favourite Difficulty

[Tennisgolfboll]

You fail and you try different things and you learn.

 

If you play on a difficulty low enough that you never lose you never really have to get any better at a game.

This isnt true at all.

 

Since you are immortal you will win.

 

The difference between hard and POTD is more reloads.

 

The difference between TOI and not TOI lies in that there is actual risk!

[DreamWayfarer]

The difference between hard and POTD is more reloads.

 

The difference between TOI and not TOI lies in that there is actual risk!

That isn't true at all. You are still immortal, you just need to reload from the character creation screen :/.

 

I mean, what is the point? The risk is wasting time either way, which IMO is boring. The difference is that on PoTD you have to struggle a little more to learn the right tatics. That is the point, learning to be able to progress.

 

You act like it was a roulette and you just had to roll it enough times to win, but it is not. There is player imput involved, and the quality of said imput determines victory or defeat. It is not a dice, it is preparation, trial and error.

Edited February 17, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[Tennisgolfboll]

 

The difference between hard and POTD is more reloads.

 

The difference between TOI and not TOI lies in that there is actual risk!

That isn't true at all. You are still immortal, you just need to reload from the character creation screem :/.

 

I mean, what is the point? The risk is wasting time either way, which IMO is boring. The difference is that on PoTD you have to strughle alittle more to learn the right tatics. That is the point, learning to be able to progress.

 

You act like it was a roulette and you just had to roll it enough times to win, but it is not. There is player imput involved, and the quality of said imput determines victory or defeat. It is not adice, it is preparation, trial and error.

Nope.

 

Having endless reloads (immortality cheat) is like never getting/losing money at a casino. No risk or reward.

 

TOI you will feel a bad bet. And a good bet.

[why]

I get what you're saying, Tennis, in that you can't claim bragging rights for playing PotD if you used infinite reloads to replay the tough battles. I'm kind of mixed. I don't mind any of this personally, but sometimes folks complaining about how easy the game is when clearly they just want to scratch out some street cred is irritating. I guess that doesn't tend to get under my skin too much either. I just don't want to fall into the trap where folks say if you don't play it on 'x' difficulty and with 'x' options selected, you aren't a real gamer or some such. Folks enjoying it a certain way or with any particular toggles doesn't bother me at all.

[DreamWayfarer]

Having endless reloads (immortality cheat) is like never getting/losing money at a casino. No risk or reward.

 

TOI you will feel a bad bet. And a good bet.

But on TOI you still have infinite reloads. It is just that have to reload from character generation .

 

Higher risk I admit, but in the end the only thing you lose is time, and some of us find that higher risk does not mean higher reward. In fact, it can sometimes mean less reward, because of the stress.

 

And the cassino analogy is a bad one, IMO. You don't get paid money, or in this case have hours added to your day, when you finish an Act on PoE. No, the reward comes from being able to push through challenges by being prepared, creative or resourceful enough to beat the challenges as they come.

 

If having higher risks forces you to change your tatics and be more creative, wonderful. But being able to reload does not make a game easy, and it is not equivalent to "immortality cheat".

Edited February 17, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[Tennisgolfboll]

I get what you're saying, Tennis, in that you can't claim bragging rights for playing PotD if you used infinite reloads to replay the tough battles. I'm kind of mixed. I don't mind any of this personally, but sometimes folks complaining about how easy the game is when clearly they just want to scratch out some street cred is irritating. I guess that doesn't tend to get under my skin too much either. I just don't want to fall into the trap where folks say if you don't play it on 'x' difficulty and with 'x' options selected, you aren't a real gamer or some such. Folks enjoying it a certain way or with any particular toggles doesn't bother me at all.

 

Thank you for a friendly reply!

 

I dont care about bragging rights or that some people need it for their ego.

 

My point is:

 

Gaming today revolves around reloading, be it on normal or on nightmare.

 

That is bad! Reloads is immortality cheat.

 

Imagine that games where designed around not reloading.

 

The games would have to be well balanced on easy, normal and hard!

 

Think about it.

 

Imagine playing a character for 50 hrs facing the final boss. Do you not think you would get a big thrill?

 

That immersion would be through the roof compared to todays immortality mode.

 

Of course games would be balanced around it and it would be awesome.

 

Death (or bets) would mean something.

 

 

Imagine losing a great companion. The sting, the sorrow.

 

And the replay value.

 

Every game so much more unique

[SkySlam]

I see your point Tennisgolfboll, it totally makes sense to me.

BUT! Last time that I've played Trial of Iron, I permanently lost 2 of my companions during act IV because I misclicked on a trap and my party stepped on it, instead of disarming it. That's a cheap way to lose 20+ hours of playing.

Needless to say, my run ended few minutes later: with a party of only 4 people in the last dungeon I had no chance.

Losing dozens of hours that way was extremely frustrating. Even tho I have now finished PotD with some reloads, I'm not trying Triple Crown any time soon!

 

Another experience, while playing without ToI: during the Raedric keep's quest, one of my characters got locked out of a room due to a positioning bug, I suppose. There was absolutely no way to continue from there ("you must gather your party..."), infact I had to reload from the last save.

That day I thought to myself "wow, this would have sucked in ToI mode!".

 

What I would like to see added in Trial of Iron is a couple of "jolly" reloads. Just two or three.

That way, I would still be extremely thrilled, but I'd be safe from cheap, unfair and gameruining missclicks and bugs.

Edited February 17, 2016 by SkySlam

[Tennisgolfboll]

I see your point Tennisgolfboll, it totally makes sense to me.

BUT! Last time that I've played Trial of Iron, I permanently lost 2 of my companions during act IV because I misclicked on a trap and my party stepped on it, instead of disarming it. That's a cheap way to lose 20+ hours of playing.

Needless to say, my run ended few minutes later: with a party of only 4 people in the last dungeon I had no chance.

Losing dozens of hours that way was extremely frustrating. Even tho I have now finished PotD with some reloads, I'm not trying Triple Crown any time soon!

 

Another experience, while playing without ToI: during the Raedric keep's quest, one of my characters got locked out of a room due to a positioning bug, I suppose. There was absolutely no way to continue from there ("you must gather your party..."), infact I had to reload from the last save.

That day I thought to myself "wow, this would have sucked in ToI mode!".

 

What I would like to see added in Trial of Iron is a couple of "jolly" reloads. Just two or three.

That way, I would still be extremely thrilled, but I'd be safe from cheap, unfair and gameruining missclicks and bugs.

Couldnt agree more!

 

Stuff like that with the traps is lame. It isnt good balance for ironman runs. And if ironman was a standard in gaming (lets a third of gamers demanded them) they would never leave beta tests.

 

Oh the thrill of playing dozens of games designed for no reload runs!

[Rosveen]

That immersion would be through the roof compared to todays immortality mode.

 

Immersion. I hate this word.

 

I always liked the idea of moving away from the necessity of reloads. Failure shouldn't always result in a reload - and I'm not talking only about combat. Save scumming is such a common way of dealing with various RNG-based tasks, I don't like it. However, I don't think ironman mode is the answer. I treat death as a valuable learning experience. I'm not a good enough gamer to figure out every encounter on the first try, I need multiple chances to succeed. If I didn't have them, I simply wouldn't play the game at all. I don't find ironman in story-based RPGs thrilling, I find it frustrating and excessively punishing.

 

People with too much free time on their hands are free to enjoy 15 failed playthroughs of every game, but I'll pass.

[Joculari]

I play on normal. I like being able to enjoy the story but also enjoy a challenging fight now and then. Plus I tried hard, I died in the first 20 minutes so I figure I should play through normal first. 

[Skladzien]

I play on normal. I like being able to enjoy the story but also enjoy a challenging fight now and then. Plus I tried hard, I died in the first 20 minutes so I figure I should play through normal first. 

That's why my first walkthrough was on normal, despite fact that i am veteran of IE games. My first cRPG was Baldur's Gate and then whole te series of games on IE, but alotof mechanics is changed since them so first playthrough was to find them and understand how they work. later it only comes easier to increase difficulty. Maybe next playthrough (i have to check druid still) will be on PotD (despite fact that i already have TCS achievement - but rogue speedrun is not what i liked the most :-P - yeah getting TCS took me 3,5h).

[Gairnulf]

People who play on Story Time and Easy are probably not on the forum. I guess there are quite many of them though.

[Tennisgolfboll]

 

That immersion would be through the roof compared to todays immortality mode.

 

Immersion. I hate this word.

 

I always liked the idea of moving away from the necessity of reloads. Failure shouldn't always result in a reload - and I'm not talking only about combat. Save scumming is such a common way of dealing with various RNG-based tasks, I don't like it. However, I don't think ironman mode is the answer. I treat death as a valuable learning experience. I'm not a good enough gamer to figure out every encounter on the first try, I need multiple chances to succeed. If I didn't have them, I simply wouldn't play the game at all. I don't find ironman in story-based RPGs thrilling, I find it frustrating and excessively punishing.

 

People with too much free time on their hands are free to enjoy 15 failed playthroughs of every game, but I'll pass.

Yeah save scumming rng mechanics are also a blight on gaming.

 

Take f3 speech checks. Save scumming designed=bad

 

New Vegas speech checks=skill check, no save scumming

 

Ironman mode could be made so that if you die then your saves get marked "dead" but you can still continue.

 

However what you missed is that a game that was designed, on normal, to have you fail 15 times would be very poorly balanced.

 

For example these could be the difficulty settings in an ironman game:

 

Easy=It takes many big mistakes to die.

 

 

Normal= forgives a few mistakes without costing you the game. May cost you a companion. Big mistakes can end the journey

 

Hard=Mistakes will probably cost you a companion. A big mistake will end your journwy.

 

Nightmare=Any mistake will mean the end of your journey

Edited February 18, 2016 by Tennisgolfboll

[Tennisgolfboll]

I think one of the reasons POE has no maze/imprisonment/instant death spells is because it has a TOI mode.

 

This has benefits for normal mode as well. The fights dont feel as cheap but more about actual strategy and not rng rolls.

[Sephie]

Does story mode give enough experience to max level cap before the expansion? 

Can you change the difficulty later for when playing the expansion? 

Does the game end after defeating last boss of main game and you have to start a new game to play the expansion? 

 

Sorry for questions, but I didn't want to create a new thread about it, this seemed a bit appropriate. 

 

I voted for normal and none, I don't like games where difficulty depends on beind unfair, nor do I like easy that gives you an edge. 

Edited February 18, 2016 by Sephie

[DreamWayfarer]

Does story mode give enough experience to max level cap before the expansion?

Besides bestiary XP, most of your experience comes from finishing quests, so I'd guess that the answer is yes.

 

Can you change the difficulty later for when playing the expansion?

I think so, but you will have to change it before visiting the maps for the first time.

 

Does the game end after defeating last boss of main game and you have to start a new game to play the expansion?

 

Yes, the expansion is side content not a mini-sequel.

[Killyox]

Imagine watching a movie where William Wallace dies 15 times in each battle but he just reloads...

 

 

We don't have to imagine such movie. It already exists.Edge of Tomorrow

[ComplyOrDie]

While I can see the viewpoint of the reload argument, I prefer having a game that forces me to reload multiple times rather than playing Trial of Iron. Lapses in concentration can end a game, also you could easily lose hours of progress to an unlucky roll.

 

There are many different ways to approach difficulty in a single player game, and having encounters that are so difficult that you need to reload multiple times is a perfectly valid way of doing it; there is nothing "lame" about reloading multiple times. I prefer this kind of difficulty and the gripe I have with Pillars is that there is nowhere near as much reloading needed on max difficulty as there should be.

 

To have encounters that can be consistently killed at the first time of asking necessarily requires them to be much simpler mechanically and less punishing, if not you are forcing players to play through the game multiple times on progressively harder difficulties just to learn the fights so they don't die after 5-10 hours every time, which would fast become extremely boring, and in effect just a far more drawn out form of reloading.

 

From my perspective, good "difficulty" involves frequent encounters where: the AI makes good use of its abilities, and are scaled sufficiently highly, that it takes me multiple attempts to work out a strategy that allows me to beat it. This is hardly groundbreaking in gaming and is why the anti-reload argument is overly simplistic. Making a game with as much variety, and as little ability to actually assess any given encounter before attempting it, as well as as massive as pillars, mean it is simply not the type of game to be designed around beating everything on your first attempt.

 

Yes, I personally frown upon the idea of reloading 100 times until your off-screen fireball kills the enemies you need to make the fight winnable, but I *want* to be reloading plenty of times while I come up with the best strategy to progress, it gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally do it. Pillars should not be designed to be a game where you can *figure out* an optimal one size fits all strategy that allows you to take on all if not most encounters at the first attempt when going in blind. That would make it incredibly stale.  Pillars (on hard mode) should be about encounters with enemies with  a wide variety of abilitiies that force you to think about the full capability of your party and gradually overcome each one. Pillars is generally disappointing on this front (ticks literally every other box for me though) which is why some people are frustrated.

 

Nothing wrong with playing ToI, nothing wrong with wanting to be made to reload. Games like Pillars should always be designed around the latter, with ToI a welcome optional extra, but difficulty done well adds tons of longevity to a game, ToI is not a substitute.

Edited February 18, 2016 by ComplyOrDie

[MonkeyLungs]

I think the coolest thing is how we have so many great options for how we want to play the game.

 

It really makes it possible to find that sweet spot for your current playthrough. And you aren't shoehorned to one mode, unless you are going for a specific achievement, you can switch it up to suit your mood.

 

Or maybe you have already played a the hardest difficulty but want to play a really goofy party of completely unoptimal builds and roll with a smaller party? Drop the difficulty down.

 

I have been switching between normal and easy but I voted for easy. I'm sure I will play the game on harder settings in the future but right now I am having fun and that's all I care about.

 

PoE is making me wish I would have upgraded my pc earlier so I could have been in on the kickstarter. I'm so glad Obsidian took a chance and made this game and very thankful to all you great fans for backing this endeavor and proving there really are a bunch of folk out there that love this type of rpg.

[limaxophobiacq]

According to steam, only 0.40% of people who have the game have beaten PotD, so the set of players who post on this forum seems not exactly representative of the playerbase as a whole.

[why]

According to steam, only 0.40% of people who have the game have beaten PotD, so the set of players who post on this forum seems not exactly representative of the playerbase as a whole.

Yep, like our slug fearing friend says, the PotD and the Tower of Iron folks are just not representative. A while back, I decided on a whim to get every badge in Portal. Pain in the rear, but I thought it was cool. The thing is, there were some I had to find out how to do on the internet. Kind of hard to brag about that. It doesn't take away the fun of doing the run, but if I'd done it just to brag about it, I think I wouldn't have the right. In Civilization V, I beat the game on the hardest level, whichever that one is. Deity? God? Whatever, I can't remember. I did that by playing on the smallest map against a single opponent and I built up the best units I could quickly, waited until his capitol was at it's weakest, and took it. If someone looked, they'd think I had been masterful, but I have to come clean to my gamer homies, I basically cheesed and cheated my checkmate. I don't begrudge anyone having fun with the game in whatever way makes 'em happy. I guess, using that logic, if your fun is come and insult the way other folks play the game, I guess that's not so bad. Whatever floats your boat.

[Tigranes]

Who really cares about bragging on the Internet? Enjoying the 10,20,30,40 hours you spend is probably more important for most intelligent human beings - and if you only cared about bragging you could just lie. I always thought 'bragging rights' stuff is just BS that other people make up to attack folks who like harder difficulties - it's often a reflection on people who use it as an insult. (Though I'm sure there's a legion of sad fellows who really do care about bragging rights.)

[why]

Dude, I just went to your sig and saw the epitaphs. See, now that's the way to play Iron Man! Respect!

[Wazz72]

Just started - bought it yesterday - Hard Difficulty with Expert mode - voted. Being a veteran of both BG and ID, I hope I'll have a nice challenge and a great time! 

It already brought back some fond memories )

[falchen]

^{Getting ready for a new playthrough, how difficult is POTD anyway? Want to make sure it isn't like... half your spells and abilities are useless, only certain builds are viable, and you have to minmax/use custom adventurers?}

Edited February 19, 2016 by falchen