[LüB]

Gonna admit, I've been one of those people who were annoyed to no end by the antagonist system. The only fact I liked about it was that it's explained well in-universe. But after almost 100 hours in, It's been growing on me.

And by growing I mean like an incurable parasitic disease whose annoyances I've accepted as a part of my other wise enjoyable life.

 I get it, alright? You want your 4v1 pvp and you want it involuntary. Fine, It's your game and I've had worse involuntary 4v1s in Dark Souls anyways. 
But if you wanna keep that, can we follow the basic rules of pvp design and level the playing field at least?

Passive skills straight up gives you raw stats just for having played longer, the hero killer upgrade point lets you deal more damage to players and you can get more with higher levels. Do I really need to spell out what that means for pvp?

If a higher level antagonist invade a low level game with a character they can't get in range to grab without instantly being put into critical (hive, ayana, valeria, etc.) then game's done. bullet resistance already means they take less damage, not to mention it takes significant time to kill something with shooting alone. All the antagonist will have to do is hide behind cover stalking the objective. Even if the antagonist can be grabbed, they still have the advantage in punches.

It definitely doesn't help that literally every antagonist will be at 100+ because.....well why the hell wouldn't they be? They know being lower leveled in pvp means being bullied.

No wonder a game of this quality still has mixed steam reviews. If antagonists appeared every game, which I'm guessing is the game's vision once the player base is built up, this game'd be dead within a month due to having zero new players.

Now it's not like I don't understand the desire to build a meaningful progression system, and by god is this meaningful, but simply from a utilitarian standpoint with the goal of keeping the game bloody alive, the playing field must be leveled. 

If you want suggestions, here's some, with the best effort put into preserving the sense of progression. Remove the Hero Killer upgrade and make all other damage related upgrades work only on AI opponents. It's gonna be a coding nightmare I'm sure, but it's better than the design nightmare it is now. Do the same with passive abilities too, and make armour work only on AI.

To be honest here, I refuse to believe this never poped up during dev meetings. But still, it'd be nice to send a reminder that the current progression system in regards to pvp is, at best, a ticking time bomb. Best diffuse it now before it becomes a proper bomb that blows up your player growth.

[sonofoz]

totally agreed.
these passive pvp bonus are absurd to me too.

i'm not against pvp, i antag pretty often too. but it's still absurd, regardless of the camp you are in by the way.

yesterday a baby antag invaded the game.
he was something like rank 6 or 5, certainly one of his first antag play, and  i'm *5, not much but maybe something like 100lvl away from him.

the poor lad was unable to do something.
i had Hive and was stalking him. i could almost run toward him while he was unloading his gun at me, and then plague-slide/punch him, then crack his head open while he was crawling on the floor and... repeat...
don't know how many time i plagued his head off... i was nearly pitying him.

0 merit for me, 0 fun for him.

[SergeyKosinskiy]

Yeah would be nice to get all on same level. Ppl of higher lvl already have weapon forge stats on top of that is a bit to much.
Ammo will be changed back btw tekato, in next patch or one after that.

[Urgehal]

I really don't remember much of my beginnings of this game (it's been MONTHS...), but I don't remember it being that bad? Or maybe I was having too much fun playing the game. Either way, "leveling the playing field" is virtually impossible in this game, because of all the variables (and there's ALOT). Take away the passives, the raiders should still have the advantage, cause 4 raiders who atleast semi know what they're doing should win 80%-85% of the time generally. And the inverse of that is the MMR against the raiders and that's a whole other story...

Same with the high/max weapon forge levels, atleast to me, it seems like a small difference in play (as with the passives). I'm level 185 (almost at MAX forge!) and still using Alicia, Hans, and Kuzman's default weapon & not upgraded, and it doesn't feel too underwhelming? Well...I guess once I get MAX forge, I'll really know, but it's feels very minuscule. Someone doing a video by video would be interesting to see...

[sonofoz]

hm... well, first alicia's weapon not upgraded can't kill a monster even if you put the barrel in his mouth, so you must be playing real good or have max bonus.
since for the max inner bonus, if i'm not mistaken, it's +100% damage and 50% armor.
so, yes, it is significant.

[SergeyKosinskiy]

Its 100 for melee dmg, so novera is shit on any lvl xD
Ok its not, hatchet. But its to crit dependent

[LüB]

I really doubt they'll remove their entire progression system.. I mean they can't even change back something as simple as the aleph and ammo drops because they're so stubborn.

Or the entirety of the antag system.

[sonofoz]

Or the entirety of the antag system.

there is only 17 missions.
without antag challenge, how much time will you play the game before getting bored ?

being crushed by stupid cheating AI is more repulsive than attractive to me.
i'm not sure people will stay more on the game with no antag system at all.

[B30]

They should generally focus more on content and not on stupidities like limited ammo drops, awful aleph drops, sudden death timers, removing player's levels, shortening wounded states, …
Man, they got so many things wrong the last few updates, it's unbelievable! With all these stupid features, they'll be scaring off more players than gaining new ones!
Everything needs time, I understand, but everyone probably wouldn't have enough resources if they were wasted on such annoying features nobody wanted and asked for.

If it's not broken, don't fix it! But maybe I got this quote wrong?

[LüB]

Or the entirety of the antag system.

there is only 17 missions.
without antag challenge, how much time will you play the game before getting bored ?

being crushed by stupid cheating AI is more repulsive than attractive to me.
i'm not sure people will stay more on the game with no antag system at all.

Really now? Worse than broken metas, game quitting antags, p2p lag that loses you fights you should have won and wasted development resources on balancing a mode that's almost impossible to balance?
How would a game survive on PVE alone you ask? Hmm, dunno, really. Lemmie just ask Warframe, Destiny, Destiny the other one, Borderlands, Borderlands the other one, Borderlands the other other one that's coming out that's apparently great but it's epic exclusive so fuck that one, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4, Payday, Payday 2: Pay Harder, Vermintide, Vermintide 2, Left 4 dead and Left 4 dead 2. Sure some have an optional pvp mode, but hardly anyone plays them and literally no one plays for them. Almost like people don't give a toss about pvp in a game where most of the content is pve.
and that's just the ones with guns in them. Without that particular parameter that list extends to every online co-op game in existence.
You know the whole pvevp thing is the exception and not the rule right?

[LüB]

They should generally focus more on content and not on stupidities like limited ammo drops, awful aleph drops, sudden death timers, removing player's levels, shortening wounded states, …
Man, they got so many things wrong the last few updates, it's unbelievable! With all these stupid features, they'll be scaring off more players than gaining new ones!
Everything needs time, I understand, but everyone probably wouldn't have enough resources if they were wasted on such annoying features nobody wanted and asked for.

If it's not broken, don't fix it! But maybe I got this quote wrong?

I personally like some of the QoL changes like short wounded states, but 1: it sounds like you replied to the wrong post, and 2: the unfair pvp advantages is about as broken as the goddamn planet itself.

[BeertheBrad]

I have suggested before that they should add a bonus option to select an Antag invasion. Add that to the mission Select screen as an option. If you select that box, you get a 2x reward bonus. Don't want an Antag? Cut the rewards. Add additional bonuses after 5,10,15 Antag queues in a row.

[sonofoz]

How would a game survive on PVE alone you ask?

that's absolutly not what i said...
i said, this game has only 17 missions.

so don't be ridiculous, games like warframe, fallout or borderlands have tons of differents missions on differents maps, they are not comparable with this one...
right now, this game only take more than two days to finish because of the lvl requirement...

so of course they can transform it in full pve. but they'll have to make a looooot of new campaigns. and it takes loooot of time, so i'm not sure it's possible right now.

so yes,if they want, they even can tranform it in a race game too, but don't you think that, as your answer, it's a little off topic...?

Worse than broken metas, game quitting antags?

yes.
i'd rather die against a good player or an overpowered equipement while i'm doing my best, than against a cheating AI who "predict" every single action i take.

when you lose you feel totally powerless, like you can do nothing cause the game counter every movement, pop direct in your ass, move, shoot or react at lightning speed, etc, etc.

and consequently when you win, you just feel like the game let you win.
uninteresting in both situations.

Don't want an Antag? Cut the rewards. Add additional bonuses after 5,10,15 Antag queues in a row.

that could be an insteresting idea.
we could even imagine that rare weapons can only be obtained in vs antags missions.

[Urgehal]

Being killed by some unbalanced broken build is a lot more repulsive than the AI imo.

How? OP "unbalanced broken build " or not, raiders should still win majority of the time. Stupid/beefed up AI just becomes a complete s***show.

[Urgehal]

I have suggested before that they should add a bonus option to select an Antag invasion. Add that to the mission Select screen as an option. If you select that box, you get a 2x reward bonus. Don't want an Antag? Cut the rewards. Add additional bonuses after 5,10,15 Antag queues in a row.

Indeed, have in the past threw out a similar idea as well.. MSE can keep it's core game (chance of antag invasion) and still make it optional. Just cut the gold reward in half and have faction points and rare BPs unattainable if you have it on.