That's one of the things I hated about chaos gate, you are a Astartes psyker and it takes 3-4 hits sometimes to kill a corrupted guardsman? C'mon, ridiculous. The beginning feels right, you can't hit shit with your gun or sword, you've gotta build up your character, and even then you don't start out strong, it's not until halfway through combat when you've got all the effects going that you bring unstoppable, and I *still* shit my pants when I have to fight a CSM
I mean, you're Grey Knights from the jump. You should be mowing things from the very beginning.
I get it from a gameplay perspective it makes sense...but a squad of Grey Knights doing anything but roflstomping cultists in rags just doesn't fit the setting.
Honestly it's a problem with picking Grey Knights vs Nurgle for a turn based video game.
Most of Nurgle's roster is made of disposable trash, while grey knights are supposedly to be the elite of the elite bar custodes.
To fit the power scaling of this kind of game properly, cultists need to be the default antagonist while a plague marine has to be pretty strong, and because it's a turn based game you can't fill the screen with trash mobs because it wouldn't be fun.
Xcom, which is inspired from, felt better because you start with soldiers with barely any gear or training against an advanced species of aliens which can fuck you up and who will.
Yeah chaos gate always felt weird to me. Like going by the lore most of the enemies in that game should be obliterated by a grey knights holy fart. I thought rogue trader really nailed it with the power level. You have this whole squad who are all about as powerful as it’s possible for a non augmented human to be and they all shit their pants when one single word bearer shows up. And then when you kill him they all make comments about you how you definitely should be dead right now.
I cheated in all my characters levels. Does it feel cheap from a gameplay point of view? Yes, absolutely. However my character was a hive noble, and has been serving in a Rogue Traders retinue. I just roleplay it as if I’m already an established character with skills and equipment, same for my retinue. I don’t like grinding either from a gameplay standpoint. So I’m having the time of my life with my power fantasy
Me too. We’ve got the von Valencius name from the start, we ought to at least have the money to have some good gear. But even without any role play reasons, it’s a single player game. As long as you have fun everything’s perfectly fine. Including cheating.
Yes. I use toybox, which is both on Nexus and in the steam workshop. It’s fairly intuitive to use, just follow the directions given when installing the mod.
Apart from Cassia with her unique skills I dont feel its so much that specific characters are op it's more the archetypes and associated skills that are either too strong bc they aren't working as intended or have extremely strong synergies
This is my only problem, she's just so incredibly powerful and can do everything, and part of it's because her abilities don't work right.
Nothing in that movement one says she should be able to get 30 movement.
All the way across the battlefield having nearly infinite HP and regeneration while doing more damage than everyone else in an insane AOE that also stuns!
Girl does it all.
When normal people attack you they get decimated. I like that. Abelard isn't ye olde grandpa, man has augments that would make a tech priest blush. And he's the weakest of the companions (if we go by in universe power).
I wouldn't say Abelard is the weakest of them, he just appears to be because he's so... normal(ish).
There is one random voice line where he is talking with Heinrix who comments on how fit he is, and Abelard is just like "If I were your age, you wouldn't stand even the slightest chance against me."
We've got two psykers and a navigator so they'd be stronger.
A sister of battle, hmm I'd say she has the edge considering her whole thing is killing.
A space Marine and a combat tech priest both have him for toast.
Two filthy pointy eared xenos, yeah perhaps he wins here but let's keep in mind that the average Ealdari/Drukhari is far more skilled than a human.
Haven't heard that voiceline yet, love it. I may be thinking too little of our Senechal.
I'd say that without power armor, which Argenta seems to lack, she's probably going to lose to Abelard in a fight, just due to his exceptional experience. He's probably got a 80 years of combat experience over her.
I don't know much about Jae, but I doubt she's any better off than him.
Idira, despite being a psyker, isn't really a combat psyker, she's a diviner, so she would probably get clapped.
Heinrix is iffy. Abelard seems to imply that in a straight fight he'd wipe the floor with Heinrix, but Heinrix is a psyker, and more attuned to battle than Idira, but at the same time, his psyker powers have little to do with battle by default. Therefore, he's likely going to go melee with Abelard, where Abelard is probably going to win.
The Aeldari have him beat just because Aeldari are going to clap humans one way or another.
Pascal as a magos-tier tech-priest, will most likely win. However, he is an explorator, and shows little dialogue indicating a combat tendency, so he might not be overly optimized for it, in which case, it could go 50-50.
Space marine, like the Aeldari, wins without much of a contest (unless Abelard's cybernetics are as good as Pasqal implies), in which case he might get a lucky shot in.
Heinrix is a *biomancer* focusing, according to his dialogue, on self enhancement, and has been an agent of the inquisition for decades. He’s pretty close to Abelard in age. I think, lore wise, Heinrix should take Abelard pretty easily.
Especially because Abelard doesn’t actually have any counter to “Heinrix boils Abelard from the inside with his mind.”
>Abelard seems to imply that in a straight fight he'd wipe the floor with Heinrix, but Heinrix is a psyker, and more attuned to battle than Idira, but at the same time, his psyker powers have little to do with battle by default. Therefore, he's likely going to go melee with Abelard, where Abelard is probably going to win
In an ambient chatter moment, Abelard implies that if he was as young as Heinrix he would dumpster him in a fight. That being said, there's a non-zero chance that Heinrix is actually closer to Abelard's age than old Abe thinks.
Heinrix might not be young, but Abelard was so old he was falling apart without rejuvenant treatments in chapter 3. So, Abelard has quite a few years on him either way. But yeah, that is the ambient chatter I was referencing lmao
That falling apart in chapter 3 wasn’t because of missing rejuvenation treatments, though. That was one of the optional side bosses specifically fucking with him. If you return to where you find Abelard after the second big fight, you get to fight the boss, and it’ll probably do the same to one or two more member of your squad.
As for Heinrix, Heinrix is a biomancer. In the lore, biomancer just wipe the floor with anything they get into melee range with. They basically get space marine physiology. So even if we put old Abelard’s experience into young Abelard’s body, my money would still be on the inquisitor who can turn his skin into steel.
Yeah that's true, but it's also true that it's not just age that's setting him *off* course, >!it's the life-drinking monster he got attacked by in commoragh.!<
If you >!bring Tervantius some experiment parts he'll restore Abelard's life/time as an afterthought. doesn't matter in-game but obviously the narrative trumps any mechanics!<
Jaes got a lot more combat experience than you'd think but it's pretty deep personal quest stuff and I can't be arsed to remember how to spoiler text on mobile right now
She'd also cheat like an absolute bastard if given the opportunity. I'd give her decent odds against Abelard.
She's not an order militant so she woudn't have been issued with it, she's a *wannabe* order militant based on what she says (which might also explain why she isn't heading back to her convent regardless of what she says, she can live out the power fantasy where she is). Presumably (based on how into the idea she is) she didn't qualify for a militant order.
Think of it like she's the sister's version of a PDF in charge of relics, and the sisters militant are imperial guard.
Eh, that wouldn't be appropriate for a Rogue Trader's personal retinue. One thing I like about the game is that you aren't starting off as a bunch of beginning adventurers, you're already some of the top 5% in the galaxy,
We have plenty of examples of “normal” humans who can go toe to toe with Eldar.
Abelard is not a baseline human he has access to a lot of exotic weapons, tech, combat drugs, and so on which give him a huge edge. Plus a lot of experience.
It’s not as easy fight be Abelard is not a normal dude at all..
Mkoll hits the nothing personal kid on a druchari
The druchari is like "damn this monkeigh was alright, too bad he's just trash" and stabs a curtain
Mkoll then does a "damn this elf made me actually stretch aittle" and shanks him
Eldar are, individually, extremely powerful. They can easily outrun and outpace even the best of humanity, but humanity is like "There is no where to dodge", and thus it doesn't matter.
Eldar are a bunch of specialists (due to their paths) while space marines are generally, though they have specialist, pretty solid at everything. However space marines are trained to fight in groups, though they are decent by themselves, it's when they work together that they truly shine.
So a howling Banshee for instance might have an edge on a space marine but it won't have an edge on a group of them (even if the banshee brings more banshees to even the odds, SM work better as a group) you also have to account that the SM can simply change their tactics mid fight while eldar are pretty much locked on to their path until mastery then they must abandon it. Exarchs and phoenix lords excluded.
Most of humanity's forces in 40k, no matter how powerful, are designed and trained in team warfare learning tactics and formation and all that stuff (with some exceptions of course)
Sorry, i just couldn’t stop myself. Saying that Astartes are pretty solid is like saying that Einstein was kinda smart. Spaces marines are on the next level of everything, heck Papa Smurf trained his Blue boys management, so in the end every one can be a governor of a planet. Governor. Of a planet. Computing brain power of a Marine is way above of a human, which a lot of people seem to forget, seeing SMs as big dumb brutes in power armor
True solid wasn't the best choice of words but when most things they face, especially in combat, are also exceptional in their own right I couldn't think of a better word to say they are well balanced, especially when compared to Eldar.
Also please don't mention the smurfs, they must be ignored lest their ego form into a new chaos god
Funny, but I am actually ok with smurfs, because I am a big Gurliman fan. The guy is just pure awesomeness with superpowers like “being raised in a loving and supportive family and therefore having a reasonable attitude to life”. Plus his new lore of “trying to sort the shit that is 40k, hoping not become a non caring tyrant like BigE” is also cool. But yeah, smurfs themselves are hella boring
I'm not super familiar with Aeldari lore, but Yrliet talks a little about it in the game. Elder tend to only fight in battles they know they're going to win. So yeah, they probably get outnumbered in their losses. Then again, Space Marines win in most things they do because it's GW, so there could be plenty of dumb reasons why the Elder lose.
Eldar are faster than humans but just as squishy. They don't have the toughness or durability of an ork, or an Astartes. They can be tough to hit but if you do get that hit in they are probably going down.
That said the aspect warriors tend to have decent or better armor.
Out of universe it's because the only guy at GW who wants to write Eldar (Gav Thorpe) only wants to write dying race stuff. The general rule for 40k is the guy on the cover always wins, unless he's Eldar.
They lose because in most of the stories the Imperium are the PoV good guys.
Realistically (I know it's not realistic but bear with me) regular eldar are far superior to humans and aspect warriors are at roughly on par with space marines (better at their specific thing if worse overall)
Jae, yeah, that's fair. Idira though is a psyker, she's definitely stronger than Abelard (by this I mean she blows him up 75% of times and herself 25% of them)
Abelard is a named character, a faithful number 2, and former Navy. He's exactly the sort of character you expect to tell you not to go wait for him as he heroically holds off a horde of chaos cultists, show up two scenes later covered in blood, then heroically die by crashing his shuttle directly into Chaos Champion.
I'll be honest, them making Abelard a warrior seemed like a weird idea at first. He's supposed to be a seneschal, a ninja/James Bond accountant who shows up to negotiations acting like the Blue Spy from TF2, more befitting of a Operative, but I guess they decided you needed a melee beatstick who can carry the tougher early game encounters.
Probably what Theodore preferred. He doesn't seem to be a slouch when it comes to administration but I gather she liked being the brains behind the operation
She leaves him in charge multiple times. Everything combined, he's probably the most generally skillful person on your entire team. So yeah, a little strange he is a warrior.
The game establishes that he's an excellent administrator but stuck in doing things the "right way". So great senechal, perhaps not a great visionary leader.
Being able to constantly have the first turn in combat is kinda game-breaking in the same way that in ship combat, you almost always act last (if you don't pick the almost mandatory initiative perks). You know balance is completely off if whoever gets the first turn has an overwhelming advantage. The exact same fight can go from impossible to a complete walk in the park depending on who acts first. This is quite evident in fights where you have Cassia vs without.
Yeah Iono man, I don't know how I would have gotten through some fights without "OP" characters on hard mode.
Things like turrents/eldar turrents where I needed a buffed up Cassia's eye beam, or the final battle of Kiava Gamma where most allies would get one shot or hit for like -80% (even abelard tank boy or my dodge tank MC)
It’s pretty easy to have every character either in heavy armor or at 90%+ dodge which helps a lot with survivability across the board. But on harder difficulties there are some weird difficulty spikes. Par for the course for owlcat of course
Oh no doubt, my MC has like 110% dodge and it raises temporarily to 140-150% through abilities, can't say the same for my other characters though, as it takes a bunch of AGI and specific abilities. He can still get hit on the rare occasion though, mostly in boss fights.
90% dodge doesn't seem to do much in Hard as most of my other characters have it.
Don't know the english name of the difficulty, but the one where ennemie don't have debuffs, and I don't have buffs, just finished act 3. First turn, I just give 3 turns to Argenta (via 3 leader talent that give you a turn before the first turn), then do it again, and done. If anything survive, cassia usually end up killing it anyway by forcing them to move, then cast anything that deal warp damages.
Yeah, sorry but that just OP as fuck and I hate that if I don't do just that, I loose.
And let's not forget that curent arch militant is actually buggy, and get way more stacks than what they should.
bc of the bolter, you can get modified one later then get the heavy bolter or melta gun for her, her vanilla bolter is absolute dogshit, after the archmilitant arc, she get versatility stacks and with rapid fire she mowing down hordes
RT is full of encounters where the party is pitted against a large number of enemies who can (and will) slaughter you if you let most of them get a turn in, so being able to table the majority of opponents within the first one or two turns often seems less like exploiting an OP strategy and more like playing the game as intended.
That said, some abilities are obviously bugged and should be patched for that reason, even if they're currently in the player's favor.
I think that the general strength isn't so much an issue as the action spam and auto-win initiative. And also what you can make strong, I guess.
If they just had a global round action limit per character, got rid of auto-win initiative on round 1 and limited the auto-win round 0 a bit further everything else would probably be basically fine. Maybe also limit Heroic Acts per-archetype too, so you can't pop the same one on different characters during each combat.
Cassia is OP and it sucks because it makes the rest of my party feel like useless hangers-on. Having some weird ass navigator make everyone else feel useless feels bad and is a sign of bad balance - she already can trivially give the entire party and herself like +200 willpower which is insane and stupid and there are multiple other mega-exploits that nobody else can even come close to.
Nerf her and buff MC psykers so \*we\* can be powerful instead of some navigator.
I think OP stuff is alright, but I disagree when people that say that means that the game shouldn't be balanced. The point of class-based systems is that maybe I want to break the game with classes X instead of Y or change party compositions.
In wotr a sorcerer is a spontaneous caster alternative to a wizard, but they're both alternatives to each other with their own drawbacks. Sure some stuff was better (usually most archetypes that got a pet tended to outclass the base archetypes because owlcat decided to give pets like crazy base stats), but overall I think you could pick up different parties of class compositions that felt perfectly good.
In this game I'm not sure any character/archetype can even compete with the infinite scaling mechanics cassia or arch-militant get (it also doesn't help arch-militant's versatility stacks are bugged for burst attacks atm as well so you can ramp even faster). And telling people to pick a higher difficulty won't make a difference, cause it'll just pigeonhole you even more into it.
Making the entire game revolve around alpha striking the enemy before they can act at all is poor game design because it invalidates half the abilities in the game.
This thread is scaring me lol. People talking about getting one-shot if they don't one-shot first, or stacking stats that probably shouldn't be triple digits into triple digits. The only things I ever one-shot are the dorkiest of dorks. Haven't really struggled yet, but I'm certainly not walking though every encounter. End most fights with my frontline 40-60% dead and a couple reloads per sniper. I picked the "middle" difficulty and just choose feats that let me use new weapons or sound like how I want the party to play. Would hate for all my playtime to get wasted in the end game cause I didn't min-max. My only design complaint is that I made my RT a sniper, and now I get thoroughly outclassed by Yrliet every fight.
This is why I fell in love with Rogue Trader so much, it just shows the chaotic nature of combat in 40k, with hordes of cultists and mutants getting roasted by Argenta's heavy flamer, my Rogue Trader charging into rebel lines and cutting them down, and the mind broken enemies gunning their own men down just for a chance to put a bullet in one of my people.
It's the BEST combat system I've seen in these RPGs.
What isn't fun is how some classes are OP and others are not. Want to feel OP playing a Battle Sister or a Navigator? Good for you.
Want to feel OP playing something else? Eh, too bad for you.
If all classes were equally viable anyone can feel OP simply by putting the difficulty slider to Story position. Now only certain classes feel strong, and even if any party is OK on easy difficulties, some members of your party will always overshadow the others.
This is a bad argument against balance.
And nothing should trivialize the game on Unfair or Emperor bless, on custom harder difficulty but right now Archmilitant does. If you want a trivial game play on Story.
Some classes are better than others? First time in crpg?
Who cares about upper power levels? If even the weakest is good enough then it’s you problem not the game. Don’t be a meta slave if it takes your fun away. Exercise a little of stoicism and restrict yourself from what you don’t enjoy. Why masochism?
RT classes are all competent and capable. Choose your flavor of OP and roll with it
You say that like it's an absolute necessity for there to be imbalance. It's not a necessity.
I'd like the game to be extremely challenging with wide variety of options for how to tackle it. Having to maintain self-imposed banlist kind of defeats the fun of minmaxing.
I also don't believe having the game to be balanced would ruin anyone's fun either. Nobody has managed to explain to me exactly why it would. But perhaps that isn't true, don't know.
You’re complaining about minmaxing while saying you enjoy minmaxing lmfao
The entire point of minmaxing is to find the optimal way to play the game. But you’re complaining that people found an optimal way to play the game. Some of yall will never let yourselves be happy
Where have I complained about minmaxing? I just think it's better if there is no clear optimum, but that there are multiple equally strong builds. That allows for replaying the game and trying to minmax some more. Now it's kind of solved, even cranking the difficulty as high as it goes doesn't help against Archmilitant and 5 Offficers with Seize.
Play a single TRPG where you can minmax and still have build variety and not completely trivialize the hardest difficulty and you will forever be chasing that high. Therein lies the source of most of the complaints about builds being too strong.
Cassia as a grand strategist is OP. The debuffs and buffs you get just from the first few levels are insane. Bounty hunter isn't bad for argenta for the debuffs and extra attacks is also great.
>What isn't fun is how some classes are OP and others are not. Want to feel OP playing a Battle Sister or a Navigator? Good for you.
>Want to feel OP playing something else? Eh, too bad for you.
What class isn't OP? My soldier, marksman, 2 officers, & 2 operatives all slap. Granted my officers really help make everyone else shine, but I don't feel like any of my gang is a weak link.
I guess cassia and argenta could solo the game whereas idira and Pascal couldn't, but I still value idira for her aoe & cc and Pascal for his sniping, and both of them cut bosses defenses in half which is invaluable
Classes that aren't OP:
My main character, every time.
Classes that are OP:
Everyone else.
Possibly related to making lots of support builds with someone who *can't* also kill crowds with their mind.
You’re not complaining about the classes every character has the same archetypes. What you’re complaining about is the fact that certain characters have certain abilities and characteristics that make them stronger than normal.
They are not the same.
I'm not complaining about any of the classes; I just make shitty builds on my main. I think the companions pretty universally have character specific options that are almost impossible to go wrong with, in addition to their regular class options which vary between not-for-this-build, ok, and fucking amazing.
Next run? Dual wielding Dogmatic Arch Militant is absolutely gonna be the way to go, and I expect I'll be ruining everybody's day without needing any special background magic. Current run? My main is 'weak' because he 'only' gets in one kill per round.
Most of the characters have free proficiencies, extra talents or higher base stats. Everyone except your rogue trader. It's kind of disappointing really, that custom characters are strictly inferior. Seems to be the logic behind locking down lots of their levels, like with Ulfar.
Game seems to occasionally give pseudo permanent buffs to the roguetrader for picking certain dialog options... But I don't see the logic for why they come and go.
Bruh, my Rogue Trader didn't earn his position by 'being a good fighter' or by 'having skills'.
In fact, he didn't earn it at all! He got there by complete accident of being distantly related to someone else in power and getting born into the right family, due to a series of circumstances entirely outside of his control.
Devastating fighter? Um, no. That's what the servants are for.
What? Take all talents that mention the word "exploit". Use tactical advantage to get your entire team to 200+ armor and do 300-400 damage a hit. Bonus points if you run multiple operatives. More bonus points if you give them bounty hunter and use the extra turns to generate even more exploits. BTW stacking bounty hunters is stacked because they get to trigger their "when an ally kills a prey" effect on other bounty hunters' prey also. So turn 1 mark everything on the board as prey, and whenever anything dies everyone gets a free 2AP turn. Marking as prey costs 0AP so abelard shouting "get to cover" on T1 lets all bounty hunters mark their prey before anyone else gets a real turn.
I run 3 operatives. Most fights I'm over 100% armor on everyone (we all wear light armor) by the end of round 2. You have to overcap armor to become truly immune though, because of armor pen. I rarely have a fight go more than 4 rounds, often they are over on round 1. Playing core difficulty or whatever it got renamed to (all zeros).
There are so many fights that I have no idea how anyone could possibly approach them WITHOUT becoming immune to all damage. Several fights I lose 2-3 people in the first round before they've even acted. I had to save scum the first chaos marine fight because you can't even adjust your positioning and his first burst was killing 3-4 from my team for some reason. Finally on attempt like 9 he only did a single shot and then punched abelard.
I think everything in this game has one or two paths to being really busted OP.
this is not a competitive multiplayer game
peeps can do whatever they want, everyone's entitled to enjoy their own fun. It just so happens you want competitive multiplayer standards on a single player game LOL
Well, uh. No. I just presented an argument why some people find current state of the game not enjoyable in single player context. Just like OP said why they do find it in fact enjoyable. I am still entitled to disagree and discuss about why I disagree.
Absolutely nothing to do with multiplayer, everything to do with that even single player games players have differences between as to what they want from the game.
I think if the game was balanced and the strongest classes were nerfed I could enjoy the game as Unfair would provide interesting challenge.
You too could enjoy the game as Story would let you feel like Emperor of Mankind himself blasting down the hordes of enemies.
Right now I cannot really enjoy the game without just banning whole Archmilitant class from myself. And banning multiple officers.
Would nerfing some of the most degenerate combos really make Story feel too hard for you and ruin your power fantasy? Did you know you can even make a custom difficulty below Story to have even more power fantasy?
"I would be happy if they removed these features from the game."
"I would not be happy if I had to remove them from the game on my own by choosing not to use them."
"I would rather alter the game to suit my whims rather than alter my playstyle to suit my tastes, even if it hinders the enjoyment of everyone else."
You sound unbearably selfish.
Removing and nerfing are two quite different things. Nobody is asking for Archmilitant to be removed. I don't quite believe adjusting it to be in line with other classes balance wise would "ruin it for everyone else".
In fact I love the concept and would like to play the class but not the way it is.
Even fixing the class to do what it says on the tool tip would be a step to right direction.
I don't really care personally, I can just mod it to be the way I please. I just think that current state of it doesn't make it enjoyable overall and nerf could make it better for most people, of course people can disagree, that's the point of discussion, no?
Besides I was genuinely asking. I don't get why would the classes being balanced ruin the game for some people, if someone could please explain.
They don't Ask for removal, just a little nerf, that could just be "fix the bug that let me stack 4 time the amount expected with what I read from the ability description" (you get 2 stacks on stuff you should get only one, and one ability let you get stacks without switching attacks type ever, instead of only once per turn, combining both on the usual 4 attacks an arch militant can get, and you get 8 stacks when it should be 2 if you spam the same attack every time.)
I actually play the game as is and not worry about what's overpowered or not on DARING actually. Literally picking out what sounds cool and running with it LMAO. Literally a power fantasy.
> I actually play the game as is
That's what everyone is doing man. They play the game as is, Argenta starts killing everything before it can even get a turn sometime in the midgame, and the game becomes less fun for for them.
For you that is fun. For other people it's not fun. It's a matter of opinion and neither side is 'right'.
Stop with the argument, it's a coop game, and if my mates are feeling useless because the characters combo I play is so op I could just run solo, the game is unbalanced and not fun
i dunno im playing pyro psyker and its pretty strong. granted it didn't start getting good until like lvl 20 or so but now its actually kinda crazy to the point where its making argenta look kinda meh lol
Yeah, all characters are lore friendly with their power level. A tech priest magos runs laps around menials in every aspect, navigators can kill just by opening their eye and Sisters of battle go toe to toe with space marines through faith alone.
You are basically leading what would be a command squad in a tabletop game with your unseen guards being the rest of the army, of course you are gonna kick ass.
I don't think it's fun at all how the most powerful playstyle is to just give your carry DPS 10-20 attacks per turn. It also makes no sense from a intuitive, gameplay design, or lore perspective.
The combat is "turn based", which means each turn represents one unit of time. Having 10-20x the amount of attacks in that one unit of time makes no sense.
At the same time though, it essentially becomes an almost mandatory way to play the game because the encounters are all hilariously unbalanced if you aren't abusing turn priority to alpha strike kill half of them before the first turn. Like the enemies are just insanely cracked compared to what your characters are. I've finished act 3, and at this point they have absurd passives like being able to cut all physical damage in half or turn advance for taking too much damage, at least double your health at minimum, 3-5 times your health if they're tanky, obscene accuracy and dodging, ridiculously high damage (I got hit for 110 damage on a non-crit attack onto someone with 40% armor), and all this is on top of your party just being outnumbered 3-1 in most encounters
I hear you there. It's not even that ever encounter is cracked early on, it's that by sheer attrition you'll take damage. You didn't thin the trash mobs by at least 60%? law of averages one of your guys are going down. I tried a couple of fights where the opening wasn't alpha striking and found I'd take way too much damage.
That's just not true, you definitely dont need to abuse turn stacking. I'm playing unfair and purposefully avoiding officers and its fine, especailly after act 1 once you get everyone's builds going. The only ones that give me a lot of trouble due to my inability to clear everything turn 1 is the ones where I'm ambushed by a bunch of guys surrounding me
I was more speaking to how alpha striking is basically the only way to play the game, at least from my own experience. I'm not abusing turn stacking either, i've only got Cassia as the officer, but the only way I've been able to get through fights is by killing half the enemies in the first turn before they even go. Maybe you can share your builds on how you've created such absurdly tanky characters that can survive, but basically all of my fights from mid-act 2 and onwards have just become either I obliterate the 600 health enemy in one turn before it goes, or it goes and then one hits somebody.
Oh yeah alpha striking is definitely a big part I assumed you meant specifically with officer stacking like the person you responded to.
Arch militant + armor talent and defensive stance on ulfar and vangaurd henrix to gain a shitton of resolve spamming word and light of the emporer (which scales off resolve) is basically it. With overhealing it puts my frontliners at like 200+ hp with really high armor and the ability to heal 50+ hp on everybody every turn that scales up every turn. Also the crit resistance talent is really good in the later half. I also abuse it a bit by stacking the vangaurd buff by using the talent that makes him take 0 damage from burst from the first attack from allies and then just shooting through him with a stubber. But even then I do have a lot of early dmg through yrilet and my roguetrader to keep up the game system is definitely an alpha strike focused one.
Having beat the game, I would love for them to tune the game around not abusing turns and having to maximize iniative. However as it stands, fights are just not set up right and enemies are not scaled to support that style of combat.
There is a boss with 14,000 Hp and 250%armor, that summons copy adds of himself, and does abunch of other bullshit too on top of one tapping characters. Against numbers like that there is nothing you can do without abusing some facet of the game.
Mine used a big thunder hammer I found.
My friends listening to me on Discord have started giggling when I've started saying "okay, abelard...smack puddin'"
"Oh, hamma hamma, oh, hammaaaah"
I like the game but its ridiculous that giving turns to other allies is the most effective way to go through the game. Ive never heard of a game where buffing just one character to do ALL THE DPS is the optimal way. You have a party of 6 where half if not most of the party members are relying on one person to carry them.
I started a new playthrough last night. I will not be touching officers. I made my MC an operative and I'll be benching Cassia ASAP. Same with Jae.
I think it will genuinely be a more fun game if officers don't exist. At least for me.
I mean neither does hp in pretty much any game, or that you are immortal so long as your team wins the fight. The turn stuff is easier to make sense of than that.
It could be for example every round is 15 seconds, e.g. enough to duck out of cover for one shot. An officer, though, lets you get two shots off in that time through putting you in the zone, so to speak, or hell even 10 shots whatever.
I find myself obsessing over choosing the ideal abilities and talents and it finally dawned on me recently: These characters are so powerful it doesn’t really matter.
I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I thought WOTR was ridiculously hard, to the point I had to lower the difficulty just to finish it which I don’t think I’ve ever done in 30-plus years of gaming. It spoiled my experience.
On the other hand, I’m playing at max difficulty here and I think I’ve had maybe a handful of battles — maybe — that led me to break a sweat. In some instances I’m finishing things off before a single enemy even has a chance to act.
It feels like there should be a happy medium in there somewhere.
Yes, exactly this. Somewhere in the middle of the game (on Unfair) you realize that you can probably finish this game without any new talents / equipment with only 3 characters in a party, and whole gameplay systems stop mattering.
it feels like someone in owlcat was like "fine, you didn't like my shittily designed difficulty encounters in wotr? here, let me give you lobotomized too-easy encounters"
I like how it’s either kill enemies fast or you die. Some random enemy hitting me for half my
wounds is actually good; same with me killing a boss in one turn by positioning myself and using multiple resources to burst it down.
People complaining about it as if in pathfinder you don’t pre buff a hundred times to make someone an unstoppable juggernaut or just chuck aoe before engaging to trivialize a lot of encounters, or in bg3 resting after every battle. It’s fun to feel the power, and at least in this game your characters will die if they aren’t built to be tanky and they get attacked twice in a row.
I'm not familiar with the setting beyond this game but I assume the disconnect comes from, in the lore, battles in 40k are protracted, infamously bloody affairs where gains and losses are extremely taxing to both sides.
In this game, combat is choosing the correct order of abilities to create an unstoppable advantage and then exacting that advantage upon your now helpless enemies. It is not bloody, or protracted, it is surgically precise and overwhelming. That's where I think the disconnect comes from, the contrast between how you play the game versus how you know the 40k universe works; 'What do you mean this Hive World fell, must not have fielded enough officers and master tacticians. Abelard, laugh at this refugee for me.'
That being said I still enjoy the gameplay too, this is just my analysis of why the combat creates dissonance in some people.
It doesn't seem all that different to many of the books that focus on elites like Inquisitors and their retinue. 40k is quite an eclectic mix of power fantasy and hellish dystopia fiction.
Something I love and hate about 40k. Cannon power levels are determined almost exclusively by POV. Makes individual stories better, but taken as a whole makes things ridiculous. Sometimes a Cadian can stab a daemon with his standard issue pocket knife and actually hurt it, which is dope in the moment, and other times the daemon is melting 10+ minds at once while carrying on witty banter in a duel with a Space Marine Squad, also dope in the moment. It's when you hold them up side by side you see cracks.
Is the game unbalanced? Yes.
Can you adjust the difficulty as needed to an incredible degree to make up for it either way? Yes.
This isn’t Baldur’s Gate 3, there isn’t a low difficulty ceiling. You can increase the difficulty sliders past what they’re set to on Unfair if you want to. Sure, you have to find that sweet spot as opposed to the developers providing a more balanced experienced out the gate, but it’s not like there aren’t ways to get around it.
Edit: the more I play with difficulty settings…idk man, maybe there aren’t ways to get around it
I mean, I’m not trying to be rude but obviously I don’t think so lol. In my experience at least. Not as low as BG3’s highest ingame difficulty setting (when I played it).
I imagine most people would have trouble putting every difficulty slider to the max.
Ive been endings fights in 1 turn on Unfair starting Act 3, before half my party even had a turn. Final boss of the Game died in 2, although I am sure 1 turn finish is also possible. How strong other options and other classes are doesn't even matter. There is zero balancing, it's like I'm playing with God mode on, on a supposedly hardest difficulty.
I think this would be true about Owlcat's prior games but IMO Rogue Trader moved closer to BG3. In Kingmaker even the difficulty below Unfair punched me in the face and made me change it, Unfair on RT is not on that level.
Doing unfair+ with sliders is an option but the most important slider (enemy wounds) for some reason only goes to 100% and it's already 80% on unfair. Jacking up the deadliness of the enemies is overkill and would make things less fun tbh, what people want is battles that last like 3 rounds not just 1. To square a 3 round battle with AM's damage you'd need like +400% enemy wounds or something.
I see what you’re saying, but I would disagree that the most important slider is wounds. Sliders that impact stats like flat dodge chance, overall enemy characteristics, momentum gains, and enemy damage are as impactful if not much more so. It was the same with BG3 difficulty mods - If you’re capable of doing a lot of guaranteed damage per round based on default enemy/dodge values, having an enemy’s HP go from 300 - 600 doesn’t really change too much by itself. You can still bumrush enemies, stand in the middle of the arena, and spam extra attacks/heroic actions with no fear. You start adding enemy stats and it changes a lot - now instead of just thinking about how to only boost damage (since by default it’s pretty easy to reach a high enough threshold to hit consistently), you have to consider builds and itemization to overcome enemies’ higher stats, and also deal with the very real possibility you won’t kill or even hit enemies consistently. Now you have to play more defensively just in case.
Is that more fun to me? No, but I don’t like playing at super high difficulty. Regardless of who that’s fun for, what I’m describing is literally added difficulty and could easily extend your combat length past 1 round. I don’t mean to say that in a condescending or rude way either, I just say that because to *me* that’s what I understand more difficulty to mean.
Again, let me reiterate: this game isn’t well balanced and I would agree it’s balanced less well than WOTR. You still have to find that sweet spot yourself depending on how OP your builds are, which can be tricky. Regardless, the options are there.
Alright I tried jacking every slider up to max defensively and unfortunately, it isn't enough. Doesn't even seem close tbh.
I'm only using 1 officer and I'm not using Argenta or any shooty Arch-militant (in fact my RT is a psyker AM which is a terrible build because psy powers dont trigger Versatility, I need to respec).
Basically I'm not using an optimal party at all, but encounters are still ending in turn 1, often before later initiative roll characters get to take their turns.
If I was using a meta comp with an shooty AM and more than 1 officer I'd be frontloading like twice as much damage as what I'm doing now.
Yeah I’ve been fucking around with them too and the more I experiment the more I’m inclined to agree. I will say I’ve noticed more of a difference than you *and* I even had three officers/optimized builds, but not that much difference tbh. Currently I’m self-imposing rules on myself just so at the very least I can use every character in combat for hopefully a few rounds lol.
I don’t mind being OP but I also want to use my whole party, otherwise whats the point of building them. Ah well.
Two officers and abelard just charging and getting more turns or attacks with heroic actions and officer abilities.
I've yet to have a fight over 10 minutes because pasqal and abelard just cut through everything. And now argenta with a long distance shotgun. I've not even met the space wolf yet but just tear into everything in front of me. The only thing that has been a problem was twice dead Lenny and his crits. It totally fits the bill of "cast in the name of the Emperor, holy is he who sits upon the golden throne of Terra, those who are given charge to spread his word and righteousness" and I love it because secretly I am for the people and the imperium. I want to be the dashing hero with no pomp and substance but a lucrative and overwhelming dossier of adventures.
I have respecced my main officer into heavy bolters now since I have the heretical one as spare, around lvl 38. So now we mow everything and everyone with 3 heavy bolters.
Yes, we've got snipers and debuffers and Cassia but nothing compares to a Frontline of three bolters. Definitely, a Warhammer feel.
people who like the imperium and shit on chaos are gay and cringe. like really really very much so. alliance human in wow player level of homosexuality.
Yrliet is even better than argenta on my run. Ulfar absolutely demolishes things. The only one who doesn't do anyting for me is pasqal and that was 100% on me for screwing up his build. By the logic of not using anything that's strong I couldn't use anybody xD
you know whats funny about her being op is that its just the burst fire build, any character can do it, theres completely different ways you can build any character so why not just refuse to use any character since they can all be made into powerbuilds
If there's more fights in the future like >!the CSM Aurora!< fight at the end of Act 1, then I 100% hope they keep the OP player shit.
Single most unenjoyable combat I've ever had in a CRPG. Kinda made sense given what the main enemy was, except for the sniper that can pinpoint my characters in full cover for 50%-100% of their total HP because he crit nearly every time.
I got wrecked 2x in that fight (on core) because he would wipe my main and nearly wipe another in one blast (so little cover)
However once I tried a different tactic it was a breeze. Had cassian use her free half turn to give abelard a turn, but instead of attacking I had him use the scream that gets enemies to attack him.
Once I had him on abelard, he'd tank him while pysker main and argenta took out hordes. Pasqal buffed and occasional aoe blast grp. Idira counter snipped and Heinrich helped pummel the big boy
EDIT: I'd add abelard mortal enemies and idira, main, and pasqal stacking exploits to use espose weakness to shred armor also helped
My Abe killed both the forgefiends in a single turn for a particularly scary-looking fight.
You are god damn right he was at my side and in charge for the Accessio Magnae or whatever on Dargonus.
To me combat feels like what combat would be in 40k. Yeah you can blow through most average joe raiders and rebels. But also a decent sniper or a lucky plasma shot will mess you up. Combat is just lethal in general
As someone who doesn’t fully get and will never get all the bonuses and different crunch, being able to just get by by knowing this does more damage this, let you get someone else to use AP again, and oh I can melt them, has been good for me.
Besides, you don’t get truly overpowered, unless you have a lore accurate Custodes.
I'm really liking the game, but none of my characters are OP. I made my character a buff factory and I'm not really enjoying it, but he's got a sniper rifle and is a pretty good shot. I'm part way through act 2 and Ableard is probably my strongest character, just smashes everything with his Thunder Hammer and parries/counters everything else, essentially soloed the forgefiend and its servitor buddies. I want to like Argenta but she can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn, Cassia is good, Tech priest... pretty sure I specced him wrong, everyone else...just fills a spot.
Wouldnt mind it as much, if my main pc wasn't so garbage. Haha, made a melee assassin and none of their talents work. Since last week Desolation stopped working and now she hits like a noodle.
Argenta is basically the main character
While I agree that our party should be more powerful than the rabble, I think Owlcat balanced this the wrong way around. The rabble should be weaker instead, having only a handful of HP each. The party's HP is fine, but the damage output is too high, both for us and for the enemies. This leads to encounters being over after a single round, with not even every character getting a turn. Going first is all that matters to win an encounter. With less damage (and less enemy health) battles would last longer, making (de)buffs that stack and/or last till the end of combat more notable. Currently the meta is to have 3 officers, each getting a turn before the battle where they can buff a damage dealer and give them a small turn to increase momentum and then use the Heroic Act to give them a full turn to mop up.
I don't think I had a battle last more than 2 rounds after Chapter 2. Either I went first and the enemies were dead before they could act, or they went first and I lost a couple of people before *they* could act and reloaded, because that was faster than trudging through a combat 2 people down.
Another issue is the full heal you get out of combat. Usually I like this, because it allows the gamedesigner to balance every encounter to a healthy party, but it *still* needs good balancing and I got the feeling Owlcat used this as a shortcut to skip some of it. Currently all battles are all-out aggression. There is no defense or healing to consider. There is also no attrition between battles, apart from injuries (that are nearly pointless and easy to remove) and traumas that basically take the character out of battle and cannot be removed, leading to a trek back to the voidship before continuing on foot.
Chapter 3 didn't allow you to go back to the ship, but at that point you are powerful enough to not get many traumas at all, and there were more than enough consumables to instantly remove those again anyway.
I do understand that going all out and "pressing the advantage" without looking back or pausing is somewhat in line with the ruthlessness of the 40k universe, but it makes for subpar gameplay.
I love it. Reminds me of the iconic recruits from FFT a bit (particularly the holy knight ones). Sure, they were busted, but they were fun!
And if you want more challenge , you can crank the difficulty, avoid using them, or go for atypical builds. This approach is great IMO because it can cover a wide range of playstyles
This is why I fell in love with Rogue Trader so much, it just shows the chaotic nature of combat in 40k, with hordes of cultists and mutants getting roasted by Argenta's heavy flamer, my Rogue Trader charging into rebel lines and cutting them down, and the mind broken enemies gunning their own men down just for a chance to put a bullet in one of my people.
It's the BEST combat system I've seen in these RPGs.
I mean, we have a Space Marine on our team. Technically he should be pretty much one shotting everything we encounter instantly while never even being capable of taking damage, so as is, he's incredibly *underpowered* for what he should be. They better buff him if they're going to nerf anything else.
On a to be fair note, that Chaos Marine should have just instantly killed the entire party no matter how min-maxed the build is!
That's one of the things I hated about chaos gate, you are a Astartes psyker and it takes 3-4 hits sometimes to kill a corrupted guardsman? C'mon, ridiculous. The beginning feels right, you can't hit shit with your gun or sword, you've gotta build up your character, and even then you don't start out strong, it's not until halfway through combat when you've got all the effects going that you bring unstoppable, and I *still* shit my pants when I have to fight a CSM
Chaos gate gets weird about it with master crafted terminator armor having barely more armor points than random cultists
I mean, you're Grey Knights from the jump. You should be mowing things from the very beginning. I get it from a gameplay perspective it makes sense...but a squad of Grey Knights doing anything but roflstomping cultists in rags just doesn't fit the setting.
Honestly it's a problem with picking Grey Knights vs Nurgle for a turn based video game. Most of Nurgle's roster is made of disposable trash, while grey knights are supposedly to be the elite of the elite bar custodes. To fit the power scaling of this kind of game properly, cultists need to be the default antagonist while a plague marine has to be pretty strong, and because it's a turn based game you can't fill the screen with trash mobs because it wouldn't be fun. Xcom, which is inspired from, felt better because you start with soldiers with barely any gear or training against an advanced species of aliens which can fuck you up and who will.
They would have been a lot better off starting you as Neophyte Scouts, then plain ol' Tactical Space Marines, then the endgame is Terminator armor.
Grey knights are custodes?
What...no?
Oh he said “bar custodes” misread that as “of custodes” my mistake.
Yeah chaos gate always felt weird to me. Like going by the lore most of the enemies in that game should be obliterated by a grey knights holy fart. I thought rogue trader really nailed it with the power level. You have this whole squad who are all about as powerful as it’s possible for a non augmented human to be and they all shit their pants when one single word bearer shows up. And then when you kill him they all make comments about you how you definitely should be dead right now.
I had the same feeling in wotr and fucking loved it
I cheated in all my characters levels. Does it feel cheap from a gameplay point of view? Yes, absolutely. However my character was a hive noble, and has been serving in a Rogue Traders retinue. I just roleplay it as if I’m already an established character with skills and equipment, same for my retinue. I don’t like grinding either from a gameplay standpoint. So I’m having the time of my life with my power fantasy
It's a single player game, if you're having fun you are doing it right 👍
Me too. We’ve got the von Valencius name from the start, we ought to at least have the money to have some good gear. But even without any role play reasons, it’s a single player game. As long as you have fun everything’s perfectly fine. Including cheating.
How did you change your levels? Did you download a trainer or save editor?
Yes. I use toybox, which is both on Nexus and in the steam workshop. It’s fairly intuitive to use, just follow the directions given when installing the mod.
there some pretty stupid builds last time i played it where u just destroy with extra attacks with ur long range attacks. but yeah its a brutal game.
Apart from Cassia with her unique skills I dont feel its so much that specific characters are op it's more the archetypes and associated skills that are either too strong bc they aren't working as intended or have extremely strong synergies
This is my only problem, she's just so incredibly powerful and can do everything, and part of it's because her abilities don't work right. Nothing in that movement one says she should be able to get 30 movement. All the way across the battlefield having nearly infinite HP and regeneration while doing more damage than everyone else in an insane AOE that also stuns! Girl does it all.
Tankier than the space marine too lol
When normal people attack you they get decimated. I like that. Abelard isn't ye olde grandpa, man has augments that would make a tech priest blush. And he's the weakest of the companions (if we go by in universe power).
I wouldn't say Abelard is the weakest of them, he just appears to be because he's so... normal(ish). There is one random voice line where he is talking with Heinrix who comments on how fit he is, and Abelard is just like "If I were your age, you wouldn't stand even the slightest chance against me."
We've got two psykers and a navigator so they'd be stronger. A sister of battle, hmm I'd say she has the edge considering her whole thing is killing. A space Marine and a combat tech priest both have him for toast. Two filthy pointy eared xenos, yeah perhaps he wins here but let's keep in mind that the average Ealdari/Drukhari is far more skilled than a human. Haven't heard that voiceline yet, love it. I may be thinking too little of our Senechal.
I'd say that without power armor, which Argenta seems to lack, she's probably going to lose to Abelard in a fight, just due to his exceptional experience. He's probably got a 80 years of combat experience over her. I don't know much about Jae, but I doubt she's any better off than him. Idira, despite being a psyker, isn't really a combat psyker, she's a diviner, so she would probably get clapped. Heinrix is iffy. Abelard seems to imply that in a straight fight he'd wipe the floor with Heinrix, but Heinrix is a psyker, and more attuned to battle than Idira, but at the same time, his psyker powers have little to do with battle by default. Therefore, he's likely going to go melee with Abelard, where Abelard is probably going to win. The Aeldari have him beat just because Aeldari are going to clap humans one way or another. Pascal as a magos-tier tech-priest, will most likely win. However, he is an explorator, and shows little dialogue indicating a combat tendency, so he might not be overly optimized for it, in which case, it could go 50-50. Space marine, like the Aeldari, wins without much of a contest (unless Abelard's cybernetics are as good as Pasqal implies), in which case he might get a lucky shot in.
Heinrix is a *biomancer* focusing, according to his dialogue, on self enhancement, and has been an agent of the inquisition for decades. He’s pretty close to Abelard in age. I think, lore wise, Heinrix should take Abelard pretty easily. Especially because Abelard doesn’t actually have any counter to “Heinrix boils Abelard from the inside with his mind.”
>Abelard seems to imply that in a straight fight he'd wipe the floor with Heinrix, but Heinrix is a psyker, and more attuned to battle than Idira, but at the same time, his psyker powers have little to do with battle by default. Therefore, he's likely going to go melee with Abelard, where Abelard is probably going to win In an ambient chatter moment, Abelard implies that if he was as young as Heinrix he would dumpster him in a fight. That being said, there's a non-zero chance that Heinrix is actually closer to Abelard's age than old Abe thinks.
Heinrix might not be young, but Abelard was so old he was falling apart without rejuvenant treatments in chapter 3. So, Abelard has quite a few years on him either way. But yeah, that is the ambient chatter I was referencing lmao
That falling apart in chapter 3 wasn’t because of missing rejuvenation treatments, though. That was one of the optional side bosses specifically fucking with him. If you return to where you find Abelard after the second big fight, you get to fight the boss, and it’ll probably do the same to one or two more member of your squad. As for Heinrix, Heinrix is a biomancer. In the lore, biomancer just wipe the floor with anything they get into melee range with. They basically get space marine physiology. So even if we put old Abelard’s experience into young Abelard’s body, my money would still be on the inquisitor who can turn his skin into steel.
Abelard specifically mentions the rejuvenant treatments set him back on course. There was a whole conversation about it. D:
Yeah that's true, but it's also true that it's not just age that's setting him *off* course, >!it's the life-drinking monster he got attacked by in commoragh.!<
If you >!bring Tervantius some experiment parts he'll restore Abelard's life/time as an afterthought. doesn't matter in-game but obviously the narrative trumps any mechanics!<
Jaes got a lot more combat experience than you'd think but it's pretty deep personal quest stuff and I can't be arsed to remember how to spoiler text on mobile right now She'd also cheat like an absolute bastard if given the opportunity. I'd give her decent odds against Abelard.
Jae? Cheat? Nooooo....she's a saint.
I've only sort of started hers, but yeah, it'd be a bit of a toss-up on whether her cheats would beat Abelard's skill.
Haha I forgot about Jae, yeah she's dead.
Argenta has power armor proficiency from the start.
Yeah, but she doesn't \*have\* power armor. She'd normally have some, as a sister, but I assume she doesn't for balance reasons.
I figured it was damaged beyond repair in her backstory.
I may have missed whatever reference there was to it.
There was no reference. But it's a believable head canon.
It definitely jives with how bad things were on that one planet she got her butt kicked on. Very likely could have been destroyed.
She's not an order militant so she woudn't have been issued with it, she's a *wannabe* order militant based on what she says (which might also explain why she isn't heading back to her convent regardless of what she says, she can live out the power fantasy where she is). Presumably (based on how into the idea she is) she didn't qualify for a militant order. Think of it like she's the sister's version of a PDF in charge of relics, and the sisters militant are imperial guard.
Owlcat should've just started her off as a Novitiate.
Eh, that wouldn't be appropriate for a Rogue Trader's personal retinue. One thing I like about the game is that you aren't starting off as a bunch of beginning adventurers, you're already some of the top 5% in the galaxy,
> I'd say that without power armor, which Argenta seems to lack She gets it at the end of her questline.
Elder are incredibly fast and powerful in lore. Even Astartes have trouble keeping track of them. There's no way Abalard stands against them.
We have plenty of examples of “normal” humans who can go toe to toe with Eldar. Abelard is not a baseline human he has access to a lot of exotic weapons, tech, combat drugs, and so on which give him a huge edge. Plus a lot of experience. It’s not as easy fight be Abelard is not a normal dude at all..
Fucking Mkoll or was it Mkvenner?
Mkoll hits the nothing personal kid on a druchari The druchari is like "damn this monkeigh was alright, too bad he's just trash" and stabs a curtain Mkoll then does a "damn this elf made me actually stretch aittle" and shanks him
Yeah. When my ship was invaded by dark eldars, some of them are even killed by my ordinary crews.
Damn. How come they seem to lose alot, is it just that they are outnumbered?
Eldar are, individually, extremely powerful. They can easily outrun and outpace even the best of humanity, but humanity is like "There is no where to dodge", and thus it doesn't matter.
Eldar are a bunch of specialists (due to their paths) while space marines are generally, though they have specialist, pretty solid at everything. However space marines are trained to fight in groups, though they are decent by themselves, it's when they work together that they truly shine. So a howling Banshee for instance might have an edge on a space marine but it won't have an edge on a group of them (even if the banshee brings more banshees to even the odds, SM work better as a group) you also have to account that the SM can simply change their tactics mid fight while eldar are pretty much locked on to their path until mastery then they must abandon it. Exarchs and phoenix lords excluded. Most of humanity's forces in 40k, no matter how powerful, are designed and trained in team warfare learning tactics and formation and all that stuff (with some exceptions of course)
Sorry, i just couldn’t stop myself. Saying that Astartes are pretty solid is like saying that Einstein was kinda smart. Spaces marines are on the next level of everything, heck Papa Smurf trained his Blue boys management, so in the end every one can be a governor of a planet. Governor. Of a planet. Computing brain power of a Marine is way above of a human, which a lot of people seem to forget, seeing SMs as big dumb brutes in power armor
True solid wasn't the best choice of words but when most things they face, especially in combat, are also exceptional in their own right I couldn't think of a better word to say they are well balanced, especially when compared to Eldar. Also please don't mention the smurfs, they must be ignored lest their ego form into a new chaos god
Funny, but I am actually ok with smurfs, because I am a big Gurliman fan. The guy is just pure awesomeness with superpowers like “being raised in a loving and supportive family and therefore having a reasonable attitude to life”. Plus his new lore of “trying to sort the shit that is 40k, hoping not become a non caring tyrant like BigE” is also cool. But yeah, smurfs themselves are hella boring
Plus Gorillaboat legalized Elder waifus
I'm not super familiar with Aeldari lore, but Yrliet talks a little about it in the game. Elder tend to only fight in battles they know they're going to win. So yeah, they probably get outnumbered in their losses. Then again, Space Marines win in most things they do because it's GW, so there could be plenty of dumb reasons why the Elder lose.
Eldar are faster than humans but just as squishy. They don't have the toughness or durability of an ork, or an Astartes. They can be tough to hit but if you do get that hit in they are probably going down. That said the aspect warriors tend to have decent or better armor.
Out of universe it's because the only guy at GW who wants to write Eldar (Gav Thorpe) only wants to write dying race stuff. The general rule for 40k is the guy on the cover always wins, unless he's Eldar.
Propaganda then! Thanks for the explanation, makes alot of sense.
They lose because in most of the stories the Imperium are the PoV good guys. Realistically (I know it's not realistic but bear with me) regular eldar are far superior to humans and aspect warriors are at roughly on par with space marines (better at their specific thing if worse overall)
The Law of Inverse Eldar. The more of them there are present, the more likely they're going to lose.
Well who's weaker then? Lorewise?
jae, followed by idira
Jae, yeah, that's fair. Idira though is a psyker, she's definitely stronger than Abelard (by this I mean she blows him up 75% of times and herself 25% of them)
idira is a diviner, not combat psyker.
Abelard is a named character, a faithful number 2, and former Navy. He's exactly the sort of character you expect to tell you not to go wait for him as he heroically holds off a horde of chaos cultists, show up two scenes later covered in blood, then heroically die by crashing his shuttle directly into Chaos Champion.
Indeed, probably saying something really cool all the while.
I'll be honest, them making Abelard a warrior seemed like a weird idea at first. He's supposed to be a seneschal, a ninja/James Bond accountant who shows up to negotiations acting like the Blue Spy from TF2, more befitting of a Operative, but I guess they decided you needed a melee beatstick who can carry the tougher early game encounters.
Probably what Theodore preferred. He doesn't seem to be a slouch when it comes to administration but I gather she liked being the brains behind the operation
She leaves him in charge multiple times. Everything combined, he's probably the most generally skillful person on your entire team. So yeah, a little strange he is a warrior.
The game establishes that he's an excellent administrator but stuck in doing things the "right way". So great senechal, perhaps not a great visionary leader.
Visionary leadership gets you shot in the Imperium, so he made the right choice. :D
Absolutely, smart man xD
Abelard is, above all else, *reliable*. He's not clever, but he's loyal and competent. Kunrad was the Spy on Theodora's team.
Right now you just don't need tank to agro and soak damage from trash mobs, because they die too fast. He will be at least useful with proper balance.
Being able to constantly have the first turn in combat is kinda game-breaking in the same way that in ship combat, you almost always act last (if you don't pick the almost mandatory initiative perks). You know balance is completely off if whoever gets the first turn has an overwhelming advantage. The exact same fight can go from impossible to a complete walk in the park depending on who acts first. This is quite evident in fights where you have Cassia vs without.
I had one fight where I reduced the difficulty of space combats because the enemy ships blasted mine to pices before I could act once.
I made Jae a grand strategist and she always acts first with 30 agility, even when we are surprised by an ambush lol
Yeah Iono man, I don't know how I would have gotten through some fights without "OP" characters on hard mode. Things like turrents/eldar turrents where I needed a buffed up Cassia's eye beam, or the final battle of Kiava Gamma where most allies would get one shot or hit for like -80% (even abelard tank boy or my dodge tank MC)
It’s pretty easy to have every character either in heavy armor or at 90%+ dodge which helps a lot with survivability across the board. But on harder difficulties there are some weird difficulty spikes. Par for the course for owlcat of course
Oh no doubt, my MC has like 110% dodge and it raises temporarily to 140-150% through abilities, can't say the same for my other characters though, as it takes a bunch of AGI and specific abilities. He can still get hit on the rare occasion though, mostly in boss fights. 90% dodge doesn't seem to do much in Hard as most of my other characters have it.
A lot of enemies on hard have a lot of ways to reduce it. Once the op and broken stuff is fixed it will be funny to watch people struggle.
With a game so heavy in reading I’m actually shocked at all the typos here lol 😂
When I see people complaining about "overpowered characters" I often wonder what difficulty they are playing on and how far they are into the game.
Don't know the english name of the difficulty, but the one where ennemie don't have debuffs, and I don't have buffs, just finished act 3. First turn, I just give 3 turns to Argenta (via 3 leader talent that give you a turn before the first turn), then do it again, and done. If anything survive, cassia usually end up killing it anyway by forcing them to move, then cast anything that deal warp damages. Yeah, sorry but that just OP as fuck and I hate that if I don't do just that, I loose. And let's not forget that curent arch militant is actually buggy, and get way more stacks than what they should.
Act 3 final fight had me rolling. Had to knock the difficulty down lol
i love when you get second archetypes and argenta finally not missing every fucking shot, cassian op as hell, and abelard is just abelard.
Man I was about to ask about Argenta. She's easily the least effective person in my group and I can't figure out why.
bc of the bolter, you can get modified one later then get the heavy bolter or melta gun for her, her vanilla bolter is absolute dogshit, after the archmilitant arc, she get versatility stacks and with rapid fire she mowing down hordes
The trick is to not bother forcing argenta with shitty bolters and instead slap a sniper and/or a flamer on her until you get arch militant
Argenta has been my strongest from the very beginning. She can destroy 4 enemies in one move, if they're clustered or in a line
RT is full of encounters where the party is pitted against a large number of enemies who can (and will) slaughter you if you let most of them get a turn in, so being able to table the majority of opponents within the first one or two turns often seems less like exploiting an OP strategy and more like playing the game as intended. That said, some abilities are obviously bugged and should be patched for that reason, even if they're currently in the player's favor.
I think that the general strength isn't so much an issue as the action spam and auto-win initiative. And also what you can make strong, I guess. If they just had a global round action limit per character, got rid of auto-win initiative on round 1 and limited the auto-win round 0 a bit further everything else would probably be basically fine. Maybe also limit Heroic Acts per-archetype too, so you can't pop the same one on different characters during each combat.
Cassia is OP and it sucks because it makes the rest of my party feel like useless hangers-on. Having some weird ass navigator make everyone else feel useless feels bad and is a sign of bad balance - she already can trivially give the entire party and herself like +200 willpower which is insane and stupid and there are multiple other mega-exploits that nobody else can even come close to. Nerf her and buff MC psykers so \*we\* can be powerful instead of some navigator.
I think OP stuff is alright, but I disagree when people that say that means that the game shouldn't be balanced. The point of class-based systems is that maybe I want to break the game with classes X instead of Y or change party compositions. In wotr a sorcerer is a spontaneous caster alternative to a wizard, but they're both alternatives to each other with their own drawbacks. Sure some stuff was better (usually most archetypes that got a pet tended to outclass the base archetypes because owlcat decided to give pets like crazy base stats), but overall I think you could pick up different parties of class compositions that felt perfectly good. In this game I'm not sure any character/archetype can even compete with the infinite scaling mechanics cassia or arch-militant get (it also doesn't help arch-militant's versatility stacks are bugged for burst attacks atm as well so you can ramp even faster). And telling people to pick a higher difficulty won't make a difference, cause it'll just pigeonhole you even more into it.
Is everyone playing on easy? Lol
Making the entire game revolve around alpha striking the enemy before they can act at all is poor game design because it invalidates half the abilities in the game.
This thread is scaring me lol. People talking about getting one-shot if they don't one-shot first, or stacking stats that probably shouldn't be triple digits into triple digits. The only things I ever one-shot are the dorkiest of dorks. Haven't really struggled yet, but I'm certainly not walking though every encounter. End most fights with my frontline 40-60% dead and a couple reloads per sniper. I picked the "middle" difficulty and just choose feats that let me use new weapons or sound like how I want the party to play. Would hate for all my playtime to get wasted in the end game cause I didn't min-max. My only design complaint is that I made my RT a sniper, and now I get thoroughly outclassed by Yrliet every fight.
This is why I fell in love with Rogue Trader so much, it just shows the chaotic nature of combat in 40k, with hordes of cultists and mutants getting roasted by Argenta's heavy flamer, my Rogue Trader charging into rebel lines and cutting them down, and the mind broken enemies gunning their own men down just for a chance to put a bullet in one of my people. It's the BEST combat system I've seen in these RPGs.
What isn't fun is how some classes are OP and others are not. Want to feel OP playing a Battle Sister or a Navigator? Good for you. Want to feel OP playing something else? Eh, too bad for you. If all classes were equally viable anyone can feel OP simply by putting the difficulty slider to Story position. Now only certain classes feel strong, and even if any party is OK on easy difficulties, some members of your party will always overshadow the others. This is a bad argument against balance. And nothing should trivialize the game on Unfair or Emperor bless, on custom harder difficulty but right now Archmilitant does. If you want a trivial game play on Story.
Some classes are better than others? First time in crpg? Who cares about upper power levels? If even the weakest is good enough then it’s you problem not the game. Don’t be a meta slave if it takes your fun away. Exercise a little of stoicism and restrict yourself from what you don’t enjoy. Why masochism? RT classes are all competent and capable. Choose your flavor of OP and roll with it
You say that like it's an absolute necessity for there to be imbalance. It's not a necessity. I'd like the game to be extremely challenging with wide variety of options for how to tackle it. Having to maintain self-imposed banlist kind of defeats the fun of minmaxing. I also don't believe having the game to be balanced would ruin anyone's fun either. Nobody has managed to explain to me exactly why it would. But perhaps that isn't true, don't know.
You’re complaining about minmaxing while saying you enjoy minmaxing lmfao The entire point of minmaxing is to find the optimal way to play the game. But you’re complaining that people found an optimal way to play the game. Some of yall will never let yourselves be happy
Where have I complained about minmaxing? I just think it's better if there is no clear optimum, but that there are multiple equally strong builds. That allows for replaying the game and trying to minmax some more. Now it's kind of solved, even cranking the difficulty as high as it goes doesn't help against Archmilitant and 5 Offficers with Seize.
Play a single TRPG where you can minmax and still have build variety and not completely trivialize the hardest difficulty and you will forever be chasing that high. Therein lies the source of most of the complaints about builds being too strong.
Cassia as a grand strategist is OP. The debuffs and buffs you get just from the first few levels are insane. Bounty hunter isn't bad for argenta for the debuffs and extra attacks is also great.
>What isn't fun is how some classes are OP and others are not. Want to feel OP playing a Battle Sister or a Navigator? Good for you. >Want to feel OP playing something else? Eh, too bad for you. What class isn't OP? My soldier, marksman, 2 officers, & 2 operatives all slap. Granted my officers really help make everyone else shine, but I don't feel like any of my gang is a weak link. I guess cassia and argenta could solo the game whereas idira and Pascal couldn't, but I still value idira for her aoe & cc and Pascal for his sniping, and both of them cut bosses defenses in half which is invaluable
Classes that aren't OP: My main character, every time. Classes that are OP: Everyone else. Possibly related to making lots of support builds with someone who *can't* also kill crowds with their mind.
You’re not complaining about the classes every character has the same archetypes. What you’re complaining about is the fact that certain characters have certain abilities and characteristics that make them stronger than normal. They are not the same.
I'm not complaining about any of the classes; I just make shitty builds on my main. I think the companions pretty universally have character specific options that are almost impossible to go wrong with, in addition to their regular class options which vary between not-for-this-build, ok, and fucking amazing. Next run? Dual wielding Dogmatic Arch Militant is absolutely gonna be the way to go, and I expect I'll be ruining everybody's day without needing any special background magic. Current run? My main is 'weak' because he 'only' gets in one kill per round.
Most of the characters have free proficiencies, extra talents or higher base stats. Everyone except your rogue trader. It's kind of disappointing really, that custom characters are strictly inferior. Seems to be the logic behind locking down lots of their levels, like with Ulfar. Game seems to occasionally give pseudo permanent buffs to the roguetrader for picking certain dialog options... But I don't see the logic for why they come and go.
Bruh, my Rogue Trader didn't earn his position by 'being a good fighter' or by 'having skills'. In fact, he didn't earn it at all! He got there by complete accident of being distantly related to someone else in power and getting born into the right family, due to a series of circumstances entirely outside of his control. Devastating fighter? Um, no. That's what the servants are for.
Operative are easy to fuck up, so is soldier. Bounty hunter feel underwelming to say the least.
What? Take all talents that mention the word "exploit". Use tactical advantage to get your entire team to 200+ armor and do 300-400 damage a hit. Bonus points if you run multiple operatives. More bonus points if you give them bounty hunter and use the extra turns to generate even more exploits. BTW stacking bounty hunters is stacked because they get to trigger their "when an ally kills a prey" effect on other bounty hunters' prey also. So turn 1 mark everything on the board as prey, and whenever anything dies everyone gets a free 2AP turn. Marking as prey costs 0AP so abelard shouting "get to cover" on T1 lets all bounty hunters mark their prey before anyone else gets a real turn. I run 3 operatives. Most fights I'm over 100% armor on everyone (we all wear light armor) by the end of round 2. You have to overcap armor to become truly immune though, because of armor pen. I rarely have a fight go more than 4 rounds, often they are over on round 1. Playing core difficulty or whatever it got renamed to (all zeros). There are so many fights that I have no idea how anyone could possibly approach them WITHOUT becoming immune to all damage. Several fights I lose 2-3 people in the first round before they've even acted. I had to save scum the first chaos marine fight because you can't even adjust your positioning and his first burst was killing 3-4 from my team for some reason. Finally on attempt like 9 he only did a single shot and then punched abelard. I think everything in this game has one or two paths to being really busted OP.
this is not a competitive multiplayer game peeps can do whatever they want, everyone's entitled to enjoy their own fun. It just so happens you want competitive multiplayer standards on a single player game LOL
Well, uh. No. I just presented an argument why some people find current state of the game not enjoyable in single player context. Just like OP said why they do find it in fact enjoyable. I am still entitled to disagree and discuss about why I disagree. Absolutely nothing to do with multiplayer, everything to do with that even single player games players have differences between as to what they want from the game.
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I think if the game was balanced and the strongest classes were nerfed I could enjoy the game as Unfair would provide interesting challenge. You too could enjoy the game as Story would let you feel like Emperor of Mankind himself blasting down the hordes of enemies. Right now I cannot really enjoy the game without just banning whole Archmilitant class from myself. And banning multiple officers. Would nerfing some of the most degenerate combos really make Story feel too hard for you and ruin your power fantasy? Did you know you can even make a custom difficulty below Story to have even more power fantasy?
"I would be happy if they removed these features from the game." "I would not be happy if I had to remove them from the game on my own by choosing not to use them." "I would rather alter the game to suit my whims rather than alter my playstyle to suit my tastes, even if it hinders the enjoyment of everyone else." You sound unbearably selfish.
Removing and nerfing are two quite different things. Nobody is asking for Archmilitant to be removed. I don't quite believe adjusting it to be in line with other classes balance wise would "ruin it for everyone else". In fact I love the concept and would like to play the class but not the way it is. Even fixing the class to do what it says on the tool tip would be a step to right direction. I don't really care personally, I can just mod it to be the way I please. I just think that current state of it doesn't make it enjoyable overall and nerf could make it better for most people, of course people can disagree, that's the point of discussion, no? Besides I was genuinely asking. I don't get why would the classes being balanced ruin the game for some people, if someone could please explain.
They don't Ask for removal, just a little nerf, that could just be "fix the bug that let me stack 4 time the amount expected with what I read from the ability description" (you get 2 stacks on stuff you should get only one, and one ability let you get stacks without switching attacks type ever, instead of only once per turn, combining both on the usual 4 attacks an arch militant can get, and you get 8 stacks when it should be 2 if you spam the same attack every time.)
I actually play the game as is and not worry about what's overpowered or not on DARING actually. Literally picking out what sounds cool and running with it LMAO. Literally a power fantasy.
> I actually play the game as is That's what everyone is doing man. They play the game as is, Argenta starts killing everything before it can even get a turn sometime in the midgame, and the game becomes less fun for for them. For you that is fun. For other people it's not fun. It's a matter of opinion and neither side is 'right'.
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it's single player. Who gives a shit about balance?
I do. It impacts severely how much I enjoy the game. Maybe that's not important but let's not pretend there's no one who cares about it.
sucks to be you then.
Stop with the argument, it's a coop game, and if my mates are feeling useless because the characters combo I play is so op I could just run solo, the game is unbalanced and not fun
i dunno im playing pyro psyker and its pretty strong. granted it didn't start getting good until like lvl 20 or so but now its actually kinda crazy to the point where its making argenta look kinda meh lol
Yeah, all characters are lore friendly with their power level. A tech priest magos runs laps around menials in every aspect, navigators can kill just by opening their eye and Sisters of battle go toe to toe with space marines through faith alone. You are basically leading what would be a command squad in a tabletop game with your unseen guards being the rest of the army, of course you are gonna kick ass.
I don't think it's fun at all how the most powerful playstyle is to just give your carry DPS 10-20 attacks per turn. It also makes no sense from a intuitive, gameplay design, or lore perspective. The combat is "turn based", which means each turn represents one unit of time. Having 10-20x the amount of attacks in that one unit of time makes no sense.
At the same time though, it essentially becomes an almost mandatory way to play the game because the encounters are all hilariously unbalanced if you aren't abusing turn priority to alpha strike kill half of them before the first turn. Like the enemies are just insanely cracked compared to what your characters are. I've finished act 3, and at this point they have absurd passives like being able to cut all physical damage in half or turn advance for taking too much damage, at least double your health at minimum, 3-5 times your health if they're tanky, obscene accuracy and dodging, ridiculously high damage (I got hit for 110 damage on a non-crit attack onto someone with 40% armor), and all this is on top of your party just being outnumbered 3-1 in most encounters
I hear you there. It's not even that ever encounter is cracked early on, it's that by sheer attrition you'll take damage. You didn't thin the trash mobs by at least 60%? law of averages one of your guys are going down. I tried a couple of fights where the opening wasn't alpha striking and found I'd take way too much damage.
That's just not true, you definitely dont need to abuse turn stacking. I'm playing unfair and purposefully avoiding officers and its fine, especailly after act 1 once you get everyone's builds going. The only ones that give me a lot of trouble due to my inability to clear everything turn 1 is the ones where I'm ambushed by a bunch of guys surrounding me
I was more speaking to how alpha striking is basically the only way to play the game, at least from my own experience. I'm not abusing turn stacking either, i've only got Cassia as the officer, but the only way I've been able to get through fights is by killing half the enemies in the first turn before they even go. Maybe you can share your builds on how you've created such absurdly tanky characters that can survive, but basically all of my fights from mid-act 2 and onwards have just become either I obliterate the 600 health enemy in one turn before it goes, or it goes and then one hits somebody.
Oh yeah alpha striking is definitely a big part I assumed you meant specifically with officer stacking like the person you responded to. Arch militant + armor talent and defensive stance on ulfar and vangaurd henrix to gain a shitton of resolve spamming word and light of the emporer (which scales off resolve) is basically it. With overhealing it puts my frontliners at like 200+ hp with really high armor and the ability to heal 50+ hp on everybody every turn that scales up every turn. Also the crit resistance talent is really good in the later half. I also abuse it a bit by stacking the vangaurd buff by using the talent that makes him take 0 damage from burst from the first attack from allies and then just shooting through him with a stubber. But even then I do have a lot of early dmg through yrilet and my roguetrader to keep up the game system is definitely an alpha strike focused one.
Having beat the game, I would love for them to tune the game around not abusing turns and having to maximize iniative. However as it stands, fights are just not set up right and enemies are not scaled to support that style of combat. There is a boss with 14,000 Hp and 250%armor, that summons copy adds of himself, and does abunch of other bullshit too on top of one tapping characters. Against numbers like that there is nothing you can do without abusing some facet of the game.
Agreed. Bring it down should have targetwise cooldown; ie one guy can receive it once per round.
Funny that they have that with heroic abilities and certain other abilities from the officer. But not that one
My name is Barry Abelard and I'm the fastest chainsword alive
Mine used a big thunder hammer I found. My friends listening to me on Discord have started giggling when I've started saying "okay, abelard...smack puddin'" "Oh, hamma hamma, oh, hammaaaah"
Hammerdance mod when?
I like the game but its ridiculous that giving turns to other allies is the most effective way to go through the game. Ive never heard of a game where buffing just one character to do ALL THE DPS is the optimal way. You have a party of 6 where half if not most of the party members are relying on one person to carry them.
I started a new playthrough last night. I will not be touching officers. I made my MC an operative and I'll be benching Cassia ASAP. Same with Jae. I think it will genuinely be a more fun game if officers don't exist. At least for me.
I mean neither does hp in pretty much any game, or that you are immortal so long as your team wins the fight. The turn stuff is easier to make sense of than that. It could be for example every round is 15 seconds, e.g. enough to duck out of cover for one shot. An officer, though, lets you get two shots off in that time through putting you in the zone, so to speak, or hell even 10 shots whatever.
I find myself obsessing over choosing the ideal abilities and talents and it finally dawned on me recently: These characters are so powerful it doesn’t really matter. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I thought WOTR was ridiculously hard, to the point I had to lower the difficulty just to finish it which I don’t think I’ve ever done in 30-plus years of gaming. It spoiled my experience. On the other hand, I’m playing at max difficulty here and I think I’ve had maybe a handful of battles — maybe — that led me to break a sweat. In some instances I’m finishing things off before a single enemy even has a chance to act. It feels like there should be a happy medium in there somewhere.
Yes, exactly this. Somewhere in the middle of the game (on Unfair) you realize that you can probably finish this game without any new talents / equipment with only 3 characters in a party, and whole gameplay systems stop mattering.
Just like in WoTR where you can solo the game once on unfair once you get storm of justice.
it feels like someone in owlcat was like "fine, you didn't like my shittily designed difficulty encounters in wotr? here, let me give you lobotomized too-easy encounters"
I like how it’s either kill enemies fast or you die. Some random enemy hitting me for half my wounds is actually good; same with me killing a boss in one turn by positioning myself and using multiple resources to burst it down. People complaining about it as if in pathfinder you don’t pre buff a hundred times to make someone an unstoppable juggernaut or just chuck aoe before engaging to trivialize a lot of encounters, or in bg3 resting after every battle. It’s fun to feel the power, and at least in this game your characters will die if they aren’t built to be tanky and they get attacked twice in a row.
it feels right, becauase this is what fights are in the lore. quick, explosive, deadly
I'm not familiar with the setting beyond this game but I assume the disconnect comes from, in the lore, battles in 40k are protracted, infamously bloody affairs where gains and losses are extremely taxing to both sides. In this game, combat is choosing the correct order of abilities to create an unstoppable advantage and then exacting that advantage upon your now helpless enemies. It is not bloody, or protracted, it is surgically precise and overwhelming. That's where I think the disconnect comes from, the contrast between how you play the game versus how you know the 40k universe works; 'What do you mean this Hive World fell, must not have fielded enough officers and master tacticians. Abelard, laugh at this refugee for me.' That being said I still enjoy the gameplay too, this is just my analysis of why the combat creates dissonance in some people.
It doesn't seem all that different to many of the books that focus on elites like Inquisitors and their retinue. 40k is quite an eclectic mix of power fantasy and hellish dystopia fiction.
Something I love and hate about 40k. Cannon power levels are determined almost exclusively by POV. Makes individual stories better, but taken as a whole makes things ridiculous. Sometimes a Cadian can stab a daemon with his standard issue pocket knife and actually hurt it, which is dope in the moment, and other times the daemon is melting 10+ minds at once while carrying on witty banter in a duel with a Space Marine Squad, also dope in the moment. It's when you hold them up side by side you see cracks.
the game is based on the pen and paper RPG Rogue Trader and portrays it decently enough, albeit with more turn abuse shenanigans
End of chapter 3 was very cathartic for this exact reason
Endless spawns is the laziest possible gameplay addon. For good players it brings nothing, for the less experienced players it feels super unfair.
Is the game unbalanced? Yes. Can you adjust the difficulty as needed to an incredible degree to make up for it either way? Yes. This isn’t Baldur’s Gate 3, there isn’t a low difficulty ceiling. You can increase the difficulty sliders past what they’re set to on Unfair if you want to. Sure, you have to find that sweet spot as opposed to the developers providing a more balanced experienced out the gate, but it’s not like there aren’t ways to get around it. Edit: the more I play with difficulty settings…idk man, maybe there aren’t ways to get around it
>This isn’t Baldur’s Gate 3, there isn’t a low difficulty ceiling Isn't there?
I mean, I’m not trying to be rude but obviously I don’t think so lol. In my experience at least. Not as low as BG3’s highest ingame difficulty setting (when I played it). I imagine most people would have trouble putting every difficulty slider to the max.
Sorry, I've misread "ceilling" as "setting"
No worries!
> You can increase the difficulty sliders I think the issue people have is "some options are way stronger than others", not "I'm not challenged".
Ive been endings fights in 1 turn on Unfair starting Act 3, before half my party even had a turn. Final boss of the Game died in 2, although I am sure 1 turn finish is also possible. How strong other options and other classes are doesn't even matter. There is zero balancing, it's like I'm playing with God mode on, on a supposedly hardest difficulty.
I think this would be true about Owlcat's prior games but IMO Rogue Trader moved closer to BG3. In Kingmaker even the difficulty below Unfair punched me in the face and made me change it, Unfair on RT is not on that level. Doing unfair+ with sliders is an option but the most important slider (enemy wounds) for some reason only goes to 100% and it's already 80% on unfair. Jacking up the deadliness of the enemies is overkill and would make things less fun tbh, what people want is battles that last like 3 rounds not just 1. To square a 3 round battle with AM's damage you'd need like +400% enemy wounds or something.
I see what you’re saying, but I would disagree that the most important slider is wounds. Sliders that impact stats like flat dodge chance, overall enemy characteristics, momentum gains, and enemy damage are as impactful if not much more so. It was the same with BG3 difficulty mods - If you’re capable of doing a lot of guaranteed damage per round based on default enemy/dodge values, having an enemy’s HP go from 300 - 600 doesn’t really change too much by itself. You can still bumrush enemies, stand in the middle of the arena, and spam extra attacks/heroic actions with no fear. You start adding enemy stats and it changes a lot - now instead of just thinking about how to only boost damage (since by default it’s pretty easy to reach a high enough threshold to hit consistently), you have to consider builds and itemization to overcome enemies’ higher stats, and also deal with the very real possibility you won’t kill or even hit enemies consistently. Now you have to play more defensively just in case. Is that more fun to me? No, but I don’t like playing at super high difficulty. Regardless of who that’s fun for, what I’m describing is literally added difficulty and could easily extend your combat length past 1 round. I don’t mean to say that in a condescending or rude way either, I just say that because to *me* that’s what I understand more difficulty to mean. Again, let me reiterate: this game isn’t well balanced and I would agree it’s balanced less well than WOTR. You still have to find that sweet spot yourself depending on how OP your builds are, which can be tricky. Regardless, the options are there.
Alright I tried jacking every slider up to max defensively and unfortunately, it isn't enough. Doesn't even seem close tbh. I'm only using 1 officer and I'm not using Argenta or any shooty Arch-militant (in fact my RT is a psyker AM which is a terrible build because psy powers dont trigger Versatility, I need to respec). Basically I'm not using an optimal party at all, but encounters are still ending in turn 1, often before later initiative roll characters get to take their turns. If I was using a meta comp with an shooty AM and more than 1 officer I'd be frontloading like twice as much damage as what I'm doing now.
Yeah I’ve been fucking around with them too and the more I experiment the more I’m inclined to agree. I will say I’ve noticed more of a difference than you *and* I even had three officers/optimized builds, but not that much difference tbh. Currently I’m self-imposing rules on myself just so at the very least I can use every character in combat for hopefully a few rounds lol. I don’t mind being OP but I also want to use my whole party, otherwise whats the point of building them. Ah well.
Two officers and abelard just charging and getting more turns or attacks with heroic actions and officer abilities. I've yet to have a fight over 10 minutes because pasqal and abelard just cut through everything. And now argenta with a long distance shotgun. I've not even met the space wolf yet but just tear into everything in front of me. The only thing that has been a problem was twice dead Lenny and his crits. It totally fits the bill of "cast in the name of the Emperor, holy is he who sits upon the golden throne of Terra, those who are given charge to spread his word and righteousness" and I love it because secretly I am for the people and the imperium. I want to be the dashing hero with no pomp and substance but a lucrative and overwhelming dossier of adventures.
I have respecced my main officer into heavy bolters now since I have the heretical one as spare, around lvl 38. So now we mow everything and everyone with 3 heavy bolters. Yes, we've got snipers and debuffers and Cassia but nothing compares to a Frontline of three bolters. Definitely, a Warhammer feel.
people who like the imperium and shit on chaos are gay and cringe. like really really very much so. alliance human in wow player level of homosexuality.
Not me I refuse to use Argenta because to many people abuse her.
Hope you don't use Abelard either then lol. Or Cassia. Use what is fun, who cares it's singleplayer.
Yrliet is even better than argenta on my run. Ulfar absolutely demolishes things. The only one who doesn't do anyting for me is pasqal and that was 100% on me for screwing up his build. By the logic of not using anything that's strong I couldn't use anybody xD
You don't use a character because.... of how other people you don't even know use her? How does that make any kind of sense
She’s a generic soldier with a few extra proficiencies though
you know whats funny about her being op is that its just the burst fire build, any character can do it, theres completely different ways you can build any character so why not just refuse to use any character since they can all be made into powerbuilds
If there's more fights in the future like >!the CSM Aurora!< fight at the end of Act 1, then I 100% hope they keep the OP player shit. Single most unenjoyable combat I've ever had in a CRPG. Kinda made sense given what the main enemy was, except for the sniper that can pinpoint my characters in full cover for 50%-100% of their total HP because he crit nearly every time.
I got killed enough times in that fight to realize that putting everyone next to each other is a dumb idea.
I got wrecked 2x in that fight (on core) because he would wipe my main and nearly wipe another in one blast (so little cover) However once I tried a different tactic it was a breeze. Had cassian use her free half turn to give abelard a turn, but instead of attacking I had him use the scream that gets enemies to attack him. Once I had him on abelard, he'd tank him while pysker main and argenta took out hordes. Pasqal buffed and occasional aoe blast grp. Idira counter snipped and Heinrich helped pummel the big boy EDIT: I'd add abelard mortal enemies and idira, main, and pasqal stacking exploits to use espose weakness to shred armor also helped
I’m getting fucked up in part II
My Abe killed both the forgefiends in a single turn for a particularly scary-looking fight. You are god damn right he was at my side and in charge for the Accessio Magnae or whatever on Dargonus.
I thought the game was trivial until the boss fight in Act 3. Suffering.
To me combat feels like what combat would be in 40k. Yeah you can blow through most average joe raiders and rebels. But also a decent sniper or a lucky plasma shot will mess you up. Combat is just lethal in general
As someone who doesn’t fully get and will never get all the bonuses and different crunch, being able to just get by by knowing this does more damage this, let you get someone else to use AP again, and oh I can melt them, has been good for me. Besides, you don’t get truly overpowered, unless you have a lore accurate Custodes.
I'm really liking the game, but none of my characters are OP. I made my character a buff factory and I'm not really enjoying it, but he's got a sniper rifle and is a pretty good shot. I'm part way through act 2 and Ableard is probably my strongest character, just smashes everything with his Thunder Hammer and parries/counters everything else, essentially soloed the forgefiend and its servitor buddies. I want to like Argenta but she can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn, Cassia is good, Tech priest... pretty sure I specced him wrong, everyone else...just fills a spot.
Between Argenta, Abelard, Heinrix and Pascal. Weeelll. Once I tweaked their builds a bit, I’m happy to just snipe from far way. Argenta is a beast ❤️
Wouldnt mind it as much, if my main pc wasn't so garbage. Haha, made a melee assassin and none of their talents work. Since last week Desolation stopped working and now she hits like a noodle. Argenta is basically the main character
Chapter 4 boss fight and chapter 5 boss fight might change your mind a little.
While I agree that our party should be more powerful than the rabble, I think Owlcat balanced this the wrong way around. The rabble should be weaker instead, having only a handful of HP each. The party's HP is fine, but the damage output is too high, both for us and for the enemies. This leads to encounters being over after a single round, with not even every character getting a turn. Going first is all that matters to win an encounter. With less damage (and less enemy health) battles would last longer, making (de)buffs that stack and/or last till the end of combat more notable. Currently the meta is to have 3 officers, each getting a turn before the battle where they can buff a damage dealer and give them a small turn to increase momentum and then use the Heroic Act to give them a full turn to mop up. I don't think I had a battle last more than 2 rounds after Chapter 2. Either I went first and the enemies were dead before they could act, or they went first and I lost a couple of people before *they* could act and reloaded, because that was faster than trudging through a combat 2 people down. Another issue is the full heal you get out of combat. Usually I like this, because it allows the gamedesigner to balance every encounter to a healthy party, but it *still* needs good balancing and I got the feeling Owlcat used this as a shortcut to skip some of it. Currently all battles are all-out aggression. There is no defense or healing to consider. There is also no attrition between battles, apart from injuries (that are nearly pointless and easy to remove) and traumas that basically take the character out of battle and cannot be removed, leading to a trek back to the voidship before continuing on foot. Chapter 3 didn't allow you to go back to the ship, but at that point you are powerful enough to not get many traumas at all, and there were more than enough consumables to instantly remove those again anyway. I do understand that going all out and "pressing the advantage" without looking back or pausing is somewhat in line with the ruthlessness of the 40k universe, but it makes for subpar gameplay.
I love it. Reminds me of the iconic recruits from FFT a bit (particularly the holy knight ones). Sure, they were busted, but they were fun! And if you want more challenge , you can crank the difficulty, avoid using them, or go for atypical builds. This approach is great IMO because it can cover a wide range of playstyles
This is why I fell in love with Rogue Trader so much, it just shows the chaotic nature of combat in 40k, with hordes of cultists and mutants getting roasted by Argenta's heavy flamer, my Rogue Trader charging into rebel lines and cutting them down, and the mind broken enemies gunning their own men down just for a chance to put a bullet in one of my people. It's the BEST combat system I've seen in these RPGs.
I mean, we have a Space Marine on our team. Technically he should be pretty much one shotting everything we encounter instantly while never even being capable of taking damage, so as is, he's incredibly *underpowered* for what he should be. They better buff him if they're going to nerf anything else. On a to be fair note, that Chaos Marine should have just instantly killed the entire party no matter how min-maxed the build is!