Maybe since Pokemon Go got everyone and their mother who had never touched a pokemon game to suddenly start playing one, companies have been elusively chasing the idea of new stuff that will draw in everyone but not alienate the core audience.
The reason for Weaves is exactly the same for PVP Mode.
The developers simply thought that it would be a good idea.
Thatâs it.
I would rather have the following:
1: Map Editor duh
2: Large survival map that entices players to move from one location to another in which case Lohner/Olyshea occasionally use magic or smuggling to get the players more supplies. Actually random enemies. Level layout should have a number of interesting set pieces interconnected perhaps with some rng path blocks that we already see.
3: More Maps. In general I think they should be a bit bigger to allow more diverse pathing with random blocks. Weâve only had 2 original maps since release which is rather sad. Back to Ubersreik and One Last Drink are a mix of old and current assets.
4: Difficulty specific enemies and events so as to rely on a different way to increase difficulty rather then just increasing numbers which to me is lazy.
5: At least 1 more Chaos special and 1 more beastman special. Chaos special would be a unique chaos warrior with a large shield + 1h great axe who should counter ranged attack by taking less ranged damage and zero ranged stagger while having some cleave attacks/knock back. Beastmen should be a weighted net thrower with long range melee attacks with a trident/spear - should counter dodging/movement.
edit: Weekly Challenges, Heroic Deeds and Crafting need to be vastly improved as well.
5 Likes
Just how i felt after a dozen or so legend games in beta 2 - all slayer with dual axes/hammers. The revamped terror events are just more mobs so no mechanic changes there. They have no effect on the other 85% of the map. Dodge changes on legend in the beta felt minimal and this is with slayer not having the dodge talent. Beastmen are fun but I didnât see much added difficulty there other than banners being BS. However you now have more hero power, new talents (even more hero power), and the stagger mechanic all seeming to only enhance kill speed on legend from what I could tell. Maybe I am completely wrong here? Wonât we just have more raw hero power (more dmg and stagger) essentially offsetting anything that might be making it harder than live?
I guess this could just be a specific case for slayer due to his kit and the changes made in the beta. Charged attacks come out non-stop and stagger everything leading to more damage. Additionally, the dual axes push attack might be better than its ever been in the WoM expansion. I guess its worth noting that the DAs crit headshots (finally) got fixed in the beta so that might be a factor too.
TLDR: Slayer kills even faster (elites specifically) in WoM legend than he does on live so its easier.
I will speak for myself. The only reason Iâm moaning is a certain degree of hope that after this expansion Fat Shark will start doing things differently. If they donât, I promised to myself, I will stop moaning and probably stop to post on the forums altogether.
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Anyway we need simple and realistic solutions. What is done⌠itâs done. Just to do some examples:
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new stagger will bring nice advantages: tank and teamplay will be finally useful⌠but then why do players complain it? Because enemies are bullet sponges and because no-staggering weapons are trash. We have to buff no-staggering ones.
Staggering weapons should âblockâ hordes, no-staggering ones should kill hordes. We will have a new role: crowd control careers and the ânewâ crowd killer ones. Enemies will die faster and the entire arsenal will be useful; -
why do you want destroy every talents? Some ones are good (like reload speed and less spread talents on Huntsman)⌠this means an harder and longer work for no reasons. And we will have another time the âmandatory talentsâ. Everyone knows what are the useless ones⌠just remove only them.
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breakpoints⌠Fatshark, how can you forget the breakpoints? Some careers like Ranger Veteran and Huntsman are totally based on breakpoints. You will destroy they meaning.
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pick one: should Cataclysm and new Stagger force teamplay or not? Because in beta if you play solo you are trash⌠but Banner guys and bosses (if they spawn in some locations) force to disperse the group. Banner guy should give another type of buff, for example more damage. In this way, a skilled group, can avoid the attacks and kill the horde⌠but currently they make hordes immortal. Regard bosses⌠please, just fix their spawn.
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Playstation version⌠I would be happy if our console friends had the complete game⌠but Fatshark, you have to be realistic. The game totally needs your support (weaponsâ balance, useless properties/traits/talents, crafting system, deeds matchmaking, cosmetics⌠and do we want to talk about old-new beta bugs? Silent patrol, Special sound bugged, talents bugged, enemies stuck)⌠have you enough resources to support both versions? Or will we have a dead game (another time)?
There is no advantage. We did play Cataclysm exactly as we would play it without that mechanic. This argument is one of those âsounds great, but doesnât actually work at allâ
Teamplay will be forced naturally by high difficulty.
Simple solution would be just remove it and maybe add it as feature on stagger heavy weapons, why would anyone suggest adding something that is not needed, and than doing more tweaking to get it somewhat working ?
Maybe we could than add another mechanic, global enchantment or something, that would mess it up even more and then there could be another mechanic to tweak it again. And then ⌠
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You could be right, but unlikely Fatshark will remove a feature that has cost time and resources.
This hardly took some major time investement, I think even they said that they took easiest possible way and just applied it flat to everything. Which is why itâs so bad.
Itâs not like they spent half a year developing this amazing new system and they canât afford to drop it now because there would be nothing new in the expansion. (It would be just fine without it⌠)
Here is again example from Path of Exile, last league they created Synthesis league, main idea was based on Carcassonne, it took incredible amount of time to make, it looked amazing, it added new very complex crafting system on top of the ânew game modeâ, but there was some issues with mechanics at start of the league and feedback was kinda negative (by negative I mean semi-mixed⌠not super 100% negative like is the feedback here on weaves/grind/seasons). Some people didnât like the extra complexity of the main system, some did not like the fact that itâs taking them away from main end-game, some did not like planning that came with it, some people felt overwhelmed by the complexity of extra crafting options etc. I thought it was great after few patches and really enjoyed that league.
Even tho, they fixed kinda all major issues that they found during the league, the whole mechanic got at least temporally (meaning 4+ months) scrapped, which is insane, considering how much $$$ it cost their studio to make that. And the feedback wasnât even that bad (but they actually learned from previous league, where feedback was again kinda mixed, that if itâs not ready they need to susspend it), it was far far away from what we see here and stuff actually got fixed fast (except for few issues).
Still, it got removed. The whole league and crafting system. I believe they will do some modifications and try to reintroduce it later in some form. As they keep kinda all leagues integrated in the game in some form.
And btw, during the Synthesis league, major feedback was âHey GGG, we donât want this, we want something less complicated like Breach league, just run thru current game, interact with new league mechanic quickly, kill some stuff and move on !!!â And guess what GGG did the next league (current one that is running) , holy f%ckin sh%t they actually did exactly that! And the league is amazing! Who would have guessed thatâŚ
What we are talking here is nothing, literally nothing, adding flat mechanic on top of everything and adding few extra simple talents. That is not sacrifice, to scrap it even completely, since there is not time to tweak it and I donât think they are planning another beta.
I would argue that this is one of those obvious things that need to go, and if they donât do it, than there will be more negative feedback as there is now for weaves, grind & seasons idea.
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You do know stating 100 times âIt comes with no advantageâ doesânt makes you truer. There are several advantages and we did discuss them already :
- Promote teamplay (one staggering, the other hitting, this is actually teamplay, not something you can refute)
- Gives weapons a new specializations, therefore more options (staggering vs not staggering)
- Gives shields a largely needed buff.
- Was already there to begin with (as pointed by op post)
But there are several drawbacks (as you and others have pointed out)
- Biggest issue that we all agree (as pointed by various poll) is balance.
- Can be complex to take into account when building
Now several quotes that proves that they donât want to remove existing gameplay, and actually point all Iâve said about advantages from op post :
â More choices
â Need to rebalance
â Promoting teamplay
â Already existing mechanic, with bonus damage added
â Removing old playstyles so they can see how new ones works
â No heavily buffed enemy hp
All in all, you should not worry about this system too much, as they are well aware of what it brings, and what it doesnât bring.
They will even provide you with options to bypass this system if you donât want to play by it.
And they know a balancing pass is still needed either on staggering, weapons, and talents. Which they had several weeks to do since the beta. Especially when they had people coming back from holidays.
5 Likes
@flisker, GGG, IMO, is the best company when it comes to working with a feedback, they really listen to it, for the most part not overreacting, but making important fixes fast enough, even if they screw up, it not feels terrible coz of of this fast reaction and fixing the problems. 2 bad other dev teams canât do it the same way GGG does.
@Froh, I can agree with you in your main idea, most changes FS made in the WoM are not that bad, some of them felt weird for the first time, but after you play a little more, get used to them they actually feel OK. But you know what? Itâs OK 4 me, OK 4 u, etc. But a big chunk of playerbase didnât like that whole âstagger mechanicsâ, and the problem is, if people donât like changes to the game they should stop playing it, so is it really that good to ignore such feedback? I donât think so.
1 Like
Iâm sorry but thatâs plenty wrong. People didnât like the buffed enemy hp resulting from the stagger mechanic (or others tests). Making the game slow. People didnât like the balance of the mechanic (as pointed out by one poll, people didnât want the REMOVAL itself). The mechanic itself have its uses. Denying them is going nowhere.
They did state explicitely that theyâre looking into it to make it right.
2 Likes
Oh, I heard it somewhere, you know about âyou think you do, bu you donâtâ meme, and and what all that situation resulted in the end?
Even within the one week of beta 2, it became clear people were building to avoid the need to use the stagger - WHC headshot being the most obvious build I saw A LOT.
Whether or not it promotes teamplay⌠In theory it promotes teamplay, In practice I suspect we might see more of the âKillingâ classes being played rather than the âStaggeringâ classes⌠because ⌠you know⌠people play this game to kill things. Giving people the option to avoid the stagger mechanic to some degree will mean players do just that.
Players who have built muscle memory, skill and knowledge are going to find it much easier to stick with what they know and as such the weapons that allow people to bypass the stagger mechanic to some degree are going to be used much more purely because players will find more success using them and theyâre used to the style of play.
The community is already hemorrhaging players and the daily players is consistently dropping month to month (according to Steamcharts) so whether or not the theory of the future of the mechanic is sound - and Iâm still puzzled as to why a years worth of balance has been discarded - the actual target audience are already disillusioned with VT2 and re-engaging the large swathes of players who have left doesnât appear to be on the radar.
I really think that many many people will not even put in the time to get used to the new mechanics.
10 Likes
People were mostly testing everything. I also did see heavily staggering builds. Including shields. So I guess my experience was not the same as yours. Therefore, people will choose their gameplay as they always had.
If people want to stick to what they know, and Fatsharks allows for this (as stated in the quote from my previous post), I certainly donât want to prevent them.
If people wants to explore new options, I donât see why we should preventing them either.
Now on the community hemorrhaging (according to steamcharts), itâs actually not. Compared to similar games, it follow the same pattern.
https://steamcharts.com/cmp/552500,548430
So not only I donât think itâs hemorrhaging. But I also donât think itâs linked to this mechanic.
Rythm of updates is rather slow though and could use a step up. (which is probably why Seasons could be a good thing in the end, as theyâre linked to a release of content, as stated in the first post)
1 Like
Average players since march has gone down from roughly 4k to roughly 2.5k average players.
Considering it was something like 73k players at launch I think it a pretty depressing situation to be in after only a year.
Of course VT1 was lost in the wilderness for a while and recovered to some degree. I donât think the mechanic is going to cause much losses now - although more and more of my friends list keep inviting me back to VT1 - but after release of WoM and IF it tanks into the floor it is my opinion that itâll be largely as a result of the change to the feel of the gameplay⌠coupled with lack of content in the form of maps and armours. Whether or not the theory about that Stagger mechanic is true , and I agree that it does hold some value, if people revisit the game for an evening and have the same frustrating experience many people had during the beta then theyâll ignore the game for even longer. Probably until thereâs new armour or maps announced.
6 Likes
This is actually an issue for absolutely all paid games since the beginning of time. Itâs of course a matter when it comes to âlive gamesâ (games with regular updates for years). But this is not a V2 related issue. People play whatâs new and then get to others games. And some comes back regularly when DLC comes.
A few exceptions exists (Payday 2 for example), but as pointed out by the comparison. Deep Rock Galactic does follow the same pace, despite way more regular updates and a randomized map system.
So probably a matter of readvertising the game a bit when releasing the expansion.
Iâm pretty confident to say that the mechanic itself will not be a cause of âlosingâ players. Fixed Weaves can lose some customers (which will not see value in this expansion). But beastmens and cataclysm alone makes this dlc worthy.
2 Likes
This has been argued to death already, but to refute your points:
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No, it doesnât, the only points at which it is feasible to hit the exact same enemies are when there either arenât many around or theyâre funneled into a choke, the rest of the time you need to fan out to either deal with how many there are without getting surrounded, to avoid having a ton of elites piled up on one spot doing overheads or to avoid all getting nuked by one globadier or blightstormer. Yes, youâre fighting side by side, but youâre mostly not hitting the same guys. Again, great in theory, doesnât work in practice
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I donât disagree, but as it was last it promoted picking a weapon based on it having it all - at least light CC, access to AP, good cleave. Anything without that was not meta.
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Shields couldâve been buffed anyway without needing the mechanic. In fact, even with it, youâre way better off with the executionerâs, glaive and dual hammers than you are with the shield weapon choices on those careers. 2H hammers are also probably still better but I didnât give them a go so I canât say from experience.
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Yes, that made it easier to them to implement, but that doesnât necessarily make it good. It also means itâs easier for them to remove.
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Agreed here (obviously).
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Not really, people are just going to pick weapons that let them do it all and thus avoid reliance on teammates
. Ofc Iâm sure people will run off-meta weapons for fun (as they always have), but the majority are going to go for the former approach and thatâs that. How often do you see a weapon that isnât crowbill on QP Siennas on live?
Quoting the OP doesnât prove that it works like you said it does in practice.
Donât get me wrong, I like the idea of the mechanic and with balancing it could work, but letâs not pretend how it was is great and solved balance.
Iâm still waiting to see what FS does with it to get it into a good place. If they donât itâs going to be annoying waiting for another BBB to solve that.
Yes, the majority voted that they liked it but it needed tweaking, but the problem with that poll was it didnât go into more detail about what people wanted from the mechanic. We donât have breakdown of why they voted that way/in what ratio.
I voted that way too, but (based on the discussions) in that group you had people who: liked it in theory but didnât like it in practice, people who wanted it on shielded and heavy weapons, people who wanted it only on shielded weapons, people who wanted it on all weapons but with adjusted/balanced modifiers and all manner of other stances on it.
2 Likes
Nobody really argued against it with examples yet, as far as I know.
Again, this just doesnât work, because as I stated, high difficulties are played the same way, no matter if the stagger mechanic is in place or not. There is no way youâre playing some Cataclysm Twitch or Deed and youâare standing on top of each other and trying to get the stagger benefit.
If you think that is sure doable and people did use this strategy, they moved like 4 man Roman army phalanx than please, share footage of that run with me, I would love to see it. (So far people only argued how great it is in low difficulties, and those people were newbs, because in low difficulty it doesnât matter what you take, you can demolish everything without any strategy or synergy)
What happens in reality is that most of the time people are not getting that benefit and especially NOT when it matters the most, they sure are not getting it in those situations. When there is horde of beastmen running with banners and charging goats and chaos spawn is running around, good luck thinking about âhow do I position myself to get that juicy amazing stagger bonusâ
Not really, lots of them got screwed up, some are pretty op and it basically did not do anything productive.
It doesnât, it gives buff to EVERYTHING that does stagger well so shield did get benefit ofc, but so did other weapons making shields still kinda crap, because weapon like 2h hammer or exec got buffed as much or even more.
If you want to fix shields, you just fix shields. Shields itselfâŚ
I disagree with nearly all of the quotesâŚ
Choices, not really, you just avoid it completely, or use stagger weapon and some weapons are just horrible. So they created new kind of core gameplay, where you either have to avoid this nonsense somehow⌠or you take some OP stagger weapon.
Balance, this is not the balance, like what they are talking about is trying to fix abomination of mechanic, be adding more avoidance of that mechanic, that is just completely ridiculous, I am stunned how people canât see this. Also they are throwing the actually balance that took year to get, comepletely out of the windowâŚ
Teamplay, I already explained why this is nonsense, especially since the new faction is made to be very disruptive âŚ
Exetension, no just no, it is no extension, current mechanic does not impact weapon dmg output in any way as far as I know, and itâs use is for defensive purpose and opening shields etc. Itâs not creating push meta gameplay.
The HP, yea HP was fine in Cata, there wasnât issue with that if you got one of those OP weapons that could stagger like crazy, or you just went screw it⌠and got something to avoid it completely, like Shade with dual swords and backstabbing (that was incredibly strong, not to mention that they did something to DS so they were pretty strong by itself in last beta)
2 Likes
- Well if the op post doesnât make me right. Saying it doesnât doesnât makes you right either.
In the past, staggering was used as a defensive mechanic (or to start alt combo). Now it gives the mechanic a new lift by giving it bonus damage in top of it. Players with naturally slower (heaviers) weapons, will get up thanks to this despite the drawback of not having dodge.
Teamplay will be needed to makes it work the optimal way (so people taking advantage of staggered enemies by others).
I really donât see how you can still tell that there will be no teamplay involved there.
2 and 3.
Doesnât solve all issues. Does a bit.
Shields are still being tackled on. According to IdonâtrememberwhichdevIâmsorry, but he was looking into it as a post made during beta days.
âAs it was lastâ is the keyword here. This was a beta. They are still balancing it. Donât forget that important information as it looks to me that, for some reason, a lot of people took the beta as a âfinished expansionâ.
Doesnât necessarily make it bad either.
Unfortunately not my experience, we can already see this with conflagration staff from sienna, which ask a bit of teamplay. Well, guess what ? It is still played.
We did. A lot. You kept ignoring them accordingly.
Still, understanding your points though. But you purposely ignoring or disagreeing with all examples doesnât mean thereâs none.
But⌠This is. This is only a question of balance here. And you canât see it.
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Yea, which is why Iâm so frustrated when I see how things are being done here.
The poll was poorly worded, it did pretty much say that people hate it. Because it was like 70-80% or whatever it was together, voting âremoved or changedâ ⌠but ⌠it was already at this last point, it was already 3rd iteration of that mechanic and people were still like âyo Shark, it sucksâ so ⌠from that point there are no options to just tweak numbers, itâs either remove or move onto stagger heavy weapons.
And⌠non of those options happened and nobody came up with better option as far as I know.
I did play it too, but just to test it, because it was beta, not because it was good or balanced.
Well both of those charts are not looking good at all and I donât think DRG wants to work on that game for 5-10 years. If they do, than they should be building the playerbase over the year not losing it constantly.
It can be, since you canât avoid it. Itâs everywhere and it disrupts everything. While Weaves⌠those you can decide to ignore completely.
This is better link : Comparison - Steam Charts actually comparing games with long term vision.
3 Likes