Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - turn-based Warhammer 40k RPG from Owlcat Games - now with Void Shadows DLC

[Grauken]

even though I think it goes a bit too often into grimderp (aka grim stupidity, especially for Eldars).

I thought this was by design (WH40K not being 100% serious)?

Some fans deny this because they can't deal with WH40K being an inside joke from the beginning, but basically yes

All millennial shit is joking/not joking because they can’t handle the merely real, then they pat themselves on the back like chucklefucks if somebody tries to ride the bike without their training wheels.

Hope this helps.

I don't understand millennial or zoomer talk, can you decode what you said kid, and translate it to something normal people understand?

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

even though I think it goes a bit too often into grimderp (aka grim stupidity, especially for Eldars).

I thought this was by design (WH40K not being 100% serious)?

Some fans deny this because they can't deal with WH40K being an inside joke from the beginning, but basically yes

All millennial shit is joking/not joking because they can’t handle the merely real, then they pat themselves on the back like chucklefucks if somebody tries to ride the bike without their training wheels.

Hope this helps.

I don't understand millennial or zoomer talk, can you decode what you said kid, and translate it to something normal people understand?

Desiderius yells at clouds, news at 11.

 

[Desiderius]

even though I think it goes a bit too often into grimderp (aka grim stupidity, especially for Eldars).

I thought this was by design (WH40K not being 100% serious)?

Some fans deny this because they can't deal with WH40K being an inside joke from the beginning, but basically yes

All millennial shit is joking/not joking because they can’t handle the merely real, then they pat themselves on the back like chucklefucks if somebody tries to ride the bike without their training wheels.

Hope this helps.

I don't understand millennial or zoomer talk, can you decode what you said kid, and translate it to something normal people understand?

Don't sell yourself short.

(All-knowing -> Know nothing pivot is a variation of the same thing)

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Do we have any info when is the next dlc scheduled? Assuming its the adeptus arbites companion

 

[Parsimonious cook]

It was supposed to be out in December IIRC, though it probably got pushed back to the start of the next year.

 

[Galdred]

It was supposed to be out in December IIRC, though it probably got pushed back to the start of the next year.

Void shadows had been pushed 3 months or so, right? So DLC 2 should be pushed the same at least.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Patience is a virtue.

 

[Grauken]

even though I think it goes a bit too often into grimderp (aka grim stupidity, especially for Eldars).

I thought this was by design (WH40K not being 100% serious)?

Some fans deny this because they can't deal with WH40K being an inside joke from the beginning, but basically yes

All millennial shit is joking/not joking because they can’t handle the merely real, then they pat themselves on the back like chucklefucks if somebody tries to ride the bike without their training wheels.

Hope this helps.

I don't understand millennial or zoomer talk, can you decode what you said kid, and translate it to something normal people understand?

Don't sell yourself short.

(All-knowing -> Know nothing pivot is a variation of the same thing)

If you talked like that in real life to people too, I would be surprised if nobody has punched you in the face yet

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm almost done with Chapter 1. I'm liking the game quite a lot. Hard difficulty is the first one where I'm not at risk of falling asleep. The story provides great opportunities for roleplaying. Some gimmicky fights in the monastery, keep things more interesting. The writing doesn't fall into cringe as it did in WotR occasionally, I would even call it inspiring, playing a dogmatic comissar. It's been rather linear, however, let's see if it opens up going forward.

BTW it was discounted a week ago on GOG, so I bought it along with the season pass for $30 or so. I thought about pirating to try it out for 10 hrs but then saw it's discounted, so I just said whatever.

 

[Harthwain]

I'm almost done with Chapter 1. I'm liking the game quite a lot. Hard difficulty is the first one where I'm not in risk of falling asleep. The story provides great opportunities for roleplaying. Some gimmicky fights in the monastery, keep things more interesting. The writing doesn't fall into cringe as it did in WotR occasionally, I would even call it inspiring, playing a dogmatic comissar. It's been rather linear, however, let's see if it opens up going forward.

Chapter 1 and 2 are the best, because fights are still quite lethal. Later on enemies get very spongy and you're pretty much forced to "take them down on your first turn before they can take you down on their first turn" (unless something changed after patches, I still have to revisit the game).

 

[Axel_am]

Oh, and on more thing. Operative still sucks monkeh ass.

Interesting, because to me Operatives-Bounty Hunters were the main damage dealers (right after Soldiers-Arch-Militants), especially against high-dodge enemies.

You can be a Bounty Hunter with a Warrior archetype.
Either way it looks like I'll be finding more use for them now, seeing how much beefier the units in Act II are.

 

[Harthwain]

You can be a Bounty Hunter with a Warrior archetype

Wait, what? Did they change something? I thought a Warrior could only get an Assassin, a Vanguard or an Arch-Militant as Advanced Archetype (which makes sense, considering that Warrior is very in-your-face playstyle)? In order to be a Bounty Hunter you'd need Operative or Soldier (so a sniper or a gunman type, both of which are ranged characters).

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm almost done with Chapter 1. I'm liking the game quite a lot. Hard difficulty is the first one where I'm not in risk of falling asleep. The story provides great opportunities for roleplaying. Some gimmicky fights in the monastery, keep things more interesting. The writing doesn't fall into cringe as it did in WotR occasionally, I would even call it inspiring, playing a dogmatic comissar. It's been rather linear, however, let's see if it opens up going forward.

Chapter 1 and 2 are the best, because fights are still quite lethal. Later on enemies get very spongy and you're pretty much forced to "take them down on your first turn before they can take you down on their first turn" (unless something changed after patches, I still have to revisit the game).

Nah, enemies do not take you down on their turn anymore, except last fight of Act 4 (and somewhat in boss fight of Act 3)

 

[Axel_am]

You can be a Bounty Hunter with a Warrior archetype

Wait, what? Did they change something?

No, my bad. I meant to write Soldier.

 

[Owlcat_Eyler]

Do we have any info when is the next dlc scheduled? Assuming its the adeptus arbites companion

It won't be in December, that's for sure. Approximate dates should appear on Steam soon enough, and the announcement of the second DLC will be published later (not sure when).

 

[Pathfinder: WoTR]

This is definitely the weakest owlcat game IMO. There's potential here, but the empty boring overworld and the way combat just boils down to "whoever goes first wins" has killed the game for me by the end of act 4.

It feels like owlcat has created an inherently broken combat system and instead of fixing it they just decided to balance the encounters around the initiative/heroic action cheese. The core problems for me are:

1. Extremely high combat lethality and potency of turn-skipping debuffs. If you let the enemy go first, they usually blow up or disable one or more of your entourage before you even get to your turn. Which is made worse by the fact that most boss arenas have terrible cover placement, depriving of you of the only thing that allows you to survive turn 1.
   
   This leads to officer+strategist being pretty much a mandatory party member on any difficulty above daring to ensure you can actually disable or eliminate the high value targets before they evaporate argenta or throw 10 stun grenades.
   
   The high lethality of combat also feels at conflict with the underlying RPG system, which is seemingly designed with longer battles in mind: all the stackable buffs in game seem to be designed for the battles that go for 5+ rounds, not 1-2 rounds which is usually the case.
   
   
2. Burst weapon supremacy. Seems like originally they had a classic rock-paper-scissors system going on with hp,dodge and armor being countered by burst, laser and melta/plasma, respectively. but instead of leaning into it and capitalizing on the different styles of defense and requiring the player to use different weapons for different enemies, they just made every enemy a HP tank with mediocre armor and dodge stats. Which is made worse by the sheer abndance of class talents that remove armor and dodge from enemies, making specialized weapons like melta, plasma and laser completely unnecessary. There's really no reason (except the cool factor ofc, plasma guns fuck) to pick them over burst weapons, because at the end of the day you just need damage numbers to reliably kill the 5000hp+ bosses.

I wouldn't say it's unsalvageable. There's definitely a fun combat system hidden somewhere underneath layers of bad decisions, and I hope one day some gigabrain modder would fix it (they managed to fix the abysmal DOS2 combat with Divinity Unleased, after all). But as of now the combat peaks at late act1-early act2 and then it's a steep downhill from there, becoming just plain unfun to play by act4. I don't really see myself replaying this untill some kind of a total combat overhaul mod releases.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It feels like owlcat has created an inherently broken combat system and instead of fixing it they just decided to balance the encounters around the initiative/heroic action cheese.

By the time I reach Act4 I may agree with you, but, well, "this has all happened before". Have you played D:OS2? Don't, just watch some footage of their gimmick fights. In that game initiative only determines who goes first, and from there onwards it's hardcoded to rotate between friendly and enemy characters. So there is worse yet than Rogue Trader.

 

[Dayyālu]

There's definitely a fun combat system hidden somewhere underneath layers of bad decisions

I'd say most of the fun of the combat system is unintentional, born of the marriage of a pseudo nu-Xcom system and the Fantasy Flight's RPG roots. It's not particularly difficult to see that the further the game goes from the baseline "Dark Heresy RPG" roots the less manageable the entire system becomes, before it essentially collapses on itself during Act 3. I've been told the patches at least made the game playable and the last DLC added content that was probably cut from the base game and is decently done (Genestealers), but if you enjoyed yourself up until Act 4 you're made of sterner stuff than many.

I'm still amazed that apparently no-one at Owlcat played their own game after a certain point, the problems are so evident that a child could point them out. HP bloat, free health refills and unskippable invincibility are the standard bandaids of terrible game design and Rogue Trader drinks deeply of each and every one instead of doing, well, combat encounter design.

 

[Pathfinder: WoTR]

By the time I reach Act4 I may agree with you, but, well, "this has all happened before". Have you played D:OS2? Don't, just watch some footage of their gimmick fights. In that game initiative only determines who goes first, and from it's hardcoded to rotate between friendly and enemy characters. So there is worse yet than Rogue Trader.

I actually mentioned DOS2 as a positive example of a "terrible combat system salvaged by mods". Divinity Unleashed doesn't fix the ridiculous initiative system, but it reworks the armor, nerfs the turn skipping debuffs and makes elemental surfaces more potent, capitalizing on the strengths of the original game's combat (positioning, area denial, environmental manipulation shenanigans).

 

[AwesomeButton]

By the time I reach Act4 I may agree with you, but, well, "this has all happened before". Have you played D:OS2? Don't, just watch some footage of their gimmick fights. In that game initiative only determines who goes first, and from it's hardcoded to rotate between friendly and enemy characters. So there is worse yet than Rogue Trader.

I actually mentioned DOS2 as a positive example of a "terrible combat system salvaged by mods". Divinity Unleashed doesn't fix the ridiculous initiative system, but it reworks the armor, nerfs the turn skipping debuffs and makes elemental surfaces more potent, capitalizing on the strengths of the original game's combat (positioning, area denial, environmental manipulation shenanigans).

Remarkable, though still not enough to get me interesred in the game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm still amazed that apparently no-one at Owlcat played their own game after a certain point, the problems are so evident that a child could point them out. HP bloat, free health refills and unskippable invincibility are the standard bandaids of terrible game design and Rogue Trader drinks deeply of each and every one instead of doing, well, combat encounter design.

All three of their games seem to not have been finished production-wise, or qa-wise.

Once-bigshot RPG developer Obsidian also released its KS project in a state of "first-draft writing, without an editing pass" in 2015. And that was acceptable. I blame the audiences.

 

[thesecret1]

Combat system is what's holding me from giving the game a playthrough, hoping they'll eventually fix at least the most glaring issues.

I dropped the game mid-act 2 because the combat became braindead. Stun or outright kill all the trash with Cassia's cone of doom, then give her a second turn with officer so she can do her laser beam or whatever and rape the boss. If that's not enough, Abelard will rush in and, in combination with his heroic ability, will do enough damage to obliterate virtually anything. The rest of the team doesn't even get to play.

 

[Pathfinder: WoTR]

I dropped the game mid-act 2 because the combat became braindead. Stun or outright kill all the trash with Cassia's cone of doom, then give her a second turn with officer so she can do her laser beam or whatever and rape the boss. If that's not enough, Abelard will rush in and, in combination with his heroic ability, will do enough damage to obliterate virtually anything. The rest of the team doesn't even get to play.

Outright avoiding officers and burst weapons made act1-2 combat enjoyable for me. Arranging enemies into neat rows for a plasma barrage with Cassia's navigator magic or planning a perfect turn for a sword-and-gun arch militant to stack as much versatility as possible by alternating between shooting and melee is where the game was shining for me.

Act3 and beyond is where the fun stuff stops working and you are pretty much forced into officer+strategist play style and combat devolves into "kill everything on turn one with finest hour 10 heavy bolter burst attacks or die instantly".

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Avoided officers and auto weapons, made it to last chapter, had a lot of fun

 

[ArchAngel]

I avoided broken characters like Argenta and Cassia and Heinrix, still game becomes super easy by Act 3.