After going into NG+ I am convinced ACS strain is a bad gimmick

[AdAstraWill]

Ok so some may have seen me complain about ACS Strain already, how it just seems to gimp you for no particular reason other than to punish people trying to enjoy themselves or make it easier on the bosses who get messed up by the player who are idk on crack or something.

For me ACS strain is the epitome of bad games design, it frontloads pretty much all difficult content, where you get a shot in and its a heavy hit only for you to be instantly staggered by some single shot nonsense from a boss that does absurd levels of damage so you cannot follow up. When build a global game mechanic around player frustration it doesn't feel at all like a good decision ever.

"Difficulty" imo should come from a variety of mechanics you need to figure out and plan around or dodge, it should not come from endless stun locks from a general mechanic external to the bosses themselves. Not only do the bosses do way more ACS strain most of the time, they have an absurd amount of health, even more on NG+. Meaning even if you do the hardest hitting thing you can do, you're still going to get wasted.

Stun locking should not be a thing and stagger (ACS strain) needs to be toned down.

I love the game, but this mechanic is severely crippling replayabiltiy for me. Its not the damage killing me, its not the bosses themselves and their mechanics killing me, its the hard stun lock from bosses and it makes doing NG+ even more of a chore instead of being fun.

/rantover

[REhorror]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von xeNNNNN:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von REhorror:

There is no randomness involved, if you got hit enough, you will be stunned, this is true for both you and your enemies.

Heck, since stunlocking is a thing, it's almost always your advantage since the enemy cannot change their loadout or AI to adapt to you.

Yeah I found that out with needle cannons lol.

What I am talking about is not explicitly purely random in a literal sense, but it just felt disconnecting because its a build up rather than something direct. I don't like build up mechanics in relation to stun in general. Something more direct would be a lot more intuitive for me.

Keep in mind though its been a while since I played and I haven't thought about it in a while so I don't even remember my full opinion of it anymore so I can't really argue lol.

Build up is basically a tolerance meter because it allows you to be hit multiple times without being staggered.
I imagine an arbitrary instant hit = instant stagger system will be even more annoying since it will be even easier to stunlock.

Either ways, you can play with the no HUD mod, this means you can't see the stagger bar. Can't see the build up = no build up.

[AdAstraWill]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von REhorror:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von xeNNNNN:

Yeah I found that out with needle cannons lol.

What I am talking about is not explicitly purely random in a literal sense, but it just felt disconnecting because its a build up rather than something direct. I don't like build up mechanics in relation to stun in general. Something more direct would be a lot more intuitive for me.

Keep in mind though its been a while since I played and I haven't thought about it in a while so I don't even remember my full opinion of it anymore so I can't really argue lol.

Build up is basically a tolerance meter because it allows you to be hit multiple times without being staggered.
I imagine an arbitrary instant hit = instant stagger system will be even more annoying since it will be even easier to stunlock.

Either ways, you can play with the no HUD mod, this means you can't see the stagger bar. Can't see the build up = no build up.

Maybe for a new player but I'll know its there :P

Hm, possibly, but if it was more favouring boss mechanics rather than the player, I'd like that more because it would become more skill based. When I completed the game I pretty much worked out that, laser cannons + plasma cannons are the only setup to bother with early game and then needles + gatlings for late game. Maybe use songbirds or the pilebunker thingie instead of needles idk.

I like the idea of mechanics that stun directly, because I dislike the idea of damage slowly building up the meter passively. Because then it incentives dodging more. May not work well in PvP though now that I think about it.

[REhorror]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von xeNNNNN:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von REhorror:

Build up is basically a tolerance meter because it allows you to be hit multiple times without being staggered.
I imagine an arbitrary instant hit = instant stagger system will be even more annoying since it will be even easier to stunlock.

Either ways, you can play with the no HUD mod, this means you can't see the stagger bar. Can't see the build up = no build up.

Maybe for a new player but I'll know its there :P

Hm, possibly, but if it was more favouring boss mechanics rather than the player, I'd like that more because it would become more skill based. When I completed the game I pretty much worked out that, laser cannons + plasma cannons are the only setup to bother with early game and then needles + gatlings for late game. Maybe use songbirds or the pilebunker thingie instead of needles idk.

I like the idea of mechanics that stun directly, because I dislike the idea of damage slowly building up the meter passively. Because then it incentives dodging more. May not work well in PvP though now that I think about it.

I mean, you certainly can do that by using high stagger weapons to make the build up faster/seems more instantenous.

This is why the meter excels because it can be applied in both prolong/sustained or alpha strike style.

[Dakota]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jegedillo:

Doesn't help that late game the enemy AC strain cooldown is significantly faster than you can inflict it. Late game I haven't managed to ever stagger an enemy AC more than 2 or 3 times while I get staggered every couple of seconds by only a few shots. Really forces you to dual wield heavy weapons because a lightweight build is kinda useless.

They're just normal ACs the same as yours. Also by the sounds of it you just have a pretty bad build or aren't attacking enough if the enemy hasn't been killed after staggering them 3 times and perhaps you're not evading enough if you're being staggered so often. Oftentimes it's pretty easy to stagger an enemy and then do easily over 5000 damage to them in a followup, some builds focus on combos and can just kill an opponent outright if they stagger them.


As for the OP:
Honestly, having read the title I thought this was gonna be more about not liking the game design aspect of staggering a boss then doing massive damage to them afterwards rather than getting stunlocked to death. I never even thought about what you're saying as an issue since not much at all can stagger you in one hit anyway and if you do get staggered it's like for 1 second or so before you can just quickboost out of it and usually dodge whatever anyway, not to mention if you run pulse armor and just use it right as you get staggered to counter the stagger.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von xeNNNNN:

Hm, possibly, but if it was more favouring boss mechanics rather than the player, I'd like that more because it would become more skill based. When I completed the game I pretty much worked out that, laser cannons + plasma cannons are the only setup to bother with early game and then needles + gatlings for late game. Maybe use songbirds or the pilebunker thingie instead of needles idk.

I like the idea of mechanics that stun directly, because I dislike the idea of damage slowly building up the meter passively. Because then it incentives dodging more. May not work well in PvP though now that I think about it.

There's far better options than laser+plasma or needles+gatlings. Infact needles+gatlings is pretty mid. I think the idea really was to incentivise dodging more since that's generally the point of combat in the game is that you are supposed to evade most incoming fire and especially focus on dodging any of the higher damage hits incoming rather than just absorbing damage. Even with tanks with heavy shielding and all that it tends to be better to just sidestep an incoming highly damaging attack than to tank it.

[Broadsword]

Bosses are friggin' WEIRD in Armored Core so while I can understand what the OP is saying to a certain extent (I don't completely agree with it) I'll say there's historical precedence for pretty 'what' bosses.

Destroy Massive Weapon in AC3 can take under a minute. Destroy Massive MT, my best run is probably like, under two minutes. Arms Fort Stigro in AC4A can be knocked out in under 30 seconds (although most 'generic Arms Forts can get knocked out like this).

I'm not really sure there's a good middle ground, but I will say that it's nice this mechanic works on pretty much every entity from players to bosses.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Skill issue, ACS strain is a good mechanic, even in Multiple NG+ I have no problem ACS Straining certain enemies, though I do use one(1) of those Shotguns. But that's precisely what the shotgun is for. You're not supposed to be able to strain an AC with plinks from an assault rifle, and energy weapons are supposed to inflict maximal damage but minimal ACS strain.

[PVT-Parts]

skill issue

[dsagent]

If you think singleplayer ACS is bad wait until you get to multiplayer with laggy kicks from across the map.