Nobody is saying he’s isn’t top tier though, I don’t know if you felt attacked or anything but I just find the players who want egregious nerfs usually fit the mold of what I was talking about in my post like I said I’ve been there before and know what it looks like.
mrapchem said “People DO NOT know how to fight against that character (JC) online, but the very first offline major we saw him lose far too many matches to be some kind of Top 3 character”. While he didn’t say the actual words “he’s not top tier”, he’s very clearly implying it here.
That said, I
do agree that no characters need “egregious” nerfs. And I know I keep saying this, but it’s a balance philosophy I’ve been advocating for like almost a decade at this point, lol. Which is, buff far more often than you nerf, and when you do nerf, you don’t need to overdo it.
It feels like an absolute no-brainer to me and makes the most logical sense. In MK1’s case, no character is “god tier”, not even close. There isn’t a super wide gap between the tiers. And outside of maybe Sub and Scorp, the gap between low tier and top tier also isn’t massive. It at the very least isn’t as big of a gap as we have seen in previous NRS games especially this early in the games life.
So, when you plan to nerf a character, you MUST take that into consideration. It is very easy to overnerf a character, just as it is to overbuff a character. NRS has had a history of doing both, but they have absolutely gotten better with each new game. But I feel like in this game, with all the tiers being so close to one another AND the Kameos being such a huge factor, you have to be very careful when you make any balance changes. One of the main reasons I’ve advocated for the “buff more than you nerf” balancing philosophy is because you DON’T want to nerf a character so harshly that no one wants to even use them anymore. And “harshly” can be something as simple as nerfing a single string a character has to be punishable on block where it was previously safe. But yeah, people invest a lot of time into these games, and into the characters they play. Hours upon hours of labbing and grinding MU’s. Imagine playing a character and it’s some of the most fun you’ve had playing not only that character, but most fun you’ve had playing any character in any fighting game. And the character is admittedly top tier, but not broken or anything, just really good. And you have as I said put hundreds of hours into the character, and know all their strengths and weaknesses. But because it’s a top tier character, that character is most likely going to be used a lot. And the more a character is used, the more they’re complained about. And this is the case even if the character is mid tier, but it’s especially the case if the character is top tier. YOU know that most of the people complaining haven’t really labbed the MU because what they’re complaining about is something that you know for a fact there’s an easy counter (or counters) to. But you just keep labbing and grinding. Even though you may be getting hated on for using said character and you see all the whining, you ignore it because you know that the character is good but fair and there’s counterplay. Then a balance patch drops that nerfs the very thing everyone was complaining about, that same thing you knew for a fact that there were several different ways around it or to counter it. If this wouldn’t make you furious, then you’re not a competitive player. Because not only was something nerfed that absolutely didn’t deserve to be nerfed, and not only does it completely change how you play the character, but now you know that this is likely to happen again in the future. And since it happened to a move you know had plenty of counters to it, it makes it SO demoralizing to spend all the time again labbing different things. Because what if the new thing you lab and grind out for hours on end also is nerfed? Not only is that even more time wasted, it’s depressing and frustrating and makes you not even want to play the game.
It is FAR more risky to nerf a character than it is to buff a character. The worst you can do by buffing a character is make more people play that character, but it also rewards the players who have put time into that character before they were buffed. No time wasted by either player in this case. But when you nerf a character, you could intentionally or unintentionally make the character play completely different. Just like I explained above.
However, I am NOT advocating for “never” nerfing. People often confuse this with that for whatever reason. You CAN nerf, but the nerfs only need to be very slight nerfs when you’re simultaneously buffing other characters.
Anyway, I’ve talked about this topic so many times and I’ve already rambled on too long in this post as well. I just hope NRS listens and doesn’t turn this game into a snoozefest by nerfing everything good that characters have. ¯\
(ツ)/¯
