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First off, big thanks to everyone who spent time trying things out on the ETR this weekend and providing feedback. We've parsed reams of feedback from reddit, discord, youtube, etc., and there several common threads we'd like to address and give more clarity on.
Why are you even doing this?
One of the longest-standing points of feedbackabout Dauntless is that the meta is stale and builds all look the same. Which is true, and it's something we want and need to address.
Rage, Wild Frenzy, and Discipline are the common thread, and for good reason. The first 2 grant large amounts of the two most powerful stats in the game —"raw" damage and attack speed. Add Discipline, and they're always on — no conditional activation, no timer. The tradeoff is being locked at half health, which is not an issue for skilled players. For those who can't yet dodge every attack, there's Iceborne. Again, always on access to the best sustain ability in the game.
The always-on nature of these buffs is incredibly warping for the meta. There’s no reason not to take this setup. It’s good in every fight, with every weapon, at every skill level. As long as it exists, there will be no meaningful diversity in Cell loadout choice.
We set out to tackle this issue with these goals in mind: Allow for multiple, equally viable builds to exist Have the choice of build be based on personal preference for a playstyle, or the fight you are building for Keep the playstyles that the top Cells supported (high-risk / high-reward, high survivability), but make the effects themselves mutually exclusive Not power creep the game Not scrap the entire Perk / Cell system and start over
Omnicells are the result. They also have the benefit of being a new thing, that you can craft from Behemoth parts, and that we can release on a regular cadence.
Why don't you just add new "meta" cells?
We’ve tried. It doesn’t work so well.
Tenacious was an attempt at making a “full-life” build that could compete with the low-life meta. Because of its more conditional nature, it didn’t really make a dent.
Cascade cracked the meta, but it just replaced poorer-performing Cells in players’ builds and added to power creep. In order to even do that, it had a whole kitchen sink of abilities piled onto it. The result is a wordy tooltip box and something that strays outside the design lane of Perks, which are meant to be incremental increases to one or two stats / mechanics.
This isn’t sustainable either. You want new content. Cells are new content, but only if they’re useful. We can’t keep making new Cells that are either not useful, or power creep the game.
Why not just nerf / buff / rework existing cells?
We could have just cut the numbers on Rage, Wild Frenzy and Iceborne. They’d either be: Still the choice, because always-on. Slayers would just do less damage and/or die a little more often Not worth using at all. The next best thing would take their place and we’d be back to square 1.
Either way, we believe many players would disagree with the change.
We could try buffing or re-tooling existing other Cells to compete, but- There’s nothing really stopping you from taking them with the Discipline package. Power creep. OR They replace the Discipline package because they’re just more powerful. Power creep.
There ARE plenty of Cells that need some numbers tweaking or rethinking. We have been, and will continue to, make changes to existing Cells to make them more appealing. It’s just not a magic bullet for the build diversity problem.
Isn't the new Rage ability nonsensical in a game that's largely about not getting hit?
There’s some validity to the criticism, and it’s a discussion we had internally. Ultimately, a couple points were made that led to us trying the iteration on the ETR. They were- Not everyone is skilled enough to dodge everything, and it could be a good catch-up mechanic. We need diversity in the meta, but not every Cell needs to be competitive at the top end. (see Iceborne) There are other mechanics that synergize with it, like Resolve / Sturdy or The Hunger, so it could have a place in some builds.
Are you just going to ship these few Omnicells and then forget about the system forever?
No. The initial release will have 3 Omnicells- Discipline, Iceborne and Bastion. At least 2 more will follow later in the same season, along with further expansions to the system. We will release 2 or 3 new Omnicells per season going forward. Omnicells are designed to be a content stream we can easily support on a regular cadence.
Everything feels so slow, and I hate it!
Hey, that’s not a… I’ll allow it. Attack speed is a problematic stat in Dauntless. It both translates directly into DPS and has other implications. At extreme values it fundamentally breaks the core gameplay, and those values aren’t particularly hard to hit in the live game right now. For the health of the game, the amount of attack speed available needs to be reduced.
On the other hand, you’ve gotten used to it being there, always on. Some weapons’ default speeds feel too slow for the pace of Dauntless combat these days. Plus, boosting your attack speed is just fun. We will be boosting attack speeds generally to compensate. More details to follow as they’re worked out.
We're making other changes to the Omnicell abilities themselves, as well as other Cells, based on the feedback and data from the ETR, and will share info when we can.
Thanks again, and keep the feedback coming! (And sorry for writing a book...)
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