Is It Too Easy?

[Hallacson]

Hi. I played the PoE in normal difficulty and most of my playtrough a bit challenging. 

But in PoED, even I choose the veteran diffculty; It's strangely easy. The battles are still satisfying, but defenitly  easier than previous game.

Is it just me, or it's a general idea?

[AeonsLegend]

How easy the game is depends on your MC mostly and how you build your party. Some classes and characters have better early game than others. It also depends on the path you take and if you use upscaling. Since it's a bit of an open world enemies have base level and scaling. Meaning you could wade through every fight easily or you could end up in a fight you can never win.

I do feel that Lagufaeth and pŵgra aren't as tough as they were before. I feel pŵgra spells aren't as powerful. And Lagufaeth die in 1-2 hits without doing any damage to you. So yea, game balance has shifted. Possibly due to the introduction of other enemies. Death Guards and Fampyrs are extremely powerful however.

Edited April 18, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[xzar_monty]

I would also agree that Deadfire is a lot easier than PoE.

Death Guards are quite powerful, as @AeonsLegend legend rightly says, but I only met one in the whole game.

[AeonsLegend]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I would also agree that Deadfire is a lot easier than PoE.

Death Guards are quite powerful, as @AeonsLegend legend rightly says, but I only met one in the whole game.

Deathguards are everywhere you fight undead at higher level. You meet them with Fampyrs usually or skeletons. One of them is in the crypt you have to discover for the mapping the archipelago quest. More are found in the The Hanging Sepulchers as well in Neketaka. Some in the area where you fight the Demilich in the Flooded cave as part of another mapping quest. Plenty of areas where these are found. Although it's one of those enemies that aren't as strong vs higher level and better equipped parties. They can one-two shot you at lower levels since they crit a lot. Higher deflection reduces their damage output quite a lot as does armor so they don't overpen you.

The problem with games like this is statgrowth to be honest. It's not as bad as Dragons Dogma for instance, but it is quite bad. Stat growth is crazy in this game. +3 all stats per level for no reason? I really wish they would change that so that a level 20 characters strength is more determined by powerlevel and abilities and much less by sheer stats. Some abilities are also quite over powered granting +20 to things and such. I feel like all that should be lower and no stacking so it becomes much harder to create a character that is good at everything without effort. That plus introduce Strength and reserve Might for spellcasters. That will forever bug me.

Edited April 18, 2020 by AeonsLegend

[xzar_monty]

45 minutes ago, AeonsLegend said:

Deathguards are everywhere you fight undead at higher level. You meet them with Fampyrs usually or skeletons. One of them is in the crypt you have to discover for the mapping the archipelago quest. More are found in the The Hanging Sepulchers as well in Neketaka. Some in the area where you fight the Demilich in the Flooded cave as part of another mapping quest. Plenty of areas where these are found.

I must assume you're talking about PotD and/or other extra-high level deals, because on Hard/Veteran (whatever it's called), there is only just the one Death Guard in the game. He's in the crypt in the mapping the archipelago quest. No Death Guards in the Sepulchers, nor in the Flooded Cave.

[thelee]

6 hours ago, Hallacson said:

Hi. I played the PoE in normal difficulty and most of my playtrough a bit challenging. 

But in PoED, even I choose the veteran diffculty; It's strangely easy. The battles are still satisfying, but defenitly  easier than previous game.

Is it just me, or it's a general idea?

my opinions:

 

1. PoE1 was almost unreasonably difficult in act i. especially on PotD even near the end of my 1000+ hours with it, I had to clear every single quest, recruit companions, and stealth through much of caed nua just to open up the map into act ii. Meanwhile Deadfire was pretty well-known to be undertuned difficulty-wise at launch (with extremely powerful items). Items and consumables got tuned down, and the higher difficulties got tuned up, especially PotD, but unlike PoE1--while you're still gated into a starting area (Port Maje Island)--the fights are more easily avoidable (plus you can pretty much stealth through the entirety of it if need be).

2. Ship bounties are an easy source of experience so you can try to overlevel combat encounters. Plus, even without overleveling, like others said multiclassing opens a lot more possibility for putting together powerful parties (though it's also possible to create weak parties, hence why the game frequently suggests that multiclassing is not for new players), whereas in PoE1 there was a tighter band on what you could do with your characters since you could only single-class.

3. PoE1 combat was also much faster pace. Once I discovered the "automatically slow combat speed" option in the menu within the first few hours of playing, I turned it on and never turned it off. Deadfire is balanced at a speed that is around PoE1's slow speed (I think this was mentioned in a developer update for backers). For people who played whatever the default speed option is, PoE1 could be almost comically frantic and challenging and by comparison Deadfire would be a lot easier to handle.

4.

6 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

I do feel that Lagufaeth and pŵgra aren't as tough as they were before. I feel pŵgra spells aren't as powerful. And Lagufaeth die in 1-2 hits without doing any damage to you.

This +1000. A lot of enemies seemingly got retuned, probably to take away a lot of the PoE1 frustration factor. I remember taking my first min-maxed party into the The White March and being obliterated by constant paralyze poison, and god help the first time I saw a broodmother cast Minor Avatar. While paralyze poison still happens, lagufeth and xaurip skirmisher encounters are nowhere near the nightmares they used to be. I remember in PoE1 some pwgra-type could cast healing spells like Moonwell infinitely (just on a loop with other spells), which could be a nightmare for parties with insufficient DPS. Many more caster-types in Deadfire are actually more like casters, with a limited inventory of spells.

5. Effects got rebalanced. This might look like a "nerf" to the player in places - e.g. prone is now just an interrupt, Devotions of the Faithful is now just a +10/-10 accuracy adjustment, confusion merely causes your targeting to become foe+friend, etc. But because all of these changes are symmetric with enemy abilities, it also means getting hit with an enemy Pillar of Faith no longer prones half your party for 10 seconds (which would be like ~20 seconds in Deadfire combat speed) or getting hit with a level 2 wizard confuse doesn't cause your party to descend into chaotic mayhem.

 

That being said, I think the hardest fights in Deadfire overwhelm the hardest fights in PoE1. I'd say the difficulty curve in PoE1 starts high and then doesn't really budge up, going down mostly after Act II starts and your options open up. There's a bit of a spike in The White March but with some poison/disease immunity you're pretty much set for what I think are the most annoying fights. In Deadfire it's more like a U - a somewhat (but manageable) rough start, smoothing out in the mid-game, and then an extremely high late and end-game (you can search through the forums for people complaining about the oracle fight, porokoa, or the megabosses). Considering that much of the late/end-game is optional, you might end up with a pretty laconic experience, difficulty-wise.

Edited April 18, 2020 by thelee

[AeonsLegend]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I must assume you're talking about PotD and/or other extra-high level deals, because on Hard/Veteran (whatever it's called), there is only just the one Death Guard in the game. He's in the crypt in the mapping the archipelago quest. No Death Guards in the Sepulchers, nor in the Flooded Cave.

Ah yea they're Risen Armsmen. I got them confused. They deal insane damage. Basically the replacement of the Lagufaeth. If you fight them below their level you can expect to get wiped.

[xzar_monty]

That's a bit strange, by the way: there are some monsters that you can deal with even if they are shown to be "three red skulls" baddies, i.e. way above your level(*). But then there are monsters like the Risen Armsmen that -- I fully agree -- are extremely difficult if you're not at or above their level.

 

(*) The Engwithian Titan, for instance, was "three red skulls" for me in both of my playthroughs, but posed no difficulty whatsoever.

Edited April 18, 2020 by xzar_monty

[thelee]

7 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

But then there are monsters like the Risen Armsmen that -- I fully agree -- are extremely difficult if you're not at or above their level.

I find all rogue-like enemies (including those Risen) are really brutal if encountered a little too early. On PotD it's very hard to get enough AR early-to-mid game to actually get enemies to underpenetrate (a little easier on veteran, but still hard), so these rogue types are doing full sneak attack damage to you, interrupting you, and using Finishing Blow on you. With extreme micromanagement you can run right out of range of their melee attacks as they start them, but some of them just switch to ranged weapons really quickly (which is actually sometimes worse because their AI targets squishies when possible, and some enemies get cheaty ranged accuracy bonuses on PotD), and sometimes (especially on PotD) there are so many enemies that you're likely engaged by someone else or there's no maneuver room.

Edited April 19, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

Hard Crowd Control effects were brutal in PoE1. This could destroy a not well prepared party. Remember base Lagufaeth and their Paralysis effect ? High level monks ? Adragans ?

Health also made Healing pretty annoying. In PoE2, you can tank anything with enough healing.

Having a Priest in your party slowly made you invicible on High Levels though. Party Buffs were so strong and immunity towards afflictions basically cancel my first point for prepared parties. The only thing that could still beat you on High level was basically Adra Dragon Breath because it was so strong it could kill several party members before you are buffed and/or the dragon is Crowd Controlled.

[AeonsLegend]

34 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Hard Crowd Control effects were brutal in PoE1. This could destroy a not well prepared party. Remember base Lagufaeth and their Paralysis effect ? High level monks ? Adragans ?

Health also made Healing pretty annoying. In PoE2, you can tank anything with enough healing.

Having a Priest in your party slowly made you invicible on High Levels though. Party Buffs were so strong and immunity towards afflictions basically cancel my first point for prepared parties. The only thing that could still beat you on High level was basically Adra Dragon Breath because it was so strong it could kill several party members before you are buffed and/or the dragon is Crowd Controlled.

The main issue with POE1 was the stackable defenses. You could buff up a character that could stand in front of the Adra Dragon while it did nothing to him. That's kinda meh and boring imo. It's still pretty bad in POE2, but not as bad as POE1. If they ever do make a POE3, I hope they do away with all those insane stackable buffs and stats and just build around abilities and tactical choices. Meaning you don't become much "stronger", but get more options to defeat your oponent. And if they do stat growth of any kind I would like to see difference between the classes and not have a bookworm mage be as adept at wielding a two handed battle axe as a trained warrior. I'm not saying a battle mage shouldn't be possible, but it should be implemented differently.

[Boeroer]

Huh? Stacking in Deadfire is even more unregulated than it was in PoE. In PoE you could only stack passives with actives and one item (except weapon). In Deadfire you can stack all item effects - like Bracers + Cloak of Greater Protection with Casita Samelia's Legacy, +2 RES pet and Entonia Signet Ring and whatnot. For the common player it's way easier to achieve high defenses values in Deadfire.

On the other hand the afflictions are a lot milder in Deadfire, also due to resistances and inspirations countering them.

As Elric said: with a Priest's Prayers it's a cakewalk in PoE, but for parties without priests (and scrolls) even a graze of an Adragan's gaze, a Xaurip Skirmisher's spear or a Lagufaeth Blowdart could mean the end. In every stage of the game. I mean holy moly did we get rants about Xaurip Skirmishers here...