History Main / Nerf

** WordOfGod says that the ''Fairy'' type [[OurFairiesAreDifferent (of all things)]] was introduced in VideoGame/PokemonXAndY to balance out the overpowered Dragon type. Originally an InfinityPlusOne element, they used to be rather rare, but as new dragons were introduced in later generations, they ended up becoming {{Game Breaker}}s who could easily steamroll virtually anything.

** The ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' recategorization of Physical and Special moves is thought to have nerfed certain Pokémon such as Blaziken and Sceptile: their dominant offensive stat is Special Attack, while their movepools primarily consist of physical moves. Ironically, the split actually made Blaziken ''more'' powerful as of Generation V, as Website/{{Smogon}} has placed it in the [[GameBreaker Uber tier]].
** WordOfGod says that the ''Fairy'' type [[OurFairiesAreDifferent (of all things)]] was introduced in VideoGame/PokemonXAndY to balance out the overpowered Dragon type.

* The ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series (and, indeed, fighting games in general) gets a bit of flak for this, since their preferred tactic for [[CharacterTiers balancing]] [[GameBreaker characters]] is to weaken or strengthen the power/effectiveness of attacks, rather than balance the characters through speed, ability to combo/''be'' combo'd, or attack changes.

* In earlier incarnations, ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' had a piece of equipment known as the Targeting Computer. This equipment not only made it easier to hit opponents, but also allowed for called shots, otherwise impossible in the normal course of play. Called shots usually took their shot at a penalty, but pulse lasers possessed a hit bonus largely negated the penalty when used for called shots. It has since removed this ability from weapons with hit bonuses to avoid GameBreaker status.

* ''VideoGame/Unreal'':

* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatII'' featured the then-new Kitana, whose telekinetic "fan lift" maneuver led to one of the most devastating and one-sided attacks in any fighting game -- corner opponent, lift, then punch or kick the living crap out of said opponent. Most of the game cabinets were eventually revved with a fix that caused a player delivering an attack on the end of the fight screen to bounce back just out of range of the attack; the fan lift, while still crippling to an opponent, was no longer a game breaker.
* In ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3'', Kabal was one of the strongest characters in the game, with his (dial-a-)combos being some of the most damaging of any character. In ''Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'', the damage Kabal's combos dished out was cut by half.

** And even the full game is one big nerf. There was always a TacticalRockPaperScissors system in the franchise, but even not responding types of units were able to deal moderate damage. Enough riflemen can take down light vehicles etc. However, in Tiberian Twilight, there is new damage type system (laser/gun/blast etc. instead infantry/tank/aircraft) and damage dealt by not responding damage types was SO nerfed down that unit can fire for minutes and barely scratches themselves. But when unit is under fire from responding damage type, it will be pulverized in seconds...
* The ''Franchise/StarCraft'' games go through continuous buffing and nerfing to improve game balance, given the franchise's incredible popularity in the UsefulNotes/ProfessionalGaming scene. For example, ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}: Brood War's'' Corsair, an air-to-air SpaceFighter flown by the dark templar, features a power called Disruption Web that targets an area on the ground and prevents ground units and towers from attacking while inside it, helping with airdrop deployments among other things. This ability's duration was severely reduced in the 1.08 patch, which also gave several nerfs to other protoss powers and units, buffs to the terrans, and a mixture to the zerg.

** In ''OrderOfEcclesia'', the items you find in out of the way places, completing Bonus Dungeons and fulfilling Villager quests, with a few exceptions, are generally not that useful or helpful.. For example, while beating the Bonus Dungeon in ''PortraitOfRuin'' netted you the Tome of Arms X and the most powerful item crash in the game, beating ''Ecclesia's'' bonus dungeons gave ultimately gave you boots that let you move faster and a crown that boosts every stat by only 2 points. Also, beating the game on a level one cap...simply allowed you to be able to level up to 255 on subsequent play-throughs.

** Much like it's successor ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' the game saw many units and abilities nerfed to balance online play. These occurred via patches and, especially, when the Frozen Throne expansion was released. A few notable examples include:

** The additions of extra weapon and armor types in Frozen Throne were seen as nerfing a number of units. No longer could spellcasters, who now did magic damage instead of piercing damage, be relied upon for anti-air duties. (Air units being strong vs. magic damage.) Likewise, Huntresses went from medium armor to unarmored, making them useless as a primary melee unit. (Unarmored being weak to the "normal" attacks of most melee units.)
** A buffed example in Frozen Throne is the ability of the Night Elf buildings to defend themselves without uprooting. A popular tactic prior to this was for attacking armies to "rush" the Night Elf player, [[WhenTreesAttack forcing him to uproot his trees to defend himself]] and thus, cut off resource flow and unit production until the buildings were re-rooted. Unlike the Orc burrows and Human militia, which could each return to work immediately after the attack, the Night Elf player would be delayed waiting for his gold mine to become entangled once again.

** The beta was horribly unbalenced. One particular unit was the GDI Offence Class Striker. Easily the fastest land unit in the game, it could jump cliffs, be upgraded to fire faster, more accuratly, and be faster. Plus its laser was strong aginst the heavy armor of the Crawler, your BaseOnWheels. Yeah. That was patched VERY quickly, but it wasn't uncommon for whole teams of Nod Players to ragequit as soon as they saw ONE.

* In Super Punch-Out, Bald Bull was demoted to the champion of the Minor Circuit. He was notably much slower and easier to beat than in the original NES game. However this nerf was averted in the Wii version of the game where he was back to normal.

** WordOfGod says that the ''Fairy'' type (of all things) was introduced in VideoGame/PokemonXAndY to balance out the overpowered Dragon type.

* In the earliest version of ''[[VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'' a player with high Barter skill [[GameBreaker could buy/sell things for ridiculously low/high prices]]. This allowed buying something at half price and immediately selling it for full price, as long as the trader had anything left. It was possible to buy Tandy and all Garl's weapons and leave Garl with a single cap. The first patch nerfed that.

** In ''OrderOfEcclesia'', the items you find in out of the way places, completing Bonus Dungeons and fulfilling Villager quests, with a few exceptions, are generally not that useful or helpful.. For example, while beating the Bonus Dungeon in ''PortraitOfRuin'' netted you the Tome of Arms X and the most powerful item crash in the game, beating ''Ecclesia's'' bonus dungeons gave ultimately gave you boots that let you move faster and a crown that boosts every stat by only 2 points.

* ''Franchise//{{Halo}}'':
** The Needler was weakened somewhat in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}, decreasing its homing capacity and making it a close-range weapon. And the shotgun too -- it lost either magazine size or range in every game until ''[[VideoGame/HaloReach Reach]]''.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'':

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'':

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':

!!Examples:
* ''UltimaOnline'' is an early example. Developers made a change early in the game's life that turned all melee weapons down to a bare fraction of their former strength. Players compared fighting with the end result to hitting the enemy with a Nerf bat and disdained them for years afterward, heralding the age of archer/mage [=PKs=].

* ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'':
** The Needler was weakened somewha, decreasing its homing capacity and making it a close-range weapon.
** And the shotgun too -- it either lost magazine size or range in every game until ''Reach''.
** They even went so far as to nerf ''physics'', revamping the vehicle collision damage system and completely removing fall damage, in order to cater to "inexperienced players". Those changes, along with a few others, completely removed the risk factor of run & gun techniques, which in turn made the game play more like an Unreal clone than a semi-innovative shooter.
** They also removed the Rocket Launcher's homing ability in ''Halo 3'', presumably to prevent it from [[GameBreaker breaking the game]] in multiplayer. It can again lock on in ''Reach'' (albeit only on aerial vehicles now) but the anti-vehicle niche has been filled by the Missile Pod and the Spartan Laser, both of which require the user to be exposed for a bit longer to get a kill.

* ''{{Burnout}} Paradise'':
** Before the patch one could go into a road rage and the timer would go up forever so long as you kept taking down drivers. People would get in excess of 100 takedowns. After the patch, if you do a road rage, the timer will stop going up once you hit the target number of takedowns.
** Another patching effect was to make beginner cars slower.
* ''DungeonsAndDragons 3.5'':
** The primary source of argument is the ''haste'' spell, which was changed from being extremely useful to everyone to being mostly worthless to anyone who does not engage in conventional (melee or ranged weapon) combat -- meaning most spellcasters have no reason ever to cast it on ''themselves''. Of course, in this particular case, 3.0 was the only edition where ''haste'' was useful to spell casters in the first place. However, since it affected your caster-level worth of allies within a 30 feet radius, it made for a semi-decent group buff (albeit not nearly as good as it used to be) for the combat characters. Eventually, it was somewhat revived in the form of "Celerity" and its variants.
** Wizards of the Coast also seems very, very afraid of polymorphing effects. They've reworked the rules so many times that this editor has completely given up on trying to keep track of them. Some of the changes were arguably good, such as changing the spells from Polymorph Self and Polymorph Other, the latter of which could be abused, to Polymorph and BalefulPolymorph. Other changes were to cover up such "abuses" as the possibility of parrots being able to pronounce command words for wands that the character could use in normal form. Despite all this, polymorph and similar effects (such as wildshape) are still really good.
** One word: Shapechange. Bar none, the most powerful nonepic spell in existence and vastly powerful even on an epic scale. The overpowered nature of that spell is, in part, what led to the massive nerf on polymorphing.
** For a buff example in ''DungeonsAndDragons'', clerics were seen as boring in 2nd edition because they had to use up almost all their spells healing their allies. In 3rd edition, they ended up being one of the most powerful classes in the game.
** Wizards of the Coast definitively Nerfed Wizards and Druids from what they were before, where at certain levels, every other character was second fiddle to whatever scroll a Wizard had. Druids were healers, and Fighters, and Sneaky. The new versions in 4th edition are much lower in power.
** Paizo's {{Pathfinder}} nerfed a great many things spammed by 3.5 players, including metamagic feats (especially Quickened Spell) and the ubiquitous spiked chain. They also nerfed some options indirectly, by improving everything, but improving some things less. For example, all Pathfinder base classes and monsters got upgrades compared to 3.5, but spell-casters generally got less new crunchy bits, effectively nerfing the casters by not buffing them as much. Likewise, letting players choose any base class as their character's favored class and giving them a bonus for sticking to it, then giving each base class a powerful bonus at max level made base classes more attractive. The effect was a nerf to Prestige Classes. Players are not ''always'' thinking of their first five levels as "filling in the checklist for my Prestige Class." Finally, eliminating EmptyLevels, the high level bonus, and the favored class bonus nerfed 3.5's ubiquitous "dipping" into classes. How successful these changes are is entirely up to each gaming group.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', which emphasizes cooperative play more than the average {{MMORPG}}, any perceived "nerf" of a job class can grossly affect that class's invitation rates for years to come, often far out of proportion to the actual impact of the change. The most infamous was the "Dragoon nerf", actually a nerfing of multi-hit [[LimitBreak weaponskills]] in general that prevented them from being spammed, which happened to hit the Dragoon's most famous weaponskill particularly hard. For years, despite the introduction of enemies that a Dragoon would work well against and some shoring up of the job's most glaring weaknesses, Dragoons had a very hard time getting invited to experience point parties; this state of affairs only changed with a controversially large {{Buff}} to ''all'' two-handed weapons.
* ''CityOfHeroes'':
** "Enhancement Diversification" ("ED"). Pre-ED, you could enhance a given characteristic (damage, accuracy, etc.) of a superpower up to six times for the same cumulative boost (Totaling a tripling of the power's statistic in some areas, doubling with defensive powers). With ED, players started seeing a loss of returns at around the third enhancement (doubled effect for most offensive effects, about a 60% boost for defensive effects), in order to encourage players to spread the wealth around and enhance different characteristics. Naturally, a lot of strategies that relied on powers [[MinMaxing being pushed to their limits]] [[GameBreaker or breaking the game]] no longer worked.
** Later, Invention Enhancements were introduced; they could circumvent the limitations of ED in a variety of interesting ways, often resulting in characters much more highly customized and/or powerful than they were before ED with clever slotting. The Devs claimed this was the point behind previous nerfs; they needed to make the absurdly powerful heroes weaker to enable them to do neat things to power them up again.
** Prior to ED, the Regeneration powerset had been significantly reduced in effectiveness at least once every update. This reduced it from ridiculous, allowing [[AnAdventurerIsYou the DPSer to absorb more damage than the tank]], to merely very good.
** And not too long before ED, there was a rather more straightforward nerf to nearly all defensive powers, officially described as a Global Defense Reduction. The lone upside of all this was almost all the defensive powers were reworked so that they stacked.
** At around the same time, agro limits and [=AoE=] target caps were introduced. Before, one could herd/damage every enemy on a map, provided they stayed in range. Now, you cannot damage, mez, or affect more than 16 foes with the most massive AE power (caps usually range from 5-12 on most powers, though), and a single player cannot have more than 16 AI trained on him/her. (This can actually be an advantage in extraordinarily large fights).
* While ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'' goes through the same regular nerf and buff cycles as other {{MMORPG}}s, particularly notable was the Gadgeteering On-Next-Hit debacle. Developers weren't happy with the moves [[http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Sonic_Device Sonic Device]], [[http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Toxic_Nanites Toxic Nanites]], and [[http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Miniaturization_Drive Miniaturization Drive]], because players could combine all three into a single, overpowered attack, and the abilities were too effective against multiple opponents. So, in a single patch, the two weaker abilities had their cooldowns raised to match the stronger Sonic Device, all three were given a shared cooldown(effectively removing any point in getting more than one), and they no longer triggered on attacks that hit multiple opponents(destroying their usefulness with numerous players, considering the emphasis CO puts on multitarget fights). Needless to say, '''no one''' liked any of these changes, much less getting hit with ''all three'' at once. Amusingly though, the announcement of these changes weeks earlier wasn't met with [[InternetBackdraft vitrolic hate]], but with pages and pages of calm, rational discussion about much ''smarter'' ways they could've solved the same problems without rendering the three abilities completely worthless. Fortunately, it wasn't long before developers realized what a moronic move they made, and redid the changes, using some of the same suggestions users had provided, but [[WhatAnIdiot had gone ignored.]]
* Akuma has been nerfed repeatedly since his first appearance in ''Super StreetFighter II Turbo'', but this was beneficial, as he was brought down from a [[SNKBoss nigh-invincible boss character]] to a powerful regular character.
* ''DarkForcesSaga'':

** In addition, ''Dark Forces''' Concussion Rifle was so powerful it was almost ''too'' strong--so powerful you could hurt yourself if you weren't careful. It was powered down for ''Jedi Knight'', unable to trigger its concussion effect on multiple spread-out enemies, being more like an instant-hit rocket launcher but was still powerful enough to be useful--it even gained a secondary fire that used less energy, was more accurate, and targeted only a single enemy. It was one of a few weapons that couldn't be blocked by a lightsaber, though it could be Force pulled. About the only way this could be called a nerf is if the ''Dark Forces'' version wasn't broken. The gun was taken out of ''Jedi Outcast'' entirely. ''Jedi Academy'' brought it back, and while it still did hideous amounts of damage, the gun was very nearly nerfed. Rather than being instantaneous damage, it fired a projectile that, like rockets, could be Force pushed away--but it was much, much quicker, requiring split-second timing. Unless, of course, you try to use it on a [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard computer Jedi]]...
* ''VideoGame/StarWarsGalaxies'':
** At its release, and for at least two years afterward, it featured Mandalorian armor, a ridiculously overpowered set of equipment. All crafting relied on a combination of player stats and material stats. While this lead to no two pieces of equipment being the same, enterprising industrialists soon discovered methods to create armor with resistance to damage >90%. While fine in the beginning (the price of the armor meant meeting another player with a full set was a rare sight), the entire system of manufacturing the armor soon hit the point where full sets of 99% resistance Mandalorian Armor were (relatively) cheap to obtain. Players soon became immortal. Eventually, SOE responded and dropped the nerfbat in the hardest way possible, limiting resistances to 90% and making anything above 80% or so ridiculously difficult to obtain.
** In an inversion of this trope, the game featured Bone Armor, a cheap pile of useless armor everyone wanted in the first weeks of the game. No one noticed when the armor was suddenly buffed so it actually resisted damage.
* Many cards in the ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' Trading Card Game suffer through this every once in a while. Usually it comes in two flavors: either the card itself or the [[{{Errata}} rulings for its use]] are changed to make it more situational and less powerful. It's become even more of a problem post-''Invasion of Chaos'', as Konami attempts to prevent another [[GameBreaker Envoy incident]].
** Many cards are nerfed in the transition from anime to real life cards. One of the most infamous examples is Card of Sanctity. In the anime, it allowed a player to draw until they had 6 cards in their hand (the legal hand size limit). To put that in perspective, konami banned a card that [[GameBreaker allowed a player to draw 2 cards]] while this one would have allowed a player to draw up to six. Instead of just not releasing it, konami made it so that you have to remove everything you controlled (hand and field) from play, and only draw 2.
** Most cards were just banned instead of nerfed though. The only time cards are genuinely nerfed is when the cards are mistranslated, like with "Bazoo the Soul-Eater", "Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer", and "Skull Lair". Their very powerful effects were very easy to activate, kinda similar to the two Chaos envoys though not as powerful. However, the envoys were banned whereas these two cards were changed. Ironically, many people did not use "Skull Lair" despite it being broken since it was only a common card.
** Subverted with "Yata-Garasu", it had the effect of making the opponent skip his next draw phase, making a lockdown possible, which essentially means an instant win. When launching the US version they decided to make it “a bit less playable” by having it return to the owner’s hand after the turn was over, making it actually stronger since it was very hard to destroy if it wasn’t on the field. Eventually it had to get banned.
* ''{{Pokemon}}'':
** The Psychic type was horribly [[GameBreaker broken]] in the original games, on account of their huge Special stats, a glitch making the Ghost type weak to when they were supposed to be strong to them, and that the other type that ''was'' strong against them (Bug) had no decent attacks at all. ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' introduced two new types (one immune to Psychic and the other resistant to it), fixed the Ghost-type glitch and buffed the Bug- and Ghost-type movesets, and split the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense.
** From a less {{egregious}} example: the Ground-type move Dig had a base power of 100 in the original ''Red'', ''Blue'', and ''Yellow'' versions, but in later games, its base power was decreased to 60. ''Diamond'', ''Pearl'', and ''Platinum'' then buffed it to a respectable 80 base power, though.
** While Psychic types are most famous for being nerfed in sequels, it is far from unique. Water types have long been the most plentiful type in the game, and the ones who were strong against them were originally possessing pitiful damage potential (Grass) or a bit rare to actually use (Electric). Subsequent games have both increased the usefulness and number of Grass moves and increased the availability of both types of moves.
** It's probably little surprise that Starmie, which is both Water and Psychic type, has been since the beginning among the highest of the CharacterTiers. It helps that each nerfing comes with a subsequent buff (like increasing its already-impressive potential movepool).
** Hyper Beam in the first Gen was horribly overpowered: though it required a turn to recharge after use, it has 90% accuracy when most moves with more than 100 power had 80% accuracy or lower, plus the recharge was mysteriously unneeded when the attack hit a Substitute or ''knocked the opponent out'' ([[UnstableEquilibrium so you can just OHKO the next one out]]). Come the next generation and it always requires recharging, so you have to lose a turn to get a move that is only slightly more powerful than average.
** Over a decade later, Explosion and Selfdestruct likewise lost their defense halving abilities in [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite 5th Generation]], cutting their power in half. Most likely this was done for double battles and triple battles, as in single battles they are simply annoying while in Double Battles they were insanely over-centralizing and would have been even worse in triple battles (which were introduced that generation). It's still the most powerful move in the game, though.
** Another Generation V nerf was how Taunt and Encore went from lasting 4-8 turns to exactly 3 turns.
** The move Hypnosis is an interesting case. It was buffed from 60% accuracy to 70% in Diamond and Pearl, but Game Freak later bumped it back down to 60%.
** Hidden Power received a nerf with the special/physical split in Generation IV. It is purely a special attack, instead of the type dictating whether it'll be special or physical. It's also a buff for some Pokémon, but other Pokémon like Dodrio and others that relied on Hidden Power to get around its counters, it's a nerf.
* ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' recategorization of Physical and Special moves is thought to have nerfed certain Pokémon such as Blaziken and Sceptile: their dominant offensive stat is Special Attack, while their movepools primarily consist of physical moves. Ironically, the split actually made Blaziken ''more'' powerful as of Generation V, as Website/{{Smogon}} has placed it in the [[GameBreaker Uber tier]].
* ''BaldursGate'':
** Charm and Dominate spells (which allow you to control enemies) last as long as the original ''[[DungeonsAndDragons D&D]]'' equivalents (ages in game time). Combined with an item that gave you infinite uses of Charm and an exploit that allowed you to use the item while invisible, a player could charm every enemy in the area, and use them to kill each other. ''Baldur's Gate 2'' addressed this not just by removing the item and the exploit, but also by changing the charm and domination spells so that the choice of targets was highly limited, the spells became easier to resist, and the time they lasted was minuscule.
** Summon wands in ''[=BG1=]'' could spam massive hordes of weak monsters to help the player. Enough of those could either kill any major opponent, or distract them long enough for the player to kill them. ''[=BG2=]'' not only removed summon wands from the game (there was one in the first dungeon, but by the later stages the creatures conjured by this were essentially useless cannon fodder), but also restricted the number of possible summoned monsters in game to five. Whether or not that was a good nerf is up to the individual player.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has had plenty of both kinds of changes since the launch. In particular, physical classes tend to receive nerfs fairly often, although it's arguably the wrong way to address the balance issue -- the real problem is that physical stats scale far better than magical stats.
** The prime example is Agility versus Intellect. Agility improves damage for rogues, hunters, and feral druids, critical hit chance, and pretty much every physical defensive attribute. Intelligence only increases mana and spell critical hit chance (at a much lower rate). Strength also being a strong attribute for Death Knights' parry also doesn't help matters.
** Individual Cycles tend to be seen too. Spell functionality changes are common as one class becomes too dominate or one style becomes the one true style to play. It gets very strange when spells get nerfed for being too powerful but come back at a higher level. Sleep becomes a huge example as in Beta it was the end all be all Mez before being removed for being too powerful and was put back in the game a few years later.
** Prior to the introduction of ''The Burning Crusade'' shamans were essentially designed to act as near counterparts to paladins in terms of functionality. While difficult, it was entirely possible to have a shaman cover all three roles in a party: Tank, heal, and dps. When paladins and shamans became available to both factions, the talents and stats required to make a shaman tank were removed, while the talents and skills required to make a paladin tank were brought up to a level near the Warrior (long considered the only "real" raid tank class).
** With every expansion -- the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm -- each class in the game (and in fact some basic game mechanics) gets a complete overhaul, in preparation for the raising of the level cap. The developers try to balance these newly-changed classes on their Beta realms, but these Beta servers just don't have enough players to get a broad statistical sample. As a result, when the overhauls do go live, there is at first a great class imbalance (e.g. retribution paladins in 3.0, fire mages in 4.0), followed quickly by a flurry of Nerfs, followed slowly by occasional buffs here and there until the game settles down.
** An odd case of a percieved-nerf-that-was-actually-a-buff, Shadow priests in 4.2 had their damage tweaked where direct damage spells were buffed by 12% and damage-over-time spells were reduced 12%. To the uneducated who assume shadow priests are wannabe affliction warlocks, it was assumed that shadow had lost it's teeth. However, with the addition of [[LimitBreak Dark Archangel and stacking max shadow orbs]] implemented at the start of Cataclysm, direct damage spells grew in power ''exponentially'' with their buff while dots were nerfed linearly. Now, shadow priests can compete with other top-graded dps like hunters and mages.

* One of the more noticeable nerfs in ''{{Battlefield 2142}}'' was the steady decrease in the power of "podding," which is the practice of launching a player out of a tube in a pod, which is intended to be a way of getting players from one place to another. Aside from the pod-surfing debate (which was more of an ObviousRulePatch closing a physics exploit), the damage of ''podding vehicles'' was severely reduced. In early versions, you could destroy [=APCs=], damage tanks, and even kill aircraft, if you could manage the funky pod controls well enough to hit them. In later versions, trying to pod ground vehicles will usually kill the infantryman doing the podding, without hurting the vehicle much, and even the relatively weak aircraft can survive being podded.
* As Castlevania games went on, the accessory that got you "infinite" MP has been brought down from "The MP bar doesn't go down" to "The MP bar fills up extremely fast" to "The MP bar fills up pretty fast", so that people cannot use obscene amounts of MP to become invincible, which was the case in some games that had seemingly game-breaking abilities such as healing on the spot.
* ''MagicTheGathering'' goes through this from time to time, with Wizards of the Coast banning or limiting cards that prove unbalancingly powerful.
** In times past, Wizards would sometimes nerf overpowered cards by issuing errata. Most of them have since been changed back. The current policy is to make all cards function as originally designed (though they'll still issue errata to fix genuine errors, or to bring cards in line with new rules). There are a few different "formats" distinguished by which cards are banned, allowing players to choose what level of nerfage they want to deal with.
** Occasionally, a de-nerfed card will immediately be banned thanks to their newfound power level. One short-lived tournament environment featured a newly-de-nerfed card that allowed very quick wins. With the right four cards in one's opening hand, the card could be used to win the game at the beginning of the first turn of the game - even if that turn was the opponent's.
** ''Magic'', because of its rotating set formats, can {{Nerf}} a card simply by replacing it with a new one. If Lightning Bolt is too powerful, wait for it to rotate out of the main format and then print Shock, which is the same cost for one less damage. Ditto Counterspell, which was replaced with Cancel - the same thing, but with a mana added to the cost. Lightning Bolt and Counterspell still see vintage and casual formats, but since [[GameBreaker a lot of things are in Vintage]], they fit in the end.
** It is more common for a strategy to be nerfed, rather than an individual card. This is often accomplished by releasing a card which is devastatingly effective against the currently dominant deck type, but of limited usefulness against other decks.
* This also happens sometimes with Legend of The Five Rings via similar methods to M:TG.
* Several spells in ''VideoGame/PuzzleQuest: Challenge Of The Warlords'' were drastically nerfed in the port from consoles to the PC. In particular the Knight's Stun and the Wizard's Fireball, which were both give two-turn recharge times and slightly reduced damage.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' nerfed several classes that were overpowered in the prequel by a variety of means:
** MP starts out at 0 every fight, limiting the higher level spells such as summons. On the other hand, most abilities use up less MP now.
** StandardStatusEffects are much less powerful or much less likely to hit, prevent Mezzer classes from locking down enemies with ease (they are far from useless though).
** Perhaps most importantly, ''Judges'' were nerfed. Only one law per battle, and breaking it only forfeits a few advantages, rewards and the ability to revive teammates during battle.
** Thieves were toned down significantly. All it took in the first game was to inflict Stop on an opponent, and a Thief could steal every piece of equipment they had [[VideoGameStealing as well as their abilities]], significantly weakening them. Now they can only steal loot and one accessory (you can still steal armor with a Viking though), and even then they can only steal up to 4 things from one person.
** The stats themselves seemed to be nerfed as well. Offensive and Defensive stats could hit 400-500 points in Advance, but in A2, they don't go any higher than the 300 range. Damage is also nerfed, making a 999 damage hit impossible unless you use an ability of some sort.
** The reaction ability Damage > MP from FFTA was broken where even if you had 1 MP left, all damage would be dealt to the MP and would not rollover to the HP. In the sequel (where the ability is now called MP Shield), the reaction ability uses MP to reduce damage and remaining damage transfers to the user's HP. Plus with the aforementioned "MP starts at 0" thing it doesn't effectively give you your entire Max MP in HP at the start of battle.
** The Beastmaster class in FFTA could control a monster until the Beastmaster's turn came up again. Now a Beastmaster can only force a monster to attack immediately on that turn.
* ''VideoGame/MarioKart'':
** The infamous snaking technique. In the DS version, players snaked by quickly drifting left to right on straight roads and doing mini turbos. Only certain characters could drift this way effectively without losing control and the mini turbos they got were almost like a mushroom. Naturally, flame wars broke out over whether this technique was fair. The Wii version changes the drifting and mini turbo mechanic, making snaking near impossible to do.
** The Red Shells are also tweaked from Mario Kart DS. In the DS game, Red Shells were smart and attacked drivers from the side instead of behind, making the "hold item behind you for a shield" strategy almost useless. In the Wii version, the shells go back to the old "follow directly behind the target" behavior.
* ''Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow'' lets you use [[{{BFS}} Big Freaking Swords]] with ease, but by ''Portrait of Ruin'', big weapons have become slower and riskier to use than, say, whips or fists.
* Holy Water in the original ''Castlevania'' and ''Castlevania III'' make for an amazing subweapon against ground enemies, not only dealing continuous damage but also freezing enemies. Combined with triple shots, it might as well replace the whip as the Belmonts' main weapon. It was weakened in future installments; it loses its enemy-freezing capability and, in later titles, has its flame crawl forward a short distance to prevent it from lingering on an enemy.
* ''KingdomOfLoathing'' has had nerfings, as with any game of its type, but it also makes fun of the concept with the "foam dart" item, which can be used on any player to give them the "Nerf'd" condition. The condition prints messages that makes it sound like you're doing less damage and getting less item drops, but it doesn't in fact actually do anything.
* Because of its highly competitive and balanced PvP, skills in ''GuildWars'' are almost constantly being tweaked, adjusted, buffed and nerfed to keep things balanced; some skills were even split into PvP and [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PvE]] versions to make them balanced in 2 totally different game modes. However, a controversial change saw the balance team blatantly destroy the PvP version of one skill (Smiter's Boon) by nerfing it as absolutely as is physically possible (maximum energy cost possible which is 5 times the previous cost, duration nerfed to 1/6th of its previous length and recharge changed to a ridiculous ''45 times'' its duration). They openly admitted their intention was simply to stop people from using the skill in PvP ''at all'' and they succeeded since it is now ''completely and utterly unusable under any circumstances whatsoever''. There was much rage. Heck, the S-Boon nerf became SO well-known that they turned it into an AscendedMeme and had one of the enemies use it on your characters!
* ''WarhammerFantasy'':
** Back in 7th edition, Dark Elf Sorceresses were some of the best mages in the game due to their access to the ''Power of Darkness'' spell, which was easy to cast and granted bonus power dice. The spell has not been changed, but the 8th edition of the rules put a cap on how many power dice you can get each turn, making it much less useful.
** Similarly, the entire army Daemons of Chaos was considered so broken that some tournaments banned it, and many players refused to play against it. Almost everything caused Fear/Terror, everything had some kind of Ward save, and the magic was atrociously undercosted for what it did; in short, you'd find your troops fleeing, dead, or otherwise incapacitated in short order without much chance to strike back. With the advent of 8th Edition, psychology has a much less damaging effect and magic has been capped in many ways. There's a reason 8th Edition has been called 'The Daemon Nerf' by some.
* Between ''Manga/{{Bleach}}: Blade of Fate'' and ''Bleach: Dark Souls'' for the DS, several characters had a radical toning-down. Byakuya Kuchiki now uses up a Spirit Power bar for each Senbonzakura, preventing him from sitting on one side of the screen and spamming it until victory, and Aizen's moves were juggled to prevent him from being a PerfectPlayAI, among others. Sadly, in the crossfire several balanced characters took hits as well (sorry, Orihime).
* Each ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' game Nerfed something that had been overpowered before (while introducing new [[GameBreaker Game Breakers]]). A few examples:
** Some chips and Program Advances did less damage in later games. [=GutsShoot=] did a whopping 500 in the first game; it dropped to 400 in the second and 300 in the third.
** Program Advances were the backbone of many a strong folder until [=BN5=], when a new rule was imposed: any given Advance could be used only once per battle. The [[StopHavingFunGuys hardcore PvPers]] were ticked.
** You could have ten copies of a single chip in your folder in the first game. This was reduced to five, then four. Tougher restrictions were placed on summon chips too.
** Many of the popular [=NaviCust=] parts became more awkward and harder to combine. [=BN4=] had a particularly obnoxious [=HubBatch=] that took up the whole Command Line.
:: The big exception to this trend was the final game, [=BN6=], which was extremely generous -- some even found it too generous. (180 damage from an M-Cannon! Everything in * code!)
* ''Franchise/MegaMan'', examples in the side-scrolling games too:
** The Shadow Blade in ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' is often considered the nerfed version of the [[GameBreaker game breaking]] Metal Blade from ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' due to their similar appearances and capabilities, with the differences being that the Shadow Blade consumes more [[{{Mana}} energy]], can't be shot downwards, and only travels so far before boomeranging back to Mega Man.
** Rush Jet was originally fine-controlled by the player. This proved too exploitable, so starting in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'', he moved forward automatically and you could only adjust his altitude. ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' nerfed Rush Jet even further by scripting his appearances -- he shows up in stages designed for him, and Mega Man can't summon him anywhere else. Don't feel bad for Rush, though. He's always getting new modes to play with.
** The Mega Buster was nerfed in ''5'' such that Mega Man loses his charge if he takes a hit. Then ''9'' came along and nerfed the Buster and the slide move clear out of existence!
** In the [[VideoGame/MegaManX X series]], both ''X5'' and ''X6'' give X a nerfed armor from the previous game as starting equipment. ''X4'' 's Fourth Armor loses its Giga Attack, the benefits of the Head part, and the power to charge special weapons; ''X5'' 's Falcon Armor loses its [[GameBreaker utterly broken]] invincible flight mode (but does pick up special-weapon charging); and neither suit's Buster is quite as good as it was before.
** Even other characters see the occasional nerfing. Bass has lost his charged shot as of ''Mega Man & Bass'' (he got multidirectional fire instead -- great for levels, not great for bosses). Zero's buster, originally his main weapon, has been an occasional afterthought since ''X4''.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Boktai}}'' , The Gun Del Sol is your only weapon in the first game, but it's incredibly versatile, capable of blasting solar energy in all sorts of ways (as well as launching grenades and storing tons of backup energy). In the second game, you lose this weapon early on -- and when you finally get it back, it's a shadow of its former self. It can't fire spreads, lacks all the extras, and consumes so much energy you can only use it a few times before refilling. It's explained that it was damaged and that there was only enough time for a sloppy repair job, explaining it's poor performance. By the third game, it was back to full strength.
* ''Madden 2006'' added the QB Vision Cone, which Nerfed the players who overly relied on the mobile Michael Vick (because his Awareness stat was so low, he had one of the smallest cones in the game). Note that this backfired spectacularly - after enough practice, with a normal or small vision cone you could effectively deke a defensive back into covering the wrong player; players with large vision cones such as Tom Brady or Peyton Manning could not, effectively nerfing the best pocket passers in the league. The vision cone was removed two years later.
* ''VideoGame/MortalKombat2'' featured the then-new Kitana, whose telekinetic "fan lift" maneuver led to one of the most devastating and one-sided attacks in any fighting game -- corner opponent, lift, then punch or kick the living crap out of said opponent. Most of the game cabinets were eventually revved with a fix that caused a player delivering an attack on the end of the fight screen to bounce back just out of range of the attack; the fan lift, while still crippling to an opponent, was no longer a game breaker.
* In ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3'', Kabal was one of the strongest characters in the game, with his (dial-a-)combos being some of the most damaging of any character. In ''UltimateMortalKombat3'', the damage Kabal's combos dished out was cut by half.
* ''Left4Dead'':

* ''EVEOnline'':
** A big one was the HAC speed nerf. This eliminated a tactic use by many 0.0 alliance to essentially be invulnerable to damage yet completely dominate targets.
** Also the Falcon buff and revision. They decided that the best jamming ship in the game needed a boost. This led to fights where half or more of the opposing fleet was out of action because Falcons could jam tagets from far beyond engagement ranges. It took a year and very vocal opponets but they returned it to its orginal stats. Now if they'll just fix rockets...
** In almost every update of the "Tiericide" ship-rebalancing initiative, some ships end up getting hammered. For example, prior to 2012, the Minmatar Hurricane was one of the most popular battlecruisers around (second only to the Drake, and preferred in PVP), capable of fitting very powerful autocannons or artillery, backed up by paired energy neutralizers that would flatten the capacitors of any ship that got close enough to threaten it. Then with the Retribution patch, suddenly the Hurricane didn't have enough powergrid for its traditional roles, and then battlecruiser rebalancing proposed yet ''another'' hit from the nerf-hammer...
* ''Gundam Vs Gundam NEXT'' was not kind to ''GundamF91'' at all, no new suits or stages and the F91 lost some bite with his signature's move having to be charged.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** Between ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', many changes were made to rein in the insanity. The biggest one was the Alchemy skill; In ''Morrowind'', it was possible to use intelligence-boosting potions to give your character godlike intelligence, and since intelligence affected your alchemy skill, each subsequent potion only got stronger. But since all skills are affected the same way by their base stats, [[GameBreaker this could get ridiculous quickly.]] The changes in ''Oblivion'' are obvious from the start; You can only have four potion effects active at a time, skill boosts past 100 (the set maximum,) have no effect, and stats don't affect skills ''nearly'' as directly as in Morrowind, the sole exception being Speed.
** And a minor example from ''Oblivion''; Due to a glitch in the original game, paint brushes aren't affected by physics, and thus don't fall. They also have surface area to them, albeit a very small surface area. It is entirely possible for a player with a sufficient supply of paintbrushes and good hand-eye coordination to create a stairway made of paintbrushes, or to create the perfect sniper's nest for archers and spellcasters. Needless to say, this was patched up with the first wave of downloadable content.
** In ''Morrowind'' the Fortify Skill spell could be used to increase the caster's Restoration skill for a short period of time. Because the Fortify Skill spell was a Restoration type spell, using subsequently increasing magnitudes of the Fortify Restoration spell (up to 800) could allow for the exploitation of the Enchant (or any other) skill. A ring could be enchanted to allow the caster to jump across half of the map. Using a combination of a damage effect and Fortify Enchant, the maximum amount of damage over the maximum range could be dealt hundreds of times with one charge of a ring. This was no longer possible in ''Oblivion'' because the stats were limited to 100 even with fortification effects.
** It looks like spells got this treatment in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' as a justification for the new MakeMeWannaShout powers that you can unlock throughout the game
* In ''[=RayStorm=]'', the R-Gray 2 is the better ship to use for scoring, as it can achieve 16 lock-on shots and a x256 point multiplier (in contrast to R-Gray 1's 8 lock-on shots and x128 multiplier). In ''[=RayCrisis=]'', R-G1's counterpart Wave Rider 01R has the same number of lock-ons as WR 01R, but now the shot multipliers go up to x256 at the maximum of 8 lock-ons, making it a more effective scoring ship than 02R (R-G2's counterpart).
* ''GunstarHeroes'': Set difficulty on Hard or Expert. Pick up [[GameBreaker Chaser and Lightning.]] Now, try to [[NoSell own any of the bosses with it.]]
* In ''Tetris DS'', as well as some other "Tetris Guideline" games, offers a "T-Spin Triple" bonus for using a twist to clear 3 lines with a T piece. Said bonus came out to be ''more than for a [[TitleDrop Tetris]].'' ''Tetris Zone'' and some other newer official ''Tetris'' games attempt to nerf this problem by simply not recognizing T-Spin Triples, counting them as normal Triples instead.
* The ''TetrisTheGrandMaster'' series has combo multipliers that multiply the amount of "grade points" you get for a line clear. In [=TGM2=], due to an off-by-one error, you can get this multiplier with single line clears. In [=TGM3=], this was corrected so that single line clears will never have a multiplier.
* ''Star Wars: Battlefront'':

* When ''VideoGame/NarutoClashOfNinja Revolution'' was released, the characters very much had the balance of a normal Clash of Ninja game (IE, [[GameBreaker too powerful]] or [[JokeCharacter too weak]]), when the sequel was released, most characters were more balanced, but there were still problems with some of the characters, when the third game was released, it apparently achieved the most balance of the three, as well as including characters after the Rescue Gaara Arc. The Japanese Wii games, unfortunately, avert this.
* ''DynastyWarriors 6: Empires'' nerfs Lu Bu, heretofore the most fearsome badass in the game. There is nothing quite like the emotional roller coaster of having Lu Bu defect to join your side ("HELL YEAH! Let the rampage begin!") only to see him get spanked by some generic NPC officer.
* The West Indies {{Cricket}} team complained that the "One bouncer per over" rule was designed to nerf their bowlers when it was introduced.
* ''{{Descent}} II'':
** Fusion Cannon was significantly nerfed, only dealing half the damage of its D1 counterpart, and losing its damage increasing glitch (fire through an enemy and it gets stronger). The Plasma Cannon and Mega Missiles were also weakened somewhat.
** In the third game, the Vulcan and Gauss cannons were replaced by the Vauss cannon, which is weaker than the Gauss, but stronger than the Vulcan. The Gauss cannon was a major GameBreaker in ''Descent II''.
* ''Thunder Force VI'' nerfs the [[GameBreaker game-breaking]] Free Range weapon from ''Thunder Force V'', decreasing its range and damage output. It also nerfs [[LimitBreak Over Weapons]] by reducing your speed to 25% while one is active, making you a [[MightyGlacier Glacial]] GlassCannon.
* ''TimeCrisis 3'' introduces secondary weapons such as the machinegun and shotgun. The machinegun inflicts more damage per shot than the handgun and is fully automatic, while the shotgun fires seven pellets while maintaining the same firing rate as the handgun. ''Time Crisis 4'' nerfs these weapons; the machinegun and the shotgun now inflict less damage unless used on specific enemies, and the shotgun has a reduced firing rate.
* ''Merlin's Revenge 3'' nerfed the Energy Beam and Monster Summon spells from the previous game, renaming them Energy Pulse and Army Summon. Energy Beam was widely regarded as a game breaker(which it was not. It was the only way to defeat the Scarlet Wizard), but the creator never gave a reason as to why Monster Summon was changed. Firstly, Energy Pulse was pathetic mostly due to the fact that as the number of enemies approached 25, a rather limiting maximum, its hit chance would approach zero. It was in fact, nerfed again, halfing its firerate. Army Summon, was, on the other hand, useful during the beta version as it seemed to be pretty much exactly the same with a different choice of units to create, until it was toned down AGAIN when the final beta map was released by only allowing you to summon friendly units that you had collected from other screens. Apart from the spells, the blue potion was nerfed next, followed by the swamp region, allied dwarves, the levelling system, enemy spawners, and finally the map itself, which was changed to a 16x4 map, as opposed the the 15x9 map of the previous game and the 18x12 map of the beta(I don't know if the exact numbers are right, but you get the idea). The map removed the scrub and desert regions, replacing them with a larger Magical Alliance area.
* ''DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu'':
** There is a special shot type called Strong Style that gives your ship [[GameBreaker broken firepower]]. In ''Dai-Fukkatsu [[ExpansionPack Black Label]]'', picking Strong Style will turn up the game to 2nd-loop difficulty to balance out your immense firepower.
** DFK version 1.5 grants you auto-bomb, which fires a SmartBomb for you every time you get hit as long as you have bombs left. In DFK Black Label, you can switch it off. In DFK version 1.51, auto-bombing will take away all of your remaining bombs instead of just your current one.

* There was a heated debate in the {{Oolite}} forums about the announced removal of the [[WaveMotionGun Energy Bomb]] from the next test version of the game. Ultimately it was left in, but only until the Mythical Next Stable Release.
* Not even {{Rhythm Game}}s are safe. The ''VideoGame/RockBand'' franchise has a few examples:
** Some note charts can change noticably when exporting songs between ''Rock Band'' and ''Rock Band 2'', making them just a bit harder to pull off. This is especially noticable in [[Music/{{ACDC}} "Thunderstruck"]], which has an intro section consisting entirely of hammer-on/pull-off notes in the original Track Pack release (making it very possible to play nearly the whole intro with one hand), but in ''Rock Band 2'' half the notes need to be strummed as normal.
** ''VideoGame/RockBandBlitz'': The Flame Notes power-up has downgraded from a GameBreaker to [[JokeWeapon Joke Power-up]] in an update... then was [[SubvertedTrope restored]].
* ''BrutalLegend'' had some infamous exploits before the November balance patch. Ironheade's Single Player properties made the hero's army too powerful in Multiplayer. Eddie could use Facemelter to butcher the opponents units right when they walk off the base, they could summon animals anywhere they want with Call of the Wild, and of course, spam dozens of Fire Barons to wipe out enemies in a short amount of time. In response, Double Fine made all the Facemelter solos weaker and unavailable until Tier 2, Call of the Wild only summoned the animals at the base, and Fire Barons became weaker and more expensive. Ironheade was more severely nerfed than the other two armies.
* The RealmsOfArkania series removed the Dwarves ability to use two handed weapons and the Druids ability to use bows in the second game (turning them into second rate SquishyWizards instead of competent magic wielding rangers). Quite a disappointment if you were planning on importing your old characters.
* In the video game version of ''VideoGame/TheDarkness'', the Darkness' weakness to sunlight was expanded to include all strong light, since the game was set entirely at night and the lack of any limitation on the main character's powers would make every fight a CurbStompBattle.
* The Model 1887s in ''CallOfDuty: ModernWarfare 2'', were nerfed twice: Once from GameBreaker to regular gun and then to [[JokeCharacter Joke Gun]].
* ''Modern Warfare 2'' also moved the AK-47, a starting gun from ''[=CoD4=]'', to one of the last unlocked weapons for its multiplayer.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'':
** Biotic Abilities were often considered a GameBreaker, so when the sequel was released it came as a shock to majority of the players that the powers were extremely nerfed. While not useless, the powers could no longer work on enemies who have any form of protection. Fair enough, but on the two highest level of difficulties EVERY enemy is protected in some form and by time you strip them of their defenses a WhyDontYouJustShootHim mentality takes hold.
** This mentality mainly applies to the control powers that could often instantly kill enemies. Most of the support or damage powers actually were substantially upgraded.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'':
** Several game breaking weapons in got nerfed for ''3''. The Viper semiautomatic sniper rifle had its ammo capacity cut, the Locust became very heavy and much less damaging, and the Mattock got a cap put on its rate of fire.
** The multiplayer mode features balance changes whereby the developers nerf and buff weapons and powers on a weekly (now fortnightly) basis. The vast majority of changes have been buffs, but the few nerfs have been more controversial - in particular, the infiltrator's tactical cloak was shifted in a way that forced players to choose whether they wanted to use it to enhance their damage or go invisible, and the turian-designed Krysae sniper rifle was ruthlessly de-clawed when it was found to make certain types of enemy all but trivial.
* Sports example: when javelin throw reached a dangerous record (104.8 meters, 114 yards), the record was lowered and spears were redesigned to prevent potential danger to audiences (current record is 98m, or 108 yds).
* In ''TombRaider III'' the M16 was replaced by the weaker [=MP5=].
* The ''MechWarrior'' games have seemingly swayed back and forth on which weapons receive nerfs in a series update and which get buffs.
** The first ''MechWarrior'' game saw the use of HitScan energy weapons and missile/ballistic weapons with some travel time to them. This made PPC-carrying 'Mechs a game-changer, especially since it was the game that also offered some of the [[BoomHeadshot the easiest cockpit kills]] in the series.
** ''MechWarrior 2'' rather literally changed everything; 'Mechs now had cockpit 'panels' rather than heads, to prevent a 100-ton monster from going down from five shots from a 20-ton light 'Mech's medium laser. All energy weapons now had a travel time, with [=PPCs=] in particular seeing a distinct speed and damage nerf. Most ballistics were nearly useless because of the way the game read damage, and missiles became a mainstay. Enemy 'Mechs now took considerable time and effort to bring down, above and beyond whatever the tabletop game or fiction mythos might have suggested, and your double-PPC rig could no longer reliably decapitate an 85-ton Assault 'Mech.
** ''Mechwarrior 3'' changed several things again. While missiles went unchanged, lasers returned to their original HitScan status. Ballistic weapons saw a much-needed boost, and even the PPC class of weapons got improvements in speed and damage. Strangely enough, Mech survivability itself received a nerf as a result of the game's engine. While the second game allowed a Mech to survive (if [[ControllableHelplessness futilely so]]) with just one leg, the third installment considered any 'Mech with a severed leg as 'destroyed' and out of the fight. This made the game both surprisingly easy or frustratingly tough, depending on what you were facing at the time ([[ThatOneLevel Operation 2-4]], anyone?).
** ''MechWarrior 4'' changed things up once again. Strangely enough, the biggest nerf from a strictly canonical angle was the ''hangar phase.'' This was where you could go in and change the loadouts, armor, and equipment on your HumongousMecha to suit your own tastes. Prior games since 2 gave you the ability to change your design considerably. 4, however, introduced the slot system, a move that was [[ScrappyMechanic not universally beloved.]] Where previous games would allow, say, a six-PPC Assault 'Mech to be piloted, 4's system limited 'Mech loadouts by weapon type, and the multi-PPC machine was usually just a dream. This became most unusual when some of the largest 'Mechs in the series could only mount a single PPC while having weight for several more even when a design 25% lighter could carry four of them. Furthermore, the weapons in their entirety seemed to suffer from raw damage limitations while survivability has increased. For instance, the [[MoreDakka Autocannon-20]] class weapons in 3 were nightmarish armor-slicing buzz saws, capable of shredding any 'Mech's armor with worrying speed and usually [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill annihilating smaller 'Mechs outright]] with a single shot. By the end of the 4th generation games, an AC-20 shot ''could not penetrate the intact centerline armor of the smallest 'Mech in the game.'' A Mech that weighs '''just 6 tons more than the AC-20 itself.''' Similar damage nerfs followed practically all the weapons in the series' generation.
** ''MechWarrior 5'' is currently trapped in DevelopmentHell thanks to lawsuits from Harmony Gold, but if the trailer is to be believed as gameplay footage (which is [[TrailersAlwaysLie unlikely at best]]), Mech damage soaking might again be nerfed given how quickly two of the three major players in the trailer are destroyed, and how much damage the third absorbs. Oddly enough, machine guns, which have been [[LethalJokeWeapon uncommonly strong]] in the face of multi-ton armored war machines in all prior game incarnations, seem to have been nerfed as well.
* Capcom seems to have intentionally watered down Issen (OneHitKill) attacks in ''{{Onimusha}}'' 3. Now, rather than zipping through each level and timing your attacks correctly to kill everything in sight, it's a coin toss whether or not the Issen can be pulled off. Unfortunately, one of the game's unlockables requires beating twelve waves of increasingly-tougher enemies using only Issen. Under these requirements, even the {{Goomba}}s can wipe you out.
* For the TransFormers Classics toy line, due to tightened gun laws preventing a release of a realistic toy firearm, Megatron was literally turned into a Nerf gun for his figure.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto 3'':
** The M16 had [[MoreDakka a ridiculously high firing rate]], approaching that of a [[GatlingGood minigun]]. It was decreased to a more realistic rate in the following games.
** Money was also nerfed. GTA 3 had cash rewards from missions ridiculously high (the first mission, picking up someone and returning them home, paid $1000!) and you gained money from ramming other cars. This led to a huge dive into MoneyForNothing since there was nothing to really spend money on other than weapons. ''Vice City'' reduced the monetary rewards to more reasonable levels and it reflected how people would pay you in the 1980s. ''San Andreas'' took it a step further by making some missions only reward you with respect points instead of money.
* The Combat Shotgun in ''{{FEAR}} 2'' was reduced to a ShortRangeShotgun. The game did have the longer range Automatic Shotgun, although that was less powerful.
* The NFL does this every year, implementing new rules to keep the defense from bumping wide recievers, hitting WRs in the head, hitting the quarterback, etc. To see this taken to a ridiculous level, look at the Pro Bowl regulations, which include ''no blitzing.''
* The NFL's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_NFL_season#Major_rule_changes greatest nerf (ahem) of all time was 1978]], opening up the passing game by:
** Limiting bump-and-run pass coverage to a single bump within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage ''before'' the ball was thrown.
** Stiffening the penalty for defensive pass interference from 15 yards to automatic first down at the spot of the infraction.
** Allowing offensive linemen to extend their hands and use open palms to block on pass plays (essentially legalizing holding in those situations)
** Adding the "in-the-grasp" rule to protect quarterbacks (the only one of these rule changes later repealed).
** Changing the penalty for intentional grounding from 15 yards to 10 (later nerfed even further by making it only apply when the quarterback was between where the tackles had originally lined up).
* What the rest of the world calls football (soccer to North Americans):
** It was nerfed sometime in the past when the rules specified that every throw-in had to be made using two hands overhead, stepping forward as you did. This was in response to some English player who honed the skill of making long one-armed throws downfield distances that would be competitive with an NFL long bomb. It sort of took the "foot" out of "football."
** Another ancient nerf happened when a certain goalkeeper started handling the ball, as was legal back then, all the way to the halfway line. This was adjusted with the limiting of a goalkeeper's ability to handle to the 18-yard box.
** The 1990 World Cup, after complaints of being boring, led to the backpass rule, which prohibited players passing back to their goalkeeper and having them pick it up.
* NASCAR originated with cars modified by their owners almost any way they liked: The first use of carbon fiber in a car was by Junior Johnson who happened to know someone working with it in the aerospace industry. As time went on restrictions were made limiting engine and aerodynamic technology, most infamously with Ford's 427 Cammer and Plymouth Superbird. Thanks to restrictions, today's cars are nearly identical and fuel injection won't be adapted until the 2014 season.
* ''[[CommandAndConquerTiberium Command and Conquer: Tiberium Twilight]]'':
** The beta was horribly unbalenced. One particular unit was the GDI Offence Class Striker. Easily the fastest land unit in the game, it could jump cliffs, be upgraded to fire faster, more accuratly, and be faster. Plus its laser was strong aginst the heavy armor of the Crawler, your BaseOnWheels. Yeah. That was patched VERY quickly, but it wasn't uncommon for whole teams of Nod Players to ragequit as soon as they saw ONE.
** And even the full game is one big nerf. There was always TacticalRockPaperScissors system in franchise, but even not responding types of units were able to deal moderate damage. Enough riflemen can take down light vehicles etc. However, in Tiberian Twilight, there is new damage type system (laser/gun/blast etc. instead infantry/tank/aircraft) and damage dealt by not responding damage types was SO nerfed down that unit can fire for minutes and barely scratches themselves. But when unit is under fire from responding damage type, it will be pulverized in seconds...
* In one of the first patches of VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas, after the discovery of a [[GameBreaker game breaking]] trick to get perma criticals with sniper rifles, where one would get 10 luck, the finnesse perk (plus +5 to base critical chance), and wear Boone's Beret (another +5) and equip a sniper or hunting rifle, which had a 5x critical multiplier, a deathclaw was no longer more than a fast target, with a relatively easily displaced head. Since then, the hunting rifle has a 2x multiplier, and the sniper rifle a 1x.
* ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'':
** The rocket launcher was pretty heavily nerfed between the first game and ''2004'': not only it can only fire three rockets at a time instead of the original six, damage was decreased as well so that it can no longer OneHitKill with direct hits. That however doesn't compare to the massive nerfing that befell the sniper rifle:

* Major League Baseball did this to pitching after the 1968 season, which was dubbed The Year of the Pitcher due to some of the most ungodly numbers ever put up by pitchers (to the point that those numbers will most certainly never be touched again). The mound was lowered five inches and balance towards the hitters was restored.
** Some of the video-game-like numbers put up in 1968:
*** Bob Gibson setting a modern-era ERA record of 1.18 (in 300 innings!)
*** Denny [=McLain=] becoming the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean in 1934 to reach 30 wins (and due to the current structure of the game with five-man rotations and a heavier reliance on relief pitchers going along with the mound nerfing, suffice to say [=McLain=] will be the last pitcher to ever hit that mark)
*** Luis Tiant led the AL with a 1.61 ERA and set a record batting-average-against, with hitters hitting an anemic .168 against him.
*** There were ''339'' shutouts in baseball that year; 30 of them came from the Gibson-led St. Louis Cardinals, which also set a 162-game season record of fewest runs allowed (472) that will never be eclipsed.
*** The AL hit a collective .231, the lowest in MLB history, and its .340 slugging percentage was the worst since the dead-ball era.
*** The Chicago White Sox set 162-game single-season records in fewest runs scored and times being shut out, both of which still stand.
* Before 1968, baseball underwent two other major nerfs:
** In the late 1890s, shortly before the American League was founded, a batter's first two foul balls were made strikes. Before that fouls didn't count against the batter, and a good one could tire out a pitcher by fouling marginal pitches until he got a hittable one (just as still happens when there's two strikes). That was even easier since they changed balls less frequently, and the balls were of lower quality than today's so they sometimes weren't even perfectly spherical anymore late in a game.
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infield_fly_rule The infield fly rule]], before which infielders could get cheap double plays in such situations with runners on first and second. With it, there's no force outs and you actually have to make the play.

* {{Wizard101}}: One of the few explicit examples of this being the Waterworks equipment compared to the best equipment from the the previous release. Previously in to balance [[StoneWall Ice school's]] horrible attack power (literally less than the TheMedic), Ice was the only school that could equip gear that granted resistance to all attacks. Other schools gear gave them resistance to spells that were either their own school or the other school in their on their side of the element/spirit line. Waterworks gear not only gave all other schools resistance to all attacks, but it also gave Ice '''less''' resistance to all attacks than the previous gear. Although Ice school still has greater resistance to attacks and blocking critical attacks than the other schools, the next closest schools resit is only 3% less and three other schools have a little under 2% less chance of blocking critical hits than Ice does. [[http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=67976&stc=1&d=1304230768 Compare to the boost other schools received from their gear.]]
* The otherwise [[GameBreaker game-breaking]] [[SpreadShot Spread Gun]] got nerfed in the arcade version of ''[[{{Contra}} Super Contra]]'', due to the limited number of bullets on screen, you can only fire up to three bursts of three shots at a time. With the upgraded, this is reduced to two bursts of five shots.
* The "Chocobuckle" in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' is an early obtainable [[MegaManning enemy skill]] costing only 3 MP. It deals damage based on the number of times the party fled from battle multiplied by the user's level. It got nerfed in the Western and International versions for being a GameBreaker. Instead, the damage is equal to the number of times the party fled from battle.
* In ''MedalOfHonor: Frontline'', the BAR's firing rate was somewhat reduced from previous games.
* ''{{Gauntlet}}'' bore witness to one of video gaming's first nerfs. The warrior and wizard both took reductions to their upgraded shot power in the nefarious 'Final Revision' of Gauntlet 1, and had their food allotment VASTLY reduced in Gauntlet 2. Annoyingly, they weren't 'too strong', people simply picked them the most often due to stereotypes of warriors and wizards in {{RPG}}s.
* For ''{{Exalted}}'', the Twilight caste's overpowered anima banner effect was nerfed in errata (and then totally rewritten into something more appropriate for the caste). The endless string of absurdly broken Charms in "Dreams of the First Age" wasn't so much nerfed as deleted entirely and replaced by a set that was actually balanced. Later, the combat system was rewritten to nerf perfect spam and lethality in one shot, so people can actually be hurt in Exalted without dying instantly and armour is actually useful.
* In ''IcewindDale'', the druid spell [[ShockAndAwe Static Charge]] which shock all opponents in the room every round. In the sequel, it only shock one random monster per round.
* In ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', knockdowns have been nerf from the previous game. They no longer cause damage and now have a 2 rounds cooldown. On the upside, it longer has a -4 penalty to hit.
* In ''{{Raiden}} II'', the SpreadShot's damage was decreased.
* ''{{Minecraft}}'' had several nerfs over the course of the game during its beta stage and even beyond the 1.0 release:
** Fires caused by lava or the flint and steel used to be able to spread very quickly if the fire was on a flammable object like trees and this was made easy for griefers. An update slowed down how fast fires spread.
** Swords did quite a bit of damage but once the enchantment system was introduced, swords became slightly weaker to encourage players to enchant them.
** Golden Apples used to restore 5 units of hunger and gave health regeneration for 30 seconds. The crafting ingredients changed in the 1.1 update to make it easier to craft the Golden Apple, but the effects got nerfed to making hunger recover only 2 points and regeneration last only 3 seconds.
* ''VideoGame/{{X}}'':
** In ''X3: Reunion'' the Split Python was one of the best destroyers in the game: average shields, top-of-class speed and maneuvering, and great weapons coverage. It was the victim of a serious nerf in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' that removed its ability to mount flak weapons, forcing it to use corvette guns for fighter defense.
** Likewise, in ''Terran Conflict'' a properly flown [[TheBattlestar Split Panther]] frigate could solo a StandardStarshipScuffle against ''heavy capital ships'' (it ''does'' take fancy flying, mind you), since it has excellent weapons coverage and selection, average shields, more fighters than some full size carriers, and maneuvering and power generation stats equal to its fighterless sister design the Tiger. The weapons generators were nerfed in ''X3: Albion Prelude'', to the annoyance of Panther-lovers.
** Up to the 3.0 ''Terran Conflict'' patch, the Terran Tokyo carrier was somewhat of a GameBreaker because its weapons generators were strong enough for it to fire its anticapital guns indefinitely. The 3.0 patch nerfed said generators, but nobody really minded since carriers aren't supposed to be able to do that.
* ''AsteroidsDeluxe'' nerfed [[{{Asteroids}} the original game's]] weakness (you could rack up points by leaving a large rock remaining from the first wave, sit in one spot and just pick off the saucers one by one) by having the saucers shoot at the rocks as well as the player ship.
* ''RecordOfAgarestWar2'' gave the biggest GameBreaker of the first game and Zero the biggest nerf. [[DesperationAttack Unleash All/Rile]] EX Skills usually required you to have your party members be at 25% HP which is easily achievable by having enemies go first and have all but one party member die, revive them which puts them at the 25% mark and feed either Plum or Routier the SP needed to activate their 2nd EX Skills to give the other party members the 250 sp to use their [[LimitBreak Limit Breaks.]] Not so in Agarest 2 where you have to a: be at 20% HP, b: ''manually activate'' the EX Skill from the character who knows said EX Skill so that other characters have the same EX Skill, and c: pray your enemy doesn't outright kill the character who has said EX Skill.
* ''ImprobableIsland'''s food system received a major overhaul in August 2012 to solve the problem that cooking the meat you get from monsters was much less effective than simply buying food from restaurants. One of the changes was that restaurant food was nerfed. It now gives less stamina, costs more and is not always available.
* ''FireEmblem'':
** Mages are usually a combination of FragileSpeedster and GlassCannon. The Tellius series downplayed both the Speedster and Cannon parts. This resulted in the massive lack of use of them and many CharacterTiers having them very low.
** The FE Nerf most fans remember is the Luna tome, a Dark Magic tome that negates the enemy's Magic Resistance. This is 'balanced' out by the weapon having 0 Might, so you're effectively doing fixed damage equal to your Magic stat. Except the spell also has an ungodly high critical rate (''very'' rare for a magic tome), and the final two bosses have such massive Resistance stats that negating them makes a HUGE difference. Add the fact that Canas and Athos, the two characters who can use Dark Magic, are both [[GameBreaker Game Breakers]], and you get, well, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AinX2j20fMk this.]] In ''Sacred Stones'' its critical rate was cut in half and its hit rate went from 90% to ''50%'', immidiately taking it from game breaking to pratically useless.
** Another weapon nerf, Javalins went from 7 might in ''Shadow Dragon'' to ''3'' might in its sequel ''New Mystery''. Their damage output is now comparable to actual Nerf Bats.
** in FireEmblem Awakening the weapons from prior games returning lost many stats and usefulness.
** Awakening also nerfed the forging system from ''Shadow Dragon'' and ''New Mystery'', where the amount you could buff a weapon was really only limited by how much money you had. Awakening imposed a hard limit of 8 'increments' per weapon (so you could buff Might 5 times and Critical 3 times, or Might 3 times and Critical 5 times, but not both 5 times) Of course, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard forged weapons used by enemies can and WILL break these rules.]]
** The way parents pass on stats to children has also been nerfed from the FireEmblemJugdral games. Instead of Child's growths = same gendered parent's + 1/2 * opposite gendered parent's, their growths are now the ''average'' of their parent's growths and the child's "base growths", which means they may end up with ''worse'' stats than their parents in some areas. It also means that the difference in stats between pairings is nowhere near as dramatic as in the 4th game, so {{Shipping}} is more down to personal prefferance than gameplay benefits.
* ''{{Warcraft}}'' 3:
** Much like it's successor ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', saw many units and abilities nerfed to balance online play. These occurred via patches and, especially, when the Frozen Throne expansion was released. A few notable examples include:

* In SonicGenerations some of the returning abilities got a nerf.
** The Boost's ability to draw rings was severely reduced.
** The elemental shields lost their ability to deflect small projectiles.
* In an unusual sporting example, fencing has an attack called a flick. A flick takes advantage of the flexibility of a fencing sword (a safety consideration) to whip the blade around and hit with the tip. The tip of two of the weapons (foils and epees) are actually spring-mounted buttons that complete a circuit when pressed, allowing an electronic scoring machine to register the hit. No real smallsword or rapier would bend like that, so a flick is a very strange attack. Flicks became so dominant in high level tournaments that the governing body, the FIE, actually changed the length of time the button must be depressed just to make flicks a less viable (but not useless) attack.

* In the earliest version of ''[[VideoGame/{{Fallout1}} Fallout 1]]'' a player with high Barter skill [[GameBreaker could buy/sell things for ridiculously low/high prices]]. This allowed buying something at half price and immediately selling it for full price, as long as the trader had anything left. It was possible to buy Tandy and all Garl's weapons and leave Garl with a single cap. The first patch nerfed that.
* ''LeagueOfLegends'' exists in a constant state of nerfing and buffing champions, spells, and items. While mostly done to keep competitive balance, two champions with extended stealth options, Evelyn and Twitch, were deliberately overnerfed because their abilities were so frustrating for new players to deal with. More recently they've started reworking the abilities and/or lore of rarely played champions like Karma and Trundle.
* The Enclave's Advanced Power Armor Mk II in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' is significantly weaker than its ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' counterpart, whose stats surpassed those of the T-51b.

** Humans were gradually toned down and buffed in other aspects over time for CompetitiveBalance sake, but the most pronounced change was in the towers they can build; in counter-chronological order, the "Masonry Upgrade" (Building HP) effectiveness was reduced in half for all three tiers which also affects every building the Humans can build, the towers were nerfed to gain 1/2 the armor points from the same upgrade, the tower's initial phase (before an upgrade is selected) was reduced in hitpoints and given ZERO armor mitigation and in The Frozen Throne expansion's release, the towers were changed to an armor class that takes full damage from all attacks, but is vulnerable to magical damage. This was all likely an effort to nerf the effectiveness of using towers to fortify an attack on an enemy town and the annoyance of attacking a human town that is swarming with towers. The Sole EXCEPTION is the Cannon Tower upgrade, which was allowed to keep the [[MadeOfIron fortified armor]] attribute.

** Humans were gradually toned down and buffed in other aspects over time for CompetitiveBalance sake, but the most pronounced change was in the towers they can build; in counter-chronological order, the "Masonry Upgrade" (Building HP) effectiveness was reduced in half for all three tiers which also affects every building the Humans can build, the towers were nerfed to gain 1/2 the armor points from the same upgrade, the tower's initial phase (before an upgrade is selected) was reduced in hitpoints and given ZERO armor mitigation and in The Frozen Throne expansion's release, the towers were changed to an armor class that takes full damage from all attacks, but is vulnerable to magical damage. This was all likely an effort to nerf the effectiveness of using towers to fortify an attack on an enemy town and the annoyance of attacking a human town that is swarming with towers.

** Don't forget the tamer nerf! Way back when, tamers had no "control slots" -- i.e., they could own and control an unlimited number of pets. This led to suitably determined players being absolutely invincible in battle; while a player character can defeat one tamed dragon, two are beyond most people, and it was possible for someone to sic ten or eleven onto an enemy, an attack that nobody could reasonably hope to counter unless they, too, had ten or eleven dragons. While the nerf was understandable in this case -- "control slots" were introduced, wherein characters could only control a certain number of animals, valued up to five points; weak animals like horses took one point; dragons took three -- it was sad that the days of [[HisDarkMaterials polar bear armies]] were over.
* The ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Super Smash Brothers]]'' series (and, indeed, fighting games in general) gets a bit of flak for this, since their preferred tactic for [[CharacterTiers balancing]] [[GameBreaker characters]] is to weaken or strengthen the power/effectiveness of attacks, rather than balance the characters through speed, ability to combo/''be'' combo'd, or attack changes.
* The Needler was weakened somewhat in Halo 2, decreasing its homing capacity and making it a close-range weapon.

** Bungie had made several statements justifying their decision to "nerf" the original [=M6D=] pistol -- that it was ridiculously overpowered in its original incarnation. They originally intended players to use the pistol as a backup, and that problems with weapon balancing led to it becoming a [[GameBreaker game breaking killing machine]]. The fact that some fans still bemoan the change, despite Halo 2 & 3's Battle Rifle having the same range, firing rate, damage and shots-per-magazine as the [=M6D=], is another example of Franchise/{{Halo}}'s UnpleasableFanbase.

* ''{{Burnout}} Paradise'': Before the patch one could go into a road rage and the timer would go up forever so long as you kept taking down drivers. People would get in excess of 100 takedowns. After the patch, if you do a road rage, the timer will stop going up once you hit the target number of takedowns.

* Whether the changes made to many facets of ''DungeonsAndDragons 3.5'' by WizardsOfTheCoast are just balancing acts or Nerfs is a subject of much [[InternetBackdraft debate]].

*** Oddly enough, Wizards eventually made a spellcasting prestige class, [[http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070327 the Swiftblade]], that haste is good on.

*** Which is why the last major update in 3rd edition was excising polymorph from the game altogether, radically rewriting polymorph-based abilities like Wildshape, and replacing polymorph with greatly nerfed spells like "Dragonshape" and "Trollshape".
**** That's returning to an earlier design. [=AD&D 2=] era ForgottenRealms has as much as four spells giving monster bodies ''with all powers'' instead of a mere semblance: ''Dragonshape'', ''Tyranteyes'' ([[EyeBeams eye tyrant]]), ''Wonderform'' ([[LethalJokeCharacter wingless wonder]]) and ''Fiendform'' (to a lesser degree, but with variety of fiends).
*** One word: Shapechange. Bar none, the most powerful nonepic spell in existence and vastly powerful even on an epic scale. The overpowered nature of that spell is, in part, what led to the massive nerf on polymorphing.

** Just remember, one man's nerf is another man's finally balanced the game...

** The ranger class was ridiculously overpowered to the point where even the most pathetic ranger could out damage the best equipped of another offensive class. All bosses and big monsters essentially only used rangers for their damage since they were by far the best damage for any situation. They got nerfed with, of course, much whining from players who now say that rangers were now one of the weakest damage dealing classes even though they still remain one of the most expensive and one of the biggest hate magnets (due the fact that even though they do weaker damage overall, they do a lot of spike damage).
** The aforementioned controversially large buff proceeded like this: two-handed weapon users experienced an upgrade followed by a downgrade (though overall it was still an upgrade). The upgrade was supposed to bring two-handed weapon users on par with one-handed weapon users, who had a significant advantage in offense due the fact that most of them capitalized on dual-wielding via the Ninja subjob and the fact that missing with a one-handed weapon meant less time, damage, and TP lost than missing with a two-handed weapon. The upgrade not only increased the damage and accuracy of two-handed users, but increased them to the point that accuracy gear (usually coveted in FFXI) was unneeded and the defenses of enemies mattered little. Even a poorly equipped two-hander could still beat a better-equipped one-hander, much as was once the case with the Ranger. Two-handed weapons that were supposed to be balanced by low damage output became ridiculously overpowered. The most overpowered class that came out of this was the Samurai, which was the only two-handed job that was balanced before the update and has one of the most famous offensive-tradeoff weapons. The Dragoon class also benefited greatly since they can heal themselves and popular enemies were already weak to their weapon type. This caused a big surge of "Samurai parties" and "Dragoon parties". This upgrade was nerfed, though the Samurai is still ahead.
* ''CityOfHeroes'' veterans will remember "Enhancement Diversification" ("ED"). Pre-ED, you could enhance a given characteristic (damage, accuracy, etc.) of a superpower up to six times for the same cumulative boost (Totaling a tripling of the power's statistic in some areas, doubling with defensive powers). With ED, players started seeing a loss of returns at around the third enhancement (doubled effect for most offensive effects, about a 60% boost for defensive effects), in order to encourage players to spread the wealth around and enhance different characteristics. Naturally, a lot of strategies that relied on powers [[MinMaxing being pushed to their limits]] [[GameBreaker or breaking the game]] no longer worked.

* In ''[[DarkForcesSaga Star Wars: Dark Forces]]'' the Imperial Repeater Rifle could shoot very accurate blasts machine-gun style and pushing enemies back farther than any other weapon. Did we mention you can fire three barrels at once? The only drawback is you'll get so addicted to it you'll wonder where the heck your ammo went. The version seen in ''Jedi Outcast'', though, has less accuracy, and the shots it fires are much, much weaker than they once were. The secondary trigger fires stronger blasts from a sort of underslung grenade launcher, but they're nigh impossible to aim. It even changed the Repeater from an EnergyWeapon to a slugthrower (projectile weapon).

* At its release, and for at least two years afterward, ''Star Wars Galaxies'' featured Mandalorian armor, a ridiculously overpowered set of equipment. All crafting relied on a combination of player stats and material stats. While this lead to no two pieces of equipment being the same, enterprising industrialists soon discovered methods to create armor with resistance to damage >90%. While fine in the beginning (the price of the armor meant meeting another player with a full set was a rare sight), the entire system of manufacturing the armor soon hit the point where full sets of 99% resistance Mandalorian Armor were (relatively) cheap to obtain. Players soon became immortal. Eventually, SOE responded and dropped the nerfbat in the hardest way possible, limiting resistances to 90% and making anything above 80% or so ridiculously difficult to obtain.

* The Psychic type was horribly [[GameBreaker broken]] in the original ''{{Pokemon}}'' games, on account of their huge Special stats, a glitch making the Ghost type weak to when they were supposed to be strong to them, and that the other type that ''was'' strong against them (Bug) had no decent attacks at all. ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' introduced two new types (one immune to Psychic and the other resistant to it), fixed the Ghost-type glitch and buffed the Bug- and Ghost-type movesets, and split the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense.
** [[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Generation IV's]] recategorization of Physical and Special moves is thought to have nerfed certain Pokémon such as Blaziken and Sceptile: their dominant offensive stat is Special Attack, while their movepools primarily consist of physical moves. Ironically, the split actually made Blaziken ''more'' powerful as of Generation V, as Website/{{Smogon}} has placed it in the [[GameBreaker Uber tier]].
*** It wasn't the split that made Blaziken more powerful, it was the fact that Blaziken was given the hidden ability 'Speed Boost', which mitigated [[LightningBruiser (and then some)]] the relatively poor speed that normally caused it to be overlooked in favor of Infernape.

*** It's probably little surprise that Starmie, which is both Water and Psychic type, has been since the beginning among the highest of the CharacterTiers. It helps that each nerfing comes with a subsequent buff (like increasing its already-impressive potential movepool).

*** Over a decade later, Explosion and Selfdestruct likewise lost their defense halving abilities in [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite 5th Generation]], cutting their power in half. Most likely this was done for double battles and triple battles, as in single battles they are simply annoying while in Double Battles they were insanely over-centralizing and would have been even worse in triple battles (which were introduced that generation). It's still the most powerful move in the game, though.

* ''BaldursGate'' had Charm and Dominate spells (which allow you to control enemies) last as long as the original ''[[DungeonsAndDragons D&D]]'' equivalents (ages in game time). Combined with an item that gave you infinite uses of Charm and an exploit that allowed you to use the item while invisible, a player could charm every enemy in the area, and use them to kill each other. ''Baldur's Gate 2'' addressed this not just by removing the item and the exploit, but also by changing the charm and domination spells so that the choice of targets was highly limited, the spells became easier to resist, and the time they lasted was minuscule.

*** Hilariously, this limit could be broken with the Wild Mage class from Throne of Bhaal. One random effect on a spell was to give it area. One LetsPlay had this conjure armies of animated swords and on one occasion filled an entire room with so many Earth Elementals that nobody actually knew what was going on.

*** After six years, this has finally been addressed. Intelligence now adds spell damage and critical hit, and scales at the same rate as agility.

** One of the more noticeable nerfs in {{Battlefield 2142}} was the steady decrease in the power of "podding," which is the practice of launching a player out of a tube in a pod, which is intended to be a way of getting players from one place to another. Aside from the pod-surfing debate (which was more of an ObviousRulePatch closing a physics exploit), the damage of ''podding vehicles'' was severely reduced. In early versions, you could destroy [=APCs=], damage tanks, and even kill aircraft, if you could manage the funky pod controls well enough to hit them. In later versions, trying to pod ground vehicles will usually kill the infantryman doing the podding, without hurting the vehicle much, and even the relatively weak aircraft can survive being podded.

** The game engine in Order of Ecclesia debuffs it again, since MP is used to fuel ''all'' of your attacks.

*** Occasionally, a de-nerfed card will immediately be banned thanks to their newfound power level. One short-lived tournament environment featured a newly-de-nerfed card that allowed very quick wins. With the right four cards in one's opening hand, the card could be used to win the game at the beginning of the first turn of the game - even if that turn was the opponent's.

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' is an interesting example in that Valve seems to be afraid of touching the damage and health values. Hence, the complaints about Soldiers and Demomen being too powerful were addressed by severely reducing their ammo (which doesn't do anything if said classes are camping near a dispenser). The Pyro on the other hand was buffed by means of a new alt-fire function for their flamethrower to deflect rockets and grenades. The alternative weapon ''did'' boost the health of the user, but that was removed shortly after.

*** Another, much more quietly executed example would be the Chargin' Targe or the Gunboats. Both originally offered better explosive damage defense buffs, but over time they have gone from reducing damage by 60% (the original value of the Chargin' Targe) to 50%, then 40%. The Gunboats were originally a 75% reduction from self inflicted blast damage (all the better to encourage Soldiers to RocketJump) but have been reduced to 60% as of this writing. Don't think these changes have gone unnoticed by [[UnpleasableFanbase those on the Steam Forums]], though...

* The infamous snaking technique in ''VideoGame/MarioKart''. In the DS version, players snaked by quickly drifting left to right on straight roads and doing mini turbos. Only certain characters could drift this way effectively without losing control and the mini turbos they got were almost like a mushroom. Naturally, flame wars broke out over whether this technique was fair. The Wii version changes the drifting and mini turbo mechanic, making snaking near impossible to do.

** An interesting variation: The particular glitch that made weapons like the Claimh Solais so overwhelmingly incredible (the fact that the weapon animation canceled if Soma landed during it) was fixed for the BFS category and other high-attack, low-speed weapons in ''Dawn of Sorrow'', but deliberately ''not'' fixed for katanas, for their specialty was decided to be speed and combo potential. The Claimh Solais' high damage and holy attribute still make it the accepted best weapon in the game, but not by such a crushing margin as on the GBA.

* Because of its highly competitive and balanced PvP, skills in ''GuildWars'' are almost constantly being tweaked, adjusted, buffed and nerfed to keep things balanced; some skills were even split into PvP and [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PvE]] versions to make them balanced in 2 totally different game modes. However, a controversial change saw the balance team blatantly destroy the PvP version of one skill (Smiter's Boon) by nerfing it as absolutely as is physically possible (maximum energy cost possible which is 5 times the previous cost, duration nerfed to 1/6th of its previous length and recharge changed to a ridiculous ''45 times'' its duration). They openly admitted their intention was simply to stop people from using the skill in PvP ''at all'' and they succeeded since it is now ''completely and utterly unusable under any circumstances whatsoever''. There was much rage.
** Heck, the S-Boon nerf became SO well-known that they turned it into an AscendedMeme and had one of the enemies use it on your characters!
* Back in 7th edition WarhammerFantasy, Dark Elf Sorceresses were some of the best mages in the game due to their access to the ''Power of Darkness'' spell, which was easy to cast and granted bonus power dice. The spell has not been changed, but the 8th edition of the rules put a cap on how many power dice you can get each turn, making it much less useful.

* Speaking of Mega Man, there are examples in the side-scrolling games too:

* In a TruthInTelevision [[InvertedTrope Inversion]] of this trope that can only be described as brilliant, people who play competitive battles using Nerf guns will actually modify the standard models so that they'll work better: putting in better springs, using custom darts (paint-filled tips, etc.), and other variations. The Irony is delicious.
* ''Madden 2006'' added the QB Vision Cone, which Nerfed the players who overly relied on the mobile Michael Vick (because his Awareness stat was so low, he had one of the smallest cones in the game).
** Note that this backfired spectacularly - after enough practice, with a normal or small vision cone you could effectively deke a defensive back into covering the wrong player; players with large vision cones such as Tom Brady or Peyton Manning could not, effectively nerfing the best pocket passers in the league. The vision cone was removed two years later.

** In ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3'', Kabal was one of the strongest characters in the game, with his (dial-a-)combos being some of the most damaging of any character. In ''UltimateMortalKombat3'', the damage Kabal's combos dished out was cut by half.
* ''Left4Dead'' got a few nerfs for the VS mode. People who play as the survivors would usually huddle together and [[{{Whoring}} spam their melee attack]] if they got mobbed by the infected. This prevented players using Hunters from being able to pounce on them without being shoved off. A patch now adds a fatigue effect to the survivor's melee attacks; survivors have to wait at least 1 or 2 seconds before being able to melee again. Another patch also reduced the damage done by the special infected in VS in order to keep the game balanced. Another changed the Hunter doing much more damage when on fire in VS to reducing the increased damage and only applying it to fire created by the Survivors.

*** Additionally, in the sequel, getting to a place that was impossible for the Infected to get to in Survival would cause the director to fill the entire floor with Spitter acid.

*** Though they did disable activating cheats in private/friends only co-op games in the sequel for some unexplained reason. It's likely tied to achievement exploits where players would activate cheats, spawn a few hundred mobs or teleport to the next safe room and disable cheats before doing what they need to so the achievement would register. What makes this even more odd is that it looks like they already had a fix in place (disabled achievement progress for session) for the sequel when cheats were active.

*** Though bizarrely, the sub machine guns' ammo capacity have been increased.

* A big one in ''EVEOnline'' was the HAC speed nerf. This eliminated a tactic use by many 0.0 alliance to essentially be invulnerable to damage yet completely dominate targets.

* Between ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', many changes were made to rein in the insanity. The biggest one was the Alchemy skill; In ''Morrowind'', it was possible to use intelligence-boosting potions to give your character godlike intelligence, and since intelligence affected your alchemy skill, each subsequent potion only got stronger. But since all skills are affected the same way by their base stats, [[GameBreaker this could get ridiculous quickly.]] The changes in ''Oblivion'' are obvious from the start; You can only have four potion effects active at a time, skill boosts past 100 (the set maximum,) have no effect, and stats don't affect skills ''nearly'' as directly as in Morrowind, the sole exception being Speed.

* Droidekas were nerfed from ''Star Wars: Battlefront'' to the sequel game, especially in shield strength and duration.

* ''{{Descent}} II'''s Fusion Cannon was significantly nerfed, only dealing half the damage of its D1 counterpart, and losing its damage increasing glitch (fire through an enemy and it gets stronger). The Plasma Cannon and Mega Missiles were also weakened somewhat.

** The Energy Beam was removed because it caused major lag in some systems.
* In ''DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu'', there is a special shot type called Strong Style that gives your ship [[GameBreaker broken firepower]]. In ''Dai-Fukkatsu [[ExpansionPack Black Label]]'', picking Strong Style will turn up the game to 2nd-loop difficulty to balance out your immense firepower.

* In ''VideoGame/CombatArms'', the M590 shotgun was epic pwnage at a two-shot kill at medium range, and instant-death any closer than that. Then, in a patch, its power was drastically reduced down to a two-shot kill, even at ''close'' range. Suddenly it was almost worthless...

** ''Modern Warfare 2'' also moved the AK-47, a starting gun from ''[=CoD4=]'', to one of the last unlocked weapons for its multiplayer.
* Biotic Abilities were often considered a GameBreaker in the original MassEffect, so when the sequel was released it came as a shock to majority of the players that the powers were extremely nerfed. While not useless, the powers could no longer work on enemies who have any form of protection. Fair enough, but on the two highest level of difficulties EVERY enemy is protected in some form and by time you strip them of their defenses a WhyDontYouJustShootHim mentality takes hold.

** Several game breaking weapons in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' got nerfed for ''3''. The Viper semiautomatic sniper rifle had its ammo capacity cut, the Locust became very heavy and much less damaging, and the Mattock got a cap put on its rate of fire.
*** The multiplayer mode features balance changes whereby the developers nerf and buff weapons and powers on a weekly (now fortnightly) basis. The vast majority of changes have been buffs, but the few nerfs have been more controversial - in particular, the infiltrator's tactical cloak was shifted in a way that forced players to choose whether they wanted to use it to enhance their damage or go invisible, and the turian-designed Krysae sniper rifle was ruthlessly de-clawed when it was found to make certain types of enemy all but trivial.

** Not necessarily, the LBX enjoyed a buff in the game, the Clan Version is as light as an AC 10! Mounting 3 of them was bad news for anyone within the range of 450 meteres. The Annihilator Battlemech from Mekpak can mount 4. Which in that case spells InstantDeathRadius.

* The M16 in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto 3'' had [[MoreDakka a ridiculously high firing rate]], approaching that of a [[GatlingGood minigun]]. It was decreased to a more realistic rate in the following games.

* What the rest of the world calls football (soccer to North Americans) was nerfed sometime in the past when the rules specified that every throw-in had to be made using two hands overhead, stepping forward as you did. This was in response to some English player who honed the skill of making long one-armed throws downfield distances that would be competitive with an NFL long bomb. It sort of took the "foot" out of "football."

* The beta of ''[[CommandAndConquerTiberium Command and Conquer: Tiberium Twilight]]'' was horribly unbalenced. One particular unit was the GDI Offence Class Striker. Easily the fastest land unit in the game, it could jump cliffs, be upgraded to fire faster, more accuratly, and be faster. Plus its laser was strong aginst the heavy armor of the Crawler, your BaseOnWheels. Yeah. That was patched VERY quickly, but it wasn't uncommon for whole teams of Nod Players to ragequit as soon as they saw ONE.

* ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'''s rocket launcher was pretty heavily nerfed between the first game and ''2004'': not only it can only fire three rockets at a time instead of the original six, damage was decreased as well so that it can no longer OneHitKill with direct hits. That however doesn't compare to the massive nerfing that befell the sniper rifle:

* ''VideoGame/Rockman4MinusInfinity'': The Balloon Adapter is a version of the Rush Jet Adapter, but Mega Man can only use it 3 times.

* {{Wizard101}} is accused of this every time they adjust anything despite most cases being that sometimes schools are buffed enough by new spells or equipment.
** One of the few explicit examples of this being the Waterworks equipment compared to the best equipment from the the previous release. Previously in to balance [[StoneWall Ice school's]] horrible attack power (literally less than the TheMedic), Ice was the only school that could equip gear that granted resistance to all attacks. Other schools gear gave them resistance to spells that were either their own school or the other school in their on their side of the element/spirit line. Waterworks gear not only gave all other schools resistance to all attacks, but it also gave Ice '''less''' resistance to all attacks than the previous gear. Although Ice school still has greater resistance to attacks and blocking critical attacks than the other schools, the next closest schools resit is only 3% less and three other schools have a little under 2% less chance of blocking critical hits than Ice does. [[http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=67976&stc=1&d=1304230768 Compare to the boost other schools received from their gear.]]

* In ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Reunion]]'' the Split Python was one of the best destroyers in the game: average shields, top-of-class speed and maneuvering, and great weapons coverage. It was the victim of a serious nerf in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' that removed its ability to mount flak weapons, forcing it to use corvette guns for fighter defense.

* In FireEmblem mages are usually a combination of FragileSpeedster and GlassCannon. The Tellius series downplayed both the Speedster and Cannon parts. This resulted in the massive lack of use of them and many CharacterTiers having them very low.

* ''{{Warcraft}}'' 3, much like it's successor ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', saw many units and abilities nerfed to balance online play. These occurred via patches and, especially, when the Frozen Throne expansion was released. A few notable examples include:

** One of the most infuriating nerfs in the game, however, is probably Captain Falcon. He was a great character in the first two games, with good power, great combos, and good speed. Now, he has poor priority, atrocious lag, and is virtually unplayable when pit against the likes of such hideously broken characters like [[GameBreaker Meta Knight]].
*** It mostly has to do with the physics. While most of his own moves have been changed quite a bit, most of the nerfing comes from the physics engine, which generally makes combos less effective regardless of the stats of individual stats.
** Pikachu, Kirby, and Ness were ridiculously strong in the original game on the Nintendo 64, and were nerfed into oblivion in ''Melee''. Fox, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, Falco, Marth, and Peach were among ''Melee'''s best characters, and they've all been drastically toned down for ''Brawl''.
** Jigglypuff's Rest is a victim of this effect, being one of the strongest finishing moves in ''Smash Bros. 64'' and ''Melee'', and pretty much taken out back and shot in the head in ''Brawl''.
* Many ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' fans consider the changes from the pistol in ''Halo'' (which, having a scope, makes an adequate long-range weapon) to the Magnum in ''Halo 2'' (which, having no scope, doesn't) a Nerfing of the original weapon.
** Bungie then took things one step further in the first ''Halo 2'' autoupdate: the Magnum went from a decent secondary weapon in a pinch (about seven shots to kill, or three headshots) to a laughable humiliation weapon (fourteen shots, or one full clip and then two more rounds, to kill). Needless to say, the community was quite upset.
*** Describing the pre-update Magnum as a "decent secondary weapon" doesn't do it justice. Its massively increased rate of fire from ''Halo 1'' and the ability to dual-wield it made it a GameBreaker if you were any bit competent at getting headshots. Before the update people would turn down shotguns and other "power" weapons for the chance to dual-wield a Magnum and a simple SMG.
** They also weakened the needler somewhat in Halo 2, decreasing its homing capacity and making it a close-range weapon.
*** That was because it was dual-wieldable (but even two of them were more or less useless). From Halo 1 to Halo 2, pretty much any weapon that was given the ability to be dual-weld experienced a Nerf (the handguns, needler, and plasma rifle). The needler has since been buffed in ''Halo 3'' and ''Halo: Reach'' (returning to a single-wield weapon but having its projectile damage and speed increased); the only thing that hasn't been improved overall from its first incarnation is the size of the combination explosion.
**** Duel-wield needlers were far from useless, due to the fast firing rate and the way their reload worked. They reloaded quickly and duel-wielding them didn't slow the reload down at all, which combined with the fast firing rate allowed players to [[MoreDakka spam needles]] endlessly with duel-wielded needlers. While it was true that they weren't terribly accurate, at close-range, you could easily make enemies explode due to the sheer volume of needles you were firing at them. The change in Halo 3 prevented needle-spamming, so the power and homing was increased to balance it.
** The plasma pistol went through a similar (but more obvious) nerfing in Halo 3, mostly due to how effective it was when combined with an armor-piercing weapon like the SMG or Battle Rifle (or even the aforementioned Magnum). You would charge up the plasma pistol while walking around, then launch it to strip the opponent of their shields, then follow up with the other weapon for a quick kill, leading to these tactics being called the [[GameBreaker "n00b combo"]]. It's still possible to do this in Halo 3, but charging the plasma pistol for too long drains its energy, so you have to wait until you're right on top of someone before you can use the combo, or else you'll run out of ammo very quickly. It also doesn't home in on the nearest target anymore, so unless you get a perfect hit, your opponent will definitely kill you before you get a second chance.
*** From a pure damage standpoint the PP got a huge nerf after the first game, in which it was about as effective as the Assault Rifle against health and infinitely more accurate. The damage in ''2'' and ''3'' was such that you'd be hard-pressed to get a kill on a fully-shielded enemy without overheating the gun. It seems to have finally been improved again in ''Reach'', though - although the max fire rate is still nowhere near the first game.

*** The vehicle thing was understandable, since in the original getting so much as tapped with a vehicle killed you instantly. A SuperSoldier wearing PoweredArmor should really be able to survive a lot more than that.

** Another change to the game "fixed an issue" where Beastmaster pets would be able to benefit from a Dancer's Samba effects. The players, oddly enough, were unanimously [[UnpleasableFanbase not amused]]. The actual problem people had with this is simply because the Samba effect would, at best, heal a monster pet's HP by maybe a couple hundred or so at the highest levels... out of ''thousands''. True, it was a glitch, but the players had no problem with it.
** The ranger class was ridiculously overpowered to the point where even the most pathetic ranger could out damage the best equipped of another offensive class. All bosses and big monsters essentially only used rangers for their damage since they were by far the best damage for any situation. They got nerfed with, of course, much whining from players who now say that rangers were now one of the weakest damage dealing classes even though they still remain one of the most expensive and one of the biggest hate magnets (due the fact that even though they do weaker damage overall, they do a lot of spike damage). There is, arguably, much truth to these complaints.
** The aforementioned controversially large buff proceeded like this: two-handed weapon users experienced an upgrade followed by a downgrade (though overall it was still an upgrade). The upgrade was supposed to bring two-handed weapon users on par with one-handed weapon users, who had a significant advantage in offense due the fact that most of them capitalized on dual-wielding via the Ninja subjob and the fact that missing with a one-handed weapon meant less time, damage, and TP lost than missing with a two-handed weapon. The upgrade not only increased the damage and accuracy of two-handed users, but increased them to the point that accuracy gear (usually coveted in FFXI) was unneeded and the defenses of enemies mattered little. Even a poorly equipped two-hander could still beat a better-equipped one-hander, much as was once the case with the Ranger. Two-handed weapons that were supposed to be balanced by low damage output became ridiculously overpowered. The most overpowered class that came out of this was the Samurai, which was the only two-handed job that was balanced before the update and has one of the most famous offensive-tradeoff weapons. The Dragoon class also benefited greatly since they can heal themselves and popular enemies were already weak to their weapon type. This caused a big surge of "Samurai parties" and "Dragoon parties". This upgrade was nerfed, though there wasn't much complaint since they were still given a significant upgrade. The Samurai is still ahead.

* In ''[[DarkForcesSaga Star Wars: Dark Forces]]'' the Imperial Repeater Rifle is arguably the game's best weapon, shooting very accurate blasts machine-gun style and pushing enemies back farther than any other weapon. Did we mention you can fire three barrels at once? The only drawback is you'll get so addicted to it you'll wonder where the heck your ammo went. The version seen in ''Jedi Outcast'', though, is utterly useless: accuracy is lost, and the shots it fires are much, much weaker than they once were. The secondary trigger fires stronger blasts from a sort of underslung grenade launcher, but they're nigh impossible to aim. It even changed the Repeater from an EnergyWeapon to a slugthrower (projectile weapon).
** In addition, ''Dark Forces''' Concussion Rifle was so powerful it was almost ''too'' strong--so powerful you could hurt yourself if you weren't careful. It was powered down for ''Jedi Knight'', unable to trigger its concussion effect on multiple spread-out enemies, being more like an instant-hit rocket launcher but was still powerful enough to be useful--it even gained a secondary fire that used less energy, was more accurate, and targeted only a single enemy. It was one of a few weapons that couldn't be blocked by a lightsaber, though it could be Force pulled. About the only way this could be called a nerf is if the ''Dark Forces'' version wasn't broken. The gun was taken out of ''Jedi Outcast'' entirely. ''Jedi Academy'' brought it back, and while it still did hideous amounts of damage, the gun was very nearly nerfed. Rather than being instantaneous damage, it fired a projectile that, like rockets, could be Force pushed away--but it was much, much quicker, requiring split-second timing. Unless, of course, you try to use it on a [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard computer Jedi]]... i.e., Welcome to Nerftown, population: Concussion Rifle.

** If were talking about banned cards here lets not forget the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbtITTlX_Xs Exchange FTK]]

** The move Hypnosis is an interesting case. It was buffed from 60% accuracy to 70% in Diamond and Pearl, but once Game Freak [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realized what they'd done]], they bumped it back down to 60%.

** And the Demoman just got a severe Nerf that took them down from GameBreaker status: Their sticky mines can be broken by a single bullet. This is important, as the sticky mines (a) do more damage than any other weapon, (b) were indestructible and easily spammable, (c) could be detonated at any time (except during taunting) and (d) you could have eight of them out at a time. This was then updated so stickybomb damage was reduced for the first five seconds when the Demoman is less than 512 units away, making them less useful for immediate attacking.

** The Pomson nerf was welcomed by the community, as prior to the nerf it was the bane of spies and medics everywhere. While the nerf was what everyone wanted, it came because of a different reason: the gun needed no ammo and pierced enemies; combined with MVM, the game mode released with the nerf, the un-nerfed gun would devastate the robot hordes since they spawn packed together, a single upgraded shot can take out several robots at once, not to mention medics. This is evident as the Soldier has a similar weapon, but the Soldier's Rocket Launcher outshines it, while the Engie can pair his Pomson with his primary weapon; the sentry gun.

* The infamous snaking technique in ''VideoGame/MarioKart''. In the DS version, players snaked by quickly drifting left to right on straight roads and doing mini turbos. Only certain characters could drift this way effectively without losing control and the mini turbos they got were almost like a mushroom. Naturally, flame wars broke out over whether this technique was fair. The Wii version changes the drifting and mini turbo mechanic, making snaking near impossible to do. Naturally, [[StopHavingFunGuys many people complained, but they found something else to use that was a lot easier than snaking]].

* The ''VideoGame/{{Boktai}}'' series has one of the worst Nerfings in gaming history. The Gun Del Sol is your only weapon in the first game, but it's incredibly versatile, capable of blasting solar energy in all sorts of ways (as well as launching grenades and storing tons of backup energy). In the second game, you lose this weapon early on -- and when you finally get it back, it's a shadow of its former self. It can't fire spreads, lacks all the extras, and consumes so much energy you can only use it a few times before refilling.
** Though it is stated in game that it was damaged and that there was only enough time for a sloppy repair job, explaining it's poor performance. By the third game, it was back to full strength.

** Spitters used to be able to incap or kill the whole survivor team by spitting acid into an elevator right before the survivors closed the door. This would kill or cripple the entire team while the survivors could do nothing about it while being trapped in a moving elevator. A patch changed the acid pool effect in elevators where it now fades a lot faster so survivors would have a fighting chance. Naturally, people who relied on the trick before complained about the nerf.

** YMMV, depending on which faction you preferred to play as. If you were a Republic player, droidekas went from being ridiculously overpowered to somewhat balanced.

* What the rest of the world calls football (soccer to North Americans) was nerfed sometime in the past when the rules specified that every throw-in had to be made using two hands overhead, stepping forward as you did. This was in response to some English player (can't remember his name; perhaps a UK troper can fill it in) who honed the skill of making long one-armed throws downfield distances that would be competitive with an NFL long bomb. It sort of took the "foot" out of "football."

* The beta of ''[[CommandAndConquerTiberium Command and Conquer: Tiberium Twilight]]'' was horribly unbalenced. One particular unit was the GDI Offence Class Striker. Easily the fastest land unit in the game, it could jump cliffs, be upgraded to fire faster, more accuratly, and be faster. Plus its laser was strong aginst the heavy armor of the Crawler, your BaseonWheels. Yeah. That was patched VERY quickly, but it wasn't uncommon for whole teams of Nod Players to ragequit as soon as they saw ONE.

** Due to massive fan outrage, Epic put the sniper rifle back into ''2004'' but while the rate of fire is faster than the Lightning Rifle, it still doesn't compare to the original weapon. Oh, and while it no longer gives away the shooter, each shot belches a large cloud of smoke that obscures the scope. Since the Lightning Rifle wasn't taken out between ''2003'' and ''2004'' (they use the same engine and ''2004'' has all of its [[ObviousBeta predecessor's]] content), preference for either usually depends on which is available on the map (an whether the server has the swapping mutator on): maps ported over from ''2003'' have the LR, ones that debuted in ''2004'' have the SR, Assault and Onslaught maps usually have both.

* In ''[[Videogame/SoulSeries SoulCaliburIV]]'', the lightsaber used by the Sith and Yoda are severely depowered from anything beforehand, considering Obi-Wan could hack a man's arm and legs off, or even in half in the movies. The lightsaber has effectively been turned into a glowing stick.

** The Boost's ability to draw rings was severely reduced to the point one can be forgiven if you wonder if it still has it.

** Humans were gradually toned down and buffed in other aspects over time for CompetitivePlay sake, but the most pronounced change was in the towers they can build; in counter-chronological order, the "Masonry Upgrade" (Building HP) effectiveness was reduced in half for all three tiers which also affects every building the Humans can build, the towers were nerfed to gain 1/2 the armor points from the same upgrade, the tower's initial phase (before an upgrade is selected) was reduced in hitpoints and given ZERO armor mitigation and in The Frozen Throne expansion's release, the towers were changed to an armor class that takes full damage from all attacks, but is vulnerable to magical damage. This was all likely an effort to nerf the effectiveness of using towers to fortify an attack on an enemy town and the annoyance of attacking a human town that is swarming with towers.

** Pikachu, Kirby, and Ness were ridiculously strong in the original game on the Nintendo 64, and were nerfed into oblivion in ''Melee''. Fox, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, Falco, Marth, and Peach were among ''Melee'''s best characters, and they've all been drastically toned down for ''Brawl''. (However, Brawl's standards are so low that Falco and Marth are still high tier.)