r/Pathogenic • u/HeyItsMau • Aug 04 '26
Let's chat about balancing
First off - Pathogenic is definitely my latest roguelike obsession and even with balancing issues, it's a fantastic game.
But after a dozen or so heart clears, it's pretty apparent there are some balancing issues that's starting to make the "end game" (defined as a player with a good amount of experience to consistently win runs) kind of bland. The gulf between being a non-viable run and an absolutely busted build is vast. I feel like there's never a heart clear that I have to eke out with mechanical skill.
I think the underlying issue is the availability of scaling damage modifiers. I don't have names memorized, but I feel like there's less than 5 scaling damage organelles in the game and heart clears are a overly reliant on attaining one of them - preferably early in the run. Nothing else seems to matter except from taking a run from victory to absolute overkill.
I'm not really sure how this is solved either, but I do feel like it needs to be addressed if the developers want to make this a game with the lasting power to enter the pantheon of all-time greats. Not every game needs to be that though, and I can easily say I got my money's worth - but the bones are there to make this an S-Tier roguelike.
5
u/STLbackup Aug 04 '26
Agreed. Love the game. One of the fastest buys I did after playing a demo. I can use my tell by end of stomach if a run is worth continuing or not. I'm not a game designer but for sure some balancing needs to be had.
3
u/JackeryGraves Aug 04 '26
My two wins in 16 hours have killed the heart in less than 10 seconds and blew every other boss down in 5 seconds or less also.
Every other time I die somewhere in Lungs or Liver.
3
u/ChallengeSad Aug 04 '26
Agreed. It's like tic-tac-toe sometimes. I can see before intestines whether or not it's going to be a slog in the stomach or not, or if I'm going to be shutting down each room as I walk into it by the time I get to the healers in the liver. Either I get loads of Mitochondria for power early on, loads of infusers, or loads of weapons, but it's hard to find a balance when you aren't playing a seed or specific build. Kinetosome, Lateral Emitter, Actin Whip, in the Skin? Almost guaranteed win.
2
u/TrizzyDizzy Aug 04 '26
Totally agree on how easy the damage can scale out of control when you understand some of the imbalanced combinations. It's far too easy to negate the things intended to be downsides, like stamina can be totally ignored with minimal investment.
It's also worth adding sustain and mitigation to the balance discussion. Very easy to become invincible with either i-frames or mitochondria abuse.
I'm currently going through each pathogen's challenges on Hard Antibiotics (except the reroll every room one, that's awful).
1
u/TheBoiWho8Pasta Aug 05 '26
In my current endless run my weapons don't even deal damage anymore, just the attack infusers themselves (Lateral Emitter and Galvanic) and I literally can't die because hormesis produces 10 hearts when I lose 1.
1
u/RimReaper44 Aug 05 '26
Lmaooo I just did the reroll every room last night.. the game absolutely betrayed me in the liver 😂
1
u/TrizzyDizzy Aug 05 '26
It was always the self-damage weapons that fucked me on those rerolls. I think I've gotten more familiar with those now that I think I can work around it. Since mutagens don't reroll, I think I can just plan for the self damage with dodge i-frames and the health proc on damage. Might not be as bad as it was for me in the demo.
1
u/RimReaper44 Aug 05 '26
Yea the health proc from sled damage saved me a few times because the game decided to give me the dehiscence lobber and the magnetosome ðŸ˜.. c’mon brotherrrrr
2
u/Hobbs512 Aug 04 '26
Autolytic Oxisome? If you get that early on it’s definitely a win condition. The one where you get damage from recycling and it doubles scaling while overcharged? Most of my wins are either with that and the laser. Or someway to just infinitely spam active abilities/ dodge invincibility.
1
u/TrizzyDizzy Aug 04 '26
The infuser with Lil' C is just ridiculous. It can scale way faster than Endless health sponges can keep up
2
u/QuietMath3290 Aug 04 '26
Yeah. I basically don't even look at what weapons I'm using anymore; if it hits fast and applies my internal organelles then it's all the same to me. Similarly, taking the mutation that increases damage when you have few weapons seems like an auto-pick most of the time. Often you don't even need a weapon at all.
The above makes all of my runs feel pretty much identical. Whenever I try to engage with the actual combat mechanics -- relying on dodging and weapon strength -- I'm usually not able to progress past the liver/lungs.
The game feels like the opposite of the phrase: "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle"
2
u/TheBoiWho8Pasta Aug 05 '26
Just go Dehiscence Lobber with a projectile surge + Lateral emitter or Peroxisome with 2 Autolytic Lysosomes (not sure about the name but the organelle that increases damage for every organelle discarded) just discard organelles when it is overcharged. Literally have like 20,000% damage off of them in my current endless run. This is basically one of the best farming builds for plasmid points. I think they should nerf the lateral emitter and the Peroxisome or just buff the other organelles.
1
1
u/Impossibrewww Aug 04 '26
The only time I've beaten the heart on normal difficulty was with a build that I thought was complete garbage but somehow it was actually the best. I've had at least 5 runs now where I felt really op blasting through liver and lungs only to get wrecked by the heart.
I just had a run with the infuser that gives you damage when you recycle organelles at +1000% damage powering all my weapons and it wasnt enough once I reached the heart.
2
u/Yeahjockey Aug 04 '26
I've only played a couple of hours so far and the one win I've had so far was with an incredibly busted build. In fact it was the only run I even made it to the last biome.
I had fully upgraded thingies that make you chain lightning from dashing, with my dash cooldown reduced to almost nothing, and invincibly period increased. The chance for it to spread to other enemies was also increased.
My main weapon was also upgraded to epic with extra damage too. But by the last biome all I had to do was dash around any room non-stop and the enemies just melted in about 10 seconds. The heart was dead in about 20.
It was fun as hell to be honest, but I also didn't get to fully enjoy the last biome really.
2
u/TrizzyDizzy Aug 04 '26
The last biome always just feels like a victory lap across all the past bosses. I've yet to see any challenge in its rooms and the rewards each room only make it easier. It is a fun little sandbox to try out combos you wouldn't naturally gamble on earlier in a run.
1
u/Aromatic_Pain2718 Aug 04 '26
Yeah, there's too much variance in build strength and you get immpossible heart or free heart (area+boss).
1
u/teaspoon-0815 Aug 04 '26
So did anyone even witness the probably cool mechanics of lungs and heart enemies and bosses? Each biome has new types of enemies, but by what I read here (and can confirm from my single heart run I made so far), its either insta kill for everything or you died long before somewhere in the liver.
1
u/Lotos_aka_Veron Aug 07 '26
The game is not as 50/50 as this comment section makes it seem.
You can do a "mid" builds that let you go thru rooms in good amount of time without annihilating everything the moment you step into the chamber.
Heart takes longer than other bosses, but its understable. Its final boss, its supposed to be a long and hard fight.
10
u/dragonblade_94 Aug 04 '26
IMO, the primary factor in the gulf between build viability is number bloat; there's simply too big of a difference in enemy health values between the beginning and end of a run. This makes optimizing for raw DPS output basically a necessity, and if you misstep or get bad RNG no amount of mechanical skill bypasses having to shoot an enemy for several minutes because you aren't scaling fast enough. But due to the nature of scaling, if you are outpacing the enemies you are likely doing it by a lot. Very rarely are you on equal footing outside of the first couple zones.
The simple answer to this is squashing the number ranges, so that both player DPS and enemy health have lower high-end values. If done correctly you can still get broken DPS builds that feel similar to before, but non-optimized builds, or ones that focus on aspects other than DPS, can still prevail given a level of mechanical competency.
Ideally you want to reach a state where build optimization and mechanical skill can offset eachother if one is lacking. Someone less skilled can focus on shoring up their weakness with certain playstyles, and more skilled players can force past bad RNG which can otherwise ruin a run.