As an outsider looking in that saw the news, was a huge player buff across the spectrum really needed? It's not terribly normal for a game studio to make their game that much easier all at once.
I think the problem was their balancing strategy was largely nerf based and their design vision was primary weapons should suck against most things. That's how it felt anyway. Like most guns weren't viable and they kept nerfing the viable ones until they felt noticably worse but still noticably better than other options.
I really don't understand their vision for the weapon landscape - most assault rifles felt bad compared to the laser rifle variant, most shotguns felt bad besides one pump and one auto and then they nerfed both of those so I haven't taken a shotgun in some time, and a sniper or semiautomatic has never felt good as a primary despite being what I'd normally gravitate to.
Half of my play time is taking something like the auto cannon or the Quasar (before they were nerfed) and using them more like my primary weapon.
The slots don't have identity because of this imbalance and the weapons within those slots don't have meaningful decisions because they fit either check some boxes - A) can harm most things B) is efficient at harming most of those things - or they don't.
In a game where part of their business model is releasing a couple of new guns every month I've used 90% of those weapons less than 3 times because they immediately feel bad at the highest difficulties.
So this new patch is, to me anyway, a blunt way to improve all guns and all viability - seemingly because they dont know how to do it any other way.
In a game where part of their business model is releasing a couple of new guns every month I've used 90% of those weapons less than 3 times because they immediately feel bad at the highest difficulties.
100% this. The game went from making you feel like a disposable badass to just disposable bad. After a bunch of nerfs to the orbital weapons I just quit playing. I don't understand why they saw people having fun in record numbers and thought "something's wrong".
The weapons are more fun to use, but the game became too easy because of it.
It seems like they buffed the weapons and nerfed the enemies at the same. I think they should've only done one of two.
High level difficulty missions should remain very difficult and challenging, now they mostly feel like that used to be 3-4 levels lower with some exceptions.
I think this update was a thing in itself, because weapons kept getting nerfed and the game became not fun, and it cost them a big chunk of the playerbase.
That said, I know Illuminate is just around the corner. And some tought bot enemy types are in queue. And the hive lord is probably going to make an appearance at some point in time. But I wish the previous content wouldn't get dumbed down to the point that the most difficult missions become too easy, taking away the challenge ruins the whole feeling of accomplishing something.
As someone who used to routinely run on Helldive, I found Suicidal rank to still be pretty challenging when I returned last week. I think they made up the difference with enemy spawn placement and mix.