Balance in Los Angeles is broken

[Rozinskylitski]

The balance of weapon damage vs. potential health, especially enemy weapons vs ranger health, is waaaaay off. I am playing on a middle difficulty level, and the first fight I encounter in Los Angelas outside of the starting compound, has the enemy hitting my rangers for over 150 damage per shot. This is over half their health. It is a CrAzy jump in damage that is way over what should be happening. These sort of RPG's depend on a gradual rise in damge vs a gradual raise in armor and a gradual raise in health. Kinda basic design sense. The ratios seen here are broken.

[chebur2012]

A breath of fresh air after Arizona, which is a walk in the park

[Revolucas]

Yeah, for some reason you get these distress calls to these locations that are pretty damn hard (on SJ) the first time you leave Santa Fe base. You get an almost impossible to beat distress at the brothel before visiting Angel Oracle for the first time. When Rodia's enemies are easy, then then when you visit distress calls after you visit Angel Oracle it is easy. Note: I don't use Vax!

Very spikey difficulty in LA. I actually wondered if I was doing something wrong. The first thing I did was went south to Rodia but before entering I got a distress call. Go there and kill some synths wasn't too bad. Go back to base see new npcs there. Then I leave and get a distress call for a pretty hard boss Scorpitron. After that I go to Rodia and complete the line there and then back to Santa Fe then I go for Angel Oracle, get a distress call at a brothel that litterally took me 20 tries because they do over 300 damage per hit. Then finally I reach Angel Oracle and everything since then has be a cake walk up until I get new rad suits. The distress call after you are almost guarenteed to have one of your rangers/companions die in a single hit by the Synth Sharpshooter but luckily I got to go first (with a CI trinket) and kill him that turn.

I know the distress calls probably aren't time sensitive but you kinda feel pressured to do them as soon as they appear and some of them are pretty difficult when you first arrive. It also seems like the ones closer to Santa Fe are the most difficult while the ones north and west of Angel Oracle are easy. I haven't done any overworld encounters, I'm too scared luckily I have 10 Outdoorsman.

Now, I'm not complaining it's too hard, just confusing to me why some things are easy and some things are close to impossible. Or how you open up a shop at Santa Fe almost as soon as you get there and then pretty much all shops in the area in-between the north and south radiation walls are practically useless in comparison. I agree LA is a breath of fresh air in comparison to Arizona, that area is way too easy now.

[GriP]

The scaling in general beggars the imagination in WL2, and of course this includes weapon and damage scaling. It's all academic now but I think this decent game would have been better if it had been a 'tighter' game. At the beginning you're fighting 'Wrecking Crew' gang members with 12 or 16 hit points. I'm in Hollywood now and the street vendors have 400 hp. Um - _what_?

These are the kinds of things that don't bear thinking about if you are to properly enjoy the game.

[peppergomez]

Those nuke pooches are tearing up my crew at the start of LA. They run a huge distance and are upon my rangers before I get a shot off. Any advice?

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by peppergomez:

Those nuke pooches are tearing up my crew at the start of LA. They run a huge distance and are upon my rangers before I get a shot off. Any advice?

Try and find the angle that gives you the longest view ahead of you and and try to peg them with a sniper before they get to act, holding z will help you spot them. The camera in the DC really sucks. Baring that, have the character with the highest armor act as your point man, hopefully he will take the first hit. Finally what's the CI of your party members? You're going to have a tough time in California if you don't have some Rangers with 16-17 CI.

[peppergomez]

Does CI stand for Combat Initiative? I don't see that as a listed skill or attribute. Plus I didn't think any numbers went past 10.

[Vardis]

Yep, that's CI. It's a derived stat, like AP. The higher it is, the more often you get turns to use your AP.

[Fox008]

On my first run in the original version, I didn't quite understand alot about the ranger builds, so I didn't invest alot in combat initiative, instead like the dummy I was back then, I increased my AP as best as possible. I know better now, combat initiative is a life saver!

[Dorok]

On another side high focus on CI is certainly the best to get tedious combats. But it's hard to balance. That's definitely an awful design approach, it's even worse than the bizarre armor design.

But I have yet to play the second part of the game and the dev quoted the difficulty is increased there. In Vanilla get initiative 14-15 in last parts was fine even if for sure not the most OP but you wasn't needing anything OP to beat the Ranger difficulty. Perhaps it's now different in DC version in second part of the game.

[HotGirlPoopin]

Learn Tactics

[One]

Yes, difficulty jumps quite significantly (I play at Ranger level) once you arrive in California. I was suprised too when I came to save those girls by disttress call, you know, and I had quite a tough fight there... but actually I like it! Yes, you were the power in Arisona, but in California you have to update your staff and your tactics and it's a nice challenge.

I love VAX btw. VAX was overpowered companion in Arizona but in California it is just a challenge to keep it alive further and it makes fights more complicated.

[Rozinskylitski]

Those of you who like the discontinuous jump in difficulty must also love reloading a lot.

[One]

Originally posted by Rozinskylitski:

Those of you who like the discontinuous jump in difficulty must also love reloading a lot.

Not really. Once I arived in California and realized that enemies here are much stronger I understood that I need to find better weapon as soon as possible (I had 2x m21 and 4x m16 when I arived) and I found better weapon quite fast. Besides I adjusted my tactics a little even with a better weapon to avoid getting damage from enemies. So no, don't need to reload much. My squad was overpowered in Arizona and here in California it's not overpowered anymore - just good enough and I like it. It's all about building a proper squad in fact. If you built it properly in Arizona, you can handle everything in California.

[ministrog]

Hmm, so it looks like I wasn't going crazy after I left for LA. It felt like things hit harder even though my rangers had 210+ hp; sometimes one-shot knockout. That wasn't the issue.

Things would of been alot more manageable if I had one ranger with higher outdoorsman. I also place too many Brute Force points on Angela Deth. All the while, fights start out with battles engaged instantly. Oh well, no problem right?

I only got through most fights around Santa Fe by the using enough 'fun' explosives. Curtesy of TNT Tan.

[Stuurminator]

Originally posted by Rozinskylitski:

The balance of weapon damage vs. potential health, especially enemy weapons vs ranger health, is waaaaay off. I am playing on a middle difficulty level, and the first fight I encounter in Los Angelas outside of the starting compound, has the enemy hitting my rangers for over 150 damage per shot. This is over half their health. It is a CrAzy jump in damage that is way over what should be happening. These sort of RPG's depend on a gradual rise in damge vs a gradual raise in armor and a gradual raise in health. Kinda basic design sense. The ratios seen here are broken.

Your biggest problems are going to be random encounters and distress calls. Invest in Outdoorsman to avoid the former and just be advised to bring your A-game to the latter. The rest is challenging but manageable.