So I haven’t played this game since January 2nd which is automatically gonna put people off but I occasionally stop by here to see the state of this game. I saw that the Power Sword got nerfs again which to be honest, makes me laugh at everyone who needed this crutch. On the other hand, I can relate to everyone saying that they indeed stripped the fun out of this weapon.
In my opinion, the weapon wasn’t ever any fun, I don’t think any of the charge weapons really are. But to lower the user functionality by having to annoying turn it on after every swing? Why do you hate the player SO much Fatshark? There are a hundred ways to improve this without making it tedious. I will give you my 2 cents which I think would make everyone happy.
Give it a battery that recharges when it’s not being used. While at full charge, it deals 100% increased damage for the first 25% of its meter and reduce it to 50% for the rest of the charge. Gives you the nice burst for let’s say 4 strikes and then you get above average damage for an additional 12 before it becomes worse than a regular weapon.
Then you can have a blessing that increases the number of 100% charges but lowers the max charges it has and every tier of that blessing could possibly be useful on very specific builds and breakthroughs. This should be a dream to balance because you have:
The number of max charges.
The number of improved charges.
The damage/penetration/cleave/etc of said charges.
The virgin values when unpowered.
The time it takes to recharge.
The combos available to it in each state.
I say it is a dream because any of those values can be roughly in the ballpark and the weapon will always feel unique and as long as the virgin value is legitimately worse than other base weapons, it will ALWAYS have a downside. The rest can be tweaked until it falls in line with the rest of the arsenal. Just stop making weapons less fun to use. Poor usability is never fun. That’s why this game plummeted the way it did, everything about the user experience is frustrating from mission select, weapon acquisition, crafting, and the gameplay itself. If you’re going to keep going in that direction, stop wasting your time patching.
I love this idea! It would be much closer to Lore Power Sword, and that would be acceptable. Unfortunately i think It would require completely new mechanic… unless Peril or Heat mechanic can be tinkered with to match desired outcome!
Other approach would be, to make power sword constantly on when unholstered (special being on-off button) and would just require juggling with numbers till desired outcome!
I’m still in favor of giving it a 100% flat damage profile against all targets and letting it be on all the time. The weapon special can be something else, maybe even just a thrust for higher damage against single target. Then you can just tweak the cleave values until its not god tier in all ways at all times, like maybe the first 2 or 3 targets take full damage with fall off on 4th and 5th or whatever.
But your idea has been proposed, more or less, before and i support that too.
100% flat damage? Yes, sounds fun. No on-off switch? No!
Imagine if you will, you’re the last person standing on the point of no return, while your team is below and already engaging enemy.
Isn’t it 100% more awesome to turn it on and jump down to join melee? It is!
Isn’t it awesome to turn it on just before exiting the lift or airlock?
What’s the point of having to manually toggle it on?
What advantage, gameplay wise, would it have for being turned off?
I’m open to cool ideas.
I do see how it can be boring but it also suites the lore and crunch well for a 40k powersword and would be dead simple to implement. Personally i think it would be fun to have a magic sword that doesn’t care what type of enemy youre fighting. It also gives space for identity to chain weapons. You can swing it effectively at anything, cut hordes to ribbons, and its always on. Normal weapons would have room to compete by having advantages against some armor types.
I’m open to a battery rework though, i just think its a bit less fluffy.
That’s fair.
I suppose part of me is trying to make up for the very simple movesets of a lot of the weapons out there through complexity in other regards.
maybe have it actif at all time with the 100% flat and good cleave but low damage and a special to overcharge for one vertical attack?
having a good feeling powersword that isn’t inherently stronger than other weapon is kind of a trick, I guess it would deal less base damage than the bigger weapons to compensate.
That’s basically my proposal. But i think a thrust would be cooler than an overhead. Thrusts aren’t used enough and power swords are more finess weapons.
Yeah, i think its base damage right now is like 150-160 with headshots landing around 200 or so? Maybe it can deal higher damage to poxwalkers and groaners to keep that sweet beheading thenhorde feel but otherwise just deal the same damage to everything. It doesn’t need to hit harder if it hits everything for good damage. The perfect everything fixer.
Replacing special with a thrust or overhead that deals a bit more damage and having flat damage could lead to more interesting fights with crushers and maulers. Something a little more like duel than just staggerbonking their heads over and over.
Nonewhatsoever, but I’m guessing it would require less messing in current code (number of powered slash = infinite, I don’t know). I’m under impression that, unless we propose solution which will allow them to be lazy AND give us what we want, FS will not do it or take their sweet time with it.
I think you’re right, but I think some other options could be quick too.
I missed this on first call out but overcharge sounds cool. Like its powered all the time and does kinda low damage but has a single target beatdown that is more powerswordy. An overhead or thrust (either) is a sweet idea. I will totally adopt that proposal into my recommendations.
Depending on how you speced your sword, you could use it to clear trash unpowered or stagger elites. If you want a battery visual, you don’t have to make another gauge, do a dead space and place an indicator on the sword itself. It has those rod-like diodes on it that can be used as a visual gauge.
The real purpose to having the weapon act this way and the reason it would suit veteran better than anyone else even if all classes had access to it would be to give it an unreasonably high amount of burst damage that no one weapon can do but has big issues with extended usage. If your team is surrounded at all sides and a pox burster leaps into the middle of them and kills al but you, all enemies immediately turn to face you. You can pull out the sword to instantly cut a path out and stay mobile but not enough to kill every enemy there because that would be hideously broken.
Despite popular belief, the Veteran does have access to most of the other melee weapons other classes get. I think the power sword needs to support the playstyle of what most veterans will be doing - holding out their ranged weapon 90% of the time and using melee only in the most dire of circumstances. But it absolutely should not be the pound for pound best melee weapon in the game, that’s messed up to give to the ranged class.
Fatshark needs to start prioritizing fun in their game. New content is fun. Balanced weapons are fun when they’re all interesting and that is currently not the case. Prioritizing making weapons interesting to use first then you can make your -0.01% attack speed nerfs and such. If I spend the hours grinding in order to afford to make my weapon perfect and then it gets nerfed, I won’t be quite as mad if it was a weapon I actually like to use. Right now, the only reason to pick a weapon is that it is mechanically best in class, very rarely does a weapon feel really distinguished by its peers imo. Only the knife feels vastly different because you’re so zoomie. I know in half a second I’m using the knife and I would be able to tell what’s being used even if my model had no textures. That cannot be said with very many melee weapons. It would take a couple minutes to gauge the swing speed, cleave, and damage for me to take a guess.
I will partialy reply on this in your thread, but in short - tbh i’ve got no strong opinion, or maybe i should say i’m pessimistic about devs will do some big overhaul how power weapon works.
I don’t think it is completely out of the cards, but they’d want to see an overwhelming majority of players agreeing with this and of course it has to coincide with the dev’s creative vision.
