[No buffing outside of combat, why?]

Funny enough, pre-buffing and removal of the combat-only state would actually make defensive mage spells useful. As they are now, there's no point in wasting a spell slot on a Wizard's Double or Stoneskin as a pre-caution against being attacked.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

Hey guys, in all honesty hard can be difficult if you play an under powered class.

 

The Fighter class is very powerful because of that constant recovery ability, grab moon like godability and you're set.

 

We should not need to gimp ourselves in order to make the "difficult" modes a challenge. I can understand the argument for Normal, but Hard and POTD make the claim that a challenge will be provided throughout the campaign, which is currently false.

 

At this point, I'm starting to wish that melee units would just take the disengagement attack from the tank instead of sticking to him like glue. 

[Hard mode is too easy.]

A slight ray of hope from a Shacknews interview:

 

"Urquhart fully recognizes that even though the game is out there, there is still work to be done. That includes upcoming patches, with Urquhart noting that 1.05, in particular, set to introduce some quality of life improvements. This includes allowing players to change portraits, balance tweaks, and other adjustments based on player feedback."

 

Sounds like a difficulty rebalance to me. Hopefully...

 

 

Could just as easily be spell, talent and class balancing. No real guarantee that difficulty will be touched at all, which would be a shame since an easy game kills all replay-ability imo.

 

I really hope they look into difficulty balancing though because the descriptions for Hard and POTD don't match up to the actually challenge levels at all, I don't think BG2 core difficulty was this easy to trivialize without cheesing the system.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

Also, just in case anyone was worried about this, the final boss fight is not too easy.  I just wiped for the third time after 45 minutes and it is wonderful.

 

My faith is restored.

[Seems like XP balance is out of whack]

Here's my plan for a new playthrough:

 

Hard using a 50% increase (EE 02 00 00) in required xp (which is actually equivalent to a 33% reduction to all exp received).

 

...And this time I'm not going to rush to get the companions to avoid their crap choices.  Whatever they choose by the time I get them, they get...  And because I'll be leveling more slowly, they shouldn't be too bad off. 

 

Actually sounds like fun!

 

Let us know your thoughts once you've gotten far enough? It would be interesting to hear how that changes overall difficulty and level progression.

 

I'll wait until 1.05 to see if the devs have managed to implement any solutions.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

Hard is not too easy. Hard only stop being hard because of the weird level curve allowing your team to be much higher level than enemies if you do all side quests before the main quest line. But I must say, without dinamic levels, it's pretty impossible to cover all bases - if the game was impossible without doing side quests first (like, say, Dragon Age Inquisition), people would complain a lot too.

 

I don't know, it may help if we had an idea of what levels the developers balanced the crit path around. For all we know, they balanced Dryford Village around level 4 parties.

[The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.]

I think that actually knowing how much exp is available is relevant when designing an exp system.

 

That's if you're working out specific values. You can work out a formula without knowing the exact number of exp points by making the total some static value x, then applying it.

[Ygritte, Barbarian Archer build?]

Guys. Guys.

 

Make Ygritte a ranger. Give her a wolf named "Jon Snow".

 

Or make a custom Ranger named Jon Snow with a wolf named Ghost.

 

Give him low int and lore because "you know nothing, Jon Snow".

[Ygritte, Barbarian Archer build?]

Yeah the ranger isn't the best damage dealer but since Tigra mentionned he wanted to make an Ygritte like character, I thought a ranger would be the closest match.

 

Only problem with Ranger is that Ygritte isn't a warg, so the animal companion wouldn't really match up. She's essentially a dexterous fighter specializing in archery, as far as I can see.

[Ygritte, Barbarian Archer build?]

Use a Rogue or Fighter specializing in bows. Put her in hide armour and boom, instant Ygritte.

[The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.]

Cool Matt, I'll take your word for it and stick to looking around source code for curiosity/knowledge purposes. Also, I want to see what the devs plan on doing regarding difficulty and balance in the patches to come; maybe modifications won't even be necessary by the end of it.

[POSSIBLE SPOILERS Modding thread: A simple mod and Console commands]

I'm going to be sad to see it go, but I can't say I'm surprised. The steam just sorta ran out once the game was released, for a lot of people, and I think it didn't live up to a lot of people's expectations, even if it's good, it's a far cry from "good enough".

 

Either way, I'll probably not play until the IEMod is updated by someone, or something better comes along. The fixes and features introduced by the IEMod are simply all too basic to pass up, whether it's removing the silly movement recovery penalty, fixing the neutral selection circles and make them a proper IE-like Cyan, or the entire modular - and beautiful - UI.

 

I could never even figure out how to change something as basic as the Attribute bonuses around. I wish it was easier to mod, but it really feels like you have to fight PoE tooth and nail to mod it.

 

 

Nevermind pirate download high-profile game development software just to take a look at things.

 

 

Yeah, it's unfortunate but POE was never going to be the second coming of BG2. Still, IE mod was great and I'm also hoping that someone else is motivated enough to continue.

[The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.]

So, a better formula for experience limits when compared to : ((currentLevel * (currentLevel + 1)) * 500)  would be what in your opinion Matt? You do seem to be the Matthematician.

 

 

Edit

 

Beat me to the response. Yeah, it's really just curiosity at the moment, looking at how different things work, etc. I'll let you know, though.

[Seems like XP balance is out of whack]

Double post, mod please delete.

[Seems like XP balance is out of whack]

 

 

Don't get the "just don't do the side quests, no one is forcing you" people. So you would only do them if you were forced to? Why play the game at all then? No one is forcing you. 

 

That nonsense aside, after a cursory examination of the game's files, it seems all of the quests are stored in xml in data\quests folder. But they only have an "experience level" and "experience weight" values, the former being (mostly?) single digit numbers. So i guess they should be multiplied by something in order to get total experience, while the latter obviously point to how much of the experience you get in each quests stage. So after some testing to determine the multipliers i guess its possible to determine total maximum quest experience by parsing all these files. 

The exp tables themselves seem to be somewhere in unity assets or dll's, so some unity thingie or visual studio would be needed to modify them. Hoped they would be in xml as well.

 

Yeah, it looks like the quest files are referencing some id values to determine how much experience should be awarded. I'm trying to figure out exactly where the exp tables are; if it's something that can be modified in VS then that would make it a lot easier.

 

A good start would be linking the different quest files to their in-game counterparts. From there, you could start playing with the "ExperienceType" and "ExperienceLevel" values. Or, just create a script that ensures that no quest outside of the crit_path has an ExperienceLevel greater than some number.

 

So i asked one knowledgeable dude, and apparently there is no xp table. But there is a formula located in PillarsOfEternity_Data\Managed\Assembly-CSharp.dll in CharacterStats class ExperienceNeededForNextLevel method. It is : ((currentLevel * (currentLevel + 1)) * 500). Also the guys that made iemod already made some framework to change that kind of stuff https://bitbucket.org/Bester/poe-modding-framework

A shame its not in xml, i'm not sure i'm up to getting visual studio with all the additional stuff required just to change this. Also i wouldn't be surprised if its very easy to f something up with that decompiling stuff...

 

 

Yeah, it's a shame that it's a hard-coded formula in the dll, especially since it sounded like the game would be mod-friendly. Decompiling probably won't be an option, hopefully something comes up that makes it easier. Just looking at the formula though, you can see why levels are so easy to gain.

 

Many thanks though, I'll definitely give this a look.

[The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.]

I think getting xp requirements to grow exponentially, while making it so that getting the 12th level requires completion of 99% of the quests is a good idea. Obviously totally rebalancing all the xp rewards so that both "completionists" and "modern gamers" were happy would be better, but are we completely sure Obsidian is up for that? Might be a waste of effort too, since most people that were happy with the xp rewards probably already completed the game and forgot about it. 

Imo just put normal xp, and reduced xp options into expert mode, just in case, and problem solved(the xp related part at least).

P.S. Apologies if you read the this post of mine in every related thread.

It would be nice to get some information regarding how individual experience requirements are stored. Maybe that way, a mod could be created to mess around with the experience requirements with minimal effort on Obsidian's part. Honestly, this would be the first thing I would try for myself.

If you mean xp requirements for each level, see here. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75906-seems-like-xp-balance-is-out-of-whack/page-7?do=findComment&comment=1648191

 

Many thanks, I'll start looking into that.

[Issues as according to me [Minor Spoilers]]

I hope one or two devs give this a look, at least. Very good representation of some of the major issues with the game currently.

[The leveling and XP curve. What's wrong and the only way to fix it.]

It would be nice to get some information regarding how individual experience requirements are stored. Maybe that way, a mod could be created to mess around with the experience requirements with minimal effort on Obsidian's part. Honestly, this would be the first thing I would try for myself.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

 

There is a camping limitation. Everything can be abused, if you really want to, I think it's pretty clear that it was intended you don't abuse it. Stark Contrast to baldurs gate where you can pretty much rest anywhere and many classes have nothing to do if not rested.

 

I think changing the camping supply capacity depending on difficulty would actually be a really good way to up the challenge on higher difficulties.  Make it 3 on hard and 2 on PotD. 

 

 

It's already two on hard and POTD.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

 

 

 

I think the best thing would be to  have a super-tough critical path so that you're kinda forced to do lot of side content in order to grow up and beat the main story.

 

Critical path on hard and pod should be extreme and you can reach  level 12 only at the end of the game and after doing  ALL side content.

 

This is what i call a challenge

 

Not really.  Being forced to do tons of side content is oppressive game design.  The better route is to scale back bounty xp rewards and possibly scale back xp rewards on minor (read easy) side quests and side quests that you have massively out-leveled. 

 

 

Forced to do tons of side content in order to beat critical path with low difficulties so that if you wanna rush it, it will be very hard.

 

Actually, even doing only critical path, is too easy (i skipped WHOLE Caed Nua and WHOLE Twin Elms),

I wonder how it is when doing also all side content.

 

 

What difficulty are you playing on?  And are you using death over maiming?  I've been playing on normal and I definitely see the inverted difficulty curve (going to play hard next, then PotD, and then mess about with trials of iron and death instead of maiming), but I have to wonder how people are having such an easy time with hard or PotD without xp grinding, or cheesing and/or min/maxing.  And I have to wonder if they are using death over maiming. 

 

 

Death over maiming doesn't really matter if your units are never at risk of losing all hp. Acts 2 and 3 are just tuned badly, no matter what difficulty you play on; I hit Dyrford at level 6 on Hard twice and it feels like I'm over-levelled both times, even more-so the second time since I know what I'm doing in combat now. It just gets easier as you progress, even without xp grinding or cheese.

[Shacknews interviews Feargus U. who "hints" at a possible BIG Patch 1.05. KS Backers get early entry to the 2 expansions.]

Definitely agree with the difficulty adjustments, at least on POTD. Not liking what I've heard about the lack of POTD difficulty past Act 1. It just looks like Acts 2 & 3 haven't been tuned properly.

[Hard mode is too easy.]

Hmm, it could be a case where the devs didn't have enough time to properly tune Acts 2 and 3. The final stretch could have been focused on squashing bugs and not difficulty balance, which would be a good reason as to why mid to late game mobs scale so poorly overall.

 

Many teams seem to have this problem when deadlines are looming. Early to mid-game is great, then you just become gods walking among mortals; at least it fits with POE lore!

[The Gamespot review]

"Planescape Torment is the only old IE game with a better story than PoE.  They all have better stories than DA:I or D:OS."

 

L0L

 

I enjoy POE too, but let's not delude ourselves. =/

[Should discussion about The Poem be ... censored?]

Don't make dedicated threads and eventually it will die down. Just ignore it now, the issue has been resolved.

[The Gamespot review]

To be fair, D:OS combat suffers in a similar manner to POE. That is, a few tactics will trivialize most, if not all encounters in the game; CC and magic in general for Divinity, high deflection tank and ranged DPS for POE. Divinity's combat may be far and away more ambitious than POE, but you don't have to dive very far to find the winning strategy. Fortunately, Larian is working on an update to add a new difficulty into the main game. Maybe Obsidian will be able to do something like that for POE to improve the challenge level of encounters.

 

Personally, I do not like Divinity's loot system; a lot of trash loot that is randomized, which doesn't help. POE may have the unlimited stash, but at least I'm guaranteed to find certain drops in different areas.