WHY ARE MOST BUILDS GARBAGE>?

[McGarnagle]

title. i hate games like this where there are 500 options but only 10 work and only 3 of those are "top tier"
i bet NO ONE goes leaf on the wind
also that goes for a bunch of bodies shields weapons too not just perks and abilities
this games isn't as fun as it used to be and nerfing things in a single player game is just cringe

[Halfshell]

I go Leaf on the Wind almost every build... -% Hull Size is extremely underrated. Furthermore, I almost exclusively play non-meta. For example, I made a completely broken Pulse build last month, I mean it was ludicrous good range, high killing power and easy screen clear. I just don't go around sharing that stuff because then people start only playing those broken builds. Then likely start claiming everything else is "unplayable". Even Thermal has a pretty solid build, not quiet as good as that Pulse build and its high effort but if you take the time to understand Thermal you will come to realize that stacking -vulnerability is lowkey broken.

I go out of my way to play the stuff people say are unplayable, turns out that yes: they are playable. I even made a pretty solid Charge Blaster the other month. And Torrent and Railgun are my favorite, "go to" comfort weapons to boot.

[desrtfox071]

I use Leaf on The Wind reasonably regularly.

[McGarnagle]

"i play wild metamorphasis which doesnt need any care because you just stack overpowered power ups again and again and again" ? something like that?
i play vanilla

[McGarnagle]

vanilla mode, assault body, grenade weapon, amp shield and leaf on the wind just doesnt perform late after wave 125 when you should get to wave 200 on any build if you play properly enough but longer and longer goes by and the builds get harder and harder to use and get farther .. it would be better to make the new versions outscore the old ones then players would have to keep up instead of "haha i top scored when the game was easier and now you can never touch this score ever"

[mip67]

leaf on the wind works with apotheosis, I use it fairly regularly for spectre w/salvo builds (which are totally underrated by the way)

[McGarnagle]

no they arent underrated ... they top the leaderboard.... everyone uses spectre salvo and that's my problem
bastion architect
full engie
spectre salvo
and blink leviathan MAYBE
but no other builds are used regularly because they are extra super hardmode(in a bad way) or literally unusable ... if you are proud of your build taking you passed level 100 then you are not a veteran we used to get to wave 200 on vanilla but now you HAVE TO go one of those mega OP builds i listed above
i used to be on the leaderboards but now it's impossible with the builds i enjoy ... heck it's even harder

[Yextiny]

I use a completely homebrew vortex + single shot build that usually gets me to 200+. I do think the enemy AoEs & burning trails are a little unbalanced with how much damage they do & screen clutter gets really bad after wave 200. All of my top scores are within like 10% of each other now b/c I unavoidably die when the screen suddenly becomes 90% projectiles. It feels a bit like a filtering mechanism that only allows super broken builds past ~1M

[McGarnagle]

yeah flooding the screen with nukes is also a problem ... pretty cheap way to die, not because you made a mistake but because the game decided it was time to ram you from all directions and then spam the screen with tiny shot so you can never recover it can guarantee end a run in a heartbeat
ok fair enough you want to make the game harder? sure sure that's fine and all but ask yourself this
JUST BECAUSE IT'S HARDER DOES THAT MAKE IT MORE FUN?!
no.
when 1/2 the ships weapons and shields are complete trash and then you die instantly on wave 140 because some cheap spam it's hard for me to promote this game considering i've convinced 2 of my friends to buy this game
i could literally never suggest this game to someone right now because you have to grind to unlock all the cool stuff and people hate that ♥♥♥♥, but then they get murdered ruthlessly because they thought sniper assault temporal sounded cool but now they are dead on wave 60 because they are useless no damage, no survivability, no cool moves like blink dragon or disco inferno
I DON'T WANT TO PLAY ENGIE OR ARCHITECT EVER
SPECTRE IS FOR COWARDS
make viper good or hullbreaker good or assault or courser or battery or any of the other ship hulls that don't get used
imagine reflect or shockwave or siphon were actually good?
blade, torrent, vortex, railgun, thermal lance, grenade now that its been nerfed into uselessness, SO MANY GARBAGE GUNS that people only use on wild metamorphasis
AND THEN THERE ARE 500 UPGRADES SPECIFICLY FOR ENGIE wtf? no one else uses those mods ...
frustrating for veterans and uninstall/refund worthy for new people

[Hazel]

Game has no soul just math.
Min max everything because of micro negatives aggregating to nothing being really good unless you get everything that cancels all the little negatives out.

Reliant on rng to even get there and then a game balanced around making you lose more with each update.

Because RNG and Death is a rogue like right?

When the literally makers of rogue said it's about choices mattering.

Your choices don't matter at all in this game you just. "do your best" and hope the rng brings at least a little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lube.

82 hours of my life on this game and I'm frustrated with playing the beginning over and over and over again because I DEIGN to decide I want to play something that isn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ meta.

[McGarnagle]

pretty much this comment, tempted to pin as the answer really
EDIT: and i agree ... did someone somewhere say "hey this game doesn't give me enough points and i don't die enough. think we could rework it so that we get lower scores and die more often? also nerf like 75% of the builds into oblivion and only focus on droolingdummymode-imean-wildmeta mode?" i used to love this game now i hate it

[Simoko]

Originally posted by McGarnagle:

"i play wild metamorphasis which doesnt need any care because you just stack overpowered power ups again and again and again" ? something like that?
i play vanilla

tbh even in metamorphosis some of the weapons are just trash and worthless after a while.

yeah as the user above pointed out the game just gets super repetitive very quick. And any of real interesting synergies take ages to build up too. There just isn't enough upgrades and variation for such a game.

[Sharlatan]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCWXUcrqb9TTnNszgQenL2w

watch these guys nova drift videos, and tell me there are only a few viable builds.....

[McGarnagle]

i swear if i click on this and its wild metamorph imma >.>
EDIT: NOT A SINGLE VIDEO OF VANILLA MODE
ALL WILD METAMORPH
R.I.P. normal players guess we all uninstall the community and devs have abandoned us

[McGarnagle]

https://youtu.be/pWk6bQcimXs
when this was the only interesting build during last year's speedrun contest
and all the first top posts were wild metamorph i KNEW vanilla was dead for all of us
ps this is my favorite build but the vanilla version no wild meta ^ but like i said no one gives a $#!^ about vanilla
and to showcase my complaint furthur -> https://youtu.be/xdMU-bncF8k
ALL 3 NORMAL BUILDS ARE THE SAME BECAUSE NO OTHER BUILDS ARE VIABLE/COMPETITIVE so during the speedrun contest the dev sees nothing but missile builds and thinks "this is fine"

[Gnodab]

Vanilla is actually the better mode, giving you way more control over how your build develops. WM is far too messy and chaotic for its own good.

You don't make a game better by denying the player what they need to succeed. You give them an array of options and encourage them to make smart choices, but ultimately every one of those options should lead to a powerful solution if the player knows what they're doing. This is opposed to WM's approach of heaping recursive mods on them, taking the power they have to make those choices and cutting it in half.

If the devs are chasing the pipe dream of a freeform experimental upgrade system, well, it doesn't exist because it can't. There are choices that will help you succeed, and there are choices that don't. If you want the game to be harder, you need to give the player more control over how to confront that difficulty, and that isn't accomplished by giving them a plethora of options that only work in incredibly specific scenarios.

It's at this point that I wonder why the game even makes you spend rerolls on your weapon, shield and body parts. You either get what you want, or you spend rerolls to get what you want, before you even have a build going. Given the very specific nature of making builds in this game, might as well do away with this step and give people 3 points to customize their ship as they see fit before they even launch. If they choose Blaster and Standard Shield and Body, they get 3 extra points to play around with. More control, less needless RNG.