So I just started up the beta for the first time since release. I played it through twice on release, and now... is it just me or did normal difficulty get super hard? before I felt it was challenging but ultimately satisfying but now I get steam rolled by beatles, using similar tactics. Has the difficulty been bumped for testing purposes? I found it really unenjoyable. Wizard seemed quite limited, and fighter went down very quickly. 

There are more beetles and due to the removal of DR, everything is doing more damage. Weapon damage has been reduced a bit, but creature damage was already too high even before the changes, now you'll notice it a lot more.

 

Been doing some testing myself with Plate Mail on characters. Doesn't seem to make much difference in survivability. BB Fighter goes down to 4-5 (Regular) Lion attacks every time.

There are more beetles and due to the removal of DR, everything is doing more damage. Weapon damage has been reduced a bit, but creature damage was already too high even before the changes, now you'll notice it a lot more.

 

Been doing some testing myself with Plate Mail on characters. Doesn't seem to make much difference in survivability. BB Fighter goes down to 4-5 (Regular) Lion attacks every time.

Thanks Sen. Balance issue, or intended? It's a noticeable leap in difficulty 

Umm, well I'd say nothing is balanced yet. Adam Brennecke stated recently that everything does way too much damage a few days ago, and there was supposed to have been a balance pass done the other day. 

There was a backer who posted that he just finished a playthrough of this build and liked the feel of the combat ... I had to raise my eyebrow a bit at that. I enjoy hard combat, but combat ends in about 10 seconds of unpaused gameplay, which isn't very fun.

Umm, well I'd say nothing is balanced yet. Adam Brennecke stated recently that everything does way too much damage a few days ago, and there was supposed to have been a balance pass done the other day. 

 

There was a backer who posted that he just finished a playthrough of this build and liked the feel of the combat ... I had to raise my eyebrow a bit at that. I enjoy hard combat, but combat ends in about 10 seconds of unpaused gameplay, which isn't very fun.

*wipes brow*

 

I read that comment too and thought 'Oh God, it's happened, AAA gaming has finally killed my late 90s/Early Naughties gaming pedigree. I can't kill these f@%ing beetles, I'm doomed.' But, seeing you say that has made me feel better.  

Umm, well I'd say nothing is balanced yet. Adam Brennecke stated recently that everything does way too much damage a few days ago, and there was supposed to have been a balance pass done the other day. 

 

There was a backer who posted that he just finished a playthrough of this build and liked the feel of the combat ... I had to raise my eyebrow a bit at that. I enjoy hard combat, but combat ends in about 10 seconds of unpaused gameplay, which isn't very fun.

Yea, that sounds terrible. In IE games fighter would also go down to 4-5 bear attacks but bear would need many more tries to hit him 4-5 times so combat seemed to last a reasonable time

I hope they consider going back to the old armor system. The DR/DT mix was much more interesting.

I'm pretty sure they haven't tuned the overall damage yet. Simply because most of the stuff they've changed recently has affected the damage, so they didn't want to do a tuning pass that worked at the time, then change some other things, then have to do another tuning pass, etc. So, there's some stuff (like damage) that I'm fairly certain they've known about for some time (as being problematic/not-finalized), but have been intentionally waiting to tweak in the proper order.

 

Honestly, I'd say most combats should last about 30-seconds to a minute. Somewhere around in there. Maybe boss fights/tougher encounters would last upwards of 5 minutes, and a handful of easier encounters (especially if handled with extreme efficiency) might actually last less than 30 seconds. But, really, a fight should feel like something you can turn the tide of, in the middle of it. Not something you're trying to react to like a modern Resident Evil Quick-Time Event.

 

I hope they consider going back to the old armor system. The DR/DT mix was much more interesting.

Hmmm... I dunno. I mean, they could always do "the same thing" with just integer DR (formerly known as DT). Armor of Flame Resistance? +2 DT versus Fire. Heck, some armor could even have negative resistance rating for a specific damage type. 10 DR, but -3 DR versus Fire. etc. You could do that with piercing, crushing, etc. as well.

 

I think that could work really well, if they got the numbers right. Which probably just requires a bit of iteration and some diligent measuring/evaluation. I like the idea of what old-DR was doing, but I really don't see the need to mix-and-match percentages and integers. It seems unnecessarily convoluted.