GOD

[GOD]

Did you play the scenarios? My advice is to do all of those before jumping into the game, so you’ve got a solid grip on combat and how some of the enemies work.

We’re not actually talking about making the early game harder. The early game is fine for the most part, with the things that are missing being in the pipelines. We’re talking about the late game. The actual end game hasn’t been implemented yet, so instead what I’m referring to is to when the player has build up a full group of mostly high level mercs who are all well-equipped and is taking on the strongest hideouts.

The strength of werewolves is that they are fast, hit multiple times and hit hard. Their defence, however, is relatively weak. This makes them an excellent target for spears, as they will continuously run into your spearwall and slowly kill themselves. This works even better if you can position your spearwall on a hill – a single merc can hold off an entire pack of werewolves this way. If you try to take them head on at low level you’ll lose many troops, but that’s the point. Shields, bows, spears, swords (for riposte) and the billhook can all easily be acquired early on and will make werewolves quite manageable. Since you are playing on easy, you can also afford good armour to increases your chances further. The only thing that difficulty level changes is the amount of gold you start with, but this makes for a huge difference, since you can buy lots of recruits and get good gear. Good gear and high levels make a huge difference, so focus on fighting bandits before taking on Orcs and Werewolves.

[GOD]

I don’t speak Spanish very well, so I’ll just post Let’s plays instead.

Tomme25 (who posts here):

Blitzkriegsler:

Writing Bull (in German):

[GOD]

Holy.Death wrote:

Overpowering enemies to reach your overpowerness is like making Ichigo Kurosaki reach yet another level of power in Bleach: after some time it got utterly ridiculous and didn’t really address the balance of power, because if you run into such overpowered enemies before you’re overpowered yourself you’re pretty much dead. I think enemies are in right spot. It’s the battle brothers who aren’t.
I think that at least reduction of experience gained is bound to happen. Why? Because you either make enemies stronger or you make your men gather experience slower. Slower experience gain means it will take them longer to level up, meaning they are more likely to die in combat, meaning you won’t level them up as easily, turning them into killing machines. This could be regulated by difficulty level (so far it only affects your starting resources and prices, if I am not mistaken).

Perhaps I worded that wrong, but I don’t mean powering up the late game opponents. I’m talking about adding the option for them to move side-ways, not moving them upwards. That is to say, making them more diverse so as to prevent the player from knowing what to expect when they are high level and fully equipped. So not perks on top of how they are now, but next to it -different versions of the same thing. Slowing down the levelling rate wouldn’t change that by the late game you should have high level bros wearing the best possible gear. More diversity should make being ready for everything more difficulty. I expect this to become less of an issue as more factions get introduced, but it is still something that I feel is worth to keep in mind.

Xoatl wrote:

Nice pic Trig, Do different parties nearby join in on battles like Mount and Blade? I haven’t noticed that in my game. Also the Necromancer does revive skeletons nearby. I met only one necromancer, had 20 skeletons and I had 12 brothers. They had the high ground and kept reviving but eventually I killed them all and chased down what looked like a wiederganger in a black hood. I didn’t catch the effect but I’m pretty certain he raised a skeleton nearby as he tried to run. Also what’s up with the ghouls? If they’re undead why do they have morale?

They’re Undead who are not dead, hence the morale.

[GOD]

I’ve never noticed much of a difference when using it in the amount of damage they do, mostly because the below 50% almost never gets a chance to trigger. Things tend to die pretty quickly when armour is no longer a factor at the moment, including when you’re armour scavenging with attacks that ignore it – Full Force satsifies all my damage needs for that. I only ever felt much of a need to give to anyone because those mercs were never going to have use for the other tier 1 offence perks. I’m looking forward though to trying it out on these beefy enemies that are going to get introduced, that’s pretty much exactly what this perk needs to make it more useful.

[GOD]

PsenBattle wrote:

Hey Death,
you are right, the late game is not properly balanced. The whole perk system was drastically changed just a few weeks before launch so we couldnt really balance-test it thoroughly against our high end enemies. As we are a very small team we always have to spend most of our time developing and sometimes the testing comes too short.
At the moment my impression is that if you manage to get by without ever really losing a battle, the Bros outscale our enemy progression slowly but surely over the course of a playthrough.
Rest assured were keeping an eye on this issue and wont hesitate to take measures once we feel we have enough feedback.
Cheers!

PS I wouldnt go so far to say “no challenge” by the way, as most people tend to complain the game is too difficult

I won’t say to those who think that it’s too difficult that they should ‘git gud’, but I will suggest they may want to get better. :P Certainly the game will stomp you into the dirt when you start out, but never in an unfair way. The key is to learn how to avoid unnecessary casualties and how not to have all your gear break constantly, at which point your core bros will turn into well-equipped killing machines. I agree with Holy.Death that the late game is too easy right now, though I would prefer seeing it rectified through beefing up the enemies a bit. Stuff like giving the enemy factions (more) traits and perks unique to them to play with, in order to keep the player sharp and to make the different high level opponents feel more diverse. I also expect that the difficulty curve will smooth out a bit eventually, once more factions get introduced that can challenge the player in different ways. In terms of difficulty, I’m of the opinion that top-of-the-line late game opponents should never feel easy, while by the end early game opponents should be manageable, though still deadly if you let them catch you off-guard.

Xoatl wrote:

I hate level caps, so please don’t do that. I’d like to see harder enemies, or just more of them in general. There should also be something I can do with all the cash I have. I’ve been stopping by the castle frequently but no matter how much I help everyone the best I find is a mail shirt. At the beginning of the game the castle had full lamellar, now there’s practically nothing.

Level caps are probably unavoidable. Otherwise student perk would become something you absolutely always want to pick. I mean, can you imagine a merc having Perfect Focus, Berserk, Battle Flow and Weapon Master coupled with high stats? The only difficulty would be getting into combat and from there on the battle is basically won. You could add Pathfinder and Brawny to ensure your streak doesn’t break, but it’s really not necessary. Just keeping the current number of perks wouldn’t balance it either, since you could still pump your stats into the stratosphere and go crazy.

[GOD]

It’s one of the things that I really like about this game – you don’t need a Berserker or Captain class, you can just make your own. Makes things feel more natural and not arbitrary like most games.
I feel you, 14 hour works days are a waste of time and the signs of deluded management. The game will most likely eventually get a DRM version, so if you have a spare lappie you’ll be able to play on that without having steam traffic tip someone off. :P

[GOD]

The utility tree already does this rather well with the Captain, Rally the Troops and Inspiring Presence perks. You can then assign those mercs ranks to match their envisioned role by changing their nicknames.

[GOD]

Sky wrote:

Yes, there should be an option where you can set the starting positions of every member like a default battle formation that is remembered by the game and applied whenever it is possible. Would be real PAIN to assemble in a tactic way before EVERY battle.

Maybe have the game remember how you arranged their deployment in the last battle. Saves effort on building a menu for it, while allowing you to make any necessary adjustments to the new scenario.

I think cavalry might not fit the relatively small scale of the engagements. Also uncertain as to how you’d gracefully implement them (they’d require tons of mechanics) while also ensuring that they don’t dominate combat.

[GOD]

But that’s the thing, having certain options or conveniences available can undermine what makes a game special because it conflicts with the established design. Imagine putting quest markers in Morrowind; it would utterly clash with the actual quest structure. Stuff like optional fast travel, toggable hit/ miss indicators, toggable floating damage numbers, even when optional, drastically change a game. The same goes for customisable character generation.

More choices are good when they are choices that fit within the design of the game, so having more options isn’t always a good thing. Full-on character creation would dilute this game’s design because of how it is strongly associated with a kind of beginning (the heroic kind) that doesn’t work here. Part of what makes Battle Brothers so interesting is the design that they’ve constructed so far and I’d hate to see it lost. We also have to keep in mind that the development team is small and that they have to pick carefully what they decide to work on. Full character generation would eat up time and resources better spent elsewhere.

[GOD]

Utility tree is pretty great, probably the best balanced one. Tier 1 lacks some flash, but tier 2 and 3 make up for that. You kind of have the issue that there’s a disconnect between the kinds of perks you get in the first tier and the second tier (more unique perks, rather than synergy), but that does mean that the tier 1 perks can be integrated rather well with offence or defence builds.

I think you’re right regarding Shield Bash. A chance to stun would fit with it being a shield. Could be too powerful though and infringe on the niche of the stunning weapons.

I haven’t gotten a good read yet on how effective Taunt actually is in triggering attackers, but it has a lot of potential for basing a build on due to being tier 1. Seems to work well with Return Favour and high resolve traits.

[GOD]

Agreed on Executioner. Currently useless. Might become useful if we get monsters with large amounts of health, rather than armour, and if the ‘below 50%’ part is removed. Right now it’s utterly inferior to Sundering Strikes.

Killing Frenzy would have been insane if it stacked, but it’s fine in its current state.

Push the Advantage doesn’t seem that OP to me, because you do need to set it up and then still have enough fatigue to utilise it.

Fast Adaption is powerful, but not too powerful. I’m fine with keeping it at 15%.

I think the power of Debilitate is acceptable, since you need to build up the user and set the attack up for it to become effective. As you say, nerfing would also run the risk of making it inferior to a passive perk. Maybe you could lower the percentage, but have it last several turns? That would stress the importance of multiple characters being able to benefit from it.

[GOD]

They could switch Nimble with Battle Forged. I adore Battle Forged so I’d hate to see it nerfed, but you’re right in that it’s kind of a no-brainer right now.

Steel Brow is great, but too weak for tier 3 perk. It’s just that it and Rotation are the only really powerful defence tier 2 perks, so it stands out.

Maybe make Nine Lives work once per turn? Powerful in certain situations, but you’re already near death and your armour is probably gone – it would fit the idea of a guy who won’t stay dead easily. Just needs a double tap.

Combine Hold Out and Fortified Mind into a single tier 2 perk. Move Anticipation to tier 1 and add another tier 2 perk. Being able to take both Anticipation and Nimble might be too useful for an offense oriented build, though, so it would require testing.

Return Favour synergises really well with Taunt. The defence tier 3 perks do feel less tempting than the tier 3 offense and utility perks. Going to need to play around with it a bit more to see how they stack up.

[GOD]

Maybe you could combine something like that with the way contracts are done? Have the contractor give you directions on how to get there where you need to go, but no actual target is shown on the map. Then you can go look for it yourself or buy the information from someone. You could even turn it into something of a quest line with you having to go find the right information broker for hard to find locations. Would add an opportunity for exploring, while also providing a natural alternative to it.

[GOD]

I’d like this, if instead of starting from scratch you’d start at the point in time at which you died. I’m not sure how they’d make it work with the narrative so this might not be worth the effort of implementing, but I do like the idea of a newly formed company trying to cope with an Orcish invasion. :D

[GOD]

I’m not sure what you mean then. Are you talking about a map that pops up while talking to the contractor that shows the target of said quest? If so, that feels way too intrusive for something that can easily be checked. What I mean by killing exploration would also still apply, as a map like that would involve the game showing you where the target is, rather than the player looking for where the contract will take them. It’s Morrowind versus Oblivion, with Morrowind feeling like a better fit for this game.

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