I’ve seen a lot of people complain about the way special spawns work, with the game throwing waves of them at you simultaneously with hordes.
I’ve also seen the complaints about hordes being too dense, and how both of these things together make the game feel “unfair”.
I think the root cause of this is the way the temporary health mechanic works in its current implementation.
If you pretend for a second that you have the same slot system in this game, as in the first one. You’ll find a nice wall where only 5 enemies can attack you, you’ll kill them and gain enough temp health that you can afford to take a hit or two without a care, and never risk losing as it’ll only be 5 enemies at a time.
To overcome this, the game tries to overwhelm you with high density and waves of specials, because the only way you lose is if you get overwhelmed and killed in a matter of seconds.
I agree that this is not a fun way to make the game difficult, as not only does it not feel good, but the way temp hp works lessens the need for mechanical skill. It doesn’t matter as much if you take a few hits here and there as long as you can outdps the health loss by getting more temp hp from killing, transforming the game into a dps race where the faster you kill the more punishment and the more micro mistakes you can make.
If we want Fatshark to reduce the “bullshit” AI director and the density of hordes they first need to fix the way the lvl 20 talents work, whether by tweaking numbers or changing them completely, something needs to be done if any real changes are to be made to the rest of the game.
I’d absolutely love to see the temp health talent go, but I think you’d need to cut down on the sliding and charging attacks that enemies do for this to work. Occasional chip damage is pretty much inevitable because enemies behave this way, and the temp health gives you a buffer against it.
Make them a percentage chance to regain permanent health like in the first game. Obviously the amount restored would need to be tweaked to the percent chance.
Temp health can get pretty crazy currently with boon of shallya. I’ve gotten back up to full temp hp after getting downed playing 200+ hit point Kruber.
Beta nightmare with near unlimited health and numberless hordes was the most fun state of the game
I’m very fast against specials, but most players are not, including in Legend. Perhaps we may need to bite the bullet and space out the specials, to spare the general population frustration and get warm bodies
The problem with the old vt1 cata style is the demand for 24/7 try harding not to get hit even once, and with silent rats this could involve 360 spinning or ridiculous fov. Sure, you can pat yourself on the back, but after achieving that, I just want to relax and kill rats. I suppose we could bring back the old vt1 cata mode through deeds and mods.
No doubt we can always look to improve vt2. Consider however, that going back to the old system could mean people still fail, but now it’s more grueling and less exciting
It would be interesting to be privy to Fatshark’s decision process behind introducing temporary health over V1’s system. I suppose it would come down to regrowth/bloodlust in V1 being a requirement for all melee weapons for them to be viable on Cataclysm, so transferring it to a universal talent frees up a trait space on melee weapons. As well as removing the RNG factor I suppose.
I’m certain there’s more to it than this, but I agree that the amount of things that temp health affects isn’t worth the benefit of having it in the first place. The DPS race for health makes support classes redundant, and with how dense hordes are, there is no other way to fight them in melee than just pouring all of your damage into them to out-sustain the inevitable attrition you’ll receive. Compare this to V1 where you’d position yourself to meet the oncoming tide, watch for attacks and skillfully dodge/block them to maintain your health bar. In V2 it seems more one-dimensional in this regard, where your survival is tied directly to your aggression, no defensive options needed.
I personally would prefer to see better class / skill talents over the Temp HP on Crit / Kill or perm HP on boss kill… Nobody takes crit or boss anyways as they are sub par.
Maybe put Temp HP as a choice but you lose out on some other type of passive for your skill or even make it so that only the tank classes can take temp health. ( e.g. Handmaiden, Ironbreaker, Footknight, )
I would also consider maybe moving skill cooldown related things to level 20 talents such as 30% Reduced CD, x% on kill, x% on critical hit. Removing these as properties from items and returning % chance healing on hit / kill to items instead.
I don’t even use temp health except on Sienna and Bounty hunter (kill and crit). Everyone else I use heal on boss, because it will stabilize you from wounded state. On Skittergate you get at least 3 free heals from boss kills, on the final boss fight you even get a free heal after killing half of the boss.
The root of the balance problems I think is the existence of a few ultimates like Trueshot and Burning head. They are just too good at ez killing specials around corners and through walls that if the game didn’t throw a ton of specials at you then they’d never kill you. There’s a similar principle for massive hordes and horde control ults. Remove/rework the ults, remove the massive hordes and crazy numbers and spawns of specials.
The temp health 20 talent replaces permanent health that saved your revive health (turning it green) in the first one with on hit proc. In a horde with high cleave, nearly every swing procced.
At champion/legend, even a full health bar can be melted quickly.
Temp health is less powerful than VT1, heal converts your temp pickup health green, and is not the problem, and yes, the real enemy is generally the specials, and hordes are your fuel
I tend to agree. I thought it was odd when I first saw it - I figured they’d tweak it a lot more. And while it does decay, it’s still just so strong. Playing as even WHC, I could easily and consitently go from a sliver of green to full white bar in a horde. It’s EXTREMELY powerful, and I could shrug off the few hits I would inevitably take for being aggressive.
I recall in VT1, these traits were just insurance against a few mistakes - it’d take a fair few minutes of playing perfect to make up for a single mistake. If you took two or three hits, you would realistically need a healing item to get back to full.
I can only assume the devs did try the old traits (I really do love them as talents, because they are meta-defining when just on weapons), and found them lacking or something in the new game. I’d be curious to hear their reasoning on it.