Why Androids are overpowered (and how to fix them)

[TechnoSam]

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a level 8 hunter and I've put in about 50 hours, so I'd like to think I have some inkling about how this game works.

Also, let me say that I've been playing on Eclipse difficulty a lot lately, so this also may be negatively influencing. me.

TL;DR included at the bottom.

Red Androids

The problem

The concept of Red Androids is to be similar to a Hunter. They are very quick, have a lot of range on their melee attacks, and can chain attacks together. This is great enemy design to contrast against the more brutish Grimm. The problems come when they are found in groups of 4-10. (I don't think I've seen a group bigger than 10)

Once they group up, they become overpowered.

Their reach is so great, that your attacks to the front of the group are ignored. Those at the back of the group who are not flinching at your attacks simply attack through and break your combo. This chains with each Red Android present.

While you are taking damage from a Red Android, there is no escape. You must sit and wait out the entirety of the animation. Which means that oftentimes, another is ready to begin its attack before you can move. This frequently leads to "one hit" encounters where you lose your Aura and have not been able to answer their attack. Staying in the same spot to provide that answer will get your killed by the incoming combo.

If you watch Grimm behavior and compare it to Red Android behavior, you can see stark differences. Grimm are aware of the size of the group they are in. They pattern their attacks accordingly. If you're surrounded by 20 Beowolves, you will not see a random attack distribution that sometimes chains together to create character immobility. You see a consistent timing that allows the player character time to escape when the situation gets hairy. You see no such awareness in Red Androids. They don't all attack at once obviously, but you don't see the same courtesy given. This creates the chaining to immobility problem.

These factors combine to make overpowered enemies. The only good way of fighting them that I have is ultimates and trickle damange with ranged attacks. The latter usually works very poorly because they are so fast. No matter how fast you run away from them, you quite often do not have enough time to get three shots off.

How to fix it

Make Red Androids more like hunters. Give them more health and damage per strike. However, vastly descrease their numbers. These enemies should be like Ursas in rarity. I like the idea of Red Androids, but their skill set seems to scream that they are independent enemies, not group enemies.

The style of this game is very much a "destroy dozens of enemies at once". This works remarkably well for Creeps and Beowolves. Other enemies like Ursas and Boarbatusks do not fit the same archetype. Red Androids do not either. So when they group like Creeps/Beowolves but behave like Ursas, we have big problems. Classic strategies of dealing with groups of enemies will never work on Red Androids. In the interest of preserving the flow of the game, they should be changed to be like mini-bosses, more like Ursas.

White Androids

The problem

[NimrodAbsolution⁧⁧98]

I like androids how they are now
Androids are the only thing in the game that poses -actual- threat
They're more powerful than the final boss

[Bot Andrew]

but white androids are super annoying, when comes "jump escape" everytime i near N attack him

[BlueFountain]

Biggest issue I have with White is in a large fight it's easy to not notice their grenades until they blow you up and in the end boss fight they will often spawn behind you and shoot you without you even having a chance to see them.

[brudda]

I agree, especially with the red androids. I feel they should have a pause between their attacks like the beowulfs if they're gonna throw them in big groups (4+). I do like the idea of making them more powerful, but reduce their numbers to a maximum of 2.

[TechnoSam]

Originally posted by Magnum dong~:

I like androids how they are now
Androids are the only thing in the game that poses -actual- threat
They're more powerful than the final boss

Haha fair enough, but I feel like that in and of itself is a problem. xD

Originally posted by Razel_Gamer:

but white androids are super annoying, when comes "jump escape" everytime i near N attack him

Exactly, now you've stuck your neck out and taken damage for no reason. Very annoying. If it would at least damage them as well then you know you got something out of it.

Originally posted by BlueFountain:

Biggest issue I have with White is in a large fight it's easy to not notice their grenades until they blow you up and in the end boss fight they will often spawn behind you and shoot you without you even having a chance to see them.

Preach. I'm gearing up to try and beat the game on Eclipse solo as each character and I have no earthly idea how I'm going to take on the final boss.

[Midnight Sky ✨🌙✨]

About the reds, since your issue seems to mostly be from being overwhelmed, I think I simpler solution would be to let players survive fatal combos by letting them keep 1hp. Platinum has been doing this with their games since at least Bayonetta. Kingdom Hearts does this as well.

There's nothing that comes to mind regarding the white bots, though.

[Thraxis, Lord of Chaos]

I think the problem with the red bots could be fixed by reducing their range just slightly (maybe reduce the "energy" reach by about half, and making their counter-interrupt a bit longer. Other than that, they're supposed to be tricky, and do the job well.

As for the white bots, I think it would be better if their grenades did just a bit less damage, and make them less quick to disengage. As of now, they disengage if you get about 2 character lengths from them (outside the range of many characters). I think it would be better if you could actually start to hit them before they had the chance to disengage.

[KaydenLee]

I'm a rank 9 hunter with 80+ hours who's been playing this game since the day it launched, and let me tell you androids are NOT overpowered, you just have to know how to fight them.

[BlueFountain]

Originally posted by She_Noob087:

I'm a rank 9 hunter with 80+ hours who's been playing this game since the day it launched, and let me tell you androids are NOT overpowered, you just have to know how to fight them.

Thy are mostly manageable of you have a decent idea what you're doing, and as the last two enemies introduced it makes sense they are the hardest. But as noted above its sad that they are a far bigger challenge than the final boss (also sad the Dev response to the final boss not being a threat wasn't to make the final boss a threat but just add a bunch of android spawns to it)

[Thraxis, Lord of Chaos]

I'm rank 9 with 50+ hours of experience. I know how to handle them, they're just really annoying in large packs. As the OP noted, large groups can stun lock you to the point where you just get close, and then they kill you with no ability to dodge away.

I don't think the solution is to decrease their numbers, though, but I think a very slight reduction in reach (maybe halve the portion of the reach past the end of the physical weapon), or even just let the player move in the slight pause before the last stroke of the animation, to potentially dodge or interrupt the combo (since they can grant themselves immunity to stun locking when they want to attack), would even things out.

Right now, dealing with a group of them tends to rely mostly on stun, charged heavy, retreat, wash, rinse, and repeat. Decreasing their stun locking would make engaging them at close range a bit more fun in my opinion.

And with the white bots, their disengage makes them only slightly harder, but is really annoying. If it damaged them a little, as others have noted, it wouldn't be as bad, also, if the disengage animation could be interrupted (even if it was made faster for balance), it would be much more satisfying than "You walked within 10 ft of it, now you've taken damage and it's 15 feet away."

[Ruby]

Lvl 2 blake can kill them easy. Others have same ability to control.

[gvk]

blake and ruby can do it lvl1 (not that hard but i used quite a lot of dashing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-He2R3I3H50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyOpUsEkNSY
ik blake has some neat combo tricks where you can do attacks real fast if you get timing right, i did not use that here but that would be of good use. (other characters may also have neat tricks)
dont play much as weiss and yang but recommended moves would be for
weiss: LLH
yang: Jump-H and H

[Ion]

Maybe it's just because they dream of electric sheep.