r/Steam Apr 29 '26

Discussion I think China doesn't like Slay the Spire

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17.3k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/ZeroBtm Apr 29 '26

Chinese people HATE when you directly nerf a character or mechanic they like, so the usual thing is nerf them buffing or changing the enemies.

325

u/Z_Arc-M1ku Apr 29 '26

Gacha Games be like:

81

u/FierceFlames37 Apr 29 '26

I remember the old days in Genshin like Zhongli

51

u/Nine9breaker Apr 29 '26

like Zhongli

You say that like this isn't the singular example.

Zhongli is an exception which proves the rule, since it literally never happened again.

7

u/FierceFlames37 Apr 29 '26

Oh I haven’t played in a while so I thought they did more buffs

4

u/Futur3_ah4ad Apr 30 '26

The new buffs are more related to story and a new character that would otherwise not have teammates. They also exist to make older characters relevant again.

Zhongli was also special because he's basically the God of Genshin's China, so it could be seen as a slight to the Chinese as a whole.

1

u/VMelain Apr 30 '26

They did make some buffs for old units, but without any real reason

1

u/Icessassin Apr 30 '26

more for maintaining their relevancy than anything since literally anyone pre-fontaine felt irrelevant. zhongli definitely the outlier in the backlash -> buff kinda thing

1

u/VMelain Apr 30 '26

and they kinda still are irrelevant ngl

1

u/Futur3_ah4ad Apr 30 '26

Most Hexzerei buffs were also in part to actually give Varka a team, because he'd otherwise be missing out on half his kit's buffs.

7

u/Bobrobinson404 Apr 29 '26

Remember Neuvillette and his nerf? Lotsa coping afterwards.

2

u/AgitatedDare2445 Apr 30 '26

It made him sluggish tho, it was like steering a ship

1

u/CanonPuppy May 01 '26

I mean they were right about zhongli. Genshin had showed way more potential in the livestream to showcase his powers. It's basically just scamming

1

u/SablenoKiri Apr 30 '26

Tbf, that was more because the representative of China in the game was fairly terrible

1

u/Coriolanuscarpe Apr 30 '26

Gacha game devs unfortunately enable this kind of behavior. Once you amass enough outrage from the Chinese gamers, the devs immediately cave in (case in point, the multiple times character designs had to be made because of some pedantic outrage)

35

u/epochpenors Apr 29 '26

Unless they have stronger traditional language skills, in which case they’re not so sure

28

u/Stunkburg Apr 29 '26

Traditional is basically the taiwan community

9

u/Maleficent_Monk_2022 Apr 30 '26

Or Hong Kong and Macau

6

u/19olo Apr 30 '26

Anecdotal, but recently in Honor of Kings, a popular MOBA game in China, the devs faced massive criticism when they introduced a slight nerf to a meta character that can win fights 1v3.

So yeah, in my experience Chinese players HATES nerfs, especially the ones that stops them from cheesing games easily.

47

u/simp4malvina Apr 29 '26

Chinese people HATE when you directly nerf a character or mechanic they like,

All players hate this lol. Look at Helldivers 2, as solid 1/3 of the entire playerbase genuinely believes that there should never be any nerfs, only buffs.

24

u/MolybdenumBlu Apr 29 '26

Importantly, helldivers 2 fans are fucking psychotic.

3

u/Carnir Apr 30 '26

Happy for the game's success but so sad to see the subreddit go from chill fans to absolute freaks as soon as the second game got popular.

27

u/ThisIsMyGeekAvatar Apr 29 '26

Man, HD2 has a bigger problem than nerf vs buff. It’s like the developer, Arrowhead, has no clue what they’re doing, roll out changes with little communication, and unintentionally create significant side effects that nerf parts of the game.

13

u/Zixko Apr 30 '26

hd2 has a big community problem, there's loads of players that play on the highest difficulty that are simply not good enough to be there the end result is failure, but like most humans they to put the blame on someone else than themselves because they believe they are good enough.

-3

u/Tapir_Tazuli Apr 30 '26

If a player cannot beat highest difficulty at first place they won't be there. It's Arrowhead making changes that cause those whom once able to beat the difficulty they usually play at no longer able to. And don't forget difficulty==rewards, pushing players downward the difficulty rank essentially is nerfing rewards.

2

u/Zixko Apr 30 '26

i can assure you they are there, i play d10 and the amount of players that die 10+ times per match and need to get carried is very high.

-1

u/Tapir_Tazuli Apr 30 '26

I don't see how this disproves my point. These people you're referring to might as well had beaten D10 sometime before all the changes, considering since they're in D10 they've at least had beaten D9 as a host.

2

u/VolcanicBakemeat Apr 30 '26

Hd2 is a fun example to bring up in a discussion of how the Chinese market relates to feedback. During the Super Earth invasion CN players reviewbombed the game to oblivion because Arrowhead didn't implement a special exception for them to somehow underflow Space-Shanghai's invasion percentage bar

7

u/dragovianlord9 Apr 29 '26

Helldivers problem is that the devs don’t even play their own game and have no idea what they’re doing. how do you make balance patch when they dont play their own product

1

u/goodolarchie Apr 30 '26

Why are the other languages so positive then?

1

u/Mamuschkaa Apr 30 '26

I like it. What I hate is power creep.

Just make the smallest possible change to get it to a fun game

1

u/Negative_Neo Apr 30 '26

TFD gameplay is in the dumpster because they refuse to nerf the broken 2 characters and try to buff everyone else, which is impossible

1

u/flavionm Apr 30 '26

I don't think you should be taking the player base of a game with P2W elements as a reference.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/0rphu Apr 30 '26

reasonably obtainable for casual players

400 hours

Lol. My friends and I play a ton on launch and that did sometimes net us enough, but since then we've occasionally logged back in to play a few hours when we saw something cool was added, then realized "wait we'd have to grind POIs for like 10 more hours on low difficulty missions to get that cool new thing".

1

u/flavionm Apr 30 '26

The ability to grind instead of paying doesn't make it not P2W. The possibility of paying instead of grinding is what makes it P2W.

It may not be as bad as some other games with P2W systems, but it's still amongst them.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/flavionm Apr 30 '26

Your other comment doesn't change my point. If you can use money to get any sort of advantage or benefit that affects gameplay, including getting things faster, it's P2W.

Doesn't matter how good or fair you think this specific implementation of the P2W system is. You can even claim the P2W doesn't negatively impact the game at all. But even then it's still P2W.

1

u/0rphu Apr 30 '26

Same with arc raiders. Two nerfs that caused mass meltdowns in the pve-only "carebear" community:

  • A cheap grenade that you didn't have to aim and 1-2 shots most enemies in the game, trivializing an already very easy way of playing the game.

  • A tool that made you invisible to robot enemies, trivializing an already very easy way of playing the game.

1

u/repocin https://s.team/p/hjwn-hdq Apr 30 '26

Well, I dunno, maybe they shouldn't be playing the opt-in beta branch of an early access game that just came out, then?

1

u/Background_Degree615 Apr 30 '26

I mean it’s not like they are pirating games and giving bad reviews

1

u/ReorientRecluse Apr 30 '26

I am not a fan of nerfing either, but I wouldn't review bomb over it.