Dragon Quest 9 How To Make Money With Alchemy

in the life-span of nearly every competitive game, there comes a player that's so dominant, that they ruin it for everyone. the man who broke basketball was lakers legend "george mikan". at 6 feet, 10 inches, his unbeatable defensive strategy was to stand near the basket and stop any shot that was about to go in. you might be surprised that there wasn't already a goaltending rule in place, but before the 1940s, the thought of anybody able to reach high enough to goal tend was unfathomable. in fighting games, rule changes usually come in the form of nerfs and buffs. anyone with a twitter account following fighting gamers knows that

having a fruitful conversation about character balance can be difficult. it's no surprise, given how subjective and personal it is. it's hard to state your opinions on fairness without looking biased, and if you do it too much, you start looking like a crybaby. baby mario: ahhh, aahhh! this is about the time that someone steps in and says "adapt." not only does "adapt" make for a badass t-shirt, it's a powerful attitude that shows how resilient you are in the face of any challenge.

and that was precisely the attitude of the fort wayne pistons when faced with mikan and the lakers. their strategy against the most op player in basketball was to make a quick lead early on, and play keep-away from the other team until the time ran out. it worked, and the pistons beat the lakers 19-18 in the lowest scoring game in nba history. of course, this was only possible because there was no shot clock at the time, and as you might've guessed, this was why they made one. in the end, the goaltending rule nerfed mikan, but the shot clock rule buffed him by making the teams have to deal with him.

why would they make a rule that benefits mikan? because the ultimate goal of nerfing and buffing isn't to balance, but to make a game that's fun to play and watch. people wanted to watch and play basketball, not professional hot potato. i think focusing on balance too much can hurt a game in a similar way to how focusing on money too much can lead to an unhappier life. business scholars call this "medium maximization"

which raj raghunathan describes as "the propensity to forget all about the end goal one wants to achieve, and to pursue instead, the means or mediums to that end goal." just like how money is worthless by itself because it's paper and metal, balance is also worthless by itself. street fighter 1 is the only street fighter to be perfectly balanced, but it's boring because you can only play as two characters who fight exactly the same.

obviously, this isn't a 5-5 utopia everyone's imagining. and it's because we want to see a diverse set of characters and movesets. balance updates are ways to increase the frequency of under-represented characters and reduce over-represented ones, but there are different ways of going about this. one way is to buff the weak. buffs are exciting and fun, and it's why we have marvel. buffs are so awesome, it kinda feels like a "faustian bargain"

that'll bite us in the ass later if we wish for too much. but, i thought about it, and the worst thing that can happen if everybody's way too buffed is this: [blanka constantly roaring] guile: [repeatedly] sonic boom! this is a hacked version of street fighter ii: championship edition made by hung hsi enterprise taiwan and it was called "street fighter ii: rainbow edition". you've got homing fireballs, instant teleports,

unlimited air specials, shapeshifting, and yoga flames coming out of knees. basically, every character got buffed to the point of absurdity and while it's a pretty dumb game, it was kind of fun and i remember dropping in some quarters to play it back in the day. where else can you do a hands hadoken into jab teleport xx crossup standing fierce? the game might've been dumb,

but it innovated many of the fighting game concepts we see today. rainbow edition was actually the catalyst that inspired street fighter ii turbo: hyper fighting, which also featured: a faster speed, air specials, a teleport for dhalsim, a fireball for chun-li, and a sales figure of over 4 million copies on the snes alone. the reason why rainbow edition was so interesting and influential wasn't because they just made everyone do more damage and move faster. it was because they gave the characters new abilities and new options. now just imagine what it would be like if instead of rainbow edition,

they made a hack called grey edition, where everybody was nerfed to absurdity. no more specials, no more combos, no more throwing. we've actually already played this game in 1984. it was called "karate champ, and it's the one of the most honest and balanced fighting games ever made. [audience cheering] nerfing is a good tool for balancing, but it's no secret people generally don't like it. even capcom has acknowledged this in a powerpoint slide that's been floating around last year.

but why do we dislike nerfs so much, even if we understand it's meant to balance the game? well, psychologically, humans, and even apes, are prone to what's known as "loss aversion". loss aversion is a theory that suggests that losses hurt twice as much as gains feel good. for example, imagine i offer you to play a game of heads or tails where if it lands on tails, you lose 10 dollars. how much money would you have to win on heads for you to be willing to play this game? psychologists found that people would accept the challenge starting at 20 dollars for winning, which is exactly twice the amount you could lose.

this suggests that one nerf on your character will hurt twice as bad as one buff of similar caliber will feel good. the human tendency to be loss aversed is used by marketing all the time. why are sales of limited editions so effective? because missing out hurts, which is why you gotta get that strawberry christmas karin dlc before the season is over. while it can be argued that nerfing is a necessary evil to prevent the game from breaking, there are creative ways to do this that can improve the game instead of making everyone depressed. one of the most hype-inducing changes i've seen

was actually a nerf. during the life of street fighter iv, ryu's shoryuken was altered many times originally, you could cancel any version of the shoryuken by sacrificing 2 bars of meter to make yourself safe, in case your opponent blocked. but after a few patches, they removed the ability to cancel the heavy (hard) version, which is the one that did the most damage. while this seems like a bummer on the surface, it gave the players an option to do a safe, but weaker version,

or a risky, but damaging version. when you had the resources to cancel, but opted for the high damage version, you were telling your opponent that you're not scared and you've figured them out. commentator 1: i mean, there's making a statement, and then there's just going ham. commentator 2: that- that was, commentator 1: [laughs] 1: that is- what is he doing?!?2: i think he's- 1: oh![audience cheers]

2: i think he's going for the record. this nerf was clever because it gave the player a new way to express themselves at the cost of some damage and safety. in contrast, if we look at ryu's shoryuken nerf for season 2 of street fighter v, they just removed his ability to do a meterless invincible uppercut. they actually removed every move like this from the game, which caused some controversy. predictably, the most common reaction to this was about balance. you often hear things like: "welcome to what it's like to be guile." or "ryu is dead.",

but what about it's impact on the game's fun? did this nerf make the game more exciting? did it make for more creative strategies? did this allow for the player to express themselves in new ways? it might've helped balance by making the characters more similar to each other, but as i mentioned before, balance is worthless by itself. pro player "infiltration" actually benefitted from this nerf, but still disagreed with it because he felt that made the game less exciting. [infiltration speaking korean]

if you look at updates to fighting games like you typical "supers", "ultras", and "ultimates", characters end up overall with more options and more abilities, not the other way around. with more characters and more mechanics, it starts to look like a nightmare for balance but you also have more ways to solve problems. the hard matchup can seem more manageable if you can choose for more specials, ultras, or -isms. and people like seeing their characters do cool, new stuff. because hard nerfing and taking away abilities can be so depressing and kill the excitement, i feel it should be reserved for extreme cases

or creative nerfs that can actually make the game more enjoyable. and even in games that don't get balance patches, the players will convene and make rules if things get really unbalanced anyways. regardless, it turns out people still enjoyed marvel 2 with its infinites, and melee with wobbling. the reality is, a broken game can still be fun, while a perfectly balanced game might not even be touched. even as the target of nerfs by multiple basketball leagues,

george mikan was a big proponent of a buff players like him could never benefit from. he wanted basketball to have a 3-point line because it would "give smaller players a chance to score and open up the defense to make the game more enjoyable [for the] fans." in 1979, the nba added the 3-point line, and mikan got exactly he predicted. announcer: thompson throwing a 3 for the lead! [announcer and audience cheer] let me know in the comments how you think balance changes should be done, or if there shouldn't be any changes in the first place. this was gerald from core-a gaming.

thanks for watching, and remember, you can vote for the 9th game at evo 2017 by donating to charity. see you next video.