Oh boy, more "difficulty" wanking. Protip: spamming Scroll of Paralysis is not difficult. Running into a "lol you lose" gimmick, reloading and re-selecting spells and consumables so you can now go faceroll the gimmick is not difficult. Gimmicks like that can be fun and force players to do something outside of their normal behavior, and so are ultimately a positive, but they can be over-used and they certainly aren't an example of "difficult." So let's cut out the "lol you're just bad" comments, okay?
You've got some rose-tinted glasses going on here because the IE games were no ****ing different. Oh, sure, you had a chance of a random encounter while resting... so you just quicksaved and then kept quickloading until you rested peacefully. How is this any ****ing different from running back to the previous floor of a dungeon to go grab the camping supplies you weren't allowed to take with you, or going to the stairwell to take a nap in your nice fancy house topside before returning back to delving through the Endless Paths? It's not, but you tell yourself it is.
There was no "dungeon diving stress" in the IE games. That's pure ****ing rose-tinted glasses. There cannot BE stress when there's no ****ing fail state. You can't run out of time to stop the ritual and fail your quest. The person you're going through the scary forest to retrieve a rare and sacred plant to make them a cure can't off and die on you because your party took too long getting there and back with the macguffin. You have unlimited saves and loads, so it doesn't matter if you **** up - you just load from save and try, try again. And, sure, you COULD do a self-imposed no-save challenge... but why, when the game is clearly built around "haha **** you" gimmicks that require specific answers? You can brute force your way through these gimmicks on lower difficulty levels, but higher difficulty levels demand the correct responses because you're at too much of a statistical disadvantage to just brute force it. Congratulations, you played 20 hours and now you're dead and have to start over because you didn't prepare "Immunity to This Encounter's Gimmick" spells before you entered the dungeon! That's your idea of fun? Permadeath/ironman games are a thing and it's a VERY valid way of getting that "dungeon diving stress" you erroneously claim is in the IE games, but the game has to be designed around that mechanic FROM THE START in order to be good, else you're just playing a self-imposed challenge mode that's apt to be frustrating more than engaging.
I'm so sick of seeing people beat themselves off to the idea that Deadfire has moved away from attrition-based gameplay because "it was too hard" for players. Deadfire is the way it is because that's what Obsidian wanted to develop. Not every system has to be a clone of ****ing d20.
First of all, this is all subjective, so I don't understand why you are getting so defensive. Could it be people like different things?
Also, the fail-state of the IE games was having to re-load. It's the same fail state as Fire Emblem actually, sure if a character dies you can just keep going, but who actually does that?
As well, Is this any different in Deadfire? The difference is, with POE1 you could load yourself into a bad spot with not enough supplies if you weren't careful, either having to do the shameful run back to town, or load a previous save, which again is the same penalty, a time penalty. You wasted your time by being bad. Now it is a free load before every encounter.
To the dungeons that you are getting wrecked over and over again. That's when you have to make the strategic decision to rest and change your spells? I don't get your issue with that. Why would you keep reloading if resting is a game mechanic.
Honestly, I feel you are more into action games. I have been reading your comments and it seems to me you didn't like managing the middle layer of your spells. That is fine, but IE had it even if you choose to ignore it, some of my favorite parts of the game were areas you couldn't rest in (lemme guess you probably just ran back to areas you could and called the game easy). You want to remove an entire game mechanic.
Let me ask you this. You want every encounter to be difficult. That's your solution right? Well guess what, that means balancing for using symbol of Eothas every fight. That means you have to make every encounter difficult enough to force you to use that spell to be any sort of challenge. Do you not see how this will cause every fight to feel monotonous? You will have your set route of optimal spells you use every time because they work the best. Guess what too? You have your conditional AI system so now you literally could make it so you have to do nothing. I'm sorry, but I really don't see any enjoyment in that.
As I said before if you want to blow your abilities without thinking there is another genre of game for you.
