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After waiting so long, early game difficulty a massive dissapointment


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No other way to say it. 

 

The combat system is weak, which wouldn't be a problem except that encounters are so uneven within the same area that it's not a matter of challenge, but a matter of cheesing things, playing power classes, or overleveling.  Don't give fights of manageable difficulty for two hours just to give a completely impossible fight at the end. 

 

It's poor game design.  It's not an attempt to revitalize the idea of a challenging game, it's not a response to how easy games have become (nothing easier than claiming something is easy), it's the result of a dev team that didn't do what they needed to do to make a segment of a campaign consistent.

 

And you can't talk about it.  Every topic I've visited about game difficulty and certain fights is met with the same canned fanboy responses.  It's depressing.  I want games like these to succeed or I wouldn't have backed it, but I wasted my evening (and my time is scant) trying to justify my support only to be rewarded with a roadblock.  This is my life.  I am going to bed soon, so that I can slog through another 10 hour day, come home, and try to maybe get 2 or so hours played. 

 

I have to make a decision at this point if a game like this is worth the time investment, or if I should use a trainer, or cheat, or what.  It's not a fun moment.

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You are the proof that games are so easy nowadays that players dont even have the gaming culture anymore to take its time and LEARN about a videogame.

If you think the game is too hard, talk to those soloing it. You should be ashamed of this post, a entire group of people giving their future on a proyect and you ddont even have the patience and the guts to try to appreciate it.

 

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*sigh*

The OP is not saying that the game itself is too hard, but that the encounters are inconsistent in difficulty in the same area.

And the OP has a point about conducting a constructive conversation on these forums - cue the fanbois to come in and flood this topic with miasma.

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What fight is so exceptionally challenging?  Is it necessary to progress in the story?  I mean, there are two schools of thought in optional higher-level side content:

 

1) Everything should be along the same difficulty curve as the rest of the area.  If you are lv4 and entering a zone, all content in the area should be lv4 so you can finish it all and move along.

2) Optional side-content may be higher level.  The world is not arranged into neat "difficulty" zones where every area is of some fixed difficulty.  There may be fights designed for a lv8 party in a lv4 area, but this is intentional and the developers intend for players to return to this area at lv8 to complete this content.  Particular (read: metagamed) strategies may allow you to finish this at a lower level, but it will definitely be extremely difficult.

 

That is, assuming you're not talking about some mandatory unavoidable story encounter which represents a sudden difficulty jump.

 

There are all the other options that don't involve "level up" as well:

 

Get equipment better suited to defeating whatever is in your way.

Optimize your tactics (particularly re: spell usage and party formation) to prioritize CC, debuffs, and protecting your squishies.

Hire or find extra party members to fill out your roster.  Going from 3-4 to a full 6 party members dramatically improves your party's strength.

Edited by AlphaMagnum
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*sigh*

The OP is not saying that the game itself is too hard, but that the encounters are inconsistent in difficulty in the same area.

And the OP has a point about conducting a constructive conversation on these forums - cue the fanbois to come in and flood this topic with miasma.

 

Eh, 90% of OP's post doesn't actually address this, however.  There's one sentence in that post that directly mentions the problem.  There isn't much discussion as to why this person feels it's a problem, or how it may be fixed.  To some extent OP seems to want to vent, which is fair and all, but it doesn't really provide much room for discussion.

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Why should be everything on the same area the same level? Have you ever played Gothic for example? Gosh yo uare just being ridiculous right here. YOu are used to the same **** videogames that taught you dont even need to pay attention to beat the game and you expect a game that is sold out as OLDSCHOOL AND HARDCORE to be what you want it to be.

And if oyu dont even have the patience to learn how to beat the game idk why should I help when you obviously dont get anything of what the games has to offer.


Do you know what is a dissapointment? That nowadays people is so free to talk they can drop **** on a forum and still expect that everyone has to agree with them. Without researching, without taking their time, just install gosh a bear kills me on the first cave, uninstall and the ****storm begins.

If you cant beat a videogame you want to play you should really think about it before coming to  forums to defend that its not YOUR PROBLEM, its everyone's else.

Edited by LastSoloer
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flood this topic with miasma.

 

So long as it's not a Miasma of Dull-Mindedness. That spell is ohhhhhh P.   :brows:

 

No but if it's an early game fight you have trouble with, I could probably give you some pointers. What fight is it?

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Exoduss, on 14 Apr 2015 - 11:11 AM, said: 

 

also secret about hardmode with 6 man party is :  its a faceroll most of the fights you will Auto Attack mobs while lighting your spliff

 

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No other way to say it. 

 

The combat system is weak, which wouldn't be a problem except that encounters are so uneven within the same area that it's not a matter of challenge, but a matter of cheesing things, playing power classes, or overleveling.  Don't give fights of manageable difficulty for two hours just to give a completely impossible fight at the end. 

 

It's poor game design.  It's not an attempt to revitalize the idea of a challenging game, it's not a response to how easy games have become (nothing easier than claiming something is easy), it's the result of a dev team that didn't do what they needed to do to make a segment of a campaign consistent.

 

And you can't talk about it.  Every topic I've visited about game difficulty and certain fights is met with the same canned fanboy responses.  It's depressing.  I want games like these to succeed or I wouldn't have backed it, but I wasted my evening (and my time is scant) trying to justify my support only to be rewarded with a roadblock.  This is my life.  I am going to bed soon, so that I can slog through another 10 hour day, come home, and try to maybe get 2 or so hours played. 

 

I have to make a decision at this point if a game like this is worth the time investment, or if I should use a trainer, or cheat, or what.  It's not a fun moment.

 

I'm playing on POTD and I am enjoying it from start to finish. At POTD you need to really put a group together with a little bit of thought but you don't need to go overboard. Eder for example is perfectly capable of main tanking all the way through and his tanking stats are terrible. It just means you need to compensate a little bit else where.

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Last Soloer is right.

A lot of older games had zones within areas of varied difficulty so you come back at a later period to see what is there.

The concept of linear scene transitions is that of more simpler \ stream lined games.

 

Even on the jRPG side FF series had some bosses which could insta kill you if you take a step in the wrong direction.

It is all about knowing which battles to fight and which not too.

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Why is it always attack the poster and not the post?

 

On the one hand, he has a legitimate point that the encounters in any given area can be all over the map, as far as difficulty is concerned. On the other hand, one needs to step back from the design of games from recent years and look at PoE with a different eye. It's much more 'old school' (and I grow weary of this term, but it fits here) in that you really need to stop and assess what you're encountering: can I really take on these bears solo at level 2? Probably not. Might be prudent to get a couple companions and come back later. Step back, take your time to assess the encounter, and don't be afraid to admit that it just may be too tough for the time being. Coma back later when your character and/or party is stronger.

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@OP

 

what fight exactly u can't manage?

I see the dreams so marvelously sad

 

The creeks of land so solid and encrusted

 

Where wave and tide against the shore is busted

 

While chanting by the moonlit twilight's bed

 

trees (of Twin Elms) could use more of Magran's touch © Durance

 

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Early game difficulty was a mixed bag in say in BG2 as well, one simply levelled the character or acquired better gear or more party members and returned (say Kanggaxx or the rogue stone chain),,. not all quests should be predictable, not all quests/encounters should be doable at the same point in the same area, accept that and return when your character/party has grown. The uncertainty of encounters was one of the things that made these types of games enjoyable... exploration came with the potential of massive failure. It made you stop taking progression with such a cavalier attitude, which is oh so prevalent in modern gaming. No, definitely not all encounters should be equal or doable within a given area at any given time. Some should be easy, some should be challenging, some should require gear and levelling.

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Early game difficulty was a mixed bag in say in BG2 as well, one simply levelled the character or acquired better gear or more party members and returned (say Kanggaxx or the rogue stone chain),,. not all quests should be predictable, not all quests/encounters should be doable at the same point in the same area, accept that and return when your character/party has grown. The uncertainty of encounters was one of the things that made these types of games enjoyable... exploration came with the potential of massive failure. It made you stop taking progression with such a cavalier attitude, which is oh so prevalent in modern gaming. No, definitely not all encounters should be equal or doable within a given area at any given time. Some should be easy, some should be challenging, some should require gear and levelling.

 

Yeah I remember walking into the basilisk forest in BG1 for the first time and getting my a** handed to me because I was expecting some gnolls or something. I guess those stone statues should have clued me in....what can I say? I was young and naive when I first started playing Baldurs Gate...man that was a long time ago....

Edited by Hellraiser789
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The thing with the difficulty is that quite a few modern western rpg games scale the encounters to your level (ala Oblivion, etc). This keeps the game at an appropriate challenge level no matter how powerful you get. However, I quite favor the approach taken in this game where the majority of content is not scaled, with only "boss battles" being scaled to keep them appropriately tough.  

Edited by Elvarein
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The thing with the difficulty is that quite a few modern western rpg games scale the encounters to your level (ala Oblivion, etc). This keeps the game at an appropriate challenge level no matter how powerful you get. However, I quite favor the approach taken in this game where the majority of content is not scaled, with only "boss battles" being scaled to keep them appropriately tough.  

 

Personally, I like Borderlands' approach to scaling. Regions would have a range of levels (say 1-10) and then scaled to your level accordingly. If you were 15, for instance the max level for any enemy would still only be 10 for the region, but by that point it was likely you had moved on to a new region anyway because of the story/loot.

 

Of course, there's nothing wrong with having different leveled enemies in different regions of a map (which I think borderlands did too). For instance, the map might generallly be lvls 1-10, but one building might be lvls 10-20 because its a bandit compound or something (yeah I think borderlands definitely did that actually). Made it so you just avoided some regions until you were stronger, or just pushed ahead knowing it would be risky and you'd probably die, but you could get really good gear. Also, loved the randomization of loot and stuff in that game - that was great! Good times....

Edited by Hellraiser789
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What fight is so exceptionally challenging?  Is it necessary to progress in the story?  I mean, there are two schools of thought in optional higher-level side content:

 

1) Everything should be along the same difficulty curve as the rest of the area.  If you are lv4 and entering a zone, all content in the area should be lv4 so you can finish it all and move along.

2) Optional side-content may be higher level.  The world is not arranged into neat "difficulty" zones where every area is of some fixed difficulty.  There may be fights designed for a lv8 party in a lv4 area, but this is intentional and the developers intend for players to return to this area at lv8 to complete this content.  Particular (read: metagamed) strategies may allow you to finish this at a lower level, but it will definitely be extremely difficult.

 

I am so glad that PoE goes the 2nd route, makes the game a whole lot more interesting. Having all content in an area in the same level range feels so dull and MMO-ish.

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Playing at PotD. Feels totaly different from Hard. Where before i could just brutforce, now i need to use brain or just leave place for future.

I like this kind of stuff. This not linear. In most of present RPG player is guided by game from point to point and if player have some issues, then it just tactic or little balance problems. Here you have open world (some of it at start) and you are free to go where ever you want. Have problems killing ghosts? Go kill wolfs and do other quests and come again later. At that point you ll have higher lvl and better gear to survive those dudes. I like it.

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No other way to say it. 

 

The combat system is weak, which wouldn't be a problem except that encounters are so uneven within the same area that it's not a matter of challenge, but a matter of cheesing things, playing power classes, or overleveling.  Don't give fights of manageable difficulty for two hours just to give a completely impossible fight at the end. 

 

It's poor game design.  It's not an attempt to revitalize the idea of a challenging game, it's not a response to how easy games have become (nothing easier than claiming something is easy), it's the result of a dev team that didn't do what they needed to do to make a segment of a campaign consistent.

 

And you can't talk about it.  Every topic I've visited about game difficulty and certain fights is met with the same canned fanboy responses.  It's depressing.  I want games like these to succeed or I wouldn't have backed it, but I wasted my evening (and my time is scant) trying to justify my support only to be rewarded with a roadblock.  This is my life.  I am going to bed soon, so that I can slog through another 10 hour day, come home, and try to maybe get 2 or so hours played. 

 

I have to make a decision at this point if a game like this is worth the time investment, or if I should use a trainer, or cheat, or what.  It's not a fun moment.

 

Dear Terikan ,

 

yes i know what you mean... It felt to me the same when i came upon some enemys which i could not beat by just beat them :-) My experience so far, i played the game wrong.

 

PoE is not how i expected the game would work. i learned a lot by reading the forum and mastered a few enemys now just by change by learned playstile. For the coming weekend i have ogres in my mind which killing my tank with one hit :-) But i have now a lot new ideas how i can beat them. All Thanks go to the PoE community. So my Tip is dont expect to know the game, expect that you need to learn something new... could be that iam wrong and iam sorry i dont want to bother you. Hope you find a way and motivation. Have fun!

 

PS: Finger crossed that it works for you, too

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*sigh*

The OP is not saying that the game itself is too hard, but that the encounters are inconsistent in difficulty in the same area.

 

 

Have you guys considered that the consistency of the difficulty might be that along-the-road battles are easy, off-the-path battles are hard?

 

Mind-blowing, I know.

"The Courier was the worst of all of them. The worst by far. When he died the first time, he must have met the devil, and then killed him."

 

 

Is your mom hot? It may explain why guys were following her ?

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Have you guys considered that the consistency of the difficulty might be that along-the-road battles are easy, off-the-path battles are hard?

 

Mind-blowing, I know.

 

If you have dev commentary on, one of the devs talks about exactly this in the basement of the Stronghold.

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