So I popped back in to this on a whim. I felt the need to purge. It must have been a long time since I played because I guess 2.0 was out in June.
Highlights:
-They scrapped the concept of a "gear score." Now, you just have your inquisitor level. Gear also has a level, and you can only use gear that meets your level. Big fan of this. Previously you'd get gear that was numerically inferior to what you were wearing but because it had a higher gear score, you had to use it, so your gear score would rise, so you could do harder missions, so you could get better gear with a higher gear score. It's simplified it.
-Itemization changes. Before it was common, uncommon, rare and relic levels of gear. Relics were the top end. Now, on top of Relic, they've added Ancient Relics and Archeotech Relics.
-Socketing. Previously the end game was "fuse older relics into better relics, level up their power until they unlock 1 or 2 new traits that only relic weapons can have." That system has been replaced by the idea of gear sockets, archeotech shards and psalms. Archeotech shards and psalms add in the extra abilities above and beyond what rolls on the gear. Archeotech shards tend to add more generic abilities, while Psalms can add more interesting unique abilities. Shards can be fused together to enhance their power, and Psalms can be bundled together, mixed or matched to produce new even more unique traits. Gear above Level 50 can roll sockets, and it can roll between 1 and 4 of them. Which isn't all that ideal when you think about it as it's basically double RNG. Not only are you looking for a high level piece of gear to drop, you're looking for it roll max sockets. So in order to smooth this over they....
-Crafting Overhaul. They completely changed the Forge upgrade trees and refunded everything you spent on it. Now, you're pretty much only unlocking the ability to use the new parts of the crafting system. First off though, they reduced the kinds of crafting materials to just the three basic types, Ancient Mechanism, Divine Sparks and one max tier special crafting materials. So now you only have the blue crafting mats, the purple crafting mats, the orange and the red. The greens are gone. I haven't tried to craft any new gear, but I'm guessing that the whole "put different mats in different orders during crafting to tweak what stats you get and how strong they are" is gone. However, you still retain the ability to re-roll the stats on gear. You have the ability to reroll the actual values these stats roll. Now, instead of just an ever escalating credit cost where you can seriously bankrupt yourself just rerolling one piece of gear to perfection, each item gets a limited number of crafting rerolls. Whether you're re-rolling what stats an item has or what the stat values are, the cost is always the same. It costs a chunk of credits and a few high-end crafting components to do these rerolls, but nothing unreasonable. Items dropping for me currently get like 14 or 15 rerolls and I assume that goes up slightly as gear level increases. Once you're out of crafting re-rolls, you still have one option left. You can now directly increase an items item level by 5, one level at a time. The cost of doing this is VERY expensive in terms of credits but if you've got a great piece of gear you simply can't conscious replacing, now, you can at least keep it current for a little while. Lastly, you can add sockets to items even if they have zero to begin with. However doing this requires one of the max tier crafting resources, which basically means if you want to add sockets to shit, you have to be breaking down Archeotech gear, which is really really rare. All in all, I like it, it's much more streamlined and reliable than the old system. A little sad their original crafting system didn't pan out because it was a cool idea, but it made almost no sense when you could spend all these resources and time to craft a new item only to have a new drop completely invalidate it. Sockets and what not I'm still not totally sold on, but I have very little exposure to it yet.
-Missions. Before, you had to operate on a sector by sector basis using the star map to decide where to spend your time. While I love the star map, it was pretty tedious constantly zooming in and out of sectors bouncing around trying to find missions at the right challenge level. The star map is still there, you can browse that way if you want, but now there's just a browser window that displays all the missions near to your level, and it lists the enemies you'll face, the map, the mission type and the sector its in and how much influence you currently have there. There's a section for all the special kinds of missions to, and the special locations, so all your mission planning and execution can be done in one spot. Very nice, even though you basically have no reason to look at the star map ever again.
-Challenge system is gone. Previously, on any mission you could say what difficulty level you wanted it at, and it'd inflate the power level of the enemies and the rewards. I never liked it, personally. I always seemed to be picking stuff like "Impossible difficulty" or "Insane difficulty" just so I was actually challenged. All that shit is gone now. The level of the mission is the level of the mission. If it's 4 higher than your currently level, it's a hard mission and you're dealing like -75% damage and taking +185% damage.
-Tarot missions are now integrated into regular missions. Previously you had to queue up a Tarot mission which cost you fate. By choosing the tarot cards you'd dictate what the enemies were, what kind of mission it was, what additional challenges would be added to the tarot mission (limited time, limited deaths, etc....) and what kind of loot you'd expect to see. Now, you can add Tarot cards to any mission you're doing (except priority assignments.) Tarot cards sorta still function the same but with some differences. Each Tarot card you use just gives you a flat bonus to loot. But then each one will increase the chances of what you might get. (So one card increases the chances of Archeotech Shards dropping, etc and so forth.) No longer do Tarot cards dictate what enemies you'll face, that's determined by the mission you apply them to. And THEN the "malus" part of cards has been randomized. Cards will generically say "Will apply a penalty to your character's defenses" or "Enhance enemy attack" and this can be anything from all enemies are now Heavily Armored, to Time Limits, to Death Limits, to Can't Use Your Inoculator" and more. You only know what malus has been applied once you've chosen a Tarot card for the mission and once chosen it can't be changed until the mission is beaten or failed. They also added a rare set of "Tarot Emblems" that, like the old system, make very specific the loot that will drop. So one might be "Get more glory for the mission" or "Get more credits" or "Have belt items drop". So now you can really tailor mission difficulty and reward to exactly what you want and what you can tolerate but there's still a slightly random element to it. FWIW I was doing red difficulty missions with my Psyker with No Inoculator healing and double Heavily Armored for enemies and still managing to squeak by, although often by the skin of my teeth. Lastly, there's drops you can earn when using Tarot cards in missions that upgrade said tarot cards so the bonuses (and penalties) get stronger.
-Warzone is no longer the end game. Everything you've done in the warzone up until now was converted into a flat Credit and Fate reward and everyone's warzone progress was zeroed out. You can still play the warzone missions but there's no longer the warzone gear or modifiers except what comes with the mission itself.
-The new endgame is "Void Crusades." I haven't had any real exposure to them, but they basically remind me of the sequential missions of Warzones. There's two kinds (two paths) to the Crusades. In order to get in to them and progress them, you need to get Void Shards as part of mission rewards. Get enough and you can start a Void Crusade, and then you'll need to unlock each part of it. There's the "White Crusade" and the "Black Crusade" variety of Void Shards. No idea what the difference is between them.
-Ragna now sells a lot more stuff. This is more crafting related, but there's relic, ancient relic and archeotech relic crafting recipes now, all of which she sells. Seems like her recipes start at Artificer and only go up from there, no more green recipes, although maybe that's based on your character level. (It sure as hell isn't based on our cabal unlocks
) She also just sells straight up loot crates for all rarity levels, which cost a hefty (500+) chunk of Fate. All the consumable buffs are still for sale as well.
I saved this for last but it's arguably the most important:
-Massive improvements to performance. I don't know what they did. Did they clean up levels, or remove a bunch of extra shit that was just clogging things up? I dunno but the game plays a hell of a lot smoother now. I suspect its some kind of culling because I see guys occasionally disappear then reappear, but man. Before the game would dip below 30 FPS on the reg, sometimes when there's combat, but sometimes when you're just running around too. Now it plays way smoother, my character feels faster and more responsive, my attacks seem faster.....it was an immediate thing I noticed. I'm sure some stuff still runs like shit (Warzones) but general mission gameplay actually feels good to play now throughout. Big ups for this one.
They've added more grind overall with these changes but it's come with a ton of QoL upgrades that make it less tedious to play. Crafting feels like it may be worth the time to invest in now. There's more kinds of rewards to look for and more ways to control difficulty and what you're getting out of it. I'm still not sure if it's balanced. I remember the last time I played there's a repeatable special mission that's still in game where I'd walk out of it with 5 or 6 Relics because my Psyker is just that broken. Begged the question why I would spend my time doing anything else for gear. No idea if that stuff has been rebalanced or not but I plan to check it out.
Martyr feels like it's at the point I could recommend it to friends who have been waiting to get in to it. If you're already a Martyr player, might be worth your time to pop back in and check it out as well.
I know I'm just rehashing what Biowrath posted months ago but I guess I felt the need to write.
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Topic: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr (Read 5683 times)