Too Easy?

[WebShaman]

I find the game mostly too easy - a select few battles are the opposite, and actually require more than auto-attacking.

 

The bounties, for example. I found them a lot of fun.

 

The Church and the Lighthouse were fun as well.

 

I found most Dragons unbelievably easy! I was expecting BG2 hard...nope. Only one was notably different.

 

The Endless Paths I find quite good - I wish the rest of the game had had similar areas.

 

For the record, I had a death godlike ranger with bear pet (warbow user), Super - tank Eder, Pelligena, Super - character Hivarius, Aloth the weak, and Killer Kana. No enchanted stuff, just what I found and bought. I didn't use potions, scrolls, or food.

 

So yeah, much too easy.

[Exoduss]

It was too easy even on PotD-Ironman, but that's just me.

POTD Ironman has critical flaw :

 

9 out of 10 fights you auto attack enemies with your ranged weapons while being afk , 1 out of 10 fights just outnumbers you 3 to 1 when you are running 6 people party so you have to use those figurines to even the numbers and then its same old auto attacking while afk ,

 

and then there is Adra Dragon who AOE 1 Shot your party , bah... its just lame...

i was expecting path of the damned to be more Challenging in terms of how you need to use more strategy and tactics , but there is no tactics at all , its either you can Auto Attack fight to death , or you need summons to not get overrun by adds , also i believe 20 trash mob groups are worst design to increase difficulty , there is no difference for me to Fan of Flames 10 or 20 or 30 mobs especially when anything more than 5 enemies gets stuck between themselves standing in line doing nothing , there is no balance between encounters , only balanced encounters i saw were group's of Ogres , and groups of adventurers , where every group has from 4 to 7 enemies who are each strong individually 

Edited April 18, 2015 by Exoduss

[demeisen]

The bounties, for example. I found them a lot of fun.

 

I just did a bunch of those tonight, and I agree, they are a lot of fun!  I considered a number of them to be legitimately hard on hard mode, and I had to use careful tactics and wise use of my party's abilities to survive.

 

What I'd really love to play is a Trial of Iron run where "normal" fights were somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 as hard as the harder bounties - e.g, involving some modest risk, with the boss and bounty fights left about as hard as they are now.  That would rock.

 

When you find an appropriate level of fight, the combat system is pretty nice.  Sure it's not perfect: it could use AI improvements, some changes to how abilities work, some more spell diversity, more difference in resistances between different creatures, etc.  But notwithstanding those things, at its best it's still good fun.  I believe those are all things that can be tuned for PoE expansions without much trouble.

[Ardan Reddy]

 

Pillars is definitely not hard at all. I would have welcome things like Vampires in BG2 or the mages like Liches and timestop. No breach spell, you are dead. No protection spell? You are dead. Those are really hard counters. I kinda remember money was scarce and to buy the Breach scroll to scribe it was really satisfying.

But i do welcome that money are aplentiful this time around and you actually get to buy stuff.

 

I played thorough the game on PoD and apart from few moments like shades in Eotha's temple or paralysing, loud, ghostly ladies towards the end of the game I didn't encounter any other moments.

 

I like what your point about mages and liches from BG2.

 

I just think that pillars suffers from lack of really different opponents and more interesting encounters.

 

In some other topic someone pointed out how many different encounters you could get in ice wind dale and BG2.

Just a few examples:

 

- mages and liches required completely different approach than standard creatures.

- some enemies being very strong in a particular attack type, like poison that will kill you in a few seconds if you don't have antidote

- enemies not reachable by melee characters like archers on some podiums or behind obstacles.

- mini bosses having unique abilities

- terrain that makes a difference during the fight like slow walking on ice or reoccurring fire bursts. 

 

There are many more and despite PoE being not such a bad game I wonder why this aspect was simplified.

 

This has a lot to do with difficulty experienced because it requires you to change the tactics once in a while. It requires preparing different spells and changing weapons on companions. So every time when scenery changes you have to think all over again and load a few times before you win.

 

In PoE almost 99% of encounter is the same. So once you figure the game out more or less nothing really ever changes.

 

That's why it seems so easy.

 

I agree, there are way too many easy encounters, even on hard or PotD.

Also, definitely not enough strategy needed in most fights. Rinse, repeat. Can damage flame blights with fire! Stupid. Should be 100% immune - if anything, chucking a fireball at a fire elemental should make it stronger or heal it.

All mobs need their own very high resistances and total immunities. Even Aumaua shouldn't be able to knock an ogre down. As the game stands, an Orlan can. Perhaps Ogres have weak knees. But they should be immune to even spell knock downs. Too heavy.

Lowly creatures, like Xaurips, should have something that makes the player need to change strategy. Immune to stun because they're so stupid in the first place. Immune to freeze because they're cold-blooded. High DR against burn because they actually like heat. Very high DR against slash and pierce due to their scales, etc. Forcing a change in tactics to using crush weapons and only certain spells against them.

Next fight with Guls, completely different again.

 

Or are players so spoon fed and lazy these days they don't want that?

[Ouroboros226]

It's hard for most people the first time they play it. But then they are applying that knowledge to subsequent playthroughs to complain "Its easy". When what they mean is "Its easy.... now that I know all the encounters and game mechanics".

The game IS hard the first time. The problem is that the game will be easier the more knowledge of the game you learn. 

 

To prove my point. Quote this and answer me if you think the game is too easy:

 

The first time you went to the temple of Eothas on hard difficulty, with only 3-4 party members - did you easily defeat all the shades? And more importantly, did you kill the 2 skuldr kings at the exit and their army of goons easily? Did you even make it on the first attempt?

The difficulty of the game is imo, hard when you dont know the game and easy when you know it. But everyone who claims they beat the game easily with few reloads or deaths on their first playthrough on hard + is lying.

[Merina]

What a big bucket of nonsense!

 

I could imagine that if I created may own party of hired adventurers and tried cheesy tactics such as luring away a single opponent from a group of enemies (you can read that in several places, but it doesn't seem to work for me), it would become easier ... but with just my monk and 5 NPCs (Eder, Grieving Mother, Durance, Aloth, Sagani currently with Kana on vacation) ... at normal difficulty ... there are enough fights I cannot win at all without a lot of micro-management. And no, I'm not a power-gamer who finishes the game on the day of its release, ... and all my heroes don't just use fire-arms.

 

Take for example the Ogre Druids and Ogre parties on the Elmshore maps. 5 or 6 enemies. At level 9, I won't wait to find out whether Eder would still stand after they have knocked out all the others with sunbeam, insect plague and other nasty spells. I reload once I fear more than 2-3 knockdowns. Combat is so fast paced, for me that means I need to pause it most of the time and cannot keep up with reading the combat log to prepare counter-spells and give instructions. I could retreat and return to such locations when my parted has advanced. A bit as in BG2 where you would not attack a lich or a dragon early either. But I refuse to rush through the game (as some self-proclaimed experts do it on Easy mode) for a first overview only to play it again with a party that has been adjusted to what will be required.

 

There are other fights that are just dull ... I let Eder do his blocking and equip the other five with ranged weapons without giving them any instructions. Sometimes I like this combat system, sometimes I'm still undecided.

[ComplyOrDie]

It's hard for most people the first time they play it. But then they are applying that knowledge to subsequent playthroughs to complain "Its easy". When what they mean is "Its easy.... now that I know all the encounters and game mechanics".

The game IS hard the first time. The problem is that the game will be easier the more knowledge of the game you learn.

 

To prove my point. Quote this and answer me if you think the game is too easy:

 

The first time you went to the temple of Eothas on hard difficulty, with only 3-4 party members - did you easily defeat all the shades? And more importantly, did you kill the 2 skuldr kings at the exit and their army of goons easily? Did you even make it on the first attempt?

The difficulty of the game is imo, hard when you dont know the game and easy when you know it. But everyone who claims they beat the game easily with few reloads or deaths on their first playthrough on hard + is lying.

Sorry but this is just not true, I Played on path the first time and found it too easy, yes there are some good tough areas like the temple as you mentioned where reloading is required, the problem is they are so rare when you take the game as a whole that the vast majority of the time you use Eder to tank, five ranged guys, and win easily. There are no difficult human encounters and reams of no thought required monster encounters. You are quoting one of the few tough fights that you actually encounter at the appropriate level in the game. If it was all like the temple for a lvl 3 party, nobody would be complaining (that it was too easy, anyway). Edited April 18, 2015 by ComplyOrDie

[Rumpelstilskin]

 

How easy is this game?

 

I'm playing on Hard mode.  At its hardest - like some of the boss or even miniboss fights - it's a satisfying level of difficulty, IMHO.  For the majority of the game though, the general consensus is that it's a very easy game.  I agree with that: you can stomp through 95% of the encounters without using most of your abilities or needing to know how the game mechanics work.  Auto attack + invulnerable tanks = win.  Then every once in a while, you find a nice, fun, difficult fight.

Then it's working as intended. If every trash mob fight required several reloads, it would be too taxing even for people who claim it's too easy (instead of "hard" though it would likely be called "cheesy", "unfair", "cheaply bumping up the stats" etc). Mob fights are just about macro attrition management, not using per-rest abilities and losing as little health as possible.

Even in the Souls games, while the mobs most certainly can kill you if you are not careful, they are not particularly hard. It's only the boss battles that are genuinely hard.

[demeisen]

Then it's working as intended. If every trash mob fight required several reloads, it would be too taxing even for people who claim it's too ea

 

 

Well, I'd certainly agree with you that every little fight shouldn't involve repeated party wipe outs and reloading to get through it!  But I think there's a happy medium to find, where such fights are well short of full-on boss fights, but still involve a little bit of challenge.  Some of what makes the world feel real and dangerous is if going into a foreboding looking cave actually is dangerous and foreboding.  Right now, at least on the main plot line, and most of the secondary plots as well, you blow through the fights with such ease that there's no risk for your party, hence no need to play carefully or cautiously.   I remember playing CRPGs in the mid 80's where exploring dangerous places really felt dangerous, because in the game's world, it most certainly was!  There wasn't the "we'll hold your hand and make sure you can't fail and aren't required to think and can walk back out of any area with no risk at all if you're low on resources" angle that modern gamers expect.

 

That's why I want the ceiling left alone but the floor raised on fight difficulty.  I don't need every single fight to be a desperate struggle to survive using everything I've got.  I do want to feel genuine nervousness when entering the Temple of We Warned you To Stay The Hell Out.  I want to have to scrape together everything I've got - not to beat each separate fight, but to survive to get back out again!  I want to get trapped in that temple by the entrance collapsing and I have to carefully manage my party's resources to fight my way to an alternate exit, and I want the game to let me fail if I don't do that well enough.  That feeling is mostly missing now in PoE, although they have all the right ingredients for it.

[Vadász]

 

... What?

 

First of all, I sincerely believe that most people are idiots. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that people are actively getting dumber. But even so, I refuse to believe that Pillars of Eternity is "really hard" for most "normal people". Especially if we by "normal people" mean people that play actual games, because alright, I'll admit that my mother's farm hero saga-addled brain would probably find PoE pretty difficult.

 

And second, it's not "somebody" that "figured out a way to cheese through a fight". Most fights you don't even need to think about cheesing. Are we playing the same game? Because unless you're actually lobotomised, you can barge through the game like a drunk, never checking the combat log, never knowing what things really do, and just sorta wing it. On Hard.

 

You know, my friends from Uni who played it the found game to be hard on hard and extremely punishing on PotD. Since they are actually studying engineering i have a hard time thinking of them as lobotomized idiots.

[philby]

can we just have 1 "too easy" master thread where everyone who wants can whinge/gloat? it seems like there is one every week.

 

im playing on normal and finding plenty of fights challenging. i must be just retarded then so please stop making me feel more inadequate than i already am.

[Justinian]

Master thread had so many posts it had to be locked. Effectively 34 pages and counting now...

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77341-hard-mode-is-too-easy-part-2/

Edited April 19, 2015 by Justinian

[dododad]

 

 

... What?

 

First of all, I sincerely believe that most people are idiots. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that people are actively getting dumber. But even so, I refuse to believe that Pillars of Eternity is "really hard" for most "normal people". Especially if we by "normal people" mean people that play actual games, because alright, I'll admit that my mother's farm hero saga-addled brain would probably find PoE pretty difficult.

 

And second, it's not "somebody" that "figured out a way to cheese through a fight". Most fights you don't even need to think about cheesing. Are we playing the same game? Because unless you're actually lobotomised, you can barge through the game like a drunk, never checking the combat log, never knowing what things really do, and just sorta wing it. On Hard.

 

You know, my friends from Uni who played it the found game to be hard on hard and extremely punishing on PotD. Since they are actually studying engineering i have a hard time thinking of them as lobotomized idiots.

 

 

I bet they don't know how to play the game then. All you have to do is enable autopause after each ability is cast, then just spam them into oblivion.

[Evange]

Can the mods create a separate forum section for all these "game too easy/difficult" threads...it's getting annoying and cluttering up the forums!

[Zenicetus]

I'm playing on Hard mode.  At its hardest - like some of the boss or even miniboss fights - it's a satisfying level of difficulty, IMHO.  For the majority of the game though, the general consensus is that it's a very easy game.  I agree with that: you can stomp through 95% of the encounters without using most of your abilities or needing to know how the game mechanics work.  Auto attack + invulnerable tanks = win.  Then every once in a while, you find a nice, fun, difficult fight.

 

So it's a mixed bag I'd say.  It's quite good at its best, but a lumpy sort of thing where a lot of the game you play for the story / atmosphere /etc, not the fights, because the fights pose no real risk or challenge.  And the atmosphere is really good in this game.  You want to play just to see what the next area will hold.

 

Highly recommended game, but for a variety of reasons beyond pure combat.

 

That sums up how I feel too. It's "lumpy" with difficulty spikes at some boss fights, so I'm happy staying at Hard level where it's pretty easy to wade through the filler content between major battles.

 

It makes sense in the context of the game, after all. Ever since the middle of Act 2, I've been leading a powerful squad of killers that should be able to mop up in most situations. Since I don't play this type of game strictly for the combat, I don't mind that it makes it easier to get through the story and explore the surroundings.

 

On the other hand, that's a perspective from someone new to the game, where I'm still learning the mechanics. I can see where someone who has been here since the beta might want the overall difficulty raised quite a bit. 

[Serdan]

I'm going to wait for 1.05 and use the XP nerf option in IE Mod. Should make it hard enough to keep me interested until the end.