The ErosionSeeker
*insert cheesy pun here*
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Excessive nerfs For the past few years, DF has been trying to introduce more nuanced gameplay than monsters that are just damage sponge / damage spikes. This has the unfortunate consequence where people get split between those that care for game mechanics and those that don't, leading to issues where people are wholly unprepared and uninterested in difficult fights in the actual story. This gets compounded by significant nerfs on monsters like Cryohem (kill the mooks), Siofra (simply shield turn 1), the Lagohms (don't use multi-hits), and numerous other monsters part of world-ending main story threat 15 years into the game, leading to a cycle where people who don't ever want to be challenged demand making things easier, and as a result everything else in the future gets handled the same way, to the point where people unironically suggest the spook hydra get moved to the Inn because none of the testers could beat it. This is even more of an issue because of how drastic most of these nerfs are. Cryohem had a significant HP and damage reduction, Dragonbane Siofra lost 95% of its turn 1 damage and half its health, and the Lagohm monsters lost the only thing that stopped them from being facerolls. Boss monsters out in the world might as well not have any mechanics if people are going to throw tantrums and get their mechanics gutted less than three days later. Reactive shields That being said, there are quite a lot of uninteractive game mechanics that really should be looked at, especially because things like reactive shields are used at a frustrating frequency. This is more of a big deal because huge MPM is hard to counter now that LUK hits are (rightfully) removed. The modern "2 hits and then 600 MPM" model is funny because it's the most unfriendly version seen thus far: When: 2 hits, 300 MPM Dolaas: 4 hits, 300 MPM Illumina: 4 hits, 500 MPM Prince: 2 hits, 300 MPM Adventurefiend: 2 hits, 600 MPM King: 2 hits, 600 MPM There are even lots of options to diversify this, such as using BPD, elemental resistance, or even Reaver regen. Why is it always 600 MPM? Why not BPD, or allres, or something other than the all-or-nothing 600 MPM? Some other solutions should be considered, rather than the current drastic design mentality of starting with something overdesigned, and then completely removing it because players who didn't try and refuse to use a different class or take advice. Prince and King were always far easier than the Radiant Leech, and now they aren't threatening at all. CHA pets CHA pets are terrible. Basically none of them are worth using even if dragon didn't exist. They require a significant stat investment to achieve their potential, and even when you invest 200 CHA they barely make a difference. 200 CHA makes it so Extra Fluffy Tog has a 25% chance to do all of ~200 extra damage; investing 200 in a damage stat, END, or possibly even WIS would be more valuable. Even the boost that Chimera gets from CHA is almost insignificant, with 200 CHA giving you an extra 50 BPD for... 3/16 turns. Indeed, these other pets shouldn't be overwhelmingly powerful, but current levels of scaling make many of them seem like CHA investment is an outright trap even in regular gameplay, too. There's not a very compelling reason to use any of them, given how most of them are from challenge bosses that you could be using a 3 point dragon to beat in the first place. A lot of times, these problems are also magnified by unofficially documented spur-of-the-moment changes that don't get looked at ever again. Siofra got nerfed because of a few responses, almost a year after it came out. Even when it's not the case, it gives off the impression that testers don't know what they're testing for, don't know what they should be testing for, or that the dev expectations of the testers aren't being well-communicated. This is especially noticeable when you see the fluctuations in difficulty between things like Tizheruk (who is far more fair than many seem to believe), Amalgam, and now Verriton. I suspect everyone kind of knows about these issues, but nobody is really willing to discuss them. I hope these issues get addressed by the tester hunt, because it's really starting to seem like casual players making the calls on what's fair and what isn't, and then getting further blindsided because they didn't try learning those mechanics from earlier.
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