Path of the damned should be the default, and only difficulty setting

[Trauma_Hound]

Stop using a 6 party min maxed group, that's not playing a RPG that's playing a Hack and Slash. There's a huge difference, besides the best RPG in the past decade was easily NWN2 Multiplayer. If you missed out on that then I don't know what to tell you. Some servers were absolutely brutal and if you attempted to min max your character well ... you actually had to Role play your **** stats, if you didn't want to RP then you obviously don't actually like RPGs you just like Party based tactical hack and slashes.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Trauma_Hound

[Hatred]

@PrimeJunta Eh. I'm not trying to be mature. I am throwing a hissy fit because of how upset I am about the game after waiting so long for it. I am literally emotionally distressed about the state of the game. Not trying to hide it. Plenty of people not throwing hissy fits out there too. Not sure anyone putting feedback in here will help but meh. 

@Trauma_Hound Not min maxing. Not even slightly. Have the companions the game gives you in the look I think looks nice on them. Sagani is using a hunting bow. Not the improved one I made her but the one with a name I found laying around. I have used 0 consumables. No enchants. No summons .... I am trying to play it like a RP game. Thats kind of my problem. I thought hard would be hard if I just RP'd it.

[Stun]

It feels like the whole middle of this game was designed to be defeated by a lv5 part, too bad I'm lv9

Yep. And what's interesting here is that because of this, the mega dungeon has turned out to be somewhat of a broken promise. During the "reveal dump" of last summer, they specifically told us that the Endless paths of Od Nua would be designed in a way where the levels would get progressively more challenging the deeper you go.

 

But it's not that way at all. Instead, the difficulty just spikes a couple of times. Twice, to be exact.... in 15 levels. The first one comes at level 8 (when you suddenly go from facing the garden variety xariups, oozes and drakes to finally dealing with things like Fampyres) and then at about level 14 (when you start facing the dungeon's named characters.)

 

How remarkably disappointing. As it happens, a level 5 party can rather easily, and casually, plow right through the first 7 levels of the mega dungeon without suffering so much as a speed bump in their advancement.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Stun

[Stun]

Stop using a 6 party min maxed group, that's not playing a RPG that's playing a Hack and Slash. There's a huge difference,

Not really.

 

While I agree with some of what you're saying here, the distinction you're attempting to make does not work for PoE. First, this IS a Combat-First game. Trying to shoo away its prominent "hack and slash" elements, as if they're some trivial distraction, instead of the very foundation of the game itself, is absurd. Second, one of the name dropped, selling points of this game was the promise that it'd be a spiritual successor to, among others, the Icewind Dale series. And those are Hack-and-Slashers by every definition of that term.

 

Plus the game has a 15 level megadungeon. Plus the game has an adventurer's hall mechanic. Plus every single village and city has a dungeon under it. None of this is coincidence, nor is it an "exception to the rule". It's what the game IS. And that being the case, when people come here and complain that they're not having fun doing hack-n-slash runs of the game, then that is a significant gripe that deserves a better response than: "you're playing it wrong!"

Edited April 6, 2015 by Stun

[durbal]

I'd like to see the money bloat eliminated too.  And make resting less of a tedious exercise and more of a conscious, planned decision -- but that would require some major game design changes.

[Trauma_Hound]

Maybe it's just me then

 

 

Stop using a 6 party min maxed group, that's not playing a RPG that's playing a Hack and Slash. There's a huge difference,

Not really.

While I agree with some of what you're saying here, the distinction you're attempting to make does not work for PoE. First, this IS a Combat-First game. Trying to shoo away its prominent "hack and slash" elements, as if they're some trivial distraction, instead of the game's very foundation itself, is absurd. Second, one of the name dropped, selling points of this game was the promise that it'd be a spiritual successor to, among others, the Icewind Dale series. And those are Hack-and-Slashers by every definition of that term.

Plus the game has a 15 level megadungeon. Plus the game has an adventurer's hall mechanic. Plus every single village and city has a dungeon under it. None of this is coincidence, nor is it an "exception to the rule". It's what the game IS. And that being the case, when people come here and complain that they're not having fun doing hack-n-slash runs of the game, then that is a significant gripe that deserves a better response than: "you're playing it wrong!"

 

 

Maybe it's just me then, I'm using companion party on PotD none of my guys are min maxed, and I'm on expert mode. I regularly micromanage my party during combat and it seems pretty tough to me. (I don't walk through combat like it's laughable.) I also think I'm pretty damn good at the game and could easily make the combat laughable should I chose to exploit the exploits. I'm also not shooing away the prominent aspect of it I'm saying don't min max, which the guy said in a previous post on another thread that he was using a party of 6 wizards in plate. To me that says he's using all hired characters.

 

Load me up some proof of how easy it is on PotD difficulty without a min maxed party with expert mode on, and no command console cheating and then maybe I'll buy into the argument that it's too easy. Seen some nice video's of people using exploits and min maxed parties, but I haven't seen a full on legit playthrough on PotD and Expert mode be such a breeze. If it is for him then good job. Problem is his story doesn't always add up.

[Molcho]

Of course you will plow through the game after having played it several times before and figuring out the "best" party synergies. Thing is, many (if not most) customers aren't as much of a nerd as some of us are, so the difficulty is tailored towars those people. Someone who just picked up PoE as his first game of this kind will get horribly murdered even on Normal difficulty.

 

If you want to try something challenging, go for solo runs. This way, overpowered party synergies are suddenly not the way to go anymore and you'll have to find new ways to cheese the game. 

[Atheosis]

 

 

 

 

Personally I feel like Obsidian really dropped the ball with difficulty and of course the XP issue. In an interview I remember hearing J.E.S. say that Pillars of Eternity was a 'niche' game. It feels a lot more like a game which was designed so that anyone who owned a mouse and keyboard could win and feel powerful instead.

 

It's the same difficulty as the old IE games more or less.  Actually at the highest difficulty settings it's probably harder relative to the highest difficulty of those games.  The old IE games did not have an ironman mode.

 

 The difficulty isn't even remotely comparable to the old IE games. This game has gotten so easy I haven't actually finished it. I'm having more 'fun' reading forum posts and staring at my wall. In the old IE games you had to sometimes cast spells. Your party would take damage from time to time. Certain enemies did things which you had to do something about. This game devolves into auto attacking. How is that comparable? 

 

 

The old games weren't very hard once you knew what you were doing.  So I don't know what to tell you.

 

 Tell me how that doesnt make the old games harder. This game doesn't require you to know what you are doing. Surely needing to work out some things is harder than not needing to work out anything at all ?

 

 

They weren't harder.  I don't know if there's something wrong with your memory or something, but they just weren't.

[Atheosis]

@PrimeJunta Eh. I'm not trying to be mature. I am throwing a hissy fit because of how upset I am about the game after waiting so long for it. I am literally emotionally distressed about the state of the game. Not trying to hide it. Plenty of people not throwing hissy fits out there too. Not sure anyone putting feedback in here will help but meh. 

@Trauma_Hound Not min maxing. Not even slightly. Have the companions the game gives you in the look I think looks nice on them. Sagani is using a hunting bow. Not the improved one I made her but the one with a name I found laying around. I have used 0 consumables. No enchants. No summons .... I am trying to play it like a RP game. Thats kind of my problem. I thought hard would be hard if I just RP'd it.

 

Most people playing the game are really happy with it.  The fact that you apparently aren't amounts to pretty much nothing honestly.  Just go play something else.

[Stun]

Thing is, many (if not most) customers aren't as much of a nerd as some of us are, so the difficulty is tailored towars those people.

Aah yes. The lowest common denominator. Funny. Why, then, did they name drop Baldur's Gate? Why didn't they just...you know... name drop a bigger selling Bioware game.... Like Dragon Age or something?

 

Silly Obsidian.

[Mungri]

The difficulty curve is weird in this game. Early on it can be a veritable nightmare, especially in the second level of Eothas's temple and trying to beat Raedric without cheesing. Then it takes a nosedive, and the only hard encounter in Defiance Bay and its surroundings is the lighthouse. Then it becomes a bit harder towards the end game, with the final boss and a few bonus bosses (Raedric 2.0, Nalrend the Wise, that fcking Adra Dragon) being pretty damn hard.

And when you return to the Crucible knights after going to Ansalog compass, those mobs are super tough.

 

Other than that the rest is a cakewalk.

[Odd Hermit]

 

 Ok so you played  a Kensai mage on your first playthrough of BG2 ? Seriously? . I wont disagree that you could cheese a fair amount of bg2. The easy response to that though is to not cheese in my opinion. I played bg2 as a fighter first time round and I didnt cheese. Didnt use summons spells because they felt cheap. That kind of thing. I restrict myself the same way in PoE.

 

 As I have said before in PoE it devolves into only auto attacking. BG didn't do this. How can not having to be at your computer during combat be described as harder than having to be there cheesing it ? It certainly isnt harder for people who instinctively shy away from anything which gives them what they feel to be an unfair and unrequired edge. If you avoid or do not know about how to cheese bg it is leagues harder than poe. There is no way to make poe harder without either failing to level up or just skipping a heap of content.

 

Edit : I dont even have a good team for auto attacking. Im using a hunting bow on sagani and have 3 casters auto attacking without weapon focus at all. In BG you had to at least get someone to a reasonable thaco if you wanted to auto attack everything down.

 Also you did mention casting spells. So that does kind of imply more effort than PoE ends up taking.

 

 

Fighter in BG2 had basically nothing interesting to do and was entirely about gear and autoattacking so I'm not sure how you can really point the finger at PoE for autoattack heavy classes. In PoE they did try to allow all classes to be more / less passive active, although certainly some classes could use a bump in the number of actually useful active abilities.

 

As for Kensai/ Mage, yeah. I was like 13 or something. I played the uber builds. But really any caster dual class could be overpowered(Berzerker/Cleric), or some multiclasses(Ranger/Cleric).

 

The game was so full of cheese it was hard to really make a dividing line anyway. The things they let arcane casters do were absurd. And as I've said in another thread, often it came down more to preparation via tons of buff stacking more than any in-combat tactics.

 

PoE has its own strengths and weaknesses but I don't recall any fights in BGII being remarkably difficult, there was just one or two things you had to learn before a certain enemy went from feeling nonsensically overpowered to trivial. Chaotic Commands vs. Mind Flayers for example.

[Mungri]

I soloed BG2 on a plain Cleric with traps and locks removed via mods, the OP dual classes just add fun.

 

The thing there was that it was easy to overlevel, and they had loads of solo easymode gear in the game like the shield that made you immune to beholder rays.

 

But it always felt challenging.

[redbird]

i agree that the game's difficulty curve and xp gain are out of whack but let's be realistic about bg2, because it had the same problem. with tob installed you can gain epic level abilities before facing irenicus and can stand out of his line of sight while letting your elemental princes and devas kill him for you (in the elf city that is, not the hell fight). if anything, the fact that a completionist play through trivializes the remainder of the critical path is simply poe being true to the flaws of baldur's gate.

 

that said, i'd love to see an xp reduction toggle in the options (or in a mod failing that)

Edited April 6, 2015 by redbird

[Trauma_Hound]

 

Thing is, many (if not most) customers aren't as much of a nerd as some of us are, so the difficulty is tailored towars those people.

Aah yes. The lowest common denominator. Funny. Why, then, did they name drop Baldur's Gate? Why didn't they just...you know... name drop a bigger selling Bioware game.... Like Dragon Age or something?

 

Silly Obsidian.

 

 

Uhm because you don't get kickstarters funded by name dropping Dragon Age? Derp!

[Sedrefilos]

Because I think so.

Naaah...

[Mungri]

Yaaaaah!

[Molcho]

 

Thing is, many (if not most) customers aren't as much of a nerd as some of us are, so the difficulty is tailored towars those people.

Aah yes. The lowest common denominator. Funny. Why, then, did they name drop Baldur's Gate? Why didn't they just...you know... name drop a bigger selling Bioware game.... Like Dragon Age or something?

 

Silly Obsidian.

 

 

Because it is much closer to Baldur's Gate than to Dragon Age, of course. It's not silly in any way. They went and remade a classig RPG, reminiscent of the old IE games in terms of looks and design. How does difficulty have anything to do with that? Are you suggesting that everyone who played and loved Baldur's Gate back in the day will steamroll PoE in PotD during their first playthrough? 

[Katarack21]

Are you suggesting that combat difficulty is something desired by all the fans of the old IE games?

[Mungri]

Oh no not on a first play through.

 

I did much rerolling for Potd.

 

But its fun to fail over and over until you succeed.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Mungri

[Trauma_Hound]

Oh no not on a first play through.

 

I did much rerolling for Potd.

 

But its fun to fail over and over until you succeed.

 

Best Part is you used Fighters, Paladins, and Wizards. 2/3rds of your party was made of the "lame" classes that every one says are so terrible. Props to showing them they don't really know what they're talking about. ^_^

[Flayedawg]

I'm just gonna say that I'm playing on Normal with a non-min/max group -- myself, a hireling Priest, & 4 NPCs. I'm in the Dyrwood Ruins in Act 2, & having a load of fun. The challenge level on Normal is just about right for me.

I don't just face-roll through spamming auto-attacks, either: I'm pausing, buffing, casting spells, summoning my bard's lil buddies, dropping END heals, & so on. & every now & then, I still have to reload. While I think it's woefully obvious that the OP is having some funzies with this post, I'm quite bemused by the number of people who are taking it seriously.

 

I recall doing much the same in BG1 & 2, & reading this thread makes me wonder if the rest of you & I are all playing the same games. Like, I dunno, maybe you guys got hold of the Super Secret Uber-Gimp Mode version of those games, or something.

Yea, ya, I know: someone is going to just say "or maybe you suck." Because, you know, that's the way "discussion" goes on the Interwebby thing these days, when most people can't even figure out what an "argument" is, much less formulate or refute one.

 

One last point: if you don't think BG2 was cheesable, then you didn't play BG2. Period. Trap-cheesing of dragons, anyone??? Please.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Flayedawg

[adreeasa]

I beat the game on Hard, never having played it before in beta or on another dif, using a druid main charn and the companions, so no min-maxing party , and it was a snooz fest  after the first few fights in the Temple of Eothas.  Did not use a single potion/scroll/consumable/food  , never felt i neded to , spamming a few CC spells and then autoattacking with ranged weapons was planty enough ( even used Pallegina with a spear because ... reasons )

 

Don't think that PotD is that much of a diff, you maybe need to rest a bit more between fights ( on hard i only rested in a dungeon before a boss, and more often than not just because i'm used to doing that in RPG's ) . This made the game kind of boring, on the combat side, did not even bother with Endless Paths beyond level 3 , was level 12 already , could not bear 50 more snoozin fights to get to one bad ass dragon.

 

 

To the people who say BG2 was full of cheeses and stuff, did they beat it that easy the first time they played it, without checking out guides for imba builds or items or tips, etc ? I remember when i had to read every spell description to see what i could use vs various enemies, the feeling of finding a legendary item or crafting one after gathering pieces for 30 hours, leaving an area well alone until wayy later ,etc ( again, don't come here with your "i beat the whole game with kensai/mage solo"after reading 50 guides made by other people - this is about the first time you get into a game )

[Robsidious]

 

 

Indeed, I play the game solo with no armor on PotD with both my hands behind my back (use my feet instead) and the screen turned off and it still isn't difficult enough, we clearly need something more challenging.

Feet. FEET!?

 

A real gamer straps himself unto his chair and snaps his neck before even starting, then plays using his tongue and nose. A lifetime of handicap is no price too high for the true gaming experience.

 

I have to admit you have a fair point, and it is indeed a far more rewarding challenge to use my face only to truly experience this game the way it was meant to be. Also, lending the neighbours cat and putting a significant amount of catnip on the keyboard enhanced this even further, my face may be utterly maimed but I finally find this game challenging enough.

 

 

That's all well and good for casuals. I play using nothing but the power of positive thinking.

 

Admittedly I have not managed to get very far or indeed even load the game using this method, yet I believe in myself.