I’ve already seen several critiques of Brutal + and while I’m not a SC2 God by any means, I’ve enjoyed the Co-op and even the “tangible” mutator co-op. Anyway, I wanted to give my experience in the new mode.
TBH: The only time I avoided Mutation was when Polarity was on, or that horrible “Every time a unit is attacked, they have a chance to…never mind…you now have 300 Hybrids wrecking your house” mutator.
So when Brutal + was introduced, I was super hopeful.
Thus far, my experience has been:
A round of “there are killbots…they need bodies.” While I played as Nova, and my partner was Tychus
A round of “killing units brings your units closer to the unit killed” on Veridia Prime, so every time EITHER of us sent a worker to a crystal, and the worker was close to a fight, the suction BROKE the command, and the little bugger would just sit there. Waiting for me to tell it for the 9000000 time “GO GET THE D**N CRYSTAL.”
A round of “SPLIT ALL DAMAGE ACROSS EVERY PERSON” whilst playing as Zagara, with a side of “killbots” and “random time warps” on scythe of amon.
Suffice it to say, I needed a cool blast to my b**thole after the thrashing each one of those gave.
This CAN’T be working as intended right? You want the player to feel challenged, yet have fun right? So, how do we go from “Brutal” being a “if you have a 15 char. and know the basics of SC2, you’ll do fine,” to “If you don’t know how to micro/macro/cure cancer/speak latin/read Egyptian/Are an Expert on String Theory on Brutal +, you WILL be raped.”
It seems like the difficulty curve is…well…a black hole named “death of fun.”
I only lose like maybe 1 out 15 games or so, so at the end of the day its hard, but its also getting me more xp, and not making me bored out so quickly like when all we had was just regular brutal.
It is RNGfest and you need to retry on the first attempt so you can strategize and pick the relevant commander for the 2nd attempt. Rinse and repeat this process for every brutal+ until you get bored and frustrated with it.
Worry not. I will be just playing weekly mutation every day. At least i can strategize with my partner for the weekly mutation instead of retry brutal+ to get a lucky shot.
The problem with Brutal+ is that it completely misses the point of what players wanted which is regular co-op gameplay in a difficulty that’s above Brutal.
When difficulty scales up from Casual to Normal to Hard to Brutal, attack waves get bigger, more frequent and objectives have appropriately reduced / increased HP.
That’s what Brutal+ should have done.
Instead, Brutal+ is just a modified form of Wheel of Misfortune - RNG mutators that rolls once. That’s not regular co-op gameplay; it’s the wrong type of challenge and it’s the wrong solution to the problem.
I would have preferred to have gotten just something like you know Nightmare difficulty that’s just a step up from Brutal and with no mutations, but we already got this, and Ive been begging for a harder difficulty for at least a couple years now, so Im just happy to get what I can get.
Brutal+1 is no problem for those who find Brutal too easy, but for those who want a little more challenge the gap between Brutal and Brutal+1 is too large. A lower starting curve up the Brutal+ levels would help, along with opening up the new +2 or +3 to solo queue.
I’m okay with them throwing a few mutators at us for Brutal +…But damn, 4 random mutators with no heads up and trying to go by the seat of your pants is rough. There’s been a few missions where I’ll literally freeze from time to time trying to remember what I have to watch out for, or focus on avoiding 2 other mutators only to get my army wiped because I forgot of a different one due to me juggling the other ones.
I think the hardest thing right now with it is keeping track of all the mutators after being thrown in a game with a random ally. Lower the amount down, and even the harder mutators will be doable.
It seems most people are stuck either playing cheesy commanders who are largely unaffected by mutators (like Zeratul and maybe Karax/Mengsk?); or loading in, checking the mutators, then ducking back out to choose appropriate commanders and hitting the replay+ button.
I really like the Brutal+ idea, but I think the pool of mutators for the lower levels needs to be adjusted. You really shouldn’t be limited to a tiny number of commanders or be forced to load into every game twice.
I’ve been getting my a$$ kicked by brutal+. It’s fun in a weird I’m being challenged kind of way, but it’s also very stressful at times. Some map and mutator combos are instant quit for me (I play random queue) like the less mineral mining and have to search the map for minerals on DoN. I know I have a lot to learn about the mutations and how to play against them (only played about 15-20 mutation games as I’m a newer player), so I’ve lost a lot of my games (only won 2 of the 15-20). I don’t feel like a scrub at the game. After getting shellacked by brutal+, brutal felt like a cake walk. I even had the pleasure of carrying a lvl 2 Mengsk in brutal after brutal+, and that felt so easy in comparison.
Sometimes I feel helpless in brutal+, sometimes I feel like I’m on the cusp of victory only to lose because a detail is missed in the map or mutator (this one is likely my fault due to lack of experience as a new player overall), sometimes the missions seem impossible at the start, and sometimes I don’t even want to start playing the mutator combos. It does make the occasional win very satisfying though.
I wonder if this was what blizzard was going for in regards to the brutal+ new player experience.
I had really high hopes for Brutal+, but i agree wholeheartedly. I won’t play more than the 2 games i did, simply because i found both to be unwinnable (polarity + alien incubation on ME with a mengsk/alarak…lost in under 5 minutes).
I seriously hope they replace it with Nightmare, as has been suggested, which is normal Coop at an insane level. Waves of pure hybrid, the entire damn Swarm hitting my base at the end game, idc. Just not mutators. We have ways to play new muta combos if we really want to.
Dead of Night. Chokers with Hardened Will. Sure, Blizzard. Next time I get this mutator on DoN I’ll just leave. That said, it paired together with Double Edged as well.
Oh and by the way, don’t use Yamato Cannons on Rank 2+ Prides when Double Edged is active. They’ll kill themselves. Even Earthsplitter Ordnance gets damaged by Double Edged. Noice.
The main thing with the Weekly Mutations is that you can select your commander based on what you’re up against. For Brutal+ and above you don’t have that luxury, so if you select, say, Nova, and find yourself against Kill Bots or Black Death, you’re going to be in for a hard time.
For Brutal+, given how random it is, I would like to suggest an individual mutator is never above 5/10 in difficulty, which means that most of the unfair mutators for particular commanders are cut out. Mutators at 6/10 or above are: Kill Bots, Minesweeper, Black Death, Just Die!, Polarity, Transmutation, Propagators, Heroes from the Storm, Void Rifts.
(Saying that, Just Die!, Transmutation and even Polarity are manageable for most commanders)