Complaining: Nerf

"Nerf" examples are loaded with Natter, Word Cruft, and Weasel Words and often seems to be an excuse to complain about characters/items/weapons or changes made to said characters/items/weapons.

I believe most of this could be fixed if we change the definition from "Something was made weaker" to "Something that was obviously overpowered was made weaker".

edited 20th May '13 11:58:20 AM by Sammettik

While I agree, I don't think that adding something as vague as "obviously overpowered" is going to help.

Plan A: Start a cleanup thread in Short Term Projects (could also take care of example sorting while they're at it). Plan B and nuclear option: Example Sectionectomy.

I prefer Plan A.

edited 20th May '13 11:46:09 AM by StarSword

Since this is a actually objective trope(something that was a Game-Breaker or similar gets weakened so it's not as useful, or even no longer useful at all) I prefer just clean-up too. ,

Nuts, I should've remembered that Game-Breaker is subjective...

Now that I think about it, my first idea was rather redundant when we already have Obvious Rule Patch.

Heck, the entire Nerf trope seems kind of redundant compared to Obvious Rule Patch.

I am not seeing that redundancy.

Obvious Rule Patch is much more broad and can cover much more than this.

Also, Game-Breaker isn't subjective. It literally means "a mechanic, attack, ability or item that breaks the gameplay in the players favor."

Game-Breaker has a big YMMV banner.

From the GB page: Game Breakers are often controversial and subjective. Rarely do people actually agree on what is and is not game-breaking. Heated debates (or worse) over Game Breakers spread like wildfire on the Internet, or even around the house. It's obvious that the extremes of the Munchkin or the Scrub are wrong. However, there are techniques whose power is hard or even impossible to call.

edited 20th May '13 12:07:22 PM by Larkmarn

My bad, I'm still new at this.

I was originally planning to do a cleanup on the article without without bothering with the repair shop, But I wanted to see what everyone else thought first before I got into any edit wars. Better safe than sorry.

Huh. Well, buddy, nobody will raise a fuss if you go and remove natter and complaining, I can reassure you.

Yeah, the definition of Nerf is pretty simple and concrete: Something is weakened in between installments. The subjectivity of Gamebreaker really has no bearing on this trope, as "item is weaker" is pretty objective.

Feel free to cut out natter and wordcruft.

I dunno, Nerfing seems to be pretty controversial in gaming circles I've seen. If something is weakened in one area, but strengthened in another, is the judgment of whether the final result is better, worse, or the same overall compared to the previous version really objective?

Sure, thanks. I'll go do that right now.

P.S. Since this is my first "repair shop", might I ask how to close this topic?

By clicking the yellow sign at the top of any post and asking for a thread closure.

It might be worth tweaking the description to make it clear that a nerf is simply "something being made weaker". It's still a nerf even if the thing being weakened wasn't a Game-Breaker before its nerf.

The only reason Game-Breaker is YMMV is because not every player is capable of utilizing its game breaking effect. Nerf, on the other hand, is compared only to itself and if certain effects are less powerful that is an objective fact.

That said, a clean-up is probably in order because the reaction to a nerf is often complaining.

How is Game-Breaker subjective? Maybe the trope is more broad than what I'm thinking.

The difference between a strong weapon and a game breaking weapon is a matter of much debate. Replace "weapon" with whatever game mechanic or tactic you want.

^^ It's very difficult to determine at what point something crosses the line from "powerful" to "game-breaking". That is the only reason.

For example, in Three D Dot Game Heroes you can upgrade your swords until they extend all the way across the screen, slice through obstructions, allowing you to One-Hit Kill entire rooms of enemies in a single Spin Attack. Is that powerful? Yes. Is it game-breaking? Well ... your sword won't protect you from ranged attacks (especially in boss battles), enemies can still block it, and sword upgrades are only in effect as long as you're at full HP. So if you take a hit, the battle suddenly becomes much harder.

edited 20th May '13 6:21:56 PM by Stratadrake

There are a lot of examples that demonstrate why the concept can be objective, but it has a massive grey area that makes curating it a headache. So for the sanity of everyone involved it is listed as YMMV.

The two reasons I can think of is the threshold of what makes something unbalanced versus just a very useful weapon/power is undefined and that player skill usually dictates how effective you can utilize a weapon/power.

Anyway, Nerf isn't about any limit at all, but just about a downgrade. Nothing more than that. It's objective.

Did a thorough cleanup. It the article well-off now?

It seems pretty good just from the skim-through I did, but folderizing the games by type would help with organization.

+1 for the cleanup.

I'm not sure I see a case for redefinition here. The degree of the nerf isn't important to the trope.

edited 28th May '13 7:23:33 AM by AnotherDuck