Beta 22.02.17 feedback

[Danubian]

Is it just me or are:

1.) Ranged enemies MUCH more accurate, even at night (its like they made crossbows and bows? more accurate, and more accurate during the night, my people are getting hit all over the place);

2.) The amount of injuries is insane; i cant make any money because after every battle i need to heal at least like 3 wounds. Ranged in particular are notorious for inflicting injuries, my friking archers cant go through one battle without being crippled by enemy archers…

[dltoster]

I think injuries will be less often when you get decent armor – because more hits will damage you lesser then needed for trauma trigger. So this is early game disaster. And high casualty rate too. I think it is realistic because missed hit without trauma means only bruises and scratches that heals in a day or two without medicine.

[Ioci]

Danubian wrote:

Is it just me or are:

1.) Ranged enemies MUCH more accurate, even at night (its like they made crossbows and bows? more accurate, and more accurate during the night, my people are getting hit all over the place);

2.) The amount of injuries is insane; i cant make any money because after every battle i need to heal at least like 3 wounds. Ranged in particular are notorious for inflicting injuries, my friking archers cant go through one battle without being crippled by enemy archers…

same here, i used to love assaulting the raider camp during the night, range accuracy repels my 4 hex rush, they are in numbers, yes, but they also hit a lot, like they have 50% hit chance.

now i start bring some low lvl light armor guys to draw attention from those marksmen, it works sometime, if my alphas could crush the other side of the enemy line quickly.

[Yolan]

Some feedback for veteran difficulty level, iron man mode. Played two party wipes. (Both times to darn necromancers! Damn I hate necromancers.)

Basically, I love it. Keeping in mind that I’ve always played iron man style, even when it wasn’t available as an option, I think the difficulty is much more balanced. A few things I love:

1. Balanced quest progression. Previously, I had trouble running out of lower level quests to do. Now there is just enough. You still have to be careful with your budgeting and overall management, but so long as you are, you aren’t too likely to fall apart from lack of quests, or from being forced into taking a quest that is too high for you. A small criticism might be that there are a few too many fetch quests (stolen item quests). I’d lower their number relative to other quests a little bit.

2. Balanced enemy spawning. Previously, I would often get wiped out by goblins, orcs, etc. that wandered around the landscape. Now the human world actually feels -human-. If you go out into the wilds, you might get yourself into trouble, but stay near towns and you are more likely to run into other human beings than monsters (although of course I imagine the greenskin invasion scenario would change this). This feels much better.

3. Better party development via new goal system. I -really- like the mini goals. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about them when I first heard of the idea, but I think they have been executed excellently. My parties feel a bit more like they have something they are striving to achieve, and as they gather nice objects like the banner, or the sash, I feel that much more attached to them (and bummed out when they die). Also, the new little occurrences and stories that difference classes can cause to pop up really add more color.

4. Nice quest variety. I love now how quests to raid a place actually occur when there is a place nearby, as opposed to just spawning the place when required by the quest. A few times, I’ve found a location, walked on past it, and returned later when a quest was offered for me to go there. Cool.

5. Art. Love the new art. Really pleasant to look at.

6. Reputation. Another cool thing to strive towards improving. Love it.

7. Retirement/party wipe. Really nice. Such a kick in the gut when your guys have a good run, then die like dogs and have their names forgotten. Or when you retire, and end up in complete penury. Trying to actually give your heroes the fate their deserve becomes a motivation for you as the player.

Some issues:
1. I once had a quest location spawn across a bay, on a peninsula. So, to get there from the issuing village, I would have to walk 2.5 days one way, 5 days round trip. Making it unprofitable. However once I accepted it, refusing also would lower my reputation. Felt a bit like a bug. Maybe add some code to check not just raw distance from the town, but how far it would take the player to walk.
2. Necromancers attacking towns. Twice now I have accepted one skull level quests to defend towns from bandits, and both times it turned out that a necromancer was attacking. Each time I was absolutely routed, even with a group of 8 level 4 men, well armed and with some decent tactics/tricks. I like how difficult this guy is, but it seems a bit raw that he has no maximum level on how many zeds he can resurrect each round. I even had him raise 4 or maybe 5 in a single round. Yikes.
3. Raider groups for low level quests are often a pack of 6-8 thugs. Happy to have the easy fight, but it would be nice if each group had at least one leader character. He doesn’t need to be very tough, but make him identifiable in some manner.

[Danubian]

Ioci wrote:

Danubian wrote:

Is it just me or are:

1.) Ranged enemies MUCH more accurate, even at night (its like they made crossbows and bows? more accurate, and more accurate during the night, my people are getting hit all over the place);

2.) The amount of injuries is insane; i cant make any money because after every battle i need to heal at least like 3 wounds. Ranged in particular are notorious for inflicting injuries, my friking archers cant go through one battle without being crippled by enemy archers…

same here, i used to love assaulting the raider camp during the night, range accuracy repels my 4 hex rush, they are in numbers, yes, but they also hit a lot, like they have 50% hit chance.

now i start bring some low lvl light armor guys to draw attention from those marksmen, it works sometime, if my alphas could crush the other side of the enemy line quickly.

Do you also get the feeling that injuries happen insanely often? In particular from ranged weapons (maybe from damage that ignores armor?)?

[Wargasm]

RusBear wrote:

Ancient dead.
It looks very interesting tactical , but T2 and higher – completely out of balance. As characteristics (no moral, no fatigue, resistance, good armor, very strong weapon) and also the time of occurrence, number of enemies , payment. About their mages I say nothing – this is nonsense anyway, I was against them as soon as they announced.

But I won the updated Ancient Dead scenario (still called “Undead – Line Battle” or something like that) at the first attempt. I even finished off the final one with a scavenged 2-hands cleaver. I’ve still never won the orc or goblin line-battle scenario …

[Anonymous]

Danubian wrote:

Is it just me or are:

1.) Ranged enemies MUCH more accurate, even at night (its like they made crossbows and bows? more accurate, and more accurate during the night, my people are getting hit all over the place);

2.) The amount of injuries is insane; i cant make any money because after every battle i need to heal at least like 3 wounds. Ranged in particular are notorious for inflicting injuries, my friking archers cant go through one battle without being crippled by enemy archers…

At day 80 so far and lost 5 brothers. 1 died to Hoggart, 1 died to a bandit archer in the early game, 3 died to mass crossbow shots from noble house armies (endgame crisis is the noble house war). I’d wager most of the damage my party has taken in the entire game has been from archers, despite my entire party using sword/kite shields. They seem insanely strong right now and I can’t figure out how I’m supposed to counter them. I think what’s happening is the archers aren’t actually hitting the brother they target but instead are hitting brothers standing next to or in front of them with extreme accuracy. I’ve noticed myself, when using javelins, that I hit neighboring enemies more often than I actually hit the enemy I target. I almost always throw my javelins at enemy billmen and others without shields, but usually my javelins miss to the side and hit the guy with the kite shield using shieldwall anyways. I think the problem is that the accuracy of the shot is only calculated for the person you’re aiming at, and if it misses (or it gets blocked by someone in front) it has a chance to just automatically hit the person. The ranged defense from holding a kite shield doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not the actual target of the shot so it just ignores your ranged defense and hits you automatically if you’re standing next to or in front of the actual target and the shot misses. Couple this perhaps with increased crossbow accuracy, the heavy crossbow which can one-shot your guys through 300 armor helmets, and the enemy noble armies having like 2-3 of these heavy crossbows + another 2-3 light crossbows that all wait till the end of their turns so they shoot you twice in a row without you being able to move and while standing far enough away that even your archers can’t hit them and there’s basically nothing you can do to avoid getting rinsed.

[RusBear]

2Wargasm

Good RNG in single battle – not a balance…
*

Anonymous wrote:

…The ranged defense from holding a kite shield doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not the actual target of the shot so it just ignores your ranged defense and hits you automatically if you’re standing next to or in front of the actual target and the shot misses…

I had the same suspicion – and this is very bad
*
500 gold for 1 skull orc contract – 4 warriors and 6 young. Sad that you can’t kill quest giver untill noble war begin…

[Wargasm]

– The MAIN difference I’ve noticed regarding ranged attacks with the current release is that EVERYONE (your starters, new recruits, and presumably your enemies as well) has HIGHER ranged skill and so gets in hits more often (hence more noticing of the insane potential damage they do)
– Another small change is that (without mastery) crossbows have been upped to 50% of damage potentially ignoring armour (up from 45%), but there was a time when it was 65-70% without needing the mastery perk (which didn’t exist at the time)
– The increased incidence of hitting non-intended targets (even ones in shieldwall with a kite) has existed ever since the injury+perk update when crossbows were made less powerful (i.e. armour-ignoring ability lessened without the new mastery perk, and no longer able to fire at enemies blocked by comrades without severe risk of hitting comrades)
– I think the idea behind it is that the shieldwall is formed with the intention of blocking blows in melee, not to stop a stray bolt/arrow from ricocheting off the edge of someone else’s shield/armour/weapon (nor to block a bolt/arrow unleashed from behind you by a comrade)
– I think that, without the Bullseye perk, the chance to hit the intended target is 50% of what it would be if not blocked, and then the other 50% of the unblocked chance is divided into a 20-25% chance to hit either of the two blocking tiles (or 40-50% if there’s one tile blocking in a straight line) and probably a tiny % chance to hit any of the other adjacent tiles
– My companion crossbowman had the Quick attribute that increases initiative, and I gave him the Dodge and Anticipation perks to protect against enemy fire, but then got killed in a crossbow duel when he had a height advantage and an unblocked target, and came back to life with partially collapsed lungs

[nope100500]

@RusBear and @Wargasm
And that’s why I already wrote a suggestion to show hit chances not only for primary target of ranged attack, but for everyone around too (since they definitely can be hit).

[Wargasm]

RusBear wrote:

2Wargasm

Good RNG in single battle – not a balance…

The point is: a full-strength ancient dead force still seems less formidable than an equivalent orc or goblin one. I’m pretty sure the orc and goblin scenarios are unwinnable. I’ve tried many, many times with each, without success, but I won the ones against the ancient dead and necro-savants (“Walk in the Woods”) at the first attempt. Necro-savants are basically exactly the same as vampires but with different graphics and with a weapon that wrecks more havoc against armour but without a +10 hit-chance.

As for “balance”, it’s so difficult to judge, because different campaigns (regardless of difficulty settings) can seem so different. There are some (even on “normal” level) when you need to travel to a far-away fortification just to fulfil the terms of the opening contract, and the only way is along a narrow coast/swamp path or through woods/hills/mountains, and your half-naked trio keeps getting chased from all directions by bandits (sorry: brigands), direwolves or occasionally even goblins, and all of them seem far too powerful for that point in the game. But then on other campaigns (even on “expert”) the roads and woods seem largely free of hostile forces for a long time, and you start close to towns that have cheap tools, cheap wildmen and prizefighters, and cheap damaged padded leather that you can repair with your tools, and everything seems so much simpler.

[dltoster]

RusBear wrote:

2Wargasm

AGiantPie wrote:

…The ranged defense from holding a kite shield doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not the actual target of the shot so it just ignores your ranged defense and hits you automatically if you’re standing next to or in front of the actual target and the shot misses…

I had the same suspicion – and this is very bad

Yes, it is interesting to know – whether collaterial miss can hit a shield.

Question to players mostly, could you tell me, does a shield hit (striking by a melee weapon and hitting a shield with a slightly shield damage I think) count as “hit” or “miss” situation in terms of a hit probability from tooltip? If it is kind of hit but still completely deflected by a shieldman i’d like to know a percentage of this event and on what it depends in numbers.

[Danubian]

dltoster wrote:

RusBear wrote:

2Wargasm

AGiantPie wrote:

…The ranged defense from holding a kite shield doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not the actual target of the shot so it just ignores your ranged defense and hits you automatically if you’re standing next to or in front of the actual target and the shot misses…

I had the same suspicion – and this is very bad

Yes, it is interesting to know – whether collaterial miss can hit a shield.

Question to players mostly, could you tell me, does a shield hit (striking by a melee weapon and hitting a shield with a slightly shield damage I think) count as “hit” or “miss” situation in terms of a hit probability from tooltip? If it is kind of hit but still completely deflected by a shieldman i’d like to know a percentage of this event and on what it depends in numbers.

Im pretty sure hitting a shield is always a miss. The animation of hitting a shield is just graphics. Also to my knowledge you only damage a shield with actual shield breaking, mostly axe related, skills.

[Wanderer]

One little detail concerning shields: a miss is considered a hit on the shield. The hit on the shield still deals 1 damage to the shield, meaning if it only had 2-3 hit points after using Split Shield, it might break anyways.

[Danubian]

The game is basically unplayable for me now, this is just ridiculous how much damage im taking from enemy ranged units.

Literally every battle as at least half a dozen injuries from archers/crossbowmen alone…

[Author]

Posts