Difficulty drops off a cliff

[Floofyboy]

When i first began playing, i do admit i struggled a lot with the game, it was very difficult. But this is the way the game was being sold, and i love difficult games. Seeing the monsters take over the town and barely surviving was exciting.

But after ~30 hours of play, 2 things happened. First i learned how to play well, which makes me far more effective at the game. And secondly, the game's progression system makes everything far far easier.

I am now on apo1 and i am just clearing every waves as soon as they spawn. The game has became very easy. Now i know Apo4 is going to be harder and they will add more difficulties, but my point is the scaling of the difficulty makes no sense. They greet new players with an essentially impossible challenge even for a pro, and then once you do get good at the game, they gave me so many buffs that the game is now super easy. I feel like the opposite should happen, begin with an easier experience and then make things harder once the player improves.

[DrakenKin]

Same here. Probably the biggest issue with the game.

[Begemot]

It would be better if the slowly introduced new enemies, buildings and weapons. For example, on the first run, let players fight until day 3 or 4 and then overrun the town in a cut-scene, unlock a few buildings, introduce new enemy types and unlock 9th day.

[Hesmah]

I absolutely agree. Once you get a lot of unlocks, especially the item crafting + rarity ones, your heroes just outscale everything.

[[MNI] Kisune]

I mean the way the game works is generaly speaking normal for roguelites however one of the things that stand out to me is just how freaking insane the meta progression is
i won on my 4rd run for the first time
im now on my 7th and since then even while always increasing the apo level i am generaly speaking breezing trought the game (this game i even went for a couple weapons i usualy underperform with and it still works quite well)
other games like hades dead cells etc while also having substantial meta progression have a lot of difficulty modifiers (and i realy mean a lot) to increase the difficulty and are far more based on execution and meta progression simply does not do as much in such a system and if you make a mistake you can still die (or atleast lose substantial ammounts of life)

another points is Unlocking it happens much faster then the difficulty scales up
about to unlock my 3rd bonus action point (so my chars start with 7) meanwhile enemys got 15% more health and i got 20% more enemys
Well that doesent even keep up with the ap increase not to mention the same tactic that originaly gave me a couple uncommon maybe 1 or 2 rare items now has me decked out in nearly full rare items bye night 10 and the few uncommons i still have are just near perfect rolls
Edit: alright if i saw it right the highest current Apo modifier even just reverts a meta upgrade (Mist moves closer every day)

[Cryten]

I think the meta progression wouldnt be so bad if the game wasnt basicly impossible except by the best players on the first 3 runs. Gold Mines, Seer, slower fog, better defences, more AP and above all the INN make it so you cant really play the game properly until you have unlocked those basics.

It would make more sense if we where going through tutorial moments but no level of skill will save the first 2 runs with this system.

[ricky]

I am currently on apocalypse VII but still easy as hell

[PewSquare]

Originally posted by ricky:

I am currently on apocalypse VII but still easy as hell

Maybe because apoc 7 is the same as apoc 143125 and apoc 4 since it does nothing past apoc 4.

[Melmak]

+1

[Fringehunter7719]

Yeah, I agree. I've reset my save a couple of times to tinker and my experience was the same every time: Run 1 - literally impossible; run 2 - very hard; run 3 - not hard at all.

Pushing through to apocalypse 4 with no grinding and just consecutive wins I thought it was in quite a good place, not as hard as the second run at all, but interesting enough in its own way with the odd spicy moment that required some thought.

The seer giving a free turn before monsters reach the defences is probably the root cause. The larger playing area also makes maxing out propagation and AOE much easier.

I wouldn't object to flattening of the AP meta progression, to 4 up to 6, or 5 up to 7, and reintroducing economic modifiers that aren't wholly blown out of the water by wealthy town 2 either.

[Floofyboy]

Just to clarify, i do think the progression system is fun, the issue is the progression and learning curve scales way faster than the difficulty of the game. 15% more monster HP is nothing compared to now almost doubling my AP, getting balistas, learning how to play optimally, getting rarer items, etc etc.

I think they need to make each Apo tiers far harder than they are now, and have more tiers.

[DrakenKin]

They could remove AP per 2-3 apo, and reduce things like gold mines, reducing max gold mines from 3 to 2 to 1 once in a while, again like every 2-3 apo. Assuming we can wrap the story up by apo 10.

[MagnaRagnus]

Agreed, won on my 3rd run and easily one shot every apo level...
Difficulty makes no sense at the moment, they need to intruduce new enemies, bosses and maybe events as you unlock more stuff to keep the game difficult.
Removing stuff or giving the enemies more stats is just a boring way to increase difficulty(It should not be the only thing that makes later runs more difficult)

Also some Stuff(Seer, Inn, +1ap) should be unlocked from the start to at least have a small chance at beating the game 1st run.

[DrakenKin]

Originally posted by MagnaRagnus:

Agreed, won on my 3rd run and easily one shot every apo level...
Difficulty makes no sense at the moment, they need to intruduce new enemies, bosses and maybe events as you unlock more stuff to keep the game difficult.
Removing stuff or giving the enemies more stats is just a boring way to increase difficulty(It should not be the only thing that makes later runs more difficult)

Also some Stuff(Seer, Inn, +1ap) should be unlocked from the start to at least have a small chance at beating the game 1st run.

Agreed

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

Hopefully devs listen to this and refactor the game, pretty consistent feedback from the community and i agree completely

[Jetrel]

Yeah once I figured out how to exploit mechanics and have everyone use the exact same build and weapon it got really easy! who would have guessed?