Difficulty after 1.1 - Game is still too easy

[algroth]

 

 

 

Why is that a problem and since when does nobody like a rest-heavy character? D&D became famous partly on the back of powerful wizards, sorcerers and priests with a limited number of uses before resting. The balance was the DM, which would equate to the game designer in cRPGs. There's nothing wrong with having diversity between the classes. How boring is it that every class in PoE2 has all per-encounter spells, an arbitrary expendable resource (rogues run out of "guile" as the battle goes on? barbs run out of rage? what??), an an arbitrary "empower" button that magically makes everything stronger?

 

 

But I would say that DM is the crucial difference there. I have never done any P&P roleplaying but I have no doubt a per-rest system can work very well in that context, because you have the DM there who's probably not going to have you take a nap after every fight (and presumably, in that sort of setting the roleplaying component will be much more pronounced so most people wouldn't want to either). But of course P&P also offers much more flexibility in getting around a fight and such. If your party is exhausted and your casters low on spells, and they spot some unfriendly ogres on their path, they can maybe just go around, or prepare an ambush, or attempt to scare them away / convince them to leave (using an illusion spell maybe, or just a really convincing / intimidating character). Hell, they could set fire to the surrounding forest and drive them off that way. And I should imagine that in P&P gaming, beating a tactical retreat is actually possible as well (realistically, having seen you off the ogres are probably not overly interested in chasing you to the ends of the earth). I would love for this to be actually possible in computer games as well. But you'd need an equivalent of a DM in the game to be able to do that, and in general an engine that allows for vastly more flexibility. That is very hard to actually do, of course.

 

I seem to have side-tracked somewhat, but yeah... per-rest systems work just fine in that context. To me, it never felt it translated at all well to cRPG. The cost of resting and time elapsing is just too ambiguous for it to balance very well. Which isn't to say that per-encounter doesn't have flaws, it clearly does. Having longer-term tactical aspects and being incentivised not to use the same abilities every fight are certainly things I would like to see very much as well (and in general, more organic design than discrete resource pools and spell levels and power levels and such). I don't thing 'per-rest' can properly accomplish that though.

 

Have you tried the Baldur's Gates and the Icewind Dales? You can get ambushed while resting in dangerous areas, or while traveling through dangerous areas. I'm not saying the balance was immaculate, but there are better ways of limiting rest than gold/expendable resources.

 

All that meant was that you quick-saved before every rest and reloaded if you got ambushed. It was dumb.

 

It was doubly dumb in BG and IWD (versus BG2 and IWD2) because many ambushes were nowhere near balanced for even a partially resource-expended level 1-2 party so if you didn't reload you would probably be game over-ed anyway. (Same thing with ambushes when going from map to map.)

That's interesting, personally I always felt they made for some very easy grinding, back in those games. Especially in the case of Icewind Dale, the yetis at the Vale of Shadows (I think that was tge area's name) made for plenty of easy money and experience early on, and I could easily survive three or four ambushes before I needed to actually rest. It was a very easy system to abuse and definitely trivialized some of the next dungeons. Either way I definitely agree that it was not well implemented at all.

 

I'll still argue that resting can only be implemented correctly if you set a real, non-avoidable risk or tradeoff when doing so. For example, using time as a constraint, and making it so that certain quests are time-critical and so resting too often can lead to running out of time and thus failing said quest. Actually one of the games that to the best of my memory made resting a relevant risk was Mask of the Betrayer, because resting meant that your hunger would still increase through that period and thus force you to feed on souls more often. But random encounters, supply-based systems and so on, that does very little to limit resting or give it some genuine purpose in my opinion.

[cokane]

 

 

 

 

Again, assertions. Ones that fly in the face of the history of the genre. How come cRPG's from Pool of Radiance, to Baldur's Gate, to even the original Pillars, all had these systems, all were praised at their time for delivering interesting, strategic combat, and some are considered among the best RPG's and video games ever made. Obviously their resting systems weren't that bad!

 

 

....

 

Resting in POE1 is not strategic. It's just tedious. Nothing is stopping the player from just going back to the inn and back to the battles again. Many people did that in POE 1 and they found it tedious hence why Obsidian changed it what we now have for POE2. 

 

Also since Obsidian knows that we'll always be at max hp and max spell allowance, they can tune the game for that. Whereas in POE1, the resting system screws up the balance. There are plenty of combat which are very easy if you go back to an inn but are hard if you keep continuing with low resources. That's not strategic as well. It's just tedious work and a waste of player's time. 

 

Having an option is a good thing. So for POE2, you can limit yourself and play it like POE1. Problem Solved. 

 

 

"And Since Obsidian knows that we'll always be at max hp and max spell allowance, they can tune the game for that."

 

Again, just assertion. Because the evidence suggests it's been much harder to balance difficulty.

 

 

It's basic maths. The less variables involved, the easier to balance things. 

ie. if Obsidian knows that the player is going to be at full hp and has max resources for that encounter, then they will have the knowledge to balance the game based on that information whereas let's say if they didn't know, it would be much harder to balance the game because there is no starting point to rely on. 

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

[giftmefood]

 

 

 

 

 

Again, assertions. Ones that fly in the face of the history of the genre. How come cRPG's from Pool of Radiance, to Baldur's Gate, to even the original Pillars, all had these systems, all were praised at their time for delivering interesting, strategic combat, and some are considered among the best RPG's and video games ever made. Obviously their resting systems weren't that bad!

 

 

....

 

Resting in POE1 is not strategic. It's just tedious. Nothing is stopping the player from just going back to the inn and back to the battles again. Many people did that in POE 1 and they found it tedious hence why Obsidian changed it what we now have for POE2. 

 

Also since Obsidian knows that we'll always be at max hp and max spell allowance, they can tune the game for that. Whereas in POE1, the resting system screws up the balance. There are plenty of combat which are very easy if you go back to an inn but are hard if you keep continuing with low resources. That's not strategic as well. It's just tedious work and a waste of player's time. 

 

Having an option is a good thing. So for POE2, you can limit yourself and play it like POE1. Problem Solved. 

 

 

"And Since Obsidian knows that we'll always be at max hp and max spell allowance, they can tune the game for that."

 

Again, just assertion. Because the evidence suggests it's been much harder to balance difficulty.

 

 

It's basic maths. The less variables involved, the easier to balance things. 

ie. if Obsidian knows that the player is going to be at full hp and has max resources for that encounter, then they will have the knowledge to balance the game based on that information whereas let's say if they didn't know, it would be much harder to balance the game because there is no starting point to rely on. 

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

 

Information is only useful if you make good use of it. You can have the best planning + knowledge in the world but if your implementation and execution sucked, then the end product is likely to suck. ie. pillars 2 balance. the devs have said they knew the game was too easy right at the start but they wanted to focus and prioritize on bugs/issues/story. information is there but useless because they didn't act on it. 

[Loren Tyr]

Have you tried the Baldur's Gates and the Icewind Dales? You can get ambushed while resting in dangerous areas, or while traveling through dangerous areas. I'm not saying the balance was immaculate, but there are better ways of limiting rest than gold/expendable resources.

 

I did, played those games quite endlessly at the time. Already wasn't a fan of the per-rest thing then either though, regardless. And as thelee said, you'd just quicksave before hand and reload as needed. Not that I'd necessarily reload in case of ambush, but it was just put in too simplistically and invariably your characters would have been rearranged with the squishy mage now in front and getting shredded (this tended to happen with beginning-of-map ambushes as well, and you'd have to reload from before moving to that map and reorder your characters so they'd end up in a vaguely sensible formation).

 

Definitely a better version of having ambushes and such, that would help a bit. If you have some ability to prepare for it, find a good spot to camp and have that actually matter, maybe can opt to keep a watch or have no campfire (and no bonuses), etc.

 

And more generally, have the game world move on. Perhaps don't necessarily have an ambush happen right at your resting spot (and if it does, that should definitely be at much more of a disadvantage), but somewhere later on the map. Or just shore up defenses later in the map, because your pre-rest activities were discovered and in reality an enemy would actually respond to that in some way. And have areas actually repopulate over time in general, rather than it remaining a deserted wasteland once you passed through. Obviously much of this would probably work much better in an open game world, which can much more easily be made dynamic, and have a variety of different routes and solutions to a given objective, etc..

[Loren Tyr]

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

[Loren Tyr]

I'll still argue that resting can only be implemented correctly if you set a real, non-avoidable risk or tradeoff when doing so. For example, using time as a constraint, and making it so that certain quests are time-critical and so resting too often can lead to running out of time and thus failing said quest. Actually one of the games that to the best of my memory made resting a relevant risk was Mask of the Betrayer, because resting meant that your hunger would still increase through that period and thus force you to feed on souls more often. But random encounters, supply-based systems and so on, that does very little to limit resting or give it some genuine purpose in my opinion.

 

Mostly I very much agree with this, though I would be somewhat hesitant in making quests and such time-critical. That is, the whole aspect of time and time-management would have to be woven into the gameplay sufficiently well for this to work. Because having the game just going "quest failed" at some point and you having to reload an older save (or just not succeeding the quest, if it's not main path or something) would be just annoying, probably. But if done properly, and the game has a building sense of urgency as time ticks down, that could be great. Especially if it's not a binary failure, but a progressive deterioration. Eg. you're supposed to help a keep under attack, and the longer you wait to rest (but for example also to scout), the more the defenders are pressed, wounded, running out of supplies, what have you; and obviously fail at some point, but not as a binary event but as something you are aware of happening more incrementally, and making your decisions and priorities actually matter in it.

[Shadenuat]

Players hate time constraints, i.e. Fallout 1 water chip/mutants attacking; Tyranny prologue. So that's something developers would not experiment with.

[Takkik]

Players hate time constraints, i.e. Fallout 1 water chip/mutants attacking; Tyranny prologue. So that's something developers would not experiment with.

there is different time constraints. Often I find that western dev use it badly. But the water chip in fallout 1 wasn't a big deal. You got a clear timer, you could push it back buy buying water supply. It was really a soft timer.

 

I prefer the persona 3-5 or atelier: escha to logy way. You have a clear agenda/objective, up to you to manage your time between self improvement, progressing the objective, do side quests. It's more linear but it work. What I hate personaly it's obscur/hidden timed objectives.

 

Another way to manage it in a 'soft' way: like mission. Make most dungeons (in a large sens, any 'enclosed' content) as a no/restricted rest content you must do in 1 go. If you can't and retreat/escape to rest, you must retry it from start. It's a way to offer challenge to player and push them to prepare well, manage better their resources without punishing them to much by 'cutting' content/reward if they fail since they can retry.

Perhaps not appropriate to all game content, but can offer interesting challenges.

 

A completly different way, a new way to do storytelling : Mount&clade: warband/crusader kings 2. PRocedural content. The game generate it's own content, so failing isn't a big deal because you don't miss anything since the game have 'unlimited' content.

In the case of deadfire, you have a dynamic map, where factions can control/capture the zones, ports, fort etc... Failing to defend a port? pirate can capture it. For the player it's not a big deal since you can try later to capture it back. You have not the pressure to complet all the content, the risk to miss stuff. of course it's mostly unexplored territory and need to rethink how to tell a story, but it have it's own charm and could fit an open world like deadfire.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Takkik

[Shadenuat]

That's like Space Rangers. Cool concept although I doubt any AAA dev would make anything like this.

 

The fact that Waterchip was very soft didn't change the fact that players hated it so much that developers decided to never do thing like that again.

 

It's like weapon durability. We can like it, but half of other player base don't.

 

I think some side content for people who like challenge like: a dungeon that locks you inside it; a dungeon which requires to be beaten in X amount of rests; a dungeon that has interrupting monsters on rest; a dungeon that increases monster strength every time you rest; that stuff could work as extra challenging content.

[Zelse]

The game is unfortunately still lacking in challenge right after the early midgame. Except Sayuaka none of the other content after Neketaka seems to have gotten adjusted.

 

Like the Vailian Quests, Crookspur, all bounties pretty much, the city in the southeast and pretty much all other later sidequests? (e.g. Berkanas Observatory) the lategame faction quests probably havent gotten adjusted as well but i am not that far yet.

The bosses are still really weak. Especially when compared to the remade encounters.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Zelse

[cokane]

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

 

You guys have no real world evidence for your arguments. In fact, the real world evidence points in the opposite direction. But yall continue to assert that somehow it must be true.

 

The fact of the matter is that Deadfire's nearly complete "per encounter" system makes it much more difficult to design *meaningful* encounters. I think this discussion about "difficulty" or "balance" is actually missing the point of why combat feels inferior in Deadfire. I laid out some of these arguments in this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99893-combat-is-now-mostly-a-dull-chore/ And I think those statements still hold up. But I'd like to add a little more here.

 

Making combat *meaningful* in PoE1 and even the BG type games was much much easier. One of the simplest reasons is that every amount of damage mattered in some way. Players were naturally driven to rest as little as possible, since that wasn't the fun part of the game, so most players would try to push their parties to their limits. This was all the "challenge" ever was in these games. What this meant is that the designers had a broad window to design meaningful encounters. So long as encounters met some minimum threshold of causing damage or risking damage, player decisions within combat had the same choice and consequence dynamic that Obsidian is striving for in all aspects of its RPGs.

 

This had all kinds of excellent downstream effects, by the way. You didn't need to mess with potions, food or scrolls to beat the game, even on POTD. However, if you did mess with those things, you would be rewarded by being able to clear out areas faster, resting less frequently, and often never having to worry about doing the hike of shame if you ran out of camping supplies. This isn't just true of consumables, but also carefully buying the right gear, enchantments, and discovering great individual character builds but also party synergies. And these investments had payoffs the player could feel almost regardless of the monster level.

 

However, in Deadfire, because there is no health loss, and almost no per rest resources to burn (and recovering them is just too easy), encounters have to exist in a much much smaller window to be *meaningful*. They have to, at a very minimum, threaten to knockdown a party member. Encounters that don't do this are literally wasting the player's time. So, it's actually the exact opposite of what some of you are suggesting. Combat is actually harder to balance in Deadfire, and the real-world evidence agrees. Moreover, because so few combats feel *meaningful* players get little visible payoff from the investments I spoke about above. This is why the game feels ludicrously easy in comparison, even though the original PoE wasn't a particularly hard game.

[OrpheusM]

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

 

You guys have no real world evidence for your arguments. In fact, the real world evidence points in the opposite direction. But yall continue to assert that somehow it must be true.

 

The fact of the matter is that Deadfire's nearly complete "per encounter" system makes it much more difficult to design *meaningful* encounters. I think this discussion about "difficulty" or "balance" is actually missing the point of why combat feels inferior in Deadfire. I laid out some of these arguments in this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99893-combat-is-now-mostly-a-dull-chore/ And I think those statements still hold up. But I'd like to add a little more here.

 

Making combat *meaningful* in PoE1 and even the BG type games was much much easier. One of the simplest reasons is that every amount of damage mattered in some way. Players were naturally driven to rest as little as possible, since that wasn't the fun part of the game, so most players would try to push their parties to their limits. This was all the "challenge" ever was in these games. What this meant is that the designers had a broad window to design meaningful encounters. So long as encounters met some minimum threshold of causing damage or risking damage, player decisions within combat had the same choice and consequence dynamic that Obsidian is striving for in all aspects of its RPGs.

 

This had all kinds of excellent downstream effects, by the way. You didn't need to mess with potions, food or scrolls to beat the game, even on POTD. However, if you did mess with those things, you would be rewarded by being able to clear out areas faster, resting less frequently, and often never having to worry about doing the hike of shame if you ran out of camping supplies. This isn't just true of consumables, but also carefully buying the right gear, enchantments, and discovering great individual character builds but also party synergies. And these investments had payoffs the player could feel almost regardless of the monster level.

 

However, in Deadfire, because there is no health loss, and almost no per rest resources to burn (and recovering them is just too easy), encounters have to exist in a much much smaller window to be *meaningful*. They have to, at a very minimum, threaten to knockdown a party member. Encounters that don't do this are literally wasting the player's time. So, it's actually the exact opposite of what some of you are suggesting. Combat is actually harder to balance in Deadfire, and the real-world evidence agrees. Moreover, because so few combats feel *meaningful* players get little visible payoff from the investments I spoke about above. This is why the game feels ludicrously easy in comparison, even though the original PoE wasn't a particularly hard game.

 

 

Man... I really like your points, but that "dull chore" clickbait flamebait title just ruins everything I wish I hadn't seen it.

[1TTFFSSE]

fix rest as follows:

 

1.)on any map you enter like a swamp/dungeon or forest if you rest you will be ambushed 100% of the time as long as the instance is not cleared of enemies

2.)also resting in the wild even with food gives a small penalty to stats since you are in "unsafe" conditions

3.)enemies respawn in a "dungeon" instance should you leave the area without clearing all monsters

 

point 1 and 2 should be standard, point 3 optional just like level scaling. 

[Loren Tyr]

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

 

You guys have no real world evidence for your arguments. In fact, the real world evidence points in the opposite direction. But yall continue to assert that somehow it must be true.

 

You keep banding about that phrase, but all you're doing yourself is either referencing the fact that certain games were praised in their day / sold well (which by itself proves nothing about, say, the quality of per rest systems as such); or, as in this post, you're just using your own particular interpretations of games and game design to support your point of view. Which would be fine in itself, if you weren't pretending that it is some kind of objective fact, and being an enormous git about it to boot.

 

But just to engage with your fondness of objectivity and evidence for a second, regarding these *meaningful* encounters. What definition of 'meaningful' are you using here? If we're talking evidence here, you probably ought to be more specific. And is this an industry standard for 'meaningful encounter' you're referencing? If so, could you cite, let's say, three independent sources? If not, why is this particular definition of 'meaningful encounter' relevant? What are its merits relative to other plausible definitions of 'meaningful encounters', and do you have objective and verifiable sources to support those? Is there empirical data on the degree of development effort required to implement such 'meaningful encounters' as a function of other components of the design, such as the relative preponderance of per-rest versus per-encounter abilities and items? You know, when we're talking about 'real world evidence'. Just some questions that spring to mind. 

 

And by the way, I have no particular need to cite extensive real world evidence. Myself, I am merely arguing for a particular view on the quality of games (in this particular genre, and more generally), and what I would see as fruitful and less fruitful in obtaining such quality (and in which I see no role for a per-rest system in anything like its existing forms). It is a personal point of view on topics being discussed in this thread, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do in a discussion forum. Unless you're actually prepared to present the kind of evidence you're yammering about, perhaps you should drop the pretense that you are anything more than that (though admittedly discussion actually requires engaging other people's arguments and point of view, something you have so far rather emphatically failed to do; probably work a bit on that as well, would be my suggestion). 

[giftmefood]

 

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

 

You guys have no real world evidence for your arguments. In fact, the real world evidence points in the opposite direction. But yall continue to assert that somehow it must be true.

 

You keep banding about that phrase, but all you're doing yourself is either referencing the fact that certain games were praised in their day / sold well (which by itself proves nothing about, say, the quality of per rest systems as such); or, as in this post, you're just using your own particular interpretations of games and game design to support your point of view. Which would be fine in itself, if you weren't pretending that it is some kind of objective fact, and being an enormous git about it to boot.

 

But just to engage with your fondness of objectivity and evidence for a second, regarding these *meaningful* encounters. What definition of 'meaningful' are you using here? If we're talking evidence here, you probably ought to be more specific. And is this an industry standard for 'meaningful encounter' you're referencing? If so, could you cite, let's say, three independent sources? If not, why is this particular definition of 'meaningful encounter' relevant? What are its merits relative to other plausible definitions of 'meaningful encounters', and do you have objective and verifiable sources to support those? Is there empirical data on the degree of development effort required to implement such 'meaningful encounters' as a function of other components of the design, such as the relative preponderance of per-rest versus per-encounter abilities and items? You know, when we're talking about 'real world evidence'. Just some questions that spring to mind. 

 

And by the way, I have no particular need to cite extensive real world evidence. Myself, I am merely arguing for a particular view on the quality of games (in this particular genre, and more generally), and what I would see as fruitful and less fruitful in obtaining such quality (and in which I see no role for a per-rest system in anything like its existing forms). It is a personal point of view on topics being discussed in this thread, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do in a discussion forum. Unless you're actually prepared to present the kind of evidence you're yammering about, perhaps you should drop the pretense that you are anything more than that (though admittedly discussion actually requires engaging other people's arguments and point of view, something you have so far rather emphatically failed to do; probably work a bit on that as well, would be my suggestion). 

 

 

I'm afraid we got baited in by a troll. It seems that cokane is a troll as mentioned by Orpheus on here. 

[Gregorovitch]

 

 

Again, the real world evidence belies your claim.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

 

You guys have no real world evidence for your arguments. In fact, the real world evidence points in the opposite direction. But yall continue to assert that somehow it must be true.

 

The fact of the matter is that Deadfire's nearly complete "per encounter" system makes it much more difficult to design *meaningful* encounters. I think this discussion about "difficulty" or "balance" is actually missing the point of why combat feels inferior in Deadfire. I laid out some of these arguments in this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/99893-combat-is-now-mostly-a-dull-chore/ And I think those statements still hold up. But I'd like to add a little more here.

 

Making combat *meaningful* in PoE1 and even the BG type games was much much easier. One of the simplest reasons is that every amount of damage mattered in some way. Players were naturally driven to rest as little as possible, since that wasn't the fun part of the game, so most players would try to push their parties to their limits. This was all the "challenge" ever was in these games. What this meant is that the designers had a broad window to design meaningful encounters. So long as encounters met some minimum threshold of causing damage or risking damage, player decisions within combat had the same choice and consequence dynamic that Obsidian is striving for in all aspects of its RPGs.

 

This had all kinds of excellent downstream effects, by the way. You didn't need to mess with potions, food or scrolls to beat the game, even on POTD. However, if you did mess with those things, you would be rewarded by being able to clear out areas faster, resting less frequently, and often never having to worry about doing the hike of shame if you ran out of camping supplies. This isn't just true of consumables, but also carefully buying the right gear, enchantments, and discovering great individual character builds but also party synergies. And these investments had payoffs the player could feel almost regardless of the monster level.

 

However, in Deadfire, because there is no health loss, and almost no per rest resources to burn (and recovering them is just too easy), encounters have to exist in a much much smaller window to be *meaningful*. They have to, at a very minimum, threaten to knockdown a party member. Encounters that don't do this are literally wasting the player's time. So, it's actually the exact opposite of what some of you are suggesting. Combat is actually harder to balance in Deadfire, and the real-world evidence agrees. Moreover, because so few combats feel *meaningful* players get little visible payoff from the investments I spoke about above. This is why the game feels ludicrously easy in comparison, even though the original PoE wasn't a particularly hard game.

 

 

This is exactly correct, a particuarly important point being the idea that the devs had a much wider range or "window" of difficulty options avaiable to keep the game fresh and dangerous in PoE1.

 

I can explain this is a slightly differnt way:

 

The rule of thumb for good play in PoE1 was three standard encounters per rest and one boss encounter per rest. Thus with two camping supplies available, plus going in fully rested, you're standard target was six standard encounters plus the dungeon end boss fight. You were expected to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the end boss fight, but you had to play accurately and carefully conservijng both your health and your resources to manage three encounters per rest on thew way down. Failure to do so meant perforce a hike of shame - a defeat to all intents and purposes.

 

Some dungeons had more than six incidental encounters and in these cases additional camping supplies were provided to loot near the bottom so you could rest up for the boss fight.

 

What this meant for difficulty was that every single stahndard encounter was a significant chellenge becasue you had to a) figure out how to beat it with minimum expenditure of resources and b) avoid getting hit and losing health. Therefore everything you did, every decision you made, every spell you cast, mattered. A lot.

 

What this did for encounter design was to make a far wider range of encounters challenging. If a mob could hurt you at all, if you needed to cast a single spell or use an ability against them, then they were at least some sort of challenge to get past and most of them had the capacity to hurt you more than a little if you were not very carefull and certainly required the application of more than one spell or ability. Which made the game consistently challenging and interesting, especially on PotD.

 

This was the magic of PoE1 gameplay. And it is essentially why it is considered a classic and is a million seller.

 

In Deafire with it's per-encounter system and auto-health regen all of this gameplay is lost with the exception of the end boss battles where you were expected to throw everything at a very tough encounter. And this is exactrly what we see in Deadfire. Some encounters are pretty good, but they are all boss battles. Floating Hangman, Gardian, Fampyre cave, giant cave grub etc. But the rest are trivially easy becasue you don't have to conserve resources or worry about health.

 

The only solution to this would be to make every single encounter in the game a boss battle, hard enough to test a full strength party using every resource and tool at its disposal. Every time.

 

But there are two problems with that:

 

Firstly if every battle is a boss battle then you don't actually have any boss battles anymore, you just have and endless stream of the same thing with nothing stading out above the crowd, no drama.

 

Secondly, specifically to Deadfire, you have an open world game where you cannot predict when a player will arive at a particualr encounter at all really therefore it is all but impossible to tune the fights to be challenging enough but not impossibly difficult except at the very beginning and end of the game (which again we see with reasonably good fights on Fort Maje and Floating Hangman and Guardian).

 

For these reasons I cannot see at the moment how this can be addressed in Deadfire TBH. This per-encounter system was a collossal mistake, and one of the reasons why the game has dropped out of the top 100 into oblivion on Steam already (the other being problems with the narrative construction) whereas DOS2, for example, which is consistently hard as nails for most of the game and brutal at the beginning, is still in the top 40. It's a terrible shame.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Gregorovitch

[Loren Tyr]

The rule of thumb for good play in PoE1 was three standard encounters per rest and one boss encounter per rest. Thus with two camping supplies available, plus going in fully rested, you're standard target was six standard encounters plus the dungeon end boss fight. You were expected to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the end boss fight, but you had to play accurately and carefully conservijng both your health and your resources to manage three encounters per rest on thew way down. Failure to do so meant perforce a hike of shame - a defeat to all intents and purposes.

 

Some dungeons had more than six incidental encounters and in these cases additional camping supplies were provided to loot near the bottom so you could rest up for the boss fight.

 

What this meant for difficulty was that every single stahndard encounter was a significant chellenge becasue you had to a) figure out how to beat it with minimum expenditure of resources and b) avoid getting hit and losing health. Therefore everything you did, every decision you made, every spell you cast, mattered. A lot.

 

Who's rule of thumb would that be, exactly? Because I don't quite recall this 'standard target' being mentioned in the game. Which rather invites the possibility that many players, not having gotten this particular memo, either undershot or overshot that target in practice. In which case they would either run through a bunch of too easy encounters (because they were using more per-rest abilities and such than they were 'supposed' to, than the encounter difficulty was balanced for), then run out of resting supplies and have to slog back through a bunch of loading screens to get more; or, they would hoard their per-rest abilities too much get encounters that were more difficult than they wanted at their chosen difficulty level, and getting frustrated by both the unwanted difficulty and the fact that they felt unable to really use their cool big spells often enough. This might also be interspersed with occasionally far too easy encounters when they got to a point where they really needed to rest soon to regain health and such, and had no incentive not to unload massive overkill of hoarded spells on some random oozes or whatever. 

 

Balancing a game on a (supposed) rule of thumb that is not actually enforced or even explained at any point... I wouldn't exactly call that a brilliant design decision. 

[cokane]

"I have no particular need to cite extensive real world evidence."

 

Nothing more needs to be said.

[Loren Tyr]

"I have no particular need to cite extensive real world evidence."

 

Nothing more needs to be said.

 

Ah, your classic approach of utterly failing to engage with what other people are saying. You're certainly consistent, I'll give you that. 

 

Just curious though, you do realise that there are quite a lot of topics of discussion that are not actually matters of empirical fact, right? Or has that rather basic observation somehow managed to escape your undoubtedly towering intellect (burdened down perhaps by its vigorous and unrelenting fact-finding)?

[cokane]

 

"I have no particular need to cite extensive real world evidence."

 

Nothing more needs to be said.

 

Ah, your classic approach of utterly failing to engage with what other people are saying. You're certainly consistent, I'll give you that. 

 

Just curious though, you do realise that there are quite a lot of topics of discussion that are not actually matters of empirical fact, right? Or has that rather basic observation somehow managed to escape your undoubtedly towering intellect (burdened down perhaps by its vigorous and unrelenting fact-finding)?

 

 

You've written far more words in this topic attacking people than I have. Far fewer words talking about Deadfire than I have. Your post above with the series of rhetorical questions about meaningfulness has no relevant substance. It doesn't even contain the words Deadfire or Pillars or anything, because it's nothing more than a long-winded personal attack.

[Loren Tyr]

You've written far more words in this topic attacking people than I have. Far fewer words talking about Deadfire than I have. Your post above with the series of rhetorical questions about meaningfulness has no relevant substance. It doesn't even contain the words Deadfire or Pillars or anything, because it's nothing more than a long-winded personal attack.

 

Evading yet again, who'd have seen that coming *gasp*. Just to clarify though, those weren't rhetorical questions, they were very much meant to be answered. The fact that you are apparently incapable of doing so doesn't change that. 

 

But sure, go ahead and dismiss everything you disagree with as 'lacking evidence' or 'personal attack'. I've no doubt that's an attitude that will serve you well in life. 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Loren Tyr

[Gregorovitch]

 

 

 

 

 

Balancing a game on a (supposed) rule of thumb that is not actually enforced or even explained at any point... I wouldn't exactly call that a brilliant design decision. 

 

 

I would disagree. Good players (or any player prepared to put the effort in really) will work out what is required of them and less good players (or those unwilling to put in the effort) who do not work it out will suffer the pain and ignimony of failure. Which makes mastering the game very satisfying and makes for a memorable, possibly even epic, gaming experience. The PoE1 resting and casting system offered a layer of gameply providing an element of mystery, challenge and difficulty to make that happen whereas Deafire doesn't. This is what people want. They are not interested in spending their valuable time playing games that offer no serious challenge and no satisfaction from mastering them. Not this type of game anyway.

 

This is why (well, one of the reasons) they are not buying Deadfire. Bascially nobody is whining on the forums about how hard the game is or how they don't understand this or that. That is telling peopole that dispite the good reviews and resonable Steam review score, something is wrong.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Gregorovitch

[cokane]

 

You've written far more words in this topic attacking people than I have. Far fewer words talking about Deadfire than I have. Your post above with the series of rhetorical questions about meaningfulness has no relevant substance. It doesn't even contain the words Deadfire or Pillars or anything, because it's nothing more than a long-winded personal attack.

 

Evading yet again, who'd have seen that coming *gasp*. Just to clarify though, those weren't rhetorical questions, they were very much meant to be answered. The fact that you are apparently incapable of doing so doesn't change that. 

 

But sure, go ahead and dismiss everything you disagree with as 'lacking evidence' or 'personal attack'. I've no doubt that's an attitude that will serve you well in life. 

 

 

What is an "independent verifiable source" in this context? You sputtered out a word salad in that post, but I don't think you even know what it means. It's an absurd list of demands you made in that post, and you should know better.

 

I encourage you to go back through this thread, page by page, very carefully. I was *not* the one who first intimated that there is an objectively superior set of mechanics. Other people argued that Deadfire's system was objectively easier to balance. I merely pointed out that real world evidence does not support this claim. It's peculiar that you didn't hit anyone else with your anti-objectivity jeremiad.

 

The original game had launch issues, but it had nowhere near the difficulty issues of Deadfire. This is doubly troubling because Deadfire didn't have to labor through creating an entire world and set of systems from scratch. Balance *should* have been much easier in Deadfire. The *fact* that it wasn't requires explanation. And to assert that its core mechanics lend themselves to easier balance? It's to double down on un-truths, something far too common today.

 

I will end by noting that you managed yet another post that doesn't mention Deadfire, its predecessor, or any game. All while maintaining some high horse attitude. I guess personal attacks are allowed when you do them.

[Loren Tyr]

I would disagree. Good players (or any player prepared to put the effort in really) will work out what is required of them and less good players (or those unwilling to put in the effort) who do not work it out will suffer the pain and ignimony of failure. Which makes mastering the game very satisfying and makes for a memorable, possibly even epic, gaming experience. The PoE1 resting and casting system offered a layer of gameply providing an element of mystery, challenge and difficulty to make that happen whereas Deafire doesn't. This is what people want. They are not interested in spending their valuable time playing games that offer no serious challenge and no satisfaction from mastering them. Not this type of game anyway.

 

This is why (well, one of the reasons) they are not buying Deadfire. Bascially nobody is whining on the forums about how hard the game is or how they don't understand this or that. That is telling peopole that dispite the good reviews and resonable Steam review score, something is wrong.

 

 

Clearly that's what you want, but it seems rather a considerable stretch to suppose that this is in general 'what people want'. Given the recent theme of real-world evidence, and the fact that this actually is a quite distinctly empirical claim, might I ask exactly what you are basing that on? Because to me it seems rather more plausible that what people want from a game, what they gain satisfaction from, and what they consider a serious challenge (supposing that serious challenge is what they are after)... that those things will tend to vary quite considerably across those people. Which makes it quite presumptuous for you to speak for all of them. 

[Loren Tyr]

 

 

You've written far more words in this topic attacking people than I have. Far fewer words talking about Deadfire than I have. Your post above with the series of rhetorical questions about meaningfulness has no relevant substance. It doesn't even contain the words Deadfire or Pillars or anything, because it's nothing more than a long-winded personal attack.

 

Evading yet again, who'd have seen that coming *gasp*. Just to clarify though, those weren't rhetorical questions, they were very much meant to be answered. The fact that you are apparently incapable of doing so doesn't change that. 

 

But sure, go ahead and dismiss everything you disagree with as 'lacking evidence' or 'personal attack'. I've no doubt that's an attitude that will serve you well in life. 

 

 

What is an "independent verifiable source" in this context? You sputtered out a word salad in that post, but I don't think you even know what it means. It's an absurd list of demands you made in that post, and you should know better.

 

I encourage you to go back through this thread, page by page, very carefully. I was *not* the one who first intimated that there is an objectively superior set of mechanics. Other people argued that Deadfire's system was objectively easier to balance. I merely pointed out that real world evidence does not support this claim. It's peculiar that you didn't hit anyone else with your anti-objectivity jeremiad.

 

The original game had launch issues, but it had nowhere near the difficulty issues of Deadfire. This is doubly troubling because Deadfire didn't have to labor through creating an entire world and set of systems from scratch. Balance *should* have been much easier in Deadfire. The *fact* that it wasn't requires explanation. And to assert that its core mechanics lend themselves to easier balance? It's to double down on un-truths, something far too common today.

 

I will end by noting that you managed yet another post that doesn't mention Deadfire, its predecessor, or any game. All while maintaining some high horse attitude. I guess personal attacks are allowed when you do them.

 

 

*yawn*