I'm guessing that the words 'power' and 'creep' meen nothing to you?

For future reference, power creep is incredibly dangerous for games like Dust and EVE, and the developers are right to try and avoid it. Additionally, it is much, much easier to nerf one thing than to buff everything else, giving you much more bang for the devs buck.

EDIT: This is a post by CCPs balancing wizard, CCP Fozzie, and explains rather well why nerfing somethings instead of buffing everything is often the best course of action.

No fun allowed.

Nerf everything.

Correct! this is New Eden, it is a cold and harsh place.

Edit: Seems to be a bit more to the post than just that. Still countering broken stuff with more broken stuff doesn't make anything balanced at all.

I'll leave this right here.

The downfall of a term I have heard and seen used since playing Planetside at release (probably existed before, but when I first saw it) is not something I imagine just happening.

However I didn't read it because something that is a product of a crap ton of local systems balancing (game, player psych, business psych, business tactics, developer psych, and developer tactics, etc) I don't think I can just whip up solutions or explanations that handle half the necessary data. So I'm sure as hell not bothering with a random post on a forum with a dramatic title

That is why I mentioned hard counters like a damage-type specific hardener. There is no power creep there, you have made a choice to buff yourself up against one type of threat and will likely suffer in some other manner as a result of that.

Simply put, if you fix balance issues with buffs, you flatten the gameplay. 10 "buffs" later and you realize your "balance" now comes from the fact that half the weapons in the game OHK at absurd distances. You basically end up buffing the weapon individuality right out of the game.

Insanely high damage =/= better ganeplay

An old, but incredibly good article as it pertains to this type of individual can be read in their relation to fighting games.

I'll leave this right here.

This is what we should be working towards for new players.

TL;DR: We need more Mass Drivers

I think the AR is the real FOO strategy here. It's familiar, easy to use and can carry you for a while. But when you come across something like an HAV, Mass Driver, or HMG, your FOO strategy needs to be adjusted. Yet instead of adjusting your strategy, you AR users **** and moan for nerfs on the forms and you get your way!

I wouldn't generalize so much. I'm an AR user, but I don't "***** and moan for nerfs" as you say. My experience has shown me that there are a few different ways to approach different weapons. Attacking another AR user is different in attacking a MD user in both approach and pressure. I try to make MD users panic and use their rounds quickly - that's when they're the weakest. That won't happen with an AR user (Usually) because of the clip they have in their primary and secondary weapon. So for them, it a matter of catching them reloading or switching weapons and conserving my shots.

I think "Run and Gun" is the real FOO strategy. You can fit your dropsuit with two damage mods and a duvolle and run though skirmish no problem. But try that in a corp battle and you're toast. Corp battles - and by that extension PC - is the real brick wall here

So instead of nerfing one aspect of a game and fixing the balance issue, try to buff everything else (and pray that it remains balanced)!

Buff everything...except AV! NERF THE KITTENS OUT OF AV

More like introduce proper countermeasures when applicable to spark up a metagame if everything is built around that perfect imbalance. For example, this build was all about shield infantry or for the most part. Armor is nothing but a joke with the movement penalty as the cherry on top of the who the **** cares cake. Now that a proper countermeasure is being introduced in the form of the scrambler rifle, shields are taken down a peg and (a rumored buffed) armor is more viable.

Here's another example.

Early this build, you had people that specialized into HAV. Their effective counter, AV was all but neglected by newer players. During that time, HAV used to be rolling death mobiles allowed to run around because their counter was left ignored. Instead of nerfing HAV, the situation should have been left alone because the proper countermeasure was there in the beginning. In this sandbox environment, players did learn to adapt but with the nerf, HAV have been almost reduced to pricy WP pinatas. There are still experienced HAV pilots out there, but the role has become more difficult to get into for inexperienced pilots because of the nerf coupled with the fact that some of us were smart enough to figure out things on our own. So HAV got the double shaft just for playing the game as intended.

BUFFING everything.

Here's the thing with HAVs. They have never taken the next step in their "perfect imbalance" evolution.

What is the best way to run a heavey? With a logi! The counter to relatively strong AV could very well be remote repping.

Does anyone ever run remote repairs on vehicles from other vehicles? Nope. People haven't figured out how to become vehicle logis. Mainly because it is clunky and a pain to use remote reps. But they can still be done. Even in this build.

But we are all still thinking of vehicles as single units that work with infantry. And not how to fight battles using various combinations of vehicles. What if the vehicle nerf was not based on players ranting, but on internal tests with game play modes where there were up to 12 vehicles per team? Do you let everyone get used to vehicles and anti vehicle roles that are balanced for Instant Battle and ignore the balance for Planetary Conquest where 16 person teams in coporation v. corporation battles will begin to figure out ways to powerful combinations of vehicles and infantry into battles in ways we have not yet seen?

I would rather they nerf all armor and shields and buff all weapons.

So it is one or two hit kill on everything.

You want a AAA FPS?

That is how you make it. Skill rules SP, ISK, WP, time spent leveling is window dressing.

Whether the nerf was from QQing or something we don't know about yet, the damage has already been done and if the stats we're seeing on HAV is any indication, it's only going to get worse and Dust will slowly devolve into a twitch gaming AR fest if something isn't done.

We'll see how it goes. I really think they are just making it up as they go. Best thing they could do is leave the game alone for a while. Unless there is something that is drastically and glaringly messed up.

However, rumor has it that something was already done. To the AR. Word on the street is that players with decent aim are no longer liking the AR.

Also, "twitch" is often used derisively but I am not sure why games that require hand eye coordination get such a bad rap here on the forums. Tetris and Pong are twitch games. Nobody hates those games. I have never seen a thread here where one poster told another to "go back to Tetris."

If done well, "twitch" adds depth to the game. All it needs is the proper counterGǪ

At this point you could always buff hit points. Wait. You would have to buff hit points. Everything must be buffed.

But if we are talking about literally every item, buffing all but one item is the exact same as nerfing just that one item. The relative strength of each item ends up the same. The ONLY difference is that buffing every item takes much more time than nerfing one.

Think of it this way. Buffing every single item by 10% would make absolutely zero difference to the gameplay. The only thing that would change would be the numbers used to describe the power relationship between items. Your armor being 100 HP and my gun doing 100 DMG per second is literally identical to your armor being 10,000 HP and my gun doing 10,000 DMG per second.

So, let's say your gun currently does 100 DMG per second, mine does 90 DMG per second, and our Armor is both at 100 HP. We also, hypothetically, need to balance YOUR gun with MY gun. My gun is exactly where the devs want the DMG vs HP to be.

So, we need a 9:10 ratio between damage and armor for YOUR gun, AND a 1:1 ratio between your gun's damage and my gun's damage. we can either raise the damage of my gun to 100 DMG and the HP of Armor to 112 (to preserve the 9:10 ratio we like), OR we can save a step and lower the damage of YOUR gun to 90. In either case, your gun will now be at a 9:10 ratio with DMG/HP and a 1:1 ratio with my gun. Both scenarios balance your gun in the exact same way, the numbers used to represent that balance are just different.

Now, expand this principle to HUNDREDS of weapons, and you see why it's not only much easier to NERF than it is to BUFF, but why there's no actual difference between NERFing one weapon, and BUFFING all items besides that one weapon.