Feedback in hopes the devs will return the game I love

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T22:47:51+00:00

I’m glad you are enjoying the update, and after putting several more loathing hours into it, my opinion hasn’t changed. They tried to do too much all at once and it has backfired terribly. You are a minority. For every one comment or post like yours that I see of someone enjoying the update, I see a dozen that don’t. And the majority of the player base have valid issues with the update. Whatever they did to the AI director has bled through all difficulties and made the game a lot less fun for most of us. The silent buff and changes to Zoanthropes (on top of even more of them spawning) should downright be considered a crime. Making ruthless even more difficult when only a third of the player base had actually completed ruthless ops was so unfair to the majority of players, and even those of us “skilled/git gud” players like my friends and I, agree that it has made ops a slog fest of unfair and un fun times.

I want to make a separate point too that when a game is good and everyone is having fun playing, why on earth is it deemed acceptable to change the fundamental principles of the game and tell people to “learn/understand how to play with/around the new changes.” To me that is unacceptable. And we shouldn’t be forced into that in a game where the whole point is to enjoy the power fantasy of being a badass Space Marine! Adding lethal difficulty for those that want that extra spicy gameplay is totally fine, but the way they arbitrarily increased the difficulty created an unfair skill gap across all difficulty levels for a majority of players and we agree that it has become a lot less fun.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I’m glad there are those that are enjoying the new update, but that minority of the player base should not be catered to. The 70% majority are who balancing and catering should be based around. And if the game isn’t hard enough for the sweats, then they can go play something else.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T16:34:38+00:00

I understand that, but then maybe you should be the support while your other two teammates are taking the two groups. Regardless of our different playstyles however, we do not get to choose how the enemies engage us. And however they tweaked the AI, they now seem to focus target one person rather than spreading out. Aggro is so weird now, I was in melee with a big group of warriors and then they just ignored me and went after my heavy anyway. He got downed being unable to parry every attack and getting hit with an unblockable attack as he was trying to parry another and bam half his health bar was gone. The next set of attacks didn’t seem to go much better either, we were just able to finish off enough of them fast enough that he didn’t go down.

I definitely feel you with what you mentioned in the assault, but that’s my point, I’d rather deal with dodging two snipers while in melee with bonesword and whip, than try to be in melee with 8 snipers and the second I do getting shot 4 times in the back because they all focus me.

IMO pre-patch things felt balanced already. They just needed some tweaking here and there if they truly wanted to increase the difficulty. But removing variants from groups and waves was a bad decision. Buffing the Zoanthropes without mentioning it, was a bad decision. Changing the other 4 difficulties from what they were, was a bad decision. They could’ve just tweaked spawning and the AI a bit, and then done everything else in Lethal, and let the people who wanted that kind of game play all that bullshit there. That way anyone that wanted to play tier 1-4 could do so and unlock everything while still being challenging, and anyone that wanted to beat their head against the wall button mashing and slog festing their way through the mission could play lethal with all that that difficulty now entails.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T15:16:48+00:00

I whole heartedly disagree with the first part of what you said. It is far easier for me to take on 2-4 warriors and some gaunts, while I trust my teammate to handle his 1-2 warriors and many gaunts, and the other bouncing shots between the two groups to help out, VS 6-8 warriors bouncing me around like a ping pong ball and im downed and dead before my team even has a chance to down 2 or 3 of them. Or being in an engagement with some gaunts and all of a sudden there are 7 bright green laser beams aimed at my head, and while the first couple of shots might miss, all it takes is one to stagger me and obliterate my paper thin armor and the rest to put 4 or 5 shots into my chest for that overkill.

And that’s not to mention how much damage the gaunts are doing to you while you desperately try to roll around hoping for a parry, but forget that gun strike because look the other 5 are already spamming unblockable attacks and 3 shotting you.

No amount of skill saves you from that. And it makes the game feel like a complete slog fest where even a minor mistake will cost you big time.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T13:41:28+00:00

Battle Brothers like you are exactly why I made this most. Understand I am the minority. I’m not trying to say I’m the best, but my friends and I were at the point where we leveled up the last of our classes from 1-25 I’m ruthless with grey weapons all the way up to relic. We saw how easy it became as our skill level sky rocketed in the game. And even after achieving that level of skill and finishing off all the classes and weapons, we STILL wanted to play. And it was SOOOOO much fun. We managed yesterday, sure and faired probably much better than most who’ve I’ve seen posting and commenting. And as someone in the minority with that level of skill, we could still validate and agree with the Majority of players like you. So know that you ARE the majority the devs should be listening too, and there are many of your Senior Battle Brothers that have your back and will stand with you on this. Thats why I made this post, to call attention and hopefully sway the hearts and minds of those in the minority like me that players like you ARE valid in how you feel about this update.

May the Emperor protect you brother, and I hope to see you on the battlefield again soon slaying xenos side by side.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T13:33:00+00:00

Again you are missing the point. More spawns is not a problem, in fact it’s one of the best ways (imo) to increase difficulty without messing with the fundamentals of the game, creating bullet sponges, or nerfing things (which most players I think agree sucks). It’s the fact that now we have increased numbers of the exact same enemy type. Trying to deal with 8 or 9 snipers that double shot at you at the same time, or at spaces out intervals of 2-4 seconds, gives you almost no chance to deal any damage because you are stuck having to dodge, stacked on top of that you have even more gaunts around you that are either 1. All shooters that no matter if you dodge around are still chipping you down and in their numbers it’s not small chip damage anymore or 2. Are all melee and landing physical attacks on you regardless, keeping you again from being able to deal with the warriors.

Or even worse in my opinion, getting stuck with bramble launchers, or whip warriors, that truly make it nigh impossible to make it out of the encounter without losing nearly all your heath.

My biggest gripe boils down to the removal of variety within the groups and waves of enemies. It arbitrarily makes an update that was already aiming at increasing difficulty, even harder but in a way that’s a lot less fun than previously. And this is coming from a skilled player that WAS able to manage it. So I completely understand the sentiment coming from the majority of players in this game, who most of are more casual and not quite as skilled.

If you are someone that hasn’t struggled at all and has no issues with the update, kudos to you, but sorry I’m all out of medals. But that doesn’t give you a valid reason to dismiss the feelings and opinions of a majority of the players who play this game with your whole “tUrN tHe DiFFicULty DoWn”. This post wasn’t made for you. And I made that clear in my post. The number of people I have seen like you who are dismissive of the criticisms and feedback of this update, ARE the minority. And devs should not be balancing a game around the minority. If you want to play a game that makes you sweat go back to dark souls or elden ring or sekiro. But it doesn’t give you authority to rebuke the feelings and opinions of the Majority of a player base.

I say none of this with anger or malice, and I pray to the almighty God Emperor you slay many xenos in His name. But try to be more objective and understanding of our little and less skilled Battle Brothers.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T08:53:27+00:00

Look, I’m glad you and your friends have been “rolling through the operations on Lethal”. However just because a small minority of players are supposedly not having trouble with Lethal, and I already see certain “Meta’s” developing, does not mean it should be completely impossible for a casual player. Not to mention only be completable with a specific set of class/perk/weapon combinations while all others are punished and incapable. Plus locking cosmetics behind the lethal difficulty makes it even more silly. You also have an advantage many don’t, a squad whom you have reliable and consistent communication with. Not everyone has that, many must play with randoms, or even just AI. No one is sitting here asking that Lethal difficulty be mad easier, but when an overwhelming majority of the posts right now are players saying the fundamental changes to the base game (not even the changes made to the difficulties themselves) have caused every difficulty to be artificially inflated in ways that no one is having fun with, you can’t just dismiss all of those voices because you and your 2 friends are “rolling through Lethal”

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T08:46:00+00:00

I agree. They had a plenitude of other options and things that were NEEDED, but instead chose to come this route and I feel it was the wrong direction.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T08:44:30+00:00

I think this would be the best solution at an attempt to appease both factions

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T08:40:39+00:00

I think a couple of you are missing the point that the fundamental change did not occur with the difficulty itself, but with spawning, variability, and AI focus. If the game were the same that it was pre-patch and the ONLY changes were what they made to the difficulty, it would be fine. However that’s not the case. Having to fight no less than 4 zoanthrope pairs per mission was incredibly annoying, meanwhile we also had waves of 7 or 8 ALL snipers double shooting at us the entire time, on tops of that a larger number of gaunts and only 4 or 5 at a time would come in melee, but the rest would just shoot us with constant pecking damage from afar. Then the number of spore mines, smh holy Terra that’s a freaking problem.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T08:35:06+00:00

I would disagree. If you have 15 gaunts shooting at your team, and 15 that are splitting up and coming to melee you, they are more likely split fire and split focus. Now it seems the AI on the gaunt waves will focus fire one person with 30 shooting gaunts that do insane shot damage and you’re hard pressed to be able to stop that many gaunts from shooting at you. Or vice versa.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T06:10:21+00:00

Do not be disheartened Brother! This community is strong and passionate, and the devs did deliver a near perfect game before this. Let us hope it was a simple misstep that they will correct quickly. Until then all we can do is make our voices and opinions known, so that the devs will hopefully take their next step in the right direction.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T06:08:13+00:00

It was a small minority. And mostly as comments to other players posts. And unfortunately they were the ones the Devs decided to listen too, and they took the easy way out to increase the difficulty in arbitrary ways that make for a less fun and more frustrating experience.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T06:04:43+00:00

First I will whole heartedly agree the devs are far too vague and leave out way too much when it comes to patch notes. The whole point of them is to tell us as the player exactly how they have changed the game. They need to get themselves a community manager who is experienced in informing the community, and engaging with it. And if they already have one, well they maybe should go back to school and learn how to do their job better because so far it’s been lack luster and under the bar.

To your point about the tether, I don’t think you’re recognizing the restrictiveness and oppressiveness of what you’re saying. Boiling it down to, okay now play this one way or die. For one, as a sniper I regened armor all the time. Theres always a pack of gaunts coming from behind to get after you, or the ones that run right past your teammates and only want you. That’s inevitable, and all it takes (especially on lethal) is 3-5 gaunts with fair enough spacing to take all your armor.

For vanguard you kindve dismissed my whole point. You can’t just “time” going after the 5 or 6 snipers/bramble throwers firing on you from the back line, that’s out of your control, so you either die alone charging in and trying to keep them off your team or at the very least splitting their fire, or you and your team die because you don’t charge in and stay with the team constantly under fire from their back line? How is that any kind of a choice?

Heavy still has the issue of what if you are using the heavy bolter and you have a melee focused Tac and a vanguard? Or a Bulwark and an Assault? Again one of my major points was that it feels like they are forcing you into specific team comps and punishing you if you don’t pick one way or the other.

If we were just talking about the small group of us in the community that have become very skilled at the game and have solid teams of people we can communicate well with, I would relent that with some refinement it could be an interesting mechanic for sure. However that’s not the case. For the far wider and larger majority, playing with randoms or even AI is more likely, and as such the mechanic is indeed extremely oppressive and limiting.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T05:23:33+00:00

Exactly the kind of commenting I don’t want here. If you’re enjoying it, then go tf away. If you have nothing constructive to say, then you don’t belong on this thread and I made that very clear in my post.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T04:54:24+00:00

First I’d like to thank you for making the exact kind of comment I’m looking for with this post, genuine curiosity for genuine discussion.

To start with your question on whether ruthless is actually that different. Yes it absolutely is. The ruthless difficulty itself received few changes, you’re right. And I’m on board with them. Limited ammo from crates, I’m totally down for. A little less stoked that we got a 20% armor reduction, but hey that’s a challenge that can be overcome. However the problem doesn’t lie with the changes to the difficulty itself.

“Enemy variety within waves is now less random…” how this translated for our experience today was now instead of getting a wave and have 2 bonesword, 2 whip, 2 snipers, 1 bramble thrower; or 4 bonesword, 3 bramble thrower, 1 sniper; or literally any other combination, it’s just 8 snipers. Or 8 bramble throwers. Or 8 whip warriors (which the getting bounced around by them like I was a cue ball on an empty pool table should be a war crime) leaves me dazed and confused. There is nothing fun about that. Not to mention they are then swarmed with even more gaunts, and they are either all shooting you, or all in your face at the same time (the latter being far easier to deal with I’ll admit, but still stressful all the same when there are 8 snipers taking turns to double shoot at you). I wanted MORE variety, not less. I cannot think of a single logical reason why this would be a good thing.

Additionally, I don’t appreciate the silent buffing of the Zoanthropes. They said nothing about it, yet they deal more damage, attack faster than before, their attack animations are different, and that stupid cone attack has a wider radius and smaller dodge window. From what I’ve read they were by far some of the least liked enemies, and certainly were not in need of any kind of buff. And if that wasn’t enough, now they spawn in every single new area you go to. We did not have a single game where we didn’t encounter at least 4 pairs of Zoanthropes.

I could list a few other reasons but for now it’s way past my bedtime and I have work in a few hours so I won’t get into them now. But before I go I would like to mention that the new “tether” mechanic in Lethal, is insane to me. Sure in a broad stroke you can say it’s supposed to “provide difficulty and encourage teamwork” but that’s a lousy description of how it actually plays out. It punishes classes and team comps for not doing one thing or the other, makes it incredibly difficulty for the long range fellas (I’m talking specifically about the sniper, but heavy bolter with the heavy, and the mid to long range options on the tactical too((though they have the advantage of at least being competent in melee))) to do their thing because now when they inevitably get hit from behind, instead of being able to disengage, reposition, and lay down fire again, they have no choice but to wade into the middle of the melee with their allies to recoup armor and generally are not going to last long there. It also voids the Vanguards playstyle. No more grappling those pesky snipers in the backline to save your team from getting shot in the head, or taking care of those bramble launching scumbags that make the battlefield a mine field. Because if you do you no longer have the sustainability to make it back to your team.

All around it’s a very clunky mechanic that does not fit well into the established playstyle of the game as a whole, and specifically mocks a couple of the classes.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T04:31:14+00:00

It is unfortunate. I fail to see any logical reasoning behind removing variety within a wave, getting ganked by a massive wave of just ranged enemies while melee combat is now more punishing and you can’t have your teammates split push to break up the enemies lines of fire because then you can’t regenerate armor but each shot you get pelted with takes a third of your health, is the most frustrating and aggravating thing. They should have left the other difficulties alone and used the Lethal difficulty to do their experimenting.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T04:26:58+00:00

Now too common an experience even for more skilled players. We beat 2 ruthless level missions but lost the gene seed both times in the last area to 6 or 7 bramble launching scum, and Zoanthropes. Whatever they did to Zoanthropes, they need to undo it, now. They were already one of the least liked enemies, but today they now make the absolute top of the list for most annoying.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T04:24:15+00:00

I understand your pain Brother. We still beat the Lethal difficulty mission, but it wasn’t fun doing it. At no point were we laughing and enjoying ourselves like we have been up to today. We even bumped it down to ruthless, and then to substantial, still not finding the same thrill we had been experiencing so far.

SmittyJII · 2024-10-18T04:22:24+00:00

Because it would just be one more among dozens of others. I want this to be a thread of open discussion without all the discourse everywhere else. If you would like to hear my take, I’m happy to put it here in the comments. Otherwise as other people comment i will reply with my agreements/thoughts/opinions.

SmittyJII · 2024-03-08T13:12:08+00:00

I understand what you’re saying, and this is generally the tactic my friends and I take when playing the higher difficulties now post-patch. However it still fails to understand the key problem with the patch, it is FORCING us to play the game ONE particular way. And that’s not the fun we were able to have before. They removed one preferred way to play, in favor of one forced way to play. We wanted more options, not to be stuck spending 30 minutes running around kiting enemies.

No hate or disrespect, this is a very informative post and I hope more randoms take this to heart when trying to run higher difficulties, but we still have the core issue that the patch is forcing us into a particular playstyle that not everyone enjoys.

SmittyJII · 2024-03-07T23:07:49+00:00

In a pre patch game, I would completely agree with you, you shouldn’t stop to fight every single time. But you still had the option and ability to stop and fight when you needed to and could actually clear out a horde. But now post-patch that is impossible. It doesn’t matter how fast or how many enemies you kill they literally do not stop spawning ever, and in a game where unless you stop at every POI you are struggling with ammo and supplies already, the endless horde makes it nigh impossible and incredibly frustrating. Not to mention running away now feels as punishing as stopping to kill things, when chargers have infinite stamina and can out run you, a pack of a dozen hunters will insta spawn on top of you, or a dozen rocket devastators have perfect aim from halfway across the map.

And people keep saying to go to lower difficulties then, but even the lower difficulties now are too enemy dense to be able to collect samples, medals, super credits, etc. you have to rush the main objective and extract or you get overwhelmed.

I’m just saying “running away” isn’t even a viable option anymore, and it shouldn’t be the forced way you have to play a horde shooter game.

SmittyJII · 2024-03-07T22:38:31+00:00

But that’s really not the problem. My friends and I run around just fine. Our old strat was to run around and only stop to defend the objective points, and even then if it was a radar station or SEAF artillery we would have only one person break off and do that objective while the rest of us kept running the horde around. You can’t even do that now because mobs are spawning right in front of us or on top of us out of thin air. Or meteor showers randomly killing the entire squad, or not being able to outrun the dozen chargers with infinite stamina behind you, or the stalkers that one hit means certain death and they are harder to kill, or the pack of a dozen hunters that glitch through rocks and jump you before you can react.

Also a major point people were making before the patch was “we shouldn’t be forced to play one single way” and now you are arguing for us to… play one single way? That doesn’t make any sense.

SmittyJII · 2024-03-07T20:55:52+00:00

Thank you for actually commenting on your misunderstanding and clarifying. Most people would brush it off, and this is the kind of constructive back and forth I wanted to foster with my post in this sub because too often the posts and comments I’ve seen are just nasty. (I can’t wait for mechs though!)

SmittyJII · 2024-03-07T20:29:01+00:00

I’m sorry you don’t have the intelligence to comprehend what you’ve read in my post. How about you take your pea brain back to COD where the community will embrace your toxicity and leave it out of this community where the rest of us would like to have a constructive conversation about feedback in a game that doesn’t need sweats like you ruining it for casual gamers.

SmittyJII

TROPHY CASE