Feedback and suggestions

[Balordazul]

I want to give my feedback and suggest changes. I see that the team has been actively working on the balance and bug fixes and a big thanks to all of you.

Currently only 53 hours on the game at day 678.

UI/UX

I'm personally finding some of the navigation .

• In the mission screen from the teleportarium add a cancel mission button and remove the option to back out via mouse click. I can't be the only that keeps backing out of the mission prep screens by mistake.
• In the barracks on the paper doll sheet let players either fully preview items by clicking on them or navigate right to the armory with the items.

Bugs / unfortunate design oops
I have encountered two bonus missions that were not completable within reasonable means.

• Collect 8 seeds on a map that had a total of 4 seeds, this was a chaos gate mission that has the cliff with the point behind the portal.
• That same chaos gate map with the cliff point behind the portal has that as a reinforcement point that does not spawn correctly. I think it dumps the enemies off the map. Ooops

-"Do not use WP" bonus objectives. This one can be near impossible as my map had enemies with drain. Drain should not be failing you the objective as that was not the objective. You would also need to complete the mission without taking damage or being hit at all.
- Crazed - This status effect only seems to work sometimes on the enemies listed as "effected". The way I think crazed works is the following. I believe it should be attacking the closest friend or foe in range unless a Knight is out of cover or in range and then it will attack a Knight even if it has an ally next to the affected unit.

I have used it for a while now with the Warp charged Provoke. Also recently with the psychotroke and the inquisitor. Sometimes it bugs completely and the enraged enemies ignore all their friends near them and attack a knight like I had not used the ability. I have also hit large units where I get mixed results where some enraged attack correctly and other enraged function normally.

I honestly don't understand what is happening here but I have been told by others it is working just fine. I don't agree and need to voice I have seen Enrage act inconsistently.

Balance and class changes.



Chaplain

• Litanies - They all seem to have a hidden WP upkeep cost. It took me hours of seeing a red -WP pop up to finally work it out. Every turn I have a litany going I lose 1WP. Please remove the upkeep cost or add text to power to explain that it has an upkeep.
• Litany of Faith is easily the least used for as many points as it takes to get to it. Please change this to work like the force stave and let Aegis activate on a set % trigger. Let that be a viable tanking choice for a Chaplain.
• Litany of Hate - This power should be a default class power similar to an Apothecary heal. It fits the lore and you would feel like a Chaplain even at level 1. At that point replace the Litany of Hate skill close with the Willpower slot below it. Add a combat buff power to Chaplain in the center bottom middle slot. This could be anything from +1 armor, crit buff or an auto % for the Chaplain. Also it could even be an anti drain always active buff for your squad called Spiritual leaders adding into their utility.

Apothecary

• All the Boon powers should have a base 3 or 5 range as there is no reason to be a range 1. Currently Apothecaries are really only taken for the healing and the skull usage.
• Apothecarion Skull is very disappointing as that is the only way to increase boon range. But besides that I don't use it, Medical and Extractors are auto includes compared to the Apothecarion Skull. The Apothecarion Skull also needs to help out with healing efficacy. With the healing nerf, WP is getting harder to come by and Apothecary are low damage so you are going to need to go those executes late game to keep the WP up. Like the Librarian's Price of Power let the Apothecarion Skull give you a chance to refund WP on healing.

Make Bleed and Burning a viable damage path. Right now you are effectively going for a stun execute or a crit build on characters. Please make Bleed and Burning stackable so they become a viable damage type. I'm looking at this from a late game perspective and even with burning having a chance to last forever when you target an enemy it needs to go down in one or two turns. The slow damage over time style of play does not match the game play style you have made and the player needs to be able to stack instances of them.

I'm also not sure if bleed or burning gives EXP and WP to the caster if it kills the target?

Lastly, in the late game I'm finding it really hard to maintain WP. Drain is all over the place, plus the spawn are very small with only a few tough enemies. It would be great to get more enemy diversity making it feel more like 40k as right now I just feel like I reached a difficulty slider threshold. For example Poxwalkers are no longer in the spawn pool it seems and cultists are super rare. Please add some fodder into the mix.
-The easy fix is add a few warp surge spawn reinforcements of cultists or poxwalkers into the late game on top of the challenging spawns.
-The better fix is to have better enemy compositions. Mix things up as it feels really stale late game. Currently I see a lot of Hellbrutes or two termines (sometimes +1) or Herald + two plague bearers or a small group of plague marines or a drone plus 1 or 2 extra enemies.


Coming soon, long term suggestions that will take more time and effect but should make the game better.

 

[Balordazul]

So these changes and suggestions are going to take more time and manpower equating to money.

First you need to get some more knowledgeable people on staff for consulting on 40k lore. The game lore feels around 85% there but then you run into some odd stuff that has a 40k fan doing a double take and asks what the heck was that?

The audio line "Silver Knights" I'm not even sure what is going on here. Daemons would know who Grey Knights are. The Death Guard might have a few that would know about them but they would call them servants or slave of the false emperor. The cultists would have zero clue who a Grey Knight is besides an angel of death.

Also, is Silver Knights like goofy slang like calling Custodes bananas or Ultramarines Blueberries?

Enemies and diversity and AI
We still need a good mix of enemies in the late game. Please create some more diverse patrols and reinforcement spawns.

Nurgling - Add them to the normal game for the love of Nurgle; they are not a rare daemon and one of the most common Nurgle daemons you would encounter. This would take minimal work as they are already in game. They are common to be found in swarms, with other daemons or going back to the glory days (3.5) even tied in with Plague Marines.

Cultists
So what we have in the game is a mix of Cultist and renegade guard and that is fine but they need to feel more like fodder. My suggestion is to increase the unit/spawn sizes of cultists. Reduce the melee damage they can do and reduce the autogun damage. Also give all the cultist weapons a 25% chance to jam on activation and force a reload. This gives them a more swarm feel but also creates a feeling of them being cultists vs a highly trained and well maintained guardsman.

We also need melee cultists being a worse version of Poxwalkers and the Flamer cultists as an alternative to the heavy stubber version we have now.

Poxwalkers, we need more of them please. The current version of them in the game is great but we still need to see them in the late game. Consider adding more reinforcements with them in the later game. Let the herald / plague ridden summon a unit of them.

Plague Marines
The AI for the PM with Plague Belcher is bad. Half the time the enemy just sits back and sprays down an area just encase you might run to him. They need to be more aggressive vs defensive. This is really clear when you play on a gate mission where you can just ignore a plague belcher as they play defensive.

Also please add some spawns of a 7 plague marines as 7 is nurgles number.

The PM Champion's plasma pistol needs to change from 10 range to 7 seeing that it is a pistol. Also add a knockback to the power fist.

We need more plague marine Mobs!
Plague Marine with the following weapons; plasma rifle, meltagun, blight launcher.
Plague Marine Genadere
Plague Marine with great plague cleaver adds a bleed and armour piercing damage.
Plague Marine with mace of contagion and bubotic axe. Give the mace a knockback.
Plague Marine icon bearer used for summoning.

Icon bearers, sorcerers and heralds should be summoning more reinforcements more often.

Blightlords!

All terminators need an AI update so that they use less cover and go for the attack more often. This would keep it close to lore and allow you to add more terminators to the spawns.

I understand why the champion has a shield but honestly it was not needed. yuck
Remove grenades from all blightlords and add different abilities.
Add a kockback of one range for the reaper autocannons.
Add a cone attack for the reaper autocannon at a lower weapon damage value that uses all the ammo.

Where are the standard Blightlord terminators?
We need variants of the current reaper version replacing the reaper with a blight launcher or a plague spewer.
Next let's see some termies with combi weapons and Baleswords. All versions of the gun should be fairly easy. Just only have them fire one at a time vs the bolter and the attached weapon firing at the sametime. bolter, plasma, flamer or melta
The Balesword should have a parry and apply plague on hit besides damage.

Myphitic Blight Hauler
Add the Bile spurt as the overwatch weapon.
The Multi-melta is one of the strongest weapons I have seen in chaos gate but it does not come close to what it does in the lore, books or tabletop. Buff the damage but have the attack changed to a telegraphed attack displayed on the ground in the form of a line attack similar to the charge indicator.

Still waiting to fight a group of three of these.

Foetid Bloat-drone
I'm honestly not sure you all can pull off the feshmower or the plaguespitters.

Helbrute
For the love of god more weapon combinations please.

Also both the helbrute and the Foetid Bloat-drone need an AI update so they can't auto target you when they don't have LOS. I love the Helbrute saying it can't find you or something like that and then shoot your knights perfectly through walls with zero LOS.

Smite for all!
Smite is the basic channeling of the warp into an attack. All GKs and enemy psykers should have it.

Have the minor smite on all GKs but the librarian. Have the minor smite always hit the closest enemy. Keep it at one AP but increase the Warp Surge cost. Also reduce it to 3 damage but make it armor piercing. It should just be an extra tool in the kit.

Remove the smite skill tree from the Paladin and that class really could use another pass.

Have the librarian's version target as is now but changed all versions to armor piercing and the charged version to damage 6.

Neutral and positive warp surges.
In the pool for all the random events that could occur we need a positive RNG result. For example it hits the positive result the code runs a RNG 1-100.
1-75 is Calm Warp - nothing happens
76-99 is Thinned Reality - All psychic powers cost 0 WP but generate 2x Warp Surge cost.
100 Summon Kaldor Draigo - The grandmaster shows up as an AI to wreck house for X number of turns.

Castellan Crowe and purifiers
To start off Purifiers are not an advanced class and should be opened up early on.

Castellan Crowe is odd, he is not all that strong compared to my end game knights. He is also a character that we are paying extra for but mainly to support the developer. I want to suggest some changes with Crowe to make him more interesting.

First we need an event in the early game ideally shortly after the second report to the grandmaster. Crowe comes over a communication to join your force. If you own the DLC you have the option to accept him and then move on with the game. If you don't own the DLC he will send you a trusted Purifier in his place. This purifier should come geared with a themed set of tier 2 weapons and armor. The melee weapon and storm bolter should have % chance afflictions to pair with the class along with an Incinerator.

After either option is chosen the purifier class is now part of the class pool. Also this gives a fun interaction for those that both own the DLC and those that don't.

Lastly Castellan Crowe is a named character and in the tabletop and the lore fairly strong. Crowe should not be part of the normal roster but a Stratagem as something special to deploy. I would recommend a 30 day cool down on the use of him but also buff Crowe a good bit. Like I said before he is ok but not nearly as good as your late game knights armed with tier 3 gear.

Recquition supply drops every 100 days.
When the tracker hits every multiple of 100 you have a minor event. This event lets you pick from the following.
1 random class level 1 knight
1 free respec for a knight
1 random weapon or armor item

The community does want a better way to respec our knights and this recurring event would be simple and fun.

Future DLC / advanced classes
Champion a character that is selfishly designed and focused on self buffs and combat vs synergies. Also it should have some skills that let him gain bonus against (vets,champions and bosses). Weapons are sword and strom bolter but you could do a champions Nemesis force sword.

Brotherhood Techmarine
This one could be fun and tie right into other classes.
First are two different armor types; the base one is a single sevro-arm but lets you field some combat servitors. The second one is the servo harness but I don't think GW calls it that anymore. This is the current stock loadout with four sets of arms, the two sevro-arms, flamer and plasma cutter plus it should give two armor. With the servo harness you would lose access to the combat servators.

Combat servitors should be low health support but require to stay close to the techmarine. They could even be AI scripted to follow the techmarine but be a little goofy in combat compared to your knights. If they die no worries they are just servitors.

Techmarines do get an Omnissian power axe that could be anti mechanical but it cannot forcestrike.

Lastly you can have skills to repair and heal mechanical team members like Dreadnoughts and Dreadknights.

Dreadnoughts
You know we want them but it will take more work so enemies correctly interact with them. For example the Helbrute "grab" would instead shoot at or walk over and hit a dreadnought.

Create a new bay area for you to gear and equip the dreadnoughts and have the capacity directly tied to the barracks upgrades on how many you can have. For example you might get only one mechanical bay slot for every barracks upgrade.

Have a long cool down for maintenance after a dreadnought's deployment. Even coming out of a battle with little to no damage it should take a bit of time for them to be deployed again.

Keep it to one mechanical deployment per mission; dreadnought or dreadknight.

There are a lot of weapon options here but I do want to break the 4th wall a bit if GW would allow it. In 5th edition when Daemon Hunters became this version of Grey Knights the rifleman dread was super popular and it was the twin auto cannons for both arms.

Lastly you need near dead kights to pilot them. So ideally the higher level knight is when he dies determines if it is a Dreadnought or a Venerable Dreadnought. Ideally you have that guy in the tutorial that dies and he could be used in a Ven Dread once you do key upgrades to the ship.

Nemesis Dreadknight
Is there much to say here I'm sure you have been asked about this one many times.

Keep working on the bug smashing and balance patches. I would love for this to feel more like 40k with more enemies and better current enemy diversity in the late game vs a slider just moving up.

I hope to see more classes, rebalances and more of the iconic Deathguard and Nurgle units come into the game. Ideally taking on Thousand Sons or normal CSM in an expansion. Khorne is cool but the CSM units tied to that god have not been redone in more than 20 years.