PLEASE DON'T NERF!!!

Instead of just dismissing them as crazy for nerfing Craftwork, try to think about how this works from a game development standpoint. The devs, like everyone else here, probably didn't think that Craftwork mattered very much, and likely didn't think much about it, but once the players get the game in their hands and start experimenting with it they can often find some unexpected uses or combos. I don't know what that is in this case, but if Bloodstained is like every other game nowdays it's spying on us constantly, and the devs will be able to see what people are doing with it.

At a guess: Craftwork consumes so little MP that you could have it out almost all the time, and it doesn't interfere with anything else that you do. So it could work as a permanent damage booster if you're willing to hold down the button constantly. That's just annoying. It means that if you're not willing to hold down the button constantly then you're not playing at your full potential.

The rest of the stuff is similar, albeit less annoying: a large part of the game is about finding powerups and getting stronger. Some of those powerups are shards, some are equipment, but whatever they are they need to get more powerful as the game goes on. Otherwise it's meaningless. If the stuff you get early is so good that you never switch it out then you've lost a big part of the appeal, and if, when the devs spy on us, they see that people get Welcome Company early on and then never use anything else, they know that they made a mistake.

"But," you say, "you can always just refuse to use the good stuff. Why don't you limit yourself to only great swords and sliding attacks? Wouldn't that be fun and quirky?" Sure, that would be fun and quirky. That's a great way to get some replayability out of a game which you've otherwise played to death. That's an absolutely terrible thing to ask people to do on a first playthrough though.

The difference is that's not what I said. Early game shards should not be broken out of the gate. If they can be upgraded later on to compete with late game shards then cool, but that is not the case with what just got nerfed. They start broken and just get more powerful.

I have a pretty big problem with this, as someone who ADORES balance in most games. Here it is. I know this statement is a little well-worn, but this really isn't an MMO. It's barely an RPG. Players (myself included) specifically buy titles like this for funfactor and that INCLUDES finding and abusing the hell out of all the broken mechanics. It was fun in SoTN, it's fun in RotN. If we wanted balanced, we'd play through one of the numerous MMOs that rebalances every other month and destroys umpteen flavor-of-the-month builds in the process. NO THANKS. I like those games, but I play them to compete. I buy games like BS to have fun and take it easy. Look at the overwhelming number of positive reviews for this game, and you know what the common sentiment is, almost without exception? "Good job, Iga, this game is so much FUN." Not "this game is so incredibly well-balanced." Not "I really enjoyed having to spend hours obsessing over multiple builds to be viable in 10 different scenarios." FUN. As in "I loved jumping around as a bikini-bunny and ninja kicking the shit out of everything" or "I loved facetanking a boss while breaking picture frames over his stupid head."

The other problem here is that "balance" typically translates into everything being less fun. All the creative and quirky exploits players find are removed, and everything is streamlined, and the whole game becomes rather basic and bland. Think of how many MMOs go that route. "Now every build is an effective tank class, as well as an effective DPS class, but they all function about 2/3 as well as the optimal builds of each discipline pre-nerf." That's not what BS needs.

Then there's the fact that nobody really appreciates when companies prioritize nerfing down working (if overpowered) skills while there are so many legitimate performance issues in the game and undelivered features. I'd say that priority one should be making BS stable on all platforms, eliminating things like game crashes when you read the in-game texts, and probably delivering the IGA's backpack, which some consoles have yet to receive despite being a backer exclusive.

I mostly love this game, I admire Iga's vision and that he has standards, but if I'm honest, I'm also disappointed by what I see as a bit of a confusion of priorities, both pre-launch and post.

Unrelated: Also, I agree with Ciel above. I don't like heretical grinder at all. Doesn't suit my playstyle and I find it boring.

Because a lot of old-school games (which BS imitates) were in this vein. You find maybe 2-3 great weapons out of a hundred in the game. Some are novel to use because they feature intriguing mechanics or are just cool as hell, but ultimately, only a few are optimal. It's been true in the Final Fantasies over the years, in Igavanias, in a plethora of others. It doesn't always equal bad game design. Conversely, one could also argue that if every weapon is more or less equivalently effective, then there's also no point to variation.



Ideally, a game would offer distinct choices that are all, dependent on playstyle, reasonably viable. I don't think BS nails this, but it gets reasonably close for a game of this sort. Really, I'm not an especially talented gamer and I can dominate with pretty much any weapon in this game.

I'm quoting myself because I realise that this was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, and I want to speak my thoughts after a bit more reflection.

I'm okay with nerfs of clearly overpowered abilities. If it was only Welcome Company and maybe Dullahead that got nerfed, it would make a lot more sense. The negative reaction I think comes from the sheer number of nerfs there are, the nerfs to abilities that were clearly not overpowered in any way (Craftwork), and the complete and utter lack of buffs aside from one item drop becoming more common.

It gives the impression that the designers can, at a moment's notice, just nuke the parts of the game we like without warning. It turns the sense of discovery and exploration into a sense of unease, as now that the precedent of nerfing has been set, nothing is safe any more. It's an incredibly significant precedent to set, as we had no reason to believe any of the numbers would ever change before this. Now we have no clue, and with how temperamental the developers have been as of late (with the paid DLC survey coming out of nowhere when there's still a ton of performance/stability work to be done with the existing game), there's not much reason to trust that they'll do the right thing.

Nerfs are never needed, just make a higher difficulty!

I highly hoped nightmare difficulty was something like the i experienced in Hollow Knight, really really hard game and sadly to say a more perfect and rewarding Metroidvania than Bloodstained is going to be...

*:The game needs a lot of dlc and rank-ups inspired by the community, these people know best whats needed!

1.there are backers not having their games yet, fix need to come first!

2. fix switch issues, these poor people have the weakest nextgen console ever seen and need a downgraded version that runs good and no normal version that runs bad but thats not the prob, the prob is that Bloodstained has requirements like resident evil 2 remake but it should be more near ori and the blind forest, don´t know why?!

3. DLC needs to come fast, the game is dying as we speak here, i played through 10 time, killed 80k+ mobs had 999 bullets of every ammo, millions of gold and everything needful on 99, 10 days ago-.- for me, this is more done than a chewing gum after 10 hours of work..

4. Nerfs are not needed, waste of time, nobody wants it, just make a new difficulty that let the players sweat in fear on bigger mobs and panic in bossfights, this is needed!

just watch some Hollow Knight vids, try´d a boss yesterday for 4,5 hours, after beating it, i felt like the time i hitted 100 in path of exile standard... this is rewarding gameplay experience!

please IGA and company, work only on things needed instead of wasting time on nerfs nobody wants or needs..

After my NIGHTMARE run where I nuked everything with chain lightning spam, True Arrow spam and Riga Dohin spam without even trying except on the bosses, all these nerfs make complete sense, especially with how little MP they cost.
There should also be a small cooldown between casts of the same shard so the player is stimulated to synergize different types of shards as well as melee and guns instead of just entering a room, staying in a safe corner and spamming the best spell they found and watching everything melt like you have cheats.

Oh I agree with this. Nerfing anything the moment it looks to be decent is the one way to make your game full of nothing but extremely underwhelming abilities.

Crissaegrim in SotN was ridiculously too good. It basically makes most enemies nonexistent. So it could definitely have done with further tweaking before release. However, every appearance of Valmanway in the following games was always extremely meh for me. Rhava Velar was the first time this kind of weapon was actually fun again, and since it wasn't as ridiculous as Crissaegrim, I felt it was finally balanced. But... welp, turns out it's just going to be a meh again.

Though, that might not be the case... it all depends on HOW nerfed these abilities are. Once we have the ability to compare old with new, we'll be able to fully understand how big a deal this all is. This is another case of bad communication more anything else.