Quinn Angstrom
something that I think is neat in gameplay is ways of nerfing an ability or strategy without directly touching it
Quinn Angstrom
I'm hearing just now about one in Marvel vs Capcom 3
Quinn Angstrom
where, and I don't know fighting games so details will be wrong,
Quinn Angstrom
there was some really good strat with Wolverine, where you were basically supposed to time out an attack at a specific time for a really powerful punish
Quinn Angstrom
but players quickly realized that you could just mash the button for that attack really fast and then you didn't need to time shit
Quinn Angstrom
so it made Wolverine stronger but also just really stupid and easy to play
Quinn Angstrom
the kind of thing you don't want!
Quinn Angstrom
so what they did in Ultimate Marvel 3
Quinn Angstrom
was not to adjust that move
Quinn Angstrom
but to add a new move, called Swiss Cheese
Quinn Angstrom
where Wolverine does a bunch of shitty stabs
Quinn Angstrom
and it's like, a moderately okay move
Quinn Angstrom
but the input for it is
Quinn Angstrom
the button that people were mashing, pressed three times in a row
Quinn Angstrom
so now if you try to mash it you do Swiss Cheese instead
Quinn Angstrom
and eat shit
Quinn Angstrom
pushing the original move back to having to be carefully timed
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
... that's really good
Quinn Angstrom
the other one I can think of was from Hearthstone
Quinn Angstrom
there was a powerful creature card at some point
Quinn Angstrom
where it had the ability of
Quinn Angstrom
"whever you use your hero ability, summon a random murloc card"
Quinn Angstrom
and it was TOO powerful
Quinn Angstrom
and they fixed it, not by touching the card at all
Quinn Angstrom
but by adding more weak, low-cost murloc cards to the game
Quinn Angstrom
this didn't make murlocs worse as a whole, because the new murlocs are cheap to play and effective in early game
Quinn Angstrom
but it watered down the "random murloc card" pool
Quinn Angstrom
with some shitty low-tier murlocs
HotXC
good design and more murlocs
NekoInc, MSPM
Legitimately a good solution to the problem, and in keeping with at least part of the intent of Murlocs, which is They're Kind Of A Joke.
Bloodededeborne
IIRC Smash has nerfs like that
EsperBot
A related concept is that in some contexts you can buff a character so hard that it never sees play, at least in high level play
Bloodededeborne
Albeit those were less intentional. The most notable one being Jigglypuff's nerf from Smash 4 to ultimate due to everyone's movement options being notably strengthened.
EsperBot
Like in DOTA 2 all tournament play is done in Captain’s Mode, where each turn has a Captain who take turns picking their lineup and - more significantly - banning characters they don’t want to play against
EsperBot
So if a character is completely off the chain and busted what happens is that they...get banned every game
連続犬
ah, the league of legends kassadin problem
連続犬
yes
EsperBot
Every now and then a team will be like ‘ we can handle that’ and let it through, and then usually it turns out that they cannot
Quinn Angstrom
and the more consistently a character is banned
Quinn Angstrom
the less practice people have facing them
EsperBot
The dynamics are more interesting when it’s a specific combo fo characters that are busted, but each of the characters are just okay on their own
EsperBot
So like in a recent DOTA patch, Tiny and Io were each just decent
EsperBot
But if you got them both together, played properly, they were almost unstoppable
EsperBot
At any moment a rock giant with a huge tree could get teleported into your midst from anywhere on the map, and just instantly obliterate your whole team
EsperBot
So as a result, both Tiny and Io each saw a lot more play than normal
EsperBot
Even though separately they were just okay
EsperBot
Because teams were fishing for the combo and not getting it
Axe Goth Real?
A recent one that I loved was perennial joke character Dan launched in Street Fighter V with an infinite that hinged on the Gadoken, his crappy Hadouken, which does minimal damage but has no pushback because of how small and weak it is, so you'd cancel into it to keep from being pushed too far from your opponent.
Quinn Angstrom
oh dan
Quinn Angstrom
what can't you do
Axe Goth Real?
The fix to this is that now the Gadoken has a small but increasingly rising chance to come out way more powerful, but when it does it basically blows him back on his ass.
Axe Goth Real?
They flat out buffed the move but removed the infinite combo by doing so.
Quinn Angstrom
while still keeping it funny
Axe Goth Real?
Yeah!