Leveling up is unrewarding, if not outright punishing for the player.

[shadowthief011]

So I'll begin with the obvious fact that I don't own the game, and as such my experience is limited to 5 hours of gameplay when I stayed over at a friend's house(he knows I like rogue like and rogue lite games so he suggested it I give Witchfire a try).

Note that this is my own opinion in the matter, and as such it won't necessary reflect that of other players...heck perhaps it's a fact that the game was not made for people like me. But anyway, here are my two cents.

I was really impressed with the game , and most of the mechanics...but I have to say that the leveling aspect of it has left me underwhelmed if not outright put off.

So I started playing with a character more specialized on spellcasting and long range combat. I found the first level a tad challenging but fair.
And I though, well I'll just level up a bit and open up more research, and this should be a cinch. Little did I know that the game opts to punish leveling by disproportionally buffing the mobs to a ridiculous degree, I've reached up to level 21 I think, and I gave up when in three consecutive runs I was combating with a large number of mobs, and the game saw it fitting to spawn in 2-3 extra squads consisting of grenadiers, musketeers and those flying things that drop bombs and spew poison around me all while I was still battling the first group.

I don't know, perhaps it's just me, but leveling up, should feel like a reward for doing well, but in witchfire it feels more like cranking up the difficulty dial from 1 to 100 and just leaves a bad taste.

Now I don't expect the devs to address this, or pay heed to a non-customer like myself, but I do hope they at least keep it in mind while developing the game.

Edit: apparently it is not the levels that increase difficulty, but Gnosis...still I can't help but feel that I was somehow punished for my choices.(was there any warning of the consequences of increasing Gnosis that I missed?)

[warmer]

I have been focusing on just leveling up my weapons vs. my character stats, and it seems to be much less punishing that character leveling.

[evancampbell]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Loudness:

I played this game back on Epic a year ago...it's way too hardcore and should have a disclaimer stating it's only for hardcore fps players. I bought it because it looked atmospheric and had nice graphics, but it turned out to be a nightmare.

Back then, levelling meant getting murdered. Now they replaced that with gnosis, which is required to progress the game and they just upped the enemy waves when you level up it seems on top of it according to their own post, making the game even worse. I stopped playing D4 for the same reason: the higher my level was, the weaker I became, plus they kept nerfing everything to the ground (no idea how it's now).

The gunplay and atmosphere is well done, but I'll wait for a mod that reduces enemy numbers and waves by 1/5th so I can enjoy the atmosphere and level design or simply creates an easy mode. I literally played the game with god mode+infinite ammo and the enemies were beyond tanky.

A non-souls player is going to have a far easier time with Elden Ring that a non-fps player is going to have with this. The difficulty is literally on par with ER/DS3 ascended mod, which is intentionally made to be unfair and frustrate players, basically a parody of souls games. This feels like a parody of hardcore fps games.

You aren't wrong. i love this game but had to put 100's of hours in to really "get it". It is not easy/a casual game

[DEFIANCE is Back !!]

or b) enemies increased in number when you leveled, which they don't. "


-- this is not true,

the dev stated clearly when he tried to 'clarify' the 'difficulty' concept of the game -

the enemies do _Not_ individualy in 'difficulty' (i.e. more HP etc),

but they _Do_ potentially increase in number,

not only that, but you are always limited in ammo.

I'm _FULLY_ aware at the top of the 'difficulty clarification' Patch Notes they stated, "enemy amount is rerolled with each new map, so you might have more enemies and feel it is harder, but it's not intentional",

which seems to say, "we do not increase enemy amount",

YET,

read this -->

------------------

Balancing Act: Player Growth vs. Game Difficulty

And yet, the player grows in power through leveling up. Your health increases, you have more stamina, and you can cast spells more often...

So... the game should get easier with each level up, right? Enemy HP stays the same, the player grows in power; it's simple math.

The thing is, HP is just one of many factors that can increase the difficulty. Here are a few more:

Indirect/hidden HP increase: Elite versions of Witchfire enemies have a witchfire shield that absorbs some of the damage. This effectively increases their HP.

---->>>> More enemies: Increasing the number of enemies directly impacts difficulty. Imagine fighting a challenging enemy—a sweaty but fair fight. Now imagine fighting five of them simultaneously. The mental load and complexity escalate significantly.

New enemies: These are difficult because you need to figure them out and understand their patterns. As Thomas Fuller said, "All things are difficult before they are easy."

New, harder enemies: They move faster, their attacks are harder to avoid, or they have more HP than average. This way or another, they require more effort from the player.


--------------




Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Dev is stating clearly the _Number_ of enemies _Do_ potentially increase, that it 'scales' with potentially more enemies as you level up, because they're putting it in DIRECTLY with the patch notes related to what 'changes' with increased difficulty (!!!)


The devs _Seriously_ need to clarify this stuff cause you can see in the devs own 'words' they are completely confusing players (!!!)


This game's 'difficulty' is creating lots of confusion and to be honest the dev needs to cut the double-speak out because saying,

" The difficulty does not increase because the enemies all stay the same with damage and HP "

but then 'clarifiying' that the number of enemies _Does_ increase __Obviously__ is an increase in difficulty (that scales),

the also stating, "ammo does not increase" obviously makes the game harder too, that's clearly a difficulty 'increase'.

He's almost insulting the intelligence of players by talking like that,

hence why I posted the clear question about the number of enemies and ammo being limited, that's really what the crux of the problem is with the game and it's a legitimate 'complaint' if the game increases the number of enemies but not the ammo,

at least not if you don't get some kind of perks / skills / upgrades etc that can concomitantly increase the ammo as the _number_ of enemies increase, if that's how you want to play

(I get the feeling the dev is making the game so that you are 'forced' to use magic etc to kill enemies if their number increases but not your ammo,

which is a put-off for people that want to play the game as a 'shooter' and not a 'magic-er' type of game)


It can't be stressed enough those are really the only points that matter, there's too much arguing back and forth about 'It does increase in difficulty! " " No it doesn't !!111", etc,

without people talking specifics about the number of enemies and how the ammo works, using the devs own words

[EmpathyandEntropy]

Naw. Gaining level doesn't make the increase difficulty. Gnosis does. It's really black and white. If you have to look at your map and have to reroute you're path through the island because you leveled up and rerolled the map, it's not harder it just different. If one of your random encounters was harder this time around, it might be easier next time around. That's what random means. People are just mad that they died and don't want to admit that they could have played better. They feel it's unfair to them because to admit that they played poorly would be to painful for them so they would rather find something to point at.

[DontEatSmurfs]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Brtzlmo:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย TheLuckyAce:

The "leave" portal constantly spawns new enemies in waves. There is no magic behind it. Every wave gets stronger and bigger. As longer you take, as stonger the wave gets and tries to push you out (the text in the lower corner said something about that they "hunt you").

So if you activate a Skull Symbol on the Map which contains a "trap" (some spawn their Enemies in packs around you) while the 6th or maybe even 8th or more wave of the portal reaches you... well it can get messy. But thats a feature of the game to push you towards a more active playstyle. Other games have similar mechanics like spawning stonger and stonger enemies until you kill a certain boss for example, which can be abused (also in witchfire) to farm EXP up to a certain point where the wave gets to strong.

The game did not get "harder" because you leveled up. But because the second map starts to get harder as its no longer a starting point. Here Bosses can spawn (specially after lvl10 even from the portal), as soon as you unlock gnosis 1/2/3/4 the enemies gets harder. Traps come more often. New enemie types start spawning. Ambushes happen more regualary.

Also note the wave from the portal does not only "note" that they hunt you - they HUNT you. There will be a pack of enemies staying at the portal but other parts of the wave (or special waves) follow you all around the map to ambush you. This includes a sniper boss which can spawn starting at your player level10 (the only difference player level has on this whole situation, rest is tied to gnosis).

thx for saving me some bucks. will see how the game turns out in the end but teleporting enemies + enemies knowing where I am + low amount of different maps sounds not fun. hopefully they can make enough money to do a new Painkiller

its actually THE FUN of the game, having to deal with waves after waves with what you have is the most fun i have playing this game, its extremely hard and really rewarding when you finish it

[DontEatSmurfs]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Baron01:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย TheLuckyAce:

...

The game did not get more difficulty, only your random seed is harder than another.

So it is semantics. More difficult = harder.

I stand corrected, seed re-roll just make the game randomly harder, not more difficult. This makes sense.

this argument is the same as saying you get a bad seed on biding of isaac and for some reason you died on floor 2, is the game harder ? no...you got unlucky or you lack knowledge to get over that second floor

[Sonnenbank]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Baron01:

So it is semantics. More difficult = harder.

I stand corrected, seed re-roll just make the game randomly harder, not more difficult. This makes sense.

this argument is the same as saying you get a bad seed on biding of isaac and for some reason you died on floor 2, is the game harder ? no...you got unlucky or you lack knowledge to get over that second floor

This whole discussion is so pointless....

Witchfire maps can get a lot harder or easier depending on the random reroll after level up.
this means sucessfully clearing an expedition on that map can be more difficult.
I for example had a seed with 2 of that zeppelin green arrows spitting monsters that fly
next to each other in a location where i could almost never see them because they floated behind a rock..but they could spit over that rock somehow. Also there were many small monsters in that same areas that swarmed me.

After a reroll the zeppelin monsters were not stacked anymore but in 2 completely different positions far away from each other which made it a lot easier.

[TheLuckyAce]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Sonnenbank:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

this argument is the same as saying you get a bad seed on biding of isaac and for some reason you died on floor 2, is the game harder ? no...you got unlucky or you lack knowledge to get over that second floor

This whole discussion is so pointless....

Witchfire maps can get a lot harder or easier depending on the random reroll after level up.
this means sucessfully clearing an expedition on that map can be more difficult.
I for example had a seed with 2 of that zeppelin green arrows spitting monsters that fly
next to each other in a location where i could almost never see them because they floated behind a rock..but they could spit over that rock somehow. Also there were many small monsters in that same areas that swarmed me.

After a reroll the zeppelin monsters were not stacked anymore but in 2 completely different positions far away from each other which made it a lot easier.

Either you must make a difference between GAME and MAP difficulty, or deal with the fact that a random seed can be harder than another. Thats the point of randomness, it should never be the same.

The GAME is not getting more diffucult because you reroll the map. You just get a different seed which can be more of less fitting to your playstyle, skill, loadout etc.

[Albie There]

I recommend playing "Soulslinger: Envoy of Death"

It's a FPS roguelike and does way better what Witchfire should have done. There is actually a sense of progression , upgrades/unlocks are meaningful, there is actually lore/ interesting story with lots of cutscenes here and there.

Between the two, to me Soulslinger win by a good margin, it's more fun and rewarding to play

[DontEatSmurfs]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Albie There:

I recommend playing "Soulslinger: Envoy of Death"

It's a FPS roguelike and does way better what Witchfire should have done. There is actually a sense of progression , upgrades/unlocks are meaningful, there is actually lore/ interesting story with lots of cutscenes here and there.

Between the two, to me Soulslinger win by a good margin, it's more fun and rewarding to play

bro ♥♥♥♥ off, you dont even own the game, jesus christ...

[Albie There]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Albie There:

I recommend playing "Soulslinger: Envoy of Death"

It's a FPS roguelike and does way better what Witchfire should have done. There is actually a sense of progression , upgrades/unlocks are meaningful, there is actually lore/ interesting story with lots of cutscenes here and there.

Between the two, to me Soulslinger win by a good margin, it's more fun and rewarding to play

bro ♥♥♥♥ off, you dont even own the game, jesus christ...

I own the Epic store version you muppet, purchased over a year go

[DontEatSmurfs]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Albie There:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

bro ♥♥♥♥ off, you dont even own the game, jesus christ...

I own the Epic store version you muppet, purchased over a year go

right, then you came here to recommend another game that has a bunch of reviews that is running badly, that has optimization issues, ♥♥♥♥ off

[Albie There]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Albie There:

I own the Epic store version you muppet, purchased over a year go

right, then you came here to recommend another game that has a bunch of reviews that is running badly, that has optimization issues, ♥♥♥♥ off

Came to post my experience. Running flawlessly here. From what I have played so far I already prefer it over Witchfire.

Speaking of reviews, bunch of negative reviews for this too depicting exactly what the OP is talking about, plus the dull and masochistic gameplay.

PS: The only think I am gonna F**** is your mama's bum

[DontEatSmurfs]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Albie There:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DontEatSmurfs:

right, then you came here to recommend another game that has a bunch of reviews that is running badly, that has optimization issues, ♥♥♥♥ off

Came to post my experience. Running flawlessly here. From what I have played so far I already prefer it over Witchfire.

PS: The only think I am gonna F**** is your mama's bum

"it runs amazing for me, ignore everyone else with the mixed reviews they are all lying"

[Albie There]

To the OP: the worst thing is the witchfire farming, you play for hours to buy expensive stuff that has almost zero impact on your stats. Stuff like increasing the HP (or any other stat) by 0.02% each upgrade LMAO, yay! That meaningless increase cost you a couple of hours of mindless dull farming.

I remember the 1st time I bought that ridiculous "cricket" weapon, how did they manage to make it worse than your starting gun? It's like you are shooting airsoft pellets. I got so pissed.