Please just stop with the nonsense about it being too easy. Yeah there are some easier RNG runs. But it is in no way “easy”.
I just played Dark Omens 4 or 5 times with a pretty experienced group on Cataclysm. The specials are still insane and the beastman hordes are still plenty deadly. It is definitely still hard.
You still need positioning. You still need a good team composition and planning. Voice comms are essentially a requirement in my opinion. Elite composition is still very dense and the terror events are unchanged from the previous build.
I quickplayed into a few Cata games before starting up with a premade group. We got slaughtered every single time on those quickplay games.
This is VANILLA CATACLYSM. It isn’t meant to be the ultimate challenge in the entire game. Even Fatshark themselves stated that it wasn’t their goal to create the end all be all difficulty. They have indicated that Deed changes are indeed coming and that will only add to the challenge.
As it stands right now, any fresh pub from Legend that thinks they have the chops will get absolutely slaughtered on Cata. And that is what they said they wanted from it.
Dark omens is a terrible sample to give. It’s one of the hardest maps in the game right now so that isn’t remotely surprising. Yes you can’t just queue into it but that shouldn’t be the case… It should require a team to play. I thought it was fine where it was and was enjoying it. Hordes are significantly less threatening now. Anyways, to each his own… I’ll go to modded realm if needed. Also I never said it was easy just easier.
Your anecdotes of Cataclysm being very hard doesn’t mean it is that way for everyone. I have yet to even need a full four man group for successful Cata runs pre patch, and now with the threat of hordes significantly diminished it won’t be long before True Solos are not only possible, but fairly consistent. Cataclysm was advertised from the very beginning as a difficulty you would not be able to successfully quickplay into in the vast majority of circumstances, and certainly not a difficulty that the average, or even above average player would be successful at.
Dark Omens is the one exception to the rule. Beastmen still break audio, and most people still don’t really know the map or the “hold spots.” My group ran through a few quick plays, then wiped on on dark omens a couple times before beating it. Then we ran meme builds and bear another couple QP’s. Then we beat some 30/30 twitch Cata. So just for reference, omens is by far the hardest map. However, cataclysm feels really easy on any other map. Granted, I know it won’t be that way for every group, but it should be difficult enough that it’s still challenging in a few weeks.
Your anecdote about dropping off a ledge and a horde spawning is exactly why Cata is great for the player base. An important thing about pacing is keeping a mental timer going of horde timers. That way, when you come to a ledge you know to wait until horde spawns then drop. When you drop and then the horde spawns, it brings all the forward ambient and you have no way to give ground because you can’t go up a ledge. That means you have to either die in a corner or push forward into even more ambient and possibly a trigger :). Cataclysm is a big learning experience. For me, that’s what makes this game so fun.
As I said in my own post about the state of Cataclysm at full release it feels like and I am fairly certain that this is the case, that they decreased the number of ambient elites by a fair bit compared to beta.
I did enjoy cataclysm in beta as it was exactly fitting my agenda of difficulty.
I think Cataclysm should give you this anxiety feeling sort of smothering sense that you feel like Oh god so many enemies but you make it through with good teamwork.
Cataclysm in the beta was more punishing when it came to positional mistakes then it is now.
I am very well aware that you can´t please everyone with the difficulty but I feel like Cataclysm should be very hard to master with a quickplay team which it is less than it was before.
It feels disproportionate right now.
I did Skittergate yesterday on quickplay with randoms up to the final event the amount of ambient enemies felt like Legend level, excluding horde and special spawns.
The final even though is the complete opposite, when you kill the deathrattler massive amounts of enemies start pooring in.
All I am saying is make it more proportionate throughout the levels because sometimes it does feel like there are not enough enemies to fight.
So you’re running with bots and winning consistently?
Yeah…bulls***. Especially considering how dumb they are. And the average Quickplay pub isn’t going to fare much better.
Cool story dude. Really riveting.
The problem is that you’ll say the same stuff regardless of how they tweak the difficulty. Even the previous build wasn’t even that much “harder”. Hordes were just tedious to chop through unless you had a high Stagger composition. It feels way better now.
The same stuff happened when they tweaked Legend after the game first released. You had people like FuPlaayz on here claiming that they could walk through it while their dog sat on the mouse and keyboard. When in reality if you watched him stream the game he was dying during Quickplays and failing runs just as much as anyone else.
I was just trying to say Dark Omens is particularly difficult. You shouldn’t use that map to gauge the difficulty of Cataclysm. And winning with 2 bots and 2 players consistently is not that big of a deal. A lot of people are doing it.
Some of this stems from many Legend QP lobbies (at least the ones I’ve loaded into), aren’t Legend vets. I think about 75% of my Legend QP hosts only have Champion banners in their Keep, so it’s been a learning experience for everyone. I’m just fortunate everyone’s been very kind.
Let’s just agree to disagree then. This is getting a little hostile and I don’t think the debate is going to lead anywhere productive at this point. Have a great day, mate!
First FS has to find the various values for the stagger related mechanics, fix the new / returning bugs and after that if Cata is still too easy they can still amp up the difficulty, but atm there are more important things that need attention.
Tbh, I’m not sure why these tweaks weren’t done in the original beta, but I think we have another 1-3 months of these jumping up and downs in difficulty especially if they intend to balance weapons and talents too.
With Cataclysm, I have mixed feelings. I have cleared all maps on Cata (with pubs, mind you), but I don’t think the challenge it presents is really one that caters to skill alone. We are back to the point where stuff feels random at best. Drop your block to attack? Sure, eat this instant attack without build up. Or this damage through your block. Or these three gors hitting you almost instantly for 75 damage each out of a horde, which means you die in about 1 second after being downed.
I think it is fair to assume that even most legend rounds are lost to beastmen right now and mainly because of Wargors and their banners being completely out of reach. It basically means you need to have a hero with invisibility that can pass through enemies. In other words: Keri.
Also, since I experience slowdowns as client: Why is your attack animation STILL linked to your frames? How is that even still a thing?
Cata already feels easier than it did in the betas. Still in a fairly decent place IMO and you can always help it with twitch mode, hopefully reworked deed system soon™.
I’d be more concerned about how stupid easy Legend is becoming again (stunlocking a CW with 1h weapon is balanced) and how it will do absolutely nothing for people in terms of “preparing them for Cata” as a result.
At this point, FS should probably just turn Legend back into the joke it was before just to calm the masses down and add one more difficulty between Legend and Cata.
Its not that Cata is nerfed, or incredibly difficult- I do not find it the case.
But there are so many game breaking “issues” as described by all that makes a run dependent more on luck than anything else.
Worst offending issues revolve around taking damage when you really are not supposed to. I regularly get punished doing the right thing but the game thinks I am doing something else, I dont know for sure, but its costed me countless lives/runs
Cata is fine appart from the one glaring issue, which also happens to be the same thing plagueing the legend difficulty, and that is beastmen.
The fact that beastmen spawns in massive hyperstacks, just as numerous as pink baldie rats is what makes it “difficult” and often forces a wipe almost completely out of your control.
I can accept massive hordes, if said hordes are enemies you can actually effectively remove. Beastmen? Not so much. They have what? 3 times the health of a baldie rat, while dealing 3 times the damage. Now toss in their HUGE attack range, faster attacks, greater stagger resistance.
If they adress this one problem, I doubt anyone would have any complaints about cata at all.
edit: I am willing to bet that if fatshark tracked the wipe reason from all legend/cata games, the vast, vast majority would be beastmen hordes. In other words, you can make the argument that successful runs (often) happen due to sheer chance, because the Gods of rng didn’t give you unfavourable spawns are inopportune times.
People can’t understand the difference between types of difficoulty. The mandatory push spam against meat wall doesn’t need skill, it is just boring for the majority (like beta section, poll and feedback section say).
Indeed, I just did runs where we kept wiping over and over. Took IB with Shield and Hammer, opportunist(50% push strength) on it with Push/Block Angle. GG, just stagger everything constantly and let your team mates kill it. We ended up doing 15 mins on Cata. It’s bloody boring, but it works…
Boring if that’s not your style, but I really like taking the shield weapons and being a stagger machine. They actually matter now and I appreciate that.
Of course shield weapons have been bad for so long that so many people don’t really know how to use them effectively or like them from the negative connotation they had for so long… so it may take some time for the community to adjust. I have seen more shields in use yesterday though!
I made a post in many words about how I was really disliking that particular thing. It’s my most consistent method of just farming wins, but man is it lackluster in both impact and feeling. Well. For me anyways.