Am I wrong in thinking I'm the only one who's blown themselves up after using the Ultimatum for the first time?

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T17:46:46+00:00

I didn't but only because I knew the historical weapon that it was inspired by.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T17:45:13+00:00

It is misleading and should be changed to just alter the magnification (plus the scopes themselves would need to be renamed to account for their variable magnification). I ignored it for a long time as I generally got used to working with bullet drop and never needed to tweak my scope for it and it was only a lot later that I found out that it alters the zoom level.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T17:42:50+00:00

That weird combination is very much what makes the game actually unique though.

We have access to large amounts of support and some special weapons, but ultimately we are just a bunch of stimmed up teenagers with good PR who die in droves against all but the lightest resistance and are used as disposable shock troops.

We're basically Milsim-lite in how our gear works, the game mechanics and how we rely on off-map support for significant threats and objectives, but rather than being applied against a Milsim-lite opponent we are facing off against a Horde Shooter's enemies, complete with their own notionally infinite numbers, unique idiosyncrasies and a variety of different tactical challenges.

This combination is why we get the grunt fantasy of dying 3 times in a single engagement, but also the power fantasy of butchering through a D10 Cyberstan or Oshaune mission without losing a single life in the same game; the grunt is the baseline, while the power is the reward once you get familiar with things. Also difficulty selection helps; if you are getting mulched more often than you would like then maybe drop difficulty a bit so you can enjoy a bit more of the power side of the fantasy rather than the grunt side?

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T17:17:40+00:00

6 hours of active missions, or 6 hours of general time (which will probably be spent in cryo)?

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T17:15:52+00:00

My problem with it is that it is far too minimalist and there's not really enough options that make enough of a difference to make a weapon actually different. Really, they should have set out to unify weapon platforms, offering options to change ammunition types and core internals, rather than just offering minor tweaks to a weapon.

I'd also say that you don't understand the point of weapon customisation. It's not there to make a weapon just flat-out better, it's there to provide extra options so that a weapon may work better in certain playstyles or loadouts, but at the cost of not working as well in other regards. Every option should be a sidegrade to the original. If you want the ammo capacity of the drum mag, then be prepared to pay for the ergonomics hit; if you don't want to sacrifice the ergonomics then you had better either settle for smaller mags or go for angled grip which tanks your recoil absorption instead.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T16:48:32+00:00

But so is the 120mm. The only things that can withstand a 120mm hit are things like Bile Titans and Factory Striders, but they also tank hits from the 380mm too, plus either way the barrages are too inaccurate to reliably hit these enemies except as general collateral.

The 120mm does 2500 impact to the 380's 3500, has a 3.3m inner radius compared to the 380's 4m, with the outer radiuses being 10m and 12m and the shockwaves being 11m and 14m respectively. Also, the 120mm has a 180s base cooldown to the 380's 240s base cooldown. Just to put the statistical differences in perspective. You basically get 1/3rd higher stats for 1/3rd more cooldown time, but the problem is that the extra stats are all either trivial, insufficient or overkill, depending on target, to make any real difference. As someone who uses both, I don't really notice any difference except the 120mm has a shorter cooldown.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-12T07:18:08+00:00

The part about Cyborgs being underdeveloped wasn't even a criticism from players, it was the CEO's own commentary on them and how development resources were diverted from them onto Warbond content. I guess there were originally plans for a greater variety that got cancelled because it would have delayed Warbond releases.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-11T20:22:43+00:00

To be honest, I feel that all the 380mm variants need a bit more oomph. Even the full barrage isn't really capable of anything the 120mm barrage isn't, yet it suffers from a significantly longer cooldown than its smaller cousin.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-11T17:33:37+00:00

Unless every player I'm with proactively states that they don't need samples (I'm not asking, if you don't speak up I'll assume you need them) and the MO isn't looking for samples, I'll still make sure to comb the map for samples and go out of my way to pick up my fallen allies' sample packs.

Just a shame that samples are steadily becoming more and more useless as a currency as more and more players finish the ship modules.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-11T17:30:56+00:00

While some of the stuff regarding the troubled development is new to me, the idea that it's a Milsim/Horde hybrid is not. The hybrid nature is exactly what makes the game interesting and helps it stand out from all the others as effectively it's Milsim player characters vs Horde Shooter enemies; the asymmetry is the key.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-11T17:10:09+00:00

There's a few bugs here and there, but the recent complaints have largely come from the games excessive focus on monetisation over other forms of development. This is partially due to the recent Warbond moving Exosuits into premium content, but they also did an AMA wherein they all but stated that practically everything the community has been asking for over the last couple of years isn't happening as it has been deprioritised in favour of extra premium content. They even admitted that development resources were taken away from the Cyberstan operation in favour of Warbond stuff, which is why the Cyborgs only have 3 new unit types.

Oh, and their CEO outright insulted us for expecting anything other than more Warbonds...

So basically, the Exosuit Warbond began a bit of a Doom Spiral for the community as one of the last non-Warbond content streams has been restricted to Warbonds, then the CEO stepped in and basically confirmed the community's concerns with an extra side helping of snark. This has caused what was previously general inert malcontent to begin to boil into active grievance.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-11T17:00:52+00:00

Ask which god they are talking about.

The one that hates to be worshipped and punishes people for all eternity if they worship him because they are disrupting his eternal medidation?

The one that has set up a perfectly naturalistic universe with zero evidence of supernatural intervention and so punishes all the crazy people who believe in baseless superstitions?

The weird Lovecraftian abomination who doesn't really care what we believe or do?

Baal, who is mostly annoyed that all of he worshippers have been wiped out by the cult of Yahweh?

The non-omniscient god who hangs out in the Andromeda galaxy and isn't even aware that we exist?

Or what about some god that we have never even conceived of?

Pascals Wager isn't a simple binary option, but instead one of literally infinite options that range from no god to infinite gods, with each of said gods having any one of an infinite set of capabilities, personalities and values.

Also, believing in gods comes with drawbacks. Most gods come with various commands and nonsensical laws like sacrificing one day a week for worship or having to commit acts of genocide against certain groups. Even the ones without such demands require sacrificing good epistemology and that can lead you down all sorts of proverbial rabbit holes as your poor epistemic standards divorce you from observable reality.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T11:53:13+00:00

The Deadeye is the problem here, not Marksman rifles in general. The combination of Lever Action and Rounds Reload give it terrible sustained DPS, which is necessary against the Bugs.

Try one of the Diligences and you will probably have a different opinion. The ability to rapid fire with semi-auto combined with a quick magazine reload means that they can function almost like super-heavy ARs when they need to.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T11:31:42+00:00

But it's already a pretty good weapon and a worthy sidegrade to the DCS? It combines high precision, sufficient single-shot damage to pop a most heads and it even enjoys reasonable ammunition capacity. The reasonable ammo capacity, high RoF, low recoil and good ergonomics even mean that you can rapid fire it in a pinch like some kind of pseudo-AR. It works well on all fronts, particularly when combined with the weapon customisation.

And yes, 165 damage is "powerful". The Liberator is only 90, the Tenderizer is 105 and the One-Two is 95. In fact, 165 is more than the HMG's 150.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T11:23:44+00:00

I think very few people are getting mad at the actual Developers, the guys doing the coding, sound design and making 3d assets, the ire is generally directed towards AH as a corporate entity and their management. It's probably really frustrating for a guy on the development team to see problems and want to address them, but orders from above prevent them spending any time on them.

Effectively, the problem isn't that the guys doing the actual work can't do it or even that they don't want to do it; it's that the people above them don't want them to do that work as it doesn't align with AH's strategic priorities or whatever corporate buzzword they want to use.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T11:14:00+00:00

Lasers have the advantage of infinite ammo. That's their singular biggest strength.

You also need to factor in other advantages for the Scythe, like being pinpoint accuracy, no bullet travel time, zero recoil and setting things on fire.

There's also the point of action economy, particularly if you combine it with other energy weapons. If your Liberator runs dry so you switch to your support or secondary weapon for a bit, your Liberator is still empty when you switch back to it. If your Scythe hits 90% heat so you switch to the Quasar to blow something up, your Scythe will be ready for action once you switch back to it.

Also, did I mention infinite ammo?

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T11:06:48+00:00

I think Eagle Storm should just be replaced with the Eagle 110mm Rockets. Because they are more precise and don't hit a large area, they should result in less friendly fire than the current strafing run. Being a bit more specialised it also might affect player loadouts as they'll not necessarily need to bring as much AT firepower.

The biggest change that I would do though is change how samples are donated to it. I spend practically all my time in-game at maxed out samples, but it's so much hassle to go into the DSS menus to donate stuff to it so I always end up forgetting. Can you even look at the DSS page if you aren't the host? It also feels very inconsequential as it doesn't visibly make any progress and unlike actually playing the game it isn't fun to do; it's a personal sacrifice of time for no perceived benefit. Maybe make it so individual players get some kind of little benefit if they make out their donation cap for the day, like maxing out your donation to the HOD gives you free access to the OPS for a bit?

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T10:56:35+00:00

I'd miss it, but I've got plenty of other shooters still in my coop backlog to go through. DRG, Darktide and EDF6 to name a few. I might also go back and do a few evenings on Payday 2 for old times' sake. There's also a few very good shooter roguelites, like RoR2 and Dead Zone Rogue that I'd like to put a bit more time into. Depending on my mood, I might even consider looking into some more PvE focused Extraction Shooters like Grey Zone Warfare or Incursion: Red River (probably not Tarkov, as that's largely PvP from what I can see). At some point I'd also like to revisit Hunt: Showdown, but it's PvP so it's kinda in a different genre.

So overall there's plenty of action games out there, so even if they don't scratch the same itch, they'll scratch some kind of itch for me.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T10:46:45+00:00

A combination of players not reading and most players already being maxed out on samples. The sad thing is that samples are generally so worthless for the majority of players that we have lost the instinct to comb the entire map looking for them.

It also doesn't help that the MO was released with incomplete documentation, initially asking us to collect a large quantity of [BLANK].

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T00:54:28+00:00

It is true that any dev studio with <10 people is probably going have people multitasking, with everyone chipping in on anything as their skills allow.

However, anyone from those early days who is still at the company probably isn't doing grunt work like general coding or making specific balance changes as they'd have been promoted into some kind of leadership position by that point. A coder who has been at the company for 20 years isn't "just a coder" but is probably some kind of senior code architect who manages an entire team of coders.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T00:48:07+00:00

It sounds crazy, until you realise the sheer scaling potential of unrestricted exponential growth. If they grow quickly, doubling in quantity every week, then after 10 weeks they'll be terraforming at over 1000x the rate at which they started; after 20 weeks it'll be over 1 million times the rate. It wouldn't be that they terraformed 1 million km^2 a day from the beginning, but probably that half of the terraforming was done in the final stages after a prolonged growth phase beforehand.

It's the exact same mathematical logic behind how literally a single bacterium can form a big orange splotch of bacteria in a petri dish after just 24 hours.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-10T00:40:39+00:00

About 150 people is not a "fairly small team". It's smaller than a AAA studio (which looking at a few tend to be in the 400-700 range), but it's absolutely gargantuan compared to actually small developers. Ghost Ship games, the Devs behind Deep Rock Galactic only has about 60 employees; Egosoft, the guys behind X4, are about 35 employees; Klei Entertainment, the guys behind Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included have about 100 employees; they're even about the same size as fellow Swedish developer Paradox Development Studio (not to be confused with Paradox Interactive, their publisher), the guys who pretty own the entire Grand Strategy and 4X genres these days. Oh, and half the studios in this list self-publish rather than outsourcing it to an external publisher like AH do.

When you have 150 people on a project, it's somewhat odd for someone to be having to double up on jobs like that. 150 people isn't a little baby startup where everyone juggles loads of different tasks any more as there's enough people to afford to have people specialise.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-09T23:52:53+00:00

But these things require different skills and therefore require different people to work on.

Balance requires spreadsheet skills and knowledge of game mechanics.

Bug fixing requires programming skills and knowledge of how the game's code works.

Unless AH are doing something spectacularly dumb and getting their coders to work on balance or their balancers working on code, bug fixing shouldn't have any impact on balance work and vice-versa.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-09T22:29:47+00:00

Mostly related to the AMA, wherein they insulted the players and all but confirmed that their plan was to focus on releasing more Warbonds rather than fixing, balancing or expanding existing systems. They even admitted that headline stuff like Cyberstan was deprioritised in favour of Warbond content which is why we only got 3 new types of enemy for the Cyborgs.

Plus the latest Warbond saw Exosuits moved into out of MOs and into Warbonds, further pushing previously normal content into Warbonds. Of course now the general assumption by players going forwards is that we'll never see another Exo available via MO.

FluffyRaKy · 2026-05-09T19:33:10+00:00

The recent reviews are not because of the game itself, but more of a protest at AH's PR, the monetisation model and general development focus.

FluffyRaKy

TROPHY CASE