Yeah, I’m with you. It reminds me of Gears Tactics.
So I posted some comments on Steam in line with my negative comments above and one of the dev team reached out to me to ask me to post my feedback on their site but when I tried to use their technical support it wouldn’t let me post as apparently I have to attach a dxdiag file or something. Whatever.
I’ll post my comments here, since I typed them out:
I posted some negative views about the 5/12/22 patch on Steam and “extender” indicated I should detail my feedback here.
My feedback is that the specific changes to willpower regeneration on Teleport Strike and Psychic Assault dramatically reduce the repeat usability of those abilities on larger maps and thus make those maps slower and more attritional. In addition, those changes take away the usefulness and repeatability of the two most “fun” and “kick-butt” abilities of the base classes. Those two abilities were the staples of my approach with a base squad and also generated a lot of gamer enjoyment as they epitomize the idea of Grey Knights kicking butt on Chaos. Reducing their usefulness is the wrong direction in my opinion.
Likewise, the changes to increase costs for abilities, especially Justicar and Apothecary abilities, (who I consider excellent support classes but lacking the “oomph” of the Interceptor and Purgator) make those classes less potent and less enjoyable. This is the wrong direction: the balance changes should have LIFTED UP those classes to make them a bit more comparable to the excellent (pre-nerf) Interceptor and Purgator.
The changes to crit percentage and stun-chaining enemies are all part of the overall approach, which was to reduce the strategies that players used to take control of battles and lay waste to large hordes of Chaos. I understand the Dev desire to tone down “positive-feedback-loop” strategies and combos that can result in a squad laying waste to a vast horde but the thing is, I call that fun. Figuring out how to use abilities to just unload a can of whoop-ass on Chaos is the point of this type of game IMO and we players should be allowed to that, at least on lower difficulty levels. (I do note the stun changes were primarily higher level - I feel like the overall focus of the balance should have been higher diff and not ALL difficulties).
Basically, I feel this patch showed too much deference to braggarts on the boards whining about how the hardest difficulty was too easy, and went in the wrong direction. Rather than general nerfing, I suggest that abilities be balanced to allow the players to have fun and kick butt on lower difficulties while challenge can be added at the higher difficulties with tougher and/or more numerous enemies.
Balance is great but in a single player game, players do enjoy finding ways to kick butt. And inevitably, given the creativity of players, players are going to exceed the design expectations of devs as to “insane combos”. Rather than fight against that I suggest the devs embrace it for most players while adjusting difficulty on the high end to maintain challenge for those who want it.
Bingo, give the man a prize. Empower the players, not the designer’s idea of “how the game should be played.”
I’ve not tried the new balance, but previously I was thinking the game felt too incentivized towards group insta gibs.
The X-Com “pod” styled spawns plus easy group kills were taking away from the game experience. If it were me, I’d lower the ease/ frequency of group kills (seems they did), boost knight survivability (and/ or post mission heal time), and boost potential of standard single/duo target combat.
As it was, the marines felt fragile with needing to spawn wipe in single turns, which they could reliably do very often. Besides lore issues, this really broke the X-Com tactical elements at times and made it just about rinsing and repeating the “popping of balloons”.
IMO.
What you describe in regard to enemies is the early game. By mid game enemies are tougher and insta gibbing far less frequent. The enemy curve I felt was balanced, and the power curve was good, before the patch.
As to the Grey Knights, there are ways to reduce fragility but keeping the Alice is a big part of the challenge.
I think it is actually, because it adds a tedious phase of farming cultists individually to replenish your WP, in missions that already drag on. I’d rather have a WP can on pods, or some opponents not giving any WP, while stronger ones would give more.
The Justicar Honor the Chapter was not very interesting, because it kind of only generated AP without letting the Justicar do something interesting himself. But with the nerf, he can do even less (and it is still a must take ability).
I would prefer having a cap on max extra AP per turn instead.
I agree that it goes in the wrong direction, as it makes everything flow more slowly, and remove some of the cool combos you could make (and basically removed the stun/execute mechanisms, instead of making higher level opponents harder to execute only, or limiting the number of AP gained through execution).
Execution could also require to deal more than half the remaining health of the target or something like that instead of being basically absent from most of the game.
It’s also annoying that we don’t get to finish an ongoing campaign under the old rules. A lot of my best knights are now specced for abilities that are no longer worth the cost.
Indeed, there would have been much less outcry if they had revamped the respec mechanism, or give free respecs with the patch.
Just got a game breaking bug at day 340. There is a quest that breaks construction and you have to wait for a repair, except it’s bugged and the ship never repairs. So I can’t use any ship construction at all. It’s a known bug and I can’t keep playing without being able to use construction as my ship keeps getting damaged. Pretty bummed about it.
I’m kind of glad I held off on this, since it sounds right up my alley but it also sounds like the dev don’t understand what makes a game like this fun. I’ll wait till a few more patches iron things out and then pick it up for $20 or less eventually in a steam sale.
It’s both sad and hilarious they felt the need to nerf fun abilities in a single player game. I just don’t get it.
Actually, I do have a theory based on buzz from the Steam boards and the way the devs did that thing with the Switch “engagement” bonuses: I think the devs pay too much attention to some of the streamers and (according to the board; I don’t Twitch) some of the streamers were mocking the game for being too easy: “watch me destroy hordes of cultists with ease! watch me chain-stun and get mega APs! this game is a joke! Waaah!”
Don’t listen to those assholes, devs. At least not disproportionately, disregarding your own original design instincts and the views of the majority of fans.
you misspelled “for free on epic”
I think I’ve logged into the Epic store like once to grab an exclusive and that’s about it. Are they giving this game away? That might tempt me into re-installing it.
I couldn’t figure out the interface for teleport strike. Bah and they nerfed it before I used it.
I reached the endgame fights.
Green was the first one. I almost wiped and had to restart. Beelined towards the plague generators instead of trying to attrition the big guy down.
Yellow (?) was the second one. That was so trivial it took me 7 actions. That’s not even 2 full turns. Used 2 justicars and AP burst the guy down.
haven’t played since the patch, if they nerfed my op combos i am going to be annoyed. It’s taking away the toys I worked hard for!
Took me a while too; doesn’t help that the description is so vague.
What it does is teleport a total of up to your teleport range, in a straight line between each enemy you select, then to a free square. So to activate it you click on each enemy you want to hit in order, then click on the place you want to finish the teleport. It won’t let you select an enemy if you then wouldn’t have enough range left to reach a free square. There is a circle centered on the clicked enemy at each stage to indicate remaining range; it would help if it added a line to indicate the selected route as well.
That sounds amazing! You turn into a pinball.
Their previous game was : Warhammer 40K: Drop Assault, no? If they came from a MP F2P game, it would not be surprising for them to focus on balance.
Anyway, I agree that these abilities were dominant, and toning them down a little was probably required, but they did a huge amount of collateral damage by:
- Making Apothecary really bad
- Nerfing poor Purgators that already struggled to compete with melee characters
- Removing stun mechanisms entirely until end game (and it is very hard to fix: too much stun rez, as it is now, and you kill opponents before stunning them. Too litlle, and you trivialize end game enemies and can get infinite AP. The best compromise would have been to cap AP IMO).
which created a lot of angry Steam players.
Because lack of challenge end game is a real issue. But players would probably have complained less about buffed end game opponents instead…
To me, the only reason to nerf abilities in a single-player game is if they are actually bugs, that is, not working as programmed in some way, or if they make many choices irrelevant by being so far and away the best choices as to be the only sane choices. Barring that, I fail to see a downside to letting players build OP characters to stomp their way through the game.
Sure, pacing is important. You don’t want players to under-value things by giving them too much too soon, but once you are a good way into the game there is nothing wrong–and a lot right–with letting players become pretty dominant.
I think that depends on the players. Some would much prefer a challenge to a stomp, and it’s well known that many players are incapable of restricting themselves for the sake of increasing the challenge. Unless it’s built into the game and comes with rewards, anyway, which is why the optional challenge for each mission is such a great feature.
So in other words, it should depend on difficulty level. It sounds easy to just add the words “WP costs are increased” and “WP rewards are decreased” to appropriate difficulty levels, but depending on how the resources are structured that might be a difficult thing to actually implement quickly. But if we’re lucky it’s scheduled for a later patch.
Oh, I’d agree that difficulty levels are the way to go. Also, I’d agree it’s not as easy as it looks. But no matter how you slice it, arbitrarily making a game more frustrating is not the same as making it entertainingly challenging.