Discussion Corner: Overpowered...?

So one of the reasons I made this thread is that something I have observed over the course of working on PoxNora is that the playerbase largely thinks about balance in terms of mechanics or combinations of such, rather than runes or decks or builds.

What do I mean by this?

Well, first, when people complain about runes, they are typically talking about a specific aspect of a specific rune. There may be a nora cost consideration in there, but generally, what people want is for whatever it is the rune does... to do it less.

(Note: There are cases where people advocate for nora increases/decreases for runes, but these are typically 5 nora adjustments to runes that are generally not considered far out of line. Anything that is called "OP" generally gets calls for much larger changes.)

Second, extending on the first, these discussions then to focus on specific snapshots of the runes (it can do X in Y situation), rather than talking about the deck or builds or game itself. For example, a lot of the "LOL, this champion costs X and has these stats when it's fully buffed and has faction bonuses" or "summons is free meat" threads/posts fall into this category. Typically ignoring or glossing over context.

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In general, powerful mechanics that aren't nerfed directly, but cost or other parts adjusted, are seen as having been "nerfed wrong" by those calling it overpowered, and even if such a rune has been nerfed a number of times, the complains persist as long as that rune remains playable. The only time the complaints about it stop are when the rune is no longer played.

As such, Pox has trended towards changes that make the mechanics less overtly powerful, while being cheaper. This is neither good or bad, but is really just a manifestation of the kind of game that emerges if the individual player feedback is taken. I mention this because some players may not be aware of the collective impact of such changes when they are advocating their own specific changes.