This is why many of us are here. It’s why many other games often feel stiff and lifeless. It’s what makes tide games special amongst a sea of L4D descendants.
This level of passion and attention to the player experience is what’s missing from your progression systems. Where those systems (as they exist at the time of writing) feel like they’re designed to try and force us to play more, the combat feels like it’s designed to make us want to play more. Mr Andersson clearly understands what makes killing heretics so satisfying.
Get some of that passion and understanding of the player experience and shove it into whatever the future progression systems are going to be and I think you’ll be able to come up with something that makes them a part of what makes people want to play instead of something we begrudgingly accept as a necessary evil.
As a side note, this is also the main reason I think Malice is the best way to experience this game: You get to really savour everything the gameplay has to give with any class and any build/weapon you like.
i personally dont think they lack the desire to make those extrinsic (all the out of the main game stuff, progression, unlocks, colelcting etc) components just as good , in fact that desire is probably why they are the half assed / gutted placeholders we have because they threw out the first few attempts for not being up to scratch.
i suspect they are struggling for 2 reasons, its just not something they have done before V2 was very bare bones in this regard and the other issue is these systems are created and built to do all the things they are getting accused off, extrinsic rewards are there to force engagement and drive cash shops , its hard to do them in a player friendly rewarding way in an intrinsic (ie relating to actual gameplay) way because fundamentally they are seperate things.
im not denying FS thoroughly humped the pooch here, DT has the flaws its accused of. i just dont find any credence in the idea this is a cash grab or a cynical ply of any type.
simply put you dont do them like this look at fifa ultimate teams, diablo immortal, mobile games. these are aweful cash grabs , when you do this you focus on extrinsic to the exclusion of all but the bare bones of the intrinsic loop
DT is the antithesis to this its ONLY draw is the awesome experinmce that is the core loop.
yeah i have often said i think Malice is the ground zero point for balance and implementation , not saying you shouldnt play the higher difficulties just when we do we have to accept were pushing the game outside of its perfect band.
Nah they can arrive at better balance over time like VT2. Even weapons that are never used like the flamethrowers become insanely clutch on the highest difficulty content they can throw at you (which involve tons of horde, naturally). Something strange like 1H axe has multiple good setups.
There’s too much role overlap, like the abundance of short distance powerhouses dwarfed by Agrip brace and flamethrower. It takes a lot of number tuning to make gun play satisfying, while also achieving uniqueness.
Someone needs to totally redesign their recoil system so weapons with a high fire rate (that aren’t just the recoil-less 2A Accatran las) can actually apply that at all. Seriously any weapon based around shooting staggered bursts that do less damage is actively penalized for existing.
And a bunch of melee weapons that even the geniuses behind the balance betas couldn’t sort out, like the cleavers, MK IV tax, duelling swords, there being a reason for most 3 variant weapons really but especially melee.
I do think the fun variety holds into Heresy though. A couple entities are massive tanks (mutant) but you can still run something goofy like revolver and not feel like a detriment. I’ve had the opposite, more than a few join in clutches with a big iron on my hip. And so much more effective toughness than Damnation.
i dunno i dont find the role overlap to be an issue because the mthod is still different they all feel distinct to me.
and personally i hope the day people realise the flamethrower is a bit of a trap and they have confused simple for good isnt too far away,
hmm i dont agree, think your point only holds if your just looking at a dps spread sheet , theres a lot of other things going on
personally i was impressed with the weapon balance havent found anything thats unuseable , the heavy swords are a little too specialised for unarmoured hordes nad the power swords still a little op but its all usefull and i really like having 3 slightly different takes of each weapon
No doubt balance can be improved, but that’s not really what this is about. This is about weapons feeling satisfying and enemies reacting the way we think they should when we hit or shoot them. In my opinion even the recoil that makes weapons harder to use actually makes them feel more powerful.
Like, one of the most satisfying things I can do in this game is play zealot with a charged up crusher, charge at an elite that’s standing near a wall, smash them with a heavy and have them just smack into the wall and slump down with a blood splatter behind them. I can feel a visceral, heavy impact in a way that no other game I’ve played has managed to achieve.
Whacking an enemy with a blunt weapon and having them react the way they should is a huge part of why the combat in this game is as satisfying as it is. Adding brutal momentum to an axe makes it far more effective in terms of killing power, but it also totally ruins how chunky and brutal it feels when you bury it in an enemy’s shoulder.
Not all weapons are perfectly set up for this. A lot of the bladed weapons feel pretty meh IMO (in fact there are a couple that are just bad, like the power sword that just effortlessly glides through everything and everything just kind of shrugs), but a lot of them do feel really good to use and in my opinion those are the what make the game worth playing over other, more complete games.
Compare it to the melee in games like Back4Blood or Dying Light 2 for example. Both are just flat out bad by comparison.
