Just finished Act II on Hard. Should I switch to PotD for Act III?

[LeonKowalski]

BTW, what good is having "perfect game"? I can exchange it for money somewhere? Your photo will be published somewhere and you will be successful with the girls? What's the point, exactly?

 

No good asking me, I think achievements should just go away ... I'm just pointing out some facts, until this post I made no value judgement.

[Matt516]

Dammit, Bryy. You get the "Post Derailer" achievement.

[Clicks]

Is reducing the number of party members an option for you? I found having a party of 3-4 members provided a bit more of a challenge.

[Matt516]

Is reducing the number of party members an option for you? I found having a party of 3-4 members provided a bit more of a challenge.

 

Possibly. I might try a runthrough on Hard with 3-4 party members after this one. Seems like it'd be a funner way to add difficulty than changing the game balance with PotD. Though I might have to try PotD out anyway, changing the game balance could actually be nice (making debuffs super necessary, for example).

 

For this playthrough, I've decided to just see it through on Hard for now and go ahead and beat the game. There are still some great fights left.

 

Though I must say, I think my party comp is part of the problem... it kicks major ass. Barb and Monk for dps/offtank, Eder for supertank, Durance for all the buffs and fire, Aloth for endless debuffs and fire, and lastly Sagani/Itumaak for a combination meatshield/hilarious amounts of single target dps and stuck on demand. Seriously, Sagani is a machine. Highest damage dealt behind my monk (who doesn't count because monks are ridiculous, especially minmaxed adventurer ones ).

Edited May 27, 2015 by Matt516

[Shevek]

Seriously, I find the second half of the game much more engaging with xp nerfed and the difficulty set on PotD. I disagree with Gromnir. On PotD, the game is actually more about taking down enemy defenses and exploiting weaknesses. The thing that the game screws up on is conferring too much accuracy and defense per level (which subverts the need to take down defenses). Slowing down the xp gain mitigates that. Just finish the play thru and restart on PotD with the 25% nerfed xp. Its a much better experience.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Shevek

[roller12]

uhm guys (i dont think hard is too easy) this is a systemic error. Game doesnt scale so if there are areas with Difficulty 1,2,3,4 and you clear difficulty 3 and 4 first then there will be an unavoidable a drop in difficulty, regardless of anything. The only way to combat that is to make challenge level grow exponentially with level difficulty so a lvl3 party would never defeat a lvl5 encounter. But that would pretty much railroad the game. What  would be of use is metagame information on expected party level (or monster level), then you could select the appropriate difficulty before travelling. Like many MMOs and i think RPGs too do.

[Matt516]

uhm guys (i dont think hard is too easy) this is a systemic error. Game doesnt scale so if there are areas with Difficulty 1,2,3,4 and you clear difficulty 3 and 4 first then there will be an unavoidable a drop in difficulty, regardless of anything. The only way to combat that is to make challenge level grow exponentially with level difficulty so a lvl3 party would never defeat a lvl5 encounter. But that would pretty much railroad the game. What  would be of use is metagame information on expected party level (or monster level), then you could select the appropriate difficulty before travelling. Like many MMOs and i think RPGs too do.

 

While that contributes in part to the issues (it's really easy to do Dyrford before starting Act II, for example, which is out of order difficulty-wise), doing things in the right order doesn't really fix things. The encounters in general are just too easy - with a few exceptions, nothing lategame is really balanced for a party higher than lvl 9-10, which means that a completionist is going to be really overleveled.