I haven’t played a ton of Chaos Wastes (around 10-15 runs), but so far most of my runs felt nearly identical. Most pick-ups are just ‘good’, but nothing gameplay changing.
In good rogue-lites, the upgrades you get define the rest of your run, and usually pretty early into it.
In here, most of the cool and game-changing upgrades are received near the end of the run, meaning most runs feel similar.
The thing is, these boons already exist! They just need to be given out more freely, perhaps upping the difficulty of the game-mode a bit to compensate.
This way, runs will feel more unique, fun, and the game mode as a whole would be more replayable.
In addition, the element of choice between boons isn’t great. In many shrines, you only really have one or two “real” options. Overall, there isn’t any feeling of customizing your build. You simply pick the best available boons, which are always obvious, and get on with playing.
The feeling of player choice isn’t really there for me. Just obvious non-choices.
What do you guys think?
6 Likes
Yeah after 40+ runs now I have to agree.
You Simply make the decision after map 2, am i gonna DPS, be a tank or a item duper for the group based off the rando and shrine and chests you got so far. After that there is no more real choice otherwise you would be gimping yourself.
I think part of the reason for this is the dichotomy of objectively bad talents and powerful talents.
Things like chance not to consume healing / bomb / potion are just useless, and healing others heals self / healing self heals others are too situational. When they cost 200 on a random boon they’re not even breaking even on value. Other talents like health regen on revive, damage reduction while down, or invuln on nearby downec allies are also way too situational and reactionary - talents that buff revives will always be weaker than talents that prevent going down. Similarly for talents that reduce damage vs talents that prevent damage or increase kill power.
Other talents like perpetual blocking, lightning crit, dupe on ult, etc are so powerful that they can just BE the whole build. I just get as many boons as possible because I only need to roll one of those to win, usually, and it’s mostly a matter of getting through the junk.
I would much prefer all the boons to be brought to center. Buff the useless talents significantly, nerf the powerful ones a bit, focus on synergies being powerful rather than individual boons maybe? Give players more options so they can actually build a build rather than relying on so much RNG?
2 Likes
I never expected CW to be even close to something like Isaac in terms of replayability, but overall it’s pretty meh, yeah. Somehow the runs feel even more straightforward than regular difficulty runs.