This is part of a series of threads I'm going to be making on how and where Three Rings can improve this game before launch.
One of my other threads, here, is about how they can create better equipment balance and more challenging battles and environments through the use of universal equipment standards.
Now for the current topic:
Scaling and why it needs to change
When you start the game, you have five health. You have about forty armour. You deal 13 damage on average with your sword.
Monsters take 7~10 hits to kill you.
The game isn't even remotely challenging in the slightest.
It's actually quite boring.
In Tier 3, you start with twelve health. You have well over 200 (useless) armour. You deal damage in the hundreds.
Monsters can one shot you until you get a Vitapod.
It takes over 20 Health to survive more than one hit from them.
It takes much longer to kill them.
The environments are exceedingly difficult to navigate and are often incredibly hazardous.
The monsters have better AI and attack patterns, and almost always inflict a status effect on hit.
The game goes from being easy to being stupidly difficult in one step.
And here I was thinking we upgraded our armour to scale up with the monsters in the given Tier, when actually you spend all that time and effort just to pay more when you die.
How foolish of me to think otherwise.
When you start putting respawning hearts inside monster rooms to give players a chance, you need to think about either buffing the players, or nerfing the monsters.
That's all I can say.
This issue has existed since you added the new content Tiering system and yet nothing has been done to balance it out fairer. This isn't even something that hasn't been brought to people's attention before, it's just seemingly being ignored.
I understand that you want the game to be challenging in party play.
But really all you've succeeded in doing is rewarding abusive solo play.
All people do is run around either spamming sword charge attacks, spamming guns or dropping napalm bombs everywhere like it's 'Nam.
You'd think if you were going to be charging people five times as much to resurrect in Tier 3, that it would be a lot less masochistic to even bother paying the CE if you do die.
But, just like everything else, that's not the case here.
You might as well turn Tier 3 into Contra Tier and charge everybody 25c to continue playing after they die.
Because the only people that aren't going to be paying you to die have probably played through and beaten the content there using these tactics.
Which are apparently, legitimate tactics, but the weapons that they're often abused by quickly get horrendously nerfed every time a balance patch comes around.
You need to fix this, you need to sit down, think about hard numbers for scaling and just fix the game.
Because only a select few people are getting anything out of the game as it is and they're destroying the CE market.
If more people could make the money to buy CE when it's at a fair price, inflation wouldn't be so bad that the same players don't just keep exchanging CE between each other.
That's my take on the whole thing, anyway.
Post your own opinion, together we might be able to find something that will work.
I'd agree I feel its a cheap tactic and unfair how much damage monsters in Tier 3 do. It's no fun to die in just a single hit or two. I understand that you want it to be about skill, and good players should be able to avoid most attacks. However, in fighting rooms with numerous enemies you are bound to take a hit by a flying bullet or straying too close to an enemy - and to be able to survive so few hits is just bothersome, making a single mistake can pretty much ruin you.
Of course, I recently got an Ash of Agni, and things have become so much easier - but that isn't saying the game is good to go, that is just showing an imbalance between weapons.
Not sure if I'm being very clear, but I'm agreeing with you Shoebox that something needs to be changed. Making a mistake shouldn't be so costly and hopefully we can allow other weapons a chance to be used in later tiers. As it stands, trying to use slow swords against the masses is just begging for you to get wrecked.