Globally Lower/Scale Player Damage At Late Game

Greetings Devpeoples,

This particular post is going to be very, very blunt. It references specifically the late game environment post-Watch and Ascended Realms. This post will probably ruffle some folks feathers, and I'm okay with that, as long as it provokes valuable discussion.

TL/DR Start

This game is full of wonderfully rich lore, world building, design. So many concepts here sing to me, and I love almost all of them. Except for Combat. And it's not even that combat is lax in prevalence, it's everywhere within the game. It's just that is some of the least engaging combat I've encountered, when it comes to late game. Due to the way the different elements all come together, materials, items, charms, enchantments, etc, each of these elements takes the Player and catapults them into the realm of effective Godhood.

I hoped that as difficulty scaled, the player would keep pace. That there would be a need for me to find allies, for there to be challenges that I could not overcome on my own.
And for there to be challenges I couldn't simply brute force with a shotgun to the face. Where I would need to learn how the enemy attacks, tailor my weapons to defeat them. To be thrilled by battle that challenged me, and to meet that challenge and emerge victorious.
The Apex Vault bosses initially gave off this feeling, until I first encountered them, and learned how easily defeat-able they are. The first purchase I made was the DB Shotgun, and since then I've never needed to be concerned with the Apex bosses presenting even remotely a challenge ever again.

And because of this, combat ceased being engaging. And thus, so did anything creature related. It now just became a game of mindless, effortless, resource grinding and some building.

I love the Lore, I love the world you've built to contain it, I love the designs of the creatures and Bound. And I absolutely hate the way combat feels and functions.

As such, I've made this post (finally), and assembled a few lists of things. Things that can happen currently (without exploits), the impact I feel these Things have upon the game, and then a list of changes to these Things that would, I feel, help bring value to this currently underperforming element of the game.

TL/DR End!

It should be noted that my ideal goal from this would be that, through a variety of changes, that the End Game becomes an achievable challenge. The player doesn't need to be fighting Dark Souls level of difficulty throughout all stages of the game. But there should be some challenge that players can seek out, combat wise, whilst using the best gear we have available to make that challenge beatable, not simply effortless.

The following things are happening:

• We can 1-shot every single creature in the game at maximum difficult with every single weapon in the game.

• We can clear rooms and pods instantly with a single grenade throw or cast of Quake or shockwave.

• We demolish the hardest vault Apex's with zero effort or challenge or difficulty.

• Our damage reaches into the many millions with every single weapon in the game.

• Absolutely zero threat is applicable from any single creature in the game. Nothing can kill us, our HP is through the roof, I can easily facetank a 220 Apex and do nothing whilst my faithful Survivor kills it for me.

• The Players Are Gods.

Things this causes:

• Creature Design is essentially meaningless.
  You cannot challenge players with interesting creatures and design without addressing the sheer output that players are doing. Any new Bound are worthless, they die just as quickly, even the Aegis (the current tankiest Bound), dies in a single hit from a grenade, throwing knife, or gunshot or stab.
  It doesn't matter if you make pretty looking Bound, I never get to see them, they die the second their spawn immunity is gone, often before they even visually fully load in.

• Multiplayer Online is essentially meaningless.
  There is no reason to play with others online to defeat or overcome challenges, because there are no challenges to defeat or overcome that even require other people, in the late game. There is next to no existent capability to build communally (not a build limit gripe, just a statement), or trade, or anything. Multiplayer in this instance has very limited purpose.
  Exception: In fact, the only time multiplayer is actually valuable is the early game and when first arriving at the Watch, when the creatures are actually a challenge due to having terrible gear and materials since the Player has not made it into Ascended realms and end-game recipes for gear etc.

• Item Statistic Caps are essentially worthless.
  Players are reaching this damage capability without coming even close to reaching what seems to be absurdly high cap limits. As was mentioned when they were released, barring a few parts, it would be unlikely these caps would ever be reached.
  In this case, why were caps for everything except movement speed even released?
  Move speed is the legitimately only statistic maximum cap that can be guaranteed reached, and is the only statistic actually being reigned in by the stat caps.
  The rest are not.
  Exception: The stat caps -do- work to (somewhat?) reign in Exploited items and materials, such as folded ingots and foods etc. However, the goal is to not even HAVE these items and materials, so the caps being generally worthless remains valid in the context of actual balance.

• Potions are worthless.
  There is zero incentive for a player to make any of these potions. They cost resources, and offer zero benefit to players because there is no current challenge in the game that requires ever making these.

Things that could be done to resolve this:

• Charms stack additively, not multiplicatively. At the moment charms multiply off of each other, rather than adding to each other. Having two charms of +50% does not = +100%. Instead, it equals +125%. This scales with every single charm added that adds these kinds of multipliers, resulting in some -very- big numbers.

• Split charms up to different weapons and damage types. Basically, make less +damage charms apply to the same things so fewer can be stacked.

• Move the late-game Dauntless/Mystic (and some others like druid/hermetic) item sets later into the Ascended Realms (ideally toward the end). Mystic/Dauntless are accessible almost the same instant that the lesser tier Ornate/Rugged are. Players should spend time progressing through those items first.

• Lower Soft Caps on items so that they are actually relevant (soft caps for Ranged Damage don't kick in until far too late, for instance).

• Apply statistic caps to the character as a whole, rather than (or in addition to) the individual items.

• Change the way attributes are increased when increasing the tier of the clothing using the upgrade bench (dramatically lower the increase value or even remove increasing it entirely).

• Lower the base Damage and/or Critical Damage values on weapons.

• Stop main-handed one-handed weapons applying their statistics (such as critical multiplier from a hunting knife) from affecting off-hand one-handed weapons (such as grenades).

• Overall greater HP/Damage increases from higher Realm Power levels. 220 Realm Power -should- feel something like a challenge, especially with the Apexes. (One of my most preferred is this one)

• Remove the ability to stack multiple infusions of the same type on the same item.

• Add resistances to enemies (Kyrosiphon's having 100% Fire Resist, etc).

• Change the way Critical Damage is calculated from Critical Damage +% and Critical Damage x multipliers. It is within ability to reach critical damage of nearing x100 damage, currently, before taking charm damage multiplication into account on top of this.

• Balance the resurgence of Best In Class materials -again- so that they're less obscenely powerful. (These are the Fabled Apex Materials, which reverted back to the Pre-v0.2.1 power levels, some even got better than that.)

The answer is likely more complex than any single option, and will likely be from a combination of several elements to achieve a balanced, enjoyable, and challenging combat experience. Seeing as combat is a very distinctive part of the game, achieving this outcome is desperately needed. To me, this game cries out to be more than a simple power trip experience, so very much more.

As always, I wish to thank you for your time and continued development of this wonderful game.

Kind Regards,

Kahz