I hardly ever play a game until it has been out for about six months, but I am really itching to play this one. The only thing holding me back is that I hear that there are some annoying imbalances that rear their head starting mid game. Something about tenebrium, resistances being overpowered, etc. I am not up on the details because I don't want the game spoiled for me AT ALL.

Having said that, can anybody provide some input as to the state of overall balance in the game? Nothing spoilerish, but in general, would you recommend now to be a good time to launch fully into the game? Or would it be better to hold off for a few more months if you want resistance issues fixed, weapons more balanced, etc.?

Hopefully it shouldn't take a few more months. The latest kickstarter update said "in the coming weeks" when mentioning new skills (dual wielding and Wand are mentioned in the game files since the latest update) and difficulty modes. There have already been some balancing changes with regards to resistances, which are part of some larger balancing changes in the works.

Thanks for the reply. That is interesting to know about the new content that will hopefully be available soon.

I guess my biggest concern is the game reportedly getting too easy around mid game because of your character getting too overpowered. I've always enjoyed brutal difficulty in RPGs, having all odds stacked against me. Games turning into a cakewalk halfway through is a major turnoff; should always get more difficult, on the whole, as you progress.

If this does not describe the current state of the game, I guess I will hold off for a little while longer.

That does not describe the current state of the game; I think you'll need to wait for the new difficult modes.

It does get easier but cakewalk is exaggerated. But I agree it's probably better for you to wait for the new difficulty modes. Hopefully they're not just +enemy health/-player damage though.

Unfortunately no - no exaggeration. Even as a RPG newbie in my first playthrough I found the fights after Hiberheim astonishingly easy, although I had to correct some character setups by adding abilities to drain resistances and willpower after leaving Cyseal.

I think I had 3 character deaths in my first attempt on normal shortly before the final battle, 2 of them in Cyseal in the first fights. The fights really tend to be on the easy side, although you might feel different as some enemies are hard (= long time) to kill, but at a closer look their damage output is often lacking (like Boreas).

The key is of course crowd control and battle setup - brute strength and blindly storming into the fihgts can be a way to desaster.

Regards,
Thorsten

Definitely should wait for the next patch, when new difficulty options become available, and perhaps some other adjustments are made.

I played before the resistance revamp up to the winter area, and it became quite easy -- such as beating two bosses even before they got initiative to attack. Granted I stole everything for cash, learned vendors have infinite inventories if you just vist them every so often, bought out all the legendaries, (didn't abuse skillbooks though), bought mats and crafted for more income...

Anyways, I realized I made myself much more powerful than the game intended me to be (at least at that point.) So i put this game on hold, to see what they come up with. I'm waiting for the new difficulty settings to give it another go...

Yeah the easy difficulty is WAY too easy and the normal difficulty is hardly 'normal'.

Normal difficulty is just what the game was balanced for. The other difficulties are just some number tweaking relative to the "normal" difficulty. Said number tweaking makes a pretty big difference last I saw some numbers.

But that's just how I see it. What do you mean by normal being hardly normal?

So in other words, you were an RPG newbie, you experienced the beginning of the game as an RPG boot camp, and suddenly the game became a lot easier because you learned how to play an RPG.

Wow, what a surprise.


I think he means that Normal difficulty is balanced still too easy. I somewhat agree with that. I played a pretty unoptimized party (half-intentionally.. though mostly for fun 'theme' purposes) and felt like I normal difficulty was balanced enough. On the other hand, if you actually spent time designing your characters/party well then normal difficulty becomes too easy.

That being said it's kinda semantics, in other words, ignore than "Normal" is called "Normal" and just think that there's difficulty is numbers 1, 2, 3, or whatever. Hard is okay if you optimize your party (to a degree - e.g. not using unbalanced traits like Lone Wolf + Glass Cannon).

I do have to reiterate, though, that I would like Harder difficulties to result in difficult encounters in terms of changing the actual encounters, better enemy party design, more skills used by enemies, better AI, etc. Not just +enemy health/-PC health/+enemy damage/-PC damage/etc. Of course that's not an easy approach but it's much more preferable.

Normal difficulty is totally unbalanced once you leave Cyseal, at least for melee and ranged attacks. Easy mode is also way too easy, you will easily crush most enemies without them even getting a chance to fight back. It feels like having god mode enabled.

The biggest problem is that the poorly balanced hit ratio. My warrior and archer can't hit for shit after Cyseal and were having 75% or higher hit chance in the Cyseal maps. After six months, this game should finally have these issues fixed. Mages, however, always hit their target with spells, though effects like blind and stunned don't always work.

The blood letting spell for witchcraft I've found useful as that does melee damage and always hits the target. Also the staff of magus spell acts the same way as if you would hit the enemy with your staff. I've used this spell to make a staff that does fire damage ignite oil and poison from afar and watch the enemies blow up and burn.

The story and character conversations are really great. It is just combat that is a mess, though it is slowly getting better with each update. By December the game should really be awesome and fine tuned. It will be a game that will be enjoyable 20 years from now.

As far as I know ALL skills ALWAYS hit but special effects like knockdown can be resisted. Normal Attack is not a skill. Also you have a 100% hit chance against stunned or knowdowned people. So the combat is about incapitating the enemy.

Right, skills always hit, normal attacks have a chance to miss or get blocked. If you're having trouble hitting things that are your level (or even 2-3 levels higher), it usually means your primary stat isn't high enough, so your offensive rating isn't high enough. Bless can also be handy, esp. for bows.

The game gets easier after Cyseal, but that's a combination of learning how to play better and your characters/gear getting better. You can still die pretty easily on Hard if you just run in and act like a buffoon. I'd appreciate a harder difficulty that didn't just rely on pumping enemy stats and lowering yours, but we'll see what Larian is planning...

Wrong catch. If a complete newbie to RPG regards the fights as easy after his learning curve, the figths ARE easy.

Regards,
Thorsten

I was giving the game another go tonight. It seems all my problems with Luculla forest are "left over" bugs that were not resolved. I seem to be having the hit % problems with the npc's/monsters on the west side of the map. Going to the mines and killing off those goblins didn't give me too much of an issue.

I would recommend killing off all the goblins to the mines and even the immaculates there until you see those invulnerable knights. Then you should be able to go to the immaculat trials without as much of an issue.

There are still problems, but I can clearly see improvements being made. Huge ones.

Just curious as you say you are considering missing your attacks as a bug, what was your level when fighting the monsters on the left side of Luculla? They are level 14 so if you are several levels lower than that you will miss often, this is just general scaling.

The goblins are all around level 12 and its optimal to take that route first (story-wise aswell, hence why they are lower level, thus easier to subdue) - however you obviously can take the other, harder route if wanted and go to the mines later.

There are no issues. You took a wrong track and ended up fighting many levels above you or/and you forgot to put points into your primary stats like strength.

Coming out level 12/13 from Hiberheim it is easy either way - Luculla mines or Immaculate trials first.

Regards,
Thorsten

No, it means you became less of a newbie as you played past Cyseal. And I said the game is easy in the second half. But it's not a cakewalk.

I don't think it has much to do with player skill in this case. Near the end of Cyseal, you have enough diversity in skills to be able incapacitate the strongest opponents in any given fight before they get a chance to act. It doesn't take much skill or planning to most fights from that point onwards.

The Source Difficulty mod has a smarter approach to this issue by rebalancing SPD/Willpower/Bodybuilding/skills for most enemies so they would not be trivial to remove from combat. I expect Larian to take the same approach to their "harder" difficulties as well.

That was another area when playing with all the #'s was I took a -5 on our guys initiative, so they don't always start first. Pretty amazing how resourceful your players can be, instead of us getting all the hits in first and a large advantage, them getting their knocks in first sometimes, makes it start out seeming hopeless, but our guys are resilient and after the end of the fight you feel pretty satisfied.

The problem here is common, I mean for many players, and it's fault of design.

There are skills/spells to increase your ToHit significantly. But they show lame numbers as 1 or 2 and only for few rounds. Psychologically most players will just reject those skills/spells because of the lame numbers. It could be wrong choice logically but it's still the result.

The design should have shown more appealing numbers to attract attention of player on tools to increase ToHit.

Those tools are buffer/debuff mainly on attributes and also through some states, this includes increase luck that increase ToHit, decrease/increase attributes, surround enemy to lower its defense or increase your ToHit, some states on enemies that will increase a lot your ToHit, some more I can't remember now.

I quote your post but it could have been another. But you write, "Hopefully they're not just"...

This evokes all the complexity of difficulty design. I also felt overall a lowdown of difficulty, it was before last patches that are supposed to have change Dark Forest combats. But when I played Dark Forest area during my first play, I skipped most combats, not because they was too hard but because it was more fun to sneak through.

This is leading to a core game problem the dev will hardler fix:
- Class design isn't enough progressive, overall you can rush your character building and get most at level 10, and almost anything at level 14, and really all at level 16. The links with difficulty is no significant new skills doesn't help offer new problems to players.
- The second element is purely design of each combats, if level progressions and enemies change hardly ensure new problems for players, design of each combats would be the way to offer now problems. Because difficulty isn't just tougher, it's also new problems to solve.
- The third problems is OP tricks. For many party builds you could apply a few tricks through most combats. So it makes feel the combats easy because it's just repeat.

Fix first point is almost impossible, I mean without design a new game.

Fix second point is a huge work because improve and tune the design of many combats is a lot of work and can have many side effects. A point is it doesn't help that most combats are outdoor allowing some easy tactics to player.

Fix third point is perhaps part of the coming change about difficulty and balances, it's still a huge work.

No. If a player choses to not observe and think, fine, than he has to live with the consequences.

Your statement would make chess a game with "fault of design" just because players know they can change a pawn into a queen reaching the back rang of the enemy but noone took the players hand in a move losing just another pawn and hindered him doing so.

Regards,
Thorsten

I have roughly 550 hours of game time since I got the game last month. I am on my 3rd play through so I don't profess to be an expert I do know something about the game and what works for me and what doesn't work.

My primary reason for posting is a recent update in Steam where one of the notes from Larian stated that they adjusted the game balance! Adjusted is a broad term IMO, the word is really "ruined the game balance"

As an example, King Boreas. This fight for me was a nightmare the 1st time out and I beat it on the 3rd try. In my co-op games we managed to kill the boss after about 20 turns and it was barely! On my 2nd play through with more game experience, choosing the right gear and the right skills, the battle went smoother but was still a challenge. After the recent "balance" patch I was able to get the boss to half health on turn one! I even checked to make sure the game wasn't on easy for some reason, and it wasn't. The good king was dead an buried before he was able to summon his 3rd set of elemental minions. Way to easy and quite a let down. Yes my game skill has improved quite a bit but this was way too easy. I notice a definite bug where the boss will just stand still for 4 or 5 turns, do nothing at all! Then as soon as his/her last minion is dead the boss suddenly comes to life.

There is another battle in Laculla Forrest against Orcs. There is a female orc caster and an elite warrior. On Turn one, the orcs turn the female orc summons her war party and then the battle heats up. On my 3rd play through after the patch, the two orcs are dead before they even get a turn! I reloaded it and skipped my turn just so more enemies would spawn and I'd get the exp for the whole group instead of just two!

Prior to the patch a level 3 or 4 trying to take on a level 7 was pure suicide. Now? My group of level 4s wiped out 5 or 6 level 7 wolves in the Cyseal zone. Now that is just wrong :(

The combat has become busy work, its just too easy. Yes, I bumped the difficulty to hard and now instead of killing them all in 1 turn, it takes 2 or 3..yay!

So Larian maybe you need to set up a play mode, lets call it "classic" and revert back to your original play balance and then an easy mode for people that are new to the game or need some help to get over that one battle they just cant seem to win.

I am in my 4th playthrough, only 2 completed. I did not notice any diffculty change in battles except minor tweaks (the source spider in black cove e.g., before change significantly harder water attacks but no minions, now less severe water attacks but 3 mini spiders added).

Boreas was easy the first time and is easy now. The wolves, I just ran accidentially into them with a party level 5 and without the hound support, were always easy, the main challenge is to keep the one character alive that they focus on with their speed.

Sorry, I disagree. No major change. If fights become much easier you changed tactics or have a better skilled party. Quite normal.

Regards,
Thorsten

His point was that many gamers refuse to use activateable skills that only have very short durations. And prefer long duration and direct effect actions.

2 rounds hit chance up on 1 dude (which still does not guarantee hits)? Or setting all enemies on fire, blasting them with meteors and setting a frozen wall up so that they can't get to you? Guess what most players choose.

And in D:OS, the hit chance up buff is never the right choice Even when I have the choice just between THAT and HEALING I would always choose healing. Because a dead dude never deals damage in that combat again. So killing enemies and preventing enemies from killing your own dudes is how D:OS works. The Hit Chance stuff should be among many toggleable auras.

You make very good points and I do not disagree with them at all. I wish designers at the start of a new game would take into account such "difficulty modes." But I wish Larian the best of luck in this, I do definitely understand it's a tough process.

However, one point I'd like to refine. I'm actually okay with increasing enemy damage. I'm not okay with increasing enemy health.

The latter results in health bloat, which is one of the most annoying aspects of any game.

The former evokes a "Glass Cannon"-esque gameplay, which while on paper is "even," is a more fun playstyle (for me).

For example I love the "deadly/realistic" modes in certain non-arcadey FPS, where you and your opponent both can die in one hit (headshot, at least). Neither the player nor his enemy actually has it more difficult, but the atmosphere and encounters put you much more on your toes.

Okay now my train of thought is going... Does "harder" difficulty require nerfs to players along with buffs to enemies? What if both groups were nerfed in playstyle (see the last paragraph) so that it would still present a significant difficulty hurdle for the player.

The problem with making things harder in any other way than truly changing the type of challenge that is in front of the player is that the tools to deal with situations are not all that vast. You have buffs, debuffs, mitigation, crowd control and damage..that's really it. Players will always be at an advantage unless you pay for a ridiculously horrendous Ai system that can out think the player. Most games don't have that, so they do what they can to disadvantage the player. They make the enemies do way more damage, have more resistance and access to better gear..but act stupidly. The problem with this and mods that increase difficulty by ramping up numbers or even trying to level the playing field is that you completely eradicate the one major component the game has going for it, variety. Right now, you don't HAVE to play a certain way to win, if you make it very difficult with numbers then you would have to do certain things to win. Make resistance or WP too high then you have to have a class with a debuff to resistances, make poison heal enemies so much then you force players to stay out of melee..you may think its tactical, most people will find this kind of play repetitive and boring because the combat becomes formulaic and methodical.

A die in one hit scenario would be horrible for an RPG, it's just not set up for it..at all.

I think what you truly need is more skills that do more interesting things, most of the skills repeat themselves in other forms..fast track = wildfire, invisibility = hide in shadows, damage is damage then the AI for the enemies needs to get much smarter, it needs more variance and logic. The enemies need to understand when lightning strike is better than blitz bolt, when ricochet is meaningless and a basic attack is better etc. Honestly anything other than teaching the enemies how to fight better is simply glossing over numbers and pretending its harder when its not..its narrowing the necessary skill set, forcing players to play a certain way and beefing up the enemies with numbers to compensate for the lack of intelligence.

i heard somewhere that Larian will add a new harder difficultly level!
That would be great!

You want a harder game? Just use two characters on hard mode.

Its just to easy - especially in the mid and end game.
Tenebrium and resistances are overpowered!!!

@ Larian Developers
In the next Patch i would like to see some game balance

Not if you get Lone Wolf, haha.

I m in my first run. I started in hard right off the bat because I know myself , after a little bit of dilly dalling , I tend to get serious and start tweaking the numbers , checking the maths and get the most out of the mechanics and the game in normal becomes too easy.

So far , hard has been the right difficulty for me ,fights are usually challenging , in the sense that I had to correct my approach (meaning the first turn decision and prebattle positionning) for every big fights. I usually fight ennemy at my level or +1 , +2 level start to be hard if they are more than 5 of them since I can't CC all of em.

Still , since it is my first run and that I refrained myself from tweaking at start , I m aware that I could get my optimisation (mostly in terms of talent) starting right from level 1 (and I will do so in the second run).


@Thorsten , you seem to find the game too easy , are you playing hard ?
@skinnylegs , are you it s not just the fact that it was your third run that made the game easier ? I m assuming you have learned to assess situation with increased accuracy during the previous runs , didn't you ?


nt;dr : @OP the game is in a good shape for a first run in hard , it is challenging and fun and a first run will already take you hours , if you happen to have a life , you might not finish the first run before increased diff are out.

hi,

i am playing hard and it is too easy!

I am also having this issue

As already said I am a complete newbie to RPG. After my first round of mistakes in my first playthrough yes - I find it a bit easy. Example - I ran into the 7 character level 7 wolves group Cyseal southeast by accident with a level 5 party. No dog support - was on the far other end.

It was a ridiculously easy fight, although I could not prevent a gang up one of my party members which died. This 2 levels below, outnumbered and surprised (no battle preparation work possible).

Yes, on hard.

Regards,
Thorsten

This was never intended to be punishing or be dark souls. They have a small enough customer base as it is, they need to the games to be as inviting as possible. Its never going to be as hard as hard core gamers want it, ever, the best we can get is Mods like the unfair difficulty by Rhydian.

Not one person ever said anything about make it hard on easy or normal and most are happy with just adding another. IMO if you want a classic to be talked and played for a decade you do want a pretty challenging setting. If they never make a change it was still a great game, but like other games of theirs, they do make enhanced versions, a little more polish, this game can still be improved upon like any. It is a hit, it is a great game as-is.

Depends on where the difficulty comes from. Nobody cares if if its hard because the enemy resistances and such are high, people want better AI.

That, by the way, is pretty close to asking for the moon. The AI is already reasonably smart and that's already pushing into the limits of just how good AIs can be made today.

Real time based - probably. Turn based - no.

Regards,
Thorsten

Some small changes in AI department could help a lot.

For example, have opponents never target "obviously" immune targets with elements they are immune to.
It should be common knowledge that you can not injure fire elemental with fire, or zombie with poison.

Also have them have in-combat memory, so if enemy target someone who is immune or highly resistant to some type of attack, then he or his allies should not target that person with same types of attack in the fight (if they have alternate ways of attacking).

For example. Different to RTS this game requires only tactical AI for tactical fights in a turn based environment, not one byte more. Ridiculously easy compared to the majority of game requirements, thus I assume the devs deliberately decided to make it dumb so that players feel better about themselves.

Regards,
Thorsten

Ha, I wouldn't assume so much. I'd sooner guess that information like elemental immunity simply isn't communicated to the AI decision making system, and that implementing such a thing would take up a non-negligible amount of time.

Either way,

Larian, please implement AI that recognizes elemental immunities when choosing targets!

Well if the enemy doesn't have high loremaster it won't know for certain if a target is immune or not until it tries. Or should AI work outside of that? Plenty of ways to increase difficulty beyond just adding HP's and tweaking resistances.

That's why I think that enemy AI should have in-combat memory.

Is target common fire immune creature?
If not, attack with fire.
No damage, target immune?
If target has no elemental buffs, don't attack same target with fire.
If it has elemental buffs, don't attack with fire, but monitor when buff expires.
Buff expires? Try again attack with fire (if no better option available)

Thats would be great!!!

A smart AI like that doesn't sound beyond possibility, but are players going to give it a minute or two per enemy in a battle while the game runs the necessary simulations?

I don't pretend to actually be in the know about AI programing, but I know enough to say that what's being used today forces a choice between reasonable waiting times and good AI.

While AI that remembers, knows and monitors specific effects via trial and error and such would be grand, a simple behind-the-scenes check for elemental immunity is more than enough, and quite a bit more realistic

Isnt Larian doing the proper bigger harder mod, as they recently announced? That will inculde redesigned encounters and other tweaks... so probably refining Ai too since its a part of that process anyway.

And if it is refined i would like to point out that some enemies need to be made dumber.

For example, headless zombies should charge through any elemental damage, instead of avoiding it like everyone else - since they dont have any heads to get all that. They are brainless.

Having correct path-finding is more tasking then this.
Of course, from CPU cycle viewpoint.

And since the CPU doesn't have union representation, I say exploit them.

Nullify Resistance for example is over powered, it is totally needed but it is way too strong. It becomes a I win button.

Given all possible combinations (spells, movement, melee or arrows multiplied by number of characters) we are talking of what? 1,000 easy calculations (most values stored in game engine or/and temporary arrays anyway) per turn for the AI? A few seconds at worst, not more. Yes, I am willing to wait a few seconds for a sound battle AI.

And working with e.g. my house rule (disable before anything else) even less.

Regards,
Thorsten

The AI in D:OS is actually gimped, and not pushing any limits. If it were not each engagement would be borderline impossible. Give the AI same skills, spells, feats and stats as player and we'd be fighting each fight for our lives.

This would also not be fun.. in the turned based initiative-rules-all combat system D:OS has anyway. This is why games either do real-time with pause, or turn based in a battle area and turn based or real-time with pause on an over-arching map. Anything else is impossible to balance.

Note: It is possible to balance the current game if magic had cast time beyond "instant"

To identify elemental resistances should be done within the system of the Loremaster ability. (Not sure enemies are using Loremaster, but i am assuming so here) The problem is, that it takes always a skill rank of 5 in Loremaster to get information for elemental resistances (i am assuming same for PCs and NPCs). IMHO this should be changed. If something is common knowledge like fire creatures are immune to fire, this shouldnt require a skill rank of 5!

To cut a long story short, 1) if not yet implemented (i'm not sure here) let the NPCs use meaningful the Loremaster ability and 2) change to way Lormaster ability works for things every child should know rather than implement another code check (IF elemental immunity = commen sense THAN)


Another topic about exploit of sneaking skill: I got the feeling there are bosses and NPCs who try to find you but still have a hard time to find a well hidden sneaker (which sounds imho like a reasonable and good system). If that is already implemented for some NPs why not add it to everybody in a more or less skilled way.


my 2 cents... cheers

I think the initiative bonus from Leadership is to strong, it can effectively double or triple your initiative depending on how much speed you have. It should be more like 3 and 6 or even 2 and 4, rather than 5 and 10.

To the above poster, if you sneak with no AP left most NPCs can reveal you with an AoE, if you sneak and then move halfway across the map they can't. At least this has been my experience, i use a rogue on most of my playthroughs.

I think sneak is very powerful but if it were nerfed rogues and rangers would become to weak. Besides their charm skills, rogue and ranger skills are quite weak and seem like an afterthought compared to several of the magic schools. Just look at barrage as a prime example, its single target damage per AP is about equal to regular attacks and quite a bit weaker than regular attacks if you're using guerrilla with 5 points in sneak. In general you are better off using guerrilla attacks or special arrows rather than the bow skills. Rogue skills seem to have some of the longest cooldowns in the game, at least their final skill is pretty fun if you have someone with teleport.

In its current state, the only thing you gain from high ranks of scoundrel, expert marksman, or man at arms, are traits. Man at arms seems to benefit from them a bit more though.

I'm aware that fleshing out these skill trees, and balancing the skills, would probably make the game even easier in higher levels. I just think this game needs more than just harder AI, though in some cases it needs that too.

Not really required. At least if there is trial or error logic.
AI should be able, based on final damage it does to the enemy, and what is expected damage against non-resistant enemy, to get approx. level of the resistance of the opponent, and based on that add this to decision chain, either to continue attacks with such element, or switch to something else.

One more thing, I think game suffers from way to many enemies spamming special attacks.

And players characters over time get more resistive to those, while being much less resistant to melee and arrow damage.

In fact, there is big change in difficulty due to this, when death knights are introduced that prefer good old fashioned slashing.

Not only that. If all enemies would skip self buffs in favour of diabling attacks the fights would be harder. Furthermore most groups are set up in a way that a surprise opening attack is possible even by a ranger with a special arrow (at max. 15 Mtrs.). Fights would be significantly harder only eliminating these two advantages for a human player.

Regards,
Thorsten

It's true that the deth metal knights are a major difficulty spike, but when you *fight* them it's a matter of having tanks and magic at hand to crowd control them. And assuming you already breezed through the game before them, you can handle them just fine. Though they are challenging they are not difficult. Dispel immunity = kill.

The entire game combat is basically a "first strike - crowd control - tank - second strike" sequence.

First strike because apart from VERY few situations, PLAYERS initiate the when and how of combat.
Crowd control because after that, your only goal is to survive until you can cast again.
Tank because if crowd control fails, your mages die with 2 hits in the early game
Second strike to mop-up whatever survived tanking phase

This is how AP/INITIATIVE combat systems always turn out. And why I hate them with a passion ;P AP alone "round" vs "round", but not Initiative based.... ;/

the AI is not really the problem. The AI CAN NOT counter a first-strike that happens "out" of combat. This imbalances the *entire* end-game where most fights are over before the combat round even *starts* especially when you have 2 meteors and 2 ice hails. The dependency on special attacks is indeed an AI problem but really, the player does the same. Tell me who starts their first round *without* a massive spell attack? In DnD You'd never waste a fireball or magic missile on goblins. Because they were preciously limited and you only had a few casts of them before you had to rest.

But with infinite mana + cooldowns, there is no reason to hold back. You should ALWAYS cast your biggest spells first, because the cool-down starts earlier, and you can cast it sooner again. Which is why the combat system is so easy and broken in a way. It's not the AI's fault. The AI has to work with the same limitations, and so using special abilities early is the correct answer. Cooldown starts earlier, allowing you to use them potentially again earlier than the enemy (especially when you have Initiative advantage)

Some self buffs are just to weak in general, wildfire for example costs nearly as much AP as you gain from using it. They either don't last long enough, use to much AP, or have to little effect. Some aren't to bad situationally though, like putting oath of desecration on a toy bomb and then teleporting it into a group of enemies, lmao.

Some skills shouldn't be able to be used before combat starts, that would help a bit with the large advantage players gain over the AI at the start.

Iterating over all possible combinations for a single unit's turn can be done by any computer in milliseconds. There is lots of room to grab low hanging fruit here, like having the AI check resistances, best tile to lay an AOE, etc.

The problem for designing a good AI is predicting the future. You never see simulation based AI in crpg's because the problem quickly branches into nearly endless possibilities. It wasn't until recently that simulation (nash equillibrium) bots became robust enough to challenge decent poker players. And there's a lot more variables/branching here than in poker.

Which is why it's likely almost every game in this genre will make up for the lack of intelligence of its AI, by giving enemies considerably more power, greater numbers, etc. It's no excuse though, there's lots of room to improve the AI in this game, and I don't rule out a very good programmer making intelligent rules of abstraction for getting the branching problem under control, to quickly run simulations. But I don't think it's ever been done yet (for crpgs).

Good stuff...

Crowd Control/Tanking. In general in this game you try to crowd control above all else, once you have that you have the win. Tanking isn't even needed, only needed if you can't get control, which can be rare as you mention.

The part of First Strike Out of Combat, really that is a player exploiting (beyond scoundrels). Being single player no big, but if anyone knocks combat because of taking advantage of this, they control that and can look in the mirror. Perhaps Larian should look at something to stop that from happening.

In my re-balancing what I ended up doing was up cooldown turns on damage skills for the magic lines. Lower AP cost on many buff/debuffs, because as you mention the tendency was too strong to go with damage almost always, damage with CC even more so. Now when I have 3 AP left over I have some buff/debuffs to consider.

Other things, lowered CC hold rounds, pretty much took off one full turn on every hold in game, both sides. Lower the chance to land a CC status affect, another thing that was too strong. Adding points to INT nicely adds to a higher chance to land CC's, but the general starting point imo was way too high.

I'm not a fan of Int being tied to cooldown, when you concentrate heavy on Int for a Mage you can easily go over 20 points and way too many magic skills can then be used turn after turn. You can't do this with Warrior/Ranger/Rouge skills they are always static in cooldown. But having mage skills always available each turn is a pretty bad thing for strategy. I'd unlink cooldown to INT and make it so all cooldowns are static, the damage boost and % to land CC increase is well enough bonus to make INT worthwhile.

Rebalancing in those manners makes you use other non-damage skills more often and to me makes it a better game.

I also knocked 5 points of Initiative right off the bat, the game is much more interesting when your team doesn't go first all the time.

As you mention with infinite refreshing skills (which I like), this is powerful and makes your guys very very resilient in nearly any battle. Having the enemies have a chance at going first or mixing both sides through the chain, can make some fights starting your side out in a good hole, but a hole you can climb out of due to the system. These scenarios have made the best moments in the game for me.

Another thing I've been tossing around is limiting how many skills schools you can build up. Every skill you should be able to put 1 point into it, but have only 3 skills in which you take higher than 1. What I've noticed is casters for example you can have nearly everything and every caster has the same skills. (Pretty much any group in which you have the same class of character within it) It would probably be better strategy if casters were more specialized in only a couple/few schools vs them all. I think there is something there to improve on, maybe a future game using same engine.

I know I am tldr'ing your post a bit, but if I could add what I think the main issue is, it's not the balance but the fact that Initiative is not a *roll* but a *stat*. Whenever you make Initiative a stat, and not a seeded pre-combat roll you end up having a lopsided combat system. Either pro enemy, or pro player (or really, pro whoever starts combat first).

For example, first striking out of combat could NULLIFY initiative, meaning after that you basically skip a turn. This would fix issue 1 (first striking). But as long as Initiative is not a roll in combat in general, all combat would be either us moving first or the enemy moving first if we first strike... that's not fun either. (And since we would have to apply it to the enemy, an enemy who attacks us FIRST would have to skip the next turn, especially with the lethality of the spells in D:OS

For me to make D:OS have a decent combat we'd have to restrict how real-time works to begin with... casting spells out of combat at enemies is a major issue. And nothing we cab do will ever fix it.

Not necessary. eRe4s3r and me (and others) have independent from each other already identified some of the glaring combat imbalances to begin with.

And even branching out on future combat is not that difficult if you limit choices. By observation of how your average Joe proceeds you can most likely find some patterns. Unusual clever people will still beat the game, because to beat or circumvene given processes is their real game, but you could end up with a fairly challenging combat system for the upper 20% of the gamers.

Regards,
Thorsten

I also want to clarify a tiny bit, when I say Initiative should be a roll.. I mean a random (dice) roll each round. Sure sounds like a clusterhug at first, but you can ALREADY put your dudes at the back end of the round (another huge advantage Larian gives players that imo is *absurdly* powerful especially in a magic slingfest) by the way, most AP based games do not allow you to preserve all your AP until the end of the round. In fact nearly all of them lock your AP when you "skip" aka "Guard" and then give you a % value of AP on top as reward for being so brave (debatable whether that is balanced in itself, but it's acceptable imo) what's not acceptable is games that let you just "wait" until the end of the turn and then after everyone moved already decide what to do. That is no longer turn based, that's just the illusion of turn based

Either way, it would make combat more entertaining, because a group of the same 5 enemies won't all just move all after each other every single time, and thus set themselves up for pwnage at the back-end of a round, when movement is done, and when you can stack damage DOT effects on them over 2 rounds for (essentially) free. And seeded roll because the initiative has to be random for each playthrough, but fixed for THAT playthrough when player reloads. So that even a "bad roll" can still be solved through raw tactics.

If that is implemented, the "wait until end of round" has to be removed, obviously. Since that is cheating the combat system the same way as a out of combat first strike. The AI can't do that and thus the player shouldn't be allowed to either.

Eraser, so you are always seeing all your guys in front first or in back last, but never good guys and enemies sprinkled throughout a round?

Always, either: (G=Good Guy, E=Enemy)
GGGGBBBB
BBBBGGGG

Never:
BGBGGBGB

Although I am not the addressee - not always and not all figures but almost all and almost all figures. Pretty normal for a decent player as initiative is a direct consequence of speed, perception and leadership. Thus only a very melee heavy party would be in danger to come second.

I had very few fights in all of my playthroughs where not at least 3 of 4 from my party fired first.

Regards,
Thorsten

Yep, I saw that to and in characters.txt you can modify it, I believe I went -5 init across the board for our guys to mix it up. Perhaps more depending on what we concentrate on attibute wise, but doing that for me has made some fights in front, some fights at the end and some sprinkled, seemed pretty balanced. The one's where I'm at the end, probably the most memorable since you dig out of a hole.

I still say most of these issues would be less concerning if encounter design were better and enemies having more (and a smart selection of) skills. (That being said, that doesn't stop me from charming half the enemies and let them duke them out amongst each other :p)

Or simply give enemies higher Initiative.


Why... I... Never... Thought... about... teleporting the toy bomb. ;_;


You may complain about that, but beta players complained that they didn't like having a mana system. Thus a cooldown system was made to appease players.


This is an excellent idea. Can even simply limit it to spells that can be cast out of range of combat initiation range.


Uh, what. In D&D (PnP) you can delay your initiative to WHENEVER YOU WANT, not just to the end of the round.

I believe the first half my post was saying a lot more can be done for removing some obviously bad choices. But once you try analyzing future turns, it gets very hard computationally.

A game with a far smaller strategy space like limit-hold'em is still very difficult for computers to analyze, and challenge decent human players. It's been done though, it just took a very long time for computers / programmers to get there. It might be a little easier than I think, b/c unlike poker there aren't (or don't need to be) hidden state variables (cards face down). It's harder for the computer, for instance, when it may not know the player's resistances to certain damages until it attacks. This introduces more branching earlier.

Proceeding under assumptions of what an average Joe would do is how nearly all computer game "AIs" are programmed. I put AI in quotes, because its not an AI, just a human telling it what a computer should consider and how it should react, rather than the computer considering the costs / benefits itself.

Human-scripted AIs are really hit and miss, and often fairly predictable. For instance, you may tell the computer to take out the healer, and after a few fights the player realizes the AI is always going to go after a healer, so turns his healer into a tank, negating what the programmer thought would create challenge. The ability of a scripted-AI to adapt is limited by the script which is by necessity fairly basic, and it will generally play the same "hand" the same way, every time, making it predictable too.

Last I checked we talked about a pc game DnD implementations (Infinity Engine) on PC never allowed you to manage your initiative within a sub round. Most of the big known DnD games where turn based with real-time on top. BG, IWD, NWN

Also the D&D i know in PnP does not allow you to delay your initiative, you roll a dice for your initiative roll when the enemy checks for initiative, enemy rolls theirs, whoever wins gets to go first in the round. You have absolutely NO CHOICE in that matter. Your initiative roll is fixed for the entire round. And to begin with you *have* to roll it when YOU initiate an action.

You can't just roll initiative to an action and then say "no thanks" once you roll, your action is committed and the order (for all other actions) fixed.

I think you played some very weird house rules ;p
Ps.: Or maybe I played a house rule that changed initiative



I always manage my Initiative and since it's a stat you can influence I never moved in mixed order. Either all LAST or ALL first.

Most of the time all first (ie, until hunters rest or what it was called). Because I realized way back in Beta that Initiative for mages is extremely important. When I can cast my big spells early in combat half the enemies would be dead, crowd controlled or in flames while half the battlefield is frozen before I even took damage, and when my warriors move first then what would I do with them at the start of combat? Have them walk in circles? ;P Only time that didn't happen was when the "game" cheated by teleporting enemies in or triggering combat from dialog (which for some reason never actually put it me as first to move, never in the entire game)

;P

Also when you get feather fall moving first is literally a game changing situation. I can TP my melee guy next to enemies with full AP AFTER my mages softened the field and rogue charmed things. This is actually nearly an exploit imo ;P

Ps.: In the end game I actually ended up moving last all the time, which was a bit harsh.. but I gave up getting initiative for moving first because some enemies used spells I had to dispel before the round ENDED or I'd have taken lots of damage And remember, first strike (even if it's just an ice-wall) always gave me the advantage for the first round anyway.

I actually only had a single fight in the entire game that gave me HUGE problems because of my intiative. That was in Lucella forest, the orc leader you can find to the right side of the map. When you don't first-strike, dialog initiates and VERY evil enemies spawn. And as I said, despite having high initiative in that segment I ended up skipping a turn. Not sure if that was intended or a bug, either way.. it was the only situation that really gave me problems. ^^

Balancing turn-based combat really is insanely hard because there are so many factors to control for, including player builds and ability, promoting variety of combats, exploitative player behavior, etc. I do hope the hardcore mode (pretty much confirmed to be called this in the official "Creating Combat" document in the mod section of the forums) also includes certain AI improvements. I think people have laid out the problems pretty thoroughly, so I'll just compile what I think would be good solutions, some of which have already been mentioned here or elsewhere.

Nerf leadership bonus down to 3/6 or 2/4. Making iniative a roll instead of a check could be interesting as well, especially if it happened within rounds as well. So archer and rogue enemies would tend to move first within a round since they're high perception and speed generally, but a mage might go first when you least expect. In general randomness doesn't necessarily make games harder, and can be frustrating, but I think in this case it could work well, because you wouldn't be able to predict exactly how enemies will go in turns so easily then.

Increase sightlines of many enemies immensely so it wouldn't be so easy for a mage to stand at the edge of their vision and get an easy first strike. Another solution would be for a player who uses a spell to strike inattentive enemies to lose all of their initiative. I found it stupid when you used a spell and then combat starts, and you can cast another spell immediately after because you won the initiative check.

Nerf charm hard. Make it last 2 rounds, max, and make it so enemies do not target charmed enemies, and will in fact try to cc them if they can. In turn, you should be able to completely control a charmed enemy, so you don't feel jipped because they did something completely useless.

Nerf CC in general. Make it harder to apply CC and make them last shorter.

Reduce health of summons, increase speed, and give them stench. Basically, what the source difficulty mod did works really well (though not sure about giving them comeback kid like the mod). Summons should be flankers and opportunists, not tanks.

Massively reduce resists found on gear and capable with crafting.

Give enemies more spells and more if-then checks to help them determine when to use certain spells or abilities. So they should try to use ricochet only when there's at least three targets grouped together. I know this is quite complex, but I do think they could do a few things regarding AoE spells and avoiding healing your summons with the wrong spells and the like.

There's an interesting discussion here about whether enemies could take advantage of loremaster, if they should "learn" about player resists and immunities and the like, or if they could at least take advantage of "common sense" that fire elementals are healed by fire damage, for example. I think loremaster could be slightly reworked so that someone with 1 or 2 loremaster would be able to see the fire resist of a fire elemental, the water resist of an ice elemental, and obvious cases like that. But they wouldn't be able to know the player's resists unless they had higher loremaster or if they realized a spell did little damage to a player. Giving certain enemies high loremaster would be an interesting mechanic, though I kind of doubt Larian would go to the trouble to do this. A behind-the-scenes check for some or all enemies would probably be the easiest solution to eliminating stupid AI decisions.

Sneak should not go down to 1 AP. You should not be sneaking and attacking several times in a turn. Perhaps players should only be able to sneak once in a round? There is a complex balancing act to be had here, and I need to play a bit more rogue myself to really offer better suggestions, but from what I've seen and heard, rogues are kind of broken. They either die really fast or do absurd amounts of damage. I just feel like they don't have enough abilities. I think Larian should figure out ways to take advantage of pickpocket in combat, like if you could pickpocket a health potion and replace it with a poison potion, for example. Enemies would do perception or loremaster rolls or something to decide if they should drink the replaced potion or not. It would also be cool if rogues could collect traps with the lockpicking skill and place them later. Overall, I think rogues need to be fleshed out more and given more abilities.

Almost every single talent needs to be buffed or nerfed. Most are useless, and some are insane, and just a few are in the sweet spot. There's lots of room to make interesting talents that aren't over the top.

Most of these ideas are number tweaks, because as Blinkicide pointed out, making predictive AI that doesn't take a while to calculate is insanely hard. But let's start with the easy changes before we get into more theoretical programming. These changes together the game would be incredibly different and challenging. There's tons of things Larian could do rebalance the game, and I'm excited to see what they're going to do.

See I don't agree with half of that. You're not increasing difficulty, you are hamstringing yourself and limiting game play options.

Not to mention increasing the way CC works affects both groups, both you and the enemies. So that to me is a non factor and honestly works more to weaken them than you.

Honestly its AI or bust..numbers are just numbers, if all you want is numbers then go download Rhidian's mod..higher heal cooldowns, -100 resistance to start game to all elements, all enemies have a boost to vitality, willpower and bodybuilding, summons are interesting because he added utility skills ot them to fit their element but with a super high cooldown.

I saw a couple people saying asking for AI is like asking for the moon, but let the modders get their hands on the nuts and bolts of the AI. Reconfigure it, BG2 was not NEARLY as punishing until people got their hands on it. Then all the sudden enemies started casting new spells, using their potions and wrecking you..

Well at least you agree with half of it then :P I kid. Certainly much of it is controversial, but I have seen many people complaining about these issues, so I don't think I'm the only one suggesting that certain tactics should be less effective. I'm mostly targeting grossly effective tactics which themselves limit gameplay options because why wouldn't you choose the most effective tactics? Many people agree that resists, charm, summons, combat stealth, leadership, and cc are pretty ridiculous, so nerfing those would make other skills more appealing, the game more challenging, and actually increase options. Sure, you could make arbitrary rules to yourself to not use certain abilities or tactics, but then you're just limiting gameplay options once again. If all options are viable, than the game is more fun.

I realize that blanket changes to CC would affect players and enemies alike, but I found that I used CC far more often than enemies used CC on me, so general nerfs would overall have a net benefit to the enemy in my opinion.

I think I'm mostly offering mechanical changes, not simple number tweaks. A few number tweaks yes, but that's to be expected in a discussion of balance. Haven't tried it myself, but Rhidian's mod sounds like a good start to that, but not dealing with a lot of the problems I have in quite the way I'd like. Starting the game with -100 resist is an okay solution to resists, but I imagine that must make the first half of the game much harder, which is fairly well balanced as it is. I think making gear and rubies give less resist would be a better way to make late game harder but have less of an effect on the first half. Also I meant to add that they should make summons have more interesting spells, but forgot.

I agree that AI is the big problem, but numbers and mechanics need work too. I think there's two ideas of AI going on in this thread: predictive AI and responsive AI. An AI that predicts what the player could and likely would do, takes into account his or her actions and updates these predictions to make the best possible move certainly takes much more computing and coding power than an AI that has fairly standard behaviors but reacts to player actions in specific ways. An AI that always freezes a charmed ally is much easier to implement than an AI that decides if that ally should be frozen or if it would be better to just attack the player or do something else instead.

Finally, totally agree that Larian should make much more of the code available to modders. I'd try making some changes myself, but I'm waiting to see what Larian does before I dive in myself.

With no way to interrupt spell casting I don't think I want enemies to cast the same spells the player can... because then the "win" button for the AI is teleporting your 2 main characters into lava. To quote Aliens "Game over man.. game over"

BG2 tactics was also not balanced because enemies had always max spells, but you only had that if you rested after each engagement.

Either way, better AI sure.. but the issues are the game systems, not so much balance or AI. The magic while nice to look at is not structured properly, there aren't counter-spells, spell mantles, spell triggers, higher summons, delayed action spells etc. And to boot there is no way to interrupt spell casting. Meaning that teleport spell for an enemy caster? Would always 100% be game-over.

Somewhere you have to draw a line in the sand with spells that the AI absolutely should not have. In tactics, I drew that line several times with summonings. While lore wise correct, higher undead or demonic summons can absolutely and fundamentally change the dynamic of a fight. And tactics is really not fun at all once you reach level 18+ and encounter enemies with lvl 8 or 9 spells..........

I think if anything, combat needs to be balanced not by numbers, but by options. The AI should have a counter to everything the player has, but the AI should not have things that do not have a counter (like teleport or feather fall)

Remember the end-goal is to make a fun game, not to make a game only 5 people will ever complete. (Which is definitely true for the bg2 tactics mod ,p , assuming you played on the highest game difficulty)

I did play the bg tactics mod, if you wanted hard..that made it hard..the enemy would pummel you to pieces and no fight even a small one was a simple event.

Im with you on the options and I believe that comes from AI. The issue is you are trying to out think players but at the same time leave many different playstyles and that is honestly hard.

Yeah, BG2 was very difficult when the enemies started realizing what their ridiculously high level spells did.

I agree, their should be counters and the issue is honestly that every class does just about everything another class does just as well. Damage, buff, debuff..several ways to stun, charm, freeze, slow, weaken, curse etc and not to mention anyone can get a bow and use the spell arrows.

But isn't that caused directly by the class less character system? With no fixed classes and class-skill-progression, you can not give characters limitations and with no limitations, you can not balance encounters and the difficulty progression along these limitations and the character growth. The enemies in this game are designed along class ideas that the player does not have to follow and indeed, the game balance falls entirely apart once players gain access to proper destruction and crowd control magic.

Nothing we will ever do to D:OS will make it's combat better tuned and interlinking than any DnD adaption. Certainly not anything like BG2 or IWD, DnD has *various* completely mutual exclusive magical schools, which allowed some higher concepts (like "protection from" spells) and vocalized vs formed spells. Or clerical vs magical, turn/command undead, Good vs Evil, or really just life vs death magic.. or more general things like "Mind and Moral" or the druid line

All these things gave you and your enemy options but more importantly it gave the game designers options. They could design fights to have a certain thematic focus, and not be always the same. They could make magic fights absolutely INSANE requiring every trick you had, but allow you to rest afterwards and breeze through combat elsewhere. In this way BG2 was never truly HARD, but it was always fun and a challenge. And it was more importantly very diverse. Sure there were goblins to 1 shot and human bandits to smash. But for each of those, you had encounters that really required you to THINK about what you are facing right there.

I mean BG2 had some insane challenges if you weren't very careful, Kangaxx the demi-lich for example. When I first encountered him I basically was wiped out, later I came back prepared analyzing his spells, preparing for his counter spells, and I won. (funnily you could play through BG2 without EVER finding Kangaxx ,p) it was that kind of RPG. And I love them. That fight was 100% optional and it was a PAIN in the BEHIND to fight. (But it also was absolutely worth it.... Kangaxx is one of the very few enemies in BG2 that cast time-stop (And assorted spells.. he also has the spell finger of death, which is hilarious (and instant game-over) if he hits your main char with that during time-stop without you being immune to death spells)

I don't want BG2 cloned, I just want a game that gives me this experience in some way or another. The thrill of meeting an enemy that REALLY knew how to use the magic to it's absolute fullest. Where you notice as player, yes, the game designers and developers gave a damn and really put their minds and hearts together to craft this encounter.

There is exactly 1 enemy in D:OS that made me feel that way, it was the literally 3rd last enemy of the game. (The uber-death knight in front of the temple gate) whoever designed that fight (and the entire area around that specific fight), kudos to you, you evil EVIL mind you. Sorry for writing this much, but I am really missing these kind of experiences in D:OS..... only 1 of these encounters in an entire game is too few. And the rest of the fights were largely forgettable, maybe that Hunters rest fight.. that was cool, but it was not challenging....

And I don't agree with this.

Numbers are just numbers? The whole game is numbers, difficulty easy are hard are predicated very much on the numbers. The numbers are key to balancing, you suggest they don't matter, which isn't the case. The examples you give do change strategies, higher cooldowns, yep. More damage per hit, yep. Those things can change everything. I look at balance two ways... I have a lot of options, but are they good options or do I have a few good one's and mostly bad one's? If I have that, I need to balance those between each other better. When done with a fight, was it a challenge? was there a legit chance to lose? I try to get both of those, the more viable options I have the better, the better the fight the more interesting it is.

That said, yes adding more skills or adjusting the AI on how they do things plays a factor to and not against that. Adding skills isn't hard to do on our end fwiw, but the time to test it all out... can be pretty daunting. If Larian does it right they have tools to bounce to any scenario at any point to test, we have to play it out along with the story... time.

I've found nerfing CC more a benefit to the enemies as they weren't smart enough to understand that A1 is Crowd Control, where we know how important it is. So the nerf hurts the player more because we would exploit that because of the advantages. And we can only take so much of enemies CC on us before players would get pissed off. CC is good in PvE when you are using it, it is hated in PvP because downtime sucks and blows. Many enemies have no CC abilities and if they do it, it isn't A1 to them all the time, they use it much more sparingly.

No, it's not. Numbers and the manipulation there of is a very parochial mechanic to use and results in a narrow style of play. Numbers will result in players being forced down certain roads because it's the path of least resistance, changing mechanics and intelligence allows characters to play how they want..but against smarter opponents.

Making ridiculously high saves for enemies forces players to methodically use spells like Divine Light, Drain Willpower etc and it doesn't make it hard, it makes it tedious. It's like having a huge equation with multiple variables, but the variables have been already figured out so all you have to do is plug them in..its not hard, it just takes a long time.

Basically, by changing numbers all you do is recreate the same hurdle to jump through over and over. Damage output vs damage received and using debuffs to saving throw abilities. By changing how enemies react and think you force new strategies on the player.

I love Dark Souls, one of my favorite series and I have played it since Demons Souls. One of the reasons people love the difficulty of Dark Souls series is that most of the time the added difficulty comes in the form of enemies having new abilities, changing their attack routines or adding another monster that isn't hard to kill but substantially changes the fight because of some small thing they do. Yeah, they have more HP, Res, Def and hit harder as well but the player isn't hamstrung and the numbers on the Evil NPC stat sheet are not the only thing that changes.

Right now (good) players have to avoid many tactics to get a decent challenge. Reducing the effectiveness of a small number number of overly strong skills won't force players down one road, but will actually incentive them to use other skills that were just inferior before. I agree that AI and mechanics are the most important things to fix, but number balance has its place too. I guess we'll just agree to disagree.

The early part of this thread was a discussion of just how easy the game is. Except for the beginning and a couple boss fights, the game is really quite easy. Fixing numbers will take us from easy to "I actually have to think a little bit since the 'I-win-automatically' tactics will be gone," and then fixing AI (by increasing variety of their behaviors and reducing their dumb mistakes) and changing some mechanics will actually make the game hard in a fun way. Changing numbers can create tedium if fights become formulaic and long but not challenging, so Larian certainly has to be careful here.

Is variety part of the answer? Most certainly, but variety is also already part of the problem. Players can access basically everything and they don't make very many sacrifices to do so. Mages don't have to specialize, and many great spells or abilities in all schools are available with one point in a school. There should be many more spells available overall, but players shouldn't be able to access quite as many of them. There's probably nothing Larian can do about that now, though. I don't think there's a simple, non-radical solution to the classless system. The best we can do is to rebalance a lot of the skill trees so they're not so frontloaded with amazing spells. E.g., you shouldn't be able to get a 3-AP oath of desecration with 1 point in Witchcraft.

On the one hand, I want variety and to be able to use it. On the other, I want to have to make serious choices about spells and abilities. Hopefully adding a lot more spells for each class will help both of those, but I think there'd have to be deeper changes to really find that sweet spot.

Amen!

What could be done easily and fast is rather simple:

- No out of combat opening attacks
- Initiative gets randomized
- NPCs apply more Crowd Control Attacks (like the demons from mangoth already do btw)

Nothing dramatic, nothing really new, but all 3 combined certainly raising difficulty by soem notches.

Regards,
Thorsten

Only 1 problem with "No out of combat opening attacks" how do you do that in a game that has you use magic to clear dangerous ground effects or blow up doors and crates etc.?

It would have to be a special flag just for enemies then? What if those enemies stand near a barrel, and you target that? Seems like a solution, but in practice first-strike is in the game because of certain design choices. I doubt it could be easily removed without breaking the game. And to begin with, some battles would have to be re-designed entirely. Right now some situations are clearly made with first-strike and certain move order in mind. ANY encounter with bomb carriers for example. Imagine the trap with the chest and the 12 explosion guys, with random initiative You'd be dead unless you are lucky.

Not saying that makes your conclusions wrong, I am saying the game was not made for these changes. And there are plenty of situations where changes have secondary effects. To begin with the entire stealth and even the TUTORIAL would no longer work.

Reminds of the saying "There are simple solutions to all problems, and they are all wrong"

Easy in comparison to all other suggestions on how to make combat more difficult.

Regarding the graveyard - yes, fight would have to be revamped. Although with rain you are in no danger whatsoever in any case.

Even a new difficulty should be aimed at a reasonable amount of players (like say 10%) instead of the ususal 1% extreme min/maxers.

Regards,
Thorsten

The game needs a hard mode, more so than the one built in. The most recent patch on Steam that made mention of "balancing" the combat seems to have made it insignificant. In the original release game build a part of level 3 characters would be committing suicide taking on the level 7 wolves in the Cyseal zone. Playing a new game after the patch in order to try the new rogue and ranger characters with a back story I was able to easily defeat the level 7 mobs at level 3! The battle against Braccas Rex was comical at best. The boss ran into the door way where you enter his dungeon and stood there watching me kill his minions and only after the last one was dead did he wake up. The ice king battle King Boreas, prior to the patch on normal the battle was a long drawn out slug fest that was allot of fun. After the patch my group had him at 1/2 health at the end of turn one and he only managed to summon one set of elementals before he was dead. After that battle I increased the difficulty to hard in the hopes of making it more of a battle instead of a slaughter for the enemy!

I have about 550 + hours in the game and I assume part of the problem is I know the game too well now. My usual gold total is between 700,000 ( if I am being lazy ) to 1.1 million if I really work at it. Coll down time on all spells is 1 turn due to intellect numbers as high as 26. Base damage for Madora is about 570, AC is 200 + and with her speed at 13, she is virtually unstoppable on the battle field. On my last play through #5 I didn't bother with constitution a whole lot. My Ranger with Glass Cannon skill was at 1300 HP and my Tank, Madora was at 2600. I concentrated on speed ( for more action points in combat ) perception for my ranger at 15 and 15 on my lead character to spot traps and hidden items without the use of pots or spells. Black smithing over 2 was all I needed and 3 in craft then +2 more with gear. Lore master was 3 and +3 with gear. I notice that random drops favor lore master and telekinesis allot more than is needed.

The pure randomness of the buffs on loot is a real sore point with me. I find a 2 handed weapon that has +1 sneak and +1 one handed sword? Heavy full plate armor with +1 dexterity and +1 Bow? The loot tables really need a good over haul as the random effects are pure rubbish and very lazy on the part of Larian.

Now, now, lets not be that harsh skinny. Rubish, very lazy... cmon.
Manners please. After all we get so much loot that it really isnt a problem if every piece isnt perfect or useful.

I think that decrease in difficulty you described there was in fact due to getting to know the game thoroughly.

As for Ai i would like to see it made bit dumber for specific enemies. I have a special beef with headless zombies using smart moves. :P

And of course i would be absolutely against removing opening attacks. What a silly counterproductive idea. If anything i wish enemies get them too more often.




Thats what i suggested in my thread about the overhaul of exactly that kind of penalties, then increasing the difficulty through more direct and organic gameplay features.

Bullshit, people like Dark Souls because it has a spammable "Negate all damage" button and every boss is a huge QTE where you tickle him to death. You can beat the game with a character that has a MAXIMUM health of ONE POINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would have been good to post examples.

What is this "negate all damage" button? I've beat all the games and I guess I've missed that button every time.

There also is no QTE going on....

I enjoy those games because of the challenge that is not to say a small percentage of people wont find a way to beat the game at level one but all games have that percentage of people that find ways to beat the game without leveling.

Dodging makes you invulnerable while you dodge and that turns every boss fight into a QTE: "Press dodge button now or die". Just because it doesn't state which button to press doesn't change the fact that it is a QTE.

Because dodging makes you INVULNERABLE! Try beating the game with blocking only at level 1.

Fun little thought experiment: Everytime you dodge in a boss battle you say "Dodge" out loud and record it. Can you determine what boss you're fighting if you listen to the recordings afterwards or are all they all too similar?