The 'Changes for Balance' Thread

[baldurs_gate_2]

 

 

Though, i'm not quite sure any fights would last this long, aside from very important ones, like the one against Irenicus.

 

Fully modded game with SCS had lots of tough fights. Maybe I'm a bad player, but some of them took me very long, or at least felt like they did. A fight that I remember that was part of the original game was of course Kangaxx. That took always very long and I had to reload a lot.

 

Kangaxx and every other Lich / Demi Lich is very easy. All you need is a Scroll of Protection from Undead and he does not attack you. You just hit him and he dies. I played it solo, so i think you need for every party member a scroll.

[the streaker]

This thread's premise is just so silly. What could someone have against the game being tweaked to provide more of a challenge? If they modify the balance to the point where you're not enjoying your time on normal/hard, you can always turn the game down to easy/normal and your superiority over the monsters is probably restored. Meanwhile the guy who is hardcore into this game and wants a harder challenge on PotD doesn't have the option of turning the difficulty to PotD+.

[Ashen Rohk]

As much as I agree with the fact that the game shouldn't be balanced around PotD difficulty (that should be tweaked in it's own right), I do feel that normal is still slightly too easy. Even with the nerfs to items and skills towards end game I'm blasting through bad guys like butter (Nemnok was a 2 minute fight with a lot of AA) and the only time that I get slowed down is when I come up against something with high Penetration resistance.

 

This is with story companions fwiw. My second playthrough is going to be using the min max builds in the other thread. Can't wait to see what happens there.

[Lord_Mord]

 

Kangaxx and every other Lich / Demi Lich is very easy. All you need is a Scroll of Protection from Undead and he does not attack you. You just hit him and he dies. I played it solo, so i think you need for every party member a scroll.

 

 

Even if I had known that, I wouldn't have done it. Feels like cheating. Like stabbing a vampire in his sleep.

[Lord_Mord]

 

As much as I agree with the fact that the game shouldn't be balanced around PotD difficulty (that should be tweaked in it's own right), I do feel that normal is still slightly too easy. Even with the nerfs to items and skills towards end game I'm blasting through bad guys like butter (Nemnok was a 2 minute fight with a lot of AA) and the only time that I get slowed down is when I come up against something with high Penetration resistance.

 

This is with story companions fwiw. My second playthrough is going to be using the min max builds in the other thread. Can't wait to see what happens there.

 

I think it depends on the player. Helped my wife yesterday with some vampires on normal difficulty. For her it is just the right setting (She's not really a gamer, it's the only game she ever played apart from BG), for me it was like holding a cigarette in one hand a drink in the other, clicking here and there and watching the guys doing the rest. On the other hand PotD after the patch is not easy for me, even if I think it still could be a tiny bit harder, but other players still do it as if it was nothing.

 

Maybe we need more difficulty levels?

Edited June 17, 2018 by Lord_Mord

[ThacoBell]

I don't think Deafire CAN have PotD balanced to the point of satiating the more masochistic players who WANT every encounter to be life or death, better put everything you have into every fight challengeing. And the reason for that is simple. The game isn't built around that. The is built with as many people in mind as possible. That means that any balance patch has sweeping consequences for every player. A patch that might make hardcore gamer happy is just as likely to drive away casual gamer. People who are asking for SCS, or Dark Souls, or classic XCOM levels of difficulty are forgetting one thing. Those games were BUILT around that obscene level of difficulty. Every mechanic, action, level design, and encounter was specifically crafted to kick you in the balls. A game trying to appeal to a broad range of playstyles like Deadfire (and most RPGs really) CANNOT do that.

What Ithink obsidian should have done, and should probably do in the future, is treat PothD as an entirely different game. Either get the base game with difficulties up to Veteren realeased with a couple/few months of bugfixes and rebalances done. And THEN focus on a PothD difficulty, even going as far as altering some base game mechanics for the sake of pumping up the challenge. Alternatively, you can have a secondary team working on PotD in parallel. Treat it as a selfcontained thing and not just another difficulty level. The way its being done now, Obsidian is facing three outcomes:
1. When trying to keep everyone in mind, the difficulty tweaks won't go far enough, alienating the hardcore crowd.
2. Obsidian caves to the very vocal hardcore players on this forum and balances everthing aroun PotD, alientaing and (effectively preventing) casual players from playing the game.
3. Obsidian compromises to such a degree that EVERYONE is unhappy.

Edited June 17, 2018 by ThacoBell

[Shadenuat]

Who cares about casual gamers? They didn't ask for this game and didn't back it, and most of them never bought it. Whoever did, probably never even finished it.

 

Why should main audience that backed it get an unfinished game on release that is not for them? We're not Obsidian's personal money lenders.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Shadenuat

[Loren Tyr]

Who cares about casual gamers? They didn't ask for this game and didn't back it, and most of them never bought it. Whoever did, probably never even finished it.

 

Why should main audience that backed it get an unfinished game on release that is not for them? We're not Obsidian's personal money lenders.

 

Ahh, the sweet smell of entitlement... 

[cokane]

I don't think Deafire CAN have PotD balanced to the point of satiating the more masochistic players who WANT every encounter to be life or death, better put everything you have into every fight challengeing. And the reason for that is simple. The game isn't built around that. The is built with as many people in mind as possible. That means that any balance patch has sweeping consequences for every player. A patch that might make hardcore gamer happy is just as likely to drive away casual gamer. People who are asking for SCS, or Dark Souls, or classic XCOM levels of difficulty are forgetting one thing. Those games were BUILT around that obscene level of difficulty. Every mechanic, action, level design, and encounter was specifically crafted to kick you in the balls. A game trying to appeal to a broad range of playstyles like Deadfire (and most RPGs really) CANNOT do that.

 

What Ithink obsidian should have done, and should probably do in the future, is treat PothD as an entirely different game. Either get the base game with difficulties up to Veteren realeased with a couple/few months of bugfixes and rebalances done. And THEN focus on a PothD difficulty, even going as far as altering some base game mechanics for the sake of pumping up the challenge. Alternatively, you can have a secondary team working on PotD in parallel. Treat it as a selfcontained thing and not just another difficulty level. The way its being done now, Obsidian is facing three outcomes:

1. When trying to keep everyone in mind, the difficulty tweaks won't go far enough, alienating the hardcore crowd.

2. Obsidian caves to the very vocal hardcore players on this forum and balances everthing aroun PotD, alientaing and (effectively preventing) casual players from playing the game.

3. Obsidian compromises to such a degree that EVERYONE is unhappy.

 

Why are you constantly talking about the upper level difficulties when you don't play them?

[Abel]

 

I don't think Deafire CAN have PotD balanced to the point of satiating the more masochistic players who WANT every encounter to be life or death, better put everything you have into every fight challengeing. And the reason for that is simple. The game isn't built around that. The is built with as many people in mind as possible. That means that any balance patch has sweeping consequences for every player. A patch that might make hardcore gamer happy is just as likely to drive away casual gamer. People who are asking for SCS, or Dark Souls, or classic XCOM levels of difficulty are forgetting one thing. Those games were BUILT around that obscene level of difficulty. Every mechanic, action, level design, and encounter was specifically crafted to kick you in the balls. A game trying to appeal to a broad range of playstyles like Deadfire (and most RPGs really) CANNOT do that.

 

What Ithink obsidian should have done, and should probably do in the future, is treat PothD as an entirely different game. Either get the base game with difficulties up to Veteren realeased with a couple/few months of bugfixes and rebalances done. And THEN focus on a PothD difficulty, even going as far as altering some base game mechanics for the sake of pumping up the challenge. Alternatively, you can have a secondary team working on PotD in parallel. Treat it as a selfcontained thing and not just another difficulty level. The way its being done now, Obsidian is facing three outcomes:

1. When trying to keep everyone in mind, the difficulty tweaks won't go far enough, alienating the hardcore crowd.

2. Obsidian caves to the very vocal hardcore players on this forum and balances everthing aroun PotD, alientaing and (effectively preventing) casual players from playing the game.

3. Obsidian compromises to such a degree that EVERYONE is unhappy.

 

Why are you constantly talking about the upper level difficulties when you don't play them?

 

 

Probably because he assumes that the nerfs of things, done for each and every difficulty level, are solely tied to the increase in difficulty Obs is trying to achieve for Veteran and Path of the Damned, and he is not the only one. Which is an assumption i'm not so sure about. At all. As always, correct me if i'm wrong.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Abel

[Loren Tyr]

Probably because he assumes that the nerfs of things, done for each and every difficulty level, are solely tied to the increasing in difficulty Obs is trying to achieve for Veteran and Path of the Damned, and he is not the only one. Which is an assumption i'm not so sure about. At all. As always, correct me if i'm wrong.

 

I agree, I'm fairly sure they're not (though obviously they're felt more strongly as the difficulty level gets less forgiving). It looks very much aimed at obtaining better balance of classes/items/abilities relative to each other across the board. Imbalance in that sense is ultimately bad for any level of difficulty, after all. Obviously it figures into overall changes in the higher difficulty levels that coincide with it in 1.1, but I very much doubt that was the specific aim of those nerfs. 

[antman45454]

The third level wizard spell. The Delectouris motion or whatever its called.

 

This spell is no where near worth casting. Plus 5 dex bonus does hardly anything thats an extra 15% bonus to speed but there is also the new diminishing return rule they implemented aswel so if you already have high dex you might only get a 11% extra speed.

 

Completely not worth using just like alot of other wizard spells

 

Why has everything been balanced to the point of utter uselessness?

Edited June 17, 2018 by antman45454

[Manveru123]

I also never understood this infatuation with some of the broken and poorly balanced aspects of BG2. Sure, you could finish the whole game by spamming cloudkill and closing the door to the room, but where's the fun in that? To me—and probably anyone who picks Path of the Damned—games are fun when they're challenging, and stop being fun as soon as they're not. Blowing stuff up effortlessly is fun on the first time but gets old by the third. For those who aren't even seeking particularly challenging combat, there're the Classic, Relaxed, and Story difficulties.

This is subjective AF. Who are you to tell someone how to have fun and what's fun for him? The whole point of an RPG game is to play however you want to, because someone's game does not affect yours AT ALL.

 

How do you define challenge? If I take 5 minutes hitting an iron construct because his defenses are sky-high, was that a challenge or just poor design? Making player's characters weaker and enemies stronger just means that fights take longer to end, because you run out of resources and have to watch as your group autoattacks **** to death with Grazes. This isn't Dark Souls where you actually have to be skilled to finish the game. How do you define that in Pillars?

 

Making the game about a war of attrition sounds more like a snorefest than fun. And this is the only way they can "balance" the game without completely reworking the mechanics or the AI, both of which cost too much to do post-launch.

[Zoso der Goldene]

 

I also never understood this infatuation with some of the broken and poorly balanced aspects of BG2. Sure, you could finish the whole game by spamming cloudkill and closing the door to the room, but where's the fun in that? To me—and probably anyone who picks Path of the Damned—games are fun when they're challenging, and stop being fun as soon as they're not. Blowing stuff up effortlessly is fun on the first time but gets old by the third. For those who aren't even seeking particularly challenging combat, there're the Classic, Relaxed, and Story difficulties.

This is subjective AF. Who are you to tell someone how to have fun and what's fun for him? The whole point of an RPG game is to play however you want to, because someone's game does not affect yours AT ALL.

 

How do you define challenge? If I take 5 minutes hitting an iron construct because his defenses are sky-high, was that a challenge or just poor design? Making player's characters weaker and enemies stronger just means that fights take longer to end, because you run out of resources and have to watch as your group autoattacks **** to death with Grazes. This isn't Dark Souls where you actually have to be skilled to finish the game. How do you define that in Pillars?

 

Making the game about a war of attrition sounds more like a snorefest than fun. And this is the only way they can "balance" the game without completely reworking the mechanics or the AI, both of which cost too much to do post-launch.

 

I just finished the game on POTD and have to say there is some truth to that.

It's not caused by balancing, but rather by a conceptual issue:

If you want to avoid giving players the potential to one-shot bosses on a regular basis - and that's a good idea -, that is going to protract some fights, especially boss fights.

And that fact doesn't play well with the per encounter resource pool. Why?

It makes the resource cost of an ability one of the, if not the the single most important consideration in most cases. Where it isn't, the more expensive ability is usually overpowered or close to. Compare Crippling Strike and Blinding Strike. Blinding Strike is twice expensive as Crippling Strike, but is it twice as powerful? Definitely not, so you're never going to use Blinding Strike. I would very much want to have a hard time deciding between the two, that would be the challenge I'd like to see (at least in PotD). But with attrition, not challenge, this is a no-brainer.

On the other hand, the upgrade to Blinding Strike, Gouging Strike, is so powerful that again, it's again a no-brainer.

 

I know this is not exactly easy - how do you design abilities that are roughly twice as powerful (3x, 4x) as other abilities? Making characters' power levels comparable, and providing a consistent experience as you level up? (You have to pay twice for an ability, once when you level up, once every time you use it.

 

I'm not sure whether complicating things by introducing variable resource pool costs for all classes was a good idea. It was already an issue with Cipher, but this resource pool was theoretically infinitely refilling, so it became more a matter of how you want to spend your time (manifest 7 small powers, or one big one and then refill?). With limited resource pools, that's no longer the case.

[kanisatha]

Who cares about casual gamers? They didn't ask for this game and didn't back it, and most of them never bought it. Whoever did, probably never even finished it.

 

Why should main audience that backed it get an unfinished game on release that is not for them? We're not Obsidian's personal money lenders.

I'm a casual gamer. I backed the game (and was one of the first backers of PoE way before most others jumped on that bandwagon). I'm just as much the "main audience" as you.

[PizzaSHARK]

 

 

 

Though, i'm not quite sure any fights would last this long, aside from very important ones, like the one against Irenicus.

 

Fully modded game with SCS had lots of tough fights. Maybe I'm a bad player, but some of them took me very long, or at least felt like they did. A fight that I remember that was part of the original game was of course Kangaxx. That took always very long and I had to reload a lot.

 

That's because there's one item in the game that makes it really easy to survive for some time (Scroll of Protection from Magic), and only 2 or three weapons that could hit him.

Without the Scroll, it was possible, but highly unlikely to defeat Kangaxx. With the Scroll, the fight was over in < 30s.

 

 

SCS nixed that, along with the Shield of Balduran trivializing Beholders.

[PizzaSHARK]

 

 

Kangaxx and every other Lich / Demi Lich is very easy. All you need is a Scroll of Protection from Undead and he does not attack you. You just hit him and he dies. I played it solo, so i think you need for every party member a scroll.

 

 

Even if I had known that, I wouldn't have done it. Feels like cheating. Like stabbing a vampire in his sleep.

 

 

It's something no DM in their right mind would ever allow.  If you were a lich and getting smacked by someone you can't see, you'd immediately start casting spells to dispel protections, gain true sight, etc.  I believe that's what SCS updated lich etc AI to do if they were getting smacked by people with Protection from Undead active.

[PizzaSHARK]

Because they went from an ad hoc buff system to a unified inspiration/affliction system and basically just directly ported over buffs as close as possible without trying to balance them out.  It's also why Priests are pretty weak outside of healing and one or two buffs that give you something you can't really get anywhere else (Devotions giving a flat +20 Acc for example.)  Wizards and Priests got hit really hard by the change to the system, especially since Confused is no longer a CC effect and instead just a relatively weak debuff.

 

It'll probably get fixed in later patches.

[theBalthazar]

I say that since Backer beta 1, but you lose your time, Obsidian don't want boost it. (Fleet feet level 1 is always better)

Edited June 18, 2018 by theBalthazar

[antman45454]

they have to boost it 

 

it does nothing in its current state

 

I just reported it as a bug

[baldurs_gate_2]

 

 

 

Kangaxx and every other Lich / Demi Lich is very easy. All you need is a Scroll of Protection from Undead and he does not attack you. You just hit him and he dies. I played it solo, so i think you need for every party member a scroll.

 

 

Even if I had known that, I wouldn't have done it. Feels like cheating. Like stabbing a vampire in his sleep.

 

 

It's something no DM in their right mind would ever allow.  If you were a lich and getting smacked by someone you can't see, you'd immediately start casting spells to dispel protections, gain true sight, etc.  I believe that's what SCS updated lich etc AI to do if they were getting smacked by people with Protection from Undead active.

 

Spellstrike should be not allowed either. A spell what can not be blocked with anything except a rare scroll of protection from magic i believe.

[Manveru123]

 

 

 

 

Though, i'm not quite sure any fights would last this long, aside from very important ones, like the one against Irenicus.

 

Fully modded game with SCS had lots of tough fights. Maybe I'm a bad player, but some of them took me very long, or at least felt like they did. A fight that I remember that was part of the original game was of course Kangaxx. That took always very long and I had to reload a lot.

 

That's because there's one item in the game that makes it really easy to survive for some time (Scroll of Protection from Magic), and only 2 or three weapons that could hit him.

Without the Scroll, it was possible, but highly unlikely to defeat Kangaxx. With the Scroll, the fight was over in < 30s.

 

 

SCS nixed that, along with the Shield of Balduran trivializing Beholders.

 

That is true, but SCS was a player created mod

[JerekKruger]

Yeah it's a huge shame. Several abilities had separate speed buffs (Monk's Swift Strikes and Barbarian's Frenzy) so they could have done the same with DAoM. I suspect that Obsidian viewed it as too powerful in PoE (it was very good) so over nerfed it as is their wont. What they ended up with is a third level spell that is, realistically, worse that the first level spell Fleet Feet.

[Shadenuat]

Since it also does damage it should at least provide another 25% bonus to speed to actions on top of it.

[Yosharian]

Immunity to Engagement is not useless, but by itself it's hard to justify casting this over Fleet Feet, I'll admit I respecced out of this spell when I realised Fleet Feet gives almost the same bonuses.