I see where you’re coming from, and I can’t say I disagree. It just makes sense.
However I do have one issue with that: veteran players may know the game better, but they have different interests than the casual ones.
A game shouldn’t be balanced around the needs/desires of a highly vocal (and competent) minority.
The balance I advocate for is not just the technical balance of weapons and classes. It’s a wider balance that takes into consideration the wants/needs of both the veterans and the casuals.
I understand that preaching this in a forum pretty much exclusively filled with veteran players is suicide, but I hope FS realizes the difference.
This feels like the barometer of “appropriate level” players. It’s the only thing that I haven’t been able to zen myself about and leaves me tilted when I see it happen.
Any player in Auric that doesn’t know the cost/benefit of picking up a netted player vs killing every last pox walker around and waiting for more to spawn can [insert 40k insult here] for all I care.
OP solo classes only deepen the fundamentals divide and exacerbate the problem.
I’ll rephrase then. Havoc IS a different game mode (that’s obvious, nobody ever argued with that) that allows the player to reach a difficulty that is ultimately the highest in the game. And the proof is that H40 IS the highest difficulty in the game so far.
And the reason why you can’t quickplay into it us exactly this. You can somehow clear auric mael with randos, but you won’t go far in havoc with quickplay.
Having said this, I gotta admit I completely forgot why we’re even discussing this…
I completely agree with the opinion that “all players need to be considered.” However, this game is not an RPGl, it’s a cooperative co-op game. And unlike a casual game like Helldivers 2, Darktide, given the complexity of its combat system, is a skill-based game. That’s why difficulty and balance are so important. You need to understand this.
To satisfy both casual and core players, the balance must be carefully managed. If everything is buffed for the sake of casual players, core players will have no place in the game. On the other hand, if the balance is adjusted correctly, core players can enjoy a challenging experience, while casual players can play at an “appropriate difficulty” without feeling the game is too hard, and difficulty can always be changed. Moreover, as players see their own skill improving, the game should become even more enjoyable.
So you’re essentially saying that a bad player is more likely to get away with bad habits because the class works like crutches?
It’s definitely possible, but then it sounds as bad as forcing said player to stick to a meta build for a non OP class because half of the talents are just not viable.
And yet I see more players complaining about the arbitrator being OP than the veteran being half useless. In fact I see quite a few players saying that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the veteran, just because they are good enough to make it work. As if that was some kind of proof.
It’s the lack of objectivity thar I argue against.
We are discussing this because your solution to power creep is telling people to just play havoc and I’m telling you that’s bad solution because getting to even play a round of havoc is giant pain in the arse. Do you get what I’m trying to say now?
If only that was realistically possible. Do you know why I HAD to increase the difficulty of my games from the very beginning?
Because whenever I was playing sedition, I ended up being with teams where at least 1 or even 2 players were sweaty veterans that rushed ahead and didn’t give me the chance to do anything, other than dying due to being left behind. And of course their suggestion was to “git gud”. But then when I started playing higher difficulties I was obviously not prepared, and I was told to play a lower difficulty and not dare to try anything harder. Which btw is the same thing I keep reading over and over here, whenever veterans complain about newbies “daring” to play damnation or even auric.
So in the mind of forum users, newbies should stick to low difficulties, but at the same time they can and will rush ahead and leave them behind in for not being good enough.
If they could come to terms with their mind, that would be great.
If I hadn’t been systematically left behind when playing sedition back when I started, I wouldn’t have felt the need to play an OP class at higher difficulties. But hey, good luck explaining this to the stereotypical auric storm survival who played sedition for the weekly contracts and penances.
THIS is what I call a balance problem, not the arbitrator being OP.
I think that’s purely an issue with the quality of the players and has nothing to do with the difficulty. As I may have mentioned before, many players will immediately abandon the game if they go down. They act selfishly and harshly toward others, even blaming others for failures and hurling insults. If you want to avoid or not worry about such players, the only option is to find like-minded teammates on platforms like Discord or Reddit.
Ever heard of recency bias?
Or confirmation bias?
Or priorities?
Arbites is the new kid on the block breaking molds. It’s honestly egregious what it did to balance and is my primary worry that FS thinks like you about Havoc balancing moving forward.
“Veteran sucks” posts are old hat on here, and yet they still pop up in some form or another here and even more on the subreddit, with decent enough frequency.
“We” also “know” that veteran reworks are in the chute.
Arbites being paid DLC means balancing it could take FS a long, very wary time to do, and that’s not healthy for the game. Or for the state of veteran.
Hopefully being vocal about the fact that space cop really just needs some numbers toned down makes it take a little less long than it otherwise would have.
I have a similar story. I was repeatedly PvP killed via barrels. Now I spend all my time in alt accounts, arguing that the DS needs to be more powerful.
Our trauma is our strength.
(I’m totally going to steal “go play it on H40.” Such an elegant sophistry: It doesn’t work on multiple levels.)
Right now I’m running around with the brain implant on arbites and using no keystone because its funnier to grab a million buffs. So I can just main the Mk3 shotgun through entire rooms in castigator stance and steal all the ammo. I am in search of red stims so I can massacre crushers in 2 shots. I routinely blow away like 6 ragers in a shot when deathspitter and fire frenzy hit 5 stacks and I just reloaded.
Imagine this amazing gameplay being the content of 1 of our 4 updates for the year…a little depressing in hindsight.
Just want to say that this is a very real issue in my experience. All the more reason to have better bots, so that players can experience the game at their own pace, imo.
It also feels to me that game imbalance trivialises Auric because you have players who are similarly rushing around mercing everything with an overpowered loadout. Some of the best games I’ve had recently were in T4 because you still have teammates who struggle, leading to more tense situations.