Elex First Impressions

Originally Posted by vurt
seems like the core mechanics are kind of broken…

quote;

"Lets see. A character with 10 Constitution gains +5 max HP on each level up. Immediately after increasing Constitution above 10 max HP does not change at all. A character with 100 Constitution still gains +5 max HP on each level up. So unless you call a ZERO contribution "minuscule" there is a bug…

P.S. Retested on latest patch."

(devs says core mechanics are not bugged, which many people are reporting).. not sure who to believe.. however they do not seem too interested to respond to the quote above (from the official forum).

I'll give it 6 months before i start playing this i think..

They are assuming the Constitution gives HP but it doesn't in this game. Even if the character had 0 Constitution, they will still get +5hp per level up.

The primary attributes provides nothing at all other than to act as gating mechanism for gear.

Originally Posted by vurt
seems like the core mechanics are kind of broken…

quote;

"Lets see. A character with 10 Constitution gains +5 max HP on each level up. Immediately after increasing Constitution above 10 max HP does not change at all. A character with 100 Constitution still gains +5 max HP on each level up. So unless you call a ZERO contribution "minuscule" there is a bug.

That's already been debunked. It's not a bug. The stats are only for meeting the requirements to use stronger gear.

Originally Posted by vurt
I'll give it 6 months before i start playing this i think..

Suit yourself, but you're missing out on a great game. Easily GOTY for me, and that's saying something because I really liked Prey.

Originally Posted by lostforever
The primary attributes provides nothing at all other than to act as gating mechanism for gear.

Is that supposed to be a plus?

Originally Posted by Drithius
Is that supposed to be a plus?

I think its silly and pointless since why not just put level requirement on gear or something However I don't believe it diminish the game since there is still a meaty RPG system in there.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Is that supposed to be a plus?

Yes. They want to keep the game harder for longer.

In their older Gothic design, for example, you could raise your Strength alone to high levels early in the game and do massive damage with the first weapon you get in the game.

Rather than a direct effect from the Attributes you get the indirect effect of being able to learn better Abilities or equip stronger weapons that deal more damage. It's a gated design, much like the gates they use in the other aspects of their games that makes things more difficult and stretches out the progression more. But later in the game you still become Godlike like any other PB game, it just takes a lot of time to get there in ELEX.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Suit yourself, but you're missing out on a great game. Easily GOTY for me, and that's saying something because I really liked Prey.

I'm not missing out, any game that is patched is better than an unpatched.. you're only missing out if you're playing it when there's still patches and perhaps mods to make it better being made.. very glad i waited almost 2 years to play Witcher 3 (for patches, mods).. my backlog of games is immense

Ok, good to know this is not bugged though.. i guess many people believe its bugged because the descriptions are bad or something.

PB verified that they are working correctly. As for the descriptions themselves, I'm still a bit unclear on that. Some people on Steam are saying the descriptions are correct, i.e. "increases melee damage", but it's an indirect increase by allowing you to equip stronger weapons. But I'm just saying what some PB fans are saying on Steam, I really have no idea other than PB did say the attributes are working correctly.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Yes. They want to keep the game harder for longer.

In their older Gothic design, for example, you could raise your Strength alone to high levels early in the game and do massive damage with the first weapon you get in the game.

Rather than a direct effect from the Attributes you get the indirect effect of being able to learn better Abilities or equip stronger weapons that deal more damage. It's a gated design, much like the gates they use in the other aspects of their games that makes things more difficult and stretches out the progression more. But later in the game you still become Godlike like any other PB game, it just takes a lot of time to get there in ELEX.

Expect it doesn't as you can still get powerful very early on. Just go to all the cities and pickpocket everyone and use the money to make elex potion and you can equip some powerful weapon at low levels.

As I said before, there are better ways to gate gear. They should have simply removed these attributes from game. All they do now is to confuse players since we are used to having attributes giving us benefit.

Originally Posted by lostforever
Expect it doesn't as you can still get powerful very early on. Just go to all the cities and pickpocket everyone and use the money to make elex potion and you can equip some powerful weapon at low levels.

True, but who wants to take ELEX and get hooked and lose their emotions?

And not to get into a huge debate but your point is beside the point I was making. You can also craft infinite iron daggers in Skyrim and do the same thing. The point is, the main attribute system cannot be easily exploited with one attribute like in the Gothic games. I.e. you can't just keep training strength and steamroll the game that way. Other tricks you can use, maybe, but you can't do it with the attributes in ELEX from basic leveling up.

Originally Posted by vurt
I'm not missing out, any game that is patched is better than an unpatched.. you're only missing out if you're playing it when there's still patches and perhaps mods to make it better being made.. very glad i waited almost 2 years to play Witcher 3 (for patches, mods).. my backlog of games is immense

That's one way to look at it. Another is that you're not getting any younger and your backlog isn't getting any smaller.

You're not missing anything by playing a great game when it's new.. especially when it has replayability.

Originally Posted by Fluent
True, but who wants to take ELEX and get hooked and lose their emotions?

I think taking Elex potions should have far higher consequence in the game and increase the cold value lot higher than it does. Right now you can drink all the elex you want and no will will bat an eye lid, specially the zerkers.

Originally Posted by JDR13
That's one way to look at it. Another is that you're not getting any younger and your backlog isn't getting any smaller.

You're not missing anything by playing a great game when it's new.. especially when it has replayability.

My backlog is huge too but some games automatically get pushed up to the top of the list and I think Elex is one of those games!

Originally Posted by lostforever
I think taking Elex potions should have far higher consequence in the game and increase the cold value lot higher than it does. Right now you can drink all the elex you want and no will will bat an eye lid, specially the zerkers.

You have to drink a lot to gain a significant amount of stat points though.

A much bigger issue is how easy it is to obtain raw Elex. I don't think it should be an item that gets restocked by vendors so quickly.

Originally Posted by JDR13
That's one way to look at it. Another is that you're not getting any younger and your backlog isn't getting any smaller.

You're not missing anything by playing a great game when it's new.. especially when it has replayability.

Replaying a game is never really the same as playing it the first time i think, this is why i often prefer to wait until the games has been patched and sometimes modded.

But i get it that people who have no backlog would prefer to play it as quickly as possible.. If it's as good as i'm hoping (i've played a bit) then i would do myself a disservice of playing it when it's not as good as it can be..

Originally Posted by vurt
Replaying a game is never really the same as playing it the first time i think, this is why i often prefer to wait until the games has been patched and sometimes modded.

But i get it that people who have no backlog would prefer to play it as quickly as possible.. If it's as good as i'm hoping (i've played a bit) then i would do myself a disservice of playing it when it's not as good as it can be..

True but you have to draw the line somewhere. Games are being patched and modded years after release. I normally wait for the first or the second patch and then its good to go for myself.

Originally Posted by vurt
But i get it that people who have no backlog would prefer to play it as quickly as possible.. If it's as good as i'm hoping (i've played a bit) then i would do myself a disservice of playing it when it's not as good as it can be..

Oh I have quite a backlog, trust me. I usually push any new Piranha Bytes title to the front though, and it was definitely worth it in this case.

yeah we'll see i guess. I'm always in the mood for this type of game, so it's a lot harder to wait. Gonna finish Mario Odyssey first at least

Any more impressions? I read (on another forum) that avoiding flamethrower and that plasma rifle is probably good, two people thought it ruined the game for them since it was basically god mode when they got them..

Yeah, I think the flamethrower is way overpowered…any low level minion with one does serious damage to me, even at level 25+. That goes the same for laser/plasma weapons as far as I can see (I'm a berserker so I use melee and some range spells). But from what I can see, high levels bows also do serious damage- and there is no way to block them (even if you go sword and board, as I have done) It would be nice a) if a shield actually deflected some arrows or reduced damage from them and b) if there was a spell which gave you a protective bubble against energy for a short period. I tried increasing my fire resistance, but I can't say I noticed much impact. Anyway, as with everything, you figure out ways around these issues…such as jetting in from above, kamikaze style and smacking them before they can point the flamethrower at you ;-)

Originally Posted by vurt
I read (on another forum) that avoiding flamethrower and that plasma rifle is probably good, two people thought it ruined the game for them since it was basically god mode when they got them..

Not at all. Those weapons seem to do more damage to the player when wielded by enemies than vice versa.

It mostly depends on what enemies you're facing though. Some have resistances to certain kinds of damage.

Originally Posted by booboo
But from what I can see, high levels bows also do serious damage- and there is no way to block them (even if you go sword and board, as I have done) It would be nice a) if a shield actually deflected some arrows or reduced damage from them

Huh? I block projectiles with a shield quite often.

*Edit* You know you have to hold down the RMB to block right?