Developers should never nerf units or abilities

It’s an interesting theory, and I believe there is a time and a place for power creep and large sweeping buffs (you’ll see some in 109), BUT I do believe that an occasional nerf makes sense for a bunch of reasons:

  1. If a single object is performing too well, it makes a lot of sense to nerf that one thing… buffing 200 OTHER things is a huge amount of work for the same result, and will still leave most core players feeling a little cheated

  2. A refund system (Hearthstone has one… we’ll have on in 109 too) goes a long way to decreasing a player’s risk about spending resources. You might feel a little cheated perhaps, but you can at least take your hard-earned resources and move them to something else

  3. Having a policy of locking-in imbalances isn’t good for the long-term health of a game. If we committed to leave Trueshot and Agile exactly as they are, for example, I believe it would be very disheartening for players to know that some gameplay, which has proved to not be so fun, was locked in place.

  4. Finally… the ability to move balance around is a luxury afforded to us by current technology. Live service gameplay SHOULD take advantage of the fact that it can have new abilities introduced, along with a fluid meta that changes over time. As a gamer, that’s something I quite enjoy about Gems of War, League of Legends, Hearthstone, etc… the constant re-evaulation of teams & strategies.

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