t work or fit the same…

I probably would not have leveled him with the very slow mana, not my play style, for sure I would not have power leveled him the first day and LB and put all those resources in to him that fast…

Only a small percentage of the player base actually reads and posts here in the forums, so they did not see any posts about Kalo being OP in Beta, or that there could be a nerf. They went on the assumption that what SG put out is what they were going to get. Now those that I have talked to are not just upset about the nerf, but mostly about the time, resources and effort they put in to a hero they thought was totally different.

Absolutely agree. It may happen again and the only way to guarantee just compensation is to never spend it on this game in the first place.

Not quite. Gradually aging into less relavent heroes is not the same as being forcibly changed into that state. Vivica is less useful in context because her stats and abilities have not kept up. However, she still does exactly what she has always done. Telluria on the other hand does not. Telluria no longer heals as much as she used to, nor is her mana gen reduction as strong as it once was. Conflating these two is not being honest.

Which dodges the point. Was she still used after the nerf, yes. But was she used as much? Guvnor himself acknowledges that the rates at which she appeared were much higher before the nerf. This suggests that clearly many people no longer saw her as valuable enough to keep at tank. If on May 1, 2020, Telluria had gone live in her current state, many who stopped using her post-nerf would not have summoned for her and would not have invested resources in her at that time.

This does not follow at all from anything I have said. In fact, I actually am firmly against such levels of powercreep and have argued (unsuccesfully in most cases) for toning down many heroes to hit beta.

But powercreep is a separate, albeit related issue. The issue at play here for me is not whether the heroes are too strong or not. That said, to me, balance is something that needs to be kept in mind before a hero is ever released. If a hero is clearly unbalanced, or even potentially gamebreaking, it should never make it into the live game. The issue for me is that I believe players should know what they are summoning for and investing resources (food/mats/feeders/etc) in.

Nerfing so many heroes after release is a direct attack on the ability of players to know what they are summoning for.

And yet SG is entirely to blame here, and in every case of heroes needing to be nerfed. Every hero that is released overpowered is a failure in the design process at SG. The fact that there have been many heroes nerfed of late means the developers need to stop and reevaluate their process and take a more thoughtful approach. To me, thus would require the following changes to beta:

  • Starting discussion on each hero with a vision of what SG intends for the hero to add to the game.
  • Longer rounds of beta testing. This would enable testers time to thoroughly consider heroes and synergies that might be too powerful so as to provide better feedback. Especially with so many heroes coming out, it is difficult to find the time to adequately test them all so things will slip through the cracks.
  • Better communication with beta testers. Understanding what adjustments (if any) were made and why (or why not) coupled with having a vision of the hero’s place will help fine-tune heroes that are useful, but not gamebreaking.
  • More rounds of beta testing. Many heroes need adjustments in beta and having more rounds would allow for more iterations to be tested with feedback provided between iterations.
  • Adding summary polls to each hero’s thread. Often posts will receive likes which do not seem to be taken into account. These polls would provide a brief overview of tester’s thoughts on how balanced heroes are.

For example, there were many voices saying Kalø was too strong. However, no changes were made to him after the first iteration. Having better communication on why SG disregarded those concerns would have at least enabled a discussion on that to take place that may have culminated in a Kalø that did not need to be nerfed. Having a vision of what Kalø was supposed to be would have enabled feedback to be more focused on ensuring that he fit the desired role (which was obviously not “hero who can destroy 5*”). Having longer testing periods would have enabled testers to play with him more and experiment and would have provided more data to SG on just how powerful he was.

That ultimately is a decision every player must make for themselves. Specifically regarding what constitutes exciting and desireable heroes. I personally find many of the heroes in beta to be very powerful, but not really exciting or desireable.

Take for example Goseck who deals 350%-600% to all at slow speed (compared to Quintus’ 270%). I found him to be highly undesirable because he does nothing but damage. I know damage will eventually increase so I can just wait until a faster hero comes around dealing the same damage. Or perhaps another slow hero dealing even more damage.

On the other hand, heroes that offer utility functions are highly desirable to me. Take for example Iris. No one is claiming Iris is overpowered. However, she offers essentially 3 dispels in one special that allow her to be used very strategically against buff heavy teams.

In short, I look for very specific key skills rather than damage. Healing/overhealing, dispel, cleanse, buff blocking, etc are skills that will always be useful even if the damage attached to these heroes does not keep up. One of the biggest disappointments to me is the lack of new support heroes in favor of “hit-harder-and-faster heroes.”

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I’m not confused about a hero being weakened either way. Big $penders have a hard time noticing the stealth nerf their roster receives when they purchase costumes for cards they just purchased 12 months ago.

Regardless of preferences over Utility or any other hero type, doesn’t matter.

Last year…epics began surpassing 5*

Towards the end of last year… a 3* replaced legendary cards on extremely successful defenses in rush mode.
All the way to top 10 in tournaments…

New Legendary heroes are threatening 8* territory

I think everyone agrees:
It would be best if they don’t nerf!
Let them happen naturally.

But meanwhile…
SG still needs to make money

On the next portal…

And you can disagree. It’s cool.
But I see it plain as day:

The bigger the creep…
The faster your entire roster erodes

Until there are many 5* sitting on your bench
Awaiting costumes…

I wish they wouldn’t nerf. Truly!
I wish they would release a 9* hero into the legendary pool and leave it alone.

Start putting 6* heroes in the epic pool.
They should just open up the flood gates!

Really nothing would change.
Same ole learn2play lectures
Same ole nerf threads
And… ahhaha… they would still have to up the ante in the next portal…
Won’t bother me none.

For you lot…At least by attempting to hold reigns on these run-away creeps you can enjoy a few of those extremely…expensive cards that you use on your 5th and 6th war flags just a little while longer.

Of course it would be nice to pull the reigns in Beta… unfortunately, that kiddy pool is not immune to the same problems here in the deep blue sea

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I wouldn’t have paid money and pulled an extra 50 times to get this current version of kalo, and I wouldn’t have maxed him as I did had this current version been offered in the portal.

That’s why this whole thing is super messed up.

Because the actions would have been different if this version of kalo was offered, they really need to do something to compensate. Same for all the other heroes.

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Exactly… I don’t understand how some players don’t get this?
Bait and switch is the problem here… plain and simple

And just because it may be within TOS does make it right either…
Plenty of companies do bare minimum legal stuff, rather than the right thing…
And to me, that speaks volumes about the character of people working at SG…
No one is going to be in trouble for this… but in my book, it only breeds bad faith

Beta thought C-Krampus was fine. Beta thought Ferant was fine. Beta wasn’t even united on whether Kalo was busted. And no one should blame them for this - it’s SGG’s job to balance heroes, not beta’s. But for the love of god stop putting beta on a pedestal.

Testers’ personal opinions may be a good judge of how a hero will be perceived, but their takes are mostly worthless in terms of actual balance. Thinking that “longer periods of testing” or “more rounds of feedback” will somehow improve balance is borderline delusional. Don’t be fooled by the handful of folks abusing their 20/20 hindsight to scream “I told you” over and over.

What matters is data. If the size of beta somehow expanded by a thousandfold, balance would probably improve because data from beta would be worth more. Beta is tiny right now. I doubt it’s large enough to provide anything of sufficient statistical significance.

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What is the size of Beta? (How long was Kalø Beta tested?)

What is the size of the playerbase who managed to (1) pull Kalø in main release and (2) instantly powerlevel him, so that SG could determine within, what, a week that he was “obviously” statistically dominant even in defense, never mind offense?

I’ve no idea how many people have access to beta, but but most feedback threads are lucky to get 15 unique commenters. Let’s say for every person who leaves a comment, there are 10 more who are doing things on the beta server. There’s still no way in hell that beta could produce a statistically meaningful amount of data even if they were given one entire WEEK to test ONE hero (unless all of them were approaching it like a full time job or something, not a fun extra hobby).

On the other hand, I’m certain that around a couple hundred big spenders (at the very least) near-instantly powerleveled at least one copy of Kalo and stuck him on their def team. That would probably produce thousands of battles at the top level of play just in a few days. That’s more than enough data to draw valid statistical conclusions.

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This would likely make Kalø unbeatable in VF – you need to hit him with 5 tiles to even start damaging him, and then you are all but certain to trigger the special.

I’d have thought that ~150 beta testers would have generated some significant amount of testing compared to ~200 big spenders.

Maybe not thousands of battles, but hundreds at least, and if the statistics were stark in main release, if Kalø were anywhere near #1 defense hero in Beta as a 4* that sounds like Big Red Flag time to me.

Kalo will again be available in a (mostly) paywall summons gate. So the last part of his special isn’t getting touched at least until that gate closes. In the interest of game balance. But not after the gem purchases to chase him.

I have 3 kalos… I’ll level up one… One. When will i use him… No clue… But it isn’t just that i saw him before the Nerf… It’s that they made him only have one decent skill… And it is contingent.

No nerfs needed after release. Thank you.

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The issue is that SG could release heroes with worse stats and buff later if needed but they don’t do that. That would sell fewer pulls and make less money. They could tell players that crew in current portal might get a nerf. That would also be helpful but less profitable. And what heroes will get nerfed? We don’t know. Some say the ones that are OP will but we have had quite a few OP ones that have not been nerfed. Some of them have been buffed.

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What is the point of beta testing if you’re not going to listen to your beta testers, they are releasing overpowered characters so they can make lots of money and then they turn down the character after they see that people are going to complain about that character

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