Discussion Thread: direct commits of balance changes without player input

[Mordent]

its far too drastic a reaction to the problem, and it cut content from the game instead of looking for other ways to remedy the solution

Balance is a balancing act. If the scales tip too far one way, sometimes it's easier to tip them the other way to see how that feels, then resolve to something in the middle. Aerosol, for instance, had received a nerf to reduce its effectiveness not too long before (making being further away reduce the amount of chem that affected you), but it didn't really alleviate the problem.

"Cutting content from the game" is not in itself a bad thing if that content is deemed to be bad/unfun/poorly balanced/etc.

Developers have the ability to make changes directly because we (the staff) think they have a good head for what are good changes. Sometimes things get reverted, sometimes things get tweaked a bit after introduction, sometimes there's a bunch of knee-jerk negative feedback (I feel that "knee-jerk" is correct here because it's generally immediately following the change rather than "hey, this change has been in for a few weeks now and I don't think it's working out, here's how it could be improved...") but people adapt and things end up fine.

Sometimes, removing content is adding to the game.