Why aren't the difficulty indicators even close to working properly?

[xzar_monty]

The game's been around for ages, and it's been patched quite a lot. However, I am repeatedly seeing that the difficulty indicators for quests aren't even close to working properly. Or even at all.

 

A case in point: I'm at level 11, and according to the quest log, Beast of Winter is now at my level, as a quest. However, when I just sailed to Harbinger's Watch, the location appears with three white skulls, suggesting that I should be around level 14 before seriously trying it. And given my previous experience with these skulls, I'm inclined to disregard my quest log and heed the skulls on the location.

 

The reason for this is that I have already experienced a bounty quest "at my level" (according to the quest log) where I turned out to be outnumbered seven to five by enemies, each of which had three red skulls. They, shall we say, kindly handed my backside to me on a plate. I'm not playing on PotD but the one below that, and the encountered felt plenty difficult, i.e. impossible.

 

Now, most of the game is great, but why isn't this stuff even close to working? What could be the logic? I don't get it. I cannot see how it could be so difficult to get this right. Is it only a display problem within the quest log?

Edited January 3, 2019 by xzar_monty

[DozingDragon]

Do you have upscaling on?  If you have upscaling on then the suggested level in the quest log might be misleading, as the stuff in Beast of Winter all upscales pretty substantially.  

[xzar_monty]

I do, yes.

 

But shouldn't the game be smart enough to recognize this?

 

As I said, the problem doesn't only exist in Beast of Winter. But you do have a point.

 

Just out of curiosity -- BoW shouldn't be suggested as "at your level" for an 11th level party, should it? (No matter whether you're upscaling or not.)

[DozingDragon]

That's fair, I thought the recommended level for starting the DLC was between 14 and 16.  Maybe they tuned down the initial fight in the DLC in a patch?  

[msyoung]

That is what I had always heard, BoW was for levels 14-16. I went there once at level 18 and that dragon was still a hard fight.

[xzar_monty]

Yeah. So, it definitely appears wrong that my quest log says BoW is on my level when I'm at level 11.

 

Incidentally, according to my quest log now, NOTHING is above my level.

[xzar_monty]

An update on this: the difficulty indicators are kind of working, but there are things that trigger them on or off. This is clearly a bug.

 

An example from my game: for the past five or six levels, there have been NO skulls in my journal, next to the quests. But clearly, some of the bounties are beyond me.

 

Now, I just did the "He Waits in the Fire" quest, meeting that one guy in that hot place. Immediately after that quest, my journal again contains some skulls. Some of the previous bounties which I haven't been able to make are now marked with the appropriate amount of skulls.

 

Very strange.

[Cartoons Plural]

you seem miserable playing this game hey heres a bugfix maybe stop playing it?

[thelee]

An update on this: the difficulty indicators are kind of working, but there are things that trigger them on or off. This is clearly a bug.

 

An example from my game: for the past five or six levels, there have been NO skulls in my journal, next to the quests. But clearly, some of the bounties are beyond me.

 

Now, I just did the "He Waits in the Fire" quest, meeting that one guy in that hot place. Immediately after that quest, my journal again contains some skulls. Some of the previous bounties which I haven't been able to make are now marked with the appropriate amount of skulls.

 

Very strange.

 

if your character leveled up, but you haven't actually leveled them up yet (there's just a plus sign on their portrait, waiting) the game uses that "not leveled up yet" level to do encounter scaling but uses your current actual character level for difficulty indicators. So you might have no skulls on anything, finish a fight/complete a quest, and then suddenly there's a skull indicator on every single quest because they all just upscaled one level, even though you haven't actually leveled up yet.

 

I think the logic is that otherwise you could "game" the system by having a low-level character that you don't level up until you actually start the quest and then slaughter the entire quest because enemies are stuck at your lower level. FWIW this is how games like Oblivion did quest scaling.

[xzar_monty]

Wow. Very interesting, thank you. That would explain some of it, yes. But there is clearly something "stuck" in the game, and it seems to be connected to various quests and/or locations. For instance, I just visited Fort Deadlight. Immediately upon arriving, every single member of my group wanted to further their personal story with me. They started a conversation, one after the other, right after one another, before I could do anything else.

 

That had to be a mistake -- otherwise these conversations would surely have taken place one at a time, at intervals.

 

I felt the sudden reappearance of the skulls was a similar phenomenon. They hadn't been checked for ages, then something triggered a check, and appropriate skulls appeared. Ditto the discussions: suddenly the game realised that they had been ignored for some time.

Edited January 23, 2019 by xzar_monty

[Thorak]

Looks like the Level Scaling is acting weird. I'm at The Hanging Sepulchers right now with my lvl 9 party and most of the enemies had 3 red skulls indicator, turning off the level scaling made it seems normal again.

Curiously enough, turning off the level scaling also updated the difficulty info on my journal.

[thelee]

Looks like the Level Scaling is acting weird. I'm at The Hanging Sepulchers right now with my lvl 9 party and most of the enemies had 3 red skulls indicator, turning off the level scaling made it seems normal again.

Curiously enough, turning off the level scaling also updated the difficulty info on my journal.

 

level scaling is based on the encounter, not on the enemy level. so level scaling can also help enemies stay above your level, not just catch up to your level as you out-level them.

 

this is not to rule out the possibility that level scaling could be screwed up somehow, just that merely the existence of seeing red skulled enemies with level scaling, and not red skulled without isn't enough evidence of that.

[mcfrank221]

Just looking for an update after the newest patch. I did not see path note addressing this specifically, but want to double check if it's fixed.