PLEASE DON'T NERF!!!

On my first run I killed numerous bosses so fast I only got to see 1 of their moves. It made me go, "wow that was lame".
Later replaying the game on hard (which is a thing that less than 30% of players end up doing). I realized that those were some of my favorite boss fights.

So yes I approve of nerfing easy to obtain skills with an absurd DPS.

That said, I'm fine with difficult to obtain stuff remaining broken... at least until competitive multiplayer modes become a thing, (I'm wouldn't hold my breath for that update).

They can avoid this shitshow by leaving the things the way it is. What is "nerf" to me? Now, instead of playing the game and have fun with it, I need to worry about what is getting nerf next. Instead of enhancing player experience, it cast doubt on bloodstained future. 

I think this hits the nail on the head. The big problem isn't just that there are nerfs, it's not even just that some of the nerfs seem arbitrary and pointless. It's the general philosophy that seems to be at work here. There's no effort here to make anything else more viable. A bunch of options that people enjoy are being taken away, and the goal seems solely be to make the game harder. If that's all that's desired, well...


Plenty of people have expressed their satisfaction with the current Normal difficulty. Some have even expressed a desire for an easier difficulty. It might be a bit more work, but if the goal is to address concerns about the game not being difficult enough, it makes more sense to add more difficulties than to change something many people are perfectly happy with and (more importantly) would not be happy having changed. ...and if simply making the game harder isn't the goal, then they've done a poor job showing it.

Let's say the goal is just to get people to use more than just the "optimal" strategies, though. Would people be as upset if instead of a sweeping list of changes, it was confined to just a handfull of the biggest offenders? If it was just the Welcome Company changes, making Dullahammer Head a bit less powerful, and...say...Heretical Grinder changes, that would be easier to take. Doubly so if there were say a 3-1/3-2 ratio of buffs to go along with those changes. Maybe add a couple points of damage to Spiral Sword, which is a mechanically unique weapon that makes a good option for a short ways on when you can first get it. Make the Summon Rat shard have a bit of homing when it gets close to an enemy, so it won't walk onto them and then walk right back off again like it currently does. With the drop rates and the fact that you basically have to go looking for rats to farm to get it, this would be pretty reasonable, as it's currently just a worse version of the Summon Giremund shard for most purposes. Or, make the Flytrap shard inflict slow, so that it's a viable trap.

We're not being given any alternatives here. It's just, "These are the options people use the most. We think you shouldn't rely on them so much and we're taking your toys away." which comes across as a bit antagonistic. The devs don't have to never nerf anything, ever. It's just that when you're only taking things away and making things harder, that's a slap in the face to people who enjoy the game in its current state and think the balance is fine as is. They could meet these people halfway, and instead of dumping a bunch of subtractions all at once, actually do something about the options that nobody wants to use at the same time. It would show that they care about "more fun", and not just "more difficult".

EDIT: It's a little off-topic, but I want to address this...

Technically, Hard and Nightmare are available from the start. They just chose to make these a cheat code (enter NIGHTMARE as your file name - yes, all caps). It seems to me, though, that based on the number of people that wanted this option and don't know about the code, this was a mistake. Even if the retro strategy booklet - which details this code in the back of the book - were made available to everyone, I suspect that wouldn't fix the problem, because how many people read the manual? If they want an easy change to satisfy people's desire for more difficulty, maybe they ought to make at least Hard unlocked from the start. Perhaps they could even make the cheat do something else, like more enemy spawns regardless of difficulty.

Quite - but "hidden behind a cheat code" is, as you note, not actually the same as "being available from the start". 

Basically, I think we agree here - the fundamental problem here isn't needing to nerf items, it's the game design not wanting to offer you different playstyle modes ("difficulty options" or whatever) from the start. People complaining about "Item X is too powerful" are mostly complaining about the game being too easy on normal, effectively (and the difficulty ramp being negative, so it gets easier over time). Simply providing more unlocked modes at the start - and thus making it clear that it was expected for people to pick a challenge level, not "cheat" to get it - would have solved this far less messily than deciding to nerf a bunch of shards and items.

Okay, okay...no one who matters wants this. (KIDDING!)

In all seriousness, nerfing the best options doesn't help make the game more fun. Either the tweaks are minor, and the best options stay the best options - just the game takes longer, or they get a major nerf that makes them not the best options any more, but the new best options haven't been made any less bad. With new difficulty modes, you can get away with more widespread buffing of other options and still have a challenging game for people. Yet, at the same time, you don't have to take away the things that let less skilled players get through.

There! Well said! Besides, if they start nerfing things, the more they cave in to no-life-whiners (boo, nerf this, waaah, balance that), more and more stuff is going to be watered down... Guns? Hellhound? Cheesels, i mean, Chisels? What could take a hit, next? This can escalate into a major sh_tstorm, if they start on with that bloody "balance".

Game is perfect the way it is. I just started a Hard Run. Things like Welcome Company, are almost irrelevant, anyway... Since you carry equipment, everything deals minimum damage to you and one cast of a shard, ANY shard, cleans screens full of enemies! What next? Nerf everything? Or what?

Hard Vepar is 1,5 second worth of Chisel shard... Did i complain? No. Does it matter? No. I loaded game and hacked at it slowly... Took less than 6 seconds. The way things are going, we might end up having a completely different game to play, at the end of all "updates". Now, why not forget about the DOWNGRADES, and offer real UPDATES, instead? Nerfs are downgrade, not an update.

That's the real head-scratcher of it all. You still have a huge  selection of completely broken options but for some reason, they thought that nerfing a select few that aren't even that broken (Except Welcome Company and Head Familiar) was the right thing to do. It's really bizarre. The game already has more challenge than your average Iga metroidvania and they're still adding an even harder mode so why the hell are they pulling a multiplayer nerf mentality here?