Altre's Comic: Fear the Bat!
Altre, 2004-05-07

There are many cuss words in the online gamer vocabularly. Delayed (release). Bugs. Lag. None of these comes close to the mother of them all, Nerf. Usually the mere mention of this being done is enough to send throngs of gamers into a near religious fury. Why is this process so reviled? Is it really all that bad? Nerfing is in essence the systematic limiting, or removing, of certain elements which result in your character being less powerful than before. In developer speak, this throat-cutting is refered to as "Re-balancing." The common philosophy behind nerfing seem to be, "Class X has stumps for arms, so we're going to make sure that all the other classes have stumps for arms as well." This may seem like it's playing to the low end, and it is. Instead of merely fixing Class X, the developers seem to find it easier to limit the others. Remember that Charred Demon of the Uldspud that you killed with your bare hands last week? Since the latest patch, that same Demon can now use you for dental floss without so much as breaking a sweat. No wonder that players get angry when the threat of Nerfing is leveled in their direction. Nerfing is the sort of thing that can make you wake up in a cold sweat late at night with images of reduced stats running through your mind. Unfortunately, debate is pointless. The developers ultimately have perogative, and the budget has the final say. Nerfing will remain a common, and easy method of balancing games for the foreseeable future. An option for lazy developers to pick up whenever they so choose.