Game finished on legendary/grandmaster first try

[Dolphinkeeper]

So I started the game and when I got librarian I formed a hypothesis on how the game can be broken, so I restarted in legendary/grandmaster and tried to BLIND speedrun it with aim to first turn all boss fights without actually knowing what they do. With one exception, I succeeded. Half of it was done even after WP nerf, which really did not solve anything...

Proof:
https://imgur.com/UiklBZF

Boss kills:
1st turn kill
https://imgur.com/zrtXbLO
https://imgur.com/cSpKbUO

Only one I needed 2 turns to kill. I got caught off guard by -4 dmg ranged shield. In retrospect, all I needed to do is switch justicars with psycanons for justicars with leveled force strikes and I would have easily gotten first turn kill as well. But it was blind run on grandmaster, so I could not reload and try again.
https://imgur.com/ApukNOR
https://imgur.com/KDxMiaK

1st turn kill
https://imgur.com/D1xkHDa
https://imgur.com/aXGIxKU

1st turn kill
https://imgur.com/f3GpPWg
https://imgur.com/JLjvnSx

Final boss - dont check if you dont want spoilers
https://imgur.com/7E624gi
https://imgur.com/FNkxDdn
https://imgur.com/IUbxid0
Poor Morty and his sad band never got single turn. All his phases without exception were done in one turn, blind run, no save/load, hardest difficulty. You can check the death guard blob down which never got turn to move from the portal. Thats what you get Mortarion, when you piss off Draigo, Chuck Norris of 40k.

Now the actual rant and not so subtle message to developers and players is incoming...

Firstly I would like to say, that as a long time warhammer enthusiast I feel, that this game captures grey knights well and does them credit. And to evoke this feeling is no small feat - well done to developers on this part. They really feel like overpowered over the top fast shock troops as they are portrayed in the fluff. And the abuse of teleportation is, in its own perverse way, how it should work for them, so I really cannot ♥♥♥♥ on them so much in this regard. I believe such a strategy should be available and viable, however that brings up quite a lot of questions...

This game, obviously, (and you state as much on your web page) is fast paced strategy game, which encourages you to take offensive action and give you many tools to finish fights and move on map quickly. Why then, have you coded in your game abilities like bleed? Taunt? Armor break? Things which are setup abilities for following turn? I will tell you why...only because other games have them and you felt obliged to add them, without any context for your game. DId you test your own ♥♥♥♥? What was your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ methodology? What did your numbers guy do? You did have a math guy, or someone with experience with board games to tell you your math is off? I somehow doubt that. Quickly after launch you find out that your balance is completely broken and what do you do...you increase WP. With that intent? What was it supposed to solve? When you are in mission, you have 2-4 targets. Even if you raise gate of infinity to 5 wp, thats enough to jump to each objective. Math is really that simple. And you do what with justicars? You double WP for AP spell? What was that supposed to solve when you can first turn all your bosess on hardest difficulty without any effort anyway?

Think of it this way. You spent lot of time designing and coding your encounters. You have created phases in boss fights, you have narrated the lines of dialogue and they look and feel great. But what does it matter, when your game is so broken, that you can skip all of that painstakingly created content? So to answer my rhetorical question, no you did not test your own ♥♥♥♥. And these are obvious design flaws, which burned out much older game systems - think phyrexian mana, black lotus, dark ritual in magic the gathering etc...its the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ principle. There are glaring flaws and imbalances in quality of your production. Some of it is really good, but other parts are so laughably bad, that they drag down the rest of otherwise great product down. This game is essentially a board game, which is a puzzle with rng balanced around a math equation, and your math SUCKS and it HURTS MY BRAIN. I did not expect that my attempt on blind run would be so trivial even with your "balance patch".

And not to piss of players as well. All these complaints about difficulty based on reality, that many players cannot take ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 15 minutes to study skill tree, but they have hours to argue about their ignorance on the internet kills all my optimism for new generation. What the ♥♥♥♥ are you going to do, when you will need to read a law, regulation, technological quota or guideline for your work and then after analysis you will need to reach conclusion and/or produce results? I do not think, that there ever was a generation with shorter attention span in the whole history of mankind. Humanity is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and Emperor cannot come soon enough...

[Envee]

Ibr my guy, bleed, taunt, and armor break have done wonders tilting stacked odds back to my favor in early game missions. Sometimes, being overwhelmed by bodies required me to consider setting up whenever I couldnt outright kill something in a turn. I figured as the knights got more powerful in the late game, those abilities would be not as useful, though I have yet to see that having not reached the late game yet.

However the WP increase I feel is really weird even still. TBF any game with a leveling system will have players overlevel and nuke late-game challeneges, but the WP doesnt really seem to address that, I agree.

[Deirdie]

wow , i am sure you are a great companion at parties. want a cookie ?

[Dolphinkeeper]

quote=Envee

I feel puzzled. because this game makes mistakes in areas, which were well explored and tested in other systems. It is make something from nothing. If you make a spell, which gives 3 actions for one action, in reality it simply means, that you have 2 more actions, the cost is not there. Making it more expensive on alternate costs like WP, makes no logical sense. You will reach hardest encounter or boss fight and even if it would cost all of WP, you can still cast it and make the encounter completely trivial. The fact that you cannot spam it is irrelevant, because you do not need it in filler fights and because there is not going to be a second turn in boss fight.

If you already have it in game, there are in my opinion two ways to balance it:
1st make it cost less wp and no ap base, but it will transfer all ap from justicar to other knight. Its one for one, but it is still usefull for damage dealer bursts.

2nd leave it as it is, but at least make it short ranged. The fact that you can can cast it over the whole map when you can freely teleport is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hilarious.

[Dolphinkeeper]

Originally posted by Deirdie:

wow , i am sure you are a great companion at parties. want a cookie ?

This is how you try to provoke people? 2/10. I bet you cant keep eye contact in conflict for 2 seconds.

[Deirdie]

Originally posted by Basileus:

This is how you try to provoke people? 2/10. I bet you cant keep eye contact in conflict for 2 seconds.

Oh , so it a starring contest now, what's next , who yells louder ? I thought this whole post was some genital competition at best, rant at most , nothing constructive in the end. Pointing out problems without a solution is not constructive.

And no , i just wanted to offer you a cookie for your effort. Because that is all its worth.

What do i have to gain provoking you anyway ? mr. special snow flake. No one is out there to get you.

[SDSkinner2011]

Originally posted by Basileus:

And not to piss of players as well. All these complaints about difficulty based on reality, that many players cannot take ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 15 minutes to study skill tree, but they have hours to argue about their ignorance on the internet kills all my optimism for new generation. What the ♥♥♥♥ are you going to do, when you will need to read a law, regulation, technological quota or guideline for your work and then after analysis you will need to reach conclusion and/or produce results? I do not think, that there ever was a generation with shorter attention span in the whole history of mankind. Humanity is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and Emperor cannot come soon enough...

Half of the classes aren't available at start and the other half of the puzzle (the enemies) isn't known at the start either. The people who are complaining it is too hard generally haven't gotten past the first boss.

...

As for balance, yeah you'd think game design would improve over time as companies learnt from decisions of earlier attempts and codify good design practices.

That hasn't happened. The game industry is rotting just like everything else.

[Dolphinkeeper]

quote=Deirdie

Your attempt to hide your passive agressivness could use some work. Did I offend you somehow with my original post that you would need to engage in such a manner?

My first point was about the lack of testing. My speedrun was, what should have happened during beta stage testing. Traditional paradigm values testers critical data as their primary output. But this should have been done by the company, not the player.

My point about testing stands. Your point was what again?

[Dolphinkeeper]

quote=SDSkinner

Man, I would love to be optimistic about it, because I really like lot of other aspects about this product. If you take into consideration how ♥♥♥♥ the most of warhammer games were in the past years, this one feels close, but not quite it. That itself from my point of view says, that they did learn in some areas, but sadly failed on others. But maybe the bar is so low, that I would consider this as an acomplishment...

[BunnyBunny]

Originally posted by SDSkinner2011:

Originally posted by Basileus:

And not to piss of players as well. All these complaints about difficulty based on reality, that many players cannot take ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 15 minutes to study skill tree, but they have hours to argue about their ignorance on the internet kills all my optimism for new generation. What the ♥♥♥♥ are you going to do, when you will need to read a law, regulation, technological quota or guideline for your work and then after analysis you will need to reach conclusion and/or produce results? I do not think, that there ever was a generation with shorter attention span in the whole history of mankind. Humanity is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and Emperor cannot come soon enough...

Half of the classes aren't available at start and the other half of the puzzle (the enemies) isn't known at the start either. The people who are complaining it is too hard generally haven't gotten past the first boss.

...

As for balance, yeah you'd think game design would improve over time as companies learnt from decisions of earlier attempts and codify good design practices.

That hasn't happened. The game industry is rotting just like everything else.

I guess you don'k know about elden ring or roguelike then... Game industry has never been as good as now.

[Deirdie]

Originally posted by Basileus:

quote=Deirdie

Your attempt to hide your passive agressivness could use some work. Did I offend you somehow with my original post that you would need to engage in such a manner?

My first point was about the lack of testing. My speedrun was, what should have happened during beta stage testing. Traditional paradigm values testers critical data as their primary output. But this should have been done by the company, not the player.

My point about testing stands. Your point was what again?

"And not to piss of players as well. All these complaints about difficulty based on reality, " think about what that line means, the classic passive aggressive opening with content to follow.

I never disputed your testing nor your point , i do think they are valid to a certain degree . The issue is , you kept saying the devs never tested their game , info you do not have , you kept saying their math guy's math is flawed , how is it flawed ? how would you want it fixed otherwise ?

Something you might find obvious and easy to you does not necessarily mean the same to some others, and you question what caused hostilities ? Your final paragraph shows 0 respect to anyone else except bashing the game being too easy for you all the while the rest that find otherwise are intellectually handicapped.

[Vantal]

I don't really see the point of this post.

You cheesed the game using broken builds, well done.

[Dolphinkeeper]

quote=Deirdie

You project your interpretation onto me and state it as my intent. I can do mental gymnastics as well. Man, you literally even take what I say and flip it with "no it was you, youre passive agressive". Are we in the kindergarden?

Now you say you do not disprove my point. I thought you said it was unconstructive pointless rant? Once again I ask what is your point?

Did you bother to check the attached documentation? That itself makes reasonable case, that the testing was insufficient. Given the setting, I dare say it makes the data quite exclusive. I can break up process for you. You say, I do not know, that they were not testing enough. That is correct. That is my hypothesis. As a methodology to support my hypothesis, I run no save hardest difficulty to break their rules. In the meantime, they form hypothesis, that the game is broken because of 2 wp teleport and give ap spells. This gives me opportunity to test my hypothesis against theirs and prove, that my hypothesis stands, because the problem persist as I run through the game. As a reference, I use another system, which fundamentaly suffered from same problem. In the next post, which you propably did not see because you were typing, I even point out what you want. Funilly enough, I even prefer that you did not read it, because on the principle level, I already paid them with my hard earned monies and provided valuable testing data for them which pisess me off, because I am not their employee. Lot of time went into testing and proving my hypothesis, yet you only attack me without actually adding anything of value yourself. Oh the irony.

On a personal level, the projection youre forcing unto me in your last paragraph is dumbfounding. Not once have I attacked intelectual capacity of anyone in my posts. My gripe stands with short attention span of new generation, which unfortunately goes along with current standard of unfinished products being published as completed games on the market. The fact, that you would imply that I would consider anyone playing the game incapable of reading ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tooltips of abilities and therefore base my intelectual superiority about it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hilarious. The fact alone, that I managed to speedrun this game blindly without saves does not prove that I am superior, but that it is broken product and I would encourage others just to not be so lazy and do little reading to save them trouble in their playthrough.

[Dolphinkeeper]

Originally posted by Vantal:

I don't really see the point of this post.

You cheesed the game using broken builds, well done.

Yeah man. I did everything according to the guides of others who did the same. To the letter.

[Have Heart]

I see your point, but a lot of people struggle and cry that the game is too difficult. Cry for nerfs in singleplayer game etc. I think bleed and other options are still viable. Yes, aggressive playstyle pays off really well. But you can try any tactics, warp surge isn't so punishing.

Just maybe balancing the game for casuals and sweaty people ain't as easy as it is inside your mind?

You know there is a saying among people who make games, that after making your own, you don't criticize other people work ever. It's a good game. Too easy for your genius? Too bad man. That sucks. I think it might be solvable with mods or dlc in the future. You could also set your own limitations to make game more interesting and challenging.

Ranting is ok, but try to contain your ego man. Being humble has it's benefits.

[Player]

I thought you were going to make actual suggestions at the end