[POTD Difficulty] Launch NOT tuned discussion thread

[ilsendoodle]

I have to believe this has already been said many times, but I'm going to chime in anyway in support.

 

I'm a fan of the game.  Halfway through I was already planning a replay.  Then it around 2/3rds through I had more money than I could spend, could afk through every fight, and was level 20 with several islands unexplored and a lot of the main quest left.

 

Scaling is a problem in most games (Divinity 1+2, POE 1, basically everything)  but this is actually the worst I've seen.  

 

Everything else is pretty good.  Thanks.

[ilsendoodle]

I'm guessing this isn't the first such post, but it deserves to be repeated.  

 

Also, whispers of the wind is way OP.

 

Edit: I'm still a fan of the game.  I have 60 or so hours into it and would like to do a replay when/if this is addressed.

Edited May 26, 2018 by ilsendoodle

[PizzaSHARK]

Mods, if this is the wrong subforum, move it where it needs to go.  None of the other forums seemed to be appropriate so I defaulted to here.

 

So update 48 made it clear that fixes for Veteran and PotD were on the way (though we already pretty much knew that), and mentioned some new challenge modes.  I'm not going to worry about those, because chances are any assumptions I could make about them would be wrong.  Maybe this whole post will be invalidated by them, but I don't know that and I think that Deadfire has some very severe issues that need to be addressed, especially if they want PotD to reward/demand tactical planning and execution rather than "hit them harder than they hit you" (which is how Pillars was, and how PotD currently is.)

 

So based off of the writing in 48, it makes it sound like their solution to PotD being too easy is largely just "add more enemies to encounters!"  This will probably come with nerfs (can't wait to see Paladins, Rogues, and Chanters stop being better than everyone at everything), too.  These changes will probably result in PotD being more difficult, but if your difficulty is just "overload the player to the point that they just do the same thing repeatedly from save until they get enough winning coin flips that they win the encounter, then repeat" is what the game turns out to be... is that really what players want?  Is that really what you, as designers, want?  And before I go further, let me be clear: Deadfire is probably at parity with Baldur's Gate II in terms of tactical depth, replacing the massive spellcaster dispel metagame with martials being able to do more than just run up and beat on things.  It is NOT at parity with modded BG2 (such as Sword Coast Stratagems, the "Improved Tougher" line of mods, etc.)  Personally, though, I feel like "it's as good as a 20 year old game," isn't really a success story - BG2 at least can claim that it was limited by technology of the time and being chained to the horribly retarded 2E rules, and we can rightfully point out that Obsidian was already bending over backwards to bring Pillars to life, so it's understandable that many of its rules and systems never felt fully mature.  I don't feel like any of that applies to Deadfire.

 

 

So moving on, there are several individual issues with Deadfire as a whole that will prevent PotD from being more than "it's the same as all the other modes, just with more mooks and everything has higher stats."  Especially with the mention of AI being better, this makes me think that PotD is intended to be a much more tactical mode than the others, but it's simply not, because the game rules and design itself prevents that.  In no particular order, these issues include:

 

 

Lack of Terrain Interactivity and the AI's Capability of Using It

 

While I'm not expecting Deadfire to turn into 5E or, god forbid, Pathfinder here, I think the near-total lack of the player needing to manage the terrain and its features is a serious problem.  It was maybe halfway through my playthrough that I began to notice that pretty much every optional fight - and many required ones! - were taking place in something that was just basically a gorgeous, barren empty corridor or room.  You'd see rocks and sand and stuff beautifully drawn on, but there wasn't any interactivity there.  I couldn't use the rocks or bushes or trees to break line of sight, and I certainly couldn't order my guys to take cover behind them (nor is there any kind of simplified "unit receives a defense bonus if an attack crosses this obstruction" contextual bonus system.)  Being on high ground, in the rare times it's even there, did not appear to give me a better field of vision, nor did being on low ground limit my vision.  For all intents and purposes, the game world is as flat and uninteractive as a typical battlemap in tabletop - except while the DM will add obstructions, cover, difficult terrain, etc in a tabletop session, Deadfire obviously can't do that on the fly.

 

This seriously limits the options the player has at their disposal (some of the bounties, for example, might be completely doable at much lower levels than "intended" if you could utilize rocks and bushes and trees to break line of sight with spellcasters or ranged attackers that, at that level, are probably too much to handle while you're busy with their melee buddies), and it also dramatically limits how inventive or interesting encounter design can be.  Even if you designed nuanced AI that could, for example, have xaurips perform a fighting retreat when they're on the downhill side of a battle, you don't have rocks and trees and such they could hide behind and lay ambushes for pursuing players.

 

Sand should be difficult for most people to move around on, especially weighed down with armor and belongings, yet it's as easy to move across as a tile floor.  You get the idea - the world's nearly invariable lack of defining features is a serious issue and needs to be addressed... assuming we want PotD to be more about than just making the numbers be increasingly less in the player's favor.

 

 

Spellcaster Spellbook Limitations

 

Someone at Obsidian must play only martials in tabletop because jesus christ did spellcasters get smashed with the nerfbat between Pillars and Deadfire.  I guess the concern was that by allowing them to cast per-encounter rather than per-rest, they'd be too strong... but given how hilariously overpowered dual wielding Full Attacking martials are, that seems misplaced.

 

The limitations on how many spells most casters get to know SEVERELY limits the player's toolbox.  As a result, the player is essentially given a choice between a hammer or a wrench early on, and from then on EVERY problem must be solved with that hammer or wrench, rather than picking the tool appropriate for the job.  If you selected a hammer, you better get used to being forced to look at every problem like it's a nail, because you don't have a choice.  Instead of the player adapting spell choice to suit the issue at hand, they're locked into a gameplay style that will result in literally every single encounter playing out exactly the same as any other... because they can't do anything else even if they'd want to.

 

This is exacerbated by the inflated enemy stats in PotD strongly discouraging offensive spells compared to defensive ones.  A buff can never miss, so if you only have one cast of a 3rd level spell and you've got a 25% chance of landing a damage or debuff spell... you might as well buff your party and drown them in autoattacks; this is exacerbated by awful base chance to hit against enemies in PotD, which further enforces the need to buff in order to be able to fight effectively (which also makes certain spells, like Devotions for the Faithful, practically must-have.)  This means you're better off selecting defensive/"can't miss" spells at level up, meaning... you only have buffs and related spells in your toolkit, meaning you can't try to disable or blast the enemies even if you'd wanted to.  I have no idea how this made it through beta without anyone calling it out on how short-sighted it is.  It's arguably the single-worst design decision in Deadfire right now.  It forces encounters to be limited (because you have to build them around being doable with everyone's artificially limited toolbox, meaning they can't be specialized to require certain responses), it forces player tactics to be limited, it's just... ugh.  It's bad.  It's maybe the only thing in Deadfire I can say is unequivocally, plainly bad.  It's the Baldur's Gate II mage battle problem (you must have a mage, and you must know ahead of time what spells you need to counter the spells the enemy mage will be using to protect themselves - hyper-specialization combined with precognition, basically), but in reverse.

 

As for a solution?  Go back to Pillars.  Priests, Druids, Wizards all get their full spell list at each level (discarding the annoying Grimoire system in both versions; it was just meaningless busywork in Pillars and it's just... really annoying in Deadfire for a lot of reasons.)  They pick one spell as their feat/talent choice at each level, just like now, which gives them one "free" cast of that spell per encounter, reducing total spells per level by 1 to compensate if necessary.  You still pick spells based on what you want that caster's specialty to be, but now you're not completely screwed if you run into an encounter your blaster mage is ill-suited for - and now you can actually design encounters knowing that all players will have the same tools available to them at all times!

 

 

The Rest/Injury Mechanic is Designed for Attrition-based Gameplay in a Game That's Largely Done Away with Attrition-based Gameplay

 

This is an example of the problems inherent in Deadfire's schizophrenic rules philosophies.  On the one hand, Obsidian promised players that it'd be like a new Baldur's Gate, complete with expected mechanics and cliches - in other words, a d20 game in fact if not in name.  On the other hand, Sawyer has mentioned in interviews his dislike for d20 and his affinity for class-less rule systems, and a number of things in Pillars of Eternity very clearly show this: attributes are much less impactful (being almost MMO-like in nature) and less clearly defined (Might is theoretically more like "spiritual power" even if it's only ever used as raw muscle strength in scripted interactions), everyone has the same base accuracy and is equally good with any weapon and armor type, and so on.

 

Resting was a formality in Pillars, enforced primarily by the Vancian magic system and Health being a hard-cap on how long you could adventure before being forced to rest (I'd often just use console commands to give everyone the Health-healing per-rest abilities just to make things less tedious.)  Spells are per-encounter and the Endurance/Health system is completely gone in Deadfire (a side-effect being that healing spells are actually worth using now, with the various CON afflictions clearly designed to prevent healing from being overpowered), but we've replaced Health with a more abstract Injury counter.  And then we went and replaced per-rest spells with a per-rest Empower pool, because... I don't know.  Arguments in the design team, maybe?

 

Regardless, we still have a largely pointless rest system.  Powergamers are just going to rest after every encounter and open with an empowered fireball to obliterate everything (or any number of other, similar things), and there's not really any real way to make resting a meaningful decision short of massive rule changes... because the whole gameplay concept of needing to spend time resting to recover spent resources is for attrition-based systems like d20.  It goes hand-in-hand with Vancian magic rules, per-day abilities and items, and so on; you have to manage how often you're casting spells and using your limited abilities with gradually accruing HP damage that you have to spend limited resources on recovering from.  While there are certain encounters where players can be knocked down or even killed in tabletop d20 systems, TPKs and player deaths are primarily from attrition; the party doesn't plan ahead well enough to be able to handle a string of bad luck (or bad decisions...) and it eventually gets someone killed.

 

Deadfire has none of that.  Everyone completely recovers, except for some meaningless Injury, after the end of every encounter.  Encounters are completely binary - either you completely succeed, or you completely fail and have to load from save.  There's no "cut your losses" response in Deadfire, like in a tabletop game or, theoretically, in the Infinity Engine games (though everyone I know would just load from save if someone died, because interesting and engaging characters in a single-player game don't usually mesh with the permadeath concept inherent to tabletop play.)

 

The logical way to make resting cost would be to make the game narrative and quest narratives time-sensitive but that would be a major departure from the basic rules.  Without doing major changes to the core game rules, it's probably best to do away with per-rest abilities, injuries, etc entirely.  Make Empower a binary on/off state, rather than a per-rest points system since powergamers are going to be using it like a binary state anyway - and PotD is explicitly made for powergamers.

 

 

These are just a few examples of the kinds of systemic problems that Deadfire faces right now.  I could write more about detailed problems with each class or role, but since we know "numbers changes" are in the pipe, it doesn't make sense to really bang on about stuff that may get fixed in a week or two.

[whiskiz]

"Included in Patch 1.1 is a complete overhaul of Veteran and Path of the Damned difficulties. You'll find more enemies per encounter and with new level scaling adjustments the game should be much more challenging. Let us know what you think on the forums - this will be an ongoing process based on community feedback"

 

So basically another month or 2 on release for balancing of the balance, for a refined version of Vet/PotD

[Wormerine]

While I agree with the title of the thread I find all three points raised to be irrelevant. Well, maybe the first one, but open spaces work against the player, not in favour of him. It’s been changed as in PoE abusing doorways is a too easy way to win majority of fights.

 

Point 2 and 3 are core gameplay mechanics and don’t make game easier/harder. Resting in PoE or EI was never an issue, therefore never added any challenge. Current system provides a more limited resources per-fight but expects you to decide what will be most useful in current fight. If properly balanced it has a lot of potential. Current difficulty problem doesn’t lie in how and when you can cast.

 

I don’t see making injuries and resting a meaningful mechanics without redesigning entire structure of the game. It wasn’t meaningful in IE games and it wasn’t meaningful in PoE1. Deadfire tries to design gameplay around elements that worked and.... has some more work to do. The core ideas are fine, though.

[ArnoldRimmer]

The difficulty is fine... They just need to reduce the price of magic items, give everyone deep pockets and let you consume consumables... Or just remove them from the game. Also wizards need to be able to choose spells - swapping books is stupid, I haven't felt the need or desire. I'm not switching books all the time, half the spells are useless or not for how I play. Making wizards have to use certain spells they don't want is like telling fighters they can only get prone if they also take bulls will or a paladin can only have FoD if he also takes snakes reflexes. This restriction isn't made for non-wizards so why should wizards be so restricted

Edited May 27, 2018 by ArnoldRimmer

[Sanctuary]

 

Spellcaster Spellbook Limitations

 

Someone at Obsidian must play only martials in tabletop because jesus christ did spellcasters get smashed with the nerfbat between Pillars and Deadfire.  I guess the concern was that by allowing them to cast per-encounter rather than per-rest, they'd be too strong... but given how hilariously overpowered dual wielding Full Attacking martials are, that seems misplaced.

 

The limitations on how many spells most casters get to know SEVERELY limits the player's toolbox.  As a result, the player is essentially given a choice between a hammer or a wrench early on, and from then on EVERY problem must be solved with that hammer or wrench, rather than picking the tool appropriate for the job.  If you selected a hammer, you better get used to being forced to look at every problem like it's a nail, because you don't have a choice.  Instead of the player adapting spell choice to suit the issue at hand, they're locked into a gameplay style that will result in literally every single encounter playing out exactly the same as any other... because they can't do anything else even if they'd want to.

 

This is exacerbated by the inflated enemy stats in PotD strongly discouraging offensive spells compared to defensive ones.  A buff can never miss, so if you only have one cast of a 3rd level spell and you've got a 25% chance of landing a damage or debuff spell... you might as well buff your party and drown them in autoattacks; this is exacerbated by awful base chance to hit against enemies in PotD, which further enforces the need to buff in order to be able to fight effectively (which also makes certain spells, like Devotions for the Faithful, practically must-have.)  This means you're better off selecting defensive/"can't miss" spells at level up, meaning... you only have buffs and related spells in your toolkit, meaning you can't try to disable or blast the enemies even if you'd wanted to.  I have no idea how this made it through beta without anyone calling it out on how short-sighted it is.  It's arguably the single-worst design decision in Deadfire right now.  It forces encounters to be limited (because you have to build them around being doable with everyone's artificially limited toolbox, meaning they can't be specialized to require certain responses), it forces player tactics to be limited, it's just... ugh.  It's bad.  It's maybe the only thing in Deadfire I can say is unequivocally, plainly bad.  It's the Baldur's Gate II mage battle problem (you must have a mage, and you must know ahead of time what spells you need to counter the spells the enemy mage will be using to protect themselves - hyper-specialization combined with precognition, basically), but in reverse.

 

 

The Rest/Injury Mechanic is Designed for Attrition-based Gameplay in a Game That's Largely Done Away with Attrition-based Gameplay

 

Regardless, we still have a largely pointless rest system.  Powergamers are just going to rest after every encounter and open with an empowered fireball to obliterate everything (or any number of other, similar things), and there's not really any real way to make resting a meaningful decision short of massive rule changes... because the whole gameplay concept of needing to spend time resting to recover spent resources is for attrition-based systems like d20.  It goes hand-in-hand with Vancian magic rules, per-day abilities and items, and so on; you have to manage how often you're casting spells and using your limited abilities with gradually accruing HP damage that you have to spend limited resources on recovering from.  While there are certain encounters where players can be knocked down or even killed in tabletop d20 systems, TPKs and player deaths are primarily from attrition; the party doesn't plan ahead well enough to be able to handle a string of bad luck (or bad decisions...) and it eventually gets someone killed.

 

 

I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment here, but I had to address these two points, since they essentially contradict each other.  You complain about offensive spells not being so hot due to the chance to miss, yet then say the resting/empower system is broken because people can simply open every fight with a huge, empowered spell.  Well, why would they if they are likely going to miss?  Here's the rub with your argument though: everyone needs a high perecption for offense, not just casters.

 

Regardless, the main issue with casters in this game, particularly Wizards is that without one particular Grimoire, their actual offense is lacking through half of the game.  Grimoire's were supposed to be "key" to playing a Wizard supposedly, because they allowed you to swap them around during combat for more options, yet ultimately very few of the offensive spells are actually all that useful due to the encounter design (a very select few are the obvious choices every single fight), so sheer quantity trumps variety here.  But "Oh, you can just use an empower point, replenish your casts and then rest after each fight!".  Well yes, you can, and playing that way makes for a much worse experience too.  But hey, the option is there.

 

Buffs are great, offensive spells are not too bad, but as I said, you already are going to know what the best ones are, and there aren't that many.  What is truly lacking is any form of legitimate crowd control.  The game offers you plenty of CC spells to choose from, yet the majority of them are never worth casting because either they take too long to cast, the duration is too short, the radius is too small, or the risk of missing puts you in a worse situation than either buffing, or doing less damage with an offensive spell.  And CC misses a whole hell of a lot in this game, regardless of your perception.

 

Anyway, I just about finished my current PotD playthrough with an Evoker, and do you know what offensive spells I used?  85% of my casts were from the second and third tier missile spells, every single fight, with the other 15% being between Chain Lightning and the first missile spell.  Most every other offensive spell is garbage, or requires you to stealth > launch every encounter, because they aren't worth using once everyone has engaged.

 

edit: What is up with the formatting on these boards?  Every time I compose something, the forum smooshes it all together and I have to edit for paragraphs every damn time, despite already having done it with my initial post.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Sanctuary

[Dorftek]

Paladin chanter and "rogue" better then anyone else? Come on rogue DO NOT belong on that list. Fighter, monk and wizard do but I guess u forgot about them?

[dunehunter]

Paladin chanter and "rogue" better then anyone else? Come on rogue DO NOT belong on that list. Fighter, monk and wizard do but I guess u forgot about them?

Funniest joke I heard today, yesterday it was a thread that claiming chanter is incredibly underwhelmed

[Sanctuary]

Paladin chanter and "rogue" better then anyone else? Come on rogue DO NOT belong on that list. Fighter, monk and wizard do but I guess u forgot about them?

Rogues definitely are not better at anything other than the initial opening attack.  Otherwise, once the fighting has ensued, their overall contribution significantly drops, despite still being able to do more damage with a single attack than most any other class.  They still spend too much time moving around the field to get into the correct position, and they also have to essentially dump all of their points into restealthing. 

 

Fighters and Monks are two of the best base classes to multiclass with too.  Chanters are another class that fit well with multiclassing.  In fact, I would actually say they probably fit with just about every class combination.  They are also one of the few classes that has very little trouble soloing the game.  I wouldn't say they do everything "better" than the other options though, but they are essentially the jack-of-all-trades class of the game.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Sanctuary

[Dorftek]

 

Paladin chanter and "rogue" better then anyone else? Come on rogue DO NOT belong on that list. Fighter, monk and wizard do but I guess u forgot about them?

 

Rogues definitely are not better at anything other than the initial opening attack. Otherwise, once the fighting has ensued, their overall contribution significantly drops, despite still being able to do more damage with a single attack than most any other class. They still spend too much time moving around the field to get into the correct position, and they also have to essentially dump all of their points into restealthing.

 

Fighters and Monks are two of the best base classes to multiclass with too. Chanters are another class that fit well with multiclassing. In fact, I would actually say they probably fit with just about every class combination. They are also one of the few classes that has very little trouble soloing the game. I wouldn't say they do everything "better" than the other options though, but they are essentially the jack-of-all-trades class of the game.

Yeah this is what I meant. Rogues resource cost vs efficiency is very very low.

 

And as for passives, sneak attack and later Deathnlows? I'd trade those for monks 50%+25% lashes any day of the week. I'm not even gonna bother bringing up swift flurry or cleave stance. Oops I guess I just did..

 

 

Paladin chanter and "rogue" better then anyone else? Come on rogue DO NOT belong on that list. Fighter, monk and wizard do but I guess u forgot about them?

Funniest joke I heard today, yesterday it was a thread that claiming chanter is incredibly underwhelmed

Yeah, probably the most versatile class in the game and super broken when they get the Brilliant inspiration.

 

I guess a rogue with a chanter buddy refilling his resources so he can click killing blow forever Rogue might be OP. But that's because of the Chanter ;P

Edited May 26, 2018 by Dorftek

[flamesium]

This is a rare occasion where I think adding extra (weakish) enemies to some encounters would help. It needs to be easier for your frontline to be overwhelmed or skipped past entirely. It’d also give your casters more cause to use AoEs (more likely to be several weaker enemies grouped together) and spells to reduce mobility.

 

Cast times can then be reduced to offset the fact casters won’t just be sat at the back in perfect safety.

[Dorftek]

No they need to fix the broken abilities. They need to tune certain gear better. They need to take a serious look at empowering on AoE spells/Attacks. They also need to give encounters better tools to screw you over. You should have to be afraid of enemy mages. You should definitely need to be afraid of enemy dragons!

Stacking armour is too strong and too easy. Same with deflection I've heard.

 

They need to have a serious look at the classes. Maybe Paladins Deep Faith is tad too strong? Maybe Rapid recovery is a tad too strong too? Maybe Cipher spell dmg need some buffing?

What about the insane passive lashes on the monk? Etc etc etc.

 

A Troubadour can stay in stealth all day long safe from enemy fire spamming summons quicker then the enemy can kill em.

 

Rogues stealth need to NOT break combat and should be disabled if u move too far away from the enemy and the enemy need a longer aggro leash. As of right now a rogue can stealth in,kill one guy and then teleport away and go invisible then enter stealth to deactivate the encounter and repeat the process.

 

Paladin Death save should imo only work once per encounter.

 

Procs should absolutely not trigger additional procs. Cleave and swift flurry will still be very very strong.

 

I cannot comment on Druids or priests cuz I haven't tried them and I haven't seen any videos proving them broken OP yet.

 

What about two handed weapons vs dual wield? I always DW for obvious reasons.

[theBalthazar]

Rogue is weird because he had mainly a lot active abilities.

[Yosharian]

More enemies is fine.

[JFutral]

Rogue still my favorite. My ranger/rogue "bounty hunter" (that's what I call him, the game says "scout". Whatever) is my only melee fighter in a party of four. Otherwise, I basically agree with Wormerine, Arnoldrimmer, and Sanctuary above.

 

Joe

[Tigranes]

I don't agree with all the points but I agree with the sentiment; as a rule, it's always better to introduce challenge via mechanics and tactics, over HP and mob numbers. Of course, the latter can still contribute to creating a tactical challenge, and in POE2's case it will be a positive change.

 

But points 2 & 3 do attack a wider underlying issue in the POE2 system: the way it variously restricts/enables abilities and combat capabilities, from smaller spellbooks to grimoires to empowers, all combine to a very weird and not particularly systematic experience. You don't really have to conserve your abilities within or between fights, you don't really have to mix it up as much between fights. And that's the key to an enjoyable and challenging experience.

[BillyCorgan]

Well summarized...

 

I finished the game with more than 700k gold. I was level 20 more than 10 hours before the end... and especially no challenge, even the final fight, the fingers in the nose ... in POTD.

Strongly waiting for patches!

[AndreaColombo]

Reaching max level when the game is over makes no sense. Max level is when the real fun starts. If there’s no content left to enjoy the power I’ve worked on building up, then I worked for nothing.

 

But yes, PotD is too easy as already openly admitted by the devs.

[evilcat]

There is special terrain, sand, water, barrels, traps. Poison gas in old city. Not bad.

Random encounter take place on short list of arenas. No complains.

Generally video games have simplification.

If they could something about terrain interaction, that would be great, but it is not that bad.

 

Enemy quantity depends on encounter, in some it is ok (as many as should be), some are clearly designed as breeze encounter, so less is ok.

 

I think that monsters hit resonably high. And their defense is ok.

They could get some extra hp. So over time effect will be more useful.

There is a situacion related to buffs, debuffs, casting times, duration.

Only some buffs/debuffs are worth it. Generally the strongest, mass, long duration one. Or quickcast selfbuffs.

And there is list of buffs which i am never gonna use in this form.

With debuffs it is similar. In 7 sec it is better to cast dmg+debuff, than only debuff.

Low hp lowers inpact of buffs/debuffs, death to enemies is best debuff.

 

The whole per encounter + empowerment mechanic does not contribute much to difficulty. It makes balancing easier, since we can asume how many resources party will have even on hardest encounter at level.

 

There is problem in orignal post with mixing difficulty issues and design preferences.

Wizards generally make encounters easier, since they have good aoe, they could alter elements at will, and they coudl cast dmg+debuff on aoe.

Even talking about Priest having shorter staffs this one is not difficulty talk.

 

There is difficulty issue with way high tier spells scale with PL. And how much you can stack with potion of ascession and empowerment and other sources. Generally all spells should be balanced around PL0, and tier 9 would almost always have +9 (unless on scroll by other class). So stacking PL would be less impactfull.

 

Starting with hunting broken, or not as inteded abillities is good idea, Even fi that means "easy game" for a bit longer. It is hard to talk balance with infinite procs.

Buffing is needed, since bringing wizard to Priest level is not what we want.

Edited May 26, 2018 by evilcat

[Archaven]

I'm just level 9 and most fights seems tough for me. Not sure why everyone say the game is too easy? Was it because my main character is caster? I'm not sure why most of my spells still miss or the accuracy of my spells still couldn't penetrate most of the enemies.

[BillyCorgan]

Reaching max level when the game is over makes no sense. Max level is when the real fun starts. If there’s no content left to enjoy the power I’ve worked on building up, then I worked for nothing.

 

But yes, PotD is too easy as already openly admitted by the devs.

 

Yes and no...

 

Do some quest for useless XP and 500Pc when i'm 700K and more... feel not interesting i found... but if there was a challenge, but not even.

[JFutral]

What I like about this game, even as I am a compulsive "completionist", you don't _have_ to do every quest or achieve every task available. You can choose the path (aka which quests) make the most sense for your particular play through via "role playing" and it is still a viable game. That actually helps to make multiple play throughs something other than a slog allowing different options each time rather than the same options every time.

 

I don't know about you guys here, but I feel like a number of people are playing the wrong game. As much as I like Diablo, this is not Diablo.

 

Or not. I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

Joe

[evilcat]

I think that being able to finish main story, without doing every quest, every bounty, every faction, tresure hunting and maping is asset.

You may judge total amount/quality of content, but comparing to other titles it is not that bad.

[BillyCorgan]

Don't understand why you spoke about Diablo.

 

I have 300 hours on Pillars 1 and now 110 hours on Deadfire ... I do the quests that correspond to the choice of my character etc ... it has nothing to do with the problems mentioned above.

 

The game is too easy, it's a fact that everyone agrees to recognize (and developers too since they work on a fix).