The Pyro wrote on Feb 28, 2021, 20:38:
jdreyer wrote on Feb 28, 2021, 19:46:
It's pretty slow paced, the weapons feel underpowered, and it's difficult to navigate the environments.
Playing Haz 5 with a full group of 4 dwarves ought to solve at least two of those issues. The game spawns more enemies against a full team. Escort and Salvage missions tend to have the most enemies, and Point Extraction ramps up very quickly. As far as navigation goes, a good driller can get the team almost anywhere, and the gunner's ziplines can handle the rest.
As for underpowered weapons, there are some hefty overclocks available (the engineer's Fat Boy comes to mind - basically a tactical nuke) but it can take a while to grind those out. You need to be promoted before you can start collecting those.
The random caves, unfortunately, can be a bit inconsistent in difficulty - but that's also what gives the game its replay value. It keeps you on your toes. I've had some hellish drops that left 3 out of 4 gold-promoted miners dead within 60 seconds of exiting the drop pod. An unfortunate Korlok or BET-C spawn (random mini-bosses of sorts) can have you scrambling for survival very quickly.
If all a newbie has to say about the weapons is that they feel underpowered, that just makes me think they don't yet have a solid understanding of the basic game mechanics. Every weapon has an upgrade progression, including various ways of increasing damage if that's what you want, which is basically the main reward for leveling up and spending the resources you're gathering. Every enemy has at least one weak spot you should be aiming for, such as the head or obvious glowing soft spot, and some of them can only be dealt significant damage that way. Every class plays a slightly different role on the team, including in combat, and you can't expect all of them to be as effective in straightforward pew-pew as the Gunner. Etc., etc.
That's not to say the balance is perfect, and they are still tweaking it (current roadmap says major balance sweep is incoming as they work on introducing some brand new weapons), but I've never felt it was that much of an issue in my 100+ hours. My guess is that some people choose to play as Scout simply because they see an AR in his hands without realizing that he's a recon/support class and you're not going to be super effective in open combat unless you're very skilled and/or know what you're doing. Of course, he's my favorite class because I am and I do

, but I know I have to rely on my mobility and utility when shit really hits the fan because I can't deal with big groups as well as other classes can. That's just part of the co-op design, and I accept it even though the majority of my playtime is solo.