Canyon trials, and the weekly competition

[real fern]

Level 95 speaking, the difficulty spikes just don't make sense, I know that they scale up to our level and so on, but still.

The early waves of the mobs are weak, which is quite understandable as they provide the lowest scores and the lowest strength. The gameplay instantly gives the vibe of "Things gradually gets harder and more challenging", as intended. Same with the bosses.

But by the high waves, the HP scaling becomes out of control.

Wave 1-20, the mobs HP are still 100-300 ish and so on, even with bosses HP gradually cracking up from 2k (donovan), 4k (snake boss) and so on, they instantly scales up, like, for example, wave 8 snake boss, becomes 14k hp. Mobs HP consistently scale up very slowly, while bosses HP scale up massively in a way that it felt like the devs just "yeah lets add random number of HP, like, tens of thousands to them for every new boss phase lol".

People are talking about doing wave 1-28, despite the game has 30 waves. That's because the balancing went out of control around those. I saw Youtube Videos of players with 10-20 levels higher than me, You can't even beat the donovan waves in time with T5 Blue Revolver at its max level with 220 +/- Attack Speed and so on (With +16 Rings etc). You are intended to fail or extremely narrowly finish those waves.

The difficulty spikes doesn't makes sense, it's as if those waves were intended for gears that are beyond T5 (Like, T6? T7?), and don't get me started with enemy armors. Devs of Westland has a bad habit of giving them so much armor that it's sometime feels pointless to get 1-2k damage weapons when you can only deliver 33% of those damage as the rest are blocked by their armor. Don't forget their spiked up health too, so even with your best gears, it felt like you're facing against enemies that were far too scaled up beyond your own level and tiers.

More in comment.

Before anyone get started with any of those "Git Gud" BS to derail this post, As a level 90 player I just beat 90% of silver leagues players in the top three, all those players are 200k+ score players who are over level 100-110 and beyond. So, yes, I do feel qualified enough to give a piece of my opinion over how broken the canyon trials are at higher level.

I don't want to even level up with that cracked amount of HP scaling.

Anyway, moving on to the next topic, weekly competition.

Weekly Competitions are unbalanced, mainly due to the fact that players of all eligible level can compete in any leagues if they can get the sufficient(ly good or bad) score to get into the league they want.

Unfortunately, it just so happens that Steel are more important than Nickels, why? Rivets.

Because of that, an ungodly amount of level 100+ players intentionally swarms Silver League, according to what I heard from other players in main chat and so on. Players who are literally decked to hell with T5 gears or maybe purple gears are literally swarming the league that might not had been intended to them. Because its just so happens that Nickels aren't that important compared to Steel, the main backbone of most endgame gears.

As much as I don't want to blame them, this can't continue, you need to add level separation, maybe +/- 5 level differences in EACH league, so, yes, an even more separated leaderboard. It's messy, but do you really have any other better solutions to this high-level-domination in lower leagues? Something needs to be done, mainly to prevent players that clearly have better gears, level, stats and everything else always having the upper hand and scoring the top three in the leaderboard, while everyone else that was in their intended league and intended level getting screwed over.

If anything, fixing these (Especially with most of the rewards of Canyon Trials being locked to leaderboard now) takes high priority. Like, seriously.

My other solution is to provide some sort of "Spirit Points" instead to the Indian Native Trader by the entrance. The better you perform in the leaderboard, the more points you get that you can exchange for processed/special materials. Rare Tubes, Indian Blueprints/Gears, Gold Nuggets etc remains unchanged in the leaderboard.

For example, As a Silver League I, the highest Silver League level, you can get 18 units of T4 materials. 18 Planks, 18 Ingots, 18 Blocks, 18 Leather, yadda-yadda.

Instead, give them these aforementioned points which they then will able to use to purchase materials (Like coins, or the native wolf/bear claws trader) with a maximum daily/weekly limit. For example, you don't want to buy the granite blocks? Well, that's more points for you to spend on something else, maybe you want to buy more steel ingots, maybe you want to buy lower tier materials, like bronze ingots.

It provides a much more freedom of choice in the reward too.

Obviously, it goes like this.

Do Canyon Trial -> Get into Leaderboard -> Gets Spirit Points according to the reward on your league and leaderboard position -> Trade with Native Indian Shaman Trader at Canyon Trial entrance -> Higher Tier materials cost more points (Because they are intended for higher leagues reward, as higher leagues -> higher points by default), while Lower Tier materials cost less points.

Why is this important?

Because it would provide the level 100+ players a reason to stay in Gold League, after all, the Gold League, by default, would provide higher base spirit points than the lower leagues, and since they can now buy lower tier materials like steel, they will have far more reason to be in Gold League, instead of downtiering themselves to the Silver League and defeating every other, clearly, weaker players.

Drop a react or your opinion, feel free.

[round perch]

Hey there! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the game's difficulty spikes and balance. It's cool that you're passionate about it! Balancing games can be a bit like walking a tightrope, trying to keep both newbies and pros engaged. The idea of level separation in leagues and a points-based reward system is pretty neat – it could help balance things out. Remember, the game's a work in progress, so your feedback definitely matters. Let's keep the convo friendly and share more ideas to make the game awesome for everyone!

[reef veldt]

My friend, the spike that you talk about happens at wave 29 and later at wave 37 (yes, it doesn't end at wave 30, its infinite). Otherwise I feel it ramps up smoothly, so i don't agree with you.

Btw with a lowest level than yours I was already reaching wave 29 easily. Just make sure you keep buying rare blueprints to improve your gear that really matters.

[round perch]

You are right rumo

[reef veldt]

thank you. In any case, i'll wait to further comment on CT after the new update. Seems it will completely change how we prepare for the weekly good run. I wonder how hard will be to get the special items for the new recipes we see in the teaser.

[real fern]

I agree that it's still doable to do the rest of the early waves and like, 25-28, doable, survivable, but afterward, the rest becomes a blurry mess of high hp-high armor mobs swarming you, you can do them but they are durability-breaker.

Considering the new combat update that is coming soon with the next update, though, I think they will be helping much

We could really use armor penetration on T4+ gears, because Trench Gun/Schofield massive damage gets heavily blocked by their armor

What do you guys think about the spirit points, though