The General Level Scaling / Difficulty Thread (not POTD)

[TheMetaphysician]

If you liked Hard on the first game, I recommend going to PotD on this one. They are roughly comparable -- which is to say, PotD is much easier than it was in the first game.

 

That's been the only downside of the best RPG (so far) I've played since Baldur's Gate 2. It reminds me so much of BG2, really feels the same. Which is the highest compliment I can pay a video game.

[z_liquid]

Eh. That would make fights longer, but wouldn't make them interesting (or challenging).

I'm one and two-shotting mobs my level. They don't do any damage either. I think a flat buff is justified.

 

 

There's also the fact that Deadfire is quite open and I'm guessing you would run into real trouble if you went off the beaten path early in the game, but I think most people will just turn away if they see one of those 3 skulls encounters (same if you see them in the journal). It's a lot easier to "plan" your playthrough in Deadfire since the game tells you "hey, this is beyond your level".

Though you can turn those skull things off.

I've got scaling turned on "all" with "only scale upwards" which also disables difficulty skulls for some reason. It really makes no difference. I've ran into some fights that were much more enjoyable since they were higher level than me, but on the flipside, doing high-level content early just makes you outlevel a ton of content. The scaling just isn't harsh enough.

[JFutral]

I wonder how much depends on PoE1 experience. I usually start on Veteran mode so that I don't get distracted from the story because of an infernal secondary enemy fight.

 

I also chose the "Everyone is dead because of you" path to help bump up the difficulty before hitting PotD.

 

I feel like at that point some part of the difficulty level should also affect the story, more detrimental affects for choosing poorly. Seems kind of 20th Century that the only thing that changes with difficulty settings is enemy stats and numbers.

 

Joe

[InsaneCommander]

Maybe they could add an option to set the enemy level. So instead of upscaling it to match the watcher, it would go even higher. Same level is too easy? Try one or two above. Having no problem in PotD? Make it five or ten.

 

IIRC that someone beat PoE1 solo without leveling up, so even playing with all enemies upscaled to level 20 might be too easy for some...

[cokane]

Ya it's definitely easier. I'm playing on Veteran and haven't had to reload once. I've had a few fights where party members dropped, but nothing has ever felt threatening. I haven't even used an empower once and I'm almost never using potions or any other limited consumables because my party's basic skills seem to dominate every fight. And with casts per encounter, there's just no reason to hold back on those spells.

 

About 14 hours in and at level 7, so no true boss fights yet. We'll see. I'll be curious to try PoTD on a second playthrough.

[WrentheBird]

So far I am finding it a bit easier as well.

[Zeitzbach]

Maybe they could add an option to set the enemy level. So instead of upscaling it to match the watcher, it would go even higher. Same level is too easy? Try one or two above. Having no problem in PotD? Make it five or ten.

 

IIRC that someone beat PoE1 solo without leveling up, so even playing with all enemies upscaled to level 20 might be too easy for some...

 

Even with level 20, I doubt they will be able to do much. All they get are some stats and they never really use the higher tier skills. Notice how most of the moves AI do use are Foe Only outside a few mages spell. The only one you really see spamming that much Team AoE have a team with immunity to that skill.

 

And look at it this way, a level 7 with legendary gears (crookspur) can probably beat a level 20 enemy using Fine/Exceptional gears. With the new damage formula, the level 7 with legendary only need to land a few hits to kill while the level 20 needs to consistently crit to even deal some damage. Throw in a few broken combination like double Unbending for 100-150% health recovery per hit and we can already see what needs to be nerfed.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Zeitzbach

[Dorftek]

Yeah this is really discouraging and also very suprising considering that the game has had beta testers who probably also played the first game.

 

I sincerely hope that Obsidian realises the importance of this and really make a good effort to fix it.

 

In the meantime I'd suggest you guys who play games to also activate ur brain to play solo or with a max of 1 companion.

Alltho this might not make much difference in the late game if armour and pen is as bonkers as its stated here in this thread.

[syphonhail]

PoE1 when it launched was also easy, it became more and more challenging as they kept patching it. Deadfire will get the same treatment, they want to fix bugs first before they focus on tuning.

[Hazmy]

Generally this is way easier, but it doesn't bother me that much, except for two things.
 

• Per encounter abilities remove SOOOO MUCH strategizing from the game. I really liked it at the start, but now I just feel It makes the game sooo spammy.
• The practically infinite resting. It's just op. You can summon all your creatures every fight, use all your op per rest abilities every fight.

I really like the second game, I think it's superior to the first game, but it lost lots of it's charm to me as a strategic game. It became an amazing roleplaying game though.

PS : The only difficulty I had was Fampyrs, and only because I play currently without a priest in my party. How do you pronounce Fampyr 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Hazmy

[Zeitzbach]

Generally this is way easier, but it doesn't bother me that much, except for two things.

 

• Per encounter abilities remove SOOOO MUCH strategizing from the game. I really liked it at the start, but now I just feel It makes the game sooo spammy.
• The practically infinite resting. It's just op. You can summon all your creatures every fight, use all your op per rest abilities every fight.

I really like the second game, I think it's superior to the first game, but it lost lots of it's charm to me as a strategic game. It became an amazing roleplaying game though.

 

PS : The only difficulty I had was Fampyrs, and only because I play currently without a priest in my party. How do you pronounce Fampyr 

 

Restriction like that aren't really challenging and strategic though. If anything, per-rest based spell lean more toward tedious scale since you can circumvent all of the difficulty created from that by just running back to town before tackling the harder enemies because stuff don't respawn.

[PangaeaACDC]

Generally this is way easier, but it doesn't bother me that much, except for two things.

 

• Per encounter abilities remove SOOOO MUCH strategizing from the game. I really liked it at the start, but now I just feel It makes the game sooo spammy.
• The practically infinite resting. It's just op. You can summon all your creatures every fight, use all your op per rest abilities every fight.

I really like the second game, I think it's superior to the first game, but it lost lots of it's charm to me as a strategic game. It became an amazing roleplaying game though.

 

PS : The only difficulty I had was Fampyrs, and only because I play currently without a priest in my party. How do you pronounce Fampyr 

"Vam-pire" :D

 

I'm around 25-30 hours into the game, and so far it's been noticeably easier than POE1. I've not come across vampires or too many other wacky creatures, but combat on my level is pretty straightforward, and kinda boring tbh. I beat down some looters who were two levels above me, and that was a better fight. But I do tend to agree with the above post that using abilities in combat feels a bit spammy. I can just blow every top level ability right away, because 30 seconds from now they are all back. My party is up to level 9, and I haven't used a single empower. Never felt the need. Not even sure what it actually does.

 

The blasted bear and first dungeon (Eothas) in POE1 was pretty tough, so maybe it's a good thing overall the start isn't quite as spicy here, but my experience so far is that combat is much easier than in POE1 on the same difficulty (classic/normal), and long-term I don't think that will prove to be a great move.

 

Suspect they will need to do a lot of balancing to get it right.

Edited May 12, 2018 by PangaeaACDC

[Zeitzbach]

The hardest part about PoE1 is the level 1 to 5 because we barely have any gear, gold and skills. Moves are so heavily restricted and we just lose the dice roll by default unless we get really lucky. However, once we start spamming Devotion and Defense every fight to get rid of the dice roll disadvantage and start getting the best gear available, PoE1 also become easy and stay really easy.

 

So one reason we might really view PoE 2 as super easy is because the game skip the level 1 to 4 hard grind for us and throw us right into our power trip fantasy curve.

 

I don't think a simple +15 to defense and acc stat bonus is enough anymore based on both exp from PoE 1 and PoE 2. After balancing the damage bonus from armor, they should start making enemies gear upgrade after every X level, like all Fine gears become Exceptional at level 7 and Exceptional becomes Superb at level 12. It will ruin the economy but you already have inflated gold on veteran after level 10 so why even bother balancing the game hardest difficulty around income at this point? The vampyr at the bottom right island are only tough because they are all wearing superb stuff. The upscaled exceptional/fine stuff all melt.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Zeitzbach

[cokane]

The hardest part about PoE1 is the level 1 to 5 because we barely have any gear, gold and skills. Moves are so heavily restricted and we just lose the dice roll by default unless we get really lucky. However, once we start spamming Devotion and Defense every fight to get rid of the dice roll disadvantage and start getting the best gear available, PoE1 also become easy and stay really easy.

 

So one reason we might really view PoE 2 as super easy is because the game skip the level 1 to 4 hard grind for us and throw us right into our power trip fantasy curve.

 

I don't think a simple +15 to defense and acc stat bonus is enough anymore based on both exp from PoE 1 and PoE 2. After balancing the damage bonus from armor, they should start making enemies gear upgrade after every X level, like all Fine gears become Exceptional at level 7 and Exceptional becomes Superb at level 12. It will ruin the economy but you already have inflated gold on veteran after level 10 so why even bother balancing the game hardest difficulty around income at this point? The vampyr at the bottom right island are only tough because they are all wearing superb stuff. The upscaled exceptional/fine stuff all melt.

Really easy "hack" to make the opening of PoE1 easy is to buy a merc at the inn, then bee-line to Durance and Kana. You can then take your full party to clear out the wilderness areas and tackle Raedric and the temple. The latter two parts are still somewhat challenging.

 

I also disagree with the further above comment that PoE1 wasn't strategic because you could just pull out of the dungeon, rest and then come back. Yes... you could technically do that. But most players want to avoid that kind of tedium. And so I think most players still played the higher difficulties while strategizing around the limited camping equipment. I played several PotD playthroughs, and I didn't grind out dungeons by hoping back to town all the time. I cannot imagine many players did.

 

I mean for one example, you could technically grind out almost the entire Cad Nua dungeon as soon as you had Brighthollow up. But, I think, most players instead chose to do the dungeon a little bit at a time, matching their levels to the monsters.

[Zeitzbach]

Every time I run PotD on PoE 1, I just 2-man everything until nearly completion of Act 2 so that I can be level 10 or 11 before I even trigger defiance bay riot, recruit everyone and finish Endless Paths for gears which completely throw the game difficulty out of the window. Easy to get to level 16 before White march even happens. PoE1 was somewhat plagued by terrible AI and easy choke points which is why it's very easy to do that once you start throwing DoT or AoE, rest, repeat.

 

And as you mentioned, people are only being conservative because if they don't, the game become a lot more tedious. A game should not be tedious to be challenging. A good challenge should be like Alpine Dragon or Llangrath Double Dragon boss fight where the game expects you to be prepared and fully rested. (Too bad they are ruined by the fact you can prepare paralysis scroll)

Edited May 13, 2018 by Zeitzbach

[cokane]

Every time I run PotD on PoE 1, I just 2-man everything until nearly completion of Act 2 so that I can be level 10 or 11 before I even trigger defiance bay riot, recruit everyone and finish Endless Paths for gears which completely throw the game difficulty out of the window. Easy to get to level 16 before White march even happens. PoE1 was somewhat plagued by terrible AI and easy choke points which is why it's very easy to do that once you start throwing DoT or AoE, rest, repeat.

 

And as you mentioned, people are only being conservative because if they don't, the game become a lot more tedious. A game should not be tedious to be challenging. A good challenge should be like Alpine Dragon or Llangrath Double Dragon boss fight where the game expects you to be prepared and fully rested. (Too bad they are ruined by the fact you can prepare paralysis scroll)

Ya, can't diagree with what you said here. And yeah, the combat engine in PoE1 shined the most precisely in those big boss fights where you're expected to fully prep. I'm not super far along in Deadfire, so I am super curious how it handles those kind of marquis fights.

[master guardian]

The game in its current state is almost not playable becasue it is far to easy

 

If you can wait until they fix it for a better experiecnce

[whiskiz]

PoE1 when it launched was also easy, it became more and more challenging as they kept patching it. Deadfire will get the same treatment, they want to fix bugs first before they focus on tuning.

 

Both things that are (should be) done *before release*

 

I can't believe they had to choose between bugfixes and balancing the game, even with a month release delay.

 

This is unheard of anywhere else and really kinda retarded.

 

Guess ill keep waiting til ****s fixed.

 

 

Generally this is way easier, but it doesn't bother me that much, except for two things.

 

• Per encounter abilities remove SOOOO MUCH strategizing from the game. I really liked it at the start, but now I just feel It makes the game sooo spammy.
• The practically infinite resting. It's just op. You can summon all your creatures every fight, use all your op per rest abilities every fight.

I really like the second game, I think it's superior to the first game, but it lost lots of it's charm to me as a strategic game. It became an amazing roleplaying game though.

 

PS : The only difficulty I had was Fampyrs, and only because I play currently without a priest in my party. How do you pronounce Fampyr  

 

You mean you actually get to play your character now, without having to save each skill use like it's some consumable or something? Good.

 

PoE 1 per rest was dumb, entire classes with only per rest more so, it didnt add any strategy or skill cause you could rest almost anywhere any time.

 

It was pointless, needless, tedious, restrictive and reduced you to only using maybe a low level spell or 2 on most fights, auto attacking 80% of combat, then blowing everything and facerolling boss fights or anything with a hint of difficulty, even on PotD.

 

"SOOO MUCH Strategizing"  Really?

 

"Just makes the game feel spammy" Do you also find the game spammy when you play something like Diablo 3, or any mmo, or any other game ever? If not, then why all of sudden do we need our character and their abilities completely restricted here? Because an old game this game is based off did that?..

 

Being able to actually use your characters properly now, like almost any other game in the gaming industry, is great - the game just needs to be balanced properly around it, and if almost every game in the gaming industry can manage that, these guys should be able to too.

 

No excuse. 

Edited May 13, 2018 by whiskiz

[Zeitzbach]

 

PoE1 when it launched was also easy, it became more and more challenging as they kept patching it. Deadfire will get the same treatment, they want to fix bugs first before they focus on tuning.

 

Both things that are done *before release*

 

I can't believe they had to choose between bugfixes and balancing the game, even with a month release delay.

 

This is unheard of anywhere else and really kinda retarded.

 

Guess ill keep waiting til ****s fixed.

 

 

It's the normal go-to practice that modern games should be accessible by everyone even on the harder difficulty. They just make em harder over time. The only exception being reflex-based gameplay.

[whiskiz]

 

 

PoE1 when it launched was also easy, it became more and more challenging as they kept patching it. Deadfire will get the same treatment, they want to fix bugs first before they focus on tuning.

 

Both things that are done *before release*

 

I can't believe they had to choose between bugfixes and balancing the game, even with a month release delay.

 

This is unheard of anywhere else and really kinda retarded.

 

Guess ill keep waiting til ****s fixed.

 

 

It's the normal go-to practice that modern games should be accessible by everyone even on the harder difficulty. They just make em harder over time. The only exception being reflex-based gameplay.

 

 

Um, i disagree.

 

Where else exactly, do devs release a game where hard is actually easy and then make it hard after release? For every maybe random 1 needle in the haystack you can mention, i can mention 30 that don't do that.

 

That is definitely by no means the industry standard. 

 

They even said they haven't balanced the difficulty properly yet, that it's because they had to choose between bugfixes or balancing difficulty. It wasn't purposely made more "accessible" or anything.

 

Lol.

Edited May 13, 2018 by whiskiz

[Zeitzbach]

D:OS2 is a good example of a more recent game pf this genre where the hardest mode is a joke once you realize the game is just number stat fest where overgearing and overleveling is more important than strategy.

 

Just like PoE 2 atm.

 

This is something a lot of RPG suffers from and it's why companies are trying to add more reflex-based action to the game to make it easier to balance for higher difficulty. Having to figure out all the broken combinations and customize the AI to be genius level is not something they can really do, especially on the AI parts. PvE will never be hard if the game don't make it completely unfair like you dying in a single hit while they take 10 or 20 to be down'd.

 

And in a heavy number game like PoE, It's far better to make the mode accessible at first and tune it up over time. It's a common practice ever since constant patching has become the norm for game development. You have to go for some kind of indie rogue lite turn-base that remove the over level and overgear element in favor for RNG instead for the higher difficulty on release.

Edited May 13, 2018 by Zeitzbach

[Mihai]

After reading all your comments I was pretty sure I'll start on POTD, but after checking to see if I can change the difficulty from POTD to HARD with the console (you can!), I'll definitely start on POTD. If I don't like it I'll just lower the difficulty. It lowers the defenses of the enemies even in the area you are curently in, but it won't delete the extra enemies though. (only in the areas you've not entered yet)

 

Thanks everyone!

Edited May 13, 2018 by Mihai

[Yenkaz]

Playing on veteran, it feels somewhere between the mid level normal and hard difficulties of POE, depending on the individual area.

[Mihai]

Altough I played the first game mostly on veteran (tried POTD once or twice), if this game is easier then it definitely won't do. (btw, do you guys use leveling scaling? because it would be a pretty big difference if not). 

Edited May 13, 2018 by Mihai

[Sanctuary]

If you liked Hard on the first game, I recommend going to PotD on this one. They are roughly comparable -- which is to say, PotD is much easier than it was in the first game.

 

That's been the only downside of the best RPG (so far) I've played since Baldur's Gate 2. It reminds me so much of BG2, really feels the same. Which is the highest compliment I can pay a video game.

 

I know it's just your opinion (I've actually seen some others claiming similar), but for this to actually feel more like BG2, the characters would need to have been better written, stealth needs to not be so terrible (playing a backstabber is way different in this than in the BG games), but most of all, the offensive spell casting in this game is just awful.  It's no fun at all.  You either exploit it via Empower > Rest shennanigans, or you may as well be shooting spitwads for the first ten levels.  It doesn't help either at the glacial pace that is required to actually reach the "fun" spells either.  CC spells are about as bad too.  Half of them either take an eternity to cast, or they simply get resisted.  All that's left are defensive spells, and none of those actually buff the player to be more offensive and seem to ONLY exist for some random Battlemage "tank" that isn't really meant to do damage other than the occasional fan of flames or damage shield (oh boy!).

 

This game is all or nothing.  You have to wear no armor, or go ultra heavy, so you're either fast and made of tissue, or tough, but slow as molassas.  Spells are super weak unless exploiting, then super powerful mid to mid-late game.  Most of the encounters are exactly the same too, which isn't really much like the BG games either.  The only way it reminds me of those games would be the layout of the big cities, and the way they look at times, but that's about it.

Edited May 13, 2018 by Sanctuary