Talk:Nerf

Seems reasonable. When the SSBB tier list comes out, there will defintely be changes and revises. ItemHazard 20:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC) ItemHazard

Are you sure about the whole "moves nerfed" thing? We're clearly talking about entire characters.

Please sign your comments. And saying an entire CHARACTER was nerfed would imply that said character was previously terribly unbalanced, which wasn't the case. In addition, some characters have had one move nerfed and another buffed, like Kirby.- Gargomon251 (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Yoshi?

Exactly how did he get nerfed in Brawl? --Posted by Pikamander2 (Talk) at 17:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...delete!

Delete - This is a bit of a dubious article in the first place. Our focus should really be on how the characters play and not how well they play. Since so much is dependent on individual player styles and skill levels, not to mention that all the games play on completely different physics engines, you can't objectively say whether one move is "better" than it was. Granted, there are some obvious ones like Peach's down-smash that are indisputable, but I don't think there's any need for it to be captured in an article. --RJM ^Talk 20:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Delete - This is basically just a small tier list that anyone can edit. --Posted by Pikamander2 (Talk) at 21:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Nerfing/buffing strikes me to be somewhat akin to clones; something that's not official, somewhat left up to individual judgment, but nonetheless a definite topic of discussion in the community. Documenting that so-and-so's back air now does less damage and/or knockback is less subjective than, say, the tier list, so I don't think there's a problem with subjectivity. I believe this stuff has been researched to some degree, but I leave it an exercise to the reader to find the appropriate SWF threads. But even if the page does suggest something about a character being better or worse, it needn't be normative--that is, it can describe general sentiments in the community without authoritatively declaring them to be truth. (BTW, Randall, you probably should tack on a delete tag to the article if you're really nominating it.) --Kirby King 21:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Again, I think because you're dealing with two fundamentally different gaming platforms, the red flag of subjectivity is automatically raised. A character's "strength" is relative to the game in which they appear. You wouldn't describe Lucas (SSBB) as a clone of Ness (SSBM) in the same way that it's meaningless to say that Mario's back air is stronger in Brawl than it was in Melee because the conditions that affect the move's power are not equal. If a character's overall strength is being graded on uneven playing fields, I don't think objectivity is achievable. Oddly though, my own reasoning makes it perfectly okay to discuss how a clone character was nerfed within his own game (i.e. Luigi Cyclone > Mario Tornado) :^) --RJM ^Talk 21:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a case for not taking things too literally, I guess, when it comes to things like how much damage a move does, etc. I would still say there's enough of a general sentiment that "nerfing" exists (and to some extent who it affects) that would at minimum warrant an article discussing what nerfing is/means, and probably (obvious) examples of characters/moves being nerfed. I don't even think it matters whether or not this would be considered subjective, because the article does not need to describe what is as much as it might describe what the community thinks is; it's the difference between tier list saying that "Meta Knight is better than Captain Falcon" and "The SBR says Meta Knight is better than Captain Falcon". It's certainly within the scope of SmashWiki to report on subjective issues, if the subjectivity can be objectively documented. :) --Kirby King 22:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Righto, makes sense to me. So shift the focus away from who got nerfed to what nerfed means, citing the obvious examples but leaving nothing subjectively questionable without reporting the source of the subjectivity. Objectively. :^) --RJM ^Talk 02:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep - Per the discussion below, the article should be kept, but should be cleaned up into less of a list of characters and more of an explanation about nerfed characters and some good examples. --RJM ^Talk 02:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep - wat is up with people and deleting? the info, no matter how useless, can always be called upon for later. i think this page is too vague: it needs more info. hit me back with why u wont it gone.