Worst game balance ever

[TheDave]

It's really silly how you tuned the difficulty of this game, I'm just destroying everything at normal (so I'm tempted to say I should raise difficulty level) but still some encounters are silly difficult (Alpine Dragon).

I cannot beat him at easy at lvl 15 because the fight is tuned very badly.

I backed this game but I'm not going to do it for next game because of this.

bad bad bad tuning destroys fun.

 

Anyway I just destroyed him at the lowest difficulty level.

Edited March 31, 2016 by TheDave

[Crucis]

Enough with the friggin' hyperbole, for crying out loud.    I get annoyed whenever someone proclaims that something is the worst (or best) game/book/movie/whatever ever.   And I suppose that you've played every game ever created to be in a position to make such an assertion. Yeah, right.  Pull the other one.

[theBalthazar]

Go Path of the damned, man, if its too easy for you.

 

For the Alpine Dragon ? Go use potions / Scrolls / Synergies of the classes. If you're so strong, you should manage.

 

But do not say that the game is unbalanced.

Edited March 31, 2016 by theBalthazar

[AndreaColombo]

TheDave, the Alpine Dragon fight is designed to be among the most challenging.

 

Do you have a Priest in your party? Did you protect your party from the dragon's Fear Aura? Do you have the Scale-breaker talent?

 

Try sending a tank to the far left to initiate conversation so when the fight starts, the rest of your party has time to safely buff on the right side of the cave before diving in.

[hilfazer]

Synergies of the classes. 

 

Just be fast about it, before they all get removed.

[MaxQuest]

I just destroyed him at the lowest difficulty level.

Hah, thanks for the chuckle Mr. "not even a person, just a mindless weapon, an implement of destruction". Your article and obsession with dragons is for sure on point ^^ Edited March 31, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Elric Galad]

Smell like troll spirit.

[TheDave]

TheDave, the Alpine Dragon fight is designed to be among the most challenging.

 

Do you have a Priest in your party? Did you protect your party from the dragon's Fear Aura? Do you have the Scale-breaker talent?

 

Try sending a tank to the far left to initiate conversation so when the fight starts, the rest of your party has time to safely buff on the right side of the cave before diving in.

 

Ok I know it's designed to be one of the most challenging but if the game at the same difficulty level goes from easy to frustrtating for me it's bad design.

 

I have a priest, I didn't protected from aura the first try then yes. I don't have scale-breaker talent.

 

I was already  trying the tacting you indicated but the crappy artificial demency keeps doing silly things. Anyway tired of reloading (reload times are way to long for a savegame inside a small cave) I killed the dragon at lowest difficulty, collected loot and raised again to normal.

 

@baltazar the game is surely badly balanced. And path of the damned: no thanks or maybe abusing eternity keeper.

[Crucis]

TheDave, the Alpine Dragon fight is designed to be among the most challenging.

 

Do you have a Priest in your party? Did you protect your party from the dragon's Fear Aura? Do you have the Scale-breaker talent?

 

Try sending a tank to the far left to initiate conversation so when the fight starts, the rest of your party has time to safely buff on the right side of the cave before diving in.

 

Pretty much all of the dragon fights are meant to be among the most challenging fights in the game.  And IIRC, all of them can be avoided, though some of the non-violent paths may have attribute limitations, I don't recall.

 

And you don't even need a priest.  Just the protection from fear (or whatever it's called) scroll will do the job (and they're very easy to make on your own).  Just have some character with 2 points in Lore fire it off and you're good to go.  I would suggest having some character with very little Lore do it so that your high Lore characters are free to cast more dangerous scrolls or spells.

 

And yes, the Scale Breaker talent is definitely good to have.

 

Another thing that an be nice to have is a really good rogue who is really good with Finishing Blows (preferably upgraded with Devastating Blows).  You just wait until the dragon gets to "Badly Wounded" and then start trying to hit him with a Finishing Blow.  I prefer doing it with a high alpha weapon, like a pistol, arbalest, or arquebus.  (And it doesn't hurt either if the rogue has some sort of accuracy enhancing spell or potion going for him to increase his chances of a hit or better yet, a critical hit.)

 

In my battle against the Alpine Dragon a couple of days ago, my Rogue nailed it for around 197 or so damage with a Finishing Blows attack with a pistol.  It didn't kill the dragon, but the dragon didn't last more than a few seconds after that devastating hit either.

 

I've never found the dragons all that difficult once I discovered the formula for dealing with them, though it does differ from dragon to dragon, due to different immunities.  Paralyze scrolls (or the wizard spell, Gaze of the Adragan) are great for any dragon that's no immune to paralyzing effects.  Also, whether they're paralyzed or not, early in a dragon battle, it's probably better to spam some debuffing spells on the dragon than attempting to punch through damaging spells against a dragon's un-debuffed defenses.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Crucis

[Crucis]

 

TheDave, the Alpine Dragon fight is designed to be among the most challenging.

 

Do you have a Priest in your party? Did you protect your party from the dragon's Fear Aura? Do you have the Scale-breaker talent?

 

Try sending a tank to the far left to initiate conversation so when the fight starts, the rest of your party has time to safely buff on the right side of the cave before diving in.

 

Ok I know it's designed to be one of the most challenging but if the game at the same difficulty level goes from easy to frustrtating for me it's bad design.

 

I have a priest, I didn't protected from aura the first try then yes. I don't have scale-breaker talent.

 

I was already  trying the tacting you indicated but the crappy artificial demency keeps doing silly things. Anyway tired of reloading (reload times are way to long for a savegame inside a small cave) I killed the dragon at lowest difficulty, collected loot and raised again to normal.

 

@baltazar the game is surely badly balanced. And path of the damned: no thanks or maybe abusing eternity keeper.

 

 

Dave, sorry, but the dragon's aren't all THAT hard.  Oh, there's no doubt that they're very, very difficult for a beginner, even with a high level party, if you haven't evolved proper dragon fighting tactics.  But once you have done so, dragon fights just aren't all that difficult.

[TheDave]

I didnt remember having so much difficult with other dragons, but maybe it's just that I started playing the expansion after several months I finished the game, but again I think that at normal a better balancing would be better.

The fights should have a much slower pace, oneshots and absurd levels of resistence and immunities are not fun (well not for me). Usually a "use paralize" spell/scroll -- resist ---all dead --- reload mechanic is very bad in my opinion.

Edited March 31, 2016 by TheDave

[Crucis]

I didnt remember having so much difficult with other dragons, but maybe it's just that I started playing the expansion after several months I finished the game, but again I think that at normal a better balancing would be better.

 

Dave, in PoE combat, often the difference between massacring the enemy and getting your butt kicked can be in the tactics, spells, abilities, etc. you're using.  You can get blown away one time and then with completely different tactics massacre the enemy in the next.  And this is probably even more true with dragon battles, because the margin for error is so narrow.

 

When i first fought the adra dragon, it took me maybe a dozen tries to kill him.  Now, I can take a party down there and probably crush it on the first try, 90+% of the time.  Why?  Because I have a plan that work, unless an underlying bad dice roll goes against me in the critical opening phase of the battle.

[Crucis]

I didnt remember having so much difficult with other dragons, but maybe it's just that I started playing the expansion after several months I finished the game, but again I think that at normal a better balancing would be better.

The fights should have a much slower pace, oneshots and absurd levels of resistence and immunities are not fun (well not for me). Usually a "use paralize" spell/scroll -- resist ---all dead --- reload mechanic is very bad in my opinion.

 

Dave, dragons are supposed to be nasty as all hell.  They're not supposed to be oversized sheep-lizards with wings that are a walk in the park to kill.  You have to earn it.  You have to use all your skill as a player to evolve a strategy to take one down, not just walk up to it and say, "Hey, look!  It's a dragon.  We can kill it and still get back up to the keep in time for supper!"

 

Also, IMO, part of the point of the high resistances/defenses is to force you to learn to use your debuffing spells to reduce them to more manageable levels.  If you're not debuffing those resistances and defenses, you're making the fight harder than it needs to be. 

 

And for the record, the Alpine Dragon is (IIRC) immune to those paralyze spells, so you have to develop a different tactic for dealing with them, preferably immobilizing them for a while so that you can kill it without getting nailed by its breath weapon or wing buffeted.

 

 

 

 

[Tigranes]

Often, this says more about how your party is built, the tactics you favour, and the game mechanics you understand/exploit the best. E.g. some people wailed and gnashed their teeth about shadows being 'impossible' and the game having terrible balance, but once you had to understand several core aspects of the game system they were simply 'above average' difficulty.

 

I can't speak about Alpine Dragon since I haven't run into it yet, so perhaps it really is ridiculous. If we look back at how people treated the Adra Dragon, though, it was often the case that an enemy requiring a different set of tactical considerations was often considered 'impossible' because the same tactics people had been using from xaurips to animats to trolls were no longer working.

[Elric Galad]

In my current play on PotD, I killed Alpine Dragon on the first try (lvl 16 party).

 

Dragon lasted about 15s.

Various accuracy buff + Gaze of the Adragan + Wrath the Five Sun for 250 damages

 

 

It's not false that there's difficulty peak in this game. But they are all optional. So if you want to handle these battle, just get more info.

[Crucis]

Often, this says more about how your party is built, the tactics you favour, and the game mechanics you understand/exploit the best. E.g. some people wailed and gnashed their teeth about shadows being 'impossible' and the game having terrible balance, but once you had to understand several core aspects of the game system they were simply 'above average' difficulty.

 

I can't speak about Alpine Dragon since I haven't run into it yet, so perhaps it really is ridiculous. If we look back at how people treated the Adra Dragon, though, it was often the case that an enemy requiring a different set of tactical considerations was often considered 'impossible' because the same tactics people had been using from xaurips to animats to trolls were no longer working.

 

This is so true.  People who just attack every monster and enemy with the same old tactics they use in every other battle are eventually going to run into some enemy against whom those same old tactics don't get the job done.  And dragons are almost always going to be one of those enemies that require different tactics.

 

 

[Stoner]

Agree that Dragon battles (Arda and Alpine) are rather cheesy than actually hard, you don't really need tactics there, just some well, exploits? too kill it easily. That's the problem, but I don't see how devs could make those encounters challenging any other way. I'm glad they didn't go korean MMO way with bosses having few billions of HP so you have to pummel it couple of hours... And complaining about optional fights is also not cool, really...

[anameforobsidian]

Optional fights designed to challenge the player are hard?  Clearly balance must be terrible.  And no, you don't need to cheese your way through it.  Just use persistent status effects, and then when one hits use the reduced defenses to land more.  This'll cause a cascading failure in defenses, so you can get a big debuff like petrify up, and then beat the hell out the dragon.

 

 

Also cast resistance to fear (or whatever the name of the spell that protects against the terror aura) on your party.  It's a level one spell.

[falchen]

The dragons are all about positioning, the alpine dragon in particular can be beaten by hiding your party in the left corner of the cave while your tankiest character engages the dragon and his mobs first, that gives them time to buff and nuke his mobs then concentrate on the dragon itself.

Edited April 1, 2016 by falchen

[mc_kracken]

just did the sky dragon battle...i fully agree with the thread starter. Worst game balance ever.

Edited April 1, 2016 by mc_kracken

[Tigranes]

 

Let's face it hard isn't hard. The developer's should know by now. I want high level scaling right from the start.

 

So it was too easy, or too hard? 

[Marceror]

Thinking we should have a hyperbole forum here, and all posts that ride the hyperbole train like this one can go there and hang out with the other hyperbole saturated posts. Really, I think all the hyperbolists (new word?) would be happier than pigs in you-know-what in that forum!

 

Really, I'm only thinking about you guys here!

 

[mc_kracken]

 

 

Let's face it hard isn't hard. The developer's should know by now. I want high level scaling right from the start.

 

So it was too easy, or too hard? 

 

i just got to the sky dragon this afternoon. (lv 11) Up until that it was too easy. Probably burial isle is a boring cake walk again.

Edited April 1, 2016 by mc_kracken

[Crucis]

Thinking we should have a hyperbole forum here, and all posts that ride the hyperbole train like this one can go there and hang out with the other hyperbole saturated posts. Really, I think all the hyperbolists (new word?) would be happier than pigs in you-know-what in that forum!

 

Really, I'm only thinking about you guys here!

 

 

No kidding.  There are just some people who can't seem to talk in anything but hyperboles.  Everything is the worst or best EVER.  Everything is extreme this or extreme that.  It's down right annoying.

[Crucis]

Agree that Dragon battles (Arda and Alpine) are rather cheesy than actually hard, you don't really need tactics there, just some well, exploits? too kill it easily. That's the problem, but I don't see how devs could make those encounters challenging any other way. I'm glad they didn't go korean MMO way with bosses having few billions of HP so you have to pummel it couple of hours... And complaining about optional fights is also not cool, really...

 

I don't think that knowing an enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them is "cheese".  It doesn't matter if the enemy is a lowly wolf or a mighty dragon.  The best way to defeat an enemy is to totally immobilize them, whether it's stunning, paralyzing, or knocking them down.  If it can't attack you and you can attack them because you hit them with a spell, etc., why is that "cheese"?    IMO, it's not.

 

Also, given that dragon breath attacks are usually so massively devastating, the player needs to have something devastating to use against the dragon in return.  And in this case, it's immobilizing attacks.

 

And if dragon attacks were less devastating, frankly, they wouldn't be nearly as big a challenge as they are currently.  And then what would be the point in having dragons in the game.

 

 

Of course, I suppose it depends on how one defines "cheese".  I tend to think of "cheese" as exploiting the game mechanics in a way that abuses the physics.  An example of this would be to put a character in a doorway and then cast a withdraw spell on him, thus blocking the chokepoint and preventing anyone from passing.  That's not the intended use of a Withdraw spell, and hence it is "cheese" to me.  OTOH, casting a paralyze spell on a dragon can hardly be "cheese" because you're using the spell in exactly the way that it's meant to be used.