What is wrong with difficulty in this game?

[Pauca Verba]

First, it's doomsday clock. If i go for fully red missions, other 2 clocks progress a bit. If i try to do any kind of story or recruiting missions, clock gaining massive charge because the red missions always appear again. Even if i kill the boss i getting slight setback on one clock, but advances on the other two. It does not feel managable.

Second, combat difficulty. I play on lowest one, and when i started mission for recruiting taro master i just can't complete it with my almost fully leveled up party... insane amount of enemies who can't be stealthly eleminated, and do A LOT of poison damage feels just too much.

I played all kinds of tactical games, but this one feels absolutly merciless on the difficulty when it should not. Why?

[GeneralGonzo]

Originally posted by Tirameowsu:

As Lamplighters, there's no shame in avoiding fights whenever you can, just to make your escape once you complete your objective.

Unfortunately in some major missions like getting the towerkeys, when you grab the key and made everything stealthy, enemies pop-up immediately, alerting everything around plus counting down the reinforcement machines - is that good design ?

[Mean Dinosaur]

Originally posted by ARFett:

Originally posted by War-A-Tron:

Just found out the doomsday clock is a soft clock. If it fills, then you get a priority mission to reset it to last breakpoint. So its not instadeath.

Still you have the problem while you do the priority mission to save the day the OTHER two factions advance.

And as soon as you got a second faction on this breakpoint mission you are screwed.

So I stand by the people to say system is flawed.

Especially having a roster of agents does punish you as you cannot set back the factions substantially.

And having more than 6 agents makes no sense as you can only do ONE mission each round.

In X-Com you could go with several teams.

Ok first off I recently on my 2nd hard difficulty game won after having all three doom clocks fill up. One first. and then the other two both finished after one week. By the time i fought them all back from the tower they were all still at the last breakpoints. After you stop the tower attack the faction stop gaining for a few weeks. I will say it again, the doom clocks can not screw you and they increase so heavily because it is how the enemy team techs up.

Second you are correct you are really only going to need 4 upgraded heros to field on the 4 man missions. If you have to upgrade a 5th or 6th I wouldn't go too far past 2 or 4 cost skills. But at the end of my game I had a 5th fully upgraded character and had something like 50-60 points unused if I had a death I could get another agent going.

Also some missions you have the option to run away and do it sneaky. Yesterday I did my first mission with only 1 stress broken agent to try to fix them while everyone else was unusable. Got out of the mission without even being seen. If there is going to be large fight you very much want to pull back and take advantage of the terrain. From my experience if there is 10+ enemies they usually just start running into fire coming at you at full speed. You can really take advantage of this, also the relics that give a free use debuff or grenade item are very strong. Bringing the right element to counter the un-takedowns is highly recommended and being able to throw three frag grenades in one turn for free will tip the scales on the bigger fights.

[moosc]

I'll tell you whats BS is when in week 5 you encounter 17 enemies with two re-enforcement pads calling more to the fight. How is three characters meant to fight that amount of enemies?
BTW this is on EXPLORER level. To me the game is rubbish when this is allowed to happen on the easy level!!
I had read other accounts of this happening but didn't believe it until now! I have tried but not going to play anymore unless game gets balanced.

[Mean Dinosaur]

It's not impossible if I can do it on the harder difficulty you can do it on explorer. You also don't need to kill every enemy there is no exp gain so grabbing the item and using stealth and smoke bombs to make it out while they chase you is doable. The agents are stronger than you give them credit for and getting wounds are nothing to worry about. Having it say 17 enemies on the top once ♥♥♥♥ goes down can sounds ridiculous but you just gotta keep taking out the ones around you. Sometimes you need to do a full turn running to reposition. You can take a huge chunk out of them if you can lure them into an explosive crate. The shock trap can also be used to make a distraction before going in for the grab or running to the exit.

The game feeds off the energy of 'oh ♥♥♥♥ I'm screwed, well whats the best choice I've got'. It may feel hopeless but it is winnable you just may have a stress break or a few more wounds on the way back home than you reckoned for. It's what makes the moments when you run away from a giant horde after you grabbed the artifact so enjoyable. To finish a mission that would have been a bloody battle without ever giving them a fighting chance is so sweet. But that only works if there is a real danger of being overwhelmed. And ever well laid out plan has those moments where you bump into a ghoul because you both took a corner at the same time. And I assure you even the most insane fights can be won. Recently I've become aware how good shock is at stopping melee enemies. I'm constantly learning new avenues that I had previously been sleeping to make use of my tools to give myself an advantage.

I just don't get the idea that you have a new strategy game and a few setbacks while you are learning the game is immediately the game is flawed. This is the fun right? Learning a new game finding out how it works and what you can accomplish. Save before the mission and take a few whacks at it and find out what works. I refuse to believe that explorer gave you an unwinnable map. With lower hp grenades must just rip through them. It just sounds like you don't want to have to learn a new game and are frustrated that you didn't stomp it like you believed yourself 'should' have.

PS: This game is not like X-com where you need to kill them instantly or suffer, fights can drag on and there are a lot of melee enemies. Seemingly unkillable enemies will eventually stress break if you cant kill them by HP. No matter how hopeless there is a route of making the best of a bad encounter that you must strive for.

[Tordaddy]

Originally posted by moosc:

I'll tell you whats BS is when in week 5 you encounter 17 enemies with two re-enforcement pads calling more to the fight. How is three characters meant to fight that amount of enemies?
BTW this is on EXPLORER level. To me the game is rubbish when this is allowed to happen on the easy level!!
I had read other accounts of this happening but didn't believe it until now! I have tried but not going to play anymore unless game gets balanced.

I just hit this mission. Seriously challenging! I tried many times to fight through and failed. The magisters (think that's their name) would keep calling in reinforcements and buffing armor. In the end I snuck one agent as close to the fragment as possible. Grab the fragment, then run! The bad guys will fight the things that spawn when you grab the fragment.

By the end of the mission there were 43 enemies. Some enemies had 60 armor... just nuts.

[GeneralGonzo]

Originally posted by Tordaddy:

Originally posted by moosc:

I'll tell you whats BS is when in week 5 you encounter 17 enemies with two re-enforcement pads calling more to the fight. How is three characters meant to fight that amount of enemies?
BTW this is on EXPLORER level. To me the game is rubbish when this is allowed to happen on the easy level!!
I had read other accounts of this happening but didn't believe it until now! I have tried but not going to play anymore unless game gets balanced.

I just hit this mission. Seriously challenging! I tried many times to fight through and failed. The magisters (think that's their name) would keep calling in reinforcements and buffing armor. In the end I snuck one agent as close to the fragment as possible. Grab the fragment, then run! The bad guys will fight the things that spawn when you grab the fragment.

By the end of the mission there were 43 enemies. Some enemies had 60 armor... just nuts.

You must have done many many things wrong in that mission - i play on hard and never encountered either that mass of enemies nor a 60 armor enemy! And I´m more than half-way through the game!

You juts don´t use the abilities in realtime to get rid off all that enemies. I often start fights after eliminating at least 5-6 enemies by the realtime abilities, Then fights are absolutely doable, especially when prioring enemies and using ypour abilities.

Damn, guy, did you ever played these kind of games?

[jmvbento]

I mean, generally, the people saying that the fights have too many enemies are the same people saying that stealth is useless, which tracks. You should be using the stealth takedowns to whittle down those 17 starting enemies to like 12 to start with, and then you should be focus firing the magisters to stress break everyone else and just do like 3 coup de graces in one round. Of course, this takes time and patience, which people appear to not be very good at.

The only remark I have regarding those sort of situations is that if I end a round with no living enemies, the Transpads should deactivate, because if that happens they're just chaff - those 2-4 additional goons are going to be a slaughter, not a fight.

[Pauca Verba]

Originally posted by uachakra:

Originally posted by Pauca Verba:

I played all kinds of tactical games, but this one feels absolutly merciless on the difficulty when it should not. Why?

From your words sounds like u dont play to much tactical games , game is preety easy and combat is boring , all u need is just find a solution , when i finish game last missions it was to boring , a lot of enemies and they are all easy , for example fully leveled Eddie , can win solo any amount of enemies with right cards, and gear , he has infinite ammo , 7 ap / turn and u always shoot 7 enemie per ap and cause bleed + flush that is 57dmg per hit + 20 from bleed. and there is lot of insane combo in this game , but u need good cards , like +1p when u attack while inspired and etc.

I figured it out. Ballance in game is just bad. Previously, i used mostly melee characters since i enjoy that kind of gameplay. But truth is that only one melee character is worth taking. Others just suck. And yes, Eddie can solo a lot of enemies... since i took him and other ranged champs like mage or sniper, game became easy.

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Pauca Verba:

Originally posted by uachakra:

From your words sounds like u dont play to much tactical games , game is preety easy and combat is boring , all u need is just find a solution , when i finish game last missions it was to boring , a lot of enemies and they are all easy , for example fully leveled Eddie , can win solo any amount of enemies with right cards, and gear , he has infinite ammo , 7 ap / turn and u always shoot 7 enemie per ap and cause bleed + flush that is 57dmg per hit + 20 from bleed. and there is lot of insane combo in this game , but u need good cards , like +1p when u attack while inspired and etc.

I figured it out. Ballance in game is just bad. Previously, i used mostly melee characters since i enjoy that kind of gameplay. But truth is that only one melee character is worth taking. Others just suck. And yes, Eddie can solo a lot of enemies... since i took him and other ranged champs like mage or sniper, game became easy.

If you think Celestine sucks you are literally terrible at the game. She's actually way more broken than Ingrid when fully kitted and you have someone like Alex to capitalize on stress breaks. I haven't played Fedir personally, but I hear from people in the discord that he also gets ridiculously strong.

It's so pathetic when people blame their lack of skill on the game. It's not the game's fault you're bad at it.

[lily40k]

Originally posted by Pauca Verba:

First, it's doomsday clock. If i go for fully red missions, other 2 clocks progress a bit. If i try to do any kind of story or recruiting missions, clock gaining massive charge because the red missions always appear again. Even if i kill the boss i getting slight setback on one clock, but advances on the other two. It does not feel managable.

Second, combat difficulty. I play on lowest one, and when i started mission for recruiting taro master i just can't complete it with my almost fully leveled up party... insane amount of enemies who can't be stealthly eleminated, and do A LOT of poison damage feels just too much.

I played all kinds of tactical games, but this one feels absolutly merciless on the difficulty when it should not. Why?

hmm i finished it with all 3 houses slightly above 50%
you need to be smart about which missions to do

there are missions with bomb avatar, those will reset their entire progress to last checkpoint, which for the first house is very very deadly they can loose like 40% progress if you do it right.

Doing missions with only 2 or 1 agent puts you really ahead... for example in a rescue mission you can just bring one agent, find the target, and just escape even if you get into combat just run to the exit. The other 3 agents will find towers or important allies.

[MaxPrimal]

I am playing this ♥♥♥♥ on easy and at week 17 all there are only critical missions and the maps are swarmed with mobs. The last one i tried at 13 mobs in one section plus two respawn platforms and a temple to take out.

[lily40k]

Originally posted by Max Primal:

I am playing this ♥♥♥♥ on easy and at week 17 all there are only critical missions and the maps are swarmed with mobs. The last one i tried at 13 mobs in one section plus two respawn platforms and a temple to take out.

you can easily take half of them down with skills but if you are out of that you can lure them out isolate them and kill them in separate if you are really desperate

but best is to level up your op skills and number of mobs does not matter, you just mass delete them

[lily40k]

what changes on Easy? sounds pretty similar to hard to me

[GeneralGonzo]

To be honest, the toughest missions are the one´s, where you are supposed to get the 3 ingredients like persephonite to get into the tower.
The problem is, that after getting the igredient, there are summoned a huge amount of enemies out of nowhere, so you can´t delete some of them before engagement.

All other missions are easy compared to that.

[lily40k]

Originally posted by GeneralGonzo:

To be honest, the toughest missions are the one´s, where you are supposed to get the 3 ingredients like persephonite to get into the tower.
The problem is, that after getting the igredient, there are summoned a huge amount of enemies out of nowhere, so you can´t delete some of them before engagement.

All other missions are easy compared to that.

yeah those are literally hardest missions, everything else is easier, especially if you use the rare resource tofully upgrade your agent.

I would suggest doing those with all 4 agents... and load up with thunder bombs or dynamite