I'm just going to leave a few constructive criticism/suggestions here not that I've had a while to experience new patch.
1. MINERS!!! I think the miners can get out of hand sometimes some characters cant shoot them very well. But why can't we punch them? I feel we should be able to melee attack miners, they're very frustrating when they crawl under you and leave a mine. The mines do a lot of damage and they're not the easiest target.
Also , antag should be harmed by miner mines as well. The new missions where miners are heavy on you might as well surrender when you see an antag, they are HEAVILY in antag favor and most of the time their victory is a forgone conclusion. I surrender when I get an antag on these missions now, there really isn't any point. It's over from the start, especially in that chaotic "bullet hell" last stage on Council apocalypse. You are walking through a miasma of damage everywhere, mines, hollow ones, elites, beholder lasers, bouncing bubbles, drone bubbles, etc... you can't step two steps without walking into damage but the antagonists can just waltz thorough this solid cloud of death flying everywhere immune to everything, it's INCREDIBLY unfair. Again, I just surrender, waste of time. The missions is already damaging enough by itself.
2. I've gotten the hang of the BP system. You have to do an elaboriate strategy of lowering MMR to about 40% to 45% which is high enough to get a good score but low enough to be easy without sacrificing success due to low scores and getting new players who are horrible liabilities to BP missions. If you get a mentor warning (and yes they are warnings) anyways you always decline on BP missions. But, I am tier 1 and have never EVER seen a common BP. I got all the rares in the game already, don't need any more. But there are characters I need common non-rare BP for. Like Valeria's Earthing and one of Shae's. I think they should be a tad more common? You can't buy mercury points to get BP so the game should make BP more available.
3. Faction points. You don't get enough of it and the cost of reshuffling cards is 4800 now. In the old system you could get 5k to 10k. I understand gold being more slow. I don't like it but it's to incentivize spending mercury points to get a litle extra. But, faction points cant be gotten by purchase, so it should be a little bit more easier to come by. Remember that many MANY times you get 4800 faction it's thrown away with no value or gain when you don't get the card you want. It take many MANY shuffles to get the card you want.
4. Mentor bonus. This should be a lot more. 20% XP bonus isn't enough, I feel. More often I am willing to forgoe this and decline mission, depending on the map, instead of being enticed by the 20% bonus. It should be 20% PER HEAD of new players. This would make it a bit better and worth it. Also, maybe make it faction and gold instead? XP is practically useless after level 150.
5. Dserter/disconnect bonus whould be more than 300 points of gold or faction. i feel 500 is a good number so as not to feel too bad when you have to work without a person because they left the game.
6. Antag system. I have noticed there is a lot less antagonists now. So I don't get so bent out of shape when I get a game with one. But we suffer from the same issue as we did prior to the patch; there is no bonus to fighting an antag. It's not rewarding and you get more rewards against AI. Antag is ONLY a liability to progress, never EVER a bonus. My suggestion is the same as last time. As well as having the antagonists skill level (MMR) factored into the score you should ALSO get a flat reward for just having an antag. 500 would be good. This would make losing to an antag not to bad and also make it REWARDING to actually WIN and FIGHT against an antag. As it is now, I don't really care to fight or try hard because my score and rewards are fucked anyways and, as we've all seen, even if you win you lose against an antag because you will ALWAYS score less than a game against AI.
7. I used to play a lot ore variety of characters before. And this was fun. Now I currently am driven only to play 1 or 2 factions and that's because of BP and faction points being so rare. You have set up a system where it de-incentivizes playing different characters. Why would I play the Locals? I need no faction with them, they are all carded how i want. I need cards for this other faction, so I guess I'm stuck just playing a limited amount of characters. I'm not sure of the solution to this? Maybe have faction points be a little bit more generous in amount? Or make faction points able to be spent on any faction? Who knows.
8. I kind of made this point above, but I actively avoid the last mission on Council Apocalypse. It's so annoying, and unless I need something from that missions, I un-choose it when I queue. I love the campaign. I even love the design and the story of that mission, seeing the 5th council itself as an entity with multiple minds (hence it's name). But the mission isn't fun. TOO much going on at once. Again, as above, maybe simply being able to punch the miners might fix this? Less Miners? Less bubbles? general LESS chaos and floating hazards to wade through.
That's all I got for now. I really wish I would get a common BP mission, because I have gold to spend and really want Earthing to spend it on. I have plenty of other BP that have not been used for upgrades, but let's be honest, they'd be a waste of gold. Mostly default weapons of characters and others that are outclassed by ones that I've already forged. I'll get to those eventually for completions sake, but while there is content I am still interested and there is never EVER an opportunity to get that content i have nothing to spend gold on. Aside from throwing away time on shuffling, there is no carrot on the end of the stick currently.
