EDIT:
I did the post bellow before to play with last patch, now I don’t have the same opinions, and this could change. I let the original post bellow, but a quick comment:
Priest nerfs: Fine and still very powerful. Now it requires even more global skill points to increase speed more than before.
Dash nerf: Older version was more flexible and more interesting but new version isn’t bad. In my opinion a better nerf was limit old dash to 2 or 3 use per turn. Now I use quite more Rally to get a high flexibility, that it is team based isn’t bad and adds some depth.
Quick Aim: Fine, to improve aiming I attack from closer, or I tempt invoke some luck.
Rage Burst: The bullet limit is ok, and even make it more flexible. The aiming penalty push attack from closer. Overall it works well but there’s still some abuse potential from using characters with very high Will Power.
Bloodlust: I don’t think it’s a good nerf, I don’t think it’s a good skill, if a nerf is needed it’s to not allow self inflicted injuries.
Other changes: Didn’t comment, and won’t yet.
Original post
So many nerfs.
Myself I wasn’t using any spaming, But I quote:
Priest, probably nerfs that was requested:
Sometimes I was rushing a Priest with all AP to use a skill or two, not anymore obviously.
Teams with Priest was using him most often to manage worms, not anymore obviously.
The nerfs could make sense anyway. I didn’t noticed much a lot because I didn’t tried much exploit it except with worms.
Dash, wrong nerf or even bad nerf:
Dash to retreat after action was something I was doing sometimes, probably never ever.
Dash and double shot, not anymore.
Overall, at first I thought the Dash change was good, not tested but I think it is bad and will increase even more balance broken favoring longer range versus shorter range.
Quick Aim, bad nerf:
Quick Aim change will mean build using sniper will have to change, more focus on precision. Bad nerf for me.
Rage Burst, need testing:
Just played a map where 3 RB certainly saved me from a lot of troubles, you know those tiny maps where small size is supposed to reflect difficulty increase, I don’t think I had ever use 3 RB. But clearly the new RB wouldn’t have work in this case. With enemies movements during RB, Adrenalin Rush will probably be stronger.
About the comment on Big Targets, it’s just Scylla, not at all Archons or anything else. And my close range alternates won’t even work anymore with the dash nerf, huu new game.
Bloodlust pointless nerf:
Something need be done against self inflicted injuries and long range abuses. A skill to skip now except with some weird abuse of self injuries.
But I admit all of that need be tested and even learn how manage well with the changes.
PRCR Sniper - Damage reduced from 130 to 120. Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused because their power level was not on par with other weapons of the same tech level.
Quite disappointed of the armour piercing weapons nerf, especially for assault rifle.
On late game I am struggling to damage Arthrons using laser rifles, flames or explosives, only AP weapons seems to work.
If you have to need them, please improve laser or grenades damage
Why nerf the guns but leave the acid ticking away at -10 armour per turn? “6 stray bullets” from an arthron kills a standard soldier a short ways into the campaign. And, hey, I’ll just say this Arthrons are the Apex Pandoran. Not those wussy little Queens.
Haven’t played with this patch yet, but reading that AP weapons received a nerf was a disappointment.
Pandorans increase/evolve their armor very fast as it is and even before the nerf i was always behind in ability to do damage because of damage reduction due to increase in target armor.
Reducing the effect of AP weapons in general doesn’t feel right. I would rather see this linked to chosen level of play.
I’m just a regular of even below average ability player. It’s hard enough for me as it was before the nerf.
I admit i still have to see what happens now, but i have a feeling this will become a darkest dungeon kinda game for me. Meaning i’ll be loosing soldiers on the fly and need regular recruiting to keep up with the losses.
Cool thanks for the info, and I’m not surprised it’s not documented in patch, perfect for the next soon new campaign, I was targeting try Legendary but eventually not.
Overall sounds like good potential balance changes with perhaps a little heavy handed on Dashing, AP weapons and Blood lust. But like everyone else says testing is needed to prove out how it will actually play out.
Quick Aim makes more sense to me now as I (Personally) never quite got why taking quicker aim would increase someone’s accuracy.
Melee still needs some love and Mutog’s are not really all that great (Unless your stats show otherwise) so why double the cost I wonder?
Overall sounds positive though and hoping that the undocumented DDR change is something good as far as more dynamic and less spikey or just piling on the armor for the Pandorans.
How about fixing accuracy first?
When you aim and your target circles are filled 100% and your shot misses? And the next one misses as well?
How about fixing Line of Sight?
You move to a position where you have LoS just to realize that you can see only a few pixels of your enemy?
How about fixing Reasearch Centre Raid?
An assault with Dash, clears 3 objectives in 1 turn.
How about balancing Armor?
You have absolutely no other way to harm the monsters unless you are using AP (or Acid and it work on next rounds). Armor is a good idea but needs nerfing! How about that nerf?
How about nerfing Pandoran’s accuracy?
It’s totally annoying when a Chiron hits bulls eye from the other side of the map. Or a triton with a shotgun hits you for the full charge from 20 squares away. Wasn’t the range on those things 6 or 8? At 20 it should miss entirely.
Really guys - start fixing these things first before nerfing left and right.
Imagine this: You save just before a base defense, all guys there lvl7 and you know it will be hard. Then you don’t play for some days due to work and when you come back there was an update that weakened most of the useful skills the team has and you can’t respec. Base Attack comes and the team does not stand a chance at all. What fun!
Next time you cite “overusage” of something as reason to weaken it, please think about “Why is it overused?” As I read many comments on this topic here and on FB, to me it seems many gamers have to deal with heavily armored opponents and one logical counter is AP.
Or maybe connect the nerfing with the difficulty level - some people rave that all is too easy, others say the opposite. So why not make it harder simply for the upper difficulty levels and not for people struggeling with “Normal”?
The AR nerf aside, this patch feels like a step in the right direction for me.
Obviously OP enemies need to be taken care of too, the armour ramp up in particular, but it was always going to be an issue that needed looking at from both sides.
Do we have details on how DDA has been changed already?
Btw - @UnstableVoltage your patch notes seem to be falling down the forum, are you able to keep them visible at the top the latest threads somehow?
The direction is kind of good but i’m frustrated by the AP-weapons nerf and the changes to dash.
When some kind of weapon is overused it is mabe NEEDED? hell, there’s no hint of any changes to pandoran armor evolement, this is just bad and way over the top. Unless you nerf all pandoran armor you take away the only reasonable weapons against them?
Strong soldiers are good, they are fun to play. Having to use 3 soldiers to kill a single arthron again just totally ruins my fun playing this.
Here’s why this patch is BS:
Missions will take much longer now which is already too long sometimes. Really i don’t want to stay in a single mission more than 20-30mins (30 for special missions). This will slow down gameplay significantly, too becaus if you need 5-10 mins more per mission, this will sum up at the end to an enormous amount. It was fine as it was
When you dash in you HAVE to kill your enemy with a single shot otherwise your soldiers will get 1shot (!!!) by the famous mg-arthron. Now when i dash in i can’t have 2 shots on my opponent but to kill him with a single shot is now mandatory. DASH should never use AP, it’s use should simply been limited to 1-2 uses per turn.
Killing enemys with your assault is pretty damn difficult now. The AP-nerf means that i have to get even closer to the enemy becaus i won’t be able to kill artrhons and tritons with my assault rifle so i must use the shotgun at all times. This is a HUGE nerf combined with point 2.
Soldiers feel weak now, which is bad. i want the game to give me strong soldiers once i cross the magic line from struggling to stay alive to “now it’s time to kick your asses”. This is what makes the game fun. Soldiers killing aliens. And even then a random arthron can flank you out of nowhere and kill one of your soldiers (hello mr. christopherodd, you know…)
I have 250h played, completed on legendary and some fun-runs on rookie i really fear since this patch that i will lose the fun it gave me up to here.
Btw:
On legendary your soldiers have 14 strength, which is so few HPs that it’s ridiculous. Soldiers should gain strength with every level or at least some HP btw.
I fully aggree with your feedback and I would also like to add my 2 cents. What really piss me off is the fact that you can’t build multi class builds with INFILTRATOR, BERSERKER or PRIEST from start on. Even if you have all of these classes in your base or in your group still not available. Why? What is the reason to hide those classes? Sniper, Range and Havy are possible but its boring like hell. Unlock this classes for good and dont hide for end game only.
On release I found this game a lot of fun up until I hit the difficulty spike. Now, sigh!. They are patching out all the fun that the game held and not leaving much in it’s wake but a mathematical equation.
You have forgotten Engineer.
Those specialist classes become available once you get the required technology. I’ve got it by getting allied with all the 3 factions. But I guess you can steal the tech.
Agree with all of your feedback. Yours is the first i see mentioning expected playthrough time.
I had that in the back of my head but didn’t work it out further.
I see you mention Odd…his let’s play is currently at 55 episodes and he’s almost at final. He runs 30-70min. vids, so lets say on average 50mins per episode. a total playthrough would be something like 56x50=2800mins…about 46 hours. Adding 20% (5 mins more per normal 20min mission) would bring that playthrough to 55 hours net playtime.
I don’t have the comment on hand but i think it’s still within the ballpark of what they were aiming for on playtime out of the game.
This is…above average players can get the aimed at gametime. I need about twice the time at least, so i’m going from 90 to well over 100 hours for a complete game.
On average playing 8 hours per week i’ll be at it for 3-5 months for a single game. My attention span doesn’t last that long so I’ll probably never finish a game for a long time. (xcom’s took me over a year to get to and through the final mission).
The DLC’s they’ll publish will need to get me back into the game once i give up on the long mission times.
