Made an account for this…
So Penances are basically achievements from other games, asking you to challenge yourself in certain ways or play a certain way in order to obtain them. On their own they are fine but sometimes they can lean a bit TOO hard on the ‘challenge’ aspect. Depending on the game this can range from ‘Stuff for hardcore players’ to ‘Stuff people HAVE to do in order to gain bonuses.’
This game is way too hard on the latter.
Now none of this is news to this game of course, many people have complained about the penances but I wanted to give my POV on some and throw out a suggestion on making it better, whether or not you agree on the suggestions is up to you these are merely my ideas, but obtaining some of these penances as-is, is just annoying at best and enraging at worst.
Note: All my suggestions are based on a solo player playing with random people, some of these maybe easier with pre-mades but not everyone is going to play with those.
On Overwatch: Is a prime example of these problems, asking the ranged class to not take melee damage at first seems reasonable, a bit annoying but reasonable. However the problem lies in the fact that this game is based around both Melee AND Ranged combat, meaning you have to actively stay out of half the gameplay and potentially screw over your team in the process. There also lies the problem of enemy spawns and how easily they can sneak up on you in the midst of combat and just smack you. There IS an audio cue to tell you that you are about to be smacked, but rarely will you ever be able to dodge due to either being in cover or not reacting fast enough because you are probably trying to shoot the hound that wishes you dead.
Suggestion: My suggestion removes trying to get away from melee entirely and instead focus on their heavy armor pool, therefore it is as follows. “On Malice difficulty or higher, remain above 50% health throughout the mission.” While still challenging it also allows leeway both in melee and ranged combat meaning as long as you are careful you will most likely get it after a couple tries.
Long Bomb: Is fine enough on it’s own until you find out the actual long as heck fuse time. You really are just throwing a bomb and praying that it explodes by the time you’re kid goes to college. There are also not many area’s where you can throw a bomb that will stay in the air that entire time without hitting a wall, ultimately making it both hard to achieve and hard to even get the CHANCE to achieve it.
Suggestion: Ya want a long throw? Here’s a long throw. “Hit 8 or more enemies with a grenade thrown from at least 15-20 Meters away.” I will say that I am not good with the metric system however by making it simply rely on hitting enemies from a long distance instead of hoping for air time, you allow players to actually aim to hit the enemies and help out the team from a long distance or even to help an ally who is downed, instead of doing advanced algebra to figure out if a grenade will stay in the air long enough.
Make Every Shot Count: Veteran is right… you gotta have thousands of hours in the game to actually do some of these penances. My biggest problem with this penance is how counter-intuitive it is with Veteran, while the class does reward precision the reality is that not every shot is gonna land. Enemies have a tech known as ‘Moving’ which can make it hard to aim, now that alone is one thing but the suppression mechanic also comes into play and that just throws a wrench into things due to the fact that it can actually become impossible to aim if you are suppressed enough. The cherry on top of all this is Veteran’s aura, which makes this penance close to impossible at the best of times due to the fact that it lets Veteran regenerate ammo. What this means is that in order to get the achievement he has to ironically fire MORE SHOTS so he can empty his ammo. And IF they manage that, they have to use melee the entire rest of the mission, which means they basically become Zealot-lite.
Suggestion: My suggestion might make it a bit too easy but at the same time I’d argue it’s better on the easy half than the hard half. “On Malice difficulty or above, empty an entire clip without missing a single shot” This keeps the spirit of the penance while also allowing players who aren’t 300 hours into the game have a chance at beating it and getting a cosmetic they might like.
Going out with a bang: Is weird because I like the spirit of it, my problem is with the amount at once. Getting three super mooks together is easy enough but making sure they are weak enough while also not killing them (accidently or otherwise…) is the hard part outside of blowing up without being downed by said mooks.
Suggestion: I think it just needs to be split into stages. “On Malice Difficulty or above, kill 1 Elite or Specialist enemy with a single Peril’s of the Warp Explosion” for the first stage, and then “On Malice Difficulty or above, kill 2 Elite or Specialist enemies with a single Peril’s of the Warp Explosion” This would make it more manageable and be easier simply by virtue of not needing three guys at once beating you to Hel and back.
Malleus Monstronum: W H Y ? ! Trying to get this penance is just detrimental and frustrating for everyone involved, yes you can cheese it with a host and a shield Ogryn but not all parties will have that. And the amount required is just ridiculous, 90% of it’s health?! People are typically shooting at the monstrosity and Brain Burst is nowhere NEAR fast enough to actually deplete 90% of it’s health before other people take out more than 10%. This entire penance requires that everyone IGNORE the monster except the Psyker which is just counterintuitive to the gameplay.
Suggestion: “On Malice Difficulty or higher, hit a monstrosity with Brain Burst 5 times in one game” while teammates killing way too quickly is still a problem this is at least achievable with randoms in comparison.
Just A Flesh Wound: Is something made annoying by two things, the timer and difficulty. Now the problem doesn’t lie with either one themselves… it’s the fact they BOTH need to be done that makes it hard. While Zealot is tanky, they can end up taking a lot of damage due to the genuinely endless amount of Elites/Specials that spawn in Heresy difficulty, which is something that can be avoided granted but can it be avoided when under a 20 minute time limit? For pre-made’s sure, but not everyone is playing with a pre-made party.
Suggestion: Not even gonna bother with an entire thing because it’s really simple. Just remove the time limit or at the very least extend it to 30 minutes.
Heavyweight Champion: I actually really like the idea behind this one, it’s the amount I take issue with. Ogryn’s are easy to pick out in a crowd, which means you will notice that there are usually only 2-4 at most on non-damnation difficulties. The amount just needs to be reduced and I think it would be perfect
Suggestion: Lower the Ogryns you need to tackle to 3.
Preternatural Dodge: This is the one that broke me and made me decide to make this post. Having to dodge so many attacks in a row is hard enough but add in allies (and/or) bots that just shoot the enemies when they see them and you have a recipe for disaster. I want to say again all of these Penances and suggestions are written as though someone is playing Solo with bots or randoms. While a pre-made can fix this easily you still have to dodge a number of attacks IN A ROW to get it, yes this can be made easy with poxwalkers but all it takes is one bug or a wall you forgot existed to muck it all up.
Suggestion: Just make it a total number of dodges “Dodge 100/250/500 enemy attacks total.” Simple, clean, actually possible to do without a migraine.
There are A LOT more but my fingers grow tired. At the end of the day I admit this comes from a selfish place as I really want those cosmetics but regardless of where my motivation to make this post comes from the fact still remains that a good number of these penances are poorly designed.
If ya read all the way to the bottom thank ya for having the patience needed to listen to a rambling shaker of salt as I. If you have any suggestions please throw them on here.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, and sorry if my communication with this is bad, usually bad at that personally.