Losing Ogryn Enemies after 3 Years is Baffling

[eatingsand]

@KnotForSail

Did a few forum posts from players with terrible team compositions, playing on havoc 40 with the rotten armor modifier, convince you that your iconic Ogryn enemies, which we’ve been mulching through by the dozens every game for the past three and a half years, clearly had to be removed?

it helps to read their actual explanation written in plain text in the same patches that made these changes, over and over:

@FatsharkQuickpaw

Over time, as we’ve expanded and improved weapons, talents, and introduced new classes, the overall player power has increased in the game. To maintain the intended difficulty, we have increased the enemy density and spawn rates of elites, and while this has kept the game intense, it has also introduced new challenges for us. As difficulty rises, enemy count increases, and in especially enemy dense scenarios this often impacts performance and stability. At the same time, as we rely on an increased number of strong Elite enemies to scale the difficulty, we also narrow down the range of effective player loadouts. It’s important to us that you can use your favourite loadouts in as many scenarios as possible, and not box players in too much.

Our long-term goal is to bring these elements back into better alignment. We want to preserve the intensity of the combat, while making it more stable, more readable, and more supportive of different builds and loadouts. This means toning down the most extreme of enemy scenarios, while also addressing a small number of player power outliers that have been shaping our encounter design.

This update focuses on Carapace Armoured enemies, particularly Ogryn Crushers. These enemies (and the tools used to counter them) have become a central part of the current meta. As we lower how frequently these threats appear, we’re also adjusting the most dominant anti-Carapace options.

@FatsharkQuickpaw

As part of our ongoing balance commitment continuing on from the previous reduction to Ogryn enemies (and at the time, specifically the Crusher), with the release of the Vanguards we’ve reduced the amounts of Bulwarks throughout the missions.

to be fair, they are being extremely slow on the actually balancing player power part. the logic goes, heavily simplified:

1. things like inferno staff etc made us spam crushers and bulwarks so the game still has anything to kill for the people who dont use those things
2. we need to reduce this for various reasons, so we will now reverse some of the spawn changes that have amassed over time
3. we will also start rebalancing some of the problematic player power cases that caused us to crank up spawns in the first place so the game can be challenging the way it was intended

step 3 has yet to happen, despite it being outlined in their explanation, and that’s what causes the frustration. it’s not because players were too bad to fight crushers