I’m aware Zealot currently has a few bugs. Some talents aren’t working whatsoever, and Martyrdom is starting at 1 stack @100% HP and going down by 50 each interval (making 6 impossible, most likely, as you’d need 0 HP for that).
This isn’t about that, it’s about two key pain points:
- Zealot’s Career Skill / Ability / feels bad for a variety of reasons we’ll get into.
- Enemy AI seems much less willing to drop their weapons and engage in melee.
Let’s take it in order:
ZEALOT’S CAREER SKILL
Zealot is all about being able to close that gap and force squads of ranged enemy into melee. It’s about being a frontline support and disruptor, as well as primarily melee damage dealer. It’s about getting up close and personal. The career skill in the CBT accomplished this fantastically, and felt good to use. It was a moderate range dash on a low CD that refreshed your toughness and let you keep the aggression going when needed, such as when retreat would let enemy squads set up firing lines.
Since the CBT, the following is different:
- Only 50% toughness is regenerated
This is fine by itself, but is problematic when considering everything else in this post.
- The cooldown has been increased
It feels like even with more economic use of the ability, I have it up quite rarely. I understand that there are traits at max level that will alleviate this, but that means that the only traits I will chose are ones that alleviate this issue.
In the CBT, functionally everyone went with Purge the Wicked (2 charges) at max rank because of the utility.
Increasing the CD, and improving Invocation of Death (from crits reduce CD by 1s to 1.5s), in theory makes at least IoD more appealing, but we’ll get into why that does work in the next point. Furthermore, the significant reduction in reliable crit chance from perks and, in some cases, flat out removal of crit chance perks makes this infinitely less desirable.
- The charge distance has been significantly reduced,
So getting into melee feels like a chore in many cases. In the CBT I could use a combination of flanking routes, cover, and my career skill to get into melee range of enemy ranged units who were suppressing my allies. Now, I am only able to use the ability to save a second or two on enemies who are already quite close to me.
In addition, because it’s harder to get into melee with the ability, a poor use would leave IoD with the same issue it had in the CBT but worse: It’s very unreliable.
In addition, the charge itself feels slower, but that might be for other factors.
- [NOT NEW] You get staggered out of your charge even with full toughness.
It’s extremely frustrating to hit the charge, and to be knocked out by a single shot of a lasgun.
I’m not sure if this is a bug, but I can only assume so. Either way, it compounds all of the previous issues and leads to a frustrating experience.
ENEMY AI RESISTING MELEE ENGAGEMENT
Something I noticed back in the CBT is how good it felt to get into melee. You finally break through that firing line and suddenly it all stops. Enemies drop their guins, and you’re rewarded with a blob of melee enemies. You trade one threat for another, more manageable one. It was high risk, high reward.
In the current test, however, enemy AI feels like it avoids engaging in melee significantly. I can hug an enemy and still have them shoot a volley or even two before switching to melee. On top of that, the range at which enemies become engage in melee seems extremely small. So much so that I have been in the middle of fairly small rooms (about 3-3.5 reaches of melee across) and had half the enemies stand at the walls shooting at me. Making rounding them up extremely difficult, as moving to gather them means some enemies quickly decide to leave melee and go back to ranged.
While the above may be ‘believable’ or some such, it makes for extremely unsatisfying gameplay when I’m in the middle of the tight corridor and enemies on either side just shoot me instead of entering melee, and means I often end up hiding in a corner with my gun out and without anyone properly able to shoot at the gun squad due to suppression. Sure, it’s doable and we win, but it’s not fun or satisfying like it was in the CBT, where many of the mechanics really felt like that harmonized extremely well
THE TAKEAWAY
To reiterate my last point: “It’s not fun or satisfying like it was in the CBT, where many of the mechanics really felt like that harmonized extremely well”
The game is still a lot of fun, but having seen how well the mechanics can lock in together and how smoothly and well the game can play, performance aside, it feels like a step back.
The classes (In this case, specifically Zealot. But this experience seems mirrored by others) in CBT felt like a lot was learned from the years of development on VT2. It felt like the classes we have now, over the classes at release.
The classes in the current open pre-release beta feel like the opposite of that. They feel a lot more like VT2 on release - Clunky and as though I’m fighting through the class to enjoy it in many cases, as opposed to the class helping me to enjoy the game.
To end off: There’s been a lot of good changes since the CBT. The dodge changes are fantastic, for example. Weapons overall feel in a more balanced spot, etc. People rarely say what they like, and there is a lot to like! But the changes to Zealot, and how the AI handles being engaged in melee, are not among those.