The General Level Scaling / Difficulty Thread (not POTD)

[bruxmeister]

Hello,

 

want to know opinion from more POE2 experienced players about game difficulty. I have played 30 ish or so hours on Veteran level with lvl scaling. I am quite disappointed. In one or two encounters I had to use some abilities, rest is just auto-attacking and its enough. After reaching Old City at character level 9 I gave up and restarted game on Path of the Damned to feel at least some sign of challenge. Its very early to say if this will be challenging so I am asking you. Please be honest, i do not have much free time to play, so if I play, I want to invest time into something worthwhile playing (Do not include game story as a reason to play). Friend of mine has completed his 1st run on same veteran conditions as I started and told me that since 10th character level he had not really do anything creative to win encounters. 

Is this true? So i don't really need to think about itemization? Editing Grimoire was already removed, no need to lay traps, use of drugs, potions, environment layout, party synergies etc. So Head ON every fight and just beat them with weapons? 

 

After finishing Path of the Damned is there something else? If not, if this is all that there is to beat, well then in my eyes, it is pure disappointment.

 

Well this concerns me much, because POE1 could be quite challenging. 

[wih]

Two days before the release Josh Sawyer said they didn't have enough time to tune Path of the Damned, so it is uneven. They intend to fix it, but it may take weeks.

In addition, people say level scaling is not working currently and the game is just plain too easy.

While I am sure that Obsidian will fix and balance things eventually, you are probably better off postponing your playthrough.

[bruxmeister]

Two days before the release Josh Sawyer said they didn't have enough time to tune Path of the Damned, so it is uneven. They intend to fix it, but it may take weeks.

In addition, people say level scaling is not working currently and the game is just plain too easy.

While I am sure that Obsidian will fix and balance things eventually, you are probably better off postponing your playthrough.

Thanks for advice, thanks for pointing me to right direction and after reading little about this whole issue i decided to stop to play. I just fear that it will take more than few weeks to fix it properly because throwing more enemies at you is not wanted.

 

One thing still bugs me, why to launch this game when level of difficulty is joke? As I played on veteran level, i cant image "normal" difficulty... Ranger's pet can kill everyone alone? 

[tela2k]

I am surprised at many of the comments and vitriol in this thread. I enjoy playing a challenging game in any of my RPGs and have been doing so for decades, however, to say that a game is unplayable, crap, and many other over the top adjectives is just hyperbole and really reads like whining.

 

If you would like a harder game and challenge that's great, but don't force it on others or say the game is broken because you are not having your perceived ideal experience.

 

Josh Sawyer has been honest and commented that PotD can be improved and I expect them to do so when they get the time to review stats and balance the game further post launch. This game has a challenging option available for players who appreciate that, but this is by no means a masochist delight game only with insane challenge. It is catered to RPG enthusiasts and infinity engine aficionados who enjoyed those games.

 

As I mentioned above, I agree that having a challenging option is needed and I am looking forward to tweaks. Also, it does seem like scaling can be improved, although I haven't played enough to really have data to support that scaling is broken or not. So far it seems off in my playthrough in certain aspects but not broken. Share data with dev's and your experience in a positive, fair and balanced manner and we maximize our chances to improve the game and have a more reasonable dialogue.

 

Finally, if you are going to go through the critical path and maybe off a bit and happen to level up fast, you will likely outlevel some fights but definitely not all. For example, it is interesting to me that people say everything is so easy, when right after Port Maje I have been exploring islands in the lower part of the left of the map with PotD/All Scaling at level 5 and there are some encounters that are insane at that level/gear/skills available - i.e. 4 Eotens 1 shooting Eder and my Paladin then murdering the rest of my party, or the Pwgra with 5 other adds, or Leofwyn (can be done with creative pathing and lucky rolls as I did it), or fighting a Galleon... So yeah, want a challenge? Try those early on, otherwise, enjoy the game and story, and if combat is the only thing that truly excites you, then yeah, you might need to wait a bit more until the game is further balanced in PotD. I am looking forward to the balances as combat is a core experience for me in RPGs.

 

Cheers.

 

Well if you're still early in the game I'll just say, that to me it felt like there was an on/off switch in the game after you start finding legendary gear.

Even without all the crazy legendary effects just that couple of points of pen and armor just seemed to completely trivialise combat.

 

The early game fights are engaging enough and I'm sure if you venture to the high lvl zones early the game can get very punishing.

Problem is if you do those early on with consumables and possibly add some cheese on top you'll start finding legendary gear even earlier and thus turn the difficulty switch earlier.

And I realise it's a common problem with RPGs that late game stuff just gets really easy if you min/max, but we aren't really talking about late game here,

legendary gear is so abundant that it just happens really fast.

 

The game isn't forever ruined or anything, it's actually looking to be a fantastic game, and I have a lot of respect for Obsidian for caring about their games enough to keep tweaking them long after release. But right now the combat just is so poorly balanced that for me the game, despite all the improvements in many areas, just felt like a disappointment on the first playthrough. And I'm mostly concerned with how they're going to balance it going forward, because like I was trying to point out in my wall of text above there are a lot of ways to go about fixing the problems. Josh said in some interview I watched, that they like to balance by making everything crazy and then "tuning down", which to me sounds like there's going to be a massive wave of nerfs. Personally I would prefer them going the buff the mobs, add more of them and redesign encounters to be tougher route. Also honestly I think some extra late game content is needed, but I guess that'll come in the form of DLCs. I'm fairly sure you should always have a couple of "WTH?" fights in the game as side content. But we'll see what they end up doing. 

[Sedrefilos]

Path of the Damned is, right now, according to path-of-the-damned-ers way too easy. I play on normal and I find the challenge... normal
I speculate normal is the most challenging mode right now

[Gmeiser]

I had the same question, we should be able to change the difficulty, at least in the menu, the game would load with the new changes

[whiskiz]

It doesn't matter - they said they had to choose between bugfixes and balancing difficulty, especially the harder difficulties, before release.

 

Even though they apparently already delayed the release a month for bugfixes.

 

Guess which option they chose.

 

People are saying even PotD is easy because of it, so it doesn't matter either way currently.

 

I'm personally waiting to get this until they balance it - i don't want to faceroll ruin it. Maybe play PoE 1 again while waiting or something else.

 

Apparently the people wanting to play on a harder difficulty are only a minority though and so it's not as important. (other people on the forums, not the devs this time)

Edited May 18, 2018 by whiskiz

[White_Fang]

Hi

 

I'm I assume about half way through the game at about 40 hrs, and I'm finding most of it too easy. I'm on Veteran difficulty, without level scaling and most fights I walk through with no effort.

 

I tried to turn on Level Scaling (Only up) but it wont seem to let me after game the starts and I can't increase it to Path of the Damned.

 

Is there anything I can do? I'm enjoying most of the game, but it doesn't seem to be the challenge the first one was and I looked forward to some of the fights I had to try and try to complete.  I now wish I'd started with at least level scaling, and probably Path of the Damned, but after investing so many hours into it it seems a waste to start over (along with half the storyline now being spoilt for me)

 

Is there a solution to this? I looked online and someone said something about a difficulty patch, but I have no idea when that'll arrive, probably after I've finished it. I would really like to get as much out of this play through as possible and the ease I'm going through it takes away from the experience.

Edited May 19, 2018 by White_Fang

[Edolamberto]

Playng in PoTD and im thinking to restart (im lvl 12).. Game is too easy without scaling.. BUT i really dislike the fact that u can't see the skulls indicators if u turn it on.. I tried level scaling once but it seems that some fight or way above your level and clearly impossible to beat and no indicator tell me that.. 

what do you think?

[Zeratul]

Well, the question is pretty much in the name of the thread. I'm desperately overleveled and most fights in quests without skulls feel like it's story mode (and not PotD) which effectively locks me out of like 20 active quests. It's especially inconvenient since, unlike the PotD, there was no warning that you can't turn the level scaling on after the start of the game... Maybe there is a way to do it via console, achievements be damned?

[Purudaya]

There doesn't seem to be a level scaling option in the console. I'm in a similar situation — I turned on upward level scaling for the critical path only and really wish I had done it for everything. It also completely disables skulls, which is frustrating.

 

This wasn't as much of a problem in PoE1 as the game presented you with side content in stages. In a game with a largely open world where you can tackle things at your own pace and easily become over leveled, some degree of scaling should be on by default and opted out of, not into.

[flamesium]

Definitely Scale Up All.

 

I agree the lack of difficulty indicator is annoying (it’s being changed) but unless you make a habit of going to places without a quest or bounty leading you there I don’t think you will get in over your head that often. Especially with the difficulty as low as it is by now.

 

Obviously if you insist on exploring areas at random then meeting enemies who will kick your ass is the risk you take, which is probably how it should be.

[Mikeymoonshine]

Yeah the skulls should be visible if you are only scaling up right? Seems like an oversight if not a bug. Scaling certainly makes the game more challenging on potd tho it was still a cake walk on veteran even with scaling.

[Edolamberto]

thanks averyone.. with the new patch i went with scale critical path only

[Wormerine]

Yeah the skulls should be visible if you are only scaling up right? Seems like an oversight if not a bug. Scaling certainly makes the game more challenging on potd tho it was still a cake walk on veteran even with scaling.

There is no logical reason not to show too high level areas when scaling up only. It’s not ideological limitation, but a technical one. The difficulty indicator is static and responds to your level only. To have it work with scaling it would require to add functionality to it to recognise what level is being scaled or disable indicators showing “below your level”.

 

Hopefully, it will be patched in the future.

[Riftis]

Yeah I set it to only scale upwards and I can see the skulls. Only scaling up seems like the best setting imo because when encounters are level appropriate through scaling they're still pretty easy anyway, I find.  

Edited May 20, 2018 by Riftis

[Edolamberto]

Yeah I set it to only scale upwards and I can see the skulls. Only scaling up seems like the best setting imo because when encounters are level appropriate through scaling they're still pretty easy anyway, I find.  

 not working for me ( even with new patch no skull and some clearly unbalanced fight

did u set to scale everything? up only right?

mine is critical path only always up but no skull

Edited May 20, 2018 by Edolamberto

[whiskiz]

Playng in PoTD and im thinking to restart (im lvl 12).. Game is too easy without scaling.. BUT i really dislike the fact that u can't see the skulls indicators if u turn it on.. I tried level scaling once but it seems that some fight or way above your level and clearly impossible to beat and no indicator tell me that.. 

what do you think?

 

I think you should wait until they actually finish the game, actually balance it, before worrying about the difficulty.

 

They apparently either had to choose between bugfixing or balancing PotD/Vet before release, even with a whole month delay of release for bugfixing. Guess what they went with.

 

Balancing will apparently be done post release - im personally waiting to get the game until its finished properly, you may wanna do the same so as not to ruin it for you, beforehand.

 

Level scaling apparently wasn't working on release too, so there's that. Was still buggy as well.

 

Gone are the days of actually finishing a game before releasing it.

 

So if you're wanting challenge, you may want to hold off altogether.

Edited May 20, 2018 by whiskiz

[Edolamberto]

 

Playng in PoTD and im thinking to restart (im lvl 12).. Game is too easy without scaling.. BUT i really dislike the fact that u can't see the skulls indicators if u turn it on.. I tried level scaling once but it seems that some fight or way above your level and clearly impossible to beat and no indicator tell me that..

what do you think?

I think you should wait until they actually finish the game, actually balance it, before worrying about the difficulty.

 

They apparently either had to choose between bugfixing or balancing PotD/Vet before release, even with a whole month delay of release for bugfixing. Guess what they went with.

 

Balancing will apparently be done post release - im personally waiting to get the game until its finished properly, you may wanna do the same so as not to ruin it for you, beforehand.

 

Level scaling apparently wasn't working on release too, so there's that. Was still buggy as well.

 

Gone are the days of actually finishing a game before releasing it.

 

So if you're wanting challenge, you may want to hold off altogether.

thanks but i really want to play anyway.. I just wish there was a way to play with scale on but seeing skull for non critical path encounters

[Arnegar]

So I'm trying to figure out what it is that's causing the game to be so easy. Clearly changes are needed, at least for PotD, but which changes? Here are my observations:

 

- It's not really an accuracy/deflection thing. Those values seem alright. If anything, spellcaster accuracy in the early game is hopeless and doesn't start to become decent until level 6 or so. In the first parts of the game, if you cast an AoE on 5 enemies, the usual outcome is 3x miss and 2x graze. Even with maxed perception.

 

- It's not the damage done by enemies, either. They hit plenty hard. If you choose to make a squishy wizard with 3 resolve and 7 con or something, he'll get 1-shotted even by trash mobs.

 

- Most enemies could use some more health. Once you get to level 10 or so, you just mow down entire groups of dudes in seconds. Also there's some weird situations in places where enemies have 1 health for some reason.

 

- Enemies use oddly little crowd control. I find that I almost never get hit with hard CC. This used to be a big danger in PoE1, but here it barely happens. Maybe it's because of these resistance mechanics that downgrade effects to something less.

[morhilane]

Enemies health is a big issue. My chanter was "one-shooting" Rathun with Seven Nights She Waited While the White Winds Wept because they sometimes get hit twice for 70-80 damage. That means about ~150 hp at level 12-13 (that was my level). Only Aloth in my party had less hp than that when I encountered them...

 

In POE1, Dank Spore at level 4 has 216 endurance. Ogre, level 6, over 300 endurance. A Bug Lurker, level 15, 600 endurance...

 

Hard CC do happen, I was paralyzed, charmed/dominated and terrified (against the guardian mostly). But there is a general issue with enemies scripts to use abilities, It's like they are on "cautious".

[Taurus]

Interesting takes.

 

Do you think number of enemies in encounters is also affecting it?

 

What is your take on the new penetration mechanics as well?

[dunehunter]

Well with Swift Flurry combo the enemy health pool is meaningless, you gonna one shot them anyway.

Edited May 20, 2018 by dunehunter

[darkhain]

Monster's accuracy is also a problem, because with party you can buff up defense and accuracy so high, mobs won't hit or you won't miss them often.

[lonelornfr]

So I'm trying to figure out what it is that's causing the game to be so easy. Clearly changes are needed, at least for PotD, but which changes? Here are my observations:

 

- It's not really an accuracy/deflection thing. Those values seem alright. If anything, spellcaster accuracy in the early game is hopeless and doesn't start to become decent until level 6 or so. In the first parts of the game, if you cast an AoE on 5 enemies, the usual outcome is 3x miss and 2x graze. Even with maxed perception.

 

- It's not the damage done by enemies, either. They hit plenty hard. If you choose to make a squishy wizard with 3 resolve and 7 con or something, he'll get 1-shotted even by trash mobs.

 

- Most enemies could use some more health. Once you get to level 10 or so, you just mow down entire groups of dudes in seconds. Also there's some weird situations in places where enemies have 1 health for some reason.

 

- Enemies use oddly little crowd control. I find that I almost never get hit with hard CC. This used to be a big danger in PoE1, but here it barely happens. Maybe it's because of these resistance mechanics that downgrade effects to something less.

 

When my warrior tank has 127 deflection unbuffed and a zillion engagement slots and puts anyone who try to disengage on its a$$, i'd say the accuracy / deflection game is a bit rigged. Once i pop refreshing defense / disciplined strikes, i can just charge into any group of enemies, never get it and knocked them down if they ever try to move.

 

Also the enemies' strategy (AI) is just bad. They could be a lot more annoying if they acted smart. Rogues enemies for instance could easily and efficiently focus your backline, to the point that any encounters against rogues would be a huge pain.