Look, Fatshark, we know how you operate. Overcomplicated systems that effectively could be replaced with something that’s been done a thousand times over and is established wisdom, and then slowly trying to cut back on the hated aspects of said overcomplicated system.
It’s not healthy, it eats up dev time, and it’s ultimately pointless.
Here is my proposal. Adopt this, and dev time should be easier to come by, and future developments much easier to balance.
STEP ONE: Normalization.
Every enemy should have its health values normalized across all difficulties. This may require reworking the Meat Grinder. This does not matter.
Weapon damage should be adjusted with this in mind. If this requires ‘narrowing’ the range from 0-80 in terms of what damage means, so much the better. If there is a single breakpoint that needs to be achieved across all difficulties, it becomes much easier to balance everything.
STEP TWO: Restraint.
Go back through player trees. Start nerfing damage to compensate for the health changes. Start nerfing everything, honestly - the players have gotten too strong and they need to be dialed back.
At the same time, dial back the spawn rates, and compensate with more damage. Slow the players down, both directly and via actual tactical threats.
STEP THREE: Rebalance.
Address ‘less popular’ talents and choices. Some of these can be handled by the reducing of enemy density in step 2 (ie, Exec Stance gets a lot more balanced if you’re not constantly being swarmed, and elite-kill-ult-regen talents become far more balanced when there’s not a dozen of them behind every corner), but others need reworking (see: Vet’s smoke grenades, positioning for some aspects of psyker’s tree).
Similarly, address weapons. Consolidating the mark system in Unlocked and Loaded was a good first step, but mobility is still king and there’s some choices outcompeted. While damage/health changes from the previous two steps may help, it might be a good idea to look at rending blessings and weakspot modifiers.
yes to everything but this point, why should enemies not be harder to kill the higher the difficulty goes, i’m not suggesting damage spunges like when VT2 cataclysm difficulty came out, but there should still be a sense
It’d make weapon balance easier across all difficulties. Difficulty could be done in other ways. Killing Floor enemies have more attacks as you go up. For example, you could give Bulwarks a charging attack in Heresy and then in Damnation add a shield swing to the end of the attack that knocks the player character around.
I just don’t see that happening. Didn’t happen with VT or VT2 (right?). But maybe…we have seen changes to enemy behaviors over time (gunners moving, flamers exploding).
But without that, which seems like a tall order (especially at this point in the dev cycle), I don’t get the “normalize enemy HP” thing. Malice and Heresy and Damnation are all “balanced” in that each is more difficult than the last. Same with Auric.
Personally, I like how arcadey the game is. I could see another mode, like how Havoc or Mortis has been implemented, that takes things in a different, slower direction. But fewer enemies isn’t something I want everywhere all the time. It’d be boring.
I figure if you hit weapon damage first you then start pruning back talents to fit additionally to avoid the ‘these talents are required to make it usable while the other weapons go from usable to godlike’ problem.