You never really feel powerful.

[Fido]

Yeah.

Which, I mean, it's okay for the game to be challenging. But the entire premise, including the intro cutscene, the game sells you on is that "oh no, vampires are back, everyone, shake in your boots". And that promise is never really made true in practice, unless you punch down on lower level clowns. Especially after level 30, bosses just feel like they are veritable mountains you have to climb, and it kind of makes them vampires look like a total non-threat if one of the strongest among them is at-best an equal said boss can lose to.


It's not really something you can- or should- fix by making the game easier, it's just a weird discrepancy with the whole "you gotta' have a challenging video game" concept. It always feels like every boss (and a good number of the higher-tier regular enemies) is a meatwall while they only need 1-5 hits to take you down from full health (depending on attack).

Maybe if fights were more strategical, where the bosses also dodged, blocked/parried, and didn't need thousands of health points to make it challenging, but instead actually fought back proper, a sort of equilibrium could be reached. But meatwalling in general is pretty horrible in terms of actual balance design.

It's also a bit lame when 3 equal-level regulars can just constantly keep you running and dodging with little opening to attack. Especially if I'm supposed to be some horrifying monstrocity everyone's so damned afraid of.


I went into this game expecting challenge, and like... just piling health points on enemies ain't it, chief. I know it's early access and all, so I'm cutting all the slack needed, this is more of a suggestion towards future balancing.


tl;dr - the suggestion part
- More balancing towards tactical boss fights in the future, rather than health bar spam.
- Expanded boss move sets, to achieve tactical combat.
- Regular enemies less difficult, less rewarding (for that crisp "scary vamp" feel).
- More regular enemies to compensate in stopgap areas???

[Fido]

Addendum:

I guess bosses with big shields and heavy armour can probably justify being bulky walls of beef. But even still, just having to hit someone several dozens/hundreds of times isn't very fun?

[Aurelia]

Barring "gamey respawns", it's also true that you're the only actual immortal in the world, and are thus the biggest threat. The very fact that you are able to triumph over every obstacle, including all those people that are patrolling down the roads that you just wreck without consideration, I'm afraid of what your definition of "feel powerful" is.

[Fido]

Originally posted by Aurelia:

Barring "gamey respawns", it's also true that you're the only actual immortal in the world, and are thus the biggest threat. The very fact that you are able to triumph over every obstacle, including all those people that are patrolling down the roads that you just wreck without consideration, I'm afraid of what your definition of "feel powerful" is.

Alright so, like. At level ~40 I have 260 or so health points. A boss has hundreds more, if not outright 4 digits. They hit me for 50+, I hit them for 9-15. It's very silly when those inferior mortals are several times stronger than you in both strength, magical prowess, and constitution.

Instead of giving them a hard numbers advantage, say, make every boss have roughly equivalent health, equivalent damage, but a severely expanded move set. Game's just as difficult, far more skill-based, and you can actually get the impression you're not just some little wimp who's only winning trait is a respawn coffin.

(On that note, infinitely respawning without penalty is a bit bogus too. There's no 'risk and reward', there's only 'time and reward')

[Silly Cat]

we terrorize whole villages and cities, kill every opposition, massacre villagers just because we can, grab all the valuables we desire, In the end we can kill dozens of soldiers with one ability, if this isn't powerful what is? At times it really feels like we can let out our power fantasies in this game, especially with higher level gear.
In the end you will kill all bosses, so it turns out vampire are in fact are an unstoppable force.
Later bosses have more to offer than just bigger health bars, they got a whole lot of abilities you need quickly to adapt to if you want to win.

[Fido]

Originally posted by Yacc:

we terrorize whole villages and cities, kill every opposition, massacre villagers just because we can, grab all the valuables we desire, In the end we can kill dozens of soldiers with one ability, if this isn't powerful what is? At times it really feels like we can let out our power fantasies in this game, especially with higher level gear.
In the end you will kill all bosses, so it turns out vampire are in fact are an unstoppable force.
Later bosses have more to offer than just bigger health bars, they got a whole lot of abilities you need quickly to adapt to if you want to win.

I haven't gotten to the highest eschelons of gear yet, so if there's a total lull in power level around the 25-45 zone, that's a problem worth mentioning, too.

[Aurelia]

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

Alright so, like. At level ~40 I have 260 or so health points. A boss has hundreds more, if not outright 4 digits. They hit me for 50+, I hit them for 9-15. It's very silly when those inferior mortals are several times stronger than you in both strength, magical prowess, and constitution.

Instead of giving them a hard numbers advantage, say, make every boss have roughly equivalent health, equivalent damage, but a severely expanded move set. Game's just as difficult, far more skill-based, and you can actually get the impression you're not just some little wimp who's only winning trait is a respawn coffin.

Except it wouldn't be just as difficult, since all you'd need to do is utilize terrain and objects, and pop off a few bolts at any boss to down them.
Players have huge advantages over AI, including paced timing of actions, pathing, consideration for terrain etc, that AI just can't keep up with. Putting bosses on the same level as players, even with expanded move sets would not be enough to give the game any challenge. The challenge comes from attrition of pacing, being able to last long enough through a duration, rather than one-off sprints which is what that would boil down to.
That's why bosses in games always seem to have such massive more hp than the player, because it's the only way to really make the fights last more than a single round of popping buffs and quicksnap nuking.

As an added bit of lore for the game...
There seems to be this belief that you're this all-powerful vampire, but you actually aren't. At this stage, you're just some wilted thrall barely capable of running.

And I can assure you, when you start outpowering bosses by 10+ levels or so, they go down quite readily without much effort. by the time you're 49, those level 30~40bosses are chumps, not even worthy of being called bosses. I down them in passing as i'm running from one location to the other without much thought.

[Silly Cat]

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

Originally posted by Yacc:

we terrorize whole villages and cities, kill every opposition, massacre villagers just because we can, grab all the valuables we desire, In the end we can kill dozens of soldiers with one ability, if this isn't powerful what is? At times it really feels like we can let out our power fantasies in this game, especially with higher level gear.
In the end you will kill all bosses, so it turns out vampire are in fact are an unstoppable force.
Later bosses have more to offer than just bigger health bars, they got a whole lot of abilities you need quickly to adapt to if you want to win.

I haven't gotten to the highest eschelons of gear yet, so if there's a total lull in power level around the 25-45 zone, that's a problem worth mentioning, too.

yeah the lower level bosses are a bit of a letdown and not really challenging tbh,
Octavian (lvl58) was the first boss we didn't beat first try and needed some preparation. Only after that it became challenging.

[Tenshin51]

Try to gear up ! Try different abilities and weapons it could help in your campaign. Lvl 40 is a different ball game you definitely need to be gear facing those mobs due iron weapons provides a bunch of AOE abilities which is useful against them.

Lvl 40 mobs can summon adds and use AOE. As long I am careful there are not issue for me. Definitely some boss can be tedious than challenging like the scholar keep summoning a ton of adds.

If you don't like default setting you can change your difficulty setting. You can make the boss have less health but can hit really hard.

[Fido]

Originally posted by Aurelia:

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

Alright so, like. At level ~40 I have 260 or so health points. A boss has hundreds more, if not outright 4 digits. They hit me for 50+, I hit them for 9-15. It's very silly when those inferior mortals are several times stronger than you in both strength, magical prowess, and constitution.

Instead of giving them a hard numbers advantage, say, make every boss have roughly equivalent health, equivalent damage, but a severely expanded move set. Game's just as difficult, far more skill-based, and you can actually get the impression you're not just some little wimp who's only winning trait is a respawn coffin.

Except it wouldn't be just as difficult, since all you'd need to do is utilize terrain and objects, and pop off a few bolts at any boss to down them.
Players have huge advantages over AI, including paced timing of actions, pathing, consideration for terrain etc, that AI just can't keep up with. Putting bosses on the same level as players, even with expanded move sets would not be enough to give the game any challenge. The challenge comes from attrition of pacing, being able to last long enough through a duration, rather than one-off sprints which is what that would boil down to.
That's why bosses in games always seem to have such massive more hp than the player, because it's the only way to really make the fights last more than a single round of popping buffs and quicksnap nuking.

As an added bit of lore for the game...
There seems to be this belief that you're this all-powerful vampire, but you actually aren't. At this stage, you're just some wilted thrall barely capable of running.

And I can assure you, when you start outpowering bosses by 10+ levels or so, they go down quite readily without much effort. by the time you're 49, those level 30~40bosses are chumps, not even worthy of being called bosses. I down them in passing as i'm running from one location to the other without much thought.

You already do things such as utilize terrain. The 'popping off bolts' thing is nice and all, but not everyone wants to play a ranged build, why should I have to use the crossbow if I just want to get in close and brawl? Why is that not a viable way of playing?

And players will always find ways to cheese things. Players are already cheesing bosses now, so I doubt it'll actually increase the rate of cheese in effect. I feel like if, as a developer, the only way you can make a fight hard, is to make it annoyingly long, then you don't really have any business being a game developer? If it's a temporary thing for early access, just to get the game out, then I totally understand it- that's why I framed the latter half of my original post as a suggestion.

As for starting out weak, I get it. You're a long-gone vampire revived, drained, weak, you have to start out sucking some rats, and I get it. But if the game wants to say 'you're not actually a strong vampire until you defeated every V Blood and have every last bit of endgame gear", then I'm not here for it.

We should be starting to feel like we're actually powerful at an earlier point, I think that'd be nice. I shouldn't have to go back an entire zone to punch down on clowns, as said earlier.

Originally posted by Yacc:

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

I haven't gotten to the highest eschelons of gear yet, so if there's a total lull in power level around the 25-45 zone, that's a problem worth mentioning, too.

yeah the lower level bosses are a bit of a letdown and not really challenging tbh,
Octavian (lvl58) was the first boss we didn't beat first try and needed some preparation. Only after that it became challenging.

Usually if I die, it's because I fell out of timing with the sequence of attacks. It's very much not difficult already, just meatwalling. And as someone who's been playing MMORPGs since the turn of the century, I'm frankly really sick of the 'health bar = difficulty' mentality, if that makes sense?

I acknowledge that when I die, it's my mistake. I acknowledge that I'm not perfect, and sometimes I die a couple times trying to catch the rhythm, and that's my fault. I'm not intending for this to sound like a drawn-out whine about the game being too difficult.

I just want something else than the boss who just has health more than anything.

Originally posted by Tenshin51:

Try to gear up ! Try different abilities and weapons it could help in your campaign. Lvl 40 is a different ball game you definitely need to be gear facing those mobs due iron weapons provides a bunch of AOE abilities which is useful against them.

Lvl 40 mobs can summon adds and use AOE. As long I am careful there are not issue for me. Definitely some boss can be tedious than challenging like the scholar keep summoning a ton of adds.

If you don't like default setting you can change your difficulty setting. You can make the boss have less health but can hit really hard.

Admittedly, I haven't reached the full-iron age yet, this has already become a problem for me before then. And if as soon as I get iron gear, the game becomes easy, then that might need rebalancing too.

I play on a friend's PvE server, so I can't quite change the settings. Nor am I really familiar with any of 'em, but I was assured it was pretty close to the default playing experience.

[Aurelia]

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

And players will always find ways to cheese things. Players are already cheesing bosses now, so I doubt it'll actually increase the rate of cheese in effect. I feel like if, as a developer, the only way you can make a fight hard, is to make it annoyingly long, then you don't really have any business being a game developer? If it's a temporary thing for early access, just to get the game out, then I totally understand it- that's why I framed the latter half of my original post as a suggestion.

As for starting out weak, I get it. You're a long-gone vampire revived, drained, weak, you have to start out sucking some rats, and I get it. But if the game wants to say 'you're not actually a strong vampire until you defeated every V Blood and have every last bit of endgame gear", then I'm not here for it.

We should be starting to feel like we're actually powerful at an earlier point, I think that'd be nice. I shouldn't have to go back an entire zone to punch down on clowns, as said earlier.

Well, you said it yourself.
The thing is, that players will always find ways to first strike nuke enemies to deal the most damage they can at the very start before the boss can even begin to use it's attacks. This is extremely common combat games like this. Deal as much damage as possible with your hardest hitting attacks. If that doens't kill it, just focus on evading until all your CDs are ready again, then nuke them again.

That isn't challenge, and most game developers know that.

And as for the game making you feel more powerful as you go on, for that to happen, it would require the start of the game being the most difficult. But let's face it. If the game only got easier from the moment you woke up in the coffin, so many people would quit this game 4 hours in, as that's all it would really take to blow through all content. The game has to get more difficult, or it won't keep people.

[Silly Cat]

just saying that the later bosses get way more abilities like summoning adds, dash, pulls, displacement, teleport, invis, several hard ccs, rage phases, casting shields, shooting dozens of projectiles in a pattern you need to weave through if you want to avoid damage etc.
I haven't played as much MMOS as you, but i found the later bosses to be interesting, the early ones don't have much to offer though.

[Fido]

Never mind, the server I'm playing on is merciless/advanced hard, with 2x health and 3x damage for V Blood foes, AND regular enemies.

And I wasn't aware of that.

[Aurelia]

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

Never mind, the server I'm playing on is merciless/advanced hard, with 2x health and 3x damage.

And I wasn't aware of that.

Owch... Well no wonder >.<

[Silly Cat]

Originally posted by DANGER☠POSSUM:

Never mind, the server I'm playing on is merciless/advanced hard, with 2x health and 3x damage for V Blood foes, AND regular enemies.

And I wasn't aware of that.

well this is explaining a lot!

[BobOnix]

i dont know i just raged for the first time at how ridiculous the frog boss is as a duo, both 65 geared, and as soon as the little mobs spawn its a cluster ♥♥♥♥ of stacking damage that can out right zero you. Im not sure if the bosses scale if you attack with 2 people.

Couple that with the tiny fight area, the fact the boss can literally remove you from play by swallowing you and you get directly damage coming out without opportunity to mitigate, boss jumping on you frogs spitting 20 areas of AOE damage. that's not a fight that's just masochism.

and its even more annoying when you've spent all that time grinding for buffs, potions and blood, just to get stomped like that.

thats not a get good issue that's a balance issue.

Even ultimate abilities seem weak AF the same abilities bosses use against you to flatten you.

maybe its easier solo, thats why some people have a differing opinion. i would replay solo but i dont fancy spending another 100 hours to be where im at now. the grind, the mat weight, the repair cost is too much.

Honestly at the point now where i grumble at the thought of killing the next boss becuase i know itll mean another trial by fire grinding session and i played WoW for 15 years and 700 attempts at the toughest raid bosses there youd think id be more patient.

im editing this alot sorry, but rewards are tied to downing bosses, its liek congrats here's an item you unlocked now go farm for hours to make it...why not tie gear to actual bosses as drops? then that's rewarding instead of inflating play time with this kind of nonsense. i see the player base dropping significantly around the mid tier to end game content.