bots feel harder than ever

[Singularity's Marauder]

being able to throw a Thermite grenade at a tank to oneshot them is cool and all, but with Hulks receiving the new autocannon that instantly kills you... And ragdolls you. Rocket AT-STs being everywhere, and Heavy Devastators never receiving any nerfs. And Automaton Troopers and Chainsaw Devastators killing you instantly. And every single minor dmg breaking your arm, like you were a stormtrooper in Star Wars: Outlaws getting punched by a teenager... I feel like bot front has gotten more ridiculous.

Previously you would be able to fight long engagements, running from cover to cover. Kite the enemy for prolonged periods of time, even run a short distance into them. Now... You just die. Everything kills you instantly...

This is really something, tbh... It feels like a huge oversight. I feel like devs didn't intend bots to be this oneshoty... But I also feel like devs don't really have the time to playtest this game. They have to keep making content to sustain live service model. They're probably working on a new biome, more cosmetic items, the Illuminate. But what's the point of releasing the Illuminate if they can't even get bots to feel satisfying to fight again?

You go to people who tell you that bots are ez now, and then upon questioning them further you find out that they rarely ever play diff 10... You go tell them that fighting rocket at-sts isn't fun, cuz u constantly die for no reason... Cuz a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing landed like 10 metres away from you... And then baiters, solo stealth players and people who just generally hate you will come over and tell you that the game is better than ever...

I mean... I feel like developers shouldn't fully rely on the community to tell them how the game feels... They should actually try it out themselves. Cuz right now the game feels stupidly chaotic. Having weapons that delete heavily armoured enemies, rendering stuff like Hulks limb system pointless is stupid... And then balancing it out by giving enemy tons and tons of oneshot mechanics is also stupid... But we are now in an even worse situation than before... This is now a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arms race between buffing players to give them the false feeling of being empowered, and buffing enemies, to give them a false feeling of the game being challenging... When in reality it's closer and closer to it just being an RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Zerx44]

... the heavy's got a mean nerf, you can stagger them now with basic gunfire throwing off their aim substantially.

LOTS of weapons can now deal with the rocket walkers via legging them,

and your probably using light armour if your getting one shot non-stop adjust your playstyle IE git gud

[Recruit "THE NASCAR DRIVER"]

i don't feel like you get one-shot (aside from cannon towers and tanks), more like you get ragdolled then promptly die because you just can't regain control of your character

i only play dif 7 because id rather try to have fun against bots than limiting even further my choices because of some Fully armored biped dog with ragdoll capability now

and even then, bots can just get insanely frustrating to fight

either one time they are tame and the mission can go smoothly or little resistance
or all of china knows where you are and you can't even take a break from them
There is no in-between against bots

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by Zerx44:

... the heavy's got a mean nerf, you can stagger them now with basic gunfire throwing off their aim substantially.

LOTS of weapons can now deal with the rocket walkers via legging them,

and your probably using light armour if your getting one shot non-stop adjust your playstyle IE git gud

im using medium armour with extra padding or heavy with an effect

[Shy]

They're certainly more deadly, but we're also more deadly too.

[Sporks of Iron]

imma keep it a buck idk why people say the bots are to hard im running heavy armor and i barely die often

[Sleepy_Walker]

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

Originally posted by Zerx44:

... the heavy's got a mean nerf, you can stagger them now with basic gunfire throwing off their aim substantially.

LOTS of weapons can now deal with the rocket walkers via legging them,

and your probably using light armour if your getting one shot non-stop adjust your playstyle IE git gud

im using medium armour with extra padding or heavy with an effect

That is interesting. I know I have lost a good 80% of my health bar when a chainsaw cut through me shoulder-to-shoulder, but I have never been 1-shot. I just about never play bots without 150 armor and vitality....do you bring vitality? It is worth 20% additional damage reduction, which is somewhere around an extra 50 armor points. 1000% worth bringing. Highly recommended.

[Midas]

It's definitely shifted from bugs being more annoying to bots being more annoying ever since Escalation of Freedom. Like they took all the things people hated most about bots and decided to just make that the whole faction's identity.

[ItzPress]

Hulk Bruisers are definitely overtuned, I think I prefer their old rockets to having a whole cannon now. They're just very precise, strong overall now and basically more mobile tanks (so far more effective), and do indeed ragdoll you a lot. I love the idea thematically of hulks using cannon weaponry but in terms of gameplay, it's definitely visibly overbearing. Dramatically lowering the cannon effectiveness is a start if it must be preserved.

At this rate I think if possible, despite engine constraints, they need to improve the ragdolling recovery physics, as that plays a massive part in how bad it gets. Ragdolling so easily when diving at a flat surface only a bit below, or taking so long to forcibly get up (what if you want to stay down?) when tossed, these things increment.

It's an issue the Impaler had. If you get ragdolled, it lets you get killed vastly easier, it's like the CC to a kill move in a MOBA. If the tentacles attacked at a different tune, you literally wouldn't be able to dodge them all as once you dive, another one is in the process of aiming and attacking you.

[Flavalicious]

The only buff the bots got in their favour after getting nerfed into the dirt was the Hulk Bruisers being considerably more lethal now. Everything else is easier then its ever been.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Flavalicious:

The only buff the bots got in their favour after getting nerfed into the dirt was the Hulk Bruisers being considerably more lethal now. Everything else is easier then its ever been.

So artillery tanks and rocket striders are easier than normal tanks and normal striders, is what you're saying?

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by Sleepy_Walker:

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

im using medium armour with extra padding or heavy with an effect

That is interesting. I know I have lost a good 80% of my health bar when a chainsaw cut through me shoulder-to-shoulder, but I have never been 1-shot. I just about never play bots without 150 armor and vitality....do you bring vitality? It is worth 20% additional damage reduction, which is somewhere around an extra 50 armor points. 1000% worth bringing. Highly recommended.

ok, truth be told i didnt mean literally one shot... I only get one shot in medium armour with effect from troopers (as in one burst) or one chainsaw slice to the head. With med in padding things feel ok but still really bad. Way worse than it used to.


honestly i dont mind troopers dealing so much dmg but i was expecting a heavy rocket nerf and devastator nerf... They re overnerfing rocket devas and gunships rn instead

[Mitzuriki]

Ngl fighting bots with my Light Commando armor makes me feel like I'm just a grunt in WW2. I GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD AND DIES FULL HP

[Graf Erik]

I'd say bugs are pretty awesome right now. They give you a good run for your money and are genuinly fun.

Bots?
Ehhhh.

I've run a few dozend missions lately, and it didnt get any better. Maybe even worse.
a) The lower player health together with the fact that there's always something shooting at you makes the whole thing pretty tedious.
b) Ragdolling. Mhhhh.
c) The still broken cover mechanics. If you take damage, any damage, you always stand up. I'd say its a bug. The same thing happens when you try to crouch on a sloped surface. Somehow 'standing up' is the default stance and anything that moves you resets your stance. Together with a) chances are you will die before you can lie down again. Makes taking cover pointless.
d) But I'd say the biggest problem is the patrol spawn system. The game randomly spawns patrols somewhere around you. On higher levels something like every 10 seconds. And it tries to do it out of your sight, which means behind you. Effectivly it means, that every few second a new pack of enemies pop out of thin air somewhere behind you. It makes any attempt of tactics, any attempt of covering your flanks or your rear, any attempts of approaching carefully completly futile. There is no clearing or securing anything.
The bugs do this as well, but the bugs rarely shoot, that gives you time to react. If the game spawns a bot patrol on you, chances are they will immediatly open fire. Thats what defines the bot experience. Somehow there are always bots shooting at you from random directions. Always. It never stops.
Now combine this with a), b) and c), and you get a gaming experience where you are constantly running around, taking damage no matter what you do. Cover doesnt work, and even if it does, chances are that 20 bots will materialize right behind you.

[Hand's Hermit Permit]

Mostly I say the rocket striders having gigantic rockets that nuke your area. You can't really take cover from them. The damage might not go through hard cover, but the concussive ragdoll effect definitely does. Then you get thrown out of GOOD cover, and mowed down by heavy devastators. You can't really play around this and it's precisely 0 fun. It's worse than how the rocket devastators used to be because they weren't guaranteed to 1-shot you if their rockets hit, and the concussive effect was MUCH smaller than the giant walker rockets.

[Brother Belial]

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

Originally posted by Zerx44:

... the heavy's got a mean nerf, you can stagger them now with basic gunfire throwing off their aim substantially.

LOTS of weapons can now deal with the rocket walkers via legging them,

and your probably using light armour if your getting one shot non-stop adjust your playstyle IE git gud

im using medium armour with extra padding or heavy with an effect

Then you shouldn't be getting one shot unless it's a tank, strider cannon or scout rocket, they are the only things the bots have that will one shot heavy.