The Update ... was UNDERWHELMING in execution.

[Nichiyoubi]

Hello. I did some testing with Barbarian. One time for each update: 0.11.039f (/Rollbacked Update [RBU]) , EA Update 9h1 [9h1], and EA Update 9g3 [9g3]. Playing with similar builds, Playing as similar as possible (Point blank to all mobs and bosses utilizing the healing of Ground Slam to face tank and dish out damage with overwhelming bleeds), Max Curse Intensity (48 for RBU, 56 for 9h1, 58 for 9g3), and seeing how long it took to get a Victory (Win stage 1 and exit with blue portal.)
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The builds
Weapon: Bloodgod's Legacy (BGL)
0.11.039f (build)Died at 7:56 at level 61 with 8 of 20 Lords Slain
Runes: Weapon Expert - Reroll Mastery - Endless Refill - Pulse of Agony - Elemental Flow - Vulnerable Target - Critical Mastery
Active Skill Order: Heavy Strike -> Ground Slam -> Scent of Blood -> Flurry -> Shrapnel Bomb -> Heart Rending Strike
9h1 (build) Victory at 6:35 at level 66
Active Skill Order: Heavy Strike -> Ground Slam -> Bloody Saw -> Flurry -> Heartrending Strike -> Scent of Blood
Runes: Weapon Expert - Reroll Mastery - Endless Refill - Pulse of Agony - Elemental Flow - Vulnerable Target - Critical Mastery
9g3 (build) Victory at 8:10 at level 55
Active Skill Order: Heavy Strike -> Ground Slam -> Heart Rending Strike -> Bloody Saw -> Flurry -> Double Slash
Runes: Weapon Expert - Reroll Mastery - Endless Refill - Pulse of Agony - Elemental Flow - Vulnerable Target - Critical Mastery
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As stated by people previously the New Beginnings Update[NBU] the pace of the game was significantly slowed down (refer to the comparisons of 0.11.039f and 9g3 levels). I intentionally died at 7:56 because going further already proved the point that the Exp gains where either cut down or exp required was increased. HOWEVER what NBU (refer to both 9h1 and 9g3) the concept of the drain tank and bleed build was consistent not only adding damage but the self buffs such as Finesse (Damage), Form (Crit Damage), Finesse (Multi Cast Chance) and especially Bulwark(Armor Power) and Resiliance (Block Power). It was very satisfying in conjunction to Barbarian's Rage Mode cutting down enemies was a blast. Unfortunately the difference between 9h1 and 9g3 differ tremendously in time and levels gained.

9h1 at least felt like a proper progression from the Rolled Back Update [RBU]. The Exp was on par with RBU but the completion of the run was significantly quicker even with higher Curse Intensity. The additions of the buffs and changes to active skills along with the upgrades replacing former and adding new ones made the overall progression fresh. Build crafting was rewarded throughout the run and was kind of bummed not going longer to see the limits of the build in Overlord. HOWEVER, since I didnt take it to Overlord I cannot comment on the severity of the scaling and if the NBU adjusted due to the pace of the game. I did play it prior to this test on Sentinel (me beloved) and it was just a slog to play and scaled way too early to RBU Overlord 3 (roughly) with nowhere near the same amount of upgrades. The arena for Overlord is absolutely great because the maps get boring on repeat and become more of a slog in comparison to the circular arena because the game play gets samey till death.I will concede on the fact the walls and terrain do save you cycling through the levels is good but with how fast the Lords attack on higher Overlord Levels you just get one tapped regardless of walls. Overall 9h1 was next to perfect from being faithful to what was expected of the game. It was fast fun rewarding build crafting even more with the self buffs that active skills provide and endless more time to dive into other characters and see what builds can be achieved with the additions. Unfortunately it resulted in 9g3.

9g3 just slowed down everything. I don't follow the streams nor do I really dive into discussions of the community too much but it's so ... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ... SLOW! Refer to the times between 9g3 and 9h1. The times generalize the details of reduced Exp Gain leading to less upgrades to less overall damage. I'm not going to lie i did get the magnet upgrade to increase expgain roughly around 80% to 100% but in 9g3 my rng and options only got me to 60% bonus. So even if I wanted to try my best to roll same damage and exp like i did for RBU and 9h1. It's impossible unless I took every magnet upgrade but the value diminishes if it takes too long to kill the monsters. While I was rewarded for build crafting I cannot reasonably shake off the fact that the standard and pace of the game lowered the exp progression because I and many other people played previously. While Gaming Smith Limited [GSL] have every right to make any edits, additions, etc to the game. I personally don't think nerfing things this hard is equal to the rewarding satisfaction of build crafting.

I think it is pretty obvious the data and test ran was very very limited but I think it communicates the idea that I and many others find problematic with the game. Why the game so slow? While I may not be against it. I don't think it was justified and needed a more substantial offset because more satisfying build's is a good upside the rate of exp slowing the progression of that power fantasy is slow to not reasonably possible for people to sit and grind out the reduced exp gains/ increased require exp gains to achieve just a taste of seeing a build's potential.

Personally. I play up to Overlord 3-5 on average. I love playing for the long runs even though the Lords just cast faster and smite my ass back to the main menu but it's fun regardless. I got all current achievements unlocked especially the Monkey King ones before GSL rolled back the update. I do love this game and Gaming Smith Limited's work so far and want to see them succeed . While I do think the backlash is warranted just not very constructive. Hopefully this little discussion and the loose test it was can help push the conversation to a more reasonable one than just saying "It's Slow."

If you want to see for yourself GSL did allow us the players to play 9h1 and 9g3. I would encourage you and others to give it an honest try and form your own thoughts and opinions. GSL did rollback the game pretty quick so I would like to think they do care about the game and community. Hopefully they do take their time and attack the problem thoroughly.

That's all I got here.

[B the Self]

Good take , I reverted back and forth the update and it's night and day , the exp and less bosses is one of the biggest and most annoying nerfs . The skills and pool of new traits was amazing. And the added number of trash mobs was lovely too, a middle ground would have been perfect

[ex_Kenny]

To be completly honest, Barbarian seems way more broken with the new update compared to the old...

[GlitchedVision0101]

I can't help but think the numbers just need to be tweaked a bit more in the player's favor here to bring the balance back up a bit. Basically, as I'm a relatively new player with no runes unlocked, I'm finding I can make more progress with each run and get closer and closer to getting my runes much quicker in the new update compared to the old. This seems to have resulted in a drastic drop in high end meta progress power overall, so my suggestion is to add more high end powerups, maybe a second layer of the core upgrades giving them all another 5 ranks to bring that power back up to where it used to be. Alternatively, divert that power gain into other late game alternatives like ways to increase character/weapon specific passives even farther than currently possible with the current passives.

I'm one who just went in and reinstalled the new update because it just feels better to me at my current progression point in the game. Most of the conversation I've seen here is from an end game perspective so I wanted to throw a beginner's point of view in.

[Nichiyoubi]

Originally posted by ex_Kenny:

To be completly honest, Barbarian seems way more broken with the new update compared to the old...

I agree. Given how powerful and early you can get with all characters in RBU. You had really good damage but your just as durable as everyone else when game went later. Undermining the Barbarian's Rage Mode's armor power and underwhelming damage and speed buff. Ground Slam's heal could not off set death. NBU gave a lot of self buffs and damage that wasn't as available and or easily accessible in RBU. Recently did a run Overlord 7 in NBU 9h1. Damage tanked but Ground Slam, Resilience, and Bulwark. Along with armor and block upgrades through leveling quite literally broke the Barbarian through the absurd damage. Overlord 7 just did enough to 1 shot me through the defenses. Only other character I would think that can barely be on par with Barbarian is Paladin but his mechanic is inconsistent and is nowhere near as high of uptime as Barbarian (HOWEVER I havent played him enough to see if Paladin's Upgrades for his mechanic makes it a nonfactor). I can double check but I think in NBU barbarian is the only who has access to a self heal in Ground Slam. I know Purity exists so I have no comments on that because I havent tried it. RBU has Exorcism but thats gone in NBU. As of right now I think Barbarian is by far has been the most beneficial boosting everything from damage, defenses , and utility.

[ex_Kenny]

Originally posted by Nichiyoubi:

Originally posted by ex_Kenny:

To be completly honest, Barbarian seems way more broken with the new update compared to the old...

I agree. Given how powerful and early you can get with all characters in RBU. You had really good damage but your just as durable as everyone else when game went later. Undermining the Barbarian's Rage Mode's armor power and underwhelming damage and speed buff. Ground Slam's heal could not off set death. NBU gave a lot of self buffs and damage that wasn't as available and or easily accessible in RBU. Recently did a run Overlord 7 in NBU 9h1. Damage tanked but Ground Slam, Resilience, and Bulwark. Along with armor and block upgrades through leveling quite literally broke the Barbarian through the absurd damage. Overlord 7 just did enough to 1 shot me through the defenses. Only other character I would think that can barely be on par with Barbarian is Paladin but his mechanic is inconsistent and is nowhere near as high of uptime as Barbarian (HOWEVER I havent played him enough to see if Paladin's Upgrades for his mechanic makes it a nonfactor). I can double check but I think in NBU barbarian is the only who has access to a self heal in Ground Slam. I know Purity exists so I have no comments on that because I havent tried it. RBU has Exorcism but thats gone in NBU. As of right now I think Barbarian is by far has been the most beneficial boosting everything from damage, defenses , and utility.

Barbarian, first Axe with Paladin skill for defensive and heal and Scent of Blood for the absurd speed and your pretty much unkillable.... i abandoned a Overlord 7 run because it got boring...

[Nichiyoubi]

Originally posted by GlitchedVision0101:

I can't help but think the numbers just need to be tweaked a bit more in the player's favor here to bring the balance back up a bit. Basically, as I'm a relatively new player with no runes unlocked, I'm finding I can make more progress with each run and get closer and closer to getting my runes much quicker in the new update compared to the old. This seems to have resulted in a drastic drop in high end meta progress power overall, so my suggestion is to add more high end powerups, maybe a second layer of the core upgrades giving them all another 5 ranks to bring that power back up to where it used to be. Alternatively, divert that power gain into other late game alternatives like ways to increase character/weapon specific passives even farther than currently possible with the current passives.

I'm one who just went in and reinstalled the new update because it just feels better to me at my current progression point in the game. Most of the conversation I've seen here is from an end game perspective so I wanted to throw a beginner's point of view in.

I am kinda inclined to agree. HOWEVER under the context of NBU 9h1. Whilie it is based of partially feeling and playing a bit more of it. If the game was at the pace of 9g3 I strongly disagree because the result in exp and numbers towards progression is shafted.

Where I agree is that the player is rewarded for coming up with builds because nearly every skill has some damage, defense, and or utility due to the self buffs and how some skills ties into debuffs / buffs. Creating a loop of sort. Each run is different if you choose to play differently and it comes down to how the player plays the game. If the build and your game play is good. You can progress further into endless or overlord to try and get more rewards. If the build is bad and you are playing bad. No harm no foul a quick run start over if you intend on playing more. Bad build and good game play / Good build and bad game play, you can stay and play or move on. This is under the assumption that the speed of RBU is not shafted and with the addition of NBU goods.

Where I'm heavily put off is the speed. I didnt address this uptop but the amount of things that slow the game in NBU 9h3 is just slow and makes the experience way more sluggish and punishes you for going longer. Experience needed to level is increased / The Total experience gain has been cut. The bosses delayed purple crystal spawn. The removal of killing enemies to spawn the next set of lords. The scaling numbers of damage and health of the enemies being really against the player with bullet sponges and absurd damage. While the spawn delay of lords and requirements to kill them in order to progress is not bad in concept but neutering Exp Gains / progression is really bad due to everything in the game is tied to it and to gain more exp is too kill and utilize the magnet exp upgrade which requires you to kill more with bad damage. The time goes longer . Exp gains and damage is so low that it builds up to being a slog to play.

While RBU can be argued to be just as bad. Which is something I agree with. HOWEVER what made it make up the bad was through meta like builds and good game play to where progression wasn't a slog but lacking in diversity of builds. Which NBU tried to solve but had to gut the foundation for seemingly no reason. While the rate of exp may not be perceived as bad in a vaccum but in context of everything that needs to be gained from skill trees to the weapons to the achievements and challenges. Progression is just slower.

Apologies unable to give you a beginner's point of view and the one's that are talking probably in the same boat as well. All I can recollect from my early hours is that the game rewarded Good play but emphasized heavily on good runes and builds. However the gains to the experience and progression was quick if you played well and garbage if you played poorly. Not adhering or taking the ideas of what makes good runes, builds, and game play really punished you but it was rewarding that becoming good at the fundamentals. NBU artificially capped experience gains, gave more health and damage to enemies, slower gameplay by delaying lord spawns and restricting progression to next wave of lords, nerfing runes. With the only thing counter balancing the negatives is: Monkey King, Rewarding build variety and utilizing skills you didnt use in RBU, New and revamped upgrades that are more beneficial and ties into what you are building around. While good on paper but in execution the downsides affect the foundation of the game while the good tries to add and replace a subset of the problems and additions. That's probably the simplest way for me to put it.

[Nichiyoubi]

Originally posted by ex_Kenny:

Originally posted by Nichiyoubi:

I agree. Given how powerful and early you can get with all characters in RBU. You had really good damage but your just as durable as everyone else when game went later. Undermining the Barbarian's Rage Mode's armor power and underwhelming damage and speed buff. Ground Slam's heal could not off set death. NBU gave a lot of self buffs and damage that wasn't as available and or easily accessible in RBU. Recently did a run Overlord 7 in NBU 9h1. Damage tanked but Ground Slam, Resilience, and Bulwark. Along with armor and block upgrades through leveling quite literally broke the Barbarian through the absurd damage. Overlord 7 just did enough to 1 shot me through the defenses. Only other character I would think that can barely be on par with Barbarian is Paladin but his mechanic is inconsistent and is nowhere near as high of uptime as Barbarian (HOWEVER I havent played him enough to see if Paladin's Upgrades for his mechanic makes it a nonfactor). I can double check but I think in NBU barbarian is the only who has access to a self heal in Ground Slam. I know Purity exists so I have no comments on that because I havent tried it. RBU has Exorcism but thats gone in NBU. As of right now I think Barbarian is by far has been the most beneficial boosting everything from damage, defenses , and utility.

Barbarian, first Axe with Paladin skill for defensive and heal and Scent of Blood for the absurd speed and your pretty much unkillable.... i abandoned a Overlord 7 run because it got boring...

Yea I feel that. It was just looking at a bar get progressively slower to go down and it didn't seem like there was anyway to get more damage than praying to rngessus to roll you a sliver of bonus damage. At first it felt so good not dying and dishing damage but it progressed to me punching Senator Armstrong(the lords) and waiting for him to ragdoll my corpse to the main menu.

[Hans]

In a much more streamlined version of what you wrote, I agree that the game slowed down way too much.

For me, I liked the original formula of speed as I felt like an adderall infused cyber ninja ice skating around the arena melting all enemies that stood before me. Depending on your build, you'd either eventually just get one shot or the enemy scaling went so high you couldn't kill anything in a timely manner. I've definitely almost fallen asleep playing SS because I literally just ran in a circle trying to kite and kill bosses, but they couldn't kill me and I couldn't damage them fast enough.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3208369394

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3138759515

In the first screenshot that was my first run with Monkey King and I seemed to pick a winning synergy; however, the lack of levels and movement speed meant I was quickly getting overwhelmed by all enemies. I couldn't escape them and just got ragdolled across the arena.

The second screenshot is to show how the "trash" mobs were substantially increased. I killed as many normal enemies and TWICE as many elites in 23 minutes in the update as I did in 54 minutes in the previous version. I don't know if that's better, but the core problem, in my opinion, of the game was still plainly evident in both versions. Namely, you need to find a way to stack armor or you're going to just get insta-gibbed.

Combine the armor conundrum with the reduced movement speed, and I felt far squishier with multiple characters than I ever did in the previous versions.

[strivinglife]

Originally posted by MrWorthy:

Good take , I reverted back and forth the update and it's night and day , the exp and less bosses is one of the biggest and most annoying nerfs . The skills and pool of new traits was amazing. And the added number of trash mobs was lovely too, a middle ground would have been perfect

Try the current alpha (9h?). It seems to me to be the best of both versions.

[Nichiyoubi]

Originally posted by Hans:

In a much more streamlined version of what you wrote, I agree that the game slowed down way too much.

For me, I liked the original formula of speed as I felt like an adderall infused cyber ninja ice skating around the arena melting all enemies that stood before me. Depending on your build, you'd either eventually just get one shot or the enemy scaling went so high you couldn't kill anything in a timely manner. I've definitely almost fallen asleep playing SS because I literally just ran in a circle trying to kite and kill bosses, but they couldn't kill me and I couldn't damage them fast enough.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3208369394

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3138759515

In the first screenshot that was my first run with Monkey King and I seemed to pick a winning synergy; however, the lack of levels and movement speed meant I was quickly getting overwhelmed by all enemies. I couldn't escape them and just got ragdolled across the arena.

The second screenshot is to show how the "trash" mobs were substantially increased. I killed as many normal enemies and TWICE as many elites in 23 minutes in the update as I did in 54 minutes in the previous version. I don't know if that's better, but the core problem, in my opinion, of the game was still plainly evident in both versions. Namely, you need to find a way to stack armor or you're going to just get insta-gibbed.

Combine the armor conundrum with the reduced movement speed, and I felt far squishier with multiple characters than I ever did in the previous versions.

I'm struggling to follow along with what you wrote. Prior to the screenshots you where agreeing with me. Then you went into talking about lack of levels and reduced movement speed. It felt like what you wrote you went in a circle or trying to bounce the discussion into poor Overlord and enemy scaling. Or I'm wrong and this to be another addition and sharing your own experience on the subject matter and it hasn't registered until me writing this out.

If that is so, as StrivingLife suggested. Do give the alpha patch 9h1 a try. Where it did add the NBU without cutting down the fat. While I dont think it remedies your problems because every character except for Barb and MAYBE Paladin with upgrades that enhance their mechanics which also come with percentage armor values maybe a good band aid solution and reaching for Overlord levels you may be able to achieve.

HOWEVER I did a run with Barbarian a day or 2 ago and died at Overlord Level 7 due to the Rage Meter not filling due to the rate of killing getting lower but it is the same build I posted at the beginning:
9h1 (build) Victory at 6:35 at level 66
Active Skill Order: Heavy Strike -> Ground Slam -> Bloody Saw -> Flurry -> Heartrending Strike -> Scent of Blood
Runes: Weapon Expert - Reroll Mastery - Endless Refill - Pulse of Agony - Elemental Flow - Vulnerable Target - Critical Mastery
Bleed heavy and upgrades to go with it. Armor and Block Upgrades. Rage upgrades. Exp Magnet upgrades. There probably is a better build some smarter and way better at the game can do way better but I think with the right build and player. It is much easier to hit higher OP levels but this of course me heavily speculating and what I have been tested.