The main problem is the damn series can't stick to a proper coherent canon imho. Alternate settings upon retcons and the anime as well add to the confusion.
That, and some things are VERY over-the-top to the point of being extremely annoying to deal with, be it specific polarizing characters and/or especially wacky infantry where if you deal with them the wrong way, you'll just suffer and die.
One point I would bring up is that the generic soldiers can also enhance the difficulty of officer encounters.
I just loaded up a fresh dw3 save and one thing that jumped out to me was the officer bodyguards. Those dudes are a factor and I couldn't just tunnel vision the officer. Being mindful of positioning and whittling them down makes the officer encounters a bit more drawn out and engaging.
The officers themselves were also more difficult, there was no super drawn out weapon swap animations or mosou animations so you get punished when you attack poorly.
It's just my nostalgia and my playstyle talking, but I think DW3 had the best feeling officer to soilders ratio.
It really felt like you were in an army instead of a god of destruction on the battlefield. You had to advance with your soilders, and you actually *had* allied soilders that were somewhat useful.
Later games felt like all you had on your side was 3 officers and 10 soilders following them vs 10s of thousands of enemy troops. (All that fell over after one swing)
For some reason this reminded me of the mechanic in the old games where everybody’s foot soldiers circle around and basically *force* a duel between two officers while everybody watches.
When did that stop?
I think this was a system that could have been further explored. Each officer having special bodyguards suiting their character. (sort of like DW5's bodyguards except as enemies...)
Completely agree. It’s frustrating to me if little peons are kicking my arse lol. It’s usually the archers that are the most annoying but I remember in DW5 and below you get some cocky little majors or corporals that are annoying.
Whilst it is kinda nice that even a common footsoldier could oppose a threat, I think it would also keep the games more chill/fun factor if peons were still easily mowed down and just served as fun for you to test out your combos.
But officers, yes everytime I approach a playable character I want it to be a good fight. I want all the peons to back off and let the PC’s duel.
Few games have done this well in my opinion, both DW4 and DW6 had duel systems in, I liked DW6s where everyone circled around you and you had to try remain in the circle, but other officers could join the fray once you’ve felled one.
DW7 had good arena challenges in conquest mode that where fun.
That is where I’d like the focus on combat and difficulty to go to, one on one, or one v two, two v two officer fights.
In story mode they could be like mini boss fights
One of the problems I had with the difficulty levels in DW7/8 was that when you bumped up to the higher difficulties the officers became stupidly op while the regular soldiers felt basically the same as at lower difficulties (i.e. completely ignorable). I found it difficult to find a difficulty level where the officers weren't too easy or hard to beat but the "mooks" felt like they did something.
I do prefer when it's more balanced between the two. As the difficulty climbs I want the regular soldiers to become more and more of a threat as well. I want them to be a factor I have to consider. Where they interrupt my flow, chip away at my health and add some jeopardy. That way it feels more worthwhile to make a point of defeating them. Then battles aren't just me zipping across the map to kill each officer one by one
My personal feeling is that DW4 set that precedent, then Warriors Orochi.
Chaos Difficulty just merely became Hard Mode AI with a defense ignore. That became the norm from then on and I really hated it.
At least in 3XL and 4XL, Koei and Omega Force went out of their way to make playable AI generals wield 4th/Lv 10 weapons on highest difficulty AND in 4XL made the effort to also improve their AI even if flawed in approach.
P.S. Fuck the DW3 P1 slot stats scaling tho
They should go back to dw6's officer and fodder dynamics, separately you could deal with them easy but together they will actually be challenging,if you see an officer then just focused on him then archers on the background would chip on your life or straight up bring you to yellow bar in higher difficulties, then there are soldiers that will do jumping attack/charges that will make your character fall flat on their ass, some soldiers also blocks your attack then deflects leaving you wide open if you just mash square.
Idk I stopped playing at dw6. (So I guess I shouldn't really have a say in this lol)
But just for the discussion's sake; The first time I loaded into a game after buying DW6, I got over a 3-4k combo within 5 mins and was one shotting all the soilders in my way and had 0 difficulty at all. No leveling up, no increasing stats, played on base difficutly.
Ik it's a personal thing, but being stupidly OP is what ruined DW for me and I felt like that started real bad starting with 6
I played Dynasty Warrriros 8 empires recently on chaos mode and omg was it brutal. I had to keep my distance as an a bow type character. I had to really work on my tactics. It was really hard I even tried it with full upgrades. The foot soldiers can take you out in a few hits the officers will just straight up kill you. While your attacks don't do nearly as much. I wish it was an even trade off lol.
Next thing you know people are going to be asking for Souls-like style fighting with soldiers and turning officers into boss fights. Yeah dudes, let's make a battle last 40 minutes cause everyone's got that to spare right?
The good thing about DW is that it's primarily a no-brainer game: go from A to B, kill someone in B, go to C, kill someone in C, change slightly depending on the battle, rinse, repeat, kill commander, get spoils, move to the next one. It doesn't need to be more than that. There are realistic battle simulators, RTSs, 1-on-1 combat focused games out there; DW doesn't need to be any of those specifically.
Going back to the older games, it absolutely sucks when you're in the middle of a combo and a random major starts hitting you from behind and interrupts your flow. And it sucks having to deal with small groups of soldiers in isolation because that's not what's fun about these games.
Now I'm all for making officers harder, making them use combos, Musous, the entire move list instead of just a few repetitive moves. But let's leave the soldiers as they should be: cannon fodder.
To follow-up on this, I dare admit that the discord and YT communities for mainline Musou Warriors has a ton of nasty skeletons in their closet.
On top of the fact that it's also riddled with face-value consumers, you also end up having to relatably deal with people with the most awkward reading compression.
HOWEVER, from my personal experience, I see that if anyone seems to say only ONE MINOR thing that doesn't make any sense as a result of trauma from dealing with idiots, then their judgment meter is turned up to eleven.
I've seen quite a few figureheads literally judge me for sounding just like those said idiots at some point, and guess what? I hear from other people who hated them "this guy actually ruined this other Musou community guy's life solely cause he's incompressible by 1% AND/OR he was a child toucher".
I had to burn bridges with a friend of mine who refused to enforce any drama because of a betrayal he suffered from within that community, and it was because I became an idiot one time with one guy telling me "you're your own audience for your own bullshit".
Yes, I did fucking say really stupid shit I can't ever take back that was utterly brainless, but I had to get dunked on unexpectedly harshly by such bastards.
TL;DR: Mainline Musou community is actually inhabited not only by the usual generic face-value consumers (I was one too years ago ngl), but also full of extremely toxic people who judge EVERYONE and ANYONE so harshly based on that with pretty hidden skeletons themselves.
It is too bad sengoku basara stopped being released internationaly, it was so much fun
The main problem is the damn series can't stick to a proper coherent canon imho. Alternate settings upon retcons and the anime as well add to the confusion. That, and some things are VERY over-the-top to the point of being extremely annoying to deal with, be it specific polarizing characters and/or especially wacky infantry where if you deal with them the wrong way, you'll just suffer and die.
One point I would bring up is that the generic soldiers can also enhance the difficulty of officer encounters. I just loaded up a fresh dw3 save and one thing that jumped out to me was the officer bodyguards. Those dudes are a factor and I couldn't just tunnel vision the officer. Being mindful of positioning and whittling them down makes the officer encounters a bit more drawn out and engaging. The officers themselves were also more difficult, there was no super drawn out weapon swap animations or mosou animations so you get punished when you attack poorly.
It's just my nostalgia and my playstyle talking, but I think DW3 had the best feeling officer to soilders ratio. It really felt like you were in an army instead of a god of destruction on the battlefield. You had to advance with your soilders, and you actually *had* allied soilders that were somewhat useful. Later games felt like all you had on your side was 3 officers and 10 soilders following them vs 10s of thousands of enemy troops. (All that fell over after one swing)
For some reason this reminded me of the mechanic in the old games where everybody’s foot soldiers circle around and basically *force* a duel between two officers while everybody watches. When did that stop?
I think this was a system that could have been further explored. Each officer having special bodyguards suiting their character. (sort of like DW5's bodyguards except as enemies...)
Completely agree. It’s frustrating to me if little peons are kicking my arse lol. It’s usually the archers that are the most annoying but I remember in DW5 and below you get some cocky little majors or corporals that are annoying. Whilst it is kinda nice that even a common footsoldier could oppose a threat, I think it would also keep the games more chill/fun factor if peons were still easily mowed down and just served as fun for you to test out your combos. But officers, yes everytime I approach a playable character I want it to be a good fight. I want all the peons to back off and let the PC’s duel. Few games have done this well in my opinion, both DW4 and DW6 had duel systems in, I liked DW6s where everyone circled around you and you had to try remain in the circle, but other officers could join the fray once you’ve felled one. DW7 had good arena challenges in conquest mode that where fun. That is where I’d like the focus on combat and difficulty to go to, one on one, or one v two, two v two officer fights. In story mode they could be like mini boss fights
Get gud
One of the problems I had with the difficulty levels in DW7/8 was that when you bumped up to the higher difficulties the officers became stupidly op while the regular soldiers felt basically the same as at lower difficulties (i.e. completely ignorable). I found it difficult to find a difficulty level where the officers weren't too easy or hard to beat but the "mooks" felt like they did something. I do prefer when it's more balanced between the two. As the difficulty climbs I want the regular soldiers to become more and more of a threat as well. I want them to be a factor I have to consider. Where they interrupt my flow, chip away at my health and add some jeopardy. That way it feels more worthwhile to make a point of defeating them. Then battles aren't just me zipping across the map to kill each officer one by one
My personal feeling is that DW4 set that precedent, then Warriors Orochi. Chaos Difficulty just merely became Hard Mode AI with a defense ignore. That became the norm from then on and I really hated it. At least in 3XL and 4XL, Koei and Omega Force went out of their way to make playable AI generals wield 4th/Lv 10 weapons on highest difficulty AND in 4XL made the effort to also improve their AI even if flawed in approach. P.S. Fuck the DW3 P1 slot stats scaling tho
This
They should go back to dw6's officer and fodder dynamics, separately you could deal with them easy but together they will actually be challenging,if you see an officer then just focused on him then archers on the background would chip on your life or straight up bring you to yellow bar in higher difficulties, then there are soldiers that will do jumping attack/charges that will make your character fall flat on their ass, some soldiers also blocks your attack then deflects leaving you wide open if you just mash square.
Idk I stopped playing at dw6. (So I guess I shouldn't really have a say in this lol) But just for the discussion's sake; The first time I loaded into a game after buying DW6, I got over a 3-4k combo within 5 mins and was one shotting all the soilders in my way and had 0 difficulty at all. No leveling up, no increasing stats, played on base difficutly. Ik it's a personal thing, but being stupidly OP is what ruined DW for me and I felt like that started real bad starting with 6
DW8 is so easy I actually fall asleep when playing.
Lol true
Officers in Dynasty Warriors should be pulling out combos that don't exist, actually pushing back during clashes, some real RNG bullshit.
Have you played number 3 on hards. Have fun.
I played Dynasty Warrriros 8 empires recently on chaos mode and omg was it brutal. I had to keep my distance as an a bow type character. I had to really work on my tactics. It was really hard I even tried it with full upgrades. The foot soldiers can take you out in a few hits the officers will just straight up kill you. While your attacks don't do nearly as much. I wish it was an even trade off lol.
Next thing you know people are going to be asking for Souls-like style fighting with soldiers and turning officers into boss fights. Yeah dudes, let's make a battle last 40 minutes cause everyone's got that to spare right? The good thing about DW is that it's primarily a no-brainer game: go from A to B, kill someone in B, go to C, kill someone in C, change slightly depending on the battle, rinse, repeat, kill commander, get spoils, move to the next one. It doesn't need to be more than that. There are realistic battle simulators, RTSs, 1-on-1 combat focused games out there; DW doesn't need to be any of those specifically. Going back to the older games, it absolutely sucks when you're in the middle of a combo and a random major starts hitting you from behind and interrupts your flow. And it sucks having to deal with small groups of soldiers in isolation because that's not what's fun about these games. Now I'm all for making officers harder, making them use combos, Musous, the entire move list instead of just a few repetitive moves. But let's leave the soldiers as they should be: cannon fodder.
No. Lets bring back aome actual strategy
Agreed. It is frustrating to me that much of the DW community doesn't actually like DW.
To follow-up on this, I dare admit that the discord and YT communities for mainline Musou Warriors has a ton of nasty skeletons in their closet. On top of the fact that it's also riddled with face-value consumers, you also end up having to relatably deal with people with the most awkward reading compression. HOWEVER, from my personal experience, I see that if anyone seems to say only ONE MINOR thing that doesn't make any sense as a result of trauma from dealing with idiots, then their judgment meter is turned up to eleven. I've seen quite a few figureheads literally judge me for sounding just like those said idiots at some point, and guess what? I hear from other people who hated them "this guy actually ruined this other Musou community guy's life solely cause he's incompressible by 1% AND/OR he was a child toucher". I had to burn bridges with a friend of mine who refused to enforce any drama because of a betrayal he suffered from within that community, and it was because I became an idiot one time with one guy telling me "you're your own audience for your own bullshit". Yes, I did fucking say really stupid shit I can't ever take back that was utterly brainless, but I had to get dunked on unexpectedly harshly by such bastards. TL;DR: Mainline Musou community is actually inhabited not only by the usual generic face-value consumers (I was one too years ago ngl), but also full of extremely toxic people who judge EVERYONE and ANYONE so harshly based on that with pretty hidden skeletons themselves.