The cost reduction was way too much.
Like... not just reduced a little, reduced to the point that now the economy is simply non-existent. You can just buy whatever the hell you want, including unique weapons and armors.
This also makes the Bartering skill completely useless since you don't have to manage your gold at all.

I can now buy 4 books for the price of what was 1 before and still have some gold left.
Before, I could already buy all the books I needed in a respectable timeframe. Now? I have almost all my skills at LEVEL TWO.

Unless your characters basically only use about 8 skills each, and steal constantly, I have no clue how you are able to not struggle with getting skill books and gear at the same time at least a little bit.

For parties that don't use thievery, bartering and crafting is definitely incredibly useful.

Getting skill books and gear at the same time was easy. Keeping everything decked out was not possible.
That's why the economy was good before the hotfix.

Now you can get all of your skills at level 2 and be decked out at level 3 and stay decked out on all of your gear minus the rares you'll find here and there.

The game lost the feel of being a prisoner scrounging for scraps.
It's great to know people are enjoying the complete lack of economy and getting everything they want, but I for one do not enjoy being able to buy a skill book because I looted 3 random crates.

With the hotfix, the game went from "You actually has to learn how to manage and make money" to "Just picking up gold = buy everything outside all unique items"

The item you can sell went down by like 33-50% in sale price (like everything else) but skillbook dropped to its pre-changes value or even lower.

Before the hotfix, attempting to steal the skillbook was actually worth it because when you steal, the value drop to the base price so in this case, stealing one book and a few cash is a much better way to save money.

Now, you can buy 3 books and steal back all the gold in one go.

Yeah I just did a run through I finished with a ton of rare items and loaded with skills the final fight wasn't even a challenge. I killed Alexander and his people before the drillworm appeared.

Was like that all the way thru really.

Was a stomping.

Sorry, but I do not want it like it was before the hotfix.
Before the hotfix, you needed to use all kinds of (I would call it exploits) to get what you want. Like steal from everybody or kill merchants to get your things back and have one char with max steal and another with max barter and so on.

I guess, most people who complain that the game is too easy are the ones who have played through the alpha 100 times. I think games should be designed around a new players, and those will not know all tricks to get max money or max exp. Classic mode is the normal difficulty after all, there will be harder difficulty levels in the final game and I do not care if they tripple the prizes for items and the number of enemies in the highest difficulty level (because I will not play it, at least not the first time).

So it feels a bit strange to me, that some people exploit every mechanic the game has and they know how to get max exp and money and then they complain that the game is too easy in normal mode. But I guess that is the purpose of an alpha. Players find all kinds of exploits and the devs fix them before the game is released. I just made a suggestion how to change merchants in another thread.

I agree, I don't want the game's difficulty to be defined by one's knowledge of exploits and preparedness to use them. I prefer a straightforward approach and simply don't enjoy gaming the system: it detracts from what I feel is the purpose of playing the game. I also don't want to feel trapped into feeling like I must engage in theft and murder to stand a chance of progressing as it's just bad RP.

At this point, exploit is more of a "You don't play the way I do" eventhough it has been in the game for ages despite being extremely easy to remove.

"You stack initiative? that's an exploit"
"You kill a merchant? That's an exploit"
"You shoot before waiting for the combat to start? exploit!"
"You... BUFFED BEFORE BATTLING?! Exploit!"

These methods are there because they are there and logical, and would even be more effective if they are even more logical and let us rob the whole store after killing the merchant. As mentioned that it has been around since Div 1, there's no reason to believe this is an exploit anymore.

This kind of "Pick a few gold and buyout a store -> easy win from super gear" shouldn't be around even on normal mode. The whole "Everything is so cheap" should be a part of explorer mode instead where you can RP all you want with crazy build but when the classical mode pretty much states on the desc that "This mode is for people who want harder battle with a lot of strategy and planning", then it should be as described.

"You stack initiative? that's an exploit"

-> That is build decision.


"You kill a merchant? That's an exploit"

-> That is hardly something you would do in real, and if soon there would be hardly anyone left to trade with you. The exploit here is, that there are hardly any drawbacks.


"You shoot before waiting for the combat to start? exploit!"

-> This is just tactics, and will be 'punished' with delay on the second turn, if attacking from sneaking after the first attack. Exploit would be keeping the leader trapped in talk, while killing is team.


"You... BUFFED BEFORE BATTLING?! Exploit!"

-> Buffing before first strike is tactic aswell, but I don't like the fact that you can get your whole team 'rested' buffed just by one click using a bedroll, but for me its less an exploit and more a design flaw. Using other buffs normally means, they last less longer, because time runs faster outside of battle.

The trade off to killing merchants is the loss of merchant, like how killing Griff camp early pretty much screw your build until you get to the seeker camp.

The reason we feel like it has little to no consequences is because half of the merchant NPCs will end up dying so you might as well be the one to kill them. If you start killing merchants in seeker camp as well, then that is something to consider but before this hotfix, the seeker camp is the location where you actually start losing tons of money because of how expensive purple/unique gears are compared to what you loot. Shamefully, because Act 1 ended right after that point, you never get to see your 10k gold stash run dry from buying level 10 gears.

One of the issues with D:OS2 so far, Act 1 has more merchants than I think the whole D:OS1 had. At least more than double the amount Cyseal offered. All those traders in the prison and the island as whole also kind of break the immersion of being on a isolated island far from the 'civilisation'.

Actually I've always wondered why most merchants are selling out in the open since I'd prefer the Magisters to keep a tighter reign on trading(one can never rule out a prisoner revolt) as even physical weapons can do some real damage.

And I feel the trading of important items should be done far away from their eyes like in the Arena, outside of the camp, etc.

I do agree there're too many merchants. There should be far less to emphasise the lack of resources. After all, scarcity is the main rule in a prison and not excess.

I won't mind tons of merchants because they want people to be able to build freely at the start of the game but they should stop sharing the same pricing guideline.

For example, Skillbook should be way more expensive in Fort joy (scacity) so freedom and power will come with actual price but when you leave them and arrive at the seeker camp, then the price should drop back to normal. This will also make those skillbook you pick up at certain place way more impactful until you get to leave Fort Joy.

ATM, the only differences between Fort Joy and Seeker camp markets are some unique blue/purple gears available (since green stuffs are part of the inventory reset and scale with level) and the Gold/Attitude ratio jumping from 1-3 to 30 each. It's like they are all part of the same merchant guild or something.

I totally agree to that.
Pre buffing, stat distribution and attacking somebody first is fine. Killing people to sell stuff several times and being rested before every fight not so much.

I also agree that it feels strange that every second prisoner on this island is a merchant.
From a role playing point of view, it would make sense if we meet somebody in the wilderness who sells random things that are stranded on the beach or traded with other prisoners. (a few random skill books from several schools, some random equipment and some items for every day life like food, drinks and tools). There might be a hidden black market where you can buy useful things for a really high prize.
Most normal prisoners should have very little things, and if they have something useful they are unwilling to give it to you unless you do something for them.

Hmmm for the black market, hmmm... the thing is: Larian just redid the economy.

How about: a hidden market(not necessarily a black market) but the twist is you need to win their trust to gain access or to lower the prices? Like: procuring certain items or killing some monsters?

'Cos the prices shouldn't be so high such that if you're down on luck(it all comes down to RNG and if you've got Lucky Charm), you can't even buy a single skillbook or a weapon.

And boy, that'd suck for all those newbies who don't understand some of the stats.

I agree with the OP. I made it to level 7 pre-hotfix and stopped at that point because I could afford all the skillbooks and fights became trivial. Haven't killed a single merchant btw. Cleared the whole Fort Joy without buying a single skill and was playing on classic. Also didn't use buffing before a fight and never opened with a preemptive strike. Moreover I didn't even change companion starting classes.
I enjoyed plaing this patch more than I did any of the previous ones because the game finally felt challenging and I had to actually think about what I was doing. I get that this kind of scarcity is too much for most people to enjoy but Larian, please, do keep pre-hotfix prices on Tactician because it was an awesome challenge.
Actually I love the idea of different economy systems for different difficulties, because AI and the number of enemies clearly aren't the only things affecting difficulty.

I didnt test the game after the patch, but i think its ok if the comunity aproves it, since you have to remember:

Exploits... now that's a good one.

1. I don't kill merchants unless it's the path I get from dialogs and Roleplaying (Such as killing the Warfare merchant because I'm the Red Prince and I slap him across the snout).

2. The only fight I actually used Snipe in stealth has been against Dallis and that is absolutely understandable (also not an exploit)

3. Stealing is part of the game and not an exploit and I've barely ever used it myself besides the occasional "Oooh I want that armor on the table".

4. The only time I've buffed myself before a fight was, again, against Dallis. A fight that requires knowledge of the game to beat because without knowledge of the game, you wouldn't even know the fight existed in the first place.

5. I don't murder innocent NPC for XP, gold or items. I don't even kill the Silent Monks. I actually play the goody two shoes characters and can never stick to an evil path for very long.

6. I've even missed many hidden chests in my previous playthroughs that I only find now and still didn't lack gold or XP from doing the most probable thing I would have done has a new player.

Don't call me an exploiter.
The game is too easy for me because I study, work and play in a logic driven environment where mathematics, physics and logic are king and I find myself solving problems like the one brought by this kind of game more easily and in a shorter timeframe than the average player.

I could probably finish Act 1 with the economy before the hotfix while all my characters are stark naked with nothing more than their starter weapon and still not use any of those "exploits" like you people call them. No buffing pre-fight, no engaging fights with a snipe, no stealing, no killing innocents, etc. Just using what I find in crates, excluding equipment, and the skill books I buy with the gold I find. I won't even sell the crap I find to vendor (Because that's probably an exploit too). I'll just buy using the gold found.

See, that's the big difference here. It's not too easy because of exploits. It's too easy because everyone is different.

And a "Normal" difficulty still ISN'T "Easy".

Sorry, I do not want to insult anyone
I just want to say 2 things:

- I am not the best player in the world and I found classic mode quite hard sometimes. All the time I see people who say "The game is too easy, please make it harder." Not just for D:OS2, but in the forums of almost every CRPG. I have finished tons of RPGs (IE games, some fallouts and much more. But usually not on the highest difficulty level) so I am not the worst player in the world either. At the moment I play in explorer mode and I admit that this is really easy, even though I managed to get my chars killed sometimes.

- It looks like D:OS2 has several mechanics that can be used to make the game easier than intended. You did a great job finding them. Now its up to the devs if they "fix" them or not.

Edit: On tactician mode (or however the highest difficulty will be called) the devs can go up with difficulty as much as they want, because most likely I will never play it)

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 (Enhanced version added the Legacy of Bhaal difficulty) did difficulty settings the right way.

A near impossible (Legacy of Bhaal) difficulty for the 0.00001%.
An insane difficulty for those who wants to get punished for any mistake they do.
A hard difficulty for the veterans who enjoy min-maxing.
A core rules difficulty for the veterans who wants a challenge.
A normal difficulty for those who like it hard but not unforgiving.
An easy difficulty for those who just want to play the game without too much challenge.
A story mode for those who just want to play for the story without stress.

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 difficulties: http://i.imgur.com/t6nXOK8.jpg

Good luck doing Insane or Legacy of Bhaal in Baldur's Gate 2 without a Kensai/Mage dual-classed character.

Then you also have Pillars of Eternity which did difficulties the right way, albeit with fewer options than Baldur's Gate.

Easy for those who wants to play the game without too much challenge.
Normal for those who wants to play the game with a bit of challenge.
Hard for those who wants to play the game with a lot of challenge.
Path of the Damned for the truly insane.

Pillars of Eternity difficulties:
http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/misc/Difficulty.jpg

In Pillars of Eternity, there is even an achievement for finishing the game in Pillars of Eternity with Expert Mode (Less helping features but more notably, no telegraphs for abilities (No circle showing the range of your ability or the area of effect it has)), Trial of Iron (Only one save file that gets deleted if your character dies) and without taking any companion in your party.
And yes, some people manage to do it by min-maxing, abusing every single overpowered thing they could use, murdering as many things as they could for extra XP, gold and items as well as stacking consumables.

oh common.
just completed the game for another time.
1) until you get out of Fort Joy grab anything from everywhere and sell it to anyone
2) you don't need to steal anything, I didn't have bartender skill also
3) when I met first undead on the bridge outside Fort Joy (near teleport point) I had about 4000+ golds, and only now I could upgrade some items in my gear and buy few new skill books
4) same with Gareth: until the last battle you collects up to 8000 gold and spend it in Seekers camp for the last upgrade. of course, I bought some gear before last battle also, and still I had a lot of money for the last upgrade
5) btw why do you need to buy ALL the books in the game? you have memory slots and it's slightly limited, source skills useless until source points almost disappeared from the game. you'd better think about HOW TO SPEND wisely, instead of 'how to get some gold to spend it on useless shit'

Good, that was a stupid design choice for the beginning of an epic RPG

It's not that atypical to start at the bottom. Skyrim for example does the same and I think The Reckoning or how the game is called.

Yeah, all of TES was like that. I actually liked scraping together the random crap I could find in the early parts of, say, Oblivion and Morrowind where even useless rubbish like inkpots were still worth a few pennies and made it feel really worthwhile when you could finally buy something decent (especially playing with one of the overhaul mods, so there were few conveniently levelled enemies for you to just take stuff from).


Kingdoms of Amalur? It's so long since I've played that I can't really remember, but probably. Sad that there'll only ever be one of it.

If I remember right you got kind of killed and thrown into a massgrave, where you resurrected and yes was a fun game. Turning from a maggot into a god can be feel quite good, but in the D:OS2 everything is so dumbed down, that there is hardly any feelable progress.

Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning.

Yeah, amazing rpg that had unfortunate timing to be released the same time frame as Skyrim which accelerated its "flop" as a game and caused the studio to go under.

If you didn't know this already it was actually a prototype for an open world mmorpg they were working on code named Project Copernicus. There is some videos and concept art that are out there and are incredible to look at. It truly is one of those depressing moments in gaming where an amazing game gets killed before it has a chance to rise to the throne it deserved.


Also guys don't forget we are still months away from the actual release, they want to fiddle with mechanics and how things feel so don't expect some amazing progression feels right now. I have faith that they will get it right in the end, just gotta have patience.

OK, I admit that now you swim in money.
I am lv7 and I can afford almost everything I like, even though I never steal and I never give items for free to make them like me. All I have is a char who uses all bartering item I find.
It really feels a bit strange for a prison where items are supposed to be rare.

I still think, things were a bit too expensive before the last patch.
I do not know what is the best spot between "you need to take everything you can possibly take and maybe even steal just to get a skill book" and "you can efford whatever you like without caring about money".

Personally? Everything SHOULD be too expensive in this early section.

Once you escape from the island and start to roll in the gold it should feel liberating as if you are finally free!

Well... ok to an extent.

As I said, there are far to many merchants for an isolated prison island. Perhaps there should be a few people, that sell stuff. But only a few stuff and really specific stuff. Somethings you perhaps only get sold if you do them a favor or you get it as a quest reward at the end. But before all, the merchants should not get new stuff at every level up and at every full hour gametime. This just breaks the whole immersion. Merchants can get back to normal, after you escaped and you are back in the freeworld, but on this island it is just odd.

Of course fights would need quite a nerf in a more dire situation with less good equipment at your disposal.

This. I don't think it's about pricing, but about the volume of items available. I want characters to have to make do with limited options. You shouldn't be able to get the second level skill/spell books inside the fort; maybe not even all of the level 1 skills are available without having to jump through some hoops. Finding the Seekers should open up your world a bit, but things should feel constrained until you get off the island.

I suspect Tactician mode will amp up the economy stinginess up to around where it was before the hotfix, based on Larian's comments. The fact is, most people who just want a semi-challenging experience aren't that interested in a brutal economy. People looking for genuine difficulty will probably get pricier items and less gold drops in tactician mode.

At the current state it not only denies immersion which more casual players do not really care about perhaps, but it also denies any kind of progres/growth feeling, if pretty every skill is available and learnable from the start. The only thing that will change are numbers: more damage, more amor, more HP.

It's not about wanting more difficulty for me - I will probably never play tactician mode. It feels wrong to be in a prison that should be a place of scarcity (and where most of the available items should probably be considered contraband) but where you can get just about anything you want right away (I'm thinking about skill books more than items, but there are a ton of items, too). It makes the world less believable and less interesting if all places are essentially the same (is every town/community going to have exactly one merchant with all of the skill books for each ability school?). I want it to feel like a huge breakthrough when you finally get out of the prison - right now it just seems like more of the same.

I certainly would love Fort Joy merchants to only sell one copy of each skill book and not restock it on level up. Also +1 to not selling level 2 skills. Gawin selling teleporter book and still telling me to go fight crocodiles is the worst offender.

Also the story treats making it to seekers camp as something great, finally there are people who can help you. But they really offer nothing new. I can go to Fort Joy and buy the same stuff from mercants there just for a lesser price. Quite funny actually how prisoners magically get better equipment than magisters. Also prisoners selling source skills and magisters being fine with that.

Suggestion: for the seekers camp to feel like a real upgrade and to make merchants less immersion breaking, Fort Joy merchants should be limited. They shouldn't sell skills above level 1 and they shouldn't sell gear above level 4.

Another suggestion to prevent the player from taking the same op combination (haste, adrenaline, teleport, rage) on every hero. Skill books should never restock. Only one adrenaline per merchant, no more builds being essentially the same.

It's mainly in the created differences, instead of evening it out.
Both story as well as gameplay.

Settingwise it's quite a joke, that you are supposed as a complete newbie (ingame) to wipe out a whole division of a well geared, established order of manhunters... ofc that results in the need of compensation, by either better equip or cheesy strategies.
But in that constellation the magisters should be way out of reach, at least level 10-15 imho. So their power is bolstered by ingame aspects as well, and you then don't fight them in the open, but really just try to escape.
Doesn't mean you can't later come back and give em a whack if you really have the urge to...
You know, the "Gothic"-formula.

Gameplaywise it's the hefty difference between the various aspects and especially exploits (that are exploits right now, but could be changed to not be). Killing merchants without any reasonable consequence, same goes for stealing and so on. There needs to be more consequences, especially ingame, like people not trading with these characters, more "security" guards, and so on, making the game at least that much harder in other fields it makes it overly easier in the first place.
Also the imbalance in the skillsets, like the again too strong melee part.
It continues with the really easily exploitable fleeing mechanic, or the (sry Larian) still really predictable AI plus the situation it simply can't handle.
Just killed the drillworm at level 3 (and it's most probably possible with level 2 if one avoids more xp)... How? Ever blessed a smoke cloud? Let's just say it's too true to be good... (pun intended)

And for the "now you don't need to learn to manage" argument: That thought is made too simple. Not everything is the same. For example necromancy right now needs a lot more skills to be viable, than for example melee. You can't lump that together.

@snap
Erm, yeah... You're this, you're that... you're so badass! ... Feelin better now? ^^

That sure sound like a fun way to start a game, just grinding your face into a wall for 2 hours

That's why it should be not 'just' expensive. Either it should not be available or only under certain conditions.

adding onto that the game loses the "makeshift" aspect of weapons after you see the huge amount of them available through vendors.

It isn't available to you if you don't have the gold to buy it.

What's the difference between a book you don't have the gold to buy, a book the vendor doesn't sell and a book you cannot use because of your level?

They are all unavailable to you, the only difference is that one of these situations is healthy for the economy because there are things being sold you can only buy if you spend a lot of time and efforts into acquiring it.
If you are able to buy everything a vendor can sell, there is no gold management to be done. If you are able to buy items you cannot even use, there is simply no economy at that point.

The difference depends on the story situation:

- Are you on the market in a big city? Of course you will be able to buy pretty everything as long you have gold.

- Are you in a prison on an isolated island? How the hell are those merchant prisoners and seekers getting all their stuff?

Making everything just more expensive would make economy more dire but in no way make immerssion more believable.

This thread is about the economy of the game, not about immersion.

Besides, it's more believable that the vendor sells books you can't afford than books you can afford. So it does make it more immersive to make stuff more costly.

If you want more immersion, then ask for merchants that make more sense. A lost spirit in a hidden or underground library that sell spell books for all school of magic for example instead of so many merchants all over Fort Joy.

That is what we are talking about. There are far to many therefore ruining economy and immersion at the same time.

If stuff isn't reasonable scarce, high prices are not understandable and therefore will just feel punishing for players. But if stuff is obvious hard to get, high prices are more logical. And if you give options like quests to lower prices you even improve the play value.

Wow.

ITT: people that want the first 2 hours of a new game to just be annoying.

Almost like starting an epic RPG adventure in a prison was a silly idea or something :O

We had that topic already. Where is the difference to game likes Skyrim for example? You start at the bottom of all there too?

I think it's just a matter of preferences. There'll always be people saying prices are too low/high. Personally I think economy is as much a part of game difficulty as combat is. Maybe even more than combat in early game.

I think different difficulties should have different prices. On explorer everything should be dirt cheap like it is now. No need to think what you buy, just buy the whole shop. On tactician on the other hand gold should be a constant struggle. Barter and thievery almost a must. Crafting is necessary if you want decent gear and some additional skillbooks at the same time. Every free piece of gear/skillbook found feels great. I was so happy when I found that battle stomp book pre-hotfix. Finally my warrior was going to have 4 skills, finally he got 2 cc. Battles became so much easier. Then when I found it after hotfix I felt nothing because I had all skills bought and 2k gold in my inventory.

Tying it to difficulty is a tricky one: I like my economy to be "somewhat challenging": I find it boring to have too much money to splash around and want to feel like I'm working for it, and if I make a bad decision, so be it.

But combat difficulty... I'm rubbish at combat and not very strategically-minded. So I'd kinda like "Explorer" there.

I felt much the same with the introduction of survival-mode on some games: I like actually having to do the essentials to keep my character alive and well, but I don't like the risk of being insta-pwned while I'm doing it or restrictions on where I can save.

I guess ideally the difficulty would be configurable depending on what elements you actually want to be difficult, but I'm not sure I see any game developer being desperately enthusiastic about something so complex, especially as different categories may be difficult to isolate without causing compromises.

So hopefully this is one more thing that easy modding can help. There is a modifiable piece of code:

key "GlobalGoldValueMultiplier","0.5"

This changes the global prices of items. I'm not sure if this effects how much gold you find, though. If this doesn't, you could simply increase the multiplier to make the prices as high as you want for your taste. If it does effect the amount of gold you find, though, it's not particularly useful, imo, and modifying the economy would require a bit more work.

I have asked for some changes to Fort Joy for the sake of immersion, another floor and better facilities and quarters for magisters.

But while you might be right that having so many merchants around makes things less immersive, removing them could be a hell of a lot more trouble than it's worth. It would require a massive rebalance of the entire act.

First, all enemies around Fort Joy would have to be reduced to level 1 or 2 at most. Forget those level 4 skeletons, that will be too high a level to reliably handle. They'd have to drop to level 3 or 2.

Second, they'd have to change the drop rate so there's more weapons and gear to find. Gold doesn't matter if you have nothing to buy.

Third, they'd have to either give you more starting skills or else provide a bunch more free skill books, because without skill book merchants, you'll be using only the same three until the Seeker camp. Hope you picked them well and.or got the teleport gloves, because one mistake and you'll never reach the seeker camp at all.

Immersion can enhance the experience of the player, but only if it doesn't come at the price of boring or annoying them. There's no point in making the prison super-immersive if players get so bored or annoyed that they stop playing.

There are different ways to support players with skill books. You already are able to find some skill book all over the place. But current most of them are pretty obsolete because you probably already bought the skills from a merchant. You could also give skill books as quest rewards or make a quest giver teach you one skill of your choice (or one of your teammates).

And why do you need to lower the level? You just need to ajust their stats/armour and they skillset. At the moment it's one of the issues, that pretty every enemies fights you with the same skills as all the others?

The first act needs a rebalance anyway, because it at current it is not balanced at all and till the end game is fixed with all mechanics it won't be balancable anyway.