Which character? Oh, uhm…
That’s not what this thread is about.
This is a thread about excited threads being made about characters being too strong, as well as being about the balancing process in general.
Now what I’m about to say might feel like it’s being directed at you, especially if you’re one of the people making or contributing to “Nerf now!” threads, so prepare yourself. - People who make these threads are creating bigger problems than they’re trying to fix.
I’m not saying calling for balance changes is inherently bad, but simply being upset over the strength of a character causes a problem, especially if you get equally upset people backing you. Companies are about making money, and in a lot of cases making money means pleasing the community. The community should be regarded as the majority, but for the most part it’s regarded as the most outspoken. If you say something is bad loud enough and long enough, and get enough people riled up with you, a change will be made even if it isn’t really a smart one.
Complete balance is hard to achieve in many instances, partially because of the community, but also because of intentional design vs unintentional outcomes. And without fully articulating your reasonings, and giving full fleshed examples, the developer looking to please you while keeping their vision of their product as intact as possible cannot easily find an appropriate compromise. With a blanket statement like “rath is OP”, even narrowed down to “his ult does too much damage” maybe reducing the damage isn’t the answer. Perhaps lower the range, lower his movespeed during it, make his lifesteal not apply to it, any number of things.
I’m not even saying rath or his ult is a problem, there are plenty of ways to stop his ult and deal with him in general, but if you have limited experience with the game you aren’t going to find these ways. A lot of “overpowered” characters or combinations are only “overpowered” because people don’t know how to deal with them, or dealing with them requires coordination which is something a team of new players won’t ever possibly have. That doesn’t make the character or thing bad, it just means people need to learn, and perhaps better teaching tools need to be available.
We have a moba-fps hybrid here though, and characters have roles. Imbalance is more a thing of characters being able to do too many things too well, or bringing too many things to a team to the point where not having X character means your team sucks and you’re going to have a hard time winning. Rath should do damage, he should do a lot of it, that’s what his character is.
If we want to examine how strong rath is vs another character, phoebe seems to be commonly compared to rath, we have to look at everything he does, not just all the damage he can do. Phoebe is harder to hit while she’s on you, she has the best escape in the game (and also the best approach), she has higher health and higher shield and in general is tankier (Rath’s survivability requires him to be hitting his target, phoebe has it naturally). Her ult is bigger and also does tons of damage, and doesn’t stop her from putting out damage herself while it’s going on. She’s also cuter.
And I haven’t even went over everything that should be considered when comparing those two characters, such as what they bring to the team, everything else they can do aside from damage. The fact that phoebe can do more damage at range than rath can, just all kinds of stuff. So saying that a character is too strong because they do a job easier or better than another character isn’t helpful because characters do different jobs and bring different things to the table. But we can use the comparisons to see what they can do and why exactly this character is good (or too good) at this thing, and use that information to completely and healthily articulate what makes this character a (potential) problem.
And aside from all of that, we had a brief glimpse at the game, where tons of people were simply trying to get a grip on what’s going on, and we only got a taste of the real depth of strategy that can go on here. As a whole I think we can say that we don’t know how to play the game, and with that in mind…we can’t judge if a character is really too strong or not at their job.
It’s worth having discussion, bring up your issues and look for people to toss ideas back and forth with. But just plainly saying that someone or something is broken and needs to be changed or just “Nerfed” doesn’t contribute. Try to figure out exactly why something is bothering you, first ask if other people know how to deal with or get around something. Do some testing (when the game comes out), and then if you still feel there’s a problem, attempt to describe it in full with specifics.
This community has been pretty cool so far, and a lot of you are making excellent points about a lot of things, but overall we need to tread carefully because we are very much being listened to. The old saying rings true “Be careful what you wish for”.
Peace out love and kisses XOXOXO.
