Skill Points Need Immediate Change

[Eyeburn]

I have about 50h worth of mythic gear sets and was able to immediately jump into full clears of both acts to farm these points. It's horrendous. The implementation is bad, it's embarrassingly bad. Players have to grind each character separately for skill points, earning 5-8 per 20 depending on what you can clear. This is well over 20h if you can start immediately with full clears, I can't fathom the slog of the new player experience in this update.

This power progression pace is tragically worse than the achievement based one that we had previously. It's not that the skill trees aren't an improvement, it's that the crumb fed skill points ruin everything. I put over 50h into the game without noticing before this update, but now I'm definitely forcing myself through a repetitive grind just to start playing the game for real.

This game has no reason to force giant time gates to pad playtime, it's a genre that doesn't have an end because you can always try something new for a clear. Filling out the skill trees does not need to take several hours per character, especially when finishing the tree is the real starting point of the game

[DeeBee]

agreed

[Eudicots]

I agree that the grind feels a bit too much since talents are important for pushing higher darkness levels. The need to grind talents for each character separately prevents players from raising higher darkness levels and new character talents at the same time.

[9lpa]

+

[Skates]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

I agree that the grind feels a bit too much since talents are important for pushing higher darkness levels. The need to grind talents for each character separately prevents players from raising higher darkness levels and new character talents at the same time.

yeah this is by far the biggest issue. I am doing runs on other characters at 0 darkness act 2 just so I can get a boss kill. If i risk high darkness in act 2 with dicey characters, i'm only getting 4 essence instead of 8 which DOUBLES the time investment required.

I've said it in a previous post, but the way it should work is darkness should make extra cosmic essence drop, something like +1 essence per 10 darkness seems fair to me. That way you can get roughly the same progression by reaching 2/3 the way through the level and not having to clear it all the way.

[Kingfisher]

Focus on 1 character, get better gear, faceroll with the other ones. If it takes you 20 hours there might be something seriously wrong with you. People complain about the grind but like, what do you not want to do runs? Maybe this genre of game isnt for you.

[crono.omegax]

I agree to the post if your coming in as a player who has been with this game for awhile as if you had previously unlocked everything this "update" is just an across the board nerf, all skills are lost, Blessings are now limited to amount that can be taken, and you have to grind every chracter to get the skills you already spent time unlocking back.

If your new to the game its not that bad, however it really does feel like a slap in the face to those who have been with it for awhile as all my characters took a huge power decrease and to get them back to where they were before the update i now have to grind intensely just to get skills i spent hours unlocking already.

If the characters got such a nerf why didnt the enemies? On the lowest difficulty your still swarmed like mad, bosses still beeline outside barriers so your unable to hit them. The best balance that can be given to bosses is swapping the order you fight them in and not the frequency of of how often they constantly dash at you or pelt you with nearly undodgeable attacks?

It really makes me hesitant to keep going as now i fear what the next update will do or take away from the player.

[Powerhorder]

Yeah farming skill points is tedious, but the argument "just play the game does not hold any weight" People should not have to "grind" for x amount of hrs just to have a character be strong and even then you still have to farm gear which is also a random amount of time given its a rng system. You cant expect a player to farm 10+ hrs just to have fun with the roster. Not everyone has the time to spend playing that much. its not even the issue of genre, most of the survivor like as i call them dont have a gear system you play the game get gold spend that gold on upgrades then keep playing

[Skates]

Originally posted by Kingfisher:

Focus on 1 character, get better gear, faceroll with the other ones. If it takes you 20 hours there might be something seriously wrong with you. People complain about the grind but like, what do you not want to do runs? Maybe this genre of game isnt for you.

people want to feel like they can do runs using darkness without being obligated to turn it off in order to get enough essence to progress at a reasonable rate. If you set the darkness too high the enemies at 17m+ will have very high hp and dmg. If they hit you you'll die, halving your progression rate.

Getting to 36 points with all 6 chars at 8 essence per run will take 20 x (36/8) x 6 minutes (10 hours) If you play with high darkness you and only get 4 essence per run it becomes 1080 minutes which is 18 hours.

That's the issue here; there's no reward in the risk/reward mechanic, only risk.

[Kingfisher]

Originally posted by Skates:

Originally posted by Kingfisher:

Focus on 1 character, get better gear, faceroll with the other ones. If it takes you 20 hours there might be something seriously wrong with you. People complain about the grind but like, what do you not want to do runs? Maybe this genre of game isnt for you.

people want to feel like they can do runs using darkness without being obligated to turn it off in order to get enough essence to progress at a reasonable rate. If you set the darkness too high the enemies at 17m+ will have very high hp and dmg. If they hit you you'll die, halving your progression rate.

Getting to 36 points with all 6 chars at 8 essence per run will take 20 x (36/8) x 6 minutes (10 hours) If you play with high darkness you and only get 4 essence per run it becomes 1080 minutes which is 18 hours.

That's the issue here; there's no reward in the risk/reward mechanic, only risk.

Then dont play with high darkness while you're leveling? Seems like a non issue lol

[Fokerpace]

they need to give legacy players something, if its all the points or like 30 points to get started, it needs something. I already did the grind to get the gear and passives, dont make me grind out the points from scratch now that a new update was released.

[Eudicots]

Originally posted by Kingfisher:

Then dont play with high darkness while you're leveling? Seems like a non issue lol

What you are defending is just a system designed to inflate playtime instead of something that increases enjoyment. They could also just as easily let you earn talent points universally for all characters. This way the grind for talents will be relatively the same, but you can still grind your way to 100 darkness.

[SKurj]

i am a new player... some characters i can't get past the first boss.. yet lorien i have been able to clear act1 all at level 0. Thankfully i can gear up other characters (tho slowly). I have cleared act 1 once and that's it, rng was likely the deciding factor there. and i am 36 hrs in...

[Lich]

I first started playing the game a week before the patch dropped. Had Merris geared and was beating d30. Patch appeared to nerf everything and reset progress but wasn’t an issue imo. The most difficult thing for me was getting a build together that can reliably beat act 2 for the first time. Once I got over that first step, I just farmed act 2 for tier 2 items while working towards d30 for increased rarity. Instead of thinking about it as a talent grind, I was looking forward to the next tier 2 unique that would drop during each run. I maxed out Merris and Lorien talents first and then used the uniques I got during their runs and maxed the melee characters while getting more uniques.

[Prime_Evil]

Having started a few days ago, I levelled fire witch to 36 first then just presumed that excess would roll over to other characters, or that maybe it would have been a shared pool in the first place. Personally I would like to see them continue to drop indefinitely, being available to other characters, then once all characters are maxed they could be used as an alternate currency, maybe paying essence to boost mob density in maps or ... many possibilities.

[treelaunka]

Originally posted by Eyeburn:

I have about 50h worth of mythic gear sets and was able to immediately jump into full clears of both acts to farm these points. It's horrendous. The implementation is bad, it's embarrassingly bad. Players have to grind each character separately for skill points, earning 5-8 per 20 depending on what you can clear. This is well over 20h if you can start immediately with full clears, I can't fathom the slog of the new player experience in this update.

This power progression pace is tragically worse than the achievement based one that we had previously. It's not that the skill trees aren't an improvement, it's that the crumb fed skill points ruin everything. I put over 50h into the game without noticing before this update, but now I'm definitely forcing myself through a repetitive grind just to start playing the game for real.

This game has no reason to force giant time gates to pad playtime, it's a genre that doesn't have an end because you can always try something new for a clear. Filling out the skill trees does not need to take several hours per character, especially when finishing the tree is the real starting point of the game

Act 2 showed they weren't ready for what the signed up to do, in many ways. Slow development, poor communication, zero agility to solve issues and append cheap revisions like damage balance, and completely revamping the game from act 1 to act 2. It's basically an entirely different game from what I bought, and to those that liked the design choices prior to act 2, you will feel cheated.

I just moved onto other games, and look in at this once every 2 months.