Legendary 6 man difficulty

[Brainwave]

Has anyone had any success with this, either questing or story mode? Specifically I'm concerned about the difficulty bump (with 6 man groups) with the wildcard powers that take 5 cards from the blessings deck and even more difficult - the one that discards a card from the blessings deck when you fail to acquire a boon.

 

To give some perspective, I've completed all the story scenarios and quested up to level 12 with a 2 man group on Legendary and while there are some fails now and then, it's not too bad. So last night I tried a 6 man group story mode on Legendary and couldn't even beat the first scenario. I haven't even gotten the harder of the two wildcard powers, this was just trying to beat Brigandoom with only 25 turns with 6 characters(not even mentioning adjacent movement and whatever the other wildcard power is). I mean I know it's *possible*. But it seems extremely luck based and MUCH harder than with 2 characters.

 

And honestly Heroic isn't going to be much easier because it's all about those two powers drastically increasing the difficulty, which is also additionally magnified with more characters since time matters more there, as none of the other increased difficulty legendary stuff is nearly as bad.

[Matsu Kurisu]

6 person is tough in the card game. You HAVE to optimise for extra explores e.g. your card feats need to be allies and blessings. All your allies need to have an explore. I haven't even bothered in the card game, as I prefer the experience of 4 players where you can mix cards a bit more

Edited May 10, 2016 by Matsu Kurisu

[StormbringerGT]

Play style and deck construction need to vary a lot for a 6 player game. 

[ThreeEyedSloth]

I'm actually currently trying to do it myself.

 

It's hard. Losing a blessing from the timer for failing to acquire a boon, PLUS boons are 3 harder to obtain? The worst, and very unfun.

 

https://youtu.be/7lPSpbosM2U

[StormbringerGT]

Also Legendary is designed to essentially be end game content, the toughest of the tough. Ideally you cannot just roll up in a legendary scenario with your regular story mode deck and start snapping necks.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

I don't mind the challenge, but challenges that are so heavily stacked against you that it's almost impossible to succeed can be rough. I still enjoy it, and still intend on running with my fresh 6-player party, but I think losing a blessing for failing to acquire a boon should be removed as a Wildcard Power. The others are still tough but fair, while that one is overly extreme compared to the rest.

[StormbringerGT]

I don't mind the challenge, but challenges that are so heavily stacked against you that it's almost impossible to succeed can be rough. I still enjoy it, and still intend on running with my fresh 6-player party, but I think losing a blessing for failing to acquire a boon should be removed as a Wildcard Power. The others are still tough but fair, while that one is overly extreme compared to the rest.

That one is tough, the idea being that normally people would horde blessings for extra explores and closing. But that card forces you to play different to work around that.

 

Most people already have the boons they want by the time they get to Legendary and because of that they do not even try to acquire boons as you normally would on story mode. This makes you change the way you play by making acquiring boons a bit more important.

[Brainwave]

I don't mind the challenge, but challenges that are so heavily stacked against you that it's almost impossible to succeed can be rough. I still enjoy it, and still intend on running with my fresh 6-player party, but I think losing a blessing for failing to acquire a boon should be removed as a Wildcard Power. The others are still tough but fair, while that one is overly extreme compared to the rest.

This.

 

Was sort of the point of my post. The other powers are tough but fair and somewhat equally punish different groups. With the card game I never felt that playing a 6 character game was any more "hard mode" than a 1-2 player game. But that power (and to a lesser extent the one that takes 5 cards off the blessings deck) specifically punish big groups. And frankly to the point where winning is next to impossible beyond being crazy lucky. And I don't really think having better cards fixes it, because the thing is you never have the resources to allocate to boons. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to succeed at the game, about 75% of boon cards aren't going to be acquired. You just don't have the resources to acquire them without then failing every combat check. And as I said earlier, it's not just Legendary. You can get that wildcard on Heroic as well.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Not only that, but there's a long history of frustrated PACG players on the Paizo message boards that have long felt that the game has never been properly playtested and balanced for 6 players, especially in newer sets like Wrath of the Righteous.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

 

 

I don't mind the challenge, but challenges that are so heavily stacked against you that it's almost impossible to succeed can be rough. I still enjoy it, and still intend on running with my fresh 6-player party, but I think losing a blessing for failing to acquire a boon should be removed as a Wildcard Power. The others are still tough but fair, while that one is overly extreme compared to the rest.

That one is tough, the idea being that normally people would horde blessings for extra explores and closing. But that card forces you to play different to work around that.

 

Most people already have the boons they want by the time they get to Legendary and because of that they do not even try to acquire boons as you normally would on story mode. This makes you change the way you play by making acquiring boons a bit more important.

Honestly, I think the Wildcard Power would totally work if we had the option of declining to roll on boons, just as we do in the physical game. That would balance the Wildcard a lot.

[Brainwave]

Interesting. I've only played RotR and Skull and Shackles and it could have been the groups I was in, but they felt about the same in terms of difficulty for 6 characters. I would agree though that while there's arguments about balance between smaller and larger parties in this game, 6 characters has always felt like one of the harder modes. But it still felt doable which is why (combine with the idea that to some it's already harder in the first place) I don't really get putting in wildcard powers that specifically punish those groups.

 

I mean you could easily modify the -5 card wildcard power to be remove X cards from the blessings deck where X equals 7 minus the number of characters in the party. That way it scales with party composition appropriately (since removing blessings hurts more with more people you don't need to remove as many to have the same effect). Not sure about the really bad one, but the easiest fix there would be to make it so you could pass on acquiring boons and if you do that, it has no effect. Implementing a needed feature in the process. Otherwise I'll probably just play on normal because while I like a challenge, I don't really like the idea of just forfeiting every time one of those comes up because there's almost no chance of winning.

[StormbringerGT]

I personally prefer and play 4 character games on my tablet.

I haven't had any issues with legendary difficulty wise, other than I don't always win and I really shouldn't. It is not designed to be a "slightly harder" normal mode. I noticed veterans of the game have a harder time with Legendary, which seems backwards, but that is because they have a mind set and an approach to the flow of the game. Legendary displaces this. The same deck and tactics you used for normal story mode should largely not work with Legendary.

All that being said, the game is not made just for me; But for all of us. I love talking shop with you guys and getting feedback. I don't always have time to respond, because you know work. But I do take your suggestions and discussions and pass them around to the team. Keep it coming!

[Brainwave]

All I'm getting at is that Legendary seems vastly harder with 6 than with 2 and while 1 and 6 player games after probably the hardest in the card game, I have multiple 6 character playthroughs and never felt like I was playing on super difficult mode or anything. So while I might expect it to be slightly harder, the difference on Legendary is more like fairly winnable with 2 to completely unwinnable with 6 with certain wildcards in play. Which also encourages repeated forfeiting until those aren't drawn. It's not so much that I'm saying that this power is too hard (well I am saying that) but more that it specifically punishes big groups vs smaller groups which as far as I knew weren't inherently supposed to be massively harder to win with in the game.

 

In other words, it would make more sense to me if Legendary was basically unwinnable period rather than being easier or harder based on the size of the party. Now whether I'd play it if it was like that would be another discussion.

 

Anyway appreciate that you're following our comments. I know I probably come across as critical but it's only because you've got a really good game here.

[Borissimo]

I'm glad someone made this post, because boy do I have a lot to say.  

 

First and most importantly of all: according to the newest rules (Wrath of the Righteous), when you choose to pass on a boon, it's the same as auto-failing. Another user posted the relevant rules block in another thread, and I was floored. I had no idea. This has two implications:

 

1) If Obsidian implemented the option to pass on boons, it would NOT fix the problem of Night Approaches being an insane wildcard. Choose to pass on a boon? Lose a blessing anyway since it's the same as failing!

 

2) Given (1) above, it seems like implementing the option to pass on boons becomes a super low-priority item, so I doubt that Obsidian will prioritize it over fixing bugs, creating new adventure decks, or, you know, just about literally anything else.

 

This thread reminds me of when Diablo 3 came out back in the day. Players had been complaining that the hardest difficulty mode (Hell) was too easy in Diablo 2, so Blizzard appeased them by creating an ultra-hard difficulty mode beyond Hell called Inferno. And guess what happened: everybody complained that it was too hard and they eventually caved and made it easier. So now instead of there being two easy difficulties and one hard one like there was in Diablo 2, there are three easy difficulties and one hard one. Whoop-de-doo. The whole affair was totally pointless and almost certainly a huge waste of the developers' time.

 

And so it is with RotR. For years the forums have been awash with people complaining that the game's too easy, and now that a proper challenge has been put in place, here come the complaints that it's too hard. Personally, I think that if you play on Legendary with a brand-new party, you SHOULD lose. On normal difficulty, with 6 players, you already have to play pretty close to perfectly to win (and even then, with poor henchmen/villain distribution, you're going to go down to the wire). There's simply no room left to make the difficulty any harder yet somehow still be in that magical "hard but doable if you play right" zone.

 

Right now, Legendary with 6 players is totally beatable if you A) use an over-leved party or B) are okay with losing a lot (and then feeling really satisfied when you do win!). If neither A) nor B) fit your needs but you still want a challenge, then play 6-player on Normal or Heroic, as appropriate to your skill level and tolerance for failure.

 

Basically, the way I look at it is this: players who don't like the challenge level of Legendary have many other options to choose from. Players who do like the challenge level of Legendary do not. So, dumbing down Legendary to satisfy the former group is just illogical. Is Legendary, on 6-player, unfair? Absolutely! It's grotesquely unfair! And it's supposed to be. If you don't want to play an unfairly difficult mode, don't play that one.

[zeroth_hour]

Borissimo, the problem with "Legendary difficulty should not be guaranteed winnable even with the best tactics" is that currently it's the only method for repeated gold.  You can't start new parties to get gold on lower difficulties anymore (even when starting a new party, completing scenarios you've completed with _any_ party on a non-Legendary difficulty gets you 0 gold), so Legendary mode is it.

 

(For the record I haven't played 6p Legendary yet)

[Brainwave]

Borissimo, if you read the middle paragraph of my last post I hope you realize that my main issue isn't that it's just "too hard."

 

I've been playing on Legendary with Kyra and Meri almost exclusively as a 2 man group and only fail about 20% of the time, mainly due to that one wildcard being such a problem that even with a 2 character group I sometimes run out of time when I get it, which should say something about how much of a difference it makes on the blessings deck. That was starting with brand new decks, never playing at all on an easier difficulty.

 

Compare that to trying it with a 6 character group in which I gave up after 4 fails everytime I got that wildcard in which none were even close. Since I'm not the type of player to abuse the forfeit option (which unbalanced wildcard powers also encourage) I decided just to stop.

 

As I said above if it was just an impossible difficulty for the amazing players out there, ok fine, I'd leave it to them. But it's not that, it's incredibly swingy depending on whether you pull one or two specific wildcards, and more importantly the size of your party. And while 6 man has always had its challenges, I always felt like intent of the game was to be roughly balanced between different party sizes.

 

And I disagree that an over leveled party makes that much of a difference. That wildcard is about acquiring boons which is never going to be something you've got the resources to spend on more a few times throughout the adventure. You're still going to fail a fair amount on those cards regardless and 6 fails on boons, which is more than a reasonable assumption for any group, is an entire round of turns lost in a 6 man group, which is pretty critical when you've only got 5 turns each in the first place.

 

Btw Z, I believe you can still repeatedly get gold on lower difficulties in quest mode, just not in story. I could be wrong about this though, haven't really experimented with it.

[Borissimo]

Great discussion guys, you make some great points!

 

First, I'm embarrassed to confess that I did not know that you only gain the gold for normal and heroic difficulty completion once per ACCOUNT. I thought it was once per party, and since I was wrong, that changes things. If the only option for f2p players to gain gold is "play Legendary" or "play Quest Mode," then I agree that seems really weird.

 

Second, I've been a pretty vocal complainer about Night Approaches since closed beta, and I wouldn't mind seeing that wildcard go away or be nerfed (e.g., when you fail to pick up a boon, roll a d6 and discard a blessing on a 1 or 2).

 

I do respectfully disagree with the idea that the "intent of the game was to be roughly balanced between different party sizes." 1-player is so out-of-balance that the rulebook even advises you not to play it and tells you to break the rules if you do. 6-player is known to be harder than 4-player. And since this app is mainly designed for solo play, I think that's fine. Character count is just another way for players to customize their challenge level. If you just want to farm gold and have an easy time, use 2 characters; if you're playing for a challenge, play 6; if 6 is too hard, try 4; and so on.

[Hannibal_PJV]

I agree. It is good to have alternatives. I have had easy time with legendary level so far, but as all rorl weterans know, the game will be much harder in the end. So I am quite sure that I am not going to play legendary mode regularly in those Late game scenarios, and that is just fine!

I have managed to win even with that Night approaches power. Not bad actually, you just have to avoid meeting boons, so you have to use augury to avoid getting any boons and run like a hell. So it is doable. Normally I just don't get any boos to my deck because of tactics, but I win the scenario.

So as it has been said, these powers force you to use different tactics, and sometimes you will just lose... No big deal.

[Brainwave]

Great discussion guys, you make some great points!

 

First, I'm embarrassed to confess that I did not know that you only gain the gold for normal and heroic difficulty completion once per ACCOUNT. I thought it was once per party, and since I was wrong, that changes things. If the only option for f2p players to gain gold is "play Legendary" or "play Quest Mode," then I agree that seems really weird.

 

Second, I've been a pretty vocal complainer about Night Approaches since closed beta, and I wouldn't mind seeing that wildcard go away or be nerfed (e.g., when you fail to pick up a boon, roll a d6 and discard a blessing on a 1 or 2).

 

I do respectfully disagree with the idea that the "intent of the game was to be roughly balanced between different party sizes." 1-player is so out-of-balance that the rulebook even advises you not to play it and tells you to break the rules if you do. 6-player is known to be harder than 4-player. And since this app is mainly designed for solo play, I think that's fine. Character count is just another way for players to customize their challenge level. If you just want to farm gold and have an easy time, use 2 characters; if you're playing for a challenge, play 6; if 6 is too hard, try 4; and so on.

I guess what I'd say is I can understand 1 character kind of breaking the game a lot more than 6. With 6 it feels more like a game design / balance problem (otherwise why even make it a 6 player game, just cap it at 4 or 5 if 6 is creating such an unbalanced experience it doesn't seem worth "supporting" it to just have it be un-fun) and with 1 it's more like "hey you can play this game solo if you want but we intended this more as a coop game so it's not really supported". Anyway that's just my take on it and this part of the discussion has more to do with the base design of Pathfinder than anything really relevant to the video game anyway.

 

Overall I agree regarding this thread, it's really all about Night Approaches, that to me is what's throwing everything out of whack anyhow. Thanks for the discussion!

[FellintoOblivion]

1. I immediately restart a game where I receive the wildcard power that discards a blessing when you fail to acquire a boon, it's simply unfun and changes the way the game is played to a degree I don't find it fair.

 

2. You absolutely receive gold for replaying story missions on lower difficulty levels.

[da_mayor]

Honestly, I think the Wildcard Power would totally work if we had the option of declining to roll on boons, just as we do in the physical game. That would balance the Wildcard a lot.

 

Lovely idea, but from the PACG Rulebook (WotR, p 10), "Encountering A Card", subsection "Attempt the Check":

If the card is a boon, you may try to acquire it for your deck; if it’s a bane, you must try to defeat it (see Attempting a Check, below). If you choose not to acquire a boon, it counts as failing to acquire it.

 

So, you're still out a blessing.

[Nightfind]

This is how I view difficulty in the game.  I see 2 types of difficulty "sliders".  The obvious one is the Heroic and Legendary additions.  I view the party size as the 2nd one as adding difficulty because you overall have to close more locations with the same amount of time as you increase the party size.  If I want a nice balanced game, I pick 3-4 players.  If I want to increase the challenge, I can up the difficulty by either going 5-6 players or going to legendary.  I view the 6 party members at legendary as the "Ultimate" challenge for the game - going the extreme on both difficulty setting and party size.

 

Nightfind

[elcoderdude]

I'm playing a six-character party. I also restart the game if I get the wildcard power that discards a blessing when you fail to acquire a boon (Night Approaches). I don't card how good you are, you are not going to win with a six-character party and that wildcard unless you get particularly lucky with henchman & villain placement.

[Rhygar]

So I saw this necro after someone pushed it up got intrigued and did my first ever 6 man freshmen party , s/l until I got that wildcard night approaches , and started off to test this out on brigandoom legendary.

 

That's when I realize what the blessing deck count isn't even increased , to rationally account for increased party size.

 

Never mind that I proceeded to play through, and seoni got lucky and on her second round closed her location quick and went to the next free spot. Things got even better I thought when the cleric got the boss villain on 3 or 4 cards into her location deck. Up to now not one single failed check , yes I was careful. So everyone dutifully close out their location leaving a free spot for the boss to be funneled into upon which I'll send our mvp seelah to root out as soon as someone close out the next location permanently. So I thought.

 

Cleric lost her combat check by 1 . Despite stacking abit dice. Chaos ensued. No more henchman encountered for the rest up to 5cards deep in their respective location. The last ten rounds, everyone drained their blessings allies but the clock just ticked down . Time ran out.

 

My conclusion was its just too luck based to succeed with any regularity and it isn't even about that night approaches wildcard. Remember I didn't fail once with boon check . Even had I not forgotten to apply harsk sniper power when pitting cleric against the villain and thus win that combat check, the placement of at least 4 henchman deep beyond the 5th card in at least 4 location will conspire to screw my game plan.

 

But hey at least I know why everyone is discussing this now.

[PinkRose]

A player has to put more emphasis on burning through the location than beating the cards.

Use up those discarding allies for bonus encounters and blessings for more encounters, and hope your powers and working together helps beat those rolls.