Game is too easy now?

[Sispir]

EDIT 4:GUYS you CAN'T make the game HARDER for yourself in a fun way. You CAN'T get the bullets to go faster even if you refund the upgrades, you CAN'T change the atack/movement pattern of enemies and bosses no MATTER what you do, and THAT'S what I'M complaining about, if I just wanted to make the enemies hp bar bigger than yeah, I could make the game harder for myself, but that goes against human psychology, humans don't like losing stuff specially on purpose, so intentionally give away upgrades is not a fun thing to do for MOST people, but to be honest with you guys I DON'T LIKE TANKY ENEMIES EITHER, what i'm talking about have nothing to do with the enemies hp bar for christ sake, it have to do with fun gameplay, wich involves the need to pay attention to enemies movement/atack patterns to avoid danger, they removed that from the game, and increasing enemies status or decreasing players status is not gonna bring this back


EDIT:(people are not realizing that unequiping items/not geting upgrades is not a fun way to make a game hard, a hard game is fun when it's done by design and this game was hard by design, this have more to it than how big it's an enemie HP bar, it have to do with atack patterns/velocity of enemies movement/hitboxes size, and all of that got nerfed/removed from the game in the frozen depths nerf wich makes the enemies/bosses not interesting, before you actually had the felling that you were fighting an epic battle against a dangerous boss, you had to pay attention to atack patterns/to movement and that was engaging! Now I have to TRY to get HIT by bosses because their atacks are mediocre, the bullets are too slow and too small, a lot of enemies looks like they try to avoid you instead of wanting to trap/killing you)

EDIT 2:What I'm talking about have nothing to do with getting better at the game/getting all the upgrades either, even with all the upgrades It was possible for you to screw up and die if you not payed attention to the enemies/bosses atacks. Now you can turn your brain off, you can only really die if you try a super different build

EDIT 3:Edit: making the game "harder for yourself" is a bad argument, it is like if I said to a person that finds the game too hard to make the game "easier for yourself", "Just play the first level over and over and it will be easy!", but it will not be fun because it was not made by design. But in the end the final decision is for the developers to take in wich way they want their game to go. But judging by how the game was they wanted to do a hard and challenging game, but by force of public opinion they nerfed it down.

In my opinion this game turned out to be too easy after the frozen depths nerf. The bosses in this game used to be threatening, you had to constantly pay attention to the shooting patterns, the enemies represented danger and had to be respected and now you not even realize they exist. I understand that most people get frustrated when dealing with difficult challenges but that was what made this game super fun for me, I get bored when I know that I WILL win every single run even with agony turned on. Making all enemies and bosses this easy to deal with is really what's best for the game?

[CY13ERPUNK]

as much as the some of the recent achieves were a legit PITA , i tend to agree with the OP here

early on Halls of Torment were just that , ie what it says on the box yo

now ofc some of this is just due to the game in-system progression , ie early on u are always desperate for gold and have no gear , after you max all blessings and can build whatever u desire then the game is a LOT easier [now FWIW i am absolutely in support of the rare items being added into the game and kept within each run]

obvs we have agony , but imho agony needs some tweaks , it seems to be too brutal for those on the lower ends of the spectrum and not enough for those on the higher end , seemingly satisfying neither , is it doing a better job at the middle hump tho? i dunno

i think we need a few things maybe to spice the game up some more

an agony-related analogy to the blessing statue , ie an ability to customize how dangerous/difficult u want the run to be , ie the heat system from Hades ; more dangerous bosses i do agree always raises the tension

another form of randomization ; like u get a random character / random gear / etc ; so we have what? 4 forms of customization? char/gear/weapon/hall ; this could give a box that has 4 options that u can check on/off , randomize everything and check all 4 or only check some and keep your gear/build for example

with just these two changes i think HoT could really maintain a more persistence amount of challenge/variance per run

this sort of reminds me of games like VampSurv and Brotato ; HoT is very much modeled more after VampSurv , with the progression/unlocks/quests/etc , this gives a 'check all the boxes and ur done till the next update' kind of scenario , whereas Brotato is more of a 'each run is its own adventure' , maybe that is more of a rogue-like vs rogue-lite comparison im not quite sure [certainly Brotato having mods also helps its longevity , but im not necessarily arguing for HoT mods at this juncture , tho im typically all for mods in almost any sense , as more choice is almost always a good thing]

imho a long-term goal for HoT could be for legit multiplayer , ie 2/3/4 adventurers vs an equally inflated horde , basically going full-tilt baby diablo-esque , but that's just a hot-take brainstorm XD

[zeke]

Originally posted by CY13ERPUNK:

....an agony-related analogy to the blessing statue , ie an ability to customize how dangerous/difficult u want the run to be , ie the heat system from Hades ; more dangerous bosses i do agree always raises the tension ....

I believe that something like that has been 'in the planning' for a while now (I believe its supposed to be called the 'shrine of torment' or such). No clue as to when its to be implemented however.

[mcrsdm5]

I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say this, but anyone that says the game is too easy can make the game more difficult anytime they want. Just turn the blessings you have down. If you want it harder limit each blessing to only having 4 levels of it active instead of five and try that. If that's still too easy lower then again and go with 3 levels and see how that plays. You can still do any build you like with equipment, marks, abilities, upgrades, and potions but you won't be as powerful overall and the challenge will be greater. Obviously you probably should wait till you unlock the different achievements. But if your playing for a challenge that's the way to make it more challenging. It's essentially another difficulty other than agony.

[themazingness]

I somewhat agreed with the nerf. Some champions took way too long to widdle down. It wasn't so much a difficulty problem as much as it was the difficulty wasn't fun. That and Agony just wasn't working right for Frozen Depths. I do feel the nerf went unnecessarily easier past fixing those problems.

But I also think that the tools are there to make it more challenging. You don't have to min-max your gear or buy blessings. You don't have to play the best character. You can create your own challenges by trying more difficult builds.

That said, I'm all for the devs adding more difficulty options.

[Sispir]

Originally posted by mcrsdm5:

I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say this, but anyone that says the game is too easy can make the game more difficult anytime they want. Just turn the blessings you have down. If you want it harder limit each blessing to only having 4 levels of it active instead of five and try that. If that's still too easy lower then again and go with 3 levels and see how that plays. You can still do any build you like with equipment, marks, abilities, upgrades, and potions but you won't be as powerful overall and the challenge will be greater. Obviously you probably should wait till you unlock the different achievements. But if your playing for a challenge that's the way to make it more challenging. It's essentially another difficulty other than agony.

Something being hard don't mean that It'll be fun, hard games are fun when it is designed to be, not because yourself made it hard, the challenge of this game was fun because the enemies and bosses were a presence to be respected wich means: The projectiles were BIG and hard to avoid you had to actually pay attention to the bullets being shot by the bosses, the enemies had interesting moving paterns that made you think how you move and when you move. That giant spider in frozen dephs for example, when this boss spawned I had the chills because I knew that I would have to pay attention to it otherwise I would get killed, now the projectiles that it shoots are super small and easy to avoid you can basically ignore it... I'm not felling that I'm fighting an epic battle anymore and this game had this felling, it becomes forgettable

[Sispir]

Originally posted by themazingness:

I somewhat agreed with the nerf. Some champions took way too long to widdle down. It wasn't so much a difficulty problem as much as it was the difficulty wasn't fun. That and Agony just wasn't working right for Frozen Depths. I do feel the nerf went unnecessarily easier past fixing those problems.

But I also think that the tools are there to make it more challenging. You don't have to min-max your gear or buy blessings. You don't have to play the best character. You can create your own challenges by trying more difficult builds.

That said, I'm all for the devs adding more difficulty options.

I agree that a lot of enemies were too tanky and that needed to be nerfed but the change that I dislike the most is the velocity/moving patterns of the normal enemies being reduced and the bullets/velocity of the bullets/patterns of the bosses atacks being completely nerfed, that is what made the game dynamic kept you aways on your toes in a FUN way. Fighting strong enemies are fun that's what incentivise me to keep playing, overcoming an actual threat, and not because I got less upgrades... but because the game developers designed a good challenge. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it will be fun. But this game was. And the atmosphere of the game complements that vibe a lot.

[Inaluogh]

Refund all upgrades. Unequip all items. Share the results.

[🌺💗Tazzamorous💗🌺]

This sounds more like you struggled earlier on, but now that you know how to play and have a few buffs it's much easier for you.

Good on you for tackling the learning curve and being ahead!

Don't bash on the game though. There are plenty of things you can do to test yourself still, besides simply struggling with the basic levels. Go try and set a high-score for example.

Good luck!

[Sispir]

Originally posted by Tazzunda:

This sounds more like you struggled earlier on, but now that you know how to play and have a few buffs it's much easier for you.

Good on you for tackling the learning curve and being ahead!

Don't bash on the game though. There are plenty of things you can do to test yourself still, besides simply struggling with the basic levels. Go try and set a high-score for example.

Good luck!

that is not it, getting better at the game don't have nothing to do of what I'm talking about, they made the game much easier, read the frozen depth rebalance patch and you will see that they slowed down a lot of enemies movement/bullets atacks patterns

[Ulyaoth]

Originally posted by Sispir:

And they did it on purpose.

Alot of players complained about the "unfair" difficulty surrounding Frozen Depths, so it got stomped down and since then difficulty kept low for exact this reason.

Even it is way easier now than it used to be, there are still complains about "it is to hard".
For those who need more difficulty, we will get the Shrine of Torment, but we will have to be a bit more patient for that.

Is it too easy? No.
As long as only a hand full of players "fall asleep" during game play, only a handfull will find it to hard and for the majority its fine, it is the way it shoud be.

[🌺💗Tazzamorous💗🌺]

Ulyaoth is right. There are players of all skill levels. Someone will always find it too hard, and someone will always find it too easy.

By your metric, many have found the game "too easy" since they started playing. Frozen Depths was never hard. Yet they continue to play because the devs gave us a good game. If you find it easy, make it harder for yourself. If you don't want to do that, and dogmatically insist it must be in the base game, go find another game.

[Sispir]

Originally posted by Tazzunda:

Ulyaoth is right. There are players of all skill levels. Someone will always find it too hard, and someone will always find it too easy.

By your metric, many have found the game "too easy" since they started playing. Frozen Depths was never hard. Yet they continue to play because the devs gave us a good game. If you find it easy, make it harder for yourself. If you don't want to do that, and dogmatically insist it must be in the base game, go find another game.

It all depends on what the developers want for the game, my fear is that they nerfed everything because the majority of the people did not like it, and that is probably the reason they did so, you don't need to be rude just because you don't like my taste for games or because I'm criticizing a game that you love the way it is, but my opinion is that I find a game much more fun when it is an actual challenge, and I used to love this game much more than I do now and that's fine. I play other games. Just here to drop my opinion. I still think that they need to make it more of a challenge, they enemies are too shallow and that's not exciting.

Edit: Oh and making the game "harder for yourself" is a bad argument, it is like if I said to a person that finds the game too hard to make the game easier for yourself, "Just play the first level over and over and it will be easy!", but it will not be fun understand?

[Pickle Rick]

What I would love to see is a Prestige system:

When you beat all chambers on Agony you can buy the next Prestige level which resets EVERYTHING and you start all over again but with increased difficulty.
Lets say all enemies get +20% base HP per Prestige level.

Doesn't require for the devs to add any content, except maybe steam achievements for each finished Prestige level. It will result in virtually endless replayiblity and more challenges for those players that still think it's too easy, while not messing with the initial difficulty at all.

At some point it will become truly impossible to finish a chamber, but thats not a bad thing imo and some players will always find a way to push boundaries. This way we are all happy and it takes like 5 days to implement for the devs ( source: I'm a game dev ). Win-win-win!

Awesome game otherwise!

[Jaeus]

Originally posted by mcrsdm5:

I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say this, but anyone that says the game is too easy can make the game more difficult anytime they want. Just turn the blessings you have down. If you want it harder limit each blessing to only having 4 levels of it active instead of five and try that. If that's still too easy lower then again and go with 3 levels and see how that plays. You can still do any build you like with equipment, marks, abilities, upgrades, and potions but you won't be as powerful overall and the challenge will be greater. Obviously you probably should wait till you unlock the different achievements. But if your playing for a challenge that's the way to make it more challenging. It's essentially another difficulty other than agony.

This is an entirely fair point.
Going and using a Vampire Survivors parallel, there's a big difference between going in on Queen Sigma and Poe Ratcho, or max powerups vs not quite max.
Solo weapon runs typically offer a mixture of challenge and the enthusiasm of experimentation.

Ultimately the problem boils down significantly to players who have low self-control.
A game can have scaling difficulty and options for characters/builds to use... but then they always go pedal to the metal with easy staples. Then they complain it's too easy. And it's like "Well, the game has dozens of options... and a ton more combos... DO SOMETHING ELSE?"

There is a streamer I sometimes watch who has done many games in this genre. And he is mad guilty of that. And he will whine a game is "too easy" if he just uses the most broken build he found 5x in a row with no deviation. And then whine if he doesn't immediately win with a different build and/or didn't execute it very well and blames the game and calls the build bad for not being easy enough to win with.
And I just can't watch him play this genre of game, I'll watch other things, but I've got no patience to see the back and forth between "talking **** about a game being too easy" and "throwing a tantrum if the game is NOT too easy".

Specifically on the "Frozen Depths was too hard". It was. It was just plain overtuned on enemy damage and HP. I could win, absolutely, but there's a big difference between "I can win if I go full minmax" and "I can win with some variety and options", and the latter part, the "options/variety" part was sorely lacking.
Winning was much less about player performance and much MORE about "pick the most broken things which are very strong in the current patch".
Like if I want to win a round, I can force Arcane Rift and whatever else supporting keeping me alive, and Arcane Rift will win. No other decision I make matters, I simply picked a massive screenwide nuke that doesn't take many level-ups to get online and dominating the round.
So when players gave feedback Frozen Depths was overtuned, was that:
- Yes, it was.
- No, just choose the broken new ability Arcane Rift and win. Because everyone knows if you CAN win, then it must be balanced.

[eumel]

don't worry. it's still in early access. it's okay to express concerns, but the devs already said they have a plan for endgame content or another way to customize the difficulty further. they know that there a some people digging the game apart. i say just be patient. they are going the right way.