Beware power creep in Brawl+.

[cutter]

As Brawl+ continues to be modified and balanced in terms of characters, moves, and whatnot, I've noticed that a great deal of the changes in terms of balance have been in terms of buffs.

Considering that not all characters are equal and they obviously have different moves/abilities, we're not going to have a perfectly balanced game in Brawl+. People will continue to modify and rectify these corrections to further balance the game making characters even better, but this can open the door to power creep.

In case you don't know, power creep is a term that is used in games when the game falls apart due to the fact that new things are constantly introduced, increasing the general power level of the game. This in turn results in a game's demise.

I just want to point out this phenomenon to you guys so Brawl+ does not go this road. Power creep is a game destroyer. I definately support action to try to balance the roster as much as possible, but remember try not to go too far. Brawl+ definately has the potential.

Cutter out.

 

[shanus]

We hope to release a set within a month or two or something along those lines from which we stop making changes to it and the community just plays it.

Yeah, thats about it haha

 

[Roxas215]

So a month or 2 we will have a final codeset? Cool. Right in time for the summer!

 

[cookieM0Nster]

yEAH, U R PROBABLY RIGHT!

 

[Shadic]

One thing to consider is that we're trying to make everybody around High tier. Which would consist of nerfing some charactes, but on a whole, a lot of characters could use some small tweaks. It seems on average, every character will only need a move or two changed in order to become extremely viable.

 

[cutter]

The problem with this I see is that if you nerf a character, you will probably make him worse overall than other characters. Because you guys are balancing the the game, the only way to make said character better is to buff him and make him better. By buffing this character, this will more than likely make another character worse and you will have to buff THAT character as well, opening the door to power creep.

 

[Swordplay]

ya I don't think it will be two months.

Just thinking about long term controversies such as fixing IC's.

Then we have to talk about in depth stage discussion modifications. (They exist now but there not our focus)





And after all that we can look to tournament results to make a final tweak the the game to try to balnce it based on these results

 

[polyopulis]

i think that there should be a balance that is finalized at some point and never modified without lots of discussion.
also when buffing/nerfing, no character should go across the tier list as in, a S tier character should not be nerfed to a D tier character or even a B tier character. or a F tier character should not be buffed to be a B or A tier character. (especially the latter)

 

[nevershootme]

i think you would have to create a unified committee as leaders to make sure the game stays balanced as possible for all players to enjoy by introducing suggestions and communicate with the hackers on balancing a mod

 

[Clever_Sleazoid]

The problem with this I see is that if you nerf a character, you will probably make him worse overall than other characters. Because you guys are balancing the the game, the only way to make said character better is to buff him and make him better. By buffing this character, this will more than likely make another character worse and you will have to buff THAT character as well, opening the door to power creep.

This has not happened ONCE yet.

MK has been nerfed, and he is STILL too **** good. Same with Snake. So... this has not even remotely began to happen.

Rest your worry (unless it's a rest from Jiggz), sir. Things are running very smoothly. Char and Lucas just got buffs and are almost"perfect" (IMO of course).

And if we figure out how to alter projectiles and throws in the next few weeks, I see this project as possibly being finished in 2 months (with rare patches every now and then OF COURSE).

 

[Sukai]

Still, it's something to consider.
These are the type of things to bite you in the *** when it's too late.

 

[Clever_Sleazoid]

No matter what happens, it's still better than vbrawl. Lol.

But no really, you can usually spot when things like this start to happen. Things like "this character was buffed in this way, and thus this character should be buffed" start to be brought up a lot, and I haven't seen it at all yet.

 

[boo-diddly]

i think you would have to create a unified committee as leaders to make sure the game stays balanced as possible for all players to enjoy by introducing suggestions and communicate with the hackers on balancing a mod

They already do. A Brawl+ BRoom exists that makes coding decisions and listens to suggestions from the rest of the boards.

 

[Revven]

Cutter, the thing is, we've only given buffs to four-six characters of the 35 characters in this game and have been trying to nerf one character (MK). We haven't been buffing the ENTIRE cast, the ENTIRE cast got buffed from the gameplay mechanics that we added in some way. However, some characters are lacking still, more than half the cast though is quite fine as they are (Ike, Olimar, Snake, Luigi to name a few). We've only been buffing characters that need some serious help. If a character needs a nerf, they will get nerfed, buffing characters that need to be buffed is our only option right now. Look at the characters we buffed right now, can you say that they are super broken? No, they're not, they're perfectly fine, they can be beaten still quite easily because we didn't really buff their weaknesses as their weaknesses are still there.

Bowser can still get combo'd easily, Samus can still get owned by ranged characters, Ivysaur can still get gimped REALLY easily, and Link can also still get gimped real bad. All these characters I've mentioned as exmaples have been buffed but, still retain their weaknesses they had before, they're just better now to handle themselves without getting owned on the first stock and proceeding to lose.

We're not going crazy with buffs, and we do plan to nerf characters that need nerfing. There just aren't any tourney results to see who's stupid good besides MK.

 

[Wiwiweb]

I don't think you quite got the term "power creep". It mostly applies to MMORPGs.
Let's say an update is released for an MMORPG with a new weapon. To make people want to get this weapon, the developpers make it more powerful than all the old weapons. But because of this, nobody will use the old "best weapon" anymore.
Let's take a real exemple : When the Medic Pack came for Team Fortress 2, the new weapon, the Blautsauger, was clearly better than the old Seringe Gun. Nowadays, nobody uses the Seringe Gun anymore.

Unless we add new characters that are better than everyone else, I don't think this can happen. Maybe I don't get what you're talking about.

 

[Dan_X]

I don't think you quite got the term "power creep". It mostly applies to MMORPGs.
Let's say an update is released for an MMORPG with a new weapon. To make people want to get this weapon, the developpers make it more powerful than all the old weapons. But because of this, nobody will use the old "best weapon" anymore.
Let's take a real exemple : When the Medic Pack came for Team Fortress 2, the new weapon, the Blautsauger, was clearly better than the old Seringe Gun. Nowadays, nobody uses the Seringe Gun anymore.

Unless we add new characters that are better than everyone else, I don't think this can happen. Maybe I don't get what you're talking about.

Good point, and you're right. Also, good choice in referencing TF2. I love that game, I'm assuming you play... What class(es) do you play? I play Spy.

We should play sometime, add me, my account name is delkin525.

Oh yeah, and I have it for PC.

 

[Mr.-0]

Cutter, I take it that your worried because all the characters will get to strong to be able to play the game? That's not gonna happen. their just trying to make every character high tier. Which i'm not sure if that's working. I'm thinking about making a b+ tier list discussion thread if i have the time to. ( i'm ungrounded XD )

 

[DarkDragoon]

First of all, I don't like how everyone says that they're making "everyone high tier".

That is impossible by the very definition of tiers.

What you MEAN to say is that everyone is a viable tournament player, as in, you can play your character in a tournament and stand a reasonable chance of winning if you're any good with him/her, and nerfing all the characters that have really stupid exploits or advantages over the rest of the cast that allow them to win almost every match.

With that said, Powercreep isn't likely to happen because Shanus and the team know what they're doing, and they don't balance a buff with another buff, they balance a buff by changing the buff, and balance a nerf by changing the nerf. Buffing all characters after making a change to another one is way too much work and is a really bad idea anyways. Who does that and can sleep at night calling themselves game designers...?

-DD

 

[goodoldganon]

I understand your fear cutter, but rest assured I preach it every day when new changes are put forth. Just because we can play Smash God doesn't mean we should and so far I have been pleased with the way changes have been implemented as well as talks of a final set.

 

[cutter]

Cutter, I take it that your worried because all the characters will get to strong to be able to play the game? That's not gonna happen. their just trying to make every character high tier. Which i'm not sure if that's working. I'm thinking about making a b+ tier list discussion thread if i have the time to. ( i'm ungrounded XD )

I'm not worried about having everyone become a high tier character.

What I'm worried about is that to keep balancing the characters, you would have to continuously buff them because every change you make to a character affects all the other characters in some way. Therefore you would have to further increase the power of the affected characters to rebalance the cast which would lead to power creep.

 

[Revven]

What I'm worried about is that to keep balancing the characters, you would have to continuously buff them because every change you make to a character affects all the other characters in some way. Therefore you would have to further increase the power of the affected characters to rebalance the cast which would lead to power creep.

No we don't, we don't have to change every character to suit what we did to the others.

I used to think this too but, really, it's not like that at all. You really have to play the characters we changed and then see that the changes we made to them aren't really that drastic that it affects match-ups so greatly that we have to fix other characters as well.

Exaggeration pl0x.

 

[Shadic]

What I'm worried about is that to keep balancing the characters, you would have to continuously buff them because every change you make to a character affects all the other characters in some way. Therefore you would have to further increase the power of the affected characters to rebalance the cast which would lead to power creep.

This is, once a character has been made definitely playable, we more or less leave them alone. I'm one of the many that basically works to shut anybody out that wants to change characters that are already perfect (Captain Falcon) unless it's a minor mechanic that just so happens to affect them as well.. Such as Scar-jumping.

 

[cman]

First of all, I don't like how everyone says that they're making "everyone high tier".

That is impossible by the very definition of tiers.

What you MEAN to say is that everyone is a viable tournament player, as in, you can play your character in a tournament and stand a reasonable chance of winning if you're any good with him/her, and nerfing all the characters that have really stupid exploits or advantages over the rest of the cast that allow them to win almost every match.

With that said, Powercreep isn't likely to happen because Shanus and the team know what they're doing, and they don't balance a buff with another buff, they balance a buff by changing the buff, and balance a nerf by changing the nerf. Buffing all characters after making a change to another one is way too much work and is a really bad idea anyways. Who does that and can sleep at night calling themselves game designers...?

-DD

No, you misunderstand. They are trying to make everyone around the level of the old high tier. Once that happens, they will all separate into different tiers again, but the tiers will be very close in power level, making a more balanced game.

 

[MasterRaichu]

I think you should power-creep Sonic and make him twice as good as MK... :D

However, since we're being realistic, I know there's nothing to worry about with Brawl+, as you've got a fantastic team of hackers and testers who know the game well and are diligent in working toward the balancing goal. They understand the concepts behind "character balance", and are taking into account each character as a whole, and not just one or two of their moves. I'm positive this game will be up to the standards everyone's hoping for, and we won't have a game like Vbrawl where one character dominates tourneys.

I understand your concerns Cutter, but I honestly don't think you need to worry. Its cool.

 

[plasmatorture]

I don't think you quite got the term "power creep". It mostly applies to MMORPGs.
Let's say an update is released for an MMORPG with a new weapon. To make people want to get this weapon, the developpers make it more powerful than all the old weapons. But because of this, nobody will use the old "best weapon" anymore.
Let's take a real exemple : When the Medic Pack came for Team Fortress 2, the new weapon, the Blautsauger, was clearly better than the old Seringe Gun. Nowadays, nobody uses the Seringe Gun anymore.

Unless we add new characters that are better than everyone else, I don't think this can happen. Maybe I don't get what you're talking about.

Since this hasn't been adressed specifically, if you only buff characters to power them up you get power creep in the same sense. Power creep generally applies to things like MMORPGs or CCGs, yes, but by buffing a character drastically you are essentially adding a new, good character to the game.

Good thing the backroomers aren't stupid enough to only buff with heavyhanded changes.

 

[GPDP]

This is, once a character has been made definitely playable, we more or less leave them alone. I'm one of the many that basically works to shut anybody out that wants to change characters that are already perfect (Captain Falcon) unless it's a minor mechanic that just so happens to affect them as well.. Such as Scar-jumping.

Which reminds me. Why isn't Scar Jumping being implemented?

 

[cookieM0Nster]

It is, check the Code Agenda Thread.

 

[Yeroc]

He's talking about why it's not in the codeset. It's not because we haven't gotten around to discussing it yet.

 

[leafgreen386]

Scarjumping will be in the next codeset.