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.
Coxinigo 2:32
thomasmahler What are your thoughts on the current poise system? Personally, I feel like a lot of weapons, even the fast ones break enemy poise too easily. I’m using the ‘Keyblade’ wand, and I can just spam attacks
thomasmahler 2:33 (Game dev)
Will get tuned
right now I erred on the side of being very forgiving
It’s clear they’re actively listening to the community <3
The issue is the whole micro-stagger thing which seems to be a something separate. None of the white bars of the enemies when one brainlessly spams attacks seem to get broken - but the enemies get perma-staggered either way.
One handed and light weapons should not break enemy stance, and that’s how it was before Hotfix for the button mashers. Those weapons would only break stance if used a charged attack or last attack in the combo string. This was determined by enemy poise. This is also separate from stagger. They removed all enemy poise so any attack breaks their stance now making them a joke where as common mobs still put up a good fight even in the endgame.
Did some extra tests - some weapons are still exempted from that nerf, like e.g. rapiers. So the poise likely still exists on the trash, only poise values on weapons were boosted.
The other exception is windup period of special attack (usually longer unparryable sequences) that cannot be interrupted. Still windups are pretty short.
Either way, this is depressing. Made a quick video for fun (should have used benny hill’s theme …).
agree. Fallen Embers should work in a different, a more intuitive way:
when you hover over a stat it should say “1 fallen ember to reroll”
exactly like in the shop, you choose a weapon, see how much it costs and click it. you’re not grabbing your money and dropping it on an item you want to buy, right?
whoever made this drag-and-drop mechanic with Fallen Embers should not be allowed to make UI/UX decisions
This is how the combat looks in the game now against most enemies - except bosses, few and far between big ones (bears, trash variation of twins, etc.) and smaller ones decked in full plate from the bottom to the top.
Calling it “err on the side of being very forgiving” is being very forgiving. Why change things that were working correctly ?
Also that guy that you replied to with “will be fixed in hotfix2”, why didn’t you educate him instead about:
learning movesets of enemies and attacking when they are open for punishment instead of being in the middle of a combo ?
being mobile ?
wonders of dodging ?
wonders of parrying ?
please . revert . this . misfeature (to put it mildly). Not tune it. Revert it to how it was working perfectly fine since 2024 up to a ~week ago.
FWIW, Thomas promised fine-tuning. Which doesn’t really fill the confidence meter, as that implies this will stay in the game in one or the other way.
Other difficulty nerfs got added as well in those 2 hotfixes.
What the game needs is knobs to alter realms (e.g. disable microstaggering, set areas to max level after story, etc.) and/or difficulty levels and/or quick presets of knobs.