New update a bit OP

Feedback/Feature Requests
197

I think this thread is both civil and instructive.

Agreeing to disagree is only a viable option if there is nothing actually important at stake.
Obviously, this is about a game so it’s not about something important.

But, objective fact is a hard thing to neglect and that is why people argue about even small things.
In this case, even though it’s not about something important, the objective fact is that the game has been changed dramatically.
That can’t be denied.

Further, it can’t be denied that harvesters now shoot “instant missiles” all the time or that hunters now teleport into battle or that some of them have sniper rail guns or that buildings/walls no longer offer protection. These are just some examples of said change.

I personally assume it is intentional though I can’t see why and as a paying customer I disagree with how my purchase has been modified.

So, my suggestion is simply to withdraw this update and let things get back to the way they were. I look forward to another island dlc coming and hope my game will have cooled off by then.

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198

I have actually made extensive use of smoke grenades and EMP rockets, but the smoke feels much less effective after this past update. One thing I’m not sure about is what the role of the enemy optics component is. If I destroy it will they not be able to see me? Be less aware? Or does it disable their abilities to use things like IR vision and OPV? If they have IR or OPV can they just see through smoke? I would love to know the answer to some of these.

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I don’t think anyone’s denying the prevalent issues and bugs. But some like the challenge that came with the update, and the changes to Machine AI, so they’ll disagree when other say it’s too difficult.

It’s easy for the discussion to heat up when people disagree with eachother.

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For us the challenge is good, but the laws of physics should be in order.
If the gas crenade is exploded on the roof, the gass should rise up instead of coming down inside the building.

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As a clarifying question: How many people supportive of the new update are using heavy sneak/hack builds, with the intent of avoiding all possible combat?

How many folks supportive of the new update are already high level with most/all gear, quest completions, etc?

One of the big problems with the human mind is we quite often subconsciously presume ‘our way’ is ‘the right way’, and forget there are other ways. Often enough, people do this without even being aware of it. When it comes to games, especially ‘freeform’ games like this one, it’s incredibly easy to forget what it was like when you started, or to not even think of what taking other options in a skill tree might entail losing.

At current, combat with anything above prototypes is a hard lose proposition, and yet paradoxically if you DON’T dump points into one of the combat trees to get Vanguard, you’re screwed the first time a Concussion Rifle fires at you. This is simple mathematics - one of them leaving me at 12 health maths out at roughly 140 damage. Considering that Concussion Rifles can now appear on military Hunters, and are in fact quite frequent - I’ve seen them spawn on every single Hunter called by a Harvester - and Vanguard becomes required for not dying on first contact. In theory, someone COULD buy all 3 levels of +max health and dig far enough into the combat tree for armor 1 - that would leave them with 6 health after getting rifle’d, and needing to eat 5 small/3 medium/2 large medkits to get back to full. Far, far more than they’re getting back from a single Hunter.

Is there a flaw in my logic so far? If so, please point it out; I don’t mean that sarcastically, either. I’m fine with being wrong, because it’s an opportunity to learn.

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I can’t speak for others. Personally I’ve currently got three characters with different builds and different weapon setups. The stealthy one is naturally not very good at combat with massive amounts of enemies so, that one’s difficult to play but very satisfying to sneak around with.

The other two are max levelled with endgame gear. They’re good at big battles, though I still play in Adventure Mode most of the time.

Fourth slot I leave free for hardcore characters. This way I can experience the game from level 1 with no items, and take on challenges like a new player would.

There’s definitely some balance issues to even out, no flaws in the logic there.

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With respect, there’s also some legitimate frustrations being vented. It feels like there’s a consensus that something is wrong with the current balance update, regardless of whether people are enjoying it or not.

I would like to say, this kinda illustrates the value of a more modular difficulty, controlling things like enemy durability, frequency, aggression, and awareness separately.

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A final set of thoughts:

As it stands, combat against mil+ bots is a hard-lose scenario - unless you face-zerg, you’re gonna burn all your medical supplies with fair odds of not actually finishing the fight. Yet there are still multiple missions that require you to fight mil+ Hunters, and at least one that requires you to fight a mil Tank. Have not come across any that explicitly require you to square off with a Harvester, but I’ve not completely explored everywhere.

If ‘detection=death’ is the intended gameplay paradigm, then these missions are as self-contradictory as putting the FEV in the purifier in Fallout 3 - at that point in that game, it’s impossible to not know that your character will be killed by the contamination. The only redeeming point in Bethesda’s favor regarding that particular scenario is the player has the option of saying “are you frikkin’ stupid? That will kill me!” and giving the poison to someone for incineration. At current, Gen Zero, sadly, lacks the affirmative ability to refuse the suicide mission - I am in effect told “If you pull this lever, you will have an anvil dropped on your head. To proceed in the game, you must pull this lever.”

If they want this level of brutal in the combat, then they need to rework quests such that you’re not ordered to pick fights, and make the stealth tree non-optional - reduce the max level cap by the number of points and just auto-add them for your first X levels. Otherwise, they’re setting players up for a frustrating, painful experience of the kind that has already got them pretty heavily review-bombed - I haven’t left a review, by the way, positive or negative, and do not intend to do so, as the game is not yet ‘complete’.

…and I think that may be part of the problem - the devs really haven’t decided what they want the game to BE, in the end, have they? There’s still a tug-of-war between the hard-stealth, detection=death style games in the Amnesia vein, and the more free-form, exploratory-ambient, hard-but-fair combat, questing/looting game they had before this update, isn’t there?

If so, that’s a problem, and not one any patch can solve.

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205

Well, there was something good too.
We were wondering that when we are going to get better guns. We had roamed through almost all the regions but we were still having three crown weapons.
After the patch we finally got four and five crown weapons (magnum and semi automatic shotgun).

So if you were balancing the game that people already have higher level weapons that might be part of the problem. Was it a bug that there were no higher level weapons to get?
So, if some people have already master weapons, they might like the extra challenge.

Anyway, that is a problem for us who don’t.

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I remember one that required you to, at least, deal with an objective that was being guarded by a FNIX harvester. AFIAK, that Harvester is mission related, so it should be a guaranteed spawn.

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I’m back with a fresh ax to grind with this mess of an update! First one on the chopping block, or grinding wheel (it’s actually called a whet (that is spelled correctly) stone) if we’re sticking with the ax metaphor, the topic of much lamentation of late: hunters. I’ve been trying to pin down exactly what is the root cause of this insane spike in difficulty we have all witnessed, and this time I think I’ve hit the nail (or ax) on the head: it’s the hypersensitivity of hunters that is the source of so much pain. Hunters themselves have not gotten meaningfully more difficult to fight or kill, but they have gotten a lot harder to avoid. Someone must’ve hit zero one to many times or misplaced a decimal point because Hunters are about an order of magnitude more alert than they were prior to the update. Both the range and detection speed are very high, and once players are detected hunters can track them for miles, even through walls and terrain. This has to be a bug, because right now hunters are about to put seekers out of a job. I don’t think that Avalanche would do something as stupid as making one of their own machines completely obsolete. Hunters are meant to be a solid foot soldier, more than an annoyance (runners), but less than a challenge unto themselves (tank). Right now they do not fill that role because they are detecting players from much too far away, and because so many are in range they end up converging on players in massive swarms that keep growing in size unless they are constantly being taken down by the players. The harvester situation only exacerbates the problem by increasing the number of hunters there are in the world to detect players.

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my guy i only have 40+ hours of this game and i got amlost all 4 stars and one 5 star rocket launcher then i fought a tank a harvester and a pile of dogs and hunters and got 1 advanced a bit of ammo that doesnt even compensate what i used and a propane tank… no it does not change the loot drop you got lucky thats all…

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It’s not a run and gun anymore.

After 25 minutes in the forest, and 4052 XP later - head on does not work anymore.

Distraction is the only way to clear them out methodically, but I still had my ass handed to me having to pop 3 adrenaline sticks to the 2 tanks that were raining fire non stop.

I’d also highly recommend paramedic kits on stand-by just in case you spawn into a fustercluck like I seem to keep doing. Patience, kill smart, don’t expose yourself.

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Distraction is good. I hope they improve distraction capability. Like remote triggered arrays or remote detonations. Or interactive sirens in towns.

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I’ll chip in on the refund side of it. I work for the Xbox UK customer support side of Microsoft.

You’ll have to call them direct and explain that the title is not as expected because of all the known issues providing of course you got the game recenetly. I wouldn’t bother if your past a months gameplay.

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Hello, I’m on ps4 pro, my console is new. Bugs have been around for a year since the game was released. But since the last update, it’s been a disaster. Decrease in fps. My game reached 2 fps yesterday after some very hectic fights !! Once the alert has been given, there are too many enemies. They appear out of nowhere !! In easy mode the enemies do too much damage and we do not enough.The robots that teleport into buildings. Rocket fire as robots spam endlessly. Flame thrower running through walls. Sound bugs. The sound of breathing is unbearable. The crafting that is useless. For 1% protection, it is useless to craft anything. I stop there, it’s already not bad … Sorry for the bad English. Have a nice day.

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Topics merged.

//Mod

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Car alarms going off when you shoot them would be a great way to distract enemies.

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If it’s one of the creators reading this then please do something. I play as an adventurer because I want to experience the game’s story. but after I bought the expansion it is impossible to move the robots see me through mountains, walls, doors so please fix the AI. Sincerely, dissatisfied ps4 player.

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Merged topics.

//Mod