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The life cycle of nerf rage

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Stage 1: A new ability is released. Players condemn it as useless.

Stage 2: Players experiment and work out how to use the ability. They laud it as essential, and condemn players without the ability as useless.

Stage 3: A few players discover particularly effective ways to use this ability. The method gradually spreads through the player population.

Stage 4: Developers notice what is happening, and investigate closely. They discover that (a) the method from stage 3 is a bug that makes the ability hugely disproportionate to other abilities, and (b) the methods from stage 2 were also unanticipated, and are around 10% more effective than intended. Both bugs are fixed, released to the testing instance, and announced to the players.

Stage 5: Somebody posts a series of screams about 'nerfs'. This is declared to be NGE. Several players ragequit. Others declare the entire player population to be deserting the game, which will soon go free-to-play and then be closed down. Dozens of angry posts are made by players who have not tested the fixed ability and have misunderstood what the developers said about it.

Stage 6: Some players actually try out the fixed ability, and note that it hasn't been changed quite how the developers said. One of them posts about it. The thread erupts into angry objections and complaints. Somewhere in the middle of page 2, a developer acknowledges the bug and notes that they have fixed it and the updated build will be available for testing shortly. The following 10 pages of the thread consist of complaints about the awful nerf, how the developers never listen to the players, and that this awful nerf must be "rolled back" (it hasn't gone live yet).

Stage 7: A lot more players try out the fixed ability, using the methods from stage 2 and stage 3. They find that these methods no longer work, and declare that this makes the entire ability/class/game unplayable. Other players respond with derision and indicate that they never used the ability anyway and did fine. This argument continues for several days, and has very little to do with the change. Players begin making "philosophical" posts about how nerfs are always wrong, nerfs destroy games, nerfs are NGE, nerfs are unavoidable, nerfs are necessary, and all of this anger (mostly from people who have not tried the fixed ability) demonstrates that the nerf must not happen.

Stage 8: The fixed ability goes live. Players condemn it as useless. The cycle restarts at this point.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Watch this life cycle apply directly to Boarding Party with the new patch when it goes live.

    No lie. It has already been and will continue to follow this exactly, step by step.

    It is about to enter step 2.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I've seen it happen a million times.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    brilliant
    /10 chars
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