Hard mode is too easy.

[Mungri]

Just play on Potd. 'Hard' is a lie. And tbh so is Potd, its just what hard should be. I wonder if it will be possible to mod harder difficulties.

[DocDoomII]

This discussion feels like a lot of people are way too used to scaling monsters.

 

Wasn't this the same with IE games? If you quested a lot and leveled up a lot, things got easier.

Edited April 6, 2015 by DocDoomII

[ComplyOrDie]

This discussion feels like a lot of people are way too used to scaling monsters.

 

Wasn't this the same with IE games? If you quested a lot and leveled up a lot, things got easier.

 

Yes, although there are some or at least one very very good mod that keeps the challenge interesting whatever you do. I certainly Obsidian could do it better hence the discussion. I'm glad they avoided scaling, Oblivion is the best example of scaling being awful.

 

It's not a "this game is awful look at me I'm so good thread". It's a this game is great, how can difficulty be improved without forcing players who want a challenge to resort to gimmicks on hard mode, or at least on the mode specifically designed to be a pain. I think it's reasonable to discuss that.

Edited April 6, 2015 by ComplyOrDie

[DocDoomII]

Would be enough to add an option in the difficulty panel "Normal XP" or "Reduced XP".

[Bersercker]

Have completed less than a half of the game on PotD, but this issue makes me sad. Maybe someone could mod an increase in xp needed for the max level? So that, say, by completing all of the quests in the game, discovering all the map, disarming all the traps and completing bestiary you'd get "max level +5%" xp. All the lower levels should get an according increase in requirements as well ofc. 5% just in case you failed some quests and for the partymembers that were left at caed nua. Making it an option for expert mode would be nice too.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Bersercker

[Atheosis]

Just play on Potd. 'Hard' is a lie. And tbh so is Potd, its just what hard should be. I wonder if it will be possible to mod harder difficulties.

 

Of course it will be.  Encounters can be edited and/or stats changed to make things much tougher. 

[Atheosis]

Would be enough to add an option in the difficulty panel "Normal XP" or "Reduced XP".

 

That's a good idea actually.

[PrimeJunta]

Sounds like the only thing needed to fix this would be to adjust the XP tables. If it's possible to hit the level cap a early as act 2, then that's clearly not right.

 

Perhaps Easy/Normal/Hard/PotD could use different XP tables, too.

 

Edit: Oh, somebody already said this. NVM

Edited April 6, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[czinczar]

I think enemies should do different attacks in hard mode, for example this creature makes you bleed while in normal mode it doesn't, this creature is immune to magic and another is immune to non magic attacks, etc.. Also, the lack of difficulty comes from the engagement system : eder is my tank and he is a beast, and I know that without him it would be much harder.

[Mazisky]

I wonder if devs are reading this thread and thinking about some balance fix in the future

Edited April 6, 2015 by Mazisky

[Zorfab]

I think enemies should do different attacks in hard mode, for example this creature makes you bleed while in normal mode it doesn't, this creature is immune to magic and another is immune to non magic attacks, etc.. Also, the lack of difficulty comes from the engagement system : eder is my tank and he is a beast, and I know that without him it would be much harder.

It´s more of an issue with enemies often being one-trick ponies. That is to say, they have regular melee attack and one special attack (if any).

 

If enemies had better AI and more options for attacking the back row of the party in intelligent manner and enough different types of attacks to do it, game would become much harder.

Imagine if you went against a group of soldiers and set up your tanks on a narrow bridge and the enemies would just pull out ranged weapons and start shooting your back row instead of rushing the tanks and do futile melee with them? Enemies coordinating flanking attacks and conditions in intelligent manner to give their rogue classed members huge boosts on spike damage? Basically using every dirty trick that the players can use themselves against them.

 

Deflection defense also seems to be overvalued (too large portion of enemy attacks are against it). If game attacked the secondary defense values more often and stat system and items were tuned in a manner that would make "omni-tanking" impossible, the difficulty level would increase dramatically. You might be forced to rotate tanks between two first ranks and put some armor on your back row characters in order for them to survive, or use more crowd control to disable certain dangerous enemies before they devastate the key members of your DPS team.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Zorfab

[DocDoomII]

 

Would be enough to add an option in the difficulty panel "Normal XP" or "Reduced XP".

 

That's a good idea actually.

 

I only have good ideas 

[PIP-Clownboy]

 

 

As opposed to avoiding those quests because otherwise there's no challenge to the game?

 

I really do not care if people whose chosen playstyle is to skip half the game find it hard to complete as a result.  It should be that way.

 

No, it shouldn't.  This game offers so many ways to increase the difficulty.  I just don't get what you people are complaining about.  Play the game on PotD.  If that's not hard enough, play it on Trials of Iron too.  If that's not hard enough replace maiming with outright death.  If that's not hard enough limit yourself to not using custom party members.  If that's not hard enough limit your party size to 3 or 4.  The list goes on and on.  And if none of it is hard enough, congratulations, you are just too good for this game.

 

PotD doesn't fix the difficulty issues. You can shove your trial of iron where the sun doesn't shine. The very definition of easy is getting through the game without dying. If you never have to rethink your approach how the hell is that hard? Trial of the Iron just puishes you for playing when you should be in bed. Hell half the time I know I should go to bed its because I have started to suck at whatever game I am playing atm. The other half its that I am not able to read subtitles on anime. So to play trial of iron I would need to actually be fully awake every single time I am in game. Its not difficulty.

 

 

Haha what the hell are you on about? 

 

Trial of Iron promotes slower play, scouting/preparation rather than just save scumming after losing. Seems like you prefer to just attack move your blob everywhere lazily so I can see why wouldn't enjoy ironman. Also sounds like you suffer from sleep deprivation or something worse. 

[Mungri]

Id rather that they level up the mobs than reduce XP, but then you might call that scaling.

[Justinian]

I wonder if devs are reading this thread and thinking about some balance fix in the future

 

I would certainly hope so. I'm holding off on progressing much more into the game (just reached Defiance Bay) because I don't want to steamroll the last half of the game and not have any fun.

 

It would be good to get a dev or Josh to come in and confirm that they are working on fixing the balance of the game as part of the next patch or two so I can have some idea when I can dive back in. The wait is really hard since I've loved every moment of the game so far.

[Justinian]

XP discussion:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75906-seems-like-xp-balance-is-out-of-whack/

[sparklecat]

Would be enough to add an option in the difficulty panel "Normal XP" or "Reduced XP".

 

Quite possibly; I am certainly getting the impression from my playthrough that this is the main problem, though I think encounter design plays a part as well.

 

Like ComplyOrDie said, it's not about how great we are or whatever; in fact, it's quite the opposite.  It's that I basically always played the IE games on easy and here I've got it on hard, with the default companions and a totally unoptimized main character, after playing about an hour of the first backer beta build and then watching one combat tutorial video when the game came out, and am finding myself unchallenged in the majority of the fights.

 

And yeah, in the BGs you could go pick up easy quests early and outlevel stuff, but it's beyond that; it's that I had one fight in all of Defiance Bay that I found at all challenging (and that's after skipping Raedric's Hold on the way there, so I don't think I was overlevelled), that I cleared out a pretty large main path dungeon without resting once or ever feeling like I was in danger, etc.  Even in the BGs, unless you used some pretty cheesy tactics or understood the systems incredibly well, you still ran into difficult fights in most of the big quests, in my experience, as well as in little encounters in the wilderness and such.  And that's when you did all the quests out there.

[Valsuelm]

I'm going to add my voice to this:

 

The XP needed to gain a level, in particular higher levels, is way too low.

 

It currently it looks like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,000
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 10,000
6. 15,000
7. 21,000
8. 28,000
9. 36,000
10. 45,000
11. 55,000
12. 66,000

 

It should be something like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,500
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 12,000
6. 24,000
7. 45,000
8. 70,000
9. 95,000
10. 120,000
11. 145,000
12. 180,000

 

Note, that I don't know the total value of XP in the game, so the above values might need to be lowered.

 

Max level shouldn't be obtainable without completing 80-90% of the game, and one should still be able to earn XP without hitting the XP cap, so the XP for 13th level should be high enough that one could complete 100% of the game and not reach it.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Valsuelm

[Atheosis]

 

I wonder if devs are reading this thread and thinking about some balance fix in the future

 

I would certainly hope so. I'm holding off on progressing much more into the game (just reached Defiance Bay) because I don't want to steamroll the last half of the game and not have any fun.

 

It would be good to get a dev or Josh to come in and confirm that they are working on fixing the balance of the game as part of the next patch or two so I can have some idea when I can dive back in. The wait is really hard since I've loved every moment of the game so far.

 

 

Many of us are perfectly happy with the way it is now.  So I hope they ignore the loud minority in this thread altogether.  A mod will come out for you guys at some point in the not so distant future I'm sure.

[Atheosis]

I'm going to add my voice to this:

 

The XP needed to gain a level, in particular higher levels, is way too low.

 

It currently it looks like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,000
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 10,000
6. 15,000
7. 21,000
8. 28,000
9. 36,000
10. 45,000
11. 55,000
12. 66,000

 

It should be something like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,500
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 12,000
6. 24,000
7. 45,000
8. 70,000
9. 95,000
10. 120,000
11. 145,000
12. 180,000

 

Note, that I don't know the total value of XP in the game, so the above values might need to be lowered.

 

Max level shouldn't be obtainable without completing 80-90% of the game, and one should still be able to earn XP without hitting the XP cap, so the XP for 13th level should be high enough that one could completely 100% of the game and not reach it.

 

There would be literally no way to reach the cap if they did that.  I really, really hope Obsidian ignores you crazies...

[Valsuelm]

 

I'm going to add my voice to this:

 

The XP needed to gain a level, in particular higher levels, is way too low.

 

It currently it looks like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,000
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 10,000
6. 15,000
7. 21,000
8. 28,000
9. 36,000
10. 45,000
11. 55,000
12. 66,000

 

It should be something like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,500
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 12,000
6. 24,000
7. 45,000
8. 70,000
9. 95,000
10. 120,000
11. 145,000
12. 180,000

 

Note, that I don't know the total value of XP in the game, so the above values might need to be lowered.

 

Max level shouldn't be obtainable without completing 80-90% of the game, and one should still be able to earn XP without hitting the XP cap, so the XP for 13th level should be high enough that one could completely 100% of the game and not reach it.

 

There would be literally no way to reach the cap if they did that.  I really, really hope Obsidian ignores you crazies...

 

 

You really need to up your reading comp level. It most certainly would be possible to reach 12th level with what I'm suggesting.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Valsuelm

[Bersercker]

I read in other thread that one dude got 10 level in 1st act doing caed nua quests, the other completing most quests of caed nua & side quests got 12 lvl in the middle of 2nd act, and the third, without caed nua, but with most side quests got 12 lvl at the end of 2nd act. So it seems simply dividing experience by two or three might do the trick. Not sure how much experience you can get is in act 3 though... I guess i would be skipping caed nua quests until there is a fix\mod\expert mode option.

 

Edited April 6, 2015 by Bersercker

[Cronstintein]

 

 

Deflection defense also seems to be overvalued (too large portion of enemy attacks are against it). If game attacked the secondary defense values more often and stat system and items were tuned in a manner that would make "omni-tanking" impossible, the difficulty level would increase dramatically. You might be forced to rotate tanks between two first ranks and put some armor on your back row characters in order for them to survive, or use more crowd control to disable certain dangerous enemies before they devastate the key members of your DPS team.

 

 

While I agree that deflection is overvalued, it's also a problem that fighters really have no weak defenses.  My tank has excellent numbers in all 4 defenses!  Giving fighters less growth in Will and Reflex, and then giving enemies a high likelyhood of using those types of attacks would really help matters.  Also, maybe applying the negative armor modifier to your reflex stat.  It seems unlikely you'll be rolling out of fireball-range while wearing full plate after all.

 

As a balancing act, I would give the more cerebral classes boosts to will, and the quicker classes bonuses to reflex.  Right now it seems like all the stats grow at the same rate and thus aren't very good distinguishers of vulnerabilities.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Cronstintein

[ComplyOrDie]

 

 

I wonder if devs are reading this thread and thinking about some balance fix in the future

 

I would certainly hope so. I'm holding off on progressing much more into the game (just reached Defiance Bay) because I don't want to steamroll the last half of the game and not have any fun.

 

It would be good to get a dev or Josh to come in and confirm that they are working on fixing the balance of the game as part of the next patch or two so I can have some idea when I can dive back in. The wait is really hard since I've loved every moment of the game so far.

Many of us are perfectly happy with the way it is now. So I hope they ignore the loud minority in this thread altogether. A mod will come out for you guys at some point in the not so distant future I'm sure.

You have a very odd attitude to this. It's perfectly possible to change the game for people who want more of a challenge without ruining modes that others are happy with, obsidian already realised this given the number of ways you can customise the game. Now, the people in here, and I'm sure plenty of others, hope obsidian does it rather than a mod because it will very likely be better done that way, and, if enough people want that I'm sure obsidian will listen to their fans, same way they did in including a path of the damned mode in the first place, they just haven't nailed it quite yet. Many months after release divinity original sin developers are working in a hardcore mode for their game, some people want this kind of thing, it's fine if you don't, but no reason for you to hope people with different views are ignored. I'm happy you are happy with the difficulty and hope if they do make changes they're optional so you can still have fun too. Edited April 6, 2015 by ComplyOrDie

[Atheosis]

 

 

I'm going to add my voice to this:

 

The XP needed to gain a level, in particular higher levels, is way too low.

 

It currently it looks like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,000
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 10,000
6. 15,000
7. 21,000
8. 28,000
9. 36,000
10. 45,000
11. 55,000
12. 66,000

 

It should be something like:

 

Level | Required XP

 

1. 0
2. 1,500
3. 3,000
4. 6,000
5. 12,000
6. 24,000
7. 45,000
8. 70,000
9. 95,000
10. 120,000
11. 145,000
12. 180,000

 

Note, that I don't know the total value of XP in the game, so the above values might need to be lowered.

 

Max level shouldn't be obtainable without completing 80-90% of the game, and one should still be able to earn XP without hitting the XP cap, so the XP for 13th level should be high enough that one could completely 100% of the game and not reach it.

 

There would be literally no way to reach the cap if they did that.  I really, really hope Obsidian ignores you crazies...

 

 

You really need to up your reading comp level. It most certainly would be possible to reach 12th level with what I'm suggesting.

 

 

I don't think so.  You are talking about three times the current amount of xp to get to 12th level and that simply doesn't exist in the game as far as I'm aware.

 

And again, you people need to stop expecting the game to suit your rather silly completionist expectations and just wait for an xp mod.  80-90% of the people playing this game are happy with the way it is.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Atheosis