Hello Hellgate. I play the HC characters Honeybeard, Upgrayedd, Zergling, Avail and Fargowoodchippr. I play mostly jank builds to offset my challenge level, and I’ve been here a year and a half. These are my concerns for patch 1.5.15 onwards.
First the big elephant in the room: what in the world happened to the difficulty and the endgame? It seems like many challenges that a Lv 50 character might rise to face have been removed. When I log on to solo now, I have the option to run Catacombs or the Wilds, because the entire normal game (and areas like Australia) have been nerfed (‘Token’ events are thankfully still here, when requirements are met and there is a large enough population to run them). Another way to say it, why was endgame removed from an old game with nothing to replace it? Hellgate used to have a charming bevy of challenge at the endgame that was included in the original design. If you found a story quest or point challenging, you had a myriad of options to level in the other content included in stonehenge and parliament square… you never hit a brick wall or were simply stopped. The Syd fight, with the equipment available to us was a white knuckled thirty minute high level challenge. My latest characters ran him at 46 and 47, and he was dead shortly after the first growl. Hellgate always let the players pick the difficulty level they wanted to play at(it was just never explicitly stated) and that is exactly where a game like this should be. Now it feels like players do not have a choice. It feels like at this point some of the only challenge left is to run a new character through the game so quickly that you are 7-10+ levels under your opponents. After the character hits 50 it is in a sense “ruined”, as you can no longer face higher level opponents. This is a terrible feeling for an action RPG, and ‘underleveling’ is harder to pull off since all of that content has been simplified as well. It feels like the new target audience is children instead of ‘old school gamers that loved hellgate london’, but children are generally not even technically apt enough to find their way here.
Here is one I don’t even see in the patch notes or discussed at all: removal of nearly all the high level items from the high level areas that still exist. Previously, endgame drops were a three circle venn diagram between augmentations, rarity and level(one could argue type in here as well). For along time this system has provided so many possibilities that this sixteen year old list of items was always still fresh- but now there are really only two circles left. If you do the math, this cuts your availability of competing items by far more than that third. If you think practically about what this does to “Items that can compete with endgame uniques” (The category that these items truly fall in for a 50) you will find this has killed most of the possibilities here. That is to say, how many non-unique items are on your endgame characters? That category (all other items combined, a category that should be massive) was already a small minority compared to uniques, it is now much smaller. Item level in particular (higher stats)was really the only thing that competed with items that allow for far more augs, have much higher natural augs and also grey augs that you can ‘double up’ on. Now these are basically only dropped from Imhotep or Molloch? This hurts build and equipment options and endgame diversity.
Regarding Tracy and her parliament square quest: being able to cycle for the item type you want enabled jank builds. As far as I can figure, jank builds are 1. not threatening the power level in any way and 2. good for the game on every level(some of these were clearly Flagship’s intention but made -jank- by a lack of support). Ive had SC players ask about and pick up my melee ENG/drone and desolator/kilij guardian builds and that is good for the game, more variety and things to do is always a positive. With tracy gone, a lot of these builds are no longer viable. I will never be able to create another cricket bat blademaster when Zergling dies; the item is too rare and the community too small. Fargowoodchippr died to the thunderstruck bug shortly after patch and I can not find her replacement another bladefrenzy: same issue. The class is effectively dead and the new Fargo has to carry a gun now. The tradeoff to finding such an item was significant, it sometimes took -hours- to find these items from here with slots(and then you roll augs and pray). Tracy was not breaking anything(that I am aware of) but added a lot of diversity to the game. Taking this away takes a lot of build possibilities with it. These items only occasionally ‘enabled’ play in areas like catacombs, they did not ever dominate it. This is easily more important to the game than the function of a single daily quest (just set quest to kill instead of item condition). Lets also briefly touch on the Escape skill here- this was changed this to only work with ‘stealth’ skills. Stealth skills is an extremely small category available only on new items right? What this does is hurt the two closest range hunter builds, melee ENG and grenadier. These two builds (that max out tactical use rate) badly needed the extra ability to weave in and out of melee. Now these specialized (tight)builds need to force new items that they do not want to use? This only seems to hurt what are possibly the two weakest hunter builds here. Having this skill as Tactical fit in perfectly with the two archtypes that needed it most often.
This patch also broke something critical in the hellgate matrix. Previously, the only enemies untargetable or bugged were occasional infernal titan types, and you just had to wait for them to teleport again to fix it. Now enemies and bosses of all types are becoming untargetable on a daily basis. Sometimes this appears to be the footprint in a different location than the model, and you can ‘shoot this other spot’ to hit them, but not all of them(drone with a beam weapon can sometimes find this ‘spot’). Some enemies like Belphagor will bug out for some period of time unmoving, and then unleash all of the pent up actions in a dangerous rapid succession. A lot of times it is better to just leave the instance if you see it, as one does not know if they will die to a bug(also similar behavior to lag/disconnect).
I do not understand for the life of me how SC does not share any of these concerns. If the fear of death is removed along with the challenge, what is left besides a mercantile game of shiny things and making money? The boomerang/rebounder changes are the best thing here, but I have lost twice as many characters now coming around a corner to a thunderstruck type enemy(no thunder gfx, just thunder sfx then loading screen). A LOT of hardcore characters have died in this way since the patch.
I wish I had more positive things to say here. The hellgate community has been wonderful. During the 22-23 end of year event, I remarked that I had never run Molloch, and Psyona took me on my first run. The hardcore community is filled with individuals of great character that all look out for each other. The additional affixes seem appropriate and increase build diversity and options, especially mage/knight/soldier because DE and myth helms needed something(DE still needs more). “When hit” nova items working is excellent, but I now have to throw away every armor or weapon that rolls electric discharge on hit or kill because I can not tell them apart from enemies and do not want to die. You have all done some great work with balancing out skills, and I would not be able to do many of these jank builds if you had not. Of the new items that were added, several at least put a dent in the meta and that is a great thing. Looking at the changes that happened before I landed, I generally agree wholeheartedly with the direction the game was moving in. This patch seems like a giant step in the wrong direction. Since closed station is indefinitely on hold, and this patch was supposed to “steamline into the new endgame of closed station”, have you considered putting this content back into the game? If not and closed station is hinged on a dev who disappeared and has not been heard from in over a year, have you considered handing the reigns of the project to a dev or team capable of further development at that level? The prospect of getting stuck at this point of development is daunting.
Unrelated to the patch, the server maintenance at the end of April seems to have permanently changed the server. There have been disconnections every day, but they are not severing the player instance from the game. A LOT of hardcore characters have died in the last twelve days that were not in danger when disconnected, but the game ‘kept them’ in the universe long enough to kill them without available input from the player.
If this is not fixed, hardcore will not be playable anymore.
Also unrelated to the patch, changing skullsplitter from a skillshot to a grenade took easily the greatest joy from evoker. It was a lot of fun going for a half court skillshot lob every two to three seconds, and if something needed to happen to the skill it should have been otherwise changed. High ceiling abilities make a class and should be explored and expanded instead of curtailed.
The new character voices needed to be recorded in similar ways or run through an experienced sound engineer, they do not fit into the game and break immersion.
If possible, all of this could be fixed for players by providing a portal to “Old Hellgate” where players could play the classic hellgate london content, difficulty level and drops with multiplayer available(insert any necessary warnings for snowflakes). It feels like the original version has once again become the ultimate version of hellgate, but I could not play with this awesome community and all the friends I have made there. Regardless of any differences in opinion, my heart and respect go out to anyone working on this beloved game from my childhood that has suffered so many tragic fates.
[tl;dr]I dont find nice things in catacombs anymore and don’t have anywhere else to go.