Well this is a welcome surprise! And boy are these some huge changes! An assault rifle that doesn't degrade? It's a shame you have to kill (or pickpocket??) Kokoschka to get it, though. Maybe you could implement an optional quest for Free Drones members that rewards you with the AKX, so you don't have to betray your faction to get it?
Also, that value decrease is going to make Dominating even more difficult than it already is, and not in a positive way, I fear. All the more reason to spec Mercantile, I suppose. Looks like you're going to need to take Mercantile if you want to stand any chance of completing a Dominating playthrough now.
The same goes for the Quick Tinkering nerf, but I think we all saw that coming. I just hope that the number of Death Stalkers in the game is suitably reduced to account for the primary method of dealing with them now being noticeably weakened.
(Seriously, tone down on the Death Stalkers. In my entire Dominating playthrough, I only ever encountered one regular Crawler. All the rest were Death Stalkers. I know it's called Dominating for a reason, but 7 in one zone? In the Upper Caves? That's too far.)
- Special attack damage bonus no longer works with "unconditional" special attacks, which are special attacks that do not have a cooldown or require special conditions to trigger. So far these are: burst, shotgun burst, heavy punch, and double shot
This is an absolutely gigantic nerf to burst fire builds. I always thought the effects from Smart Goggles and Modules really shouldn't stack and so mostly used the Goggles only, but the loss of that smaller bonus alone still represents a significant reduction in damage output. Maybe there's something I don't know, but this seems like an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach. :S
I have to agree with Hazard. I know that burst builds were some of the strongest in the game, but if you're going to nerf burst builds so hard, what about all the other OP builds in the game? (*cough*
Locus Builds*cough*) It doesn't seem like psi builds are being nerfed at all, for that matter. Oh well. We'll just have to see how the new feats and specializations change things. That Versatility feat certainly seems like a good one to take! Free skill points! It almost sounds too good to be true.
As somebody who used an SMG special attack burst build w/ Quick Tinkering and w/o Mercantile to get through Dominating (barely), this patch has single-handedly wrecked my entire build.
I don't really mind, because I'll still be more than strong enough to get through Expedition; I just think it's funny how significantly this one patch has impacted my whole build. xD
My whiny complaining aside, I'm still very excited to play Expedition when I have the time. You guys have worked incredibly hard on this thing for years, and I can't wait to see how it all turns out! I know it'll make this masterpiece of a game even more incredible.
Keep up the great work, you guys. Merry Christmas!
(Digging the new logo, by the way.)
