Reply To: No challenge?
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.
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.