Normal difficulty needs more challenge

[Lord Grievous]

I really love TOW on normal difficulty, which is the difficulty I always play a game on my first playthrough. I consider it the standard difficulty that the game is supposed to be developed for and played on by most people.

But I have to admit that the game has become a walk in the park quite early on. Especially if you bring two companions with you and have some decent armor/weapons.

In fact, during my entire playthrough so far I haven't used my companions' special ability.. once!

Seriously, they kill any group of enemies so quickly I don't even have the time to use it.

Now I know you can increase the difficulty but I don't feel like this the solution. They should create some more enemy variety, give them better a.i. and give them some more distinct behaviours. Instead of just increasing the damage stats.

Hopefully they'll fix this with a patch/dlc and for the sequel :

[LaMOi]

I do hope they bring out some harder difficulty options...

[VaultBoi2077]

Yeah. It's called Supernova.

You know.

Where your PC must eat, drink and sleep daily.

And the mode where your companions can experience permadeath.

Sorry you didn't get the memo......

[thearmourofGod]

console gamers have been screaming for better a.i., enemy tactics, etc. for 2 decades and it still hasnt improved much at all

as for TOW on supernova i dont find it to be so much an issue of enemy bullet spongue as i can kill any single enemy rather quickly

its more of them as a group kicking my boot fast

for me, TOW supernova is more tactical v group mobs

[Lord Grievous]

I know about supernova difficulty 

But that doesn't mean that normal difficulty should be a walk in the park. Nor am I asking for Dark Souls level difficulty.

Normal difficulty should be the baseline from which easy and hard are derived. So it should add enough challenge without being overbearing.

Right now it's just too easy.

Also, I don't much care for the savegame limitations on supernova. I fail to see what restricting me in saving my game has to do with difficulty. It's a convenient feature so I don't have to start all over if I suddenly need to quit playing.

It's just ridiculous that savegames are limited in higher difficulty. They should've just stuck with the survival mode from FNV, that was a nice addition without being obtuse.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Lord Grievous
Spelling

[Wormerine]

I don't know if you really want the game to be hard - there just isn't enough to it.

I can see it become frustrating very easily if difficulty is tuned too high. The combat doesn't have enough depth to become interesting on harder settings. 

[algroth]

51 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I don't know if you really want the game to be hard - there just isn't enough to it.

I can see it become frustrating very easily if difficulty is tuned too high. The combat doesn't have enough depth to become interesting on harder settings. 

I suppose it depends what one means when saying they want the game to be harder. If by "harder" you mean "more health/damage", then I would be vehemently against it - but a smarter AI for example could offer a greater challenge and more depth and so on. I would also suggest that if the game is to become harder, it'd maybe be a good idea to remove some encounters from Monarch as even in its current form it feels a bit overloaded with trash fights*.

That said, I'd agree that the combat feels a tad on the easy side in normal. Also, I absolutely disagree that Supernova is the answer. Supernova might be a fun mode for some but it is an entire different game mode, and is very much aimed at a niche that isn't necessarily the same as the one that wants more challenging combat. I'll speak for myself in saying that I have not interest in perma-death, fast-travel limitations or sleep/eat/drink mechanics. I'm not saying they shouldn't be there, they absolutely should be since a portion of the playerbase enjoys the challenge these aspects offer, but I for one would simply like what mechanics are already in place in a normal playthrough to be more challenging.

*Edit: Actually, maybe it's not an issue of encounter density so much as how frequently they respawn. Maybe by delaying the respawn timer, the feeling of trash mob overload could be drastically reduced.

Edited November 11, 2019 by algroth

[Ommamar]

I just saw this on the nexus forums: https://www.nexusmods.com/theouterworlds/mods/28 

It looks like people are at least trying to make things harder for those who want to try it, no endorsement as I haven't played the mod but it is there if you want to give it a go.

[Mr.Placeholder]

They need to unlock custom difficulty settings. I like the stat effecting sleep-food-water system from supernova but the enemies are ridiculously spongy. It's not immersive when marauders need to take 10 bullets or shrug off stealth headshots and drags down the flow of combat when you're just magdumping into stunlocked or cowered enemies who refuse to die. 

Ideally you should be able to set damage/health scaling. Can't go wrong with 1:1 either. On normal you take down most enemies in 2-3 shots and something like a mantis queen is a fight. On supernova a marauder with a sword takes a mag of light ammo to the chest to die and a mantis queen is just not fun; you're just emptying magazine after magazine of heavy ammo into it. There isn't a way to play that tactically. Deathclaws as a bellweather they would almost instantly rek you in FO:NV but you could via mines, explosives, and a proper loadout go toe to toe with them. In outer worlds the random mantis queens in the road you option on supernova is... come back in 10 levels when it doesn't matter? 

[thearmourofGod]

for me, its very simple:

custom huds, custom play 

I will go even further and say that Supernova is too ez

Thief4 is a great example and good start at how to properly begin to address this long-neglected component of gaming

lol, better a.i. (AND optional bullet spongue choices) goes without saying, since, weve been yelling for it for decades

 

[Lord Grievous]

Indeed, higher difficulty doesn't just mean more enemy hitpoints. It also means better ai.

[Wormerine]

3 hours ago, thearmourofGod said:

Thief4 is a great example and good start at how to properly begin to address this long-neglected component of gaming

Thief didn't do many things right, but it's custom difficulty setting is something I would love to see more of.

[Darth Jebus]

Companion abilities are a thing?  I went through the whole game one-shotting everything on my 1h melee build, so I honestly didn't know they had abilities.

[Lord Grievous]

Yeah me too, never got the chance to use it

Personally I would love it if TTD was even more like VATS or pausing combat in KotOR. That would give you the chance to select which attack moves your companions would use.

[thearmourofGod]

2 hours ago, Darth Jebus said:

Companion abilities are a thing?  I went through the whole game one-shotting everything on my 1h melee build, so I honestly didn't know they had abilities.

im playing a melee character on supernova and there is no way you 1-hit everything at the beginning

its difficult just to survive all of those dang apes next to the ship in emerald vale at low levels

using parvatis destroyer ability was crucial many times early on, especially, when those same gorillaz turned into n-ray respawns

playing without a HUD and not having psychic compass ridiculousness makes this especially true

[Katarack21]

It's not just "normal" or "supernova". There's "hard" difficulty inbetween the two. If you want a game that's more challenging than "Normal" but doesn't have the save game limitations or survival requirements of Supernova...play it on Hard.

[thearmourofGod]

On 11/11/2019 at 11:26 AM, Wormerine said:

Thief didn't do many things right, but it's custom difficulty setting is something I would love to see more of.

fair enough

but, for this gamer, Thief4 did a whole lot of right

the atmosphere, the controls, the resources, the city, the hubs, the traversing, the story and the gameplay/hud customization  

and, the THIEVING!

i think the game is superb!

when i review a game i judge it on its own and not compared to other games, especially, previous entries;  i will compare and contrast a game with others but the ultimate tally is on its own

for example: i judge the non-rpg known as Fallout4 on its own and as a fps it is perfectly mediocre in every way and boring and repetitive with perfectly mediocre gameplay: a solid 6/10 (if one wants me to judge it as a fallout rpg game i give it an F+)

 

 

[Wormerine]

44 minutes ago, thearmourofGod said:

the atmosphere, the controls, the resources, the city, the hubs, the traversing, the story and the gameplay/hud customization  

and, the THIEVING!

Well, I played Thief 1-3 for the first time right before the reboot came out so it's difficult for me to saparate those. Still, I can't see anything positive about things you mention as I found the setting, story, characters, limited movememnt ability, idiotic DASH, and the overworld to be all awful. It's like the devs saw Dishonored and decided to make a garbage knock off of that, instead of a proper stealth game. 

Ah, one of the last casulties of post-Nolan-Batman unnecessary gritty reboots.

[thearmourofGod]

for me, Thief is nothing like the action game called Dishonored that focuses on combat and abilities with some stealth mechanics

Thief focuses on...thieving and not being seen and has very limited “stealth” mechanics

imo, it is absolutely foolish to compare thief to dishonored as they arent even close to the same type of game and is as bad as comparing TOW to NV or skyrim and fallout4 to NV or fallout3

in fact, id call dishonored a Thief 1/2 game with magic, lol, but, anywho 

do i wish Thief had more equipment options and “go anywhere” mechanics?  absolutely

do i wish the audio and some other minor tech issues wouldve been fixed before release?  sure

but, i think the latest entry set the stage for a great next title with a little more resources 

Edited November 16, 2019 by thearmourofGod

[Masticator]

I would like to see a difficulty between normal and hard. Although hard for me was about perfect. Only 2 battles I ran into trouble where I was getting 1 shotted. Seriously, how do you deal with being one shotted? Perhaps if I could have figured out where the damage was coming from I could have avoided it, but the game isn't clear how you are losing health (at least not that I can see). I had to lower difficulty to normal because I didn't feel like reloading the battle over and over. But normal really is too easy. At least once you get past the initial planet where you are battling primals (they can be tough at level 2). The places I was getting 1 shotted was a guy with some kind of energy weapon at the lab where a certain someone gets taken prisoner near the end, and the mech at the very end of the game. I didn't have the patience to keep reloading so turned it down to normal.