Yet Another Feedback Thread(tm)

4

Like my other feedback thread, this thread is being written with a light tone. I can't believe I have to have a disclaimer, but time and again I've had my feedback taken... poorly... in games because people are incapable of parsing subtext.

I'll start with the Reborn Marauders, as they're the most common nurglite unit I come across with the Nurgle mark heal, and the most problematic through the whole game. First, remove the absurd knockdown immunity. Champs in Van Helsing weren't immune to CC, they just suffered a shorter effect, and that's fine. But between the knockdown/stun blanket immunity and the fact that they will arbitrarily warp through terrain with their pull technique, I find that I'm burning a LOT of cooldowns when more than one is in a room. Usually, I will trigger something like my shield rush and I'll get locked in place, wasting a mobility tech and leaving those pesky ranged mobs (ref: Shield Discussion feedback thread) alive and able to continue carving chunks of my health off. In cultist only investigation missions, if there is one in the room I average losing about 10k EHP (between shields, health, and regenerated health). If there are two more more, I will die.

Why? Because they tend to surround you, cannot be jumped over, cannot be bowled through, and each one does (with 35% damage reduction) between 500 and 1500 damage per hit. This is simply not feasible to tank through, even with fairly "decent" gear. This feeds into the next point--their damage needs to be nerfed to about 1/3rd the current value. Alone in a duel it's a challenge, in a room with three to six of them as a melee character with no dodge, just "mitigation" (again, see other thread), it's a brutal slog. Three of them can clear my healthbar while I'm in an animation loop, and on top of it in three hits drop my suppression into the red, stunning me and killing me. Not fun, and more "boss" ability than Elite/Champion mob ability.

Now we arrive at the Mark itself. The regen on a Marauder outpaces most of my melee abilities. If I have three Marauders on me, I might be able to kill one, but the other two will regain full health between cleave swings. Again... with bonus damage from skill points, mobs will heal to full in the time it takes a chainsword to clear the 1.3 second attack CD. That's... insane. I'm not expecting to cleave through them like trash mobs, but I am expecting that my time isn't wasted, and with how many of them get thrown at me to a room, that's what it currently feels like.

Now, this is extra !!Fun!! (dorf fort, yes the flame tag is intentional) when applied to, say... those beastly Daemon Engines, who have really bizarre leash lengths for aggro (that seem to change from pull to pull, even with the same engine on the same map). I've had a dozen Nurgle dreadnoughts heal over the damage I could put out with an alpha strike (highest damage, firing everything at once), making them an intense slog to fight... and then I get them down to half health or lower, and it suddenly decides it has something more pressing to do, wanders off, and is fully healed before it stops plodding. !!FUN!!.

The key to handling health regen on enemies, like drinking tequila, is moderation. If an appropriately skill/level/geared character has difficulty taking on a common enemy (regardless of the Champion/Elite tag, if I can run into 5 or more in a single room they're trash mobs with a fancy title), then it could stand to have a wee bit o' rebalancing.

My suggestion? Since it seems far less of a slog in coop, perhaps do what you did with Van Helsing, or what many devs have done with ARPGs... pin down a solid solo value and have a stacking +% bonus to mobs per player added. It's worked well for ARPGs (even those intended for party play, with solo being largely an always-online afterthought for those of us with bad connections) for two decades, I can't see it hurting here.

Edit: Strictly speaking, not entirely relevant to this thread, but I would also recommend switching the buttons for Scything Strike and Eviscerate on the 1h chainswords as well... the cooldown for Scything Strike is short enough that it's the default attack when dealing with most rooms, and it just seems like it's the (unintended) primary attack for the weapon with Eviscerate being the (non-stunning, for some reason) backup.

This post was edited 7 years 82 days ago by BrotherLazarus
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Yet Another Feedback Thread(tm)
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7 years 82 days ago
+2

Agreed, the Nurgle regeneration reaches absurd levels.

I tried to tackle Power Level 4 with some bosses yet their regeneration makes any encounter super tedious.


Imho the regeneration of Mobs should be just as high as it would pose a problem if you ignored them or only attacked them with the odd AoE ability. If the regeneration of them is high enough to outpace your single target DPS skills, something is very wrong.

7 years 82 days ago
+1
Posted by FieserMoep 7 years 82 days ago

Agreed, the Nurgle regeneration reaches absurd levels.

I tried to tackle Power Level 4 with some bosses yet their regeneration makes any encounter super tedious.


Imho the regeneration of Mobs should be just as high as it would pose a problem if you ignored them or only attacked them with the odd AoE ability. If the regeneration of them is high enough to outpace your single target DPS skills, something is very wrong.

Therein lies the problem. Once I'm down to 4-6 Marauders and all the trash is cleared, I'm spending up to 45 seconds per Marauder using all of my actives to try and out-pace the absurd healing. If it's a mob that comes in groups, it should be able to be cleaved as groups (see: Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing for how this can work from Neocore)--otherwise have a spawn flag that does not allow them to spawn if another is nearby. It can be one or the other; not both.


As is, they're a time-check that keeps me from clearing missions at a reasonable pace at best, and a cheap method to kill me quickly at worst, because they're immune to stuns, knockdowns, and you can't just jump pack over them. So when a pair spawn in from the sides off-camera, and use that obnoxious grappling hook on you so that you've got one on all four sides, you're stuck because you can't shield-rush past them, can't jump-pack over them; and without absurdly high deflect/reduction, you're dead. And that's if you only have four. It gets worse when another pair wander in with a retinue of ranged enemies, then you're just dealing with kicking the puppy levels of "not cool, dude".


And that is why I think their regeneration pace should be halved, at the highest, in solo content. The regen is fine for two players as I discovered last night, probably a little low for four players... but I think Neocore should probably examine the fact that a lot of people are buying this to experience the story and game alone, rather than as part of a cadre. I'd positively adore running cooperative all the time--I'm not nearly as anti-social as I seem--but my net has so many issues that I can only (barely) play with a second player after about 2200PST, when I'm about the only person on the ISP's chain (covering some half dozen towns) and the only person on this town's network. And I'm not alone there, there are a few other posts from folks that can end up deployed or working in areas with terrible net and will need the ability to survive in solo play.


So it's definitely something they need to consider. Solo play needs to be viable at some level, or a lot of potential players will simply not bother with it. Look at the release of Deathwing for an example of what happens when things aren't tuned properly--refunds and review bombing crippled a game that was, by all rights, one of the best 40k franchise titles in quite some time. I really do not want to see that happen to Martyr, not with the amount of fun I have with it... but there's something wrong when the most optimized way to play my tank (while trying to grind out gear to reach survivable status) is to hunker down with a heavy bolter.

7 years 81 days ago
+1
BrotherLazarus

They should be able to lower the Regen for solo and then change it based on player numbers in Co-Op (say +15-20% per player) I haven't played any Co-Op yet, but from what I've seen posted and in the discord chat - they need to add Health/Damage scaling for Co-Op anyway or you're just blowing through the content.


Something else they could add/change could be they don't have regen - but have a 33% chance of ignoring damage (Disgustingly Resilient from 8th TT) regen just feels like a cop out when they have so many cool abilities from the games they can draw from.

7 years 81 days ago
Insane Cheese

Disgustingly Resilient sounds almost like one of the old Nurgle Mark ++ saves--I'm not sure I'd dig total damage immunity procs given how long it takes to kill them in the first place and how hard they hit though, at least not until I can either shield-dash through them or jump-pack over them when they pull the synchronized hook-shot and lock players in the box of death.


Now, that's still a sound idea: taking some of the other crunch and adapting it in place of using purely ablative HP coupled with high regen. There's plenty to draw on both in old and newer Chaos codices that would work, in fact... that's a great way to tie the two together while marrying up some less conventional mechanics--because, really... who has played an ARPG that hasn't featured a healthsteal/self-healing burst/high regen monster?


For that matter, who can honestly say that running into the millionth one of those healer/lifeleech/high-regen mobs in any ARPG, from Diablo to Grim Dawn, Torchlight to Martyr... causes any reaction other than "oh [expletive deleted], another one of those."?


I like that. I hadn't even considered recommending using tabletop crunch. +1 Inquisition cookie basket for you!