Game rewards passive, cowardly play

[SandWhale]

Not really a criticism, more just an observation. I think there's something to be said for the tension created by how punished you are for making mistakes, but the way things are structured right now, by far and away the most effective stratagem for typical is to sit far away in cover plinking away with a sniper rifle. And when enemies start spawning in around you, the "meta" option is actually just to turn right the ♥♥♥ around and sprint until you're far away, then take em out one by one. Only time things are switched up is the few dungeons and bossfights where you're forced into close quarters. Sure you can get in close and dirty by choice, but you will almost immediately be punished when the game immediately descends into a chaotic clusterfck of overlapping attacks and ranged spam where one hit leaves you staggered, slowed, unable to use focus, and down some of your limited healing.

Not sure how other people feel. I wonder if there are modifications to the core combat they can make to reward more active play while maintaining their desired atmosphere of tension. Maybe instead of having a healing resource limited by number, they could have it recharge by dealing damage, with more recharge the closer you are.

[DespotAspid]

There are powerful melee weapons. There are spells. Melee is difficult only at the beginning. Then it's easy and fast. The main thing is to move correctly, here concentration and tactics come first. It is also very important to know the terrain well. And even with a sniper rifle, do not run away, but on the contrary, run after pathetic mobs)). So far, I don't like only knights with arquebuses. They are vile.

[SandWhale]

Originally posted by DespotAspid:

There are powerful melee weapons. There are spells. Melee is difficult only at the beginning. Then it's easy and fast. The main thing is to move correctly, here concentration and tactics come first. It is also very important to know the terrain well. And even with a sniper rifle, do not run away, but on the contrary, run after pathetic mobs)). So far, I don't like only knights with arquebuses. They are vile.

Out of curiosity, how far into the game are you?

[Hrafnskald]

Originally posted by DespotAspid:

There are powerful melee weapons. There are spells. Melee is difficult only at the beginning. Then it's easy and fast. The main thing is to move correctly, here concentration and tactics come first. It is also very important to know the terrain well. And even with a sniper rifle, do not run away, but on the contrary, run after pathetic mobs)). So far, I don't like only knights with arquebuses. They are vile.

Melee weapons? When do those open up and how do you acquire them?

[Bam Bam]

In souls games the oldest tactic you instantly discover is to pull enemies aggro 1 by 1 to the leash range. In prepare to die edition of DS1 when it came out my first playthrough was like that, pulling aggro and happy with each kill. Now I can return and play it as a relaxing nostalgia game, running around naked with a club into enemies and never in real danger. It's easy compared to the later games.

I recommend rebind dodge to a key where you always have a finger resting without moving from wasd or fire buttons. I use a thumb mouse button. Then just pay calm attention to everything and avoid panic dodge like in souls games with panic roll death.

Try forcing yourself to stay in the area when just leveling. Fully running away to snipe isn't needed. Unless you enjoy it. Consider how slow the arquebus wind up is, or how slow the bombardier's mortars fall from the sky, everything tells you what will happen. Mass amounts of archers firing at different intervals is a problem, but there is Ice Sphere for that and other things

He means spells for melee weapons. You do have a fist and it does extra damage on stunned enemies. Actual melee weapons are on the roadmap

[SandWhale]

Originally posted by Bam Bam:

In souls games the oldest tactic you instantly discover is to pull enemies aggro 1 by 1 to the leash range. In prepare to die edition of DS1 when it came out my first playthrough was like that, pulling aggro and happy with each kill. Now I can return and play it as a relaxing nostalgia game, running around naked with a club into enemies and never in real danger. It's easy compared to the later games.

I recommend rebind dodge to a key where you always have a finger resting without moving from wasd or fire buttons. I use a thumb mouse button. Then just pay calm attention to everything and avoid panic dodge like in souls games with panic roll death.

Try forcing yourself to stay in the area when just leveling. Fully running away to snipe isn't needed. Unless you enjoy it. Consider how slow the arquebus wind up is, or how slow the bombardier's mortars fall from the sky, everything tells you what will happen. Mass amounts of archers firing at different intervals is a problem, but there is Ice Sphere for that and other things

He means spells for melee weapons. You do have a fist and it does extra damage on stunned enemies. Actual melee weapons are on the roadmap

Souls games have tailored enemy encounters that very carefully proportion the placement and type of enemies you encounter in multi enemy scenarios. The later games only derive their difficulty from deliberately misleading telegraphs because they bungled everything by adding crutch weapon arts and giving the player too many iframes. This game just ♥♥♥♥♥ out a bunch of ranged ads every time you trigger anything.

I'm not saying close range isn't doable. It's fine unless you get randomly hit at a bad time. Even preferable in a few scenarios. The first boss for instance is trivialized by stunlocking him at close range with focus. What I'm saying is that I could clear the camps both safer and FASTER by headshotting everything with my Hypnosis from 5 miles away.

The key element is that in the souls games pulling enemies is the easiest strat, but not the meta strategy. You will win fights much faster with calculated aggression. That's true here maybe... until you get hit once and are slowed, have your stamina reduced, lose the ability to stun enemies with focus, get poisoned or silenced by status effects, and have your screen covered in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Yeah you CAN win with the shotgun, but you're working 5 times harder for nothing. If you enjoy it, good for you, but I think the game could stand to benefit from shifting a few things around to reward more aggressive play, a la BB.

[*Gen*HeroCrusher]

Spell cool downs are way to long!

[SandWhale]

Originally posted by *Gen*HeroCrusher:

Spell cool downs are way to long!

Spell cd's are mainly refreshed by collecting witchfire from killing enemies afaik.

[1mbalanced]

You defo can build the character for close fight with proper spells and weapons. shotgun, stun spells and shockwaves are your friends. Also there are arcanas which renders you invulnerable after switching weapons or casting spells.
However i prefer long and mid range builds.
Witchfire has very thoughful gunplay, it is not that simple run and fire at everything shooter.

[1mbalanced]

Originally posted by *Gen*HeroCrusher:

Spell cool downs are way to long!

level up you witchery or pick certain arkanas. There is even one which instantly refresh your spells after you lose health

[SuperGenesis]

Originally posted by DespotAspid:

There are powerful melee weapons. There are spells. Melee is difficult only at the beginning. Then it's easy and fast. The main thing is to move correctly, here concentration and tactics come first. It is also very important to know the terrain well. And even with a sniper rifle, do not run away, but on the contrary, run after pathetic mobs)). So far, I don't like only knights with arquebuses. They are vile.

Melee weapons? What melee weapons? Wtf are you talking about?

[EZtigER]

Originally posted by 1mbalanced:

You defo can build the character for close fight with proper spells and weapons. shotgun, stun spells and shockwaves are your friends. Also there are arcanas which renders you invulnerable after switching weapons or casting spells.
However i prefer long and mid range builds.
Witchfire has very thoughful gunplay, it is not that simple run and fire at everything shooter.

Agree with that, I'm only 8 hours in and the game has punished me no end of times. It's very frustrating but great fun; definitely makes you think about your approach. What with enemies popping up behind you, pulling the plug on any pre-planned safe spaces. It is a challenge with enough curve balls thrown in to keep pulling me back in!

Back on topic : Trimming enemies HP down with a mid range weapon from a distance and strategically using cover to get in close with the shotgun is devastating at close range. Not a melee weapon but effective if used correctly.

[Bam Bam]

Originally posted by SandWhale:

Originally posted by Bam Bam:

In souls games the oldest tactic you instantly discover is to pull enemies aggro 1 by 1 to the leash range. In prepare to die edition of DS1 when it came out my first playthrough was like that, pulling aggro and happy with each kill. Now I can return and play it as a relaxing nostalgia game, running around naked with a club into enemies and never in real danger. It's easy compared to the later games.

I recommend rebind dodge to a key where you always have a finger resting without moving from wasd or fire buttons. I use a thumb mouse button. Then just pay calm attention to everything and avoid panic dodge like in souls games with panic roll death.

Try forcing yourself to stay in the area when just leveling. Fully running away to snipe isn't needed. Unless you enjoy it. Consider how slow the arquebus wind up is, or how slow the bombardier's mortars fall from the sky, everything tells you what will happen. Mass amounts of archers firing at different intervals is a problem, but there is Ice Sphere for that and other things

He means spells for melee weapons. You do have a fist and it does extra damage on stunned enemies. Actual melee weapons are on the roadmap

Souls games have tailored enemy encounters that very carefully proportion the placement and type of enemies you encounter in multi enemy scenarios. The later games only derive their difficulty from deliberately misleading telegraphs because they bungled everything by adding crutch weapon arts and giving the player too many iframes. This game just ♥♥♥♥♥ out a bunch of ranged ads every time you trigger anything.

I'm not saying close range isn't doable. It's fine unless you get randomly hit at a bad time. Even preferable in a few scenarios. The first boss for instance is trivialized by stunlocking him at close range with focus. What I'm saying is that I could clear the camps both safer and FASTER by headshotting everything with my Hypnosis from 5 miles away.

The key element is that in the souls games pulling enemies is the easiest strat, but not the meta strategy. You will win fights much faster with calculated aggression. That's true here maybe... until you get hit once and are slowed, have your stamina reduced, lose the ability to stun enemies with focus, get poisoned or silenced by status effects, and have your screen covered in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Yeah you CAN win with the shotgun, but you're working 5 times harder for nothing. If you enjoy it, good for you, but I think the game could stand to benefit from shifting a few things around to reward more aggressive play, a la BB.

I don't consider Hypnosis a cowardly passive weapon. Max damage puts you in range of everything. You can start up an ADS charge while mid air off a double jump, it's a brawler weapon.

Hunger pistol is good example of full mobility weapon with respectable range that can delete everything quickly. Good stun power too, so synergy with something like the stake gun which does 450 damage headshot to stunned enemies, plus all the charged Hunger shots to the head and a melee strike which does big damage on stunned enemies. You can also set this up with a stun gun and not a spell used so add that in too. Maybe Firebreath to further increase the melee damage and recharge it. Close range deletes special enemies.

It's not at all apparent to me that pure long range is faster. Especially if you are taking the time to do what some would call tactical play. There's a big difference between using positioning to manage the moment you start a Hypno charge, and passive play.

If the game needs more incentives or sustain for closing the gap, they have the systems in place with prophecy customisation and equipment. Melee weapons are coming, see what they do with that.

Space Marine 2 comes to mind, they went overboard recently by giving free armor for parrying trash mobs in a very generous parry window, and now you can't die whenever they are near.

[TheLuckyAce]

Most of my time so far I played with Hunger + Bolt Action of any kind. So I pick up enemies from afar but as soon as it gets close up I can still hold my ground while moving backwards to get a chokepoint.
For me a valid tactic to not fight "open field" against larger groups of enemies, but instead kite them to a battleground more suited for my own style.

But as I progress I start now to level up Shotguns and SMGs as well (to have more options) and added Rings, Fetish and Relics to the mix, up Close works pretty fine as well. You need a far better selection of weapons and spells to minimize the risk, but thats no problem I guess.

Fastes kill strats's for Shieldbeared I found for example are "Rush in with Ice and Burn shotgun." and I dont see any non-cheese way to play the Boss with a pure LongRange build anyway :D

Overall - Sniping and running is a valid and save way of fighting. But by far not the most effektiv. You wast A LOT of time, as soon as you learn to use your Spells and Close Range weapons more effektiv, you can finish runs in half the time.

[EmpathyandEntropy]

Basically OP doesn't use the Cricket and dash around like a mad man. Which is a shame, it's a lot of fun.

[Rauchsauger]

Originally posted by 1mbalanced:

You defo can build the character for close fight with proper spells and weapons. shotgun, stun spells and shockwaves are your friends. Also there are arcanas which renders you invulnerable after switching weapons or casting spells.
However i prefer long and mid range builds.
Witchfire has very thoughful gunplay, it is not that simple run and fire at everything shooter.

You should try the "last bullet" Arcana with "Cornucopia" heavy spell.
Pair that with Psychopomp or any fast firing smg and you absolutely want to snuggle up to the enemies to melt their faces off