Why does the balance game use the nerf?

Isn't it a balance to make everyone stronger?Why designers nerf useful and interesting specialty rather than buff bad specialty to the same intensity as good expertise? nerf useful specialty doesn't make bad specialty more interesting, it just makes interesting specialty as boring as bad specialty. As a result, players choose specialty that have not been nerf , reduced operability, and more and more boring games.Is it not good for all players to feel that their favorite specialty is powerful?From a psychological point of view, buff is more comfortable than nerf , nerf is equivalent to taking existing things from players,buff is equivalent to giving, and nobody likes taking their own things away.edit：buff does not mean simple digital expansion.Adding more functionality to increase operability is also an buff.If we take the real world view as an example, progress comes from competition for excellence rather than who is worse. Only this kind of healthy competition can make products more and more useful.

Because in that way you will end up in never ending cycle of buffs and that will lead to power creep, which is much more harmfull for the game than occasional nerfs.

because then you end up with a game of ppl flinging nukes around. (it's called powercreep if you want to look up why that's bad)

and sometimes it's just more efficient to nerf on thing rather then buff 50 different builds/trait-lines/weapons/etc.

If there are only buffs, pretty soon a character need only sneeze on a Raid boss to defeat him, no?

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:Is it not good for all players to feel that their favorite specialty is powerful?

Powerfull is a subjective term, this means it is always compared to things simular (other specialities). Nerf or buff, would not make any difference to that comparison. When a specialty is too powerfull compared to others, it will be brought to the same level, by buffs or by nerfs.

@"ZeteCommander.4937" said:Isn't it a balance to make everyone stronger?Why designers nerf useful and interesting specialty rather than buff bad specialty to the same intensity as good expertise? nerf useful specialty doesn't make bad specialty more interesting, it just makes interesting specialty as boring as bad specialty.

The thing a lot of people don't seem to understand about "balance" is it's exactly that; balance. It's never going to be exactly right after every "nerf" and "buff". Go look up "balance scales": You place some form of weight on one side (an over tuned spec) and place any other weight on the other side (under performing spec) and watch how the scales don't move. If the case happens to be that they keep adding to the under performing specs and they still can't reach the over tuned specs weight then they need to start taking a little away from the over tuned spec. You try to balance out that way -because- if you simply keep adding to each side until they are "balanced" you can very well end up breaking the scale all together.

For an example of this go look at Diablo 3 balancing where they only balance upwards. Some classes will see anywhere from 500% to 10,000% damage increases trying to balance them out, yet some classes will still out perform others. So the next season they do it again. Know what this lead to? The devs needing to put harder and harder difficulties into the game because it was at the point where people were literally walking through the hardest difficulties. This would happen for GW2 as well. Balance in buffs AND nerfs is needed to keep game modes from becoming moot. If every class only received buffs modes like Raids and Fractals would become solo-able (fracts even more so than they are now), wold bosses could be killed by a single person with one skill rotation before anyone else got there. WvW and PvP would be so broken that no one would play them.

As a result, players choose specialty that have not been nerf , reduced operability, and more and more boring games.Is it not good for all players to feel that their favorite specialty is powerful?From a psychological point of view, buff is more comfortable than nerf , nerf is equivalent to taking existing things from players,buff is equivalent to giving, and nobody likes taking their own things away.

The only people who really choose classes that have not been "nerfed" are those who are either following the meta or simply only played the class to begin with because it was over tuned or used everywhere and they could always find a spot in a group. You have players out there who still play Ranger, Necro, and Rev regardless how hard or how many times they get nerfed. People who really care about the game, and not just what's meta, will look at nerfs, not as something to be sad about, but rather as a reason to look at new ways to play the game.

Yep, diablo3 is a cautionary example of how only balance upwards is a fallacy of an idea. It just does not work.

they could also reduce the number of options to 1 for each line then everyone will be equaly powerful OP

@"Linken.6345" said:they could also reduce the number of options to 1 for each line then everyone will be equaly powerful OP

Or, there's always this argument...

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:Isn't it a balance to make everyone stronger?

No.

Elite Specs have already buffed us considerably over base builds, although I do agree it does suck when a legit build gets nerfed because someone found an exploit and now your class is pooped on by this seasons class buffs...

@Vyriis.6258 said:

@"ZeteCommander.4937" said:Isn't it a balance to make everyone stronger?Why designers nerf useful and interesting specialty rather than buff bad specialty to the same intensity as good expertise? nerf useful specialty doesn't make bad specialty more interesting, it just makes interesting specialty as boring as bad specialty.

As a result, players choose specialty that have not been nerf , reduced operability, and more and more boring games.Is it not good for all players to feel that their favorite specialty is powerful?From a psychological point of view, buff is more comfortable than nerf , nerf is equivalent to taking existing things from players,buff is equivalent to giving, and nobody likes taking their own things away.

Enhancement does not mean simple digital expansion.Simple data addition like Diablo 3 is the wrong balance, and more functionality should be added to increase operability . Warcraft's balance hasn't improved after removing a large number of functional skills, and any small number fluctuation will make the balance unbalanced again.

@Omernon.9762 said:Because in that way you will end up in never ending cycle of buffs and that will lead to power creep, which is much more harmfull for the game than occasional nerfs.

Enhancement is not equivalent to numerical expansion，wouldn't it be better to increase operability?

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:If there are only buffs, pretty soon a character need only sneeze on a Raid boss to defeat him, no?

buff does not mean simple digital expansion.Adding more functionality to increase operability is also an buff

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:Because in that way you will end up in never ending cycle of buffs and that will lead to power creep, which is much more harmfull for the game than occasional nerfs.

That's a fair point. My initial inclination is to say that I never want to see quality of life nerfs and I would invariably favor buffs over nerfs when it comes to the 'feel' of an ability. Increasing the aftercast of an overperforming ability (and thereby making it clunkier to use) sounds like a poor solution compared to a 6% nerf in damage which may see similar results. Conversely I can get behind increasing the cast time to make it more interruptible/dodgeable in place of a flat damage nerf, despite the fact that too makes it harder to use.

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:Isn't it a balance to make everyone stronger?Why designers nerf useful and interesting specialty rather than buff bad specialty to the same intensity as good expertise?Because the former is much easier than the latter. Buffing other options to the same level requires a very careful balancing. Nerfing the build that stands out requires only a big hammer. And Anet sems to be consistently bad at finetuning anything.

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:Because in that way you will end up in never ending cycle of buffs and that will lead to power creep, which is much more harmfull for the game than occasional nerfs.

It is all dependant on what you wish to be balanced. If a single ability is outrageously OP then it is better to nerf said ability than to buff everything else regardless if the problem lies within numbers or operability. In other words there is ten times more effort to reach the same goal if you want to buff everything else.

Also every time new expansion comes out you get huge buff in operability in every class, because of new specializations and that causes balance issues as well.

Also some numbers can and do affect functionality and feel of abilities. For example if you reduce Teleport range by 300 (from 900 to 600) you’ll seriously change how it functions and no amount of cool down reduction (unless we are talking about some absurd reductions) will justify that loss.