The new heal utility rune is way too OP

Ok I expressed myself badly it’s a small part of the problem, but it’s not what causes the problem, and so even if the rune was nerfed or removed the problem would still be there, and since I’m sure they won’t remove the difficulty options it doesn’t make sense to remove the rune to solve this problem.

And the difficulty options are not the only problem, as I already said:

“…It is impossible not to have difficulty options within the game (depending on the items you use and not on the settings) when it comes to a complex RPG like NRFTW or Elder Ring…”

“…Armor, Spells, Objects, Runes, etc. all different from each other it is unrealistic that there are no strong combinations and strategies, you have to regulate yourself and not use the strong things if you want to increase the difficulty…”

The comparison is about the part where the game is not tailor-made for you and so if you are too good you have to set limits if you want to find the game difficult, NRFTW is not an easy game for the vast majority of players, if you want to have fun through the difficulty limiting yourself is an effective way to do it, once you realize that the rune is too strong for you remove it and don’t think about it anymore.

This does not mean that the game cannot be balanced, but it would be impossible for everyone to experience the same difficulty level, not only because difficulty is subjective but also because with each build of the game you have a different experience.

You shouldn’t feel bad because other people haven’t experienced the difficulty the same way you have. It’s impossible for this kind of game. The game should be difficult enough for all builds to be made so that enemies are faced with the right respect for their moovesets. But obviously a mage will have more difficulty with different types of enemies and bosses compared to a warrior or even another wizard but with different runes.

(also, even if I wasn’t comparing the strength of the two mechanics, but in my experience the spirit ashes are stronger than the Rune, they ruin the learning process of the bosses because almost always the boss is distracted to hit them for you so you don’t have to learn the attack patterns in the same way, and they take a lot of pressure off you by allowing you to heal without consequences, to attack without consequences and to use spells without consequences.)

(You don’t send out summons alone while you stand around doing nothing, you join them and when the boss turns towards you it’s always random, so you don’t expect it and you get hit, but then you move away the summons attack the boss and the boss turns back to the summons, then you heal yourself and go back to attacking, you can do this with almost all bosses without learning their moveset, while the healing rune is just an extra heal, it’s no different than food and if you can take on bosses without doing anything besides attacking and healing yourself with the rune you can do the same with food too.)

(But also consider that people who use spirit ashes not only have fun anyway but probably don’t find fun to learn the attack patterns of the bosses so it’s not a problem with the game, even if I still don’t recommend them.)

I agree with this, but I think it does not the healing Rune fault, there are many other stronger things in the game, especially considering that every buff in this game is percentage-based and so if you combine two things that synergize the result is often too strong and makes the game much simpler than it should be.

Also for this reason I tend to prefer games that don’t have stupid progression mechanics, in particular I’m annoyed by the combination of “character levels” + “world explored in the order you want”, practically making the last area you go to easier than the first (then the developers try to compensate in some way but often they don’t solve the problem 100%).

You’re being a little too defensive, I didn’t attack you like that.

I Recommend you try Rain World, Nine sols, Blasphemous 1 & 2 and Sifu

Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing the game for over 500 hours and I don’t get hit that often, but I haven’t found the rune to be that strong. It’s also a issue relative to the build, If you have high focus regeneration, focus regeneration, and high healing increases, the rune definitely becomes incredibly strong, (but if that’s the case, food also becomes much stronger with the increased healing).

Generally, I find it never worth using the rune if you can use food, since if you use the rune, you can’t use damage runes. Both food and the rune give you to full or high health, so there’s no reason to combine them. I only find it a cool option when you want to save food or have used all your food and it’s the only thing you can use to heal yourself, even if using it still means reducing your damage.

So your build is probably much more tanky than mine, but can’t you do the same with food in that case? I played a tank build before adding the rune and I didn’t like it either, but there’s no risk against most enemies.

We agree on this, except that I think that the rune is not the problem, and that there are stronger things that trivialize the game more than the rune, however it is difficult to talk about balancing for the future of the game since the class system will surely change the balance.

Obviously the rune can be nerfed but I think that removing it is a mistake, and if it is nerfed you have to be very careful not to nerf it too much, also I think that high level food is stronger than the rune and that it makes no sense to nerf the rune without nerfing the food.

If indeed with the more tanky builds the rune can be used by spamming attacks in the face of enemies and then healing, then the rune does not need to heal less or cost more mana but should have an internal cooldown like the old food.

I was just pre-emptively addressing the hatred that I usually receive when I make this argument. I’ve been arguing this exact topic on the forums of many games for many years. I say “____ is overpowered and I would like to see it nerfed”, people say “it’s a single player game just don’t use it!” and I think to myself “oh boy here we go again”, and I have the exact same argument that I’ve been having about balancing single player games for half of my life. People really get offended when I suggest that the devs balance overpowered mechanics.

You’re much more polite than the usual rabble that start foaming at the mouth and gnashing their teeth when I ask the devs to balance a broken mechanic.

I really need to write an essay about it that addresses all of the arguments people make on this topic and then I can just copy-paste it instead of having to type it out.

This is the perfect solution fallacy. Just because balancing a broken mechanic doesn’t magically balance the whole game and remove all options for difficulty control, doesn’t mean it’s pointless. This is like saying that seatbelts are worthless because they aren’t guaranteed to save you in a car crash.

As I’ve already said, I agree that gameplay needs to be balanced. What I meant by that sentence wasn’t “it’s all useless, let’s do nothing” but that the problem you describe is so rooted in the foundations of the game that it will never be fully solved.

This doesn’t mean gameplay shouldn’t be balanced, but the problem is that when a game increases build variety, the variety among player experiences also increases (also because this is partly the goal, it adds replayability and attracts more player types). However, this is at the expense of a shared experience of the game and partly at the expense of balance.

Giving players a shared difficulty experience is a secondary goal of the game, and if it’s prioritized over the current goals, it would make the game fundamentally different from what it is now. It would be like Elden Ring becoming Sekiro.

While I like Sekiro more, it’s still not a choice that makes sense, since NRFTW plans to become the best version of itself, and that version includes different classes with different experiences.

Having different classes with the same experience is not only impossible, but it would be stupid because people play one class over another just to have a different experience. I have 500+ hours on this very game, so I’ve experimented with these options. But obviously, a similar experience of difficulty remains a secondary objective, but since it depends on the classes and variety, it will always be partially compromised.

All this without considering that each player, as an individual, always has a different experience of difficulty, even in a game like Sekiro, given that each person has a different skill level and way of perceiving the world.

And if it wasn’t clear, I want changes to improve the experience and the game’s balance is part of these changes, one of my topics (Runes heve a balancing poblem: They are not based on motion values) talks about how I would like all weapons to follow well-classified balancing criteria with a system of values ​​that takes everything into account (attack speed, stamina consumption, damage, range, focus regeneration, AOE, charged attacks, etc.) since at the moment there are simply stronger weapons and weaker weapons, and I have another topic (The RNG Problem, Enchantment System Vs Gem System (Major Edits)) where I essentially rework the enchantment system, to make it more usable but also easier to balance.

And I also wrote two topics (Difficulty and Accessibility & Game Accessibility and Difficulty, Unsolved and New Problems (Breach Refind)) that talk about difficulty options and difficulty in general.

Most of the topics I’ve written talk about balancing in one way or another and possible solutions.