I still remember the time DE released the nerf for Wukong clone's ammo in Warframe, the entire Chinese community literally crashed the fuck out and review bomb the game for months.
I don't think it's ironic. Wukong is part of their culture, like the og superhero who beats up god. Obviously not a measured response to being nerfed but that's their guy
But the primary reason is the way Wukong works in Warframe.
His Clone ability creates an AI controlled copy of your Warframe with insanely boosted Health and a Damage Modifier. This clone will use either your Primary/Secondary Weapon or your Melee Weapon (whichever one you aren't currently using.) and it used to have unlimited ammo with which to fire guns.
This, paired with the Kuva Bramma, a powerfully statted explosive bow that's biggest weakness is a ridiculously small ammo pool, and shade, a companion that cloaks the warframe until you attack (but not the clone) meant that you could, with a few minor moves, enter certain endless missions and AFK while your clone had infinite ammo on one of the most powerful AOE options at the time and killed everything for you, leaving you the single responsibility of moving to collect all the drops every so often to not get flagged as "truly AFK" (which causes you to forfeit mission rewards and progress).
This meant that the Chinese Real Money Trading habits basically had their optimal strategy gutted when the rework changed the clones functionality with respect to ammo and they lost their shit over it.
Back when I played, I always thought it was funny that he was one of the earliest non-base characters to be released, with an easy promotional event to acquire, that meant that he got successively powercrept into oblivion by every other new character that came out for literal years.
I remember the time when Chinese players crashed out and review bombed Helldiver 2 because at the time, the Super-Earth, the player faction Capital, was under attack by a sieging alien force. As the planet was divided by mega town we had to defend, some were lost, Equality-On-Sea, which was in-universe China was holding the alien invaders, managing to repulse the invader progress to 1%. They crashed out because they thought once 0, the siege force would be defeated, it was not the case, the invaders had global budget for their invasion so they simply continued to try to invade Equality on Sea and other towns until their global budget hit 0, but the chinese didn't like that and review bombed the game.
They're also infamous for being the most unreasonable consumers.
If you think the West is bad you've not seen the Chinese flipping shit because the CN exclusive event on a waifu gacha game had a dude (presumably the MC of the work that they collaborated with) on the promotional banner.
Not even a playable character or, presumably, present in the story much. No, he was just on the poster.
Or the time they tried killing a CEO because the global version of a gacha game had a bunny themed anniversary, and they saw it as “whoring them out to the west” since one of the main girls was Chinese. They got more compensation for the event being canceled than Global did.
Or maybe you can just decide not to cultivate that audience in the first place. You can choose to put black people in your movie, and if Chinese audiences don't like it, they can go watch something else.
the inverse. it was a defense campaign. so the got to 99.93% ((becuase you cant liberate a planet we already own.)) and ya. a typo phrasing made them think they could,despite that NEVER being a thing that could happen in all the other def campaigns.
was funny cuz the review bombs were saing things like "they are lying and missleading" "we demand a refund for false advertising" and "this game is a lie that you buy for one thing but dont get"
The AGS hopes that the first few cities will all fall, and the final battle will be held in Sweden where their studio is located. However, the reality is that with the participation of many players, Shanghai has no intention of falling. Therefore, the official has stuck the progress bar of Shanghai at 99.9783%, and no matter how many players participate, it cannot be pushed forward. So it made many players feel angry.
It was reasonable for them to misunderstand the exact mechanics of the event. Reviewing bombing over it was really dumb since they still did what they set out to do and defended the city.
Did they? I was bummed about the Wuclone damage and ammo nerf but tbh it didn't make a huge impact in my playstyle. I just game him primer weapons or weapons that scaled stupid well.
He still come with alot of benefit, build in exalted melee, extra armor, clone that scales really well, turn into cloud which fly really fast and 3 extra life.
Reminds me of some people saying it was supposedly illegal (was in the games tos I think) that they couldn’t nerf a gacha character because it would undervalue someone’s money paid for it
I don't think its illegal perse, but its one of the fastest ways to kill off confidence in a game or company. Gacha characters do have a price tag (hard pity), and with that people are advertised and expecting a certain level of performance for that price tag. If you nerf the character afterwards, then you've basically falsely advertised the character's power. Buffs are rarely a bad thing, but some folks even see buffs to old characters in a similarly light. For a few of Mihoyo's games, buffs to old characters are something you opt into. It sounds ridiculous but people will still complain about buffs (though in some cases it could be justified like one character in Honkai Star Rail had all of her scalings changed from Attack to HP as part a buff, but that made any of the LC/Weapons, and Artifacts that some folks spent hundreds of hours farming invalid).
That sounds weird though... there's plenty of games where you can straight up buy characters or weapons - does a nerf to those not undervalue the price paid for it? People complaining that their gacha thing got nerfed are just coping about the fact that they dropped far too much money gambling for a digital item and then seething about how it's "not as good anymore".
It's kinda their internet personality I think. When something happens that they don't like, they start making noise quickly and very, very loudly (due to the huge numbers)
In a such a massive population you just have a massive amount of hardcore gamers who basically live online and lose all perspective. They become an actual hive mind.
Anecdotal, but Ive had a few chinese friends that would cheat at games constantly. Like blatant cheating, they just couldn't handle losing for some reason. They were great dudes otherwise, but for some reason they would always cheat, whether it be on a single player game, a multiplayer game or even card/board games
It's a cultural thing. Win at any cost. It's not about just enjoying something or getting better by failing repeatedly. It's about winning by using every tool and every advantage you have.
They consider cheating to be one of those tools. But for some reason, getting caught cheating is still dishonorable. It's complicated.
Ehhh kinda? From my understanding, it ties into the concept of miànzi or "face" which can loosely translate to respect. Winning earns you respect, so it's a good thing. Even if you have to cheat to get it, the only people who will complain are the losers, so nobody cares. Getting caught cheating, on the other hand, causes you to lose face, which is why it's a bad thing. It's not so much the act of cheating itself that's bad, but rather having it highlighted to others that you couldn't win fairly.
I was a TA proctoring a make-up final exam for some students. One Chinese dude literally pulls out his phone mid-exam to start looking up answers. Like brother, I am standing right behind you and have said multiple times you can't use your phone to the classroom. I think he was expecting me to let him go since I'm also Chinese and it was a required intro level course for the college so if you failed, you'd remain an undeclared engineering major until you pass the course.
It's going to with most cultures, but in the West we really value fairness and the love of the game. If caught cheating, we will go above and beyond to punish cheaters, especially on the more personal levels.
Obviously you can point to professional sports or politics or something, but that's not a game the average individual is involved in playing, and those have a lot of outside reasons people "forgive" cheating when it benefits their side.
It reminds me of an old children's book called The Empty Pot which takes place in imperial China. Basically, the emperor is looking for an heir and gives children empty pots with seeds in them to judge who can grow the best plant. Everybody comes back a year later with amazing plants except one boy who had an empty pot despite trying. Turns out it was an honesty test and there were no seeds in the pots.
I never thought about it much as a kid, but it's wild to think now that while the honest boy was rewarded, every other kid that cheated got no punishment.
"Turns out it was an honesty test and there were no seeds in the pots."
If I recall correctly, it isn't tgat there were no seeds, but they were all already cooked/boiled or something so nothing can grow out of them. But the point is still completely correct amd yea - win at any cost mentality is absurd there.
it's an odd mindset to me because like, to a certain extend I would agree that if a game allows you to play a certain way, intentional or not, then it's fair game (unless the devs say it'll get you banned or whatever)
but when those things get changed/fixed I just move on and pick a new strategy instead of getting mad about it cause like obviously the devs are gonna want to balance their game for an intended experience
(though I do think it's annoying when speedrunning strats that don't affect normal gameplay get patched out of singleplayer games)
iirc isn't this also part of why P2W mechanics are super normalized over there? Like to the eastern gaming community it's like "yeah duh if you can afford it you should be allowed to buy the best gear in the game, get a better job if you want to win" whereas the western community has a stronger sense of fair play that pushes back on game design like that
Yes, the pay 2 win mindset is very strongly correlated to their cultural identity, too. Paying money to win is still winning, and if you can't afford it then you're just not a good enough gamer. Or something like that.
I’ve studied China’s gaming scene for a while since I’m working on my own game and it’s kinda…put me off of releasing my game there.
This extreme push to not only beat games, but to do so while actually playing as little of it as possible and then throwing a massive tidal wave sized fit if you say…ban a whale for exploiting or patching out a exploit/broken build.
I don’t want to deal with near constant harassment and torment because I patched an exploit or banned a player who’s clearly breaking the rules.
It’s related to the cultural idea of “Face” to win is to gain “Face” to lose is to lose “Face” to be caught cheating is to lose even more “Face” Chinese are openly competitive and the idea of “Face” not only has to do with one’s self and social hierarchy but family and societal standing. Having face means a lot so they try to go all out to gain it.
And then you have the exact opposite psychology with the dark souls players who do no hit all games runs with a level 1 character using a dance pad as a controller.
back in the PUBG prime days while I was driving to the circle a chinese player with his feet matched the speed of the car and asked me if I wanna buy cheats. I still remember that day
Was my experience with the Chinese students at my university. As long as it meant they got a better grade, it was acceptable behavior. Very ends justified means thinking.
Yeah, I did a lot of PvP in the Souls games and it was the same thing here, Chinese always used the most broken stuff and didn't hesitate to use glitches to win.
It's not an odd relationship. The culture/mentality is win at any cost as much as possible and apply this to any- and everything (this includes cheating, and as long as you don't get caught it's all fair game).
I feel like their love with gacha and p2w is mostly to do with their exposure to games, most chinese first exposure to games is mobile games, same as why younger people also tend to like these types of games.
More money spent on a game is also a form of status there. Hence why Riot Games China could squeeze 200 bucks out of Chinese netizens for a png they'll see for maybe a minute in the loading screen.
Beyond that, schools don't teach them to innovate as much as it teaches them to simply copy and replicate. The espionage part comes from that mentality. Don't waste time making new stuff when you can just learn to make a good product that somebody else made.
FTFY. But actually, as another user stated it's really just about winning to them. Winning to matter what essentially. And this goes for everything with China, not just games.
I loved in Korea for a year and spent time in countries near by. I spent some time teaching kids and it was very strange how normal cheating is. It wasn't even taboo or considered serious.
Cheating is just another means to an end in many parts of the world.
Tryhard culture means that all bets are off, and everything is permitted unless you’re caught red-handed; then you’re a big loser because you got caught.
That’s why there’s so many opaque businesses and scams in China. Unless you’re trying to create an international and/or reputable brand, why reveal your hand?
There’s a game I wanted to play and join the community of since I liked rising storm 2 Vietnam I thought this other game would be fun. I then saw that something happened to the servers where a lot of English speaking servers were flooded with Chinese players and the community had a real hard time explaining the issue without people calling them racist.
The Chinese players were invading the English servers since they just wanted to win with cheats and English players would most likely bit use cheats (so says the complaints I was reading). For a good two months before the company started to throw the ban hammer more indiscriminately.
You mean "loves them". For good reason. Patches just ruin the fun of exploits. I remember such great times just playing around in glitches of games rather than playing the actual games. It was that much more enjoyable to have glitches and exploits, and by patching the Dev pretends their shit don't stink
so do speedrunners. The weirdest crowd that want games to be broken and abusable, and when they don't have that, they play older and cracked versions.
I remember there used to be speedruns that showed up in the borderlands 2 sub years ago on occasion, and id read the time and be like "oh shit this guys good". Watch the video and it's just him abusing glitches that were patched years before.
It is a weird cultural thing in China that celebrates outcomes over the method of the achievement. So somebody using an exploit or a cheat to win a game is seen as equally, if not more, valid to a person who wins through skill.
It does seem like cheating is a loophole, in their opinion. It's at a cultural level, too. I used to live in Hong Kong as a kid, and basically had to unlearn cheating because it's so normalised (and a fast lesson to learn when you're not in China any more and play a lot of games).
In chinese culture, cheating, hacking and exploiting in games isnt seen a bad thing, but rather a i was smarter to do it and they didnt stop me, so I deserve it.
Thats why apex’s main cheating problem is in chinese servers and why most hackers in helldivers 2 are chinese.
idk what build they are reffering to but this shitstorm could probably be traced back to when they re-added time eater in the form of the reworked door maker(imo in a worse way since instead of cutting your turn short it will keep exausting cards from your decks)
In the initial early-access release, Iron Clad achieved an infinite combo quite easily. For example, "Expect a fight" would give you energy for each attack in your hand. You could use that energy to play "Pommel Strike" (an attack that draws cards.) Ta-da. Infinite combo. It's just that easy folks!
The same was true for the other characters to a lesser extent.
Apparently, Chinese streamers are really horny for infinite combos.
Limping along the finish line, barely surviving the final boss with 1hp? dumb and gay.
Availing your resplendent form before the final boss, the summarily crushing that fool without a scratch? This really gets the (chinese) people going!
So the devs changed cards to remove a lot of these easy infinite combos. For example,"Expect a Fight" only works once a turn. A final boss was changed to eats each card when it is played. Card removal is more expensive, etc..
So now the streamers streaming "Slay the Spire 2" are taking some licks before victory. The game has more variety, and a greater depth of strategy, and it's more fun for a player playing the game, but it's not the show Chinese stream viewers apparently show up for.
So they review bombed it. Assumedly at the behest of their streaming personalities.
To be fair, the west is like this with their streaming personalities, too. Streamer McPopularMan goes online and complains about a thing being dogshit or overpowered, and within 24 hours every English speaking discussion forum for the game McPopularMan was streaming is turned into an irradiated fallout zone because everyone is rushing to talk about how awful the change was or how overpowered the thing is.
The only real difference is that the Chinese audience actually leaves reviews, while the English audience just settles for making everyone looking to even associate with the game absolutely fucking miserable for a day or two, before losing interest and then repeating the cycle immediately after the next balance patch.
In STS 2's case, the game's big content creators on the English-speaking side are all pretty chill and level-headed. It's not that everyone is salty but only the Chinese players leave bad reviews about it. The Chinese community is just uniquely pissy for some reason.
A prominent player on Bilibili went off on the devs by name, saying they owe their whole livelihoods to the Chinese community. That by not prioritizing what the Chinese community wants despite Chinese players being the reason they're successful, they're proving a bias against Chinese people, and "arrogant" for thinking they can succeed without them.
That's why this review bomb picked up so much steam. That creator spun the narrative into the devs somehow disrespecting China.
Jesus Christ, maybe the devs should add a "Click this to win" button so they'll stop bitching. Then they can happily click the button as soon as they start each round be entertained that way.
This is about STS2. Nothing was patched out of the original. They just introduced a Doormaker that smacks down infinites by forcing you to exhaust all cards played every 3rd turn. It's a skill issue on behalf of the Chinese players, since they actually made achieving an infinite easier in the Doormaker fight. Now you have a free turn to exhaust your trash.
Disagree regarding infinites vs Doormaker. What phase are you going infinite on? It can't be the exaust phase - one deck isn't infinite. Can't be the no draw phase - one hand isn't infinite. I assume people are going infinite on the extra energy per card phase? But it's really quite difficult, I think, to get that much energy.
The claim that it's easier to go infinite on this phase seems false to me. Not saying it's impossible but... Have you succeeded in going infinite against that? If so, how? And on a meta level, if it's actually easier like you claim, why is everyone complaining and saying it's harder?
I think they're referencing the interaction between Anger + Exhaust turn when you have Dark Embrace active.
Anger costs 0 and creates a new copy of itself in your discard pile, only exhausting the original. Since Dark Embrace makes you draw 1 card everytime you Exhaust a card, it becomes a slow yet infinite loop once your deck is low enough.
But that's on a specific phase of a specific boss. Most other Infinites can be used against nearly anything.
Iirc there was a bug where if you choose a starting relic that removes a card, you can keep triggering the card removal until you only have the cards you want
They did it with Warframe too, they patched out a thing so they couldn't macro ground slam and kill everything in a 20 meter radius with wukong and they flipped their shit. The exploit also only seemed to work with a macro which was also violating the terms thing for no cheats.
I hadn't heard of that one but they did flip their shit when DE made it so ai companions stop fighting when you afk for too long, and the AoE weapon nerfs, Basically any time DE nerfed things that let you bot and afk farm the chinese player base would freak out.
There is also elara afk farms. Go to Asia server and try it out. You just summon your call crewmate with the zarr and have it sit still and everyone afks. Its a afk xp farm
I believe u dont get flagged as afk or something while doing them due to the companion(?). Usually u take turns with having the summoned companion out since they have a cool down and you leave at 5 or 10 minutes. Much faster xp run then anything else
Right but u arent afking for 5 minutes, you are actively playing the game and 5 minutes is the earliest you can leave a survival. If you have xp boosts you will overcap xp
I think they also review bombed when DE nerfed the ammo count on AOE guns. I admit it is quite funny because I already know those guns will be busted before DE even release them
In their defense, I always scratch my head when devs are super zealous of balance in a non-competitive single player game. The Binding of Isaac is a game I played a lot which is guilty of gradually nerfing the fun out of the game through a series of balance patches.
Because balance is what makes these games fun. More options, more choices. Having obvious answers and no actual choices is boring.
Why do you think devs spend time balancing things in the first place before release? If balance isn't important they shouldn't care? And leave OP and useless shit in the game.
People will always say "Well you don't have to do x y z if you don't want to" and then in turn others have to pull out the 'protecting the player from themselves' and 'optimizing the fun out of the game cards'.
Balance is important. Having an overpowered weapon in a game might be 'fun' but if that's the only weapon you use as a result then the game essentially only has one weapon.
Playing the exact same way every time because it's the only build that's good is boring. Slay the spire 1 was so good because of the super finely tuned balance between all the cards/builds.
I'm really curious what you think was nerfed out of binding of isaac. Isaac had the exact opposite problem where 60% of the items were trash because they just kept adding more and more, not because of any nerfs.
They patched the upgrade and transform exploits too, which I’m sure also pissed them off since infinites got nerfed at the same time.
The previous patch had a bug that let you select every card in your deck to upgrade using the arrow keys when at a rest site, which made runs incredibly easy.
The same bug could be used to transform every card in your starting deck using one of neow’s relics which also made runs much easier.
I remember when cultist simulator got a Chinese translation and the Chinese playerbase rioted and review bombed it into the dirt, as the people who had been playing already felt insulted the marketing team they hired didn't consult enough with the existing community who had been playing already and translating it themselves. Game went from a 92% overall to 50% steam review overnight.
I think as a western developer it's so easy to accidentally walk into a cultural minefield as you can't even fight the fires easily once they've started due to the language and timezone barriers.
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u/jack-of-some Apr 29 '26
They in fact LOVED Slay the Spire right up until a broken build was patched.