Crystal (and the meta) are boring and unbalanced as ♥♥♥♥

[ShitterMan]

What were they thinking when they made this character? Everything this character has goes against nuclear throne's philosophy of high risk high reward. She has so much good ♥♥♥♥ in her kit and none of it even takes skill to use. Her active ability is a shield that both lasts long and is spammable. Her passive and her ultra makes her twice as tanky as the average character even without rhino skin. She has all these benefits but no downside whatsoever.

Here's an idea to fix this character:
1: Make the shield have a cooldown(atLEAST a 3 second cooldown, it's literally just a "pls dodge for me" button), it is way too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spammable. You can put yourself in a ♥♥♥♥ situation and slam both of the mouse buttons and still come out of most situations alive because the shield works as a dumb panic tool, something that doesn't even belong in the game.
2: her fortress ultra is always way better than the other and it's also boring. My idea is that the ultra should either make the shield's hitbox bigger or the shield time longer.

Another thing: the meta is boring as ♥♥♥♥, pls just nerf trigger fingers. It synergises way too well with super plasma cannon and there's absolutely no reason to use anything else in the whole game. Wouldn't the game be much more interesting if picking your weapons was about your mutations and playstyle rather than "i have trig, time for op weapon that makes me reach high loop count ooga booga"? I don't even play dailies anymore, as it's always spc+ushovel vs spc+ushovel. You cannot do anything innovative or interesting without being at a MASSIVE disadvantage. What if i don't wanna play the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ run over and over again for dopamine points?

(ignore my playtime i started playing this game by pirating it and eventually decided to buy it after playing it a ♥♥♥♥ ton, i'm talking 1500+ hours)

Also, are the devs planning make the game balanced in the next patch or is this post completely pointless?

[binnibep]

in terms of bringing change, it probably is "completely pointless". the original developers jan willem nijman & rami ismail that made up vlambeer are not working on NT and havent for a long time now. vlambeer itself is also disbanded as of september 2020.
YellowAfterlife is preparing one final update to the game, but it is almost entirely for optimization & bug fixes; things as game-changing as nerfing the meta/influencing the competitive scene with an update like this is very very unlikely for that reason & might be unwelcome by much of the community

[Yung Venuz]

>nerf trigger fingers
WITCH HUNT!

[icespiceisnice69]

i guess dont play crystal? i mean theres other characters n the games pve so i dont even think balance like this is even that important. you also dont have to take that boring ultra if u dont want to

[Matthanic]

The game does not force you to play meta. Note that the game's design pretty much ends around L2~. I mean for the most part the devs did not even expect people to go past L1. Everything works perfectly fine honestly. No reason to play meta if you do not like. I often encourage it even. It is a single player focused game. Play it however you enjoy it.

[UF7_YO]

Originally posted by Matthanic:

The game does not force you to play meta. Note that the game's design pretty much ends around L2~. I mean for the most part the devs did not even expect people to go past L1. Everything works perfectly fine honestly. No reason to play meta if you do not like. I often encourage it even. It is a single player focused game. Play it however you enjoy it.

That's pretty true. I know a lot of people that ignore meta and melee weapons altogether. They're some of the most skilled people I know.

As far as characters, I usually always come back to solid characters like crystal and eyes, but love to experiment with the rest of the cast. Especially weird ones like rebel, or try to show off on the leaderboard by making it far with melting or rogue.

I don't know if this helps, but I love to get more into the game by modding it! Changing text files or creating entire new replacement soundtracks. To mix things up

[InsaneFirebat]

I don't think it matters what you change, meta is always going to have that boring factor. It's intended to be the easiest strat that produces the best results (efficiency) and anything that replaces it is going to be working towards the same goal. If you don't like meta, imo, you shouldn't try to compete with the internet. Do your own thing :)

[ShitterMan]

Originally posted by InsaneFirebat:

I don't think it matters what you change, meta is always going to have that boring factor. It's intended to be the easiest strat that produces the best results (efficiency) and anything that replaces it is going to be working towards the same goal. If you don't like meta, imo, you shouldn't try to compete with the internet. Do your own thing :)

yeah good point, the people would probably find that one character, that one build, that one weapon combination that will produce the best result with as little risk as possible

[I / Me / Meowself]

On the daily grind, yes most of the top runs have spc+ushov. However I often track stats within the confines of the top 100 from thronebutt's site, and while there's a lot of meta players there's also decent variety with long-term players who barely even ever reached L3 but enjoys playing characters and weapons that aren't the "meta". It's how they choose to play the game, and it works for them.

While I don't like to plug in things here I feel the need to share this; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RbTn7Xoi-594tSnMWlF02DMUiPmPH3QILGdt4A-ildw/edit?usp=sharing is one of the more recent stat tracks I've made on April 1st(I do it every 3 months). While L3+ almost requires you to stick to specific weapons, if you sort by most dailies played or anything else you'll find that there's lots of people with high volumes of dailies that never touch meta.

For instance, the person #1 in dailies, Seroga, often goes for double bolt builds daily. L3 PB. icon delta soared through the ranks while always sticking to sbow and lhammer. L5 PB. You can also see the distribution of characters; while some get far more attention than others(YV having a toooooon of mains), the main 12 characters all have at least 1 main still loyally playing. And this is just within the top 100, there's lots of other regular daily players whom play as they choose.

Essentially what I'm getting at is that yeah meta is optional but even within the daily field you have people playing whatever they prefer even if it's not the most efficient meta builds. The top few runs may always be the meta but there's often a thousand entries each day, and many people are just playing the game whichever way they prefer. You don't need to play Crystal in order to achieve that; the way you feel frustrated with her mechanics is a sign she's not a character you enjoy. I don't enjoy playing Eyes despite him also being a S-tier character. I think you're letting meta have too much control over your enjoyment of the game; take it from someone who's done dailies for nearly 5 years straight now. Just do what you find fun; I did, and I've had modest success even if that was not my goal of playing a fun video game.

[FilthySouls]

Crystal alone

[Matthanic]

Okay, time to pipe down. I think everything that will be said, has been said.