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Post by exile on Aug 8, 2019 16:04:39 GMT -6
Much as I'm a fan of the little faery, it's hard to beat the all-around utility of the knight.
On another note, I'd REALLY have loved to see some kind of alchemical shadow creature. Seems like a lost opportunity that in a game about alchemy, none of the sidekicks except arguably Buer has a very alchemical feel about them.
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Post by exile on Aug 8, 2019 15:59:59 GMT -6
I fully support the opportunity to hit things more times before they die. Ain't 'nuthin wrong with that, hombre.
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Post by exile on Aug 8, 2019 14:23:44 GMT -6
Best of luck to you here, lai. I see you re-stating what I've said myself a few times now and I don't have much more to add. It feels like we have one discussion spread across 4 forum topics. bloodstained.forums.net/post/71503/threadAnd meanwhile I make a thread on the fun side of things about ideas for the cosmetics items and get zero replies. It's mostly complaint/reactionary stuff around here lately and it bothers me more than it should. It's just that most who would otherwise engage positively are playing the game or have moved on to their next game. I think that this is actually the natural progression of how things like this go, but I miss the excitement and discussion of what was to be. You're experienced enough to recognize that this is sadly the common cycle of most games. I'm no less guilty. Something that was dearly beloved at the initial stages is diminished once the romance wears thin and I get to picking apart the trivial areas where it falls short. I can't speak generally, but for detail-specific people such as I am, it seems inevitable. I think human nature also leads us to dote more heavily on what dissatisfies us than what does not, which is a huge shame. At day's end, Bloodstained is one of my favorite games in years. It's imaginative (despite being largely derivative), I absolutely love the art direction (which is something I'm incredibly selective about), and the gameplay is a ton of fun, which is easily my favorite aspect of this gem of a game. It's that last criterion that accounts for my sometime-bitterness and also skepticism. There are few modern games that I consider "just good, honest, *#@%ing fun." Bloodstained is one of these, and while I trust Iga and his vision, I also know the insidious, creeping nature of self-doubt which leads a creator to amend his vision to please the mob, a futile endeavor, and a dangerous one.
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Post by exile on Aug 8, 2019 11:38:38 GMT -6
lai I understand your point, and I generally agree. There comes a point where you can "faceroll" your way through a game, and there is little satisfaction or joy in that. This presupposes several things, however. 1. That this minimal difficulty is a default in the game, and not something arrived at intentionally. If you progress in a reasonable way through the normal mode of BS, without excessive grinding and questing, I think BS offers a reasonable challenge as compared to other games in this genre. It's not Hollow Knight (and doesn't want to be), but there were some deaths along the way, and some bosses were rather tricky until you got the patterns down. True, an extremely skilled player may want for a challenge, but "normal" mode is never designed with hardcore gamers in mind; it's meant to be accessible. My own observation was that the game only got excessively easy after I put a considerable amount of time into leveling, farming shards, and hunting down the best gear. If one does that, the presumption is that they're TRYING to become overpowered. It's quite different from a game that presents zero challenge out the gate. 2. As I've stated elsewhere, I feel you and others are really overstating how great some of these skills are. They're perhaps easy to use, but not great. Welcome Company is only decent, as far as I'm concerned, because I can do exponentially more damage spamming bullets or spells without even placing myself in range of an enemy's attack. I'd say, if anything, Welcome Company would need a substantial BUFF before I'd even consider using it beyond the first few hours. Almost without exception, RPGs reward higher risk skills with greater damage output. I have to be in very close range to use Welcome Company, but the risk is not reflected in the damage it does. As for Bunnymorphosis, I loved that skill and thought it would be the be-all-end-all of shards, but as my character grew in power, again, I found the risk/reward wasn't justified. It's nice to be a bikini-bunny, don't get me wrong, but it's a little awkward to use. You have to really time the jump attacks correctly, and the "Chun-Li" kick barrage is nice on paper, but you have to remain close and stationary, and there's a wind-up time to use the skill and then you're risking eating a counterattack before you can break away to dodge. Again, conversely, I can blast an enemy from across the screen with a spell/bullet that does equivalent or greater damage. I was actually sad to find I never used Bunnymorphosis any more, so I had to ditch the shard for healing or stat boost skills despite really loving its originality. So, again, they'd have to BUFF the skill for me to use it. In sum, the game really isn't particularly easy (or any easier than other games in the genre played on normal mode), and the skills they've targeted are odd, as I consider them average skills, by far not the strongest. However, I've acknowledged there is some merit to what Purifyweirdshard mentioned, which is that the goal is simply to encourage experimentation. I think it's a somewhat futile goal, as casual gamers are always going to default to "easy and convenient" skills, but certainly I can appreciate the argument.
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Post by exile on Aug 7, 2019 17:02:02 GMT -6
But touch my Void Ray and Chisels and there will be blood. Anybody nagging for further nerfs, should be shown to the door asap. You're doing it right. I'm hesitant to say it, because I don't want any more nerfing, but as cool as weapons are, they're mostly a vanity item for me. There ain't a weapon in game that can touch shards. Not even close. Invert+machine gunning something with Chisels is priceless.
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Post by exile on Aug 6, 2019 14:12:28 GMT -6
Yeah, I concede that sometimes gamers (myself included) can be a little melodramatic. I don't really find that to be the case here, at least not where I'm coming from. What I'M getting tired of reiterating is that I generally admire balance patches. This is probably one of only a handful of times I've ever taken serious issue with it, and this one is the worst offender in my book. It's not because the proposed nerfs are earth-shattering. They aren't. Most of them are actually quite mild. It's because I think it evidences a fundamental lack of insight by the developers of their own creation. BS succeeded because it harkens back to an era where gaming was as much about fun as competition. Most review magazines (yeah, the printed stuff, folks) back then actually had a specific score for "fun-factor" or something similar. The issue, as I see it, with these seemingly minor nerfs is that they miss the "problem." By nerfing something like Rhava Velar, the devs are essentially taking a country with a nuclear arsenal and making adjustments to a particular fighter plane. It makes that particular plane worse, but changes nothing in any significant way. The bulk of my Miriam's power is that I've leveled up the shards to where she has absolutely absurd passive bonuses. I've cooked all the recipes which, again, confer massive stat bonuses. I've also reached level 99. You could put a dull cheese grater in her hands and she'd make Dominique cry. And you know what? That's exactly what I intended. That's why I ground it out for hours and hours. It's because I wanted to revel in the unmitigated glee of wiping out an entire screen with a bolt of lightning. By picking and choosing a handful of weapons and skills (some of them rather unspectacular, to be honest), the devs really aren't solving anything. They designed a game that rewards grinding with absurd power, and now it seems they're trying to embrace an alternate philosophy and amend the design to match it. The game was DESIGNED to be broken. What they're doing won't work. At best, it will result in spoiling the fun for a few people, garnering a lot of negative feedback, and accomplishing nothing. At worst, they'll try to adjust the whole game and just make a big, bland mess out of it. I'm not ignorant of the benefits of patching and extending the lifespan of a game, but as others on these forums have stated, this particular type of tampering sometimes makes me miss the days where you got what was on the cartridge, and nothing more. The "problem" you think they're aiming for/the one you think they're concerned about (and in perhaps OP's case as well) isn't what is being addressed here. I've talked about this in one of the other threads about this topic (which I may be merging this one into one of those soon), but the distinction is about being overpowered in the normal progression of the game, not being overpowered as a result of grinding or late game as per usual in all these games. I think being ridiculously strong is the result they want for us and what we all expected and will not change, that's just the nature of these games and a lot of what makes them fun is getting there. Already being there in the first 20% of the game, however, is not as fun and more taking away from the experience of wanting to get the things that are supposed to be powerful, and experiment with what is new. For the incredible majority of players, once you had, again in the most obvious case, Welcome Company and True Arrow, which were most often acquired by complete accident in the first 20% of the game - your incentive to experiment, grind or look for mid game (let alone end-game) options was incredibly diminished. The player needn't even look for wiki info or insight on if what they had already was the best, the person already knew it. You can be at a level of power early in the game that feels like it would be much more appropriate near its end - when it is common in Igavania games to ignore the level design considerations once you have the powerful abilities that allow you to skip them. Some of the early RotN shards near base level, upgraded to level 3-4 if maybe a little more or less, gave me a feeling I didn't enjoy where I was running straight though my normal progression, not fazed by enemy placement that was supposed to be something to think about, and commonly not looking twice at mid or late game abilities. Once again, think about Symphony of the Night - a notoriously broken game. Even so, nothing in the normal castle/first half of the game that can be acquired through normal/non-glitch means will easily carry you through the inverted castle unless you're a quite experienced/trained player (and hit things a whole bunch of times). In a game with upgradeable souls/shards, it can and should be completely fine for early abilities to be near equal standing to late game ones after said upgrades, but most likely not be *better* than them, especially in cases where they can be upgraded easily or perhaps not even need upgrades to suit purposes that trivialize the game/other options much earlier than you should be at an overpowered state. For the player who has beaten the game, I don't think this will mean as much or perhaps anything at all - the power of the shard adjustments are from what I understand aimed at their early power to better steer the curve of progression so more players can see and experience more content, and think more to achieve that rewarding level of power that I am sure is unchanged. I am aware that one exception to this seems to be the Crissaegrim style sword - I imagine they had their reasons for that, perhaps to give more incentive to make the weapons that are harder to craft. A counter to this point has been a potential slippery slope scenario where they end up normalizing and nerfing everything and we're in a padded room where everything is bad and the game isn't fun anymore, but I think that's an extreme exaggeration. Most very strong things, which are appropriately strong later, are untouched. Okay, that was a pretty reasonable response. I see the logic of keeping the sense of progression by encouraging people to experiment, and I believe it does make the game more fun overall. I need only look to Diablo 3, where I had a blast experimenting with multiple classes/builds/skills. The one shortcoming, however, that I hope you'll carry to the devs, is that MANY players I've encountered, in every game of this type, will simply default to latching onto the first effective skill setup they discover, whatever it may be, and going with that. It may not necessarily represent the optimal build, but a lot of people play casually. They're not min/maxxing everything. They just find something that works and stop there. A great example is Welcome Company. I'd call it a "good" skill, if situational. I personally abandoned it with a quickness once my intelligence was high enough to clean house with some of the stronger spells in the game. I consider it a complete waste of a shard when I can wreck the entire screen with a spell. I don't think that warrants a nerf. It's an effective skill that many people simply won't bother changing. If Welcome Company is nerfed enough, people will probably default to another easy-to-use skill for the duration of their playthrough. I think mine was Seeker Arrow or whatever the homing arrow is called. Certainly, if something is SO dominant that there is effectively no alternative choice, nerf it. If, however, it's simply the case that people discovered X first, and never bothered to try Y or Z, artificially prompting them to do so by watering down the experience may ultimately do more harm then good. But hey, I'm no developer, this is all speculation on my end as a fan.
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Post by exile on Aug 5, 2019 16:41:50 GMT -6
I’m growing tired of this community’s endless whining and crying foul over the smallest of things. There ARE legitimate concerns to complain about (almost everything surrounding the Switch version, for example), but this ain’t it, Chief. This ain’t it. Yeah, I concede that sometimes gamers (myself included) can be a little melodramatic. I don't really find that to be the case here, at least not where I'm coming from. What I'M getting tired of reiterating is that I generally admire balance patches. This is probably one of only a handful of times I've ever taken serious issue with it, and this one is the worst offender in my book. It's not because the proposed nerfs are earth-shattering. They aren't. Most of them are actually quite mild. It's because I think it evidences a fundamental lack of insight by the developers of their own creation. BS succeeded because it harkens back to an era where gaming was as much about fun as competition. Most review magazines (yeah, the printed stuff, folks) back then actually had a specific score for "fun-factor" or something similar. Short of playing couch co-op with your friends or the genesis of FPS competitions (Quake, anyone?), there really wasn't much focus on balance in the way we perceive it today. Nobody cared if, for instance, everyone was abusing the hell out of "Knights of the Round" materia in FF7, because it was understood that a gamer would put in many hours with the eventual goal of being completely overpowered and one-shotting the last boss. There was immense joy and satisfaction in that. Same deal for SoTN. I think I four-shot Dracula by the time I was done leveling Alucard. As aforementioned, not every game needs to be Dark Souls. There are plenty of those. I didn't fund this game because I wanted another DS. The issue, as I see it, with these seemingly minor nerfs is that they miss the "problem." By nerfing something like Rhava Velar, the devs are essentially taking a country with a nuclear arsenal and making adjustments to a particular fighter plane. It makes that particular plane worse, but changes nothing in any significant way. The bulk of my Miriam's power is that I've leveled up the shards to where she has absolutely absurd passive bonuses. I've cooked all the recipes which, again, confer massive stat bonuses. I've also reached level 99. You could put a dull cheese grater in her hands and she'd make Dominique cry. And you know what? That's exactly what I intended. That's why I ground it out for hours and hours. It's because I wanted to revel in the unmitigated glee of wiping out an entire screen with a bolt of lightning. By picking and choosing a handful of weapons and skills (some of them rather unspectacular, to be honest), the devs really aren't solving anything. They designed a game that rewards grinding with absurd power, and now it seems they're trying to embrace an alternate philosophy and amend the design to match it. The game was DESIGNED to be broken. What they're doing won't work. At best, it will result in spoiling the fun for a few people, garnering a lot of negative feedback, and accomplishing nothing. At worst, they'll try to adjust the whole game and just make a big, bland mess out of it. I'm not ignorant of the benefits of patching and extending the lifespan of a game, but as others on these forums have stated, this particular type of tampering sometimes makes me miss the days where you got what was on the cartridge, and nothing more.
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Post by exile on Aug 5, 2019 11:06:52 GMT -6
Yeah, so...this is the kind of thing that will quickly have people wondering "what the hell?" absent a reasonable explanation. Hopefully, it's just some kind of silly error. Even then, there really is getting to be this sense of "fix something, break something else."
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Post by exile on Aug 2, 2019 14:25:38 GMT -6
I come here just want to say "FXck you" for you We Switch player buy your game,it has been a omnth past,the game still sucks even can't play I hope if someday your family get some critical illness and must have surgery,the doctor will say"OK,first we want to sell you a beautiful set of clothes,it needs some time to make.And about the surgery,we will do it after we finish the clothes set." After Bloodstsined,I know you a incapability game maker team,I will only buy game how made by your team on secondhand I understand and even somewhat share your frustration, but if you're going to liken lacking game features to someone awaiting treatment for a terminal illness, I'd say you need to take a serious step back and do some thoughtful self-examination. Some things in life are just not that high-stakes. Whatever else I believe, I think the team is TRYING to course-correct here. Unfortunately, they rolled out the game in a less-than-ideal way that's become problematic in terms of timely addressing certain issues and deciding what needs fixing first. I don't envy them.
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Post by exile on Aug 2, 2019 14:20:45 GMT -6
First of all, just to play Devil's Advocate, because it's what I do, I'd like to remind everyone of something. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is not, and has never been, a single-player game. Multiplayer was announced during the Kickstarter. It hasn't been implemented yet, but it's a known feature. Multiplayer is coming, in at least one mode, and possibly multiple. That's confirmed to be a part of the 13 free DLC. That said, I've not noticed any major balance issues that would warrant sweeping changes to the game. I worry about "fixing" the fun out. As a cook, I know what trying too hard to correct the seasoning can do. As someone with a background in both game design and writing, I know that there's a point where you need to say, "This is done. I am not working on this any more." Finally, as for all the people complaining about people complaining, using terms like "whining" and "butthurt"...what's got you so butthurt? People who are having fun and now hear that their fun is considered something to be "fixed" have a right to complain. Possibly more right than people who aren't having fun because they refuse to use a solution that already exists. I think we can be friends.
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Post by exile on Aug 1, 2019 16:06:14 GMT -6
I absolutely don't think cosmetic stuff should be a priority, or even a discussion until the game is running acceptably on all platforms. That said, if it is implemented in the future, please consider making some kind of vanity slots for gear. There's zero incentive right now to equip something like cat or elf ears, with abysmal stats, when it replaces a functional headpiece. It's such a wasted opportunity to include all these cool customizeables and then make players choose between functionality and style. As it stands, unless the introduced cosmetics also have the best stats in the game (which I assume they won't, because that would be a terrible idea), there is no incentive whatsoever to purchase them. Should you create some cosmetic slots, the option to hide helm would also be appreciated.
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Post by exile on Aug 1, 2019 15:51:25 GMT -6
Nerfing Craftwork was a surprise. Were speedrunners doing something crazy with it or was something found out regarding it? Either way... Interesting. Nope, this is definitely the change that seems the most out of left field. My current theory as to why it was nerfed was that it is a free dps booster if you have the finger dexterity for it even if it isn't a very good one. The sheer annoyance of using it that way is more than enough of a cost already. I would hate to play that way, but if someone else wants to, more power to them.
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Post by exile on Aug 1, 2019 11:56:13 GMT -6
The patch isn't out yet? (At least not on Steam.) It’s out on Switch, which the post mentions is the first to get the patch right away. Well that's...disappointing. How's the overall performance?
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Post by exile on Aug 1, 2019 2:29:02 GMT -6
They are working on the switch but this was already in progress and needed to be finished. Hopefully there are no more nerfs in the future because I probably won't download this even with the actually fixes. Maybe if we ask nice they'll reverse the nerfs. Yeah, definitely skipping this patch. We’ll see what the future brings, but I’ve had very few glitches. It’s not worth eating the nerf at this stage.
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Post by exile on Jul 30, 2019 19:38:05 GMT -6
Bloodless all day long. Hot vampire chick+interesting attacks+sinister laugh. Ohhhh yeaaaah! Zangetsu and O.D. were also great fun, although I think the latter had some very obnoxious attacks where the hitbox felt a little cheap. I wouldn't know about IGA, since, you know, I'm on PS4.
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Post by exile on Jul 28, 2019 12:36:08 GMT -6
Those wanting challenge and are misled into thinking nerfs will cut it... I am so going to repeat that to exhaustion, i promise... Will achieve nothing. Until they nag to the point that EVERYTHING gets nerfed. Best solution is a challenging mode (i hope chaos mode does that). In higher difficulties, even water leapers are OP. Even lowly summons of pathetic, upstart critters. Bosses last seconds against a fight and no, not even a single weapon swing is involved, not even one of those listed nerf victims! Things like True/Homing Shots are actually irrelevant, in higher difficulties... Fully upgraded shards, make weapons completely useless and obsolete. Mainstream shards like Riga Stormae? Thanks, but no, other ones like Va Ischa/Schia, or 8 bit Overlord which actually gets the entire screen, are much better. Void Ray flash and screen empties, why to bother with shots? Those nerfs, sure as hell, ain't balancing no game. Their only achievement, is to irritate those who want/use/like those skills. And those fools demanding them to be nerfed, won't stop there; next thing they find OP and they are so going to keep nagging, endlessly pestering. Pro-nerfians; did they even bother to play past normal, or use other skills than those in the nerflist, as their regulars? ? That's the real head-scratcher of it all. You still have a huge selection of completely broken options but for some reason, they thought that nerfing a select few that aren't even that broken (Except Welcome Company and Head Familiar) was the right thing to do. It's really bizarre. The game already has more challenge than your average Iga metroidvania and they're still adding an even harder mode so why the hell are they pulling a multiplayer nerf mentality here? We share this confusion, and that is also my greatest concern. So many of the abilities are overpowered that I do not see this type of balancing ending well. Once a company starts this nonsense, it usually does not end till everything that is remotely fun is neutered and the once-charming game becomes bland as hell. That’s just not what Igavanias have ever been. As I said before, balance has its place. This will mark the first time ever (and I’ve been gaming since the 80s), that I forego additional patches to a game because I just want to have fun with the real version, not some piece of crud that’s stripped down to appease whiners.
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Post by exile on Jul 27, 2019 13:17:23 GMT -6
Artists and modelers who create new assets arent going to be the same people responsible for bugfixing or porting code. Most of us appreciate that, but it just doesn’t look good PR wise when you have some pretty major performance issues and you’re talking about nerfing things people are enjoying and cosmetics. Extreme (and not incredibly apt) analogy, but if you’re watching your house burn down, are you going to be amused by the guy who asks what color you want to paint it when it’s rebuilt, despite that the painter is not impeding the firemen from performing their duties?
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Post by exile on Jul 24, 2019 13:10:31 GMT -6
Guys, I'm not clairvoyant so I won't pretend to understand all the motivations behind the way information is being relayed to the public. Perhaps (hopefully?) it's part of a solid plan that's to be unfurled in the near future. As it stands, it just seems incredibly tonedeaf and uncomfortably awkward. I play on PS4, so I have the privilege of being the most stable experience (except PC). That said, it really is bad form to tout cosmetic crap and nerfs when a sizable portion of your fanbase can't even properly play the game. This isn't about transparency; it's just really bad public relations. Regardless of whether team A is working on stability and team B is working on extras, it just doesn't sit right with people who channeled their hopes, expectations, and dollars towards the dream of a new Igavania only to encounter crashes, glitches, and undelivered content.
I'm sorry to say it, but when I first got to experience Bloodstained, I thought, "How refreshing, to see that after all this time, certain game developers still understand what made us love these genres to begin with." Clearly fans agreed, as the reception for BS was generally quite good. Fast forward only a few weeks and I'm thinking "Are these even the same guys?" It seems incredible that they have enough awareness of their audience and confidence in their vision to create a game like BS, but then do the exact opposite going forward.
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Post by exile on Jul 19, 2019 15:43:06 GMT -6
There is no functional difference between nerfing one thing and buffing everything else. You have to buff all of the monsters as well, of course, or all of these buffs just amount to making the game easier. It's pretty stupid to buff every damn thing in the game though, when you can accomplish the same thing by nerfing just a few. If the player is finding one thing and spending the rest of the game with it then the devs have failed. It is not the nature of this game to stick with one thing forever, what would be the point of a loot collecting game if you never use most of your loot? Because a lot of old-school games (which BS imitates) were in this vein. You find maybe 2-3 great weapons out of a hundred in the game. Some are novel to use because they feature intriguing mechanics or are just cool as hell, but ultimately, only a few are optimal. It's been true in the Final Fantasies over the years, in Igavanias, in a plethora of others. It doesn't always equal bad game design. Conversely, one could also argue that if every weapon is more or less equivalently effective, then there's also no point to variation. Ideally, a game would offer distinct choices that are all, dependent on playstyle, reasonably viable. I don't think BS nails this, but it gets reasonably close for a game of this sort. Really, I'm not an especially talented gamer and I can dominate with pretty much any weapon in this game.
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Post by exile on Jul 19, 2019 15:33:13 GMT -6
I have a pretty big problem with this, as someone who ADORES balance in most games. Here it is. I know this statement is a little well-worn, but this really isn't an MMO. It's barely an RPG. Players (myself included) specifically buy titles like this for funfactor and that INCLUDES finding and abusing the hell out of all the broken mechanics. It was fun in SoTN, it's fun in RotN. If we wanted balanced, we'd play through one of the numerous MMOs that rebalances every other month and destroys umpteen flavor-of-the-month builds in the process. NO THANKS. I like those games, but I play them to compete. I buy games like BS to have fun and take it easy. Look at the overwhelming number of positive reviews for this game, and you know what the common sentiment is, almost without exception? "Good job, Iga, this game is so much FUN." Not "this game is so incredibly well-balanced." Not "I really enjoyed having to spend hours obsessing over multiple builds to be viable in 10 different scenarios." FUN. As in "I loved jumping around as a bikini-bunny and ninja kicking the shit out of everything" or "I loved facetanking a boss while breaking picture frames over his stupid head."
The other problem here is that "balance" typically translates into everything being less fun. All the creative and quirky exploits players find are removed, and everything is streamlined, and the whole game becomes rather basic and bland. Think of how many MMOs go that route. "Now every build is an effective tank class, as well as an effective DPS class, but they all function about 2/3 as well as the optimal builds of each discipline pre-nerf." That's not what BS needs.
Then there's the fact that nobody really appreciates when companies prioritize nerfing down working (if overpowered) skills while there are so many legitimate performance issues in the game and undelivered features. I'd say that priority one should be making BS stable on all platforms, eliminating things like game crashes when you read the in-game texts, and probably delivering the IGA's backpack, which some consoles have yet to receive despite being a backer exclusive.
I mostly love this game, I admire Iga's vision and that he has standards, but if I'm honest, I'm also disappointed by what I see as a bit of a confusion of priorities, both pre-launch and post.
Unrelated: Also, I agree with Ciel above. I don't like heretical grinder at all. Doesn't suit my playstyle and I find it boring.
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