Petition - Do we want to see the game made harder on POTD on the late levels? Please voice your concern here

[DozingDragon]

Like I said, I did not think my suggestion would be popular.  But on average, magical equipment in Deadfire provides more effects than magical equipment did in Baldur's Gate 2, which ends up being a big deal with all of the equipment bonuses stacking with one another.  Then add in tailoring a character's equipment to work well with their active and passive class abilities, and all of a sudden it becomes very clear why enemies lose a lot of their bite once a party reaches around level 12 or 13.  

So either the asymmetric advantages provided through gear and ability synergies need to be reduced by paring down some of those bonuses, or enemies need to be provided with their own asymmetric bonuses.  This could be done by providing enemies with randomly rolled or hand-placed bonuses.  And that might just be the plan for the future by the developers. According to this article, the current plan for Galawain's challenge is to give "beast" keyword enemies random bonuses.  So perhaps the developers are going to add in similar options for the other enemy types.  

[baldurs_gate_2]

Like I said, I did not think my suggestion would be popular.  But on average, magical equipment in Deadfire provides more effects than magical equipment did in Baldur's Gate 2, which ends up being a big deal with all of the equipment bonuses stacking with one another.  Then add in tailoring a character's equipment to work well with their active and passive class abilities, and all of a sudden it becomes very clear why enemies lose a lot of their bite once a party reaches around level 12 or 13.  

 

So either the asymmetric advantages provided through gear and ability synergies need to be reduced by paring down some of those bonuses, or enemies need to be provided with their own asymmetric bonuses.  This could be done by providing enemies with randomly rolled or hand-placed bonuses.  And that might just be the plan for the future by the developers. According to this article, the current plan for Galawain's challenge is to give "beast" keyword enemies random bonuses.  So perhaps the developers are going to add in similar options for the other enemy types.  

Makes it impossible to trial of iron it, because you can not prepare for the fight. At least when you play solo.

[cokane]

The loot isn't the issue. Penetration isn't the issue.

 

The issue will always fundamentally remain in the game. So long as the player has maximum resources in every fight *and* the designers want to create battles of varying difficulty the game is going to feel easy to veteran players. Because that means any non-boss fight is going to effectively be a trash mob.

 

The only way Deadfire combat can be made to have consistent difficulty is to make every fight a "boss fight" and that monotony is not going to be fun. Unless there's radical changes to the underlying systems of player abilities, this is how it's going to be.

[protopersona]

The loot isn't the issue. Penetration isn't the issue.

 

The issue will always fundamentally remain in the game. So long as the player has maximum resources in every fight *and* the designers want to create battles of varying difficulty the game is going to feel easy to veteran players. Because that means any non-boss fight is going to effectively be a trash mob.

 

The only way Deadfire combat can be made to have consistent difficulty is to make every fight a "boss fight" and that monotony is not going to be fun. Unless there's radical changes to the underlying systems of player abilities, this is how it's going to be.

So you are of the mind that without meta resources to manage like in PoE1 you can't make a challenging game? Cause I don't agree. The resource management only added tedium to PoE1.

 

Making challenging encounters comes more from creating better enemy abilities and behaviors. The Divinity: Original Sin games managed this pretty well. Unfortunately I think it looks like that's more work then Obsidian is going to invest in the game. That's judging by their habit of buffing things by a flat amount for PotD.

Edited August 23, 2018 by protopersona

[cokane]

 

The loot isn't the issue. Penetration isn't the issue.

 

The issue will always fundamentally remain in the game. So long as the player has maximum resources in every fight *and* the designers want to create battles of varying difficulty the game is going to feel easy to veteran players. Because that means any non-boss fight is going to effectively be a trash mob.

 

The only way Deadfire combat can be made to have consistent difficulty is to make every fight a "boss fight" and that monotony is not going to be fun. Unless there's radical changes to the underlying systems of player abilities, this is how it's going to be.

So you are of the mind that without meta resources to manage like in PoE1 you can't make a challenging game? Cause I don't agree. The resource management only added tedium to PoE1.

 

Making challenging encounters comes more from creating better enemy abilities and behaviors. The Divinity: Original Sin games managed this pretty well. Unfortunately I think it looks like that's more work then Obsidian is going to invest in the game. That's judging by their habit of buffing things by a flat amount for PotD.

 

 

It's undeniable that if you want variety to the difficulty level of combat encounters of Deadfire, you will create a large percentage of absurdly easy encounters. If you make 10 fights in one dungeon, and want one to be the hardest fight, a boss fight, that's the only one that's going to be truly difficult to the attentive player. What I'm saying is specific and backed up by the evidence in the game.

 

"Making challenging encounters comes more from creating better enemy abilities and behaviors" is overly vague to the point of being meaningless. It's boilerplate advice.

 

You may have found managing resources "tedious", but it's only by having a cross-combat layer of resources that the designers had freedom to make encounters of varying sizes and difficulties while still allowing those encounters to be meaningful experiences for the player. In Deadfire you can half-effort about 75% of the fights and you'll suffer no consequences (nor see benefits from giving full effort there). This is the chief reason the game feels so much easier, imo.

[Boeroer]

If you make every fight equally difficult then there will be no feeling of progression in character development (in terms of power). Most players want to feel that their character evolves and turns into a powerhouse. For that you need easier encounters where your char shreds things to pieces with his fancy new abilities. But you also need hard, tricky encounters every now and then to hold up the tension and to get a feeling of accomplishment. This is not done with general buffs or nerfs on all chars or items or enemies. It is done with proper encounter design and certain high level enemies who have some tricks in their sleeve or are exceptionally hard to beat because of insane stats.

 

And then look at people who complain that PotD is too easy at higher levels - and at the same time the same people post about Concelhaut using Arcane Dampener and that it is unfair - or that the BoW dragon is too tough.

 

The kids these days...

Edited August 23, 2018 by Boeroer

[Teclis23]

Yeah but all fights in POTD after you hit level 14 are a complete push over. Its almost impossible to die in them.

 

These is no balance between "Feeling you power and progression" and " Tough fights"

 

It is all one way to easy

Edited August 23, 2018 by Teclis23

[protopersona]

 

It's undeniable that if you want variety to the difficulty level of combat encounters of Deadfire, you will create a large percentage of absurdly easy encounters. If you make 10 fights in one dungeon, and want one to be the hardest fight, a boss fight, that's the only one that's going to be truly difficult to the attentive player. What I'm saying is specific and backed up by the evidence in the game.

 

Just because you believe it to be true doesn't make it factual. Specific or not, your evidence is colored by your opinions of it.

 

"Making challenging encounters comes more from creating better enemy abilities and behaviors" is overly vague to the point of being meaningless. It's boilerplate advice.

Well I'm not interested in giving a long list of the exact things that could fix the game. My evidence of my opinion is just as valid as yours, which I already gave. D:OS 1 and 2 both do a great job of making encounters challenging without having to conserve or manage meta resources between encounters. There's more than one way to make a game challenging.

 

You may have found managing resources "tedious", but it's only by having a cross-combat layer of resources that the designers had freedom to make encounters of varying sizes and difficulties while still allowing those encounters to be meaningful experiences for the player. In Deadfire you can half-effort about 75% of the fights and you'll suffer no consequences (nor see benefits from giving full effort there). This is the chief reason the game feels so much easier, imo.

Judging by the popularity of mods to make per rest abilities into per encounter I'd say I'm not in the minority on finding it tedious. Deadfire drastically overhauled the combat system, and probably in a large part due to the data Obsidian collected about how people liked playing the first game. Again though, there are more ways to make encounters matter than just adding resource management. D:OS manages to make most encounters something that is both masterable but still requiring your attention and tactics to avoid an embarrassing death.

 

There's another aspect of this discussion I think most people in this thread haven't talked about. Those of us that actually want the game to be an even bigger challenge are in the tiniest of minorities. By and large people nowadays do not play games to be challenged. They play to be entertained and feel empowered. Like it or not, we are not the audience that will earn them enough money to be successful. The devs have probably spent more time on PotD's difficulty than they ever planned to at this point. Thankfully there are mods to go the rest of the distance for the small number of us that want it.

Edited August 23, 2018 by protopersona

[Boeroer]

Yeah but all fights in POTD after you hit level 14 are a complete push over. Its almost impossible to die in them.

These is no balance between "Feeling you power and progression" and " Tough fights"

It is all one way to easy

 

So... weren't you the one who opened that thread about the dragon in BoW being too tough for your party, eh?

 

Anyways:

 

I agree that it the general difficulty is too easy from mid- to endgame. Even at lvl 8 I do mostly red skulls encounters just to get certain gear and it's not much of a problem.* 

 

I just don't think that a general character or item nerf or a general enemy buff will do the job. The encounters themselves need to be improved. That's something that takes time and effort and can't be done with a broad brush.

 

)* For example I just grabbed Rekvu's Scorched Cloak from the Flame Nagas at lvl 8/9. The Naga marauders and archers themselves are fine - they just lack one nasty boss who makes things harder. They have this Sorcerer guy named Uvvhateverhisnameis who spams some damaging spells, but he's quite squishy despite his level.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Boeroer

[Manveru123]

 

Yeah but all fights in POTD after you hit level 14 are a complete push over. Its almost impossible to die in them.

These is no balance between "Feeling you power and progression" and " Tough fights"

It is all one way to easy

 

So... weren't you the one who opened that thread about the dragon in BoW being too tough for your party, eh?

 

 

 

Maybe he fought him at 13.. :D

 

 

"Making challenging encounters comes more from creating better enemy abilities and behaviors" is overly vague to the point of being meaningless. It's boilerplate advice.

Well I'm not interested in giving a long list of the exact things that could fix the game. My evidence of my opinion is just as valid as yours, which I already gave. D:OS 1 and 2 both do a great job of making encounters challenging without having to conserve or manage meta resources between encounters. There's more than one way to make a game challenging.

 

 

Yeah for like.. the first act maybe. The challenge ends the moment you get Apotheosis.

[Teclis23]

I did the beast at level 14. It was really hard.

 

But this is the only hard fight i came across in the entire game before i stopped playing it.

[Boeroer]

You didn't finish it? Then how can you know that there aren't any more difficult encounters to come?

[Teclis23]

I did like 10-15 fights after beast and they where all a cake walk.

 

This is when i realised something was seriously wrong and i canned my playthrough.

 

The two sets of legendary plate mail i got in the expansion made a big difference when i put them on my two tanks. Both goldpact paladins with the +4 AR gilded emnity talent. So pretty much every fight i had like 17 AR on both my tanks.

 

This pretty much broke the game.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Teclis23

[cokane]

 

 

It's undeniable that if you want variety to the difficulty level of combat encounters of Deadfire, you will create a large percentage of absurdly easy encounters. If you make 10 fights in one dungeon, and want one to be the hardest fight, a boss fight, that's the only one that's going to be truly difficult to the attentive player. What I'm saying is specific and backed up by the evidence in the game.

 

Just because you believe it to be true doesn't make it factual. Specific or not, your evidence is colored by your opinions of it.

 

 

This isn't an opinion though. If you have access to the same level of resources in every fight and fights are of varying difficulty...

 

this isn't hard.

[Manveru123]

I did like 10-15 fights after beast and they where all a cake walk.

 

This is when i realised something was seriously wrong and i canned my playthrough.

 

The two sets of legendary plate mail i got in the expansion made a big difference when i put them on my two tanks. Both goldpact paladins with the +4 AR gilded emnity talent. So pretty much every fight i had like 17 AR on both my tanks.

 

This pretty much broke the game.

I'm pretty sure the game was balanced for playing with companions, who are far from optimized. If you have more custom characters than just the Watcher, you're making the game easier for you yourself. Also there is nothing wrong with high-level characters being super strong, this is pretty much every RPG game ever.

[hilfazer]

The two sets of legendary plate mail i got in the expansion made a big difference when i put them on my two tanks. Both goldpact paladins with the +4 AR gilded emnity talent. So pretty much every fight i had like 17 AR on both my tanks.

 

This pretty much broke the game.

 

This is % damage reduction for you!

High values do too much.

Good job, Obsidian.

[baldurs_gate_2]

I did like 10-15 fights after beast and they where all a cake walk.

 

This is when i realised something was seriously wrong and i canned my playthrough.

 

The two sets of legendary plate mail i got in the expansion made a big difference when i put them on my two tanks. Both goldpact paladins with the +4 AR gilded emnity talent. So pretty much every fight i had like 17 AR on both my tanks.

 

This pretty much broke the game.

Yeah, but you can still try on solo potd upscaled, there are more encounters that are hard.

[Verde]

Enemies need to use more afflictions, spells, and abilities. Plus potions and revivals. And even puzzle like gimmicks.

[bringingyouthefuture]

And you should never be able to crush enemies in a fight in a majority of encounters with single blows, some encounters sure but  ... I mean that really was the issue before the first PoTD rework patch that made me put it down for a little until they did some balancing.  If this is still happening it would be awesome if they fixed it please!!!!  Haven't had as much time to play and have started over a few times due to patch updates so haven't gotten to the high levels yet, but hope to reach them around the time the next DLC arrives, if I have time!!! Ugh, wish I still got summer break ...

Edited August 23, 2018 by aaronghowell

[Big-Ben]

Difficulty is going to depend on a lot of things. Making every fight like a boss fight isn't going to do much of anything to alleviate these things because there are so many variables. One party might have a breeze because of the set up and another might not. Game balance can be like a black hole. When it is one there's no way to win and when gamers come in with things like nostalgia and rose tinted glasses about times gone by it's impossible for devs to do anything right. Wanting "X" for difficulty doesn't equate to an absolute for everyone so devs need to fine tune between absolutely asinine difficulty and reasonable challenge.

 

Ostensibly it becomes "Why isn't the game difficult or easy in the way I want?" and that's just not an acceptable way to handle this. At some point some folks are just going to have to deal with the fact that not everything in the game is going to be a real life nipple twister.

[1TTFFSSE]

I think the balance in Beast of Winter was good. I don't know how the regular game is balanced especially the later parts of the game but the metrics seem to be ok for BoW expansion. Now if the later parts of the game and a few areas receive another pass based on such metrics it would be nice but it is probably not at the top of the to do agenda. 

[Teclis23]

And you should never be able to crush enemies in a fight in a majority of encounters with single blows, some encounters sure but  ... I mean that really was the issue before the first PoTD rework patch that made me put it down for a little until they did some balancing.  If this is still happening it would be awesome if they fixed it please!!!!  Haven't had as much time to play and have started over a few times due to patch updates so haven't gotten to the high levels yet, but hope to reach them around the time the next DLC arrives, if I have time!!! Ugh, wish I still got summer break ...

At high levels it is pretty much in the same state the game was in before the balancing patch. I dont think they have changed it at all.

 

Maybe they ran out of time

[shadow85]

I am sick of waiting for PoTD to get fully tuned. Bring on DOS 2 Definitive Edition, hopefully they added a tougher difficulty, Taactician+ or something.

[Big-Ben]

Not many games launch in perfect shape (Not that they did before.) folks. I think it's just going to be a thing from here on out. I do however find it incredibly disingenuous of folks to bring up older games somehow being perfect and ignoring the fact that those games had serious issues too. Baldur's Gate STILL doesn't have all the bugs ironed out even in the most recent Enhanced Editions.

 

 

I am sick of waiting for PoTD to get fully tuned. Bring on DOS 2 Definitive Edition, hopefully they added a tougher difficulty, Taactician+ or something.

 

Ironically this is a relaunch of game that has had significant overhauls due to...criticism.

[Manveru123]

DOS2 did not have any "significant overhauls". All of their gameplay changes combined so far change less than Pillars did with the first major patch. This might not be the case with Definitive Edition, but if it's the same as the first DOS, it will be a different game in your Steam library and will not affect the original in any shape or form. It's pretty cool when the devs don't force you into an overhaul of their initial release :]