I wish difficulty were the problem with Ashlands

[Aelis]

From what I've seen, there are some pretty serious concerns about the difficulty in Ashlands. I saw a lot of the same complaints at the start of Mistlands and assumed they were about on par, different people want different things out of this game which inevitably introduces friction between the "this is too easy" and "this is too hard" camps. That's all fine. I didn't LOVE Mistlands, but saw what it was going for and worked through it all the same. There are things I'd change but for the most part I'd classify Mistlands as "tolerable".

After our initial disaster of a landing in the Ashlands, we sailed back a second time and put together a small refuge with a portal that would be our beachhead. Confident, we headed out to finally fight the swarms on our own terms.

We died, a lot.

I'm in the best possible Mistlands gear, with all varieties of hp/stam(and Eitr, see below) food. My goal was to simply parry a single attack against an enemy, then hit it while staggered - something I've done the entire game. After being killed 4-5 times trying to do even a single parry we realized a simple truth: the network latency is so bad that we effectively have to guess whether to block early, late, or maybe entirely randomly to block the actual attack.

We ran a few tests - each of us going into the zone alone which worked better, up to two people in the zone at the time where we had about a 1/3 parry chance given what we saw on screen. Playing with four people however was a death sentence for everyone, it was simply impossible to parry or dodge enemy attacks that had a habit of one/two shotting us depending on how many stars they had. Bows/Arbalests were mostly useless given the massive number of skeletons, which left only Frost Staffs as a viable weapon because it effectively stunlocks the enemies so defensives aren't necessary.

I could go on about the troubles we ran into, but we've all pretty much classified the game as "unplayable" given its current performance. I don't know why it's so much worse than Mistlands (which had so many of its own issues) but unless some serious work is being put into the underlying engine of the game I don't think it's going to last as a multiplayer game.

[cyberhrc]

Are all of you melee?
Me and friend had problems with melee so we had to adapt a bit. I went wizard and its SO much smoother play now.
Cant force everything, sometimes adapt.
Or git gud! :D

[Aelis]

Originally posted by cyberhrc:

Are all of you melee?
Me and friend had problems with melee so we had to adapt a bit. I went wizard and its SO much smoother play now.
Cant force everything, sometimes adapt.
Or git gud! :D

For sure, if it were was as simple as playing poorly I'd be all on board, I was actually slightly disappointed that the magic staffs in Mistlands weren't all that useful. Our problem isn't so much the strategy as much as nothing we do actually matters because the on-screen visuals are so disparate from the actual latency-driven mechanics. We can use bows or magic to mitigate some of that because they don't need the precision timing that parrying does, but the core problem is still the same - the game's performance makes it impossible to play effectively in a large (4 person) group.

Maybe we'll try having one person with a tower shield + 3 frost staves (and a side protection staff), that might be viable.

[Dslim]

Lower the difficulty for you then.

[Aelis]

Originally posted by Dslim:

Lower the difficulty for you then.

Like I mentioned in the title of my post, I wish difficulty were the issue. We've all been playing on the normal difficulty and have managed without major issue. Mistlands required some strategy changes (mostly just playing a little more slowly) but the base mechanics of the game still applied. Currently, as far as we can see, they don't. Parry isn't possible, dodging is inconsistent, and we can't even be sure our attacks are going to land, even ignoring that we might die the the meantime to attacks we can't see. I don't know how lowering the difficulty, other than arbitrarily making the game easier, is going to help.

[Dslim]

Originally posted by Aelis:

Originally posted by Dslim:

Lower the difficulty for you then.

Like I mentioned in the title of my post, I wish difficulty were the issue. We've all been playing on the normal difficulty and have managed without major issue. Mistlands required some strategy changes (mostly just playing a little more slowly) but the base mechanics of the game still applied. Currently, as far as we can see, they don't. Parry isn't possible, dodging is inconsistent, and we can't even be sure our attacks are going to land, even ignoring that we might die the the meantime to attacks we can't see. I don't know how lowering the difficulty, other than arbitrarily making the game easier, is going to help.

Well you havent tried is a major factor, because everything dies faster, plus maybe your setup is wrong, go with the shield staff and enough food to use it and roll melee. You can have a shield absorb around 600 or more and just attack stuff without having to roll, dodge, or parry.

[Mharr]

Yeah this seems not good at all for a multiplayer server based game with timing critical combat. Anyone know if this is also a problem over LAN?

Originally posted by Dslim:

Well you havent tried is a major factor

A core game mechanic isn't *working*, "just avoid that mechanic then" is not a solution.

[Empada]

I also noticed performance issue when playing. the music does not play smoothly anymore, even in other biomes, and with the lavablob explosion the game pauses for 2 to 3 seconds.

for the parry, note also that the new enemys have 4 attacks, 2 normal and 2 with feint. it makes it harder to anticipate the parry. I really liked it, they should make it to older enemys as well

[Dslim]

Originally posted by Mharr:

Yeah this seems not good at all for a multiplayer server based game with timing critical combat. Anyone know if this is also a problem over LAN?

Originally posted by Dslim:

Well you havent tried is a major factor

A core game mechanic isn't *working*, "just avoid that mechanic then" is not a solution.

It actually is a solution, you not wanting to do it is on you.

[Mharr]

It's not a solution to *the game being busted*. It's a workaround, this needs *fixing*.

Parry & counter is core to Valheim, even in ranged combat. If that's broken what's left to play isn't Valheim.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Mharr:

Yeah this seems not good at all for a multiplayer server based game with timing critical combat. Anyone know if this is also a problem over LAN?

Originally posted by Dslim:

Well you havent tried is a major factor

A core game mechanic isn't *working*, "just avoid that mechanic then" is not a solution.

Yeah, my wife and I play on LAN and even with just the 2 of us there are some latency issues.

[Aelis]

Originally posted by Empada:

for the parry, note also that the new enemys have 4 attacks, 2 normal and 2 with feint. it makes it harder to anticipate the parry. I really liked it, they should make it to older enemys as well

I mentioned it briefly above, we spent quite some time testing solo, in duos, and all together. Alone, dodging and parrying were mostly reliable (even with the feints that I agree were a fun addition). As we added more people that reliability dropped significantly. Notably having multiple people on the server wasn't really an issue, it was having multiple in the zone that caused the breakdown. That's not particularly new, just so much worse in this biome compared to previous.

[Mharr]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Yeah, my wife and I play on LAN and even with just the 2 of us there are some latency issues.

Aw hell. Yeah this needs to be raised as a critical performance bug then. :(

[Caelib]

Originally posted by Dslim:

Lower the difficulty for you then.

This is the primary failure of the developers. When you select a difficulty level for a game, you shouldn't have to change it later. "Normal" should continue to be "normal" all the way through the game.

[FREEZED]

i wonder how game would be with 4 wizards with staff of wilds

[Bacon Overlord®]

Originally posted by Aelis:

From what I've seen, there are some pretty serious concerns about the difficulty in Ashlands. I saw a lot of the same complaints at the start of Mistlands and assumed they were about on par, different people want different things out of this game which inevitably introduces friction between the "this is too easy" and "this is too hard" camps. That's all fine. I didn't LOVE Mistlands, but saw what it was going for and worked through it all the same. There are things I'd change but for the most part I'd classify Mistlands as "tolerable".

After our initial disaster of a landing in the Ashlands, we sailed back a second time and put together a small refuge with a portal that would be our beachhead. Confident, we headed out to finally fight the swarms on our own terms.

We died, a lot.

I'm in the best possible Mistlands gear, with all varieties of hp/stam(and Eitr, see below) food. My goal was to simply parry a single attack against an enemy, then hit it while staggered - something I've done the entire game. After being killed 4-5 times trying to do even a single parry we realized a simple truth: the network latency is so bad that we effectively have to guess whether to block early, late, or maybe entirely randomly to block the actual attack.

We ran a few tests - each of us going into the zone alone which worked better, up to two people in the zone at the time where we had about a 1/3 parry chance given what we saw on screen. Playing with four people however was a death sentence for everyone, it was simply impossible to parry or dodge enemy attacks that had a habit of one/two shotting us depending on how many stars they had. Bows/Arbalests were mostly useless given the massive number of skeletons, which left only Frost Staffs as a viable weapon because it effectively stunlocks the enemies so defensives aren't necessary.

I could go on about the troubles we ran into, but we've all pretty much classified the game as "unplayable" given its current performance. I don't know why it's so much worse than Mistlands (which had so many of its own issues) but unless some serious work is being put into the underlying engine of the game I don't think it's going to last as a multiplayer game.

What you're describing has been an issue with the game since launch and has every little to do with the map or the content. It's your ISP and the network coding for multiplayer. After you've played solo and someone joins sometimes the network coding gets funky. I'm not an expert, but it seems like latency is off by a half second or so.

Have everyone log out and restart the server. That should fix it. If not, if you just wait awhile that also sometimes fixes it.