Relaxed is not relaxing

[[S.C.] Worsin]

I am a very casual player and have around 280 hours since this game hit early access. My time is stretched over many partial play throughs. I have not completed this game and I am finding that I will not.

I started on Normal and found it far too difficult after hitting a wall, so I changed it to relaxed. Many bosses are entirely over powered even on this mode.

For example. On General Valencia or whatever her name is in Dracula's area. I am level 88. Its on easy and and I have half of the buffs and all maxed out gems. Still dying to her.

Everyone will surely respond to this thread with Git Gud by all the white knights but I don't really care. That is not the point of Relaxed mode. Relaxed mode is for people who do not have the time to spend perfecting the fight mechanics or who do not care to do so. Brutal is for the people who want a challenge, I can even accept Normal as being a challenging mode if that is what the devs are going for. Just don't call relaxed mode, relaxed, it isn't.

V Rising Relaxed mode is not relaxed. Maybe its relaxed for someone who has mastered all of the game mechanics or is a young kid with the reflexes of a cat, but for anyone my age (53) or older this game is too difficult even in relaxed mode.

I have not finished the game yet nor will I because I am running into a situation where I do not care to put the time into the game to perfect the fight in order to progress.

I like the game overall, I just find the bosses too annoying to continue to play, even in the easiest mode. When I choose easy, I want it to be easy.

I do not think you are approaching Relaxed mode from the perspective of a casual player but from the perspective of a hardcore player and this is a flaw in your thinking.

If you want this game to be enjoyed by everyone the Relaxed mode needs to be fixed and provide a path for casual players like myself.

[Ice-Nine]

Easy mode is already braindead easy.

"Relaxed mode" barely requires pushing buttons to win.

This is a true Git Gud moment.

[Tanyon]

General Velencia?? is literally one of the easiest bosses in the game.. I think maybe you were just not meant to beat this game.. sorry.

[Mad Engineer Kikoumaru]

While I do think even Normal mode is way too easy... if you're having trouble and not playing online, you could change the health and attack/spell power scaling in your settings to help. Though since it's gear based I think it's only applied to new gear you craft AFTER changing the setting, so you'll have to craft a new set of your equipment.

[carnie2]

Originally posted by S.C. Worsin:

If you want this game to be enjoyed by everyone the Relaxed mode needs to be fixed and provide a path for casual players like myself.

I agree 100 %

I play relaxed, (Have played wow in elite raiding guilds, and tons of other hard core), but this game is quite unbalanced in difficulty settings. I love the game, but i cant watch a movie while playing VRising. And that is sometimes what i wanna do.

Give us more user settings to find the correct challenge mode for us.

Players who say its too easy, i wonder why you care to invest time, coming to the forums, to prevent casual players from enjoying the game, How is that benefiting any one.

[Quinian]

I've been having a tough go of some stuff on normal, but it's an amount of difficulty with a failure rate I like. That said, there are custom settings you can pick when starting a new game (dunno if you can after the fact, if not they should add that) that will allow you to set all kinds of individual things. If you can't alter those setting on an existing game, there is probably a way to do it with a text editor

[theworld]

Originally posted by S.C. Worsin:

I have half of the buffs

What happened to the other half?

[Metaltier]

Agree, relaxed is far away from beeing relaxed. Not everybody is a highly trained 15year old, high on energydrinks and having the reaction time like a fly on cocain.

[Moist Butt]

hot take, but I think "brutal" mode is actually the default mode or the intended experience that the dev wants for gamer. Yes I know its the hardest difficulty, but how many games can you think of where the devs actually put that much thought into the hardest setting. We arent talking about the typical increase hp and damage. Brutal literally gives new moveset to bosses and improve ai. There's a lot of fking bosses in this game which means a lot of work. Not something you expect a small studio to do at all when even big studios dont do that. I honestly think the only reason devs called brutal is because things like this.

With that said, I aint opposing OP's idea of adding an easier difficulty. I just think its crazy how low the skill floor has fallen for the avg gamer.

[skizzo]

Originally posted by S.C. Worsin:

I am a very casual player and have around 280 hours since this game hit early access. My time is stretched over many partial play throughs. I have not completed this game and I am finding that I will not.

I started on Normal and found it far too difficult after hitting a wall, so I changed it to relaxed. Many bosses are entirely over powered even on this mode.

For example. On General Valencia or whatever her name is in Dracula's area. I am level 88. Its on easy and and I have half of the buffs and all maxed out gems. Still dying to her.

Everyone will surely respond to this thread with Git Gud by all the white knights but I don't really care.

Don't worry I won't ...
But maybe sth. that could help u: The right build for the right boss often trivilalizes the fight (on brutal changing build becomes even mandatory).
If you struggle with that particular boss, try to use iceshield to block her multispear-attack. She gets a lot of dmg just by blocking the attack. Destroy the iron maiden as soon as possible and utilize minions to do so if you struggle to destroy it yourself (also distracts bosses which can be quite convenient). As dodge, I recommend veil of chaos, it's very beginner friendly and u don't rely so much on perfect positioning.
It's jus an example, there are a lot other which work. In general: max ur gear, drink all avaible buff potions and get 100% blood type for the build u need (rogue and scholar are superior imo - again depending on the build ofc).
Hope that helps, hf.

[theworld]

Originally posted by Moist Butt:

but how many games can you think of where the devs actually put that much thought into the hardest setting.

This isn't new or THAT rare. Terraria and Dead Cells have it. And these are just off the top of my head, and I have played like <15 games over the last 10 years.

[holdem]

Game does good job making you feel like you are playing a weak little vampire compared to the bosses. lol
While your attacks twittle little chunks of hp bosses can delete half your hp bar per hit.
Also literally all progression is locked behind bosses in a way that you always have to fight them under geared so you either beat him with twitch dodge reflexes or you can quit.

[theworld]

Originally posted by holdem:

While your attacks twittle little chunks of hp bosses can delete half your hp bar per hit.

This describes 99% games out there. I can't name 1 game out there that would have both you and the boss have little HP and for it to be both balanced and fun.

I heard Devil May Cry has a mode where everything is oneshot (including you), but I don't think that would be that good once the novelty wears off.

In cases where you and bosses have little HP (Meaning you have a glass cannon build) you still have to be an expert at that game and dodge or parry almost everything, or you will die very quickly. Most recent example I can think of is Dead Cells at 5BC difficulty.

[Moist Butt]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by Moist Butt:

but how many games can you think of where the devs actually put that much thought into the hardest setting.

This isn't new or THAT rare. Terraria and Dead Cells have it. And these are just off the top of my head, and I have played like <15 games over the last 10 years.

I aint saying its new. Idk I have over 200 games on steam and have played at least 150 of those. Maybe I am unlucky or you are lucky. From my experience most dev just add on more damage or hp for higher difficulty. One that I can think of top of my head that adds a bit more is SOD2, but its no where near the scope of this imo.

Funnily enough I never played terraria or dead cells despite having more than 10x your games. Really might be a RNG thing.

[holdem]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by holdem:

While your attacks twittle little chunks of hp bosses can delete half your hp bar per hit.

This describes 99% games out there. I can't name 1 game out there that would have both you and the boss have little HP and for it to be both balanced and fun.

I heard Devil May Cry has a mode where everything is oneshot (including you), but I don't think that would be that good once the novelty wears off.

In cases where you and bosses have little HP (Meaning you have a glass cannon build) you still have to be an expert at that game and dodge or parry almost everything, or you will die very quickly. Most recent example I can think of is Dead Cells at 5BC difficulty.

Most open world games don't lock all gear or power up progression behind a certain boss.
The issue is either you can beat boss or you are stuck.
Normally when you can't beat a boss you go level or gear up somewhere else and return to boss later.

[Owl]

Note For Casuals: Just about every setting can be tweaked here. You can make yourself more powerful, and make all the enemies weak as garbage. You can not only increase your base power, but also increase the power added into by equipment. There is no reason for you to require anything more than what is already in place currently for making this "easier" for yourself as a casual. If you're not satisfied with the base settings for the "RELAXED" mode, then take it upon yourself to alter the settings until it is at a level that you can call relaxed.

If you're running a server for casuals, you can tweak the setting through whoever you're using as a host as well. I'm not going to sit here and tell you to "GIT GUD" or some nonsense, but they don't need to change anything in those regards. You can do it yourself. Those settings are their own preferences they set down.

Just to be clear... Even the Brutal difficulty, can be made to be even more unforgiving than it already is by tweaking the settings. So their version of the "hardest" difficulty can be made even worse by people who have a serious death wish. O_O

All in all, you can change the settings yourself to what you like for you. Look into it.