I'm late to the party (I was traveling for work and didn't pick up my preorder until a week and a half after launch). I just brought it with me to my out of town assignment, so I'll be booting up pretty regularly. I'm just at level 16, so hopefully I can get up to level 30 by the big update. So far, so good, the presentation is gorgeous. I think I'll enjoy it even more as my gear improves.
Just take your time and enjoy the game. There are the group of players that are always looking for some exploit to hurry up and get bored with the game. They got bored a few days in, when the rest that just played the game as it was intended are still enjoying it. Once you hit the cap, it's all about finding the playstyle you like, and gearing up for that. Or getting gear for multiple playstyles. Afterall, you are meant to be able to switch on the fly. I personally like a good balance of the 3 stats (firearms, stam, skill). I lucked out and got the Caduceus from a hard mode daily mission drop. It requires firearms and skill power to enable it's talents. Much more fun than stacking firearms and stamina if you ask me.
They're nerfing crafting on the 12th I think. Time to farm up on items and deconstruct/craft while the cost is low.
Man, I want to reserve judgement until after the patch comes out, but initially, this sounds horrible. It is like they are punishing players who did not use exploits and geared up after the first few days after release. Making crafting high end items THIS much more expensive in terms of materials is a bit much. Now, I think that the best items should come from the content you run, not from crafting, so I HOPE they are moving towards that. Maybe upping the drop rate and the quality of the items from bosses or the incursions. They release the patch notes yesterday, everyone lost their minds, and today on a stream somewhere, Massive states we only have half of the story, and that we will be pleased with the other half...um, sure. Doesn't seem smart to decide to drop a pretty big nerf like that and not even hint at what might offset it. I do like the other changes they are bringing with DZ ranks and what you can purchase as well as what costs DZ creds, PhxCreds, etc.
Yeah I hope that High End level 31 items drop a bit more, because otherwise the crafting nerf doesn't punish who they are trying to punish. The guys with all the high end gear won't be affected much since they are already so far ahead of everyone. I've had 4 high end drops so far and 3 of them were level 30 performance mods, which were not usable at all and got deconstructed right away for materials.
I think I am somewhere in the middle of casual and hardcore as far as playtime. I typically play 2-3 hours on a weeknight, do my daily missions and hit the DZ (rank 49.5, so close!) for a little. That's allowed me to deck myself out in all HE gear, but it's not maximized, but decent. Crafting and some lucky drops here and there (Caduceus and gear that I can't craft from BoO plans) is how I have what I do. I've recalibrated when it made sense. I never understood why people exploit so they are bored after a week of the game being out. Doing the daily missions is enough to get you a blueprint once a day or two. With all the daily missions, materials you picked up while leveling, and DZ farming, you should be good to try a decent amount of rolling gear. I don't have perfect gear, far from it, but I'm still enjoying the game. In the DZ if I run into a rogue, I don't know if I'll be able to kill them or not. That's the fun part. If I know I will always lose or always win, that's honestly no fun to me. There would be no point to it. My concern now is perfecting my gear and how I'm going to approach Incursions since I really only have 1-2 other friends that play that I can group with. Doesn't sound like I'd want to PUG/Random the new incursion.
The nerf to crafting materials is accompanied by a dramatic increase in drop rates. Now every named NPC level 30+ will drop a high end item. Details here. Following the Diablo 3 lessons, Massive is incentivizing playing the game to get loot instead of exploits to get around a gated economy. Should make casual play a lot more rewarding.
Yes. So glad they are going this direction. Their announcement of the crafting changes was poorly constructed.
Well, the Dark Zone is about to become even more of a blood bath than it has been. Players were killing just for sport, before. Now they will know there is high end loot in those yellow bags. If the game turns into kill-on-sight with no risk calculation, then the rogue-death XP penalty may need to be upped.
Thanks for clearing that up...I was concerned -- especially since I have less time to play than I used to.
Add to that supply drops...the DZ is going to be crazy. I don't see it in the patch notes but it implies brackets by gear score since there is a new bracket of 160+. It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Brackets should be determined by DZ rank I would think. Some measure of your skill in the DZ and that is the closest thing we have right now.
Gear score is a better approximation of power since the gear is the basis of character stats. Going by DZ rank won't work for two reasons: 1) you can lose rank, but not your gear and 2) people will just create new characters and put their high end gear on those low DZ-ranked characters. Players were already doing #2 when the rogue penalty was really high, just so they could go rogue with no consequences. Gear score isn't perfect as one's gear may not be optimized, but by including everything in the character inventory into the calculation, we will get better/more competitive matches.
Question: Do you find that PvP makes use of the game's mechanics? As beneficial some of the skills like Smart Cover and such are, I rarely see it used in PvP. It ends up being some b*stard child of Call of Duty, but using more bullets. Players just running around in the open rolling around and whatnot. They need to make the penalty for not being in cover a lot worse or something. Or make being in cover more rewarding and even more powerful with Smart Cover. Have tactics play more of a role. Add the mechanic of back crits. I don't think that exists does it? Crit chance is higher from behind an enemy and also higher than a "normal" crit like most RPGs. I think it changes PvP a little. I mean, I'm just spitballin' here with my choppy sentences, but I wish PvP were a little different. Someone on reddit had a good suggestion: remove damage mitigation unless you're behind cover
No, I don't see the game's mechanics in play. I completely agree that Massive should do something to enforce the cover mechanics. Removing damage mitigation when not in cover would be a great start. The whole hosing-each-other-with-bullets and rolling and running in circles until Survivor Link runs out style of combat is just boring. I would like to see higher crit chance and crit damage when not in cover, too. Even a backstab/back crit would make players measure when to fight and flee. The most tactics I have seen is when a group I was in was hunting down some players on manhunt. Those rogues cleverly ran though narrow alleys and dropped shock turrets at blind corners to slow the pursuit. Other than that, I have seen no tactics.
Haha yeah. The default tactic in the DZ is roll around and/or run in circles while trying to spray as many bullets as possible.
That's disappointing. That's why I hated Gears of War's multiplayer. Ah well, that's why I have Halo 5. Destiny also did a great job in this space being a loot shooter, and yet having extremely fun / addictive multiplayer. Step 1: Roll...a ****ing lot. Step 2: Shotgun. Step 3: Profit. Skill level 0.
I agree with the cover system. Hardly ever use it unless I'm in a really tough situation. Cover to cover is non existent. PVP in my experience is mostly pop your tank buff, run up to the guy, and unload as many bullets as you can until one of you eventually dies.
Honestly if I have to extract I dont even bother to fight others. I just pop whatever buffs/heals etc and rush straight to the extraction cord and hope I live long enough for me to attach it.
Regarding the rolling around stuff, we don't see that on PC as much as console I don't think. We can still hit rollers with bullets pretty easy with KB+M. I was watching some vids of PvP and saw a guy rolling around like crazy thinking...no way that works. Does it make you invincible during the roll or something? Then realized maybe it's harder to aim at a roller on console.
So, we put some time in this. Rolling in a band of 3, level 16, DZ level 10 and so far IMHO the game is not very fun. Its alright, but more of a time killer than a fun experience. Does it get better later?
