This is just not my experience. Granted I finished my first game with positive relations with all factions. But only allied status with one. But only very late in game dimplomacy started to go with positive numbers for all factions and I was hated by NJ most of the game, and I finished the game without having access to most their guns and classes. And this is doing all missions.
I dont think my experience is not a cringe one, and most new players will commit mostly to one faction.
Still most of my arguments I think are valid, even without this point.
Also this is only true if you go hunting for that in advance, and if you know in advance how to do it and why. Wich misses the point completely, on why only veteran players play this way.
This time you are wrong, because you get a lot of reputation with diplomatic missions + exploration (POIs and visiting havens) + destroying Pandoran colonies + Interception combats.
No way you can’t achieve perfect rep with every faction just playing, and I am not mentioning sabotage and other hostile actions granting rep, you can rotate faction and keep going without penalty
So, and this is a bit of just plain logic. You said there is no way (it is imposible) to not have perfect rep with every faction just by playing.
Now, as I plaid the game for quite a lot. I can tell you that did not get a perfect rep with all factions in my first 2 playtroughts (finishing all missions). This is a counterexample that makes your statement false.
Now the only way you can show you argument Is valid is to claim im lying. Which I am not.
Legend players are probably 1 in 100, but that proportion does not hold true for “veteran” players, as in players that have played the game more than once (whether they have finished it, or not).
Should PP be aiming at Legend players as its main audience? Obviously not. But the game is definitely built for replayability, and it doesn’t make sense to build the game so that it is repayable only to leave the “veteran” players out in the cold.
Still you boldly claimed that it is imposible to not finish the game with max rep with all factions. This is false. Because I also play the game and is very easy to prove you are wrong. I did not acuse or making any fallacy, I said what you claim is just false. Because it is.
Let’s not focus on the useless part of the discussion. It is completely pointless to argue what is a veteran player (which your definition I completely would still disagree on) or what type of players are or should be the focus of the game.
The relevant things to this discussion is, and these are my claims:
Laser guns are not OP for late or mid game.
To get laser guns early in game, you need to play in advance to get them early. In order to do that you need to know how everything in the game works in advance (this is called meta knowledge of the game), and plan intentionally and accordingly to do so.
As you dont think is fair you can use your previous knowledge of the game, to get too early some weapons that most people will get much later. Your solution is make the guns worse for everybody.
To me this point is obviously a wrong approach.
First, I don’t think is really Ok to punish the people who knows everything about the game because they take advantage of that knowledge. But most importantly is certainly not fair to punish everybody, because some players do not like that they can’t stop themselves of taking advantage of the knowledge most players don’t have.
Lets see if we can agree on this. I think that the main problem here is how strong is to plan your game to sreamline some tech. And how better are some factions in comparission to others. (IMHO the disciples of anu are plainly worse than the other two)
I dont think the point is unfair, but the solution would be in changing the diplomacy system not just nerfing the guns. That may be to me make the other factions up to pair with the best (maybe just by making MC and other disciples abilities more useful), while changing the game so you cant get all the benefits of the alliances too early. Would that be fair?
Destiny III can reliably blow off the head of any Siren (except Armis) at any distance for 0 to 1 AP at negligible cost, and it can be used by any operative regardless of class with no penalty. How is this not OP?
Gorgon Eye has double the DPS of an AR with comparable accuracy, not to mention how it compares with VDM Enforcer, which requires far more research.
As to Scorcher, turrets as a type of weapon are by themselves already too strong, because 1) their small size makes them small targets, 2) their relatively low armor makes them priority targets for enemy AI, 3) for some inexplicable reason they have return fire, 4) pack a punch in their attack, 5) can be used an unlimited number of times per turn, and 6) do not require purchasing ammo after mission.
Scorcher is basically all that but on steroids: long burst + high damage per projectile.
No you don’t. You just need to do what the game tells you to do - progress in your diplo relations with factions. Once you reach aligned with Synedrion and NJ you will have access to this tech. It would be different if it would require an advanced tech from one of the factions, thus requiring taking a certain path, but it doesn’t. The 2 required tech are early, and main branch.
I want to be able to use these weapons in my game without feeling like I’m cheating. I find it particularly upsetting with Destiny III, as it’s a unique and interesting weapon, but currently using it means that Sirens are no longer a threat. Really, nothing is a threat with enough Destinies, because each one is a once-per-turn joker card.
Tbh, I don’t think that buffing everything else so that is on par with Advanced Lasers makes any sense. Imo, they should be either nerfed or better “gated”, or a combination of the two.
Destiny II, has 80 damage value. Burst 3. So you can only blow up a head of a siren if you land all the 3 hits on its head, which does not kill it, but removes some of its most dangerous abilities.
First, it is completely not true that you can reliably blow the head of a siren at any distance. that is not how aiming works. Second, you say that you should not be abe to blow the head of a siren in one turn, if land 3 (burst) shots on it.
That is an opinion I do not hold. Disabling a head is not killing, and the siren can take control of one of your soldiers in one turn, usually hiding after so you cant easily blow his head to remove the MC. No matter how easy is getting one of your soldiers body parts disabled in one turn by many enemies. I dont think is unfair you can disable enemy parts in one turn in return.
Also is important to also ack that some enemies includding the artemis are far stronguer, and that you can face multiple sirens in one turn. You really need that firepower to not be underpowered in comparision with the enemy.
To get them in week 3, as was the claim. yes, you do.
Yes, Scorcher and Destiny III are powerful guns. I argue you should have powerful guns, because the enemy has too and the only problem to me is that other factions do not have guns so powerful.
Now, you think the game should not allow the player to one shot a part of an enemy with these guns. I dont disagree as long as you are only talking about the hardest difficulty settings. When talking about nerfing the player to make the game more difficult in all difficulty settings. I disagree.
Of course I do not mean everything else. I do think every faction should have a very strong weapon or ability up to pair with Destiny III. And that any nerfing in this regard should be done difficulty wise.
I only support that level of nerfing above veteran. With the ack that than veteran and below, specially with other weapons. The balance actually needs to go in the opposite direction, buffing other guns.
I messed up with the accuracy. And u are right I did not use it that much (only in one gameplay), since in my first two, I never got it. I went for the disciples in my first game play, and got allied with synedrion and disciples in my second. (which according to some is just not possible). Later I did get it, but did not overrely on it. Also I never recovered one in two entire playtroughts as the enemeies never used it either.
Still Destiny III requires line of sight and usually I was not finding it that usable long range. This I may be wrong but I think enemy animations could make it miss. This may have been changed . But still in my experience you can only reliable hit the head of siren a close range because usually and given how the siren behaves you would not have a clear shot most of the time. Yes In big lairs or finding sirens in the open will be very useful as your video shows really well.
If Im wrong about the animations, I will happily concede that is very accurate.
Now requiring proficiency or reducing the ammo of the gun could be reasonable. I still don’t think reducing the damage is. And still don’t think is OP mid to late game.
My problem with the arguments advocating to nerf it is not that is a great gun. It certainly is, and after the nerf of the flamethrower (too much imo) and the same with rage burst (also too much i think), with the scorcher may be the best gun in the game.
My main issue with the argument is that assuming that every player will have it at week 3, thus breaking the game is a completely unfair assumption in my experience.
The other issue is how unbalanced factions are. synedrion has stealth (very strong if u learn how to use it), NJ has very powerful guns. Disciples are very underpowered in comparison. Mutons are just not worth it and MC is imo useless in many cases.
The 2 approaches are nerfing NJ and Synedrion, or buffing disciples. I advocate for the last.
I used it before it’s current iteration (July last year), when it was absolutely useless, and for a very long time afterwards. I test out a lot of things, some of them very suboptimal, and some that are referred to as “OP”. Not all things that are called OP are actually that, or for the reasons given for it, imo. To be completely candid, with D3 for a long time I was more of the opinion that it is OK.
Funny thing, but even before animations were changed, D3 hit the body part you were aiming at with the whole burst even when the target was animating, because it tracked it after each shot. The only time that Destiny misses is due to player error, or some intervening hit box.
I think it should be gated so that no player can get it at week 3-4, at least not without a very conscientious effort. Perhaps put it behind NJ advanced piercing weapons. In practice it would mean that without any prior knowledge or special effort you would get it by mid February, assuming you didn’t go out your way so as not to be aligned with Synedrion or NJ.
I do think it should also be nerfed, because right now it’s in LOTA territory.
Less ammo? Definitely. Give non-proficient class chance to fumble? Sure. Damage… Yeah, that too I think. I will even give you a number: 70 x 3
Why? Without any buffs or Vivisection it’s not enough to disable the head of a Siren (160 HP with 20 or 30 armor), but with Bombardier, Reckless or Vivisection (increasing damage to 77), it is enough to disable the 20 armor heads, and with a combination of 2 of these perks or one perk + Vivisection, it can disable even the 30 armor head.
In practice, it would mean that you would be able to disable some Sirens heads after vivisecting one, and the rest of the others (except Armis) with an additional damage buff, whether from those perks or other skills. (Like Mark for Death, for example…)
I think it’s debatable… Iconoclast and Harrower are both extremely good weapons, Priest Mind Ward is very strong, Viral weapons can be devastating against some enemies… Then there is stuff like Frenzy and Adrenaline Rush…
IMO, the problem with Anu is that they lack ranged weapons, like a solid shot shotgun similar to Slamstrike.
Lately I was thinking, increase the Anu handcannon effective range to 19, and give pistol proficiency to all classes. Then Anu Assault could use both Iconoclast for CQ and the handcannon for a bit longer range.
Right now this tech requires basic tech from both factions - so when you get aligned with both of them (which we argue about if it is easy or not - in my opinion it is really easy, unless RNG will block player in some way) you automatically get that tech (behind one research project). It beats almost all weapons of similar design available to factions, despite that those factions get their tech a lot later in the game… and we already have that overpowered stuff like before mid-game (or mid-game if we are unlucky).
If advanced lasers would be in Phoenix Project research tree quite late - so for example while requiring late game tech from both factions - then maybe I could agree to leave it overpowered to some point. But I doubt that research trees will be changed.
There could be also some change how diplomacy works and how it is easy to get aligned with two factions. If that would be quite hard, then meddling with research tree probably would be unnecessary. Question is if Snapshot Games will prepare that diplomacy re-make. There were some plans, but from plans to implementation is a long way.
Most simple solution in that case is nefring these advanced lasers, so they will get in line properly with other tech.
I must be doing something wrong. One needs 50+ relations with both Syn and NJ (without raiding tech) both of which need to have many havens near where your forces are operating, and then research the 1200pt “adv lasers”, and finally have the 96 tech + 190 materials to build 1, and all of this is in just 2 weeks? Just how many labs, manufacturing, and squads can one have in 2 weeks? Also, how many heavy armours do you have by this point? Those heavy torsos are time (24 hours with 1 manufacturing) and resource intensive to build. But if one gets lucky where the bases that need to be activated happen to have both uplinks and manufacturing, that would expedite things.
And this is assuming no raiding?
Another thing that one needs to get lucky on is where the requisite 5 missions land. Getting that 2nd diplo mission in Antarctica is a common bottleneck as it usually requires activating those bases, and maybe having to build an uplink (3 or 4 days) or 2 in order to have a path to down there. Australia can be similar, esp when a mission lands on that island east of NZ.
Anyway, lots of things need to go right and then the game will be considerably easier. I’m good with that! I do enjoy those occasional Nest or Lair missions where all the things needing to be killed are immediately visible so the mission can be completed in 1-3 turns.
In my current game the “2 week laser rush” strategy wasn’t possible. Syn was on the wrong side of the map, so there weren’t many haven defenses to gain rep from. It must have been over a month before they got above 0.
