[patch 1.1 beta] potd difficulty feedback

[anishar]

Hello,

 

Made a new run on the beta patch with PotD difficulty scaling upward only, currently level 12 and i have few feedbacks concerning the difficulty.

 

I think the early game is great, however after Neketa things gets a little awkward.

 

- The Old City in itself was overall ok (first room to get mowdyr is rather easy, then it gets harder, makes sense), the Skeletton fight to get the cornet of depths was super hard i like that a lot, however the boss felt super easy in comparison. I would suggest to either make the skeletton fight slightly easier or to make the boss encounter straight up harder. Right now the skeletton fight is the actual boss

 

- There are a lot of super strong items that are quite easy to get with stealth/mecanics in neketaka, basically every shop in Periki's overlook, as well as the Summon item from Delver's Row (Shadows) and the summon Dragons Neck right next to Neketaka. Once you get those items you can basically pop every summon, every Empower, win every fight easy mode, rest with 1 water or 1 hardtack and there is no challenge anymore.

 

I believe summon items to be too strong considering they have no drawback, most of them barely have a cast time, and can be used every combat due to unlimited rest. These items also make the Summoner Chanter build kind of useless as your party can do what he does without taking a character slot.

 

I would suggest either to limit summon items to 1 per party instead of 1 per character, or to make summon items having Charges that does not replenish when resting. (Limited uses, then item is gone forever, so you only use them as a joker for very specific encounters you're struggling with).

Another solution would be to add penalties to these items (Your character loses stats, ressource points, dies with 1 injury or whatever, any drawback will do)

 

There are most likely other/better options, but current summon items state is not properly balanced i think. 0 downside, just straight up flat increased power for every encounter, not fair!

 

Then when it comes to numbers, at mid game the armor/defenses feels alright, i have to apply some debuffs or i get some "No pen", the accuracy buffs don't give me super high chances to hit, this is fine, without Summon items the fights are not free win, but it somehow doesn't feel as challenging as the early game fights (the one right before Aloth with boars panthers and a drake is awesome!). I think this is due to party composition getting stronger with levels, more powerful abilities and gear, the difficulty somehow doesn't keep up that well (where i'm at, at least).

 

I will continue the run and see how the scaling ends up working for late game. Will give more feedbacks at that time.

But for now, the biggest problem imo is summon items. Wayyy too good

[Cdiaz]

Hey anishar and all,

 

Thanks for the post! We'll take a look at the feedback and process them for the devs. I believe we already have the summoned items being looked at, so we really appreciate the input!

 

Best,

 

-Caleb

[Thenightelf]

I continued a game at lvl 14 with the beta, fought 2 bounty fights marked with a skull (that is, mobs at a higher level than me) and the game is still ABSURDLY easy. A few AI settings are enough to win fights with no player input, no summons/consumables, most of my gear at just "exceptional" rank.

[anishar]

Yeah from mid game i'm experiencing a similar situation, well scripted AI are enough to win most fights, and if not i just spawn every summon and it gets the job done in no time...

Early game is the most challenging part so far. Hopefully they increase difficulty for mid game/late game content

[anishar]

Follow up feedback :

 

Reached lv 17 and i will stop the run there, did most of the side quests and islands, from mid game most encounters felt unchanged for the most part (work in progress i assume?).

 

Summon issue aside, what i've noticed was that from mid game encounters against enemies at our level (or scaled up to reach our level) were not challenging at all compared to early game. I feel like scaling upward should not have a limit and take player level as a base instead of scene level. When going for a more "completionist" run, a lot of content ends up being low level quite fast and it doesn't scale in a challenging way.

 

Some of the fights were really good however. I liked the "ambush" at Poko Kohara's ruins entrance, i wish there was more ambushes like this (havent faced any after that point).

 

The enemy behaviour seems improved as well, enemy mages really try hard to protect themselves with reflect shields and arcane veils (which i simply remove with Arcane Dampener but that's still interactive and i liked that); my more fragile characters are under some pressure, it definitively felt better. But ! I still feel like most of the pressure comes from Rangers/Cannoners/Mages, i am yet to see a sneaky melee rogue bypassing my tanks with shadowstep.

 

Also i felt like having a Cipher in my party made things rather easy, i did not face many high will opponents (only few mages were hard to mind control), and the most powerful bruisers have low will and don't have int resistance affliction/immunity for the most part; also i figured Will is super easy to reduce compared to other defenses (Club Modal, Wizard Miasma, on top of all the resolve/int afflictions and the few reduce All defenses tools). Fortitude however felt really hard to reduce in comparison, after applying might and cons afflictions and the generic -alldefenses debuffs that's pretty much the max you can do, there is no ability in the game directly targeted at either reducing might/cons/fortitude specificly other than generic might/cons afflictions (Wizard Miasma reduces intellect without being an Intellect affliction for exemple, so it stacks with int/resolve generic afflictions).

 

I had a lot of armor debuffs in my party (wizard Expose vulnerability, chanter Hel Hyraf, as well as Cipher Phatom Foes applying flanked status), and it seems like it stacks, resulting in an almost 100% uptime -5 armor on enemies. I feel like armor debuffs should be a status as well and should not stack as it currently does, with multiclassing it's very accessible and kind of breaks the difficulty.

 

Overall i feel like some classes are really stronger than others for this mode. Cipher in particular, i feel like Charmed should be at the top of the Intelligence status instead of Dominated (and dominated should be gone, with a derpy confused/charmed in-between status as the new mid tier). It is a lot stronger than the highest tier afflictions (Paralyzed and Stunned), yet a lot more accessible, earlier, cheaper, and it lasts a crazy long duration as well. Not only does it "remove" an enemy for the duration, it also gives you some extra power! In hearthstone Mind Control is a 10 mana card (most expensive), meaning you only have access to it at the very last stage of the game. Whisper of treason is available lv 1! 

 

Paladin and Priest feel like must have due to their accuracy party buffs; Wizard and Chanter are also quite valuable for their aoe armor debuffs and paralyze, and Druid feels quite underwhelming. They do not provide any good utility, and can only shine through healing or damage numbers, which is not enough to justify taking it over any other class who's also going to do heals or damage (with slighly different numbers), but with really good utility on top of it. Nature's mark is ok early game, but they have nothing for late game; and their armor debuff is super long cast, single target, short duration. The shapeshifting is their identity and is what makes them unique, but it doesn't really benefit the party that much if at all.(especially for Life Givers... Be punished for using what makes your class unique, hmm...)

 

Changes to martial classes felt really nice however, especially fighter's Charge not being an attack anymore as well as Rogue's abilities buffs, they seem to be all strong and they also open really fun multiclassing options..

 

 

To sum up this block of text :

 

- Scaling upward during mid game/late game when doing "lower level" zones does not accomplish much

- Specificly designed encounters with cheesy ambuches felt really good, more pressure on backliners would be appreciated (with melee rogues using shadowstep for exemple, or a barbarian carelessly leaping in etc...). It is still very safe on the backline right now.

- Will is easy to reduce, Fortitude is hard to reduce, armor debuffs stacking feels wrong/too strong

- Ciphers feel too strong and Druids rather weak

- Martial classes are in a good state

[Thenightelf]

Changes to martial classes felt really nice however, especially fighter's Charge not being an attack anymore as well as Rogue's abilities buffs, they seem to be all strong and they also open really fun multiclassing options..

 

 

To sum up this block of text :

 

- Scaling upward during mid game/late game when doing "lower level" zones does not accomplish much

- Specificly designed encounters with cheesy ambuches felt really good, more pressure on backliners would be appreciated (with melee rogues using shadowstep for exemple, or a barbarian carelessly leaping in etc...). It is still very safe on the backline right now.

- Will is easy to reduce, Fortitude is hard to reduce, armor debuffs stacking feels wrong/too strong

- Ciphers feel too strong and Druids rather weak

- Martial classes are in a good state

I think druid is alright, at least my tekehu druid is good at what it does, and cypher is mostly ok except for whisper of treason, it should probably be a much higher level spell - gaze of the adragan and the druid storm are also gamechanging but you don't get them at lvl 1. Then again, I'm having a very easy time lategame without needing to charm anyone ever so I don't think cypher is too good, it's mostly because mobs don't really do anything dangerous.

 

Scaling doesn't do anything at all late game: as I said before, if I can easily beat encounters marked as higher than my level, scaling mobs to my level doesn't change anything. I've no idea how to make the game more challeging (my crazy idea would be removing the accuracy/defenses gained by level and see what happens) but I'd say that, compared to baldur's gate 2 or divinity 2 for example, the game lacks strong casters, invisible rogues trying to snipe the mage and actual boss fights too.

[Zares]

Maybe devs should get inspired by Deadly Deadfire mod and make some changes similar to these from mod. Not changing the vanilla game, because there are some mods that do that is not a solution, because I know people (including my friends) that hate mods and they say that games should be played without them.

Here is mod's description:

1. Level Scaling

- In vanilla enemies only scale upwards a maximum of 4 levels. If you are level 15 and find a level 5 enemy, he would be scaled up to level 9 but not any further.

- This mod increases the scaling limit to 9. That enemy would now scale up to 14. (not quite this simple with location levels etc but you get the idea)

 

2. Named Enemies

- Important Named Enemies will now scale an additional 2 levels higher than a normal enemy. If you find a level 8 named boss at level 10, he will now scale up to level 12, in an effort to keep even previously-missed lower level boss fights challenging. (again location levels matter too but this is the idea)

 

3. Increased HP

- Enemy health has been increased by around 20-30% on a creature by creature basis. This is an attempt to stop a single empowered spell from halving the opponents right at the start of combat.

 

4. Reduced XP

- Experience from quests and combat has been reduced by 28%. This is not really noticeable at the start but it will help with the over-levelling issue in the lategame.