Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
What is the best approach to rebalancing a particular ability/champion/class/etc. - to do one large, comprehensive balance pass over one update, or several smaller, incremental balance passes over many updates?
All things being equal, I would advocate that it’s better to do it once. Touching something in many updates just increases the chance of introducing bugs, makes it feel like balance is unresolved (and therefore perhaps not worth players’ time to invest in mastering it), and can also get really wearying for players who play that character.
However, overdoing a change has all of these risks and even more. Overshooting a target and then having to revert changes adds to the sense that game balance isn’t anywhere approaching stable and can feel ever crappier to players who love that character than slowly creeping towards a target.
It’s one of those Price is Right deals - get as close as you can without going over.
Now sometimes we’ll run into a situation where small +3% changes don’t have a meaningful impact. In those cases, it’s entirely possible that we don’t even have a sense for the order of magnitude. We’re tuning the dial by 3% when really it’s going to take a 50% buff or nerf to solve the problem. That clearly could take a really long time.
If this seems to be happening, I would advocate for making a massive change - double the number or whatever. You will likely overshoot your target, perhaps by a lot, but at least you’ll know where the endpoints of your continuum are so you can try to get things somewhere in the middle. This tactic works much better for internal testing where you can explain your goals (finding the extremes) than foisting it on players who have to suffer even more balance problems just so you can get your shit together. (
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