"YaeVizsla;c-1847207" wrote:
"FraxisStargazer;d-202533" wrote:
PS - This doesn't even touch on the "Nerf found counters" thing that started with DMalak
Only one change has been made to target a counter.
That was to prevent a fifth Palpatine meta. This is not unreasonable; he's had enough metas for a very long time.
While I agree that Palpatine has had enough metas, they did consider doing it for JKA. He's just not consistent enough for it. If he was doing it as consistently as Palp, they no doubt he would have gotten the nerf-hammer. This was made clear by their recent post regarding JKA, saying that "he is performing as desired" or something like that. Meaning, it is clearly policy to curate the meta even if it takes 1) nerfing newfound counters 2) nerfing recently reworked charcters.
The issue with this is that it makes resource allocation tricky, because, if you happen to find a counter, or want to test for one, you risk your gear investment being nullified by the devs.
For example, in a fictional scenario where they release a character that is supposed to make the top of arena, then you as the player make the amazing discovery that it can possibly be countered by some weird, underused character, like Lobot.
Before this policy was made known, it would be easy enough to invest and attempt the counter, because if it succeeded, you had a reasonable expectation that the "Final text" in the new character's release was truly final for at least several months. This is part of the game's fun, figuring it out, figuring how to break the meta. But, because countering something that SHOULD be meta is punished by the devs, you don't get to do that anymore.
This is also a negative impact on the community, because now theorycrafters have less incentive to work the meta, because the devs are (I'm assuming obligated) to keep it a certain way that favors new releases.
Granted, this could all be solved by the upcoming test servers, because more rigorous testing would help ensure that "final text" is indeed "final" for a reasonable amount of time that justifies gear investment. That devs are moving in this direction shows that they recognize that the current system of "achieve expected utility at all costs" is problematic.
