I’ve posted some emotional feedback in this thread and a few others. As someone who is not enjoying playing the game right now, it’s hard to force myself to play the game enough to really dig into what the problems are. But I’ve been kinda struggling through it because I used to love this game and though I’ve lost a lot of trust in Fatshark at this point, I’m hoping they can figure out how to fix the game again. I’ll try to be a bit more rational with feedback here.
Some things in 2.0 are inexcusably bad. Like, the kind of BS that might make me opt out from ever buying a future title from a developer levels of bad:
- The level cap increase to 35 – since the game was re-tuned for level 35 instead of 30, this doesn’t add anything at all to the game. Rather, it effectively removes levels and talents from our characters. I cannot imagine a universe where I as a consumer should be okay with this. Also, I can’t imagine how a project manager at Fatshark could have ever been okay with this – it’s just a lot of wasted dev time on something that isn’t actually even changing the game. And another frustrating consequence of this is that we’re all underleveled now, and I can’t tell how much of the combat feeling bad is due to that instead of due to actual changes. This change is a complete disaster with no redeeming qualities.
- The bugs – I don’t even know where to begin with this one, but the game feels more broken than it has since the first couple weeks after release. This is not a beta branch; 2.0 was pushed out into the live environment for everyone. There’s no excuse for stepping 12 months backwards in terms of quality. This is also a hard one for me to give specific feedback on, because the game is not fun to play, and there’s been such a breach of trust from the devs that it’s hard for me to believe that if I spend my time understanding and reporting issues, they’ll even address them.
But here are some issues I feel like I’ve encountered, without rigorous testing:
. enemy insta-spawns immediately behind me
. enemy attacks clipping through other enemies so I get hit by stuff I couldn’t even see
. enemies clipping through my character model so now I’m inside the enemy and can’t move at all
. hyperdensity / slot system feels broken
. getting hit without even being able to tell what hit me (maybe latency-related?)
. audio cues for enemies out of my view don’t seem to play consistently
. audio cues on enemy spawns also seem inconsistent
Some things feel like pointless change:
- The stagger system – this adds nothing to the gameplay; stagger was always there as a core mechanic, and the value of stagger was that it kept you safer. The talents around this system are bland and uninteresting. Was the bonus damage even explored as a buff on specific weapons before making a global change that required many other downstream tweaks? That seems like it would have been a much better (and simpler) solution.
- The talents overhaul – this one feels like swatting a fly with a shotgun. There were a small number of talents that seemed pointless in the past, but Fatshark pruned away a ton of healthy growth along with the dead branches. Overall, because just as many good talents were replaced as bad ones were, this feels like change just for the sake of change, not replacing the garbage talents with something worthwhile.
- Environment changes – why is the 3rd tome on Empire in Flames now inside of a doodad, or terrain, or whatever that pile of soot is considered? How did a manager approve spending dev time on this? It adds nothing to the experience for players and just creates more things for QA to spend time validating. (Though in fairness, as the tome is hidden from view, it would appear no QA time was actually “wasted” looking at this stuff.) Fixing stuck spots in old maps is great, but cosmetic passes through old maps (if that’s what this was) feel unnecessary at this point.
Also, the lighting in many maps also feels very different to me now, though I can’t be sure about that one because there’s no way for me to go back & try the old version. And I think a bunch of the weapon sounds are different now, but again I can’t go back to double check. Not sure why any of that stuff was necessary.
A few things are good:
- Specific targeted buffs to individual weapons – shields blocking unblockable attacks is a cool perk to add to an underplayed set of weapons. Continuous fire on left click for swift bow feels interesting, though I don’t personally care for that weapon. Overall, most of the weapon-specific adjustments seemed good. (These types of relatively minor changes are what Fatshark should have been doing in a lot more places, rather than tearing out whole swathes of old content and replacing with new.)
- Terror events scaling with difficulty – I haven’t played enough maps to be able to give specific feedback per map, but I very much enjoy this concept. The AI director already makes the main parts of the maps vary with difficulty (more specials & patrols/bosses on higher difficulties); it’s overdue for similar treatment to be applied to the map finales. Better late than never on this one. Probably still needs map-by-map tweaking, though.
- Moving temp health talents to level 5 – I mention this separately from the broader talents overhaul, because this could have been done without changing the game at all for veterans, just making things more accessible for new players. It’s a good change.
As for dodge, I can’t tell yet whether I’m okay with the change. I want to say that I’m okay with the timing being tighter, but I don’t like that enemies track so aggressively through your dodge. But I’m not sure about that. If the tighter dodge timing is actually causing latency issues to surface again, that’s not a worthwhile tradeoff to me. And it might be that the enemy behavior that annoys me has more to do with the bugs I mentioned above, rather than the changes to how enemies track through dodge.
On the subject of Winds of Magic content, rather than 2.0:
- Beastmen seem cool, but they don’t feel ready for release yet. The spears feel unfair because usually you’re just getting hit by stuff you can’t see. The beastmen models are so dark that it’s hard to follow their animations in many environments. Once beastmen start showing up on the old maps, chaos & skaven just feel like filler between beastmen hordes; they overpower most of the old content (except berserkers).
I do like the totems & how they make players push upstream through enemies, or retreat to a safer spot to fight. That’s a cool dynamic. - The new map is visually pretty, but gameplay-wise, it’s basically one long narrow corridor. And the finale event might be the most boring finale in the entire game. The finale fight feels like a tutorial, but it comes after we already fought through a whole map full of beastmen. And the objective was unclear to me – why are we standing around waiting by this meteorite? And why does it blow up at the end? Why is the portal back to the keep inside of it? Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
Also, it’s one map. I mean, A Quiet Drink felt like as much content as this entire “expansion” has. - Cata & Weaves I have not played, so I can’t speak to those, or to the new weapons. But they do not feel like enough content to justify the asking price for this DLC. I’m not sure I would want to buy Weaves at any price, though. It just feels like a game mode that even if it’s fun, you’re never going to find a party that is at the same stage as you are. And I hated how grindy it was in the beta. Leveling up weapons individually might be a complete deal-breaker on this whole game mode for me.