Difficulty after 1.1 - Game is still too easy

[Shadenuat]

 

Um, its NOT all about combat. Obsidian deliberatly reduced the amount of combat in this game compared to Pillars1 and then went so far as to include FAR more options for avoiding combat. People are complaining about not getting Dark Souls level of "difficulty" in a game that has been almost entirely tuned around story, character interaction, world interaction, and roleplaying.

Sorry dude, but this statement is laughable. PoE2 has quite a lot of encounters where you talk to person and end up fighting that person anyway, most of content is about party adventure and dungeons, and it's character system has literally only 2 skills to level up, with skills not affecting story much in any way. Deus Ex 1 has more roleplaying, player agency and endings than PoE2 and it's built on an engine of 1st person shooter.

 

But the whole point of having 5 difficulty settings

I still can't think up any reasons why you need whole 5 difficulty settings in your game btw. In any game.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Shadenuat

[theBalthazar]

Obsidian cannot balance all possibilities.

 

Often the start of the game is difficult in this kind of RPG. Because after that, you can optimize your choices. AND :

 

1) If this choice is irrelevant = no enough choice = no interest to play. The player have no impact on his environnement.

2) Relevant but far too much game breaker with few associations = no inteteresting to play = too easy.

 

But in this game, there is almost open world after port maje. It is extremely hard to put the cursor at the good place.

 

Few people will say : I want MAX difficulty BUT without "over-routing".

 

Few other say : No... If I CAN do that,  -this- must be included to the "meta" game, a new high level. (like considering that the player has found the best weapons after port-maje for example = consider this behavior like a new standard)

 

So POE2 is complicated to Balance for that I think.

 

PoTD is perhaps the hightest level of difficulty but he cannot be frustrating like : you must pick exactly theses and theses classes + this routing. And for example, if not, you are wrong and you lose systematically all your fights.

 

The best example is : Gorecci alley.

 

Few people say : I want to challenge this moment NOW because I want to play a very hard difficulty but without derived manners. (Return after few levels)

 

Others say : If this moment is too hard, come an other day (= routing)

 

If you are Obsidian you do what ?^^...

Edited June 10, 2018 by theBalthazar

[Tigranes]

Tacobell,

 

(1) POE hearkens back to an Infinity Engine tradition which involved a huge number of fans who loved story and worldbuilding, and also a huge number that loved combat and character building. It's not really genuine to dismiss one over the other.

 

(2) You missed the numerous times when we all made the point that yes, very few people play POTD, so it's hard to devote huge resources to it, but at the same time, it needs to at least try to be more difficult, because it is supposed to be extrmeely difficult for grognards, and there are four other difficulty settings for everyone else. It's pretty nonsensical to set the yardstick at "50% of people should be able to beat the absolute hardest difficulty".

 

(honestly, it would be better to have a single difficulty level that they balance painstakingly for most players, and then tack on a story time mode and brutal mode on either side for the minority. managing 5 seems far too difficult.)

[InsaneCommander]

I actually find all this deal "difficulty was not a priority" bizarre. You have a party based game where most of content is about combat, and difficulty was "not a priority". If combat difficulty was not a priority, then what was? What is even the point of the game then? It's main gameplay is combat. It's not a project like Numenera where combat, indeed, might not have been a priority.

 

I think it was not a priority when comparing it to removing bugs. Because they started addressing the difficulty after the hotfix, with some improvements on their first main patch. That's ok for me.

 

I'm playing on Veteran now and it's difficult enough for me. I expect it will become easy later but it's ok. By the time I replay the game I will want a good challenge on PotD though.

[Undesirable]

I thought people were reporting that the game is difficult enough now in POTD with scaling turned on? I'm finding it pretty challenging. The op says it's all about leveling being too quick and accuracy, but if the enemies are scaling along with you, surely that makes up for it?

Edited June 10, 2018 by Undesirable

[cokane]

Um, its NOT all about combat. Obsidian deliberatly reduced the amount of combat in this game compared to Pillars1 and then went so far as to include FAR more options for avoiding combat. People are complaining about not getting Dark Souls level of "difficulty" in a game that has been almost entirely tuned around story, character interaction, world interaction, and roleplaying.

 

 

This isn't true. Yes, the game is marginally less about combat than the original.

 

However, gear, consumables, stats, half your level-up skills, and much more have nothing do with anything except combat. Virtually everything you spend gold on helps combat or the ship. There's almost nothing else to spend gold on! Arguing the game isn't focused around combat is simply false.

 

Moreover, combat is the only aspect of the game that has a challenge. People seemingly don't want fail-states for quests, or at least Obsidian doesn't, so there's no actual challenge in the other things you listed: story, character interaction, world interaction and roleplaying. There's no fail-states for these parts of the game. Thus there's no "tuning around" them.

[Wormerine]

 

 

...

 

It seems to be an Obsidian thing.  Pillars was undeniably hardest in the early stages of the game, Tyranny peaked at the end of Act 1 and was downhill from there, and Deadfire is little different.  Maybe the majority of their effort is on the early stages of the game?

 

(...)

So, while I don't expect big things, I do expect that Obsidian wouldn't make POTD trivially easy on release (which they did), and I do hope that they will go further than what they did with 1.1. 

Ha! You know what, we are so spoiled. I remember starting PoE1 and thinking to myself how much better it is than IE games where you had one real difficulty and other ones were awkward stat changes. It took me couple playtrhoughs before I started to be critical of PoE1 difficulty, as it was so much better than games that inspired it.

 

That said. Yeah, it can be better. I am diapponted to hear that later fights don't keep the difficulty. How are the "epic" fights"? (dragons etc.) I hope for something on the level of Adra dragon.  

[1TTFFSSE]

I thought people were reporting that the game is difficult enough now in POTD with scaling turned on? I'm finding it pretty challenging. The op says it's all about leveling being too quick and accuracy, but if the enemies are scaling along with you, surely that makes up for it?

In general it is I would say except maybe some extra tweaks to enemy ai. For more enemy "stats" I think a mod can do the trick but a mod for ai is not as good as what obsidian can do. 

[Shadenuat]

I think it was not a priority when comparing it to removing bugs. Because they started addressing the difficulty after the hotfix

I think this is a bit full of gak, because varied and difficult encounters & core design for open world game remaining difficult should have been designed during development and be a priority, it's THE GAMEPLAY; it's their second PoE game, it's not the mega dungeon with copy pasted slimes anymore.

 

Speaking of bestiary, BG1 had goblins and bandits, BG2 added golems, vampires, dragons, celestials, demons, illithid, beholders, liches, drow - that's how proper sequel should probably handle new adventure, difficulty & new bestiary, don't you think?

 

I thought people were reporting that the game is difficult enough now in POTD with scaling turned on? I'm finding it pretty challenging. The op says it's all about leveling being too quick and accuracy, but if the enemies are scaling along with you, surely that makes up for it?

Monsters scaled around +2/-2, with fixes they're now +4 (?), add gear to that, empower, many things, and eventually you seem to outpace everything.

 

I hope for something on the level of Adra dragon

I thought so after release and a playthrough too.

 

Btw, there is definitely something wrong with big monsters like dragons, which is because of interrupt system. Party seem to be able reliably interrupt and cancel actions of big creatures like dragons and they never seem to finish their abilities (that's not even talking monks just kick flipping kraken in the air for massive lulz). I wonder if anyone noticed that, because just mashing various interrupt rogue/monk/barbarian buttons on magma dragon seemed to completely stunlock her.

 

These creatures should have immunity to interrupt maybe. I wonder what other people experience with these beasts is because I think current dragons are the easiest big creatures in the game.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Shadenuat

[Myztik]

 

Can you please elaborate how the game is too easy? I couldn't even touch the thugs in Gorecci street.

 

Was playing PotD, with ALL scaling, upwards only, 35 points of beraths blessings spent on stats, +4 lvls and gold.

 

In some attempts my guys would die before touching anything. There were 7 (or 8?) enemies, 1 skull to 3 skulls and i even tried hiring mercs for a full party. I barely touched them and they 2 - 3 shot anyone. I only managed to defeated them by turning scaling off.

 

And people were saying they can solo this? What type of character can solo 8 enemies that are way above his level in the early game? Genuinely curious.

A game is considere too easy if you select normal mode and have the AI win the game for you. Stating it becomes really hard on the hardest difficulty mode is good, but that doesn't mean the game itself is hard. The fact that you have to select level scaling to prevent you from falling asleep during encounters on veteran mode is just dumb.

 

What? That's the whole point of the setting

[ThacoBell]

 

 

Um, its NOT all about combat. Obsidian deliberatly reduced the amount of combat in this game compared to Pillars1 and then went so far as to include FAR more options for avoiding combat. People are complaining about not getting Dark Souls level of "difficulty" in a game that has been almost entirely tuned around story, character interaction, world interaction, and roleplaying.

Sorry dude, but this statement is laughable. PoE2 has quite a lot of encounters where you talk to person and end up fighting that person anyway, most of content is about party adventure and dungeons, and it's character system has literally only 2 skills to level up, with skills not affecting story much in any way. Deus Ex 1 has more roleplaying, player agency and endings than PoE2 and it's built on an engine of 1st person shooter.

 

But the whole point of having 5 difficulty settings

I still can't think up any reasons why you need whole 5 difficulty settings in your game btw. In any game.

 

Well no. Combat was measurably reduced between Pillars 1 and Deadfire. Conversly, ways to avoid combat (through dialogue, class choice, etc.) as well as ways the world cahnges to yuro character were increased, and quite dramatically. THere is quite a lot of evidence that character interaction and story were given precedence over combat. Thats the main focus of ROLEplayinggames as well. Deadfire is not a hack and slash. That's more the realm of Diablo or Dark Souls.

[Tigranes]

You realise getting rid of trash mobs and focusing on better encounter design doesn't mean the game isn't combat-focused, right?

 

And you realise there's a whole world of RPGs between Diablo and Planescape: Torment, and the enduring 20-year allure of, for instance, BG2 was that it was pretty good at supporting combat-oriented, story-oriented, mix&match playthroughs?

 

It's OK if you don't care so much for combat.

[Mazama]

You played with a party of 4, ofc it's easy. Play solo and if you still steamroll everything, then you can say its to easy. There will be a achievement with TCS, so you can not increase the difficulty that high, that solo ist not possible anymore.

 

It isn't as difficult as you would think, because you level up ridiculously fast when solo. My solo character reached level 20 before I completed half of quests available. And the game's difficulty is heavily front loaded. Once you're past the early game the difficulty melts away, and you'll still breeze through the game at high levels.

[Shadenuat]

Yeah, by the way, I would actually recommend playing party of 5. What is the penanlty to xp you get, 5% for every extra char or something? I don't remember how it worked in PoE1.

 

Having more low level characters is harder than having fewer higher level characters in PoE.

 

It's OK if you don't care so much for combat.

NO ITS NOT OKAY

Edited June 10, 2018 by Shadenuat

[Wormerine]

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. 

The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

[Elb]

I saved just after the lava dragon prepatch (PoTD). Before the patch I plowed right through the dragon, fight was laughably easy, no potions, a few buffs out of habit, killed it with auto attacks. Post patch I finally beat it after multiple potions per character, exhausting all spells and abilities and still died to the trash that was left. It was the first time in the game that I had to pay attention to the abilities that the enemy was using to react spatially. Definite increase in difficulty.

 

Something that is sorely missing is the variety of gear it take to outfit all of your characters with saving throw gear. It's almost as if they forgot it from the loot table. This gear should probably be the most prevalent in the game as it usually goes in several slots and it takes a huge variety to fit it in on all your characters. In very tough fights this is an item that ends up being crucial (I usually play a melee heavy party) and there are very few ways to really pump up your saving throws in this game.

[Tigranes]

It's a number of things. You give players an open world experience where they can pick and choose their fights, you give them zero attrition where any encounter can be faced at full strength, you give too many ways to buff up the party from pets to food to drugs to rest bonuses to Empower etc., and then you also have enemies that basically plateau after ~lv12 and only scale up in a limited way, and you also generously dole out accuracy/defences per level.

 

None of those things are awful in and of themselves, but they exert remarkable 'synergy'. Hence you walk around, level 16, with plenty of quests still to do, and your rogue crits & over-pens named bosses because they're stlil running around with 90 deflection after being upscaled.

 

This 'bad synergy' can't really be broken up post-release, because all of those things are pretty major design decisions. All they can really do now is tone down XP gain, buff enemies a bit, and so on.

[AeonsLegend]

 

 

Can you please elaborate how the game is too easy? I couldn't even touch the thugs in Gorecci street.

 

Was playing PotD, with ALL scaling, upwards only, 35 points of beraths blessings spent on stats, +4 lvls and gold.

 

In some attempts my guys would die before touching anything. There were 7 (or 8?) enemies, 1 skull to 3 skulls and i even tried hiring mercs for a full party. I barely touched them and they 2 - 3 shot anyone. I only managed to defeated them by turning scaling off.

 

And people were saying they can solo this? What type of character can solo 8 enemies that are way above his level in the early game? Genuinely curious.

A game is considere too easy if you select normal mode and have the AI win the game for you. Stating it becomes really hard on the hardest difficulty mode is good, but that doesn't mean the game itself is hard. The fact that you have to select level scaling to prevent you from falling asleep during encounters on veteran mode is just dumb.

 

What? That's the whole point of the setting

 

It's a setting that was made necessary because of how the game is made. The fact that it requires a setting such as this proves that the levelling system with this open world setting is not optimally implemented.

[JiggleFloyd]

I think the early game is much more difficult than it was. I am finding it challenging and not to the point of steamroll. I have yet to die but I came close a few times. My guess is that I'll begin to steamroll once I hit 12 or something, but it's better than it was, they're making progress.

 

I think that the game will be better if they fine tune all encounters, and like you mentioned, add variety of defenses and enemy types to the encounters so a one-size fits all method never works really well. I think more monsters with immunity will also be helpful.

 

An improved AI would be nice but it's easier said than done.

 

Also, we really can't expect devs to balance PotD based on the ultra elite power gamers have played 10 playthroughs of PotD and plan to do the same for Deadfire. Mods should try to fill in the gaps to a degree. If it's too easy then play with a smaller party or put your own limitations on the game, such as never using empower, or putting resting limits on yourself.

[Ichthyic]

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. 

 

The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

I liked the way they ramped up fight difficulty in BG2.

 

they gave everyone, including enemies, the ability to set combination spells that trigger instantly on conditions.

 

like... iron skin, spell reflection, and mirror image that are cast instantly on combat start, for example.

 

that made a lot of the fights much more interesting, and you had to plan ahead to deal with tough defenses by using counters like ruby ray, etc.

 

so, at higher difficulty levels in PoE2, have the enemy ai be able to instant cast some defensive spells or abilities at the start of combat, and/or when certain conditions are met, like 50% health, immobilized, etc.

 

again, the scripting for this kind of thing is already built into the game... the ai just doesn't do well using it.

 

 

[BalkothTheFeared]

 

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. 

 

The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

I liked the way they ramped up fight difficulty in BG2.

 

they gave everyone, including enemies, the ability to set combination spells that trigger instantly on conditions.

 

like... iron skin, spell reflection, and mirror image that are cast instantly on combat start, for example.

 

that made a lot of the fights much more interesting, and you had to plan ahead to deal with tough defenses by using counters like ruby ray, etc.

 

so, at higher difficulty levels in PoE2, have the enemy ai be able to instant cast some defensive spells or abilities at the start of combat, and/or when certain conditions are met, like 50% health, immobilized, etc.

 

again, the scripting for this kind of thing is already built into the game... the ai just doesn't do well using it.

 

 

 

 

Would need to get rid of Arcane Dampener as well. Otherwise it's just nullified right away.

[misterjimmy]

I think they nerfed concelhaut.

 

POE1

 

MIG: 24

CON: 18

DEX: 14

PER: 18

INT: 26

RES: 22

 

POE2

 

MIG:15

CON:18

DEX:8

PER:18

INT:21

RES:14

 

The funny thing is Xaurip base int 22.

[Lokithecat]

 

They balanced PoE 1 for solo players as well, otherwise there would no TCS or FCS runs possible. So they should do that for this game as well.

 

 

No they didn't.  People just found ways to avoid / cheese encounters, until high enough level to handle them, and Summons (Through equipment) were impressively unbalanced.

 

Saying it was balanced with this in mind, is as silly as saying that they balanced PoE1 for solo, level 1, PoTD, since someone managed to figure out how to do that.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84857-noobers-revenge-a-level-1-solo-challenge/

[dunehunter]

 

I think they nerfed concelhaut.

 

POE1

 

MIG: 24

CON: 18

DEX: 14

PER: 18

INT: 26

RES: 22

 

POE2

 

MIG:15

CON:18

DEX:8

PER:18

INT:21

RES:14

 

The funny thing is Xaurip base int 22.

 

 

I can understand the 'Body Stats' is inconsistent because Concelhaut changes his body, but why the hell his 'Mind Stats' is also reduced? And lower than Xaurip yes, that's an insult basically...

[PizzaSHARK]

 

Yeah, you don't really lose anything for doing stupid things in combat. As the system goes now, you can use party to gather mobs and fireball them all together with mobs, have 1 dude left standing and win, no problem. It's actually a pretty degenerate gameplay. Only thing that fixes it is Grog, by the way. Which is pretty funny.

 

I don't expect Obsidian to spend huge resources on complex solutions for POTD, though; that only serves a tiny fraction of their player base

I actually find all this deal "difficulty was not a priority" bizarre. You have a party based game where most of content is about combat, and difficulty was "not a priority". If combat difficulty was not a priority, then what was? What is even the point of the game then? It's main gameplay is combat. It's not a project like Numenera where combat, indeed, might not have been a priority.

Um, its NOT all about combat. Obsidian deliberatly reduced the amount of combat in this game compared to Pillars1 and then went so far as to include FAR more options for avoiding combat. People are complaining about not getting Dark Souls level of "difficulty" in a game that has been almost entirely tuned around story, character interaction, world interaction, and roleplaying.

 

 

 

Deadfire is quite clearly combat-focused, though less so than Pillars.  The default solution to almost every encounter is "fight it."  You CAN talk your way out of SOME encounters, but very few.  Almost all of the side content is focused on combat - every single bounty is combat.  All of the islands you can explore and name?  You have to clear some little dungeon or scripted event that - you guessed it - involves combat.  Everything involving the ship?  Fight ****, yo.

 

Oh, sure, we have discrete SECONDARY skills that allow us to diplomancy our way through SOME encounters... but it's piss poor compared to what's on offer in many other CRPGs, let alone the tabletop systems they were all built using or inspired by.  Even ****ing Pathfinder, RAW, has better diplomancy options than Deadfire does...

 

 

 

 

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. 

 

The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

I liked the way they ramped up fight difficulty in BG2.

 

they gave everyone, including enemies, the ability to set combination spells that trigger instantly on conditions.

 

like... iron skin, spell reflection, and mirror image that are cast instantly on combat start, for example.

 

that made a lot of the fights much more interesting, and you had to plan ahead to deal with tough defenses by using counters like ruby ray, etc.

 

so, at higher difficulty levels in PoE2, have the enemy ai be able to instant cast some defensive spells or abilities at the start of combat, and/or when certain conditions are met, like 50% health, immobilized, etc.

 

again, the scripting for this kind of thing is already built into the game... the ai just doesn't do well using it.

 

This is still perfectly doable if we let the computer cheat - and it HAS to cheat, because no AI is going to be a match for human powergamers and we don't have a human DM slapping them on the wrist or adjusting the dungeon on the fly to prevent some gimmick or playstyle from breaking the game.  SCS was well known for creating illegal Contigencies and Spell Triggers just so that players couldn't faceroll encounters in the opening rounds, and even the Improved Tougher mods usually let the game cheat a little just to deal with how overpowered players were by that point.

 

Obsidian have painted themselves into a corner with systems design here, and I don't see a "legitimate" way out of it unless they want to add in multiplayer with a human DM or something.  I don't think "that's unrealistic!" is a valid complaint for PotD, so just go nuts.  We have quicksave, so who cares if an encounter is designed such that the surprises will PROBABLY TPK the first time the player sees them?