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Showing results for tags 'difficulty'.
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I wanted to talk about the difficulty of P:E. I skimmed the first few pages and couldn't find a topic about it, so I decided to create one. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but here we go: I've been replaying DA:O on nightmare and couldn't help but notice how easy it is. When I played it for the first time I found it was more difficult than other games this generation, but that feeling went away when I got used to the mechanics. Now I just wail on the enemies and wait for them to die. That's not good combat. I know Obsidian is trying to capture the IE games, but those weren't *hard* per se, just obnoxiously luck based. I want to use tactics and all tools I have at my disposal. You should be punished for memorizing only damaging spells on your mage etc. The question is: How badly should you be punished? How difficult should the game be? How different should the experience be between normal and hard? How do you define difficulty in RPG's in general? Should anything be designed around luck? I have no idea where to even begin answering those questions, so I'll refrain from having an opinion before I read some of yours. -
From the IGN wiki for P:E If I could have polled more questions, I'd have asked if there are those with a personally imposed handicap for difficulty. And whether you'd use the ability to change difficulty settings during the game.- 85 replies
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What does that mean? The player is given specific abilities to deal with situations. Then, the developer designs a level and realizes a player ability may trivialize whatever silly challenge they came up with. So, they weasel out that player ability by bypassing it in code or putting in some invisible trigger to shut it off. Example: The player is given a levitate spell, you hover a few feet off the ground and damage breaks the spell. Later, a level is designed with pits of fire. In testing levitate makes it a cake-walk. Now you could have fire fall from the sky in a patten that will break levitate; in which case the player has to figure that out. Or, the developer can weasel out the use of that ability all together by putting an invisible fire damage layer at the levitate height. The former doesn't bother me, the latter annoys me to no end. I've run across this twice in NWN2 now. I'm outside Ammon Jerro's haven and I need to get some water from a geyser. I read the lead in and it states that you need to be careful of the acid. What do I do? Why I have the gith cast Energy Immunity: Acid of course. What happens? I step in, 60 damage from "Acid (Magical)". I smell a weasel! Please don't do this sort of thing in PE. It's not challenging, it just gives me one more reason to think that non-DPS spells simply aren't worth keeping memorized. I mean, if it isn't going to work when I stop and think, "oh yea, I have a tool for that." Nope, sorry... that tool doesn't work as it makes it too easy. Really? Then why bother giving me tools at all? And, expecting me to waste slots on them if they're just going to get dodged by the code every time I realize one of them might be useful?- 38 replies
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* 1st Should Economy cost more on higher difficulty? In Baldur's Gate (once upon a time) I played one game with "Tactical Settings". It made Bandit Raids more rough and more difficult, but more important for this thread, it made the Iron Crisis real. Items broke more often (due to the Iron Crisis), and due to the Iron Shortage all of the "iron" items cost a ton more (and breaking way easier). I think a Short Sword cost around 100~ gold or something similar, whilst on an original vanilla game it goes for something like 10-15 gold. * 2nd Adventurer's Hall also included? This question is regarding the Adventurer's Hall specifically because I am curious to know what people think about companions costing gold from the Adventurer's Hall. If this is the case "Companions for Hire" that is, would they cost even more on... let's say Hardcore? Could you perhaps even be able to "Shut off" the Adventurer's Hall on Hardcore? (In essence: Not being able to hire companions for Hardcore difficulty). * 3rd Adventurer's Hall "Off" on Hardcore? This question is related to the Adventurer's Hall & Hardcore difficulty, or as an option regardless of difficulty. Excluding yourself from the possibility to hire "extras", making the game more difficult naturally and automatically (handicapping yourself, basically). I personally think that if you can turn it "Off" it'd be way more difficult. However, you could just not use it if you don't want to use it, but locking yourself out from it entirely also removes any thoughts of "Backup plans". Without the Adventurers Hall occupying the sub-conscious of the back of your head, it being "Closed" would and should cause even more carefulness in progression of the story. * 4th Why should Economy be affected by higher difficulty? In my opinion, it adds immersion and realism. At least it did for me with BG with Tactics Mods. Finally, this is a lot on "Hardcore", how could it work on easier modes? Is the Adventurers Hall "Free to Hire" on Casual mode?
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End game difficulty and PE
anubite posted a topic in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
I think balancing an RPG for the end game can be pretty difficult because you have to account a lot of theoretical party complexity. On one hand, you don't want encounters to be too hard, you want the pacing to match the development of the player's party. On the other hand, players can be very good at exploiting mechanics. Although SoA doesn't have this as much, Throne of Baal has many, many moments where my group could just right click entire enemy groups to death without breaking a sweat, seldom having to actually use any of my upper tier abilities to clear most enemies. And really, despite its rough spots, I was able to clear Watcher's Keep before clearing the Underdark in my second playthrough (granted, I chose to skip fighting the final boss, knew I stood no chance) ... and that place is pretty freakin' ridiculous. Even some of the fiercest challenges can be beaten with the right party makeup and tenacity. I know Obsidian has talked about its current stance on difficulty, adding a few modes to enhance difficulty, and to tailor enhanced levels of difficulty by adding diversity and size to monster packs instead of just buffing damage and health. But I was wondering, perhaps, if there should, or could be a rudimentary little check after a certain point, to see how "easy" the last fight was. On higher difficulty levels, I was thinking, what if there were something like L4D's ai director? Towards the end game, this director would kick in after checking to see whether you're right-clicking things to death or not. If you are, it would further add to enemy diversity and perhaps unlock certain abilities for monsters, to further enhance difficulty? And if you start wiping a lot afterwards, it would turn back the difficulty to normal. Just an idea anyway. Not saying it should be all game long, or exist on the easier difficulties. Just that, in spite of a developer's best intentions, a game may still be "too easy" for some players, given the right items and party make-up. -
So I've been playing and replaying some of the older IE games and some other cRPGs these past few months and I've noticed that a lot of the riddles in the games are riddles that I couldn't remember the answers to many years later. I thought it was good fun having to figure out the answers again. However, as soon as I looked at the answer choices, the solutions were simple enough. All I had to do was pick the right choice (or reload and pick the right choice (or reload...)). Anyway, it would be nice if either on hard difficulty or as a game option, we would be able to type in the riddle answers instead of picking from a dialogue option. Might and Magic III:Isles of Terra is the only game I've played where I could/had to type in riddle answers through keyboard and I really enjoyed having to figure out the solutions. Anyway, it's worth bringing up. Computer AI is nowhere near being able to accept dialogue that is typed, but at least we can do a simple IF (typed answer) = "actual answer" THEN correct() ELSE incorrect() for riddles. It would be enjoyable and definitely harkens back to the good old days when video games were actually tough because of the riddles. For those of us who want to just go through the story or who don't have a strong background in English, we can remove this option to get through the riddles. I can see this being a problem for localization and translations, but hopefully there is a workaround. Oh, and don't make it case-sensitive. -
Hey kid, we have different stories about it. What do you think about building storyline mechanics with respect to different difficulty options? I mean that gameplay would vary not only in difficulty, but in storyline or amount of quests that player receive. It may look like developer have to build handful unique stories and will demand double of money and HR. My idea is to build one complete main plot and set of side stories/quests, and until certain difficulty modes (suppose those 3 special most difficult goals) player wont get all side quests (developers may even randomize offered set) and may be restricted to go through some predefined shortcuts of main story. Another possibility (along with hiding some secondary quests) will just end main plot and propose to continue (or even restart) on full difficulty to see extension of story. P.S.: I know that this may require additional funds, however perhaps not as many compared to the interest shown by players. Many games struggle to attend audience more than once. Such feature may add motivation, and different gaming experience. Instead of single pass, players will become interested to go through the game again. And of course, adding more arbitrariness of gameplay will reduce significance of pass-through "manuals" which will inevitably rise over the internet with time. -
Something I haven't seen much discussion on is the aspects of Death in Project Eternity. What is your opinion on death mechanisms? Would you prefer a Baldur's Gate style? or a more forgiving style? This is something I'd be interested in hearing about in an update (if Josh and the team have made any decisions on which angle they're going to go for the death system). I'd like to know whether it will be a brutal death system like Baldur's Gate or a more forgiving KotOR-like style. Perhaps they're going to use different systems on different difficulties? For example, on Expert or Heart of Fury mode, the BG style death? I think I'd enjoy the game if it used a KotOR style death system with party-joinable NPC deaths related to the story or as consequences of my choices in the game (but with some degree of avoidability, for instance, not a if you pick this option, Ashley Williams dies a la Mass Effect). if they're going that route that would be fine. However I wouldn't mind a harsh system like Baldur's Gate as well, that would also be fine. Do you think death should be permanent in Project Eternity? Should a Raise Dead or Ressurection spell exist? -
Clearly not every one wants the same game. Some want the game to be painfully hard. Others would like something more equivalent to the old IE games. Some want healing, money, and magical gear to be super rare, and recovery from injuries to be a protracted and dangerous challenge. Others don't. I wonder how it would work if the relative availability of healing, money, and powerful gear were tied to difficulty level. I hate using improved AI to define difficulty because I don't want to fight idiots, and folks who want a hard game seem not to like the traditional increase/decrease health, increase/decrease damage model. Having more options for healing and having money and magical equipment more plentiful on Normal would make the game less difficult than it would be on settings where resources were tighter. Players on every setting would retain control of how they allocate resources, with those decisions obviously being more difficult the scarcer things are. If such a system were implemented, I'd like Normal to be roughly equivalent to BG I. I'd be fine if an achievement or a printable card were used to recognize the accomplishments of those who overcame greater adversity. -
There are gameplay difficulties, but I think it would be better if the plot is challenging as well :D So, what do you think? For example, Morrowind belongs to "Hard." If you kill plot-important NPCs, you will get a "you should feel bad" message and you can't continue the main plot, therefore "game over." For JRPG players, Persona 3 and 4 also belongs to "Hard" -
Being able to play through the game again when you have finished it with your already somewhat levelled character would be great. I really like new game plus in other games and it encourages me to play through a game more than once. This could be especially significant if the game has meaningful choices or hidden things, an option to change race would also be great but not absolutely needed. Enemies would be appropriately levelled of course.
