Man, I’ve explained this like three or four times now, I really don’t think it’s fair to criticize other peoples ideas without actually reading their posts.
Yes, you would start stronger. You would also end stronger, and would be fighting significantly more enemies. No progression is lost because you’re just shifting the scale up a few points. CW getting extra traits is not really a defense when we’ve been waiting for a trait rebalance in the main game for at least a year now (years, I’m 99% sure).
Exchange shrines are pointless, there’s absolutely no reason for them to be in the game. You’re starting a run with a weapon you already like that works with the talents you have, there’s zero situation in which you’re going to want to risk swapping that out for a garbage weapon that doesn’t work with your build at all. They could be completely free and they still wouldn’t be worth taking, the risk/reward ratio is not fixable.
I’ve read your earlier posts. So ill break it down so you can understand me a bit better. Weapons are the only thing that give power level in CW. The power level starts at 450 and ends at 700. You want to start at 700 (basically double) and give more boons to people. But boons don’t give power level. On top of that if you only use adventure mode weapons you are missing out on a lot of strong traits that are only available in CW that give build diversity. If you add those OP traits in adventure mode you’ll have to COMPLETELY rebalance adventure mode.
On top of that your claim that the first few maps are empty I have not experienced. In fact there are times where the first few maps are controlled by chaos gods with hard add ons which make the first 1-2 levels pretty engaging and action packed.
Also don’t people already beat Onslaught with regular adventure builds? Your argument is a revolving door. First levels are too easy and are a grind. Give full gear to eliminate the grind. Make end game harder to keep progression. End game fully geared with extra OP boons will make Onslaught easier. Make boons weaker so Onslaught is more challenging. etc…etc…etc… or w.e. Dude play the modes for what they are don’t completely change them and ruin their identity.
Power level doesn’t scale linearly, and it isn’t the only thing that determines your actual level of power. 700 is not anywhere near “nearly double” of 450. Good boon combos contribute significantly more to your actual strength than your weapon power does, from my experience.
Or you could just make the traits a bit weaker, lol. Anything would be a good change from literally always taking swift slaying on 100% of weapons.
Okay, but we know for a fact that the game spawns significantly less enemies in early maps, and others in this thread have confirmed seeing maps that feel super empty.
Yes, modded players, including myself, beat content harder than cata 1 onslaught. No-one is demanding that it be crept up to suit the difficulty that modded players want, that’s never going to happen on live with randoms and there’s already a CW difficulty mod being made.
Onslaught for the average person is super hard, with boons it would be significantly more approachable, and would avoid the issue of some combos being so strong that they make the whole mode a walking sim for everyone else, as onslaught levels would give you enough enemies to actually take that much DPS.
The identity is making even more weapons useless because they feel terrible without certain breakpoints or swift slaying? I don’t think that’s a good identity.
I see a lot of contradictions in your post. So if I’m mischaracterizing what you are saying please clarify.
But you are arguing to start with 700 weapons not specific boon selection.
You want to use something other than SS but also say weapons are useless without SS.
I don’t know who is right or wrong with this but I was under the impression that the only thing that affected enemy density was the add-ons of each map not the order. From my experience I’ve had double khorne levels 1 and 2 that where extremely populated.
We obviously disagree and IDK if we will convince each other but either way if CW is getting a mod than everyone will be happy.
No I’m not, I’m arguing to start with your actual gear. Additionally, starting with your gear would mean you’d be able to get more boons, making it less likely you’ll roll nothing but trash, and the higher difficulty will mean you feel less useless even if you do roll poorly, as there’s still enemies alive to fight, instead of whoever gets lightning deleting everything.
Yes, because most other traits are awful and you can’t guarantee you’ll get one you want. Weapons that feel terrible without SS would still run it, but you’d have options to run something else on weapons that don’t need SS if you had non-garbage traits available outside of it.
It’s both, you can pretty clearly see that even just through normal play.
How do you figure? CW getting a mod won’t fix the issues it has on live lol, and people aren’t always willing to bother getting a full modded group together, nor are they necessarily modded realm level players.
If you’re already fully geared you are already powerful so adding more boons don’t do anything. You have all crit chance, power level, stamina, traits etc… If you’re in a pool it doesn’t matter if it rains… you can’t get more wet. The higher difficulty won’t matter because you are already strong enough to kill everything fast with your starting build so after you finish 1 or 2 levels you’ll be so OP youll insta kill everything. You want to have a full build strong enough to go through the full pilgrimage and add more boons to make you even more op? It is redundant and it completely takes away from progression. And if you get bad drops (boon shrines) it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to adapt because you are already strong enough to run through everything. You are asking for adventure mode dude. The extra boons are irrelevant. That change completely destroys CW.
Not everyone agrees that there are issues on live. That is your opinion. Modded realm will let you play adventure mode with the campaign map/curses but won’t destroy CW on live. Everyone wins. But in the end this seems like a situation where we will just have to agree to disagree.
No, but you are obviously reading only what you want to read. If you check what I initially replied to…
Well, that is the challenge. It’s a lot more about skill in the beginning and dealing with randomness.
Thanks to Chaos Wastes, I have finally concluded that the decision not to allow gear switching at beginning of the VT2 games, as opposed to the VT1, was the right one.
I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion you go a bit too far (although not by much) with
You seem not even to consider that while offering a random weapon, they also upgrade it to the color of the shrine. As such, they offer you a weapon of generally higher rarity for half of what the upgrade would cost you. Even if I personally don’t like them (because as you say the risk can be too great) the problem is more with the current THP system than with the choice itself. Some THP talents are useless on the wrong weapon and THP being an integral part of the game, they make for bad choices. But assuming you know how to play different weapons - and didn’t start with an absolutely niche one - exchange altars can offer a quicker upgrade at a fraction of the cost. They can be meaningful mid-run and even if you end up with a bad option you can reroll at a later altar. You could even reroll 2 reds for the price of a red update. This is doubly true with ranged weapons, which don’t suffer the THP problem. If you know a reroll will damage you (like rerolling the fire-sword for sienna with THP on stagger) then you won’t reroll that weapon, but you might reroll your staff.
TL:DR I personally tend not to use them much, but they have a point, and it could be made more meaninful with a THP talent rework.
EDIT: as a side note (which does not invalidate your points, which I agree with): if something feels to easy, you might try something different, and take random shrines as a challenge, see if you can make any weapon work.
It’s a bit unfair to always choose the optimum layout - or something you’ve spent hundreds of hours fine tuning - and expect the entire game to be balanced around that. It reminds me a bit of the discussions around Lords, where BH and Shade players abusing conc potions would say Lords are too easy, while other careers already struggle with them.
(again, not saying you haven’t got a point, just food for thought. On legend I used the random shrines more, on cata I chose to play it safe)
I’d like the option to start a run with completely random weapons/talents.
Then the exchange shrines would be the only option to get rid of a weapon you don’t like and therefore get new combinations that you wouldn’t use otherwise.
Again, as an option. I know people like their weapons and forcing this much randomness would be too much for many, I think.
I get why they think they’d have value, but the extra power just isn’t worth the risk really. A single power upgrade isn’t giving you that much damage, and you’re risking losing a heap of your actual strength if you get a weapon that’s just not very good or doesn’t make any sense with your build. Would be an issue even with a better thp system, some weapons just aren’t going to work well with most builds, or are just too weak to be much fun.
Same would be true if they were free, the risk is just way way worse than the potential reward. It’s not even a fun challenge mode, because some weapons are just awful to play with, particularly if you don’t build around them somehow.
Ranged weapons struggle a lot with the breakpoint issue imo.
It’s really not though lol, the beginning maps don’t spawn enough enemies to be challenging. You’re not having to deal with randomness or anything at that point in the games, you’re just playing nerfed versions of normal difficulties with bad versions of your normal builds. Randomness is only really a relevant factor further into the runs when people have had the chance to get some boons, but then you run into the issue of some builds just being crazy dominant and making the game boring for everyone else.
I completely agree with @Lord_Giggles in that gimping the players in the beginning of the run is offering false difficulty. Removing stamina, BCR, Swift Slaying or any of the other things people have on their trinkets and have got used to over dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours is adding artificial difficulty to the run by breaking players muscle memory and lurching them back to recruit or veteran… which took GOD KNOWS HOW LONG to grind your way up through the levels . * More on this later…
We ALL KNOW there are significant ways to massively boost difficulty in adventure via twitch, or the weekly events or deeds, so for some people to suggest that to start with reds is going to halt progression is ignoring the fact that we have much much harder stuff designed for people with red weapons and trinkets in adventure via deeds and twitch.
Therefore if you start with red weapons just make the overarching balance be that you start the same as you would in adventure and with the difficulty scaling up so that by the time you’re at the citadel then it’s like playing a ramped up deed with HBFS, Vanguard, +Specials and +hordes. The difficulty possibilites are already in the game.
This would open up things like 2 traits on red weapons within the chaos wastes, wacky properties on red weapons such as things like the earthing rune from VT1, heroic killing blow, and so on or even things like Trollhammer torpedo fires barrels instead of bombs or whatever. Elven Hagbane fires double damage purple poison, Blunderbus fires grenades, flaming skull moves at 1/4 speed, and whatever else crazy stuff seems fun.
*The only effective argument I’ve seen for NOT having Reds at the beginning is that new players can get stuck in without needing to grind up to get good gear. But this means new players get straight into Legend QP… and all that entails. Why have difficulty levels if everyoen can just pile in wherever they like?
All that time in adventure opening chests (Literally thousands of hours trying to get a red greatsword in my case) is completely ignored in the new game mode. My time in adventure means nothing in the Chaos Wastes and demonstrates a lack of respect for the players time investment by FS. I spent a long time getting my kit and now it’s shelved because reasons,
[edit] it’s not bad how it is, but it’s not good either. I hope there’s fairly big balance patch coming as the meta is fairly broken in that pilgrimages are tough at the beginning and easy at the end. Putting in massive difficulty spikes via 4 assassins a hookrat and a gunner seem to be the main go-to for ending runs or ramping up the difficulty. Having a good team and a good run ended by 4 assassins in a matter of seconds feelbadman.
I’m always in opposition to making heroes/gear/w/e more powerful.
The games are rife with soloers running around with zero respect/attention to other party members.
Making stuff more powerful will just increase the problem.