First, congrats for releasing the expansion (as a last beta) a bit sooner, it’s really appreciated (at least in the french community). And thanks for the incredible work around Beastmens, Winds of magic, and all the balance changes (incredible as we can see you did work a lot on it).
Secondly, I’ll try to open a nice discussion here about what COULD be improved to please most of the crowd but also stay on what you want to do for the game. Specifically on all thoses combat changes.
I would like (but you’re not forced) that some dev actually answers here in order to differenciate between what you intend to do (and for what reasons) and what you didn’t intend to do (so we can know it will probably change).
Please keep it civil in this discussion and don’t derail, you can disagree about the long term plan, but this is more as an alternative way to speak about what could be done to keep Fatshark’s vision but allowing the system, now in place, to work better.
-> Making the game difficult again.
So, on that topic, Legend is significantly harder than before. This is done mostly because of the nerf of THP, but also the overhauled hordes.
On the nerf of THP though, we don’t really know if it’s intended, but the feeling of the game comes closer to the first one due to health attrition.
Making every enemy count is a good idea. But there was already a system in place for this (a single enemy makes you more damage because he’s alone).
Overhaul hordes makes the enemy less stacked (to prevent hyperdensity), but also more agressive.
There are some issues there : You’ll mostly get hit because of the number. And you’ll mostly get hit because staggering some makes non staggered others behind attack you. Which means push-attacks are becoming unreliable to use.
The drawback it comes with is actually slowing the runs, who have to be a lot more careful about not being hit, but also a bit more vigilant about finding heal which means also cleaning all ambiant enemies everywhere.
V2 had this “arcade” feels where you had to rush through the enemies in order to get to the end as fast as possible. But it also because you COULD do this. Using hordes to “refill” your health.
Making them more dangerous is actually okay, but the nerf was probably a bit heavy handed there (in legend).
So if you end up to not like the fact that THP do exists, please, remove it totally so we can get useful talents instead. If it’s a bug, then communicate and/or iterate on it.
-> On rewards
Winds of Magic have several things that annoys people currently. Thoses are minor and can probably be patched easily.
The 35 level.
On itself, it could be a level you need to attain, in order to get better breakpoints. That’s fine.
The fact that you have to grind that even if you’re way over is also okay so everyone start the same at the expansion.
What’s annoying is that the “ult” talent has been gated at 35 rather than 30 for some reason. Thoses are not “new talents”, and thoses are important talents that sometimes makes your ult useful or reliable.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a strange decision, especially since in the past, talents tree stop 5 level before, so it could have been a 30-row.
The WoM skins
One of the main argument against WoM is how disconnected it is to the main game. Now that aethanor is earnable through the main game, it could be great to have some challenge to unlock skin for a weapon in the normal game (like, you know, maxing a weapon).
On cataclysm, it could have been interesting to reward people a bit better for completing a map that actually ask for a lot more investment that its legend counterpart. But I can agree that the philosophy of cataclysm is that it should stay “optionnal”.
Still, I think with the Weekly Events, the incoming Deeds 2.0, and now cataclysm, you should at least make that the rewards scales a bit with the time invested in the map so at the very least, make it so it’s not better to run legend than cataclysm in term of time investment versus reward.
-> WoM grind
As I need to test this part a lot more, I can’t give feedback on this topic yet.
-> On beastmens
For now they are a very interesting faction. Will also give feedback after more game played.
-> Overall
Despites thoses categories, I think the most important feature right now is getting the game more visceral/arcade again.