Reflections on Balance Changes to Robot Weapons

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This thread is about balance changes to robot weapons in the most recent patch, the one setting up for the Alpine Unrest DLC (and please leave Alpine Unrest itself out of this - I don’t have it, it’s not relevant and there are other threads for your spoilers). I’ll muse on the changes to damage received and how that’s altered my play. I am interested to hear from you as well despite what this post might look like. And yes, it’s not a Flick thread without some footnotes.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, with the new patch installed I quickly found I was no longer enjoying the game the same way. Or enjoying it much at all. But why? I’ve loved the game so far and don’t want to simply drop it. Is there something I can do to fix this? Am I perhaps not looking at this right?

@TherotcoD mentioned in another thread about hunters and their flechettes, and some of the changes we’ve seen. Fortunately I have past footage to compare, and going to the tapes I don’t find anything before like my recent experiences. As a post-patch example, I had a case where I was at 82 health, I got hit for 74 hp from a flechette shot, and while I’m ragdolled and helpless with 8 hp I was hit again. This is versus a single hunter. Shortly afterwards I was hit for 54 while dodging. I used to get hit for around 20 before the change. A prototype tick used to hit me for 0 with all the damage reduction I have, now they bite me for ~11. One bullet from an apocalypse runner will hit me for 40 (unless I drop what I’m doing and burn another medkit); those runners come in four-packs and are not conservative with their ammo. The shotguns on the fnix (or possibly military) runners now wing me for 27.

Incidents like the above are where my ‘Dates with Death, and a poll’ thread came from. I was wondering how ‘normal’ it is to get downed or killed, and get up again like that’s totally fine. That dying during combat is something that’s supposed to happen, and that I’m expected to get with the program.

Previously, a battle could take as long as five or six minutes. Sometimes more. The initiative would ebb and flow, I would have various things like position, ammo, weapon choices, deployment of utility items, healing and environment to manage, all in concert.1 But with my insistence that I stay alive, the rhythm of combat now keeps getting broken. I’m forced to go hide to heal up. Ducking behind a tree and tearing open a simple first aid kit with my teeth before re-entering the fray just isn’t really viable anymore. I’m being forced to spend less time in combat during the battle itself, and this turns the ‘dance’ of the battle into a collection of micro-engagaments, like an awkward teen trying to ask someone out. We’re not vying for initiative, we’re taking turns.

At this point you might be thinking I’m complaining about the difficulty, that now it’s ‘too hard’ for Flick, and that ‘everyone wanted more danger anyway’ or some such2. But that’s not what this is about.

My range of play styles has shrunk dramatically. No longer am I assessing risk and adapting tactics to situations on the fly, instead I’m now spending time filling a leaky hp bucket, or using adrenaline like it’s another 20hp medkit.3 Combat feels more like a race against the clock as I burn through medkits instead of being a battle of wits and aim with the robots. The time between fighting being a pause for fast travel medkit farming. My attention keeps getting pulled away from the robots to managing my health pool. My health meter is now more ‘interesting’ than all of the wonderful robots. Worse still, breaking my attention breaks the flow of the game. I have to stop what I’m doing to go manage something else for a bit.

Now combat feels punished (and by extension, exploration feels punished too because that’s how you meet robots). Combat feels like a high risk / low reward option, and a negative move best avoided. I used to think “I wonder if I can slip in a canister here or lure a robot to a house’s power point or finish this robot with my pistol before I die etc,” but now I’m thinking nothing much tactical at all in combat. I’m either dropping on them like a rod from the gods, killing a hunter as fast as possible and then vanishing to safety, or I’m already holed up in safety pecking something to death with a sniper rifle. Perhaps this is the price I pay for not wandering around with the X-PVG-90 over my shoulder. A smaller, simpler game with fewer options and less agency.

By avoiding combat and exploration, I’m also now contending with the quality and quantity of the writing for the plot and world-building backstory. The story I was really into just a few weeks before. A lot of what’s there is good, I really think so. But it’s also sparse and frequently isolated. I guess the driving factor of “I have to know what happened here…” is facing off with “screw it, I’m heading for Norway.” As the risk has increased, the price of discovery is scarcely worth the reward. Can the writing win this battle? I’d wager it’ll take some adrenaline.

There is a delicate balance here, and the changes to combat are putting more stress on other areas of the game. I hope that they can support the shortfall. Honestly, what keeps me at the moment is spending time with a friend while we finish up searching for his collectibles and side missions. My motivation is social.

Generation Zero is far from boring, it’s just stopped being fun.

1. Sometimes I would aggressively deploy fuel cells and canisters during a battle, even as far as going to pick one up from the middle of the melee with associated inventory juggling so I could place it somewhere better, and then shoot it. Cover and fireworks, people!
2. If you want to tell me to "get gud" kindly lick a frozen pole.
3. And who wants to have thighs like pin cushions?
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I noticed that as well. And for me combat starts just feeling tiresome, such as the whole game. I end a session and feel tired, where before I felt exhausted, but excited!

Well, we had a lot of people shouting: “The game is to darn soft!”

One for me, too. I am already good. And as someone else said wisely: I don’t need to prove it to anyone. I don’t need a game to prove it to myself over and over again. If a game stops being fun, I stop playing it.

I liked the playful combat styles I could explore in the past. If your observations are correct and the game just gotten harder just because we “needed” those experimental weapons so badly, that would make me sad. Nearly feels like an arms race.

EDIT: Just to rule out the obvious, it isn’t just the case that the game gets harder with you being higher level, right? With more enemies running to the fight you’re in, faster response times of hunters hitting you while your are down and all.

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Good thought, but no. See exhibit A, me getting blown to smithereens by a single hunter. Prior to the patch, the damage wasn’t as high, (and the targeting might not have been as tight - I’ll try to check that). Since hitting level 31, I see more fnix robots, and in larger numbers. I don’t see a level dependent change in damage output, and there really shouldn’t be from a design perspective. We have co-op, and if buddy and I fight one machine, it would be odd to have me punished for working up to a higher level.

And again, it’s not about being too soft, it’s about having a broken rhythm. The game interrupts itself.

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I see squads of 5-6 FNIX hunters now. So part of my observations might be due to me approaching 31. And level-dependant adjustments… well the game already caters to your ammo needs. I also had the feeling that I tend to find higher tier weapons in my own game world than when I join my lower level buddy. I find this debateble. Even if unrealistic, it could be the attempt to keep the challenge at the same level. On the other hand, I also like games where I have to eat through the oatmeal and at some point things get a little more playful.

At any rate, I tend to trust your numbers. You seem very meticulous about observations.

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Thankyou for the explanation of the fletchete gate saga , nicely done :+1::+1:

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TBH, I think that the Rocket Runners should be balance more than the other Runner Class since I found them annoying while dealing with any other machine (excluding Ticks).

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I concur, Flick, as I have noticed everything you’ve mentioned.
I just assumed the game got harder as your levels progressed. Kind of like an RPG.
I incur overwhelming situations regularly since I hit level 30.
It really makes the hunt for Gold and experimental weapons (Especially the .50 cal) a must.
Along with the Standard and Advanced First Aid Kits being a must to carry from now on.

I’m not saying the combat shouldn’t be a little more balanced, just that sometimes we need to pick our battles.

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I suppose that I play differently to the way you do - I am always sniping at some level. I always seek to damage the enemy while giving the enemy no opportunity to do the same. I am too aware that IRL a single bullet strike would cripple or kill me, even from a 1* .32! Having said that, I don’t like the flechettes and don’t think they should be in the game on either side - nor poisoned bullets. I was serving in the late 70s and can think of no weapon class or type which would produce that effect.

On the other hand, I would expect a closing Hunter to spray bullets as suppressing fire - I would expect that groups of Dogs would split into a fire party to keep my head down and an assault party to outflank me, since they would have been programmed by soldiers. So from here I would upgrade the difficulty in different directions to those chosen.

There is no way you could possibly survive by running round Hunters single-handed. You would have to keep the enemy to your front somehow - by distance or by moving using cover so that you were taking them one one at a time. You can also do this by a “withdrawal-in-contact”, but it is hard to do alone!

Any battle that was not on your terms you would avoid, and in this game I do. (No, I don’t, there are times when I just fancy a barney, and others when I get way overconfident.) My other exception is the Rivals, but I don’t fight Rivals, I assassinate them - eliminate a threat. But they too need to be properly inserted into the story, and they aren’t at the moment.

My worry is that the changes are arbitrary - beef this, introduce that, bolt-on the other. That will end up in a mess, and we are getting a bit messy!

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@Bootie
I understand your point when it comes to terms of engagement in battle (I’ve had some training myself).
However. There are very few video games that do combat tactics correctly.
GZ does combat well enough and gives incentive to go after certain robots to gain XP and loot those special items.

As for the flechette rounds. (I agree with you)

  1. You can’t tell when they are being fired.
  2. They ragdoll you to near death.
    They are the bane of engagement and nine out of ten times I will end up dead when facing an enemy which uses flechette.
    As for the poison. I could see them being some sort of high velocity darts, but dodging them are just as bad as the flechette.

It also sounds like you and I like to engage the enemy the same way. From afar; picking off targets, until what we cannot destroy at a distance gets too close, or reinforcements show up. To which then changes to mid to close range combat.

I really only avoid combat if I’m just trying to get to a location or if the situation isn’t in my favor (no tactical advantage).

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The response that I’m going to offer is that, yes, recent changes to combat feel like they’ve limited what the ‘successful’ options are to start an engagement. This, to me, is because the point of the game is to force a cat-and-mouse playstyle. The theme of the game doesn’t support the idea of rambo-ing into enemies - if you were capable, mid fight, of looting an enemy for a static-place explosive, equipping it, and then deploying it, given the current systems at play (more on this in a moment), then I’d say the encounters weren’t difficult enough.

I don’t think there’s a problem with dynamically deploying fuel cells and the like - I think a streamlining of equipping stuff, so that we could, you know, use those resources mid combat as we get them, would highly encourage players to not just shoot the fuel tank off, but that’s whatever.

I’m not 100% in alignment with Bootie, but they raise a point - this game should be pushing a playstyle where you eliminate threats with as little risk to yourself as possible. Deploying flares every time you get noticed should be a thing - fireworks on every tank fight should be a thing - basically, you shouldn’t be able to stand toe-to-toe with any of the robots, 'cause, well, they’re robots. They’re armor plated and servo driven - you’re squishy. That’s kinda the whole thematic point, as far as I’m aware. Nowadays, with an exp 50 and a quickscope, everything that isn’t apoc class becomes relatively trivial - even FNIX hunters, with their dreaded flechette attack, aren’t too bad. Once you recognize the pose they strike to fire their flechettes, you recognize that as your sign to sprint away and to the side - and suddenly flechettes stop pegging you for full damage.

I dunno - While I tend to agree with the perspective of ‘limiting how players play your game is bad’, I feel like these changes drive towards the spirit of the game as envisioned - what they need to do is fix their utility items and expand upon them, to give us more and better tools to counter the robots that aren’t just ‘moar bigger gunz’.

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Yes, it really takes a long time to swap equipment (with the delay thereafter before you e.g. can actually apply a medkit after selecting the hot slot).

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I should add that I had a firework for cover, and moving the canister wasn’t a first choice technique (correcting placement). But I appreciate your point.

Making flares compulsory affects the inventory storage game, I’m not sure what the consequences of that are. I think you’re dead right about the streamlining and utility. Good one!

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I had similar issues last night. 80% of the fight is swapping between flares, med packs and reloading. Not fun game play.

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Don’t suppose you have ever fought carrying a bergen, or even a small backpack - getting things out takes time, and with the best will in the world, getting an 84mm out of your bergen would take you about five minutes. Get the stuff you need in your “ready” slots, and duck behind something to change them. But really, having the wrong things in your ready slots should kill you. Think before action, not during - it’s all too bloody late, then! :slight_smile:

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I don’t doubt the realism behind it. Only the enjoyment I get from it while being surrounded by 20 death machines from hell. In a video game that is supposed to be a metaphor rather than a close approximation of real world combat.

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Well, play Doom. You should have planned where to run to before the 20 death machines found you. You’ve got a contour map with every building on it. Plan your route, stock your slots, all of them. Decide what weapons you will need before you start. Make sure the ammunition is where you can easily find it - this is basic. Move in bounds, either with a map marker as your direction target, or as your emergency RV. Think. Make sure you have some mines and flares in the ready slots so that you can fight your withdrawal to your emergency RV and then fight back from there. When you go into a bunker, stop and restock with what you need for that phase. When you come out again, do it again - it takes two minutes.

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When I play GZ, I don’t want to play a realism military simulation, Bootie. Seriously, that is not GZ. Has never been, not even in the beginning If I understand everything correctly that is being told here.

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You don’t. I was there in the beginning. It took me four hours to clear all the island behind me, searching every little shack and shoreline and another two hours to get into the second safe house. Six hours play and I reached the church, alive. Never touched a road, never got skylined, I watched the runners patrolling and carefully hid while they went past. That’s what it was like in single player. Scary.

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I only got it to run properly when the bikes came in, and my experience was the same as @Bootie’s

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For me it was also scary. And I loved it. Actually it was pretty much as you described it. Me and my buddy decided to visit the top of the hill on the first island. Mistake! :smiley:

When we saw our first hunter we were just scared sh*tless. How I loved this beginning.

But you want to fill your limited number mags by hand? I go play Doom while you play Tarkov. That game is hard tho. :wink: