Follow Your Nerf Assiduously After the Fact

After nerfing something, a developer has a duty and a responsibility to its customers to keep a close eye on the effects of that nerf. Simply releasing the nerf into the wild and just leaving players do deal with the aftershock is irresponsible and downright cruel. Your players are going to be somewhere between mildly annoyed and absolutely miserable as a result of the nerf. You owe it to them to watch it closely and find out if the nerf went father than you expected or intended.

All too often, developers just assume they can count on players to raise a huge stink if the nerf went to far. A sloppy, lazy attitude all too common in developers is that they only need to use their tracking metrics to find things that are too good and too powerful, since players will be far more honest about reporting things that are weak. While it is true that players are more likely to report things that are weak, relying on this depends on your staff having a really good ability to sort through the din of forum posts and other feedback methods. Good luck with that.

If You Need to Nerf Again, Consider Undoing the First Nerf

Everyone has seen this happen countless times. Some class or ability in a game is too powerful, it gets nerfed, it continues to be too powerful, and it gets nerfed again (or perhaps again, and again, and again). Eventually, one of (or some of) these nerfs actually does the trick and results in the ability no longer being overpowered. At this point, all previous nerfs should be reviewed as potentially being unnecessary. Sometimes it is hard to properly diagnose why something is too powerful. Perhaps the ability is getting used in surprising ways, or perhaps when seems like the problem at first is not the real problem. That is fine. There is no shame in admitting that. But do not compound the problem by lazily or stubbornly refusing to re-examine and possibly undoing previous nerfs.

Example: 

A certain power seems too strong. In round 1, the damage gets nerfed. In round 2, the cooldown is increased. In round 3, the “real problem” is discovered, that the damage from this power is being delivered untyped, or unresistable, or resistances simply are not working against it. Round 3 successfully makes the power reasonable. The developer should now go back and consider undoing nerf #1 and nerf #2 now that the real problem has been found.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 1)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 2)

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