New content or another focus nerf?

Wicked General
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Quick little idea here : If you guys are done nerfing to the ground everything that is focus related, turning a fun mechanic into a chore, it would be great to have genuine new content like a new map, an update to the story, or new crucible wing. I havent played for 3 weeks cuz I’m bored to death running those 7 rooms again and again and again.

I guess u guyz are working on a 5th focus nerf…

and btw, still wondering why you are trying so hard to kill this mechanic. Elden Ring is challenging and you can still spam weapon arts if you have the ressource. They did NOT nerf this. And some WA are pretty strong in this game. And game is still challenging.

You don’t want us to have strong tools vs strong ennemies. Crucible boss is fckin nightmare if you 100% melee him. OFC we use a LOT of throwing spells vs this motherf*cker. YOU made this spell strong and we’re not dumb, we noticed this. Test your shit.

I guess my idea of a spell caster mage build in NRFTW is gone, ,not even gonna try. I will do the uber meta rogue life/focus leech like everyone else. Yay.

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They are working on an update that resolves around a reworked crucible. From X we can also gleam that two new areas will be added. I’m not sure if it is the same patch or a different one. In the mean time I would recommend playing a different game.

In my opinion the focus nerfs were deserved, as many on the forums tend to agree with. I’m not gonna argue about this and will simply link the dozens of posts about it.

It created an unhealthy playstyle resolving around a focus neutral build that allowed for stagger rune spam. We could kill the echo knight in 30 seconds. But, I would prefer more game styles or options in general. Currently, we don’t have as many. Some various specializations would be fun. Simply put, I’d like more toys to play with and some of the toys we did have were overtuned.

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Both focus and hp regain need nerfing to the ground one or the other way, perhaps including cap of how much focus you can have at all. And along with it, rune attacks need to be nerfed hard (either their potential power (+stupid stackable op rings) or how frequently they can be used). I’d go much farther with hard nerfs, as I’d expect the game to be skill based, not cheese based.

And I’m saying this as a parry lover (though potion gulping provides the similar effects) as I recognize how ludicrous all this is.

Crucible boss is fckin nightmare if you 100% melee him.

Come again ? The “boss” has few easy patterns per phase. Easy to dodge, easy to parry (of those that can be parried). And rune attacks massacre him, leaving you scratching your head what were the devs even thinking.

The game needs some sort of Sekiro’ization.

We could kill the echo knight in 30 seconds.

We still can, sadly.

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This game is going to get nerfed out of existence if the devs keep listening to garbage suggestions like nerfing all the fun components out of the game practically.

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Sorry but I genuinely don’t care about the fun of people who enjoy cheesing bosses. That’s like caring about the fun of people who use developer commands or player’s who give themselves infinite money to enjoy the game…

The issues with runes/focus are, in my opinion:

  • Focus is a limited and shared resource which all runes use

This creates competition between runes rather than an incentive for using different runes.

  • A Focus-Neutral state can be achieved

  • Runes have no cooldown

  • Runes can stagger

Now the combination of the above three leads to issues. Adding cooldowns to runes would solve a big part of the issue. But, players can then still chain runes together. Like all throwing runes and then just cycle through them.

  • Runes lack mechanical distinctions and advantages or these are too irrelevant to matter during combat.

I love how V-Rising approaches their combat and makes counters, shields, dashes and ranged abilities feel rewarding. Combat is much more fluid. I would love if runes where reactive more and the dodge runes where more valuable. Most runes just 1 shot enemies which doesn’t incentivize different rune usage.

Enotria also did something interesting where you have to build up the runes independently. I’m sure other soulslikes have something similar.

What matters is incentives to use different runes and not META runes. Rune selection is almost like building your character and picking a rune for various situations. Currently that is lacking.

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Enjoy the game getting nerfed into non-existence if nerfs become the main focus. I will not go back and forth and beat my head against an invisible wall. I know many on the forum do not want massive nerfs to fun components. The minority are voicing this.

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I try not to be mean as much as I can but I have to just sigh sometimes when I see people asking for a new fucking map, or more story, etc for a game where everything is handcrafted with intentional level design & not just a flat 2D plain. Like you said it’s been 3 weeks, 3 freaking weeks. You’d be lucky to even model a whole new zone in 3 weeks

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Everyone is just anticipating more. That is not a bad thing either, it says a lot of what is in the game already. I know even with the limited content that is currently available, I put in about 150 hours so far because it is so enjoyable of a game.

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nerfing some affix or weapon damage to be normal is not like they nerfing everything. the nerfs was justified, it was a broken mechanic that had to be fixed

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I am not saying it did not need to be adjusted. However, even with 4 health regen on gear, the regen is at a crawl. Thus, I would not say nerfing it any further would be a justifiable thing to do and it would then make it useless. Same thing for focus. I have seen many people posting that focus for staves related regeneration is something that should be improved. If you have focus regeneration, it does tend to be slow, unless you have all the focus generation on each piece of gear plus multiple focus rings. Those things are not available until end game, thus, focus regeneration is very hard to get anything out of it after the nerf, prior to a ton of farming end game. Thus, I see that side of things as well. Something that a lot of people calling for further nerfs seem to not even be considering.

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honestly what i think about the focus and health gain affixes in melee gear it shouldnt exist, health and focus gain only when enemy killed or parry but not when hit.
range weapons like staff and bow should only regen focus when hit enemy

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you need to relax.

you realize this is early access right? as in the game is not done, and shouldnt be treated as a released game. its ok that there is no content. the devs are still developing the game.

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people tend to get confused with challenges and fun.

challenges can be fun but fun doesn’t necessarily only come from challenges only.

making games more challenging doesn’t necessarily make it fun all the time either.

people should be able to enjoy challenging games as much as how games should also be providing fun to players who enjoy games other ways as well.

I believe the way to approach the fact that focus/health gain making the game relatively easier in the eyes of players who seek difficult/challenges is not only to nerf this particular way of playing solely, but to increase the ways of other possible ways to enjoy/have fun; hence, not to take away the way people are having fun doing it this way to only please the players who can only have fun the difficult way, but to make it possible for all kinds of players who can enjoy the way they want.

At this point there are probably people who won’t agree and say impractical or impossible to please everyone. It can be hard, that’s why success requires hard work.

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Thanks for offering a different spin. Let me add to it.

Talked about this before, but indeed the perspective is a bit off.

Challenge is easy to understand. We have an obstacle and either numbers and or Mechanics, make it difficult to overcome it.

Fun is much more difficult to define. From my PoV Fun in ARPG’s with build and playstyle variety comes from overcoming the obstacle your way.

Now the greyzone is, how high the challenge should be and how much impact your playstyle can have.

I don’t think Moon has in any way stated, they want to become the toughest ARPG, with the most limited playstyles on the market. Have they? On the contrary, they have on multiple occasions communicated, that they want to introduce more playstyles into the game. They want variety. So one would assume, they want the playstyles that are available to be somewhat balanced.

Thus, the question to ask is: “How to balance?”

Balancing by difficulty is basically impossible and very restrictive, thus imo the easiest and most effective metrics to balance by are efficiency and popularity, NOT difficulty.

Identify what the most efficient, statistically relevant playstyle is (ignore select outliers piloted by hardcore gamers, until they become statistically relevant, unless truly broken).
If its too efficient, nerf it. If it is not, buff all other less efficient playstyles up to that level.
Also interact with the community and especially ask, if the most efficient playstyles are fun. Even if efficient, they might have to be readjusted.

Identify what the least popular playstyles are, figure out, why they aren’t as popular by interacting with the community, then adjust them. If they feel good to play, are FUN, but just lack efficiency, buff them.

In an ideal world, the devs would also communicate, what their goals are in terms of efficiency. “A casual player with X playstyle should be able to finish the crucible in on average X minutes”; “A hardcore player with a perfect setup should be able to finish the crucible in on average X minutes”. Calculating in losses along the way.

Currently we are restricted in terms of playstyles, we have playstyles that clearly outshine others in both ease of play AND efficiency if piloted well, while also having no clearly communicated benchmarks, neither about difficulty nor efficiency. Which is why this argument is a little bit to heated from my PoV.