Let's improve this stuff

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.

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Having to re-unlock talents we’ve already had for over a year is definitely a point of contention that can’t be overstated. Huge oofs.

Man, I actually love most of the changes, but it’s still coming off as a pretty abrasive update. Beastmen still have an unmanageable attack speed where I’m taking way more than reasonable amounts of chip damage between a push and push-stab (Zealot/Flail, max attack speed during ult). Enemies do not feel like they are taking extra damage we were told they do during the closed beta, with their immediate attack reactions and lack of stun animations while climbing, fighting on cliffs now feels more dangerous than fighting in the open.

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“lack of stun animations while climbing, fighting on cliffs now feels more dangerous than fighting in the open”
That’s a very old issue. Maybe you missed it since it was easier to dodge, but stagger immunity during climbing and immeidate attack after finishing animation were there for a long time.

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Spot on.

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I’m a huge fan of the difficulty increase on the hordes; it’s how Legend should feel, in my opinion, but it’s also got some fairly odd interactions of enemies being in weird places. Enemy positioning is a bit wonky, but I’m loving how the hordes no longer get themselves mulched.

Beastmen have been… hard. Fun! But hard.

The Temp-Health stuff, aside from Cleave, feels so much more reasonable. (IMO)

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Wow. This thread is closer to my own opinions (on short testing) than anything else I’ve read about people’s feelings about the expansion and update. As such, I don’t think I can add much (for now, at least).

But a couple of things came to mind. It seems to me that the Temp health on Cleave, specifically, was broken at some point. It could be overnerfing in haste, it could be a mistake in numbers, it could be a genuine bug - but it seems something went wrong. It’s horribly weaker now than what it was, and the numbers seem to indicate way too much (the ones I’ve seen indicate 50% or less effectiveness than before). Several people have also claimed that the first hit doesn’t return health anymore, when it was a purposefully-made change before that it did.

I kind of agree. I think that Cata could indeed have slightly better rewards than Legend - but not much. I’m thinking about one chest category worth. So a bit better chances of getting Reds, mainly - and still needing extra work to get to the high ones. Anything more would pretty much invite people going in over their heads.

Absolutely correct. It’s an annoying but acceptable decision otherwise, but it’s also inconsistent with earlier iterations, which makes it very strange indeed.

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I concluded the exacct same thing about the Stagger in practise, staggering (nor pushing) ennemies just doesn t WORK !

ennemy instant recovery (they exit stagger stance for no reason); lags; ghost swings; slow attack speed; unpraticable against big packs of foes (sometimes it hits the ennemy in backline while the ennemy in frontline attack you; running attacks; same goes for pushes; many weapon just became frutrating to play with; etc…

Dodge = rreliable (well more or less depending on the dodge window)
Push/stagger = mostly unreliable especialy in the situations when you most need it (big packs/density)

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Unlocking my 6th talent again feels like a slap in the face. I already had it, before wom you got it maxlevel-5 now it’s maxlevel. Despite the fact I have several dozens bonus levels accrued from earlier. Not a good feeling. The skins on wom weapons not being in beta is disheartening - if there even are any?

I’m not a fan of the grind fatshark keeps pushing on us, 600 weaves per season? 40 per career? Wasn’t it enough to make us play 1500 games for hats on each career? Come on, my suggestion would be to remove the 40 per career, make it 40 per character and give us 1-2 commendation chests instead.

Weaves are interesting when you maxed out the maingame but I bet 90% of the playerbase won’t touch it. The crafting of it is a big improvement from the main games crafting (which is so much worse than vt1 crafting) and I would like to see it crossover to adventure mode.

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Enemies are considered staggered while climbing, so they have less effective mass and take additional damage, but still will ignore staggering animations when they finish climbing which makes fighting hordes at ledges somewhat dangerous.

I think an important thing to bring up (it’s being mentioned, but not in the sense of actually making it a suggestion for improvement) is that Beastmen have such dark coloration that it legitimately is hard to read their movements. Combined with their faster attacks, it’s an unfortunate combination, and I think it might be very beneficial if their fur was a bit lighter. Especially in dark environments, they’re really hard to pick out.

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I’d only agree with you on their Ungors (every other beastman has shine or very bright skin). That being said, the Ungor’s are extremely dark-haired (quite realistic of the beastmen, if I’m not wrong) and I agree that they’re difficult to see but I’ve not played a ton of dark maps with them on it, so I’ve not had troubles as of yet.

I’ll run a couple spooky-maps soon to solidify my agreement!

Ungors are the short ones with patches of human-toned skins - do you mean Gors? Because those are the ones I’m having the hardest problem with, since they tend to be solid-color, in mostly black tones.

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Herp-derp, Gors. You are correct :stuck_out_tongue:

Ungors are super easy to spot; Gors are the only ones I’ve had a problem with.

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