It's the game designer again. Here's my thoughts (1.07)
So at first I really liked 1.06, as it introduced more bloodborne-esque combat and environmental awareness that I fondly remember from playing BB professionally.
But. It chopped up gameplay alot with the i-frames and whatever other hoodah was going in that patch and I think we can all agree we are much better off with 1.07. It's just a more functional game.
That gotten over with ...
The state of the game right now is really good.
Spam is much more easily handled although I still feel it needs a hard counter. The current issue with spam is that while you can wait out the persons meter, the other player does not necessarily have to stop when their meter is empty. They could ditch much earlier and keep the pressure up more or less with some consistency. This isn't too bad when its a mindless jab spammer whose moves can be easily dodged/absorbed with a few well placed alternates, but on the flip side, low and middle spam is still very difficult to handle as the visible difference between a low attack and a mid attack is slight.
Spam I feel still needs a more direct counter, but as it currently stands it's acceptable because there arent very many smart spammers. This may change as we see more intelligent and or practiced spammers show up.
Heavy hits have a much more recognizable impact on the flow of combat and have a few nice, likely unintended high risk high reward benefits of use now, even my fast deck makes regular use of heavy hitting attacks now.
The camera against a wall is AWFUL it is the meanest thing someone can do to you as it takes away your ability to visibly react completely.
There is a bug which carries over your shards from previous matches (not rounds).
Absorb feels very powerful now from NPC's and while I have seen a few good khalt players, most still dont seem to understand the function of this tool they have. Perhaps more specifics should be provided on defensive techniques.
2 shard shockwave is perfect. I love the stamina boost as I now have a choice running shock and heal. Do I fill my stamina bar and keep the pressure up? Or do I try to back off and heal? It also still has its uses in ledge throwing, but it's much much more skill based now, and less spammy. I would like to say that the range of the stun effect perhaps still needed to be where it was before, as it's next to useless for cancelling heals now until the enemy is uncomfortably close. Knockback range is perfect as is though.
I don't know how you decreased the number of AI, but I'm not sure that it worked. I got in a fight with SEVEN npc's in bird callers, and as much as I'd like to say numbers around that amount in one area is abnormal, truth is thats been pretty consistent. 3-5 seems about average in online...
Granted. I am a combat rank 200 (earned btw, not grinded) so the game may just be adjusting to my skill level. I actually do better in those kinds of fights anyways.
Now onto health. Everyone's favorite. I have to admit I don't think I can reasonably review that because I win basically every match within four rounds at the moment. I've had very few fights with those similarly skilled to me lately and in those I was pretty careful to make good use of my heals. In my opinion you should start every round with full health. But as it is right now, perhaps a slight tweak to how healing works (a larger starting chunk or faster healing when you have no enemies around you, etc) could also be used to even things up.
My husband uses a khalt deck I built for him (lol only girl in the house and I'm the best gamer) And says the rate of the passive heal and the starting chunk are stressful because it feels like waiting on that quarter bar of health isn't made possible, and no abilities really seem to allow him to get his heal off uninterrupted.
I like the weight impact. It seemed nonexistent before but now I know I am paying for three pounds of protection withthree pounds of weight. Oddly enough, I run a fast deck and wear medium heavy armor, and my husband runs a slow deck with really light armor. To each their preference.
Gear drops are really repetitious. I continue to see a direct correlation between my equipped equipment and all drop rates. I would like to confirm or deny this with the devs if possible. Lmk
I have noticed an influx of people standing around doing nothing for hourse at a time and causing areas to be laggy. I have taken up the unfortunate ritual of giving afk's a few quick taps to see if they are lag wells, and if they are, spamming them to death and not healing them. I don't like that this is necessary.
More on the internet note, there should be a way to load offline from within online, and I am still experiencing (although far less often) disconnects from my husband when the instance randomly places us back in encounters from the invitation instance.
I still occasionally must soft reset for infinite loading screens and a ui bug which superimposes the practiceroom UI and prevents shard use. A workaround for that bug is to open the practice room again, and then leave it.
New masks are cool. My favorite is definitely the oration operative mask, as it has the most fashion-solver potential. I hope this shows a willingness by the devs to put more interesting masks and gear in the game like this in the future because they are all really fun.
In general I feel the game is at its best yet, which is saying alot. Although there are some things I feel could be done better like health and camera tracking, I greatly enjoy the game as a whole, and happily spend hours on it.
Thank you for your time,
Praise the Moon.
But. It chopped up gameplay alot with the i-frames and whatever other hoodah was going in that patch and I think we can all agree we are much better off with 1.07. It's just a more functional game.
That gotten over with ...
The state of the game right now is really good.
Spam is much more easily handled although I still feel it needs a hard counter. The current issue with spam is that while you can wait out the persons meter, the other player does not necessarily have to stop when their meter is empty. They could ditch much earlier and keep the pressure up more or less with some consistency. This isn't too bad when its a mindless jab spammer whose moves can be easily dodged/absorbed with a few well placed alternates, but on the flip side, low and middle spam is still very difficult to handle as the visible difference between a low attack and a mid attack is slight.
Spam I feel still needs a more direct counter, but as it currently stands it's acceptable because there arent very many smart spammers. This may change as we see more intelligent and or practiced spammers show up.
Heavy hits have a much more recognizable impact on the flow of combat and have a few nice, likely unintended high risk high reward benefits of use now, even my fast deck makes regular use of heavy hitting attacks now.
The camera against a wall is AWFUL it is the meanest thing someone can do to you as it takes away your ability to visibly react completely.
There is a bug which carries over your shards from previous matches (not rounds).
Absorb feels very powerful now from NPC's and while I have seen a few good khalt players, most still dont seem to understand the function of this tool they have. Perhaps more specifics should be provided on defensive techniques.
2 shard shockwave is perfect. I love the stamina boost as I now have a choice running shock and heal. Do I fill my stamina bar and keep the pressure up? Or do I try to back off and heal? It also still has its uses in ledge throwing, but it's much much more skill based now, and less spammy. I would like to say that the range of the stun effect perhaps still needed to be where it was before, as it's next to useless for cancelling heals now until the enemy is uncomfortably close. Knockback range is perfect as is though.
I don't know how you decreased the number of AI, but I'm not sure that it worked. I got in a fight with SEVEN npc's in bird callers, and as much as I'd like to say numbers around that amount in one area is abnormal, truth is thats been pretty consistent. 3-5 seems about average in online...
Granted. I am a combat rank 200 (earned btw, not grinded) so the game may just be adjusting to my skill level. I actually do better in those kinds of fights anyways.
Now onto health. Everyone's favorite. I have to admit I don't think I can reasonably review that because I win basically every match within four rounds at the moment. I've had very few fights with those similarly skilled to me lately and in those I was pretty careful to make good use of my heals. In my opinion you should start every round with full health. But as it is right now, perhaps a slight tweak to how healing works (a larger starting chunk or faster healing when you have no enemies around you, etc) could also be used to even things up.
My husband uses a khalt deck I built for him (lol only girl in the house and I'm the best gamer) And says the rate of the passive heal and the starting chunk are stressful because it feels like waiting on that quarter bar of health isn't made possible, and no abilities really seem to allow him to get his heal off uninterrupted.
I like the weight impact. It seemed nonexistent before but now I know I am paying for three pounds of protection withthree pounds of weight. Oddly enough, I run a fast deck and wear medium heavy armor, and my husband runs a slow deck with really light armor. To each their preference.
Gear drops are really repetitious. I continue to see a direct correlation between my equipped equipment and all drop rates. I would like to confirm or deny this with the devs if possible. Lmk
I have noticed an influx of people standing around doing nothing for hourse at a time and causing areas to be laggy. I have taken up the unfortunate ritual of giving afk's a few quick taps to see if they are lag wells, and if they are, spamming them to death and not healing them. I don't like that this is necessary.
More on the internet note, there should be a way to load offline from within online, and I am still experiencing (although far less often) disconnects from my husband when the instance randomly places us back in encounters from the invitation instance.
I still occasionally must soft reset for infinite loading screens and a ui bug which superimposes the practiceroom UI and prevents shard use. A workaround for that bug is to open the practice room again, and then leave it.
New masks are cool. My favorite is definitely the oration operative mask, as it has the most fashion-solver potential. I hope this shows a willingness by the devs to put more interesting masks and gear in the game like this in the future because they are all really fun.
In general I feel the game is at its best yet, which is saying alot. Although there are some things I feel could be done better like health and camera tracking, I greatly enjoy the game as a whole, and happily spend hours on it.
Thank you for your time,
Praise the Moon.
Comments
I am a developer for a different company, I have nothing to do with what happens in Absolver, I have no inside knowledge, and I am not (in case it wasn't obvious) a sloclap employee.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Praise the Moon.
if they win most of their matches with little investment with fast attacks they will keep doing it. Only until players are good enough that such a tactic rarely works will it fall away.
for what its worth i have made exactly one fast attack deck in nearly 250 hours of play, and i found it quite lacking in terms of effort vs reward.
really you only need 4-5 fast moves in your entire deck, then its just about not putting too many SLOW moves in so you dont get repeatedly jabbed out.
absorb is bad, it rewards sub optimal play while not rewarding optimal play, and will actively punish you for wearing more armor due to armor cap. i run 61/51 protection on my favorite setup wich means 1 absorb and im near cap. its largely pointless. NPC's feel godly because they are, that doesnt mean absorb is good right now. its not terrible, but its now a mediocre skill instead of a stellar one.
other then those i do agree with your feedback on a personal level.
After attempting to play with absorb it's clear that it is effectively useless because of how short of a time it is active. Perhaps instead of it's current form, one might receive the aborbtion bonus during their next attack if it's within a certain (less difficult) timeframe. Or even a boost to just the length of time it can be active really, although I'd prefer it to function differently as it really is just confusing how it could ever flow into combat at all.
Granted I tried for about two hours before saying screw it and equipping my stagger stance. So this isnt coming from an extremely experienced perspective. I will add though that I picked up every other ability to at least a basic level within that time. Khalt in my opinion because of the slower emphasis should be easier to pick up, not more technical than one could reasonably hope to functionally use.
Other than that nothing new to add. Thanks abslover for your input as well, especially since it seems you put more time into understanding it than I did ^^
mechanically it still works, the only thing that is mediocre is the reward.