I assumed you watched Asmon’s stream. Here are some things I noticed:
He discarded a lot of valuable gear because he didn’t understand Fallen Embers. (A tutorial that forces you to reroll 1 item after obtaining your first one could be helpful)
He opened a lot of chests in “hard spots” expecting a big reward. They contained Fallen Embers and gems, but he didn’t feel like the loot was that great. Maybe you could give Fallen Embers a distinct color, like legendary items, so they feel more rewarding.
He over-leveled for the first boss because he didn’t knew where to go, he opened the map just twice, making it too easy. The second phase was almost nonexistent.
He didn’t use the “key” Fillmore gave him for the big door mechanism, he bypassed it by jumping from a small wall.
Paddle pose is a bit OP for the start, I have a lvl 30 main paddle haha. It seems a bit repetitive to watch, mainly charge attack after charge attack. I like it, but it destroys the enemies pose. Maybe it was just because he over leveled.
Cascaseno from discord shared: I entered and saw a bit and noticed that:
Chest bright even if empty and that confused him.
You can’t use click to select on quick menus (Q) and (F), saw he tried to do that.
Man I didn’t understand fallen embers until I had like 80 of them stashed somewhere. Tutorial is needed asap. Yes I know I can’t read.
I don’t think overleveling the first boss is bad because the difficulty is passed back to fighting hard encounters with the agile enemies on the area above the whisper. I also beat the boss on my first try after doing all the zones before it, didn’t feel like it took away any enjoyment.
Bypassing the gate without the key is funny. I didn’t know it could be done either. If funny, it’s ok.
The paddle poise, I can 100% agree, but with some scythes as well. Charged attack is super quick, breaks poise super fast.
Noticed mobs it seems to stagger them on a charged attack even though their poise meter isn’t full either (or some sort of short hit reaction), then break again once it is. This leads to them being almost constantly staggered until dead.
It’s especially noticeable on the large mobs that tend not to have great mobility and longer attack times (so you can more easily chain hits into them) Maybe, even just for large mobs, it might be good to remove the hit reaction, give them higher poise.
Couple this with the WIDE arcs on the swings and good forward momentum and I can jump into a group of mobs, stagger them all, heal from the stagger, and chain until dead. Not that there isn’t other broken builds out there but wanted to bring notice to it.
Oh was that what it was? Hope they patch something in to fix it then because right now combat as a whole is becoming kinda mindless, I can just switch off and swing. Pretty sure I heard one of the devs saying they wanted to avoid that kind of thing.
Maybe a start would be to not allow poise meter to build up while the person/creature is already poise broken, would help avoid the chain stagger locking.
Yea, that “poise boost for medium weapons” and doubling down on that in hotfix3 with “poise for wands”. They want diablo button mashers happy. And those kind of players don’t learn movesets of enemies, or when to dodge, when to parry and when to attack.
Combine that with area level nerfs after completing the story, some boss nerfs, stamina for all types of dodges equalized to the lowest weight class - and we now get rather mindlessly boring game at level 30 with reasonably upgraded gear. And even maxed pestilence (4 + 10/10) doesn’t help.
IDK, maybe a while ago that was true, but … it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I’d be very happy to be proven wrong at some point. But I won’t hold my breath.