Which was the last version of the CBM made with the "no nerf" philosophy?

Reverend Zombie · #1 May 26th, 2012, 10:34 PM

My story is this:

I returned to Dom3 after a hiatus of 3 or 4, maybe 5 years.

My recollection from when I left is that the philosophy for the CBM was not to nerf things deemed overpowered and overused, but to improve things that were underpowered and under-used.

The latest versions of the CBM seem to me not to follow that philosophy, at least insofar as some magic items are concerned (SDR being unique, for example).

So, for those who have been playing continuously, or at least more recently, than I have, the following question:

What's the most recent version of the CBM that follows the older philosophy--the one with the fewest nerfs?

Valerius · #2 May 27th, 2012, 12:03 AM

I've never had a problem with things being nerfed. If 50% of things are balanced, 25% too weak and 25% OP it seems to me the most efficient aproach is to boost the 25% of weak things and nerf the 25% of OP things rather than boost 75% to the OP level. But I also prefer toning down the power instead of ramping it up.

I think some of the the things you are talking about, such as SDRs, are not necessarily aimed at nerfing those things but reducing micro. Another aspect is breaking routines and opening up different approaches (the somewhat controversial removal of hammers being in this category).

Another thing we are seeing more of in recent releases is new content such as national spells and summons (as well as the EDM summons, of course, that are available to all nations). I'm a huge fan of this kind of thing. You look at some base game nations and they have many national summons and then others have almost nothing. Assuming everything is balanced adding national spells and summons just makes the battlefield a lot more interesting and really has no drawbacks.

But to answer your question, assuming you aren't attached to gem gens CBM 1.6 would be probably be the version that matches what you have in mind. If you do want gem gens then you'll have to go back to 1.5 or add them back to 1.6. In terms of MP, you might get some people to play 1.6 (though not as many if you want gem gens included) but I doubt anyone would go for 1.5 at this point.

Admiral_Aorta · #3 May 27th, 2012, 01:20 AM

CBM's goal is to make evrerything usable at least some of the time and to make the game more fun. Gem gens turn the game into a horrible micromanagement slog, which is the opposite of fun. If you really want to play with gem gens, why not make your own mod? It would be incredibly easy to puy gem gens back into CBM.

llamabeast · #4 May 27th, 2012, 06:26 PM

I don't think there has been a significant shift in philosophy as you describe. I can see that the effective removal of gem gens, SDRs and hammers probably seems pretty shocking if you've been away for a while. There are lots of long discussions here on those topics - you could read them if you're interested, and hopefully you'll find the arguments for their removal convincing. Certainly they were not removed lightly.

However if you really want those things back I'd suggest you should take CBM1.92 and just undo the changes to to those items (probably ten minutes' work in Notepad even if you haven't modded before). I think you will like a lot of the other changes and new content.

Also, welcome back Reverend! Great to see you again! Terrifyingly I've been here pretty much every day the whole time...

Gandalf Parker · #5 May 27th, 2012, 06:42 PM

I also remember the original goals of Zen for CBM.

What might be a working version for you would be 1.6
That was when a big discussion broke out about nerfing. The open games on Dom3Minions.com was frozen at CBM 1.62 from those discussions. Various efforts to get a consensus to upgrade to higher CBMs or one of the variations from other forums has failed to get agreement ever since.

I get occassional requests to set up games with new CBMs (which I do with no problem) but 1.62 is still the biggest request.

Also I believe that 1.6 was the last one that someone dissected into separate .dm files for Gods, Scales, Gemgens, Heroes, Independents, Spells. That makes for abit more control over what you do and dont want to affect the game.

llamabeast · #6 May 27th, 2012, 07:11 PM

I'm 90% sure Gandalf means removal of gem gens when he says "nerfing".

Generally there is not a huge amount of nerfing in CBM. Although I basically agree with Valerius, in practice there is significantly more buffing than nerfing. Basically players enjoy it more. There are exceptions, e.g. Ashdod (and plenty of others of course, in a mod which makes thousands of changes).