So I was playing around with a new run, and for whatever reason ran into more forsaken than normal this time around. By more than normal I mean 5 havens were attacked, 3 were forsaken…and pretty much every 3rd exploration was a scavenge mission against forsaken…which I immediately did every time because I began to realize something…I was having the most fun fighting forsaken in early game.
Early on none of your team has the skills or equipment to just erase everything they thought they saw, but neither do the forsaken have an easy way to eliminate your team. Your attacks do almost nothing, except for snipers and heavies, but that early on they have a hard time getting in the good shots…requiring you to actually maneuver around and try to draw the forsaken to where you want instead of after your crates or whatever haven defending things…
Was this the kind of balance that was originally striven for? Am I the only one who feels like early forsaken fights are more balanced and fun than the alpha strike death that fills the rest of the game?
Well, i can say I have a similar experience, but i face both the Forsaken and The Pure. In both case they are hard to kill and require more work to defeat. I also did fight some rather dangerous Pandorans during ambushes that forced me to play more cautious than usual. That’s a nice change to not be able to outright kill the enemies as soon as you can shoot at them.
The number of people who find alpha strike repetitive and boring (no tactical decisions required) is growing steadily here. The longer you play, the more this problem becomes apparent.
And yes: I think the early game with the necessary tactical maneuvers shows what the game really can do. All the flexibility (e.g. 4 APs) can be really exhausted. Until BOTH SIDES equip themselves with nuclear weapons and then it’s only about who can pull the trigger first.
I have yet to feel the need or desire for the DLC because from what I understand all it does is give you another group of decent enemies to fight…not more of them, just replacing some of what’s there…and adds a few more things for even more and easier alpha striking. None of that has particularly piqued my interest yet.
That said, from a sci-fi loving perspective the DLC LOOKS awesome and the ideas behind the new story and all the stuff seems amazing…just not quite good enough for me to want to break the game more…
(Addendum) I’m kind of at the point where I keep choosing one of 2 options in a playthrough, either start a new game when 1 shotting begins, or choose to never pick up rage burst, rapid clearance, and rally the troops…the first option lets me feel like I’m playing a balanced game and have some fun but gets repetitive while the second option makes things feel more balanced up to a point…that point being where it’s practically impossible to beat a mission anymore…leading back to option 1…
Just like my opinion …
I bought the GamePass and I do NOT regret it!
It is a great game!
But: As things are currently balanced (alpha strike), I have deactivated the DLC, because just as you said
I’ve read through all those…but I wanted to really point out how an afterthought they threw in the game to act more as an advertisement for anu mutations (and pure parts for DLC users) ended up feeling the most entertaining and balanced thing they’ve done while subtly (although by saying this it takes away the subtlety) using it as a poll to see how many others agree on hopes that maybe…just maybe…one of the devs will glance at it and go, “oh…that’s what we should aim for in balance”. That or a modder who wants to do a rebalance themselves but isn’t sure where to start would now have at least a starting point…
PS Any game I play, balance is what I always want most. If I were any good with coding and such I would have already tried starting work on rebalancing with some simple ideas I had to see if it worked…but I know my ideas of balance don’t always match what everyone else wants or thinks is a good idea so I haven’t put them up anywhere.
I may be doing the devs a disservice, but I don’t think ‘subtle’ gets through in this context.
I and others have been hammering away at this point since damn near Day 1 (not to mention all the Backer Builds), and we’re still nowhere near the kind of balance this game needs to survive with anything but a cult following.
But I have seen the devs e-verrr soooo slooooowly re…spooonding to several of the main points we keep banging on about - so we persevere, because we can see how good this game would be ‘if only’…
Your ideas are just as valid as anyone else’s. So as long as you are prepared to defend them robustly (and politely) against a barrage of objections, backed up by irritatingly hair-splitting debating points, feel free to join the discussion.
…And if you have the temerity to call for Skills to be nerfed, be prepared to be called everything under the sun
I do have the temerity…nay, I say bravado…to try and put my ideas out there…and so I have under the Nerf everything post by @SpiteAndMalice as I felt that matched it rather beautifully.
