Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Honor mode still too easy

Somewhat ironically, the main complaint top players have about chess is that it devolves to pure memorization at the highest level. Whoever memorizes more at the top level to get a .3 centipawn advantage to convert to a win.

As with all tactics or turn based games, the more familoar you get with patterns and strategies, the easier it will become, even in a game like chess.

It is a very hard game for beginners, mainly because it has an "inverted" difficulty curve. At the beginning you struggle against a few goblins, later you can wipe out a dragon in just one turn. You start out with a very limited set of tools at your disposal, but you get more and more as you level up and find good loot. This makes the game gradually easier, which is not a wise design choice for several reasons.

Exactly. All people have different abilities, whether it's the ability to memorize or the speed of learning: some play better than others. Well, a game with a weaker opponent is obviously not interesting. That's why I suggest adding an additional level of difficulty. One that complies core rules of D&D e5. I can clearly see that many (if not all) changes to the rules from Larian make game much more casual.
And please note, I have never doubted people's ability to learn. Learning always pays off, but this does not mean that the difficulty level should drop to zero if I know system well.

1rst run was in Tactician : "very hard, many reloads"
2nd was in Tactician fully MP : "balanced" (except first area, hard)
3rd was in Honour : "moderate~quite easy" (except first area)

Reason : BG3 is a puzzle we know now the solution, maybe best way to satisfy ultra-hardcore-players is a cursor
to select difficulty from "easy" to "unreachable" (but I hope Larian devs work on far more interesting things atm)

BG3, by its very nature, cannot be genuinely difficult to play.

BG3 is very different from chess. The chess analog for BG3 is NOT applicable here. The difficulty of Chess can go infinitely high, without us changing anything. BG3? No way! BG3 is really just a role-play game, meant to be played by ordinary people for fun.

BG3 is more like high-school math. For those who have never received good education at the high-school level or higher, high-school math can be an impossible subject without getting another chance in their next life. However, for the majority of the human population who have received quality education, especially those who have additionally earned a college degree in math, physics, economics, engineering, etc., high-school math can be way too basic to them.

BG3 is similar: if you don't know much about it, it's so complicated and can be overwhelmingly difficult. However, once you have learned enough, especially after you have "solved" every battle and every quest in the game, you have learned at least one solution in each and every situation. What can still be difficult?

At the high school level, once we have learned enough, we may try out some really hard questions, such as those used in math competitions. However, as long as the questions can be solved at the high school level, given enough time and efforts, most high schoolers should be able to know how to solve those questions. Once they know the solutions, none of the questions can still feel hard.

BG3 is similar: once you have learned enough, you may try harder modes. However, after you have learned enough to beat the game on a higher difficulty level, like this Honor Mode, what can still feel hard?

Just like high-school math is only at the high school level. No matter how hard it can feel, it's not college math. if a high-school math question requires college-level math knowledge, it will be simply dropped completely by all high schools in the world, or only given to most gifted and talented students.

BG3 is similar: the difficulty of BG3 cannot go high beyond a certain limit. If a BG3 quest becomes impossible to handle by ordinary game players, this quest will be either dropped or changed.




That's exactly what happens to players who come back to replay BG3. The player as well as their skills stay the same, the game also stays the same, but the players' perceived difficulty of this game keeps dropping.

How so?


BG3 primarily only involves a test on player knowledge and it is meant for fun (so, there isn't anything beyond the common sense and everyday skills and abilities of most players). It does not involve any test on the players themselves.

To help explain that, let me talk about the "Veteran" mode in Call of Duty again.


"Veteran" of the Call of Duty is not just a test on a player's knowledge. Far more than that. It's, first and foremost a most stressful test on the player's reflex in using their gaming gear. The majority of players in the world are not supposed to be able to handle "Veteran" with ease. It's like running a Marathon under 3 or 4 hours. The majority of the 8 billion human population cannot handle a Marathon in their entire life, let alone completing it under less than a few hours. The same can be said of the "Veteran" mode.

"Honor Mode" remains to be primarily only a test on player knowledge and it's meant for fun too. On the player's part, the game only requires basic skills in using gaming gear to play video games. Given enough time (up to 1000+ hours, if necessary) to explore and practice, the majority of the players should be able to eventually handle the Honor mode with ease. After all, this Honor mode is meant only to relieve players of the burden of saving/reloading. Very little else, other than some "legendary" actions meant to scare off inexperienced players and help marketing this game.



Conclusions:

1) There is no way to logically and factually prove BG3 is difficult to play. Everything required to play this game reasonably well is well within the reach of most game players who have acquired basic gaming skills. To play BG3 well, players only need to find out a solution to each and every quest that they are supposed to deal with in the game. And these solutions, just like solutions for high-school math questions, can be shared among players in the same way as we share human knowledge. If one player can't figure out a solution, they can ask for it from others and then apply it in their own gameplay. As long as it's a good solution, everyone can use the same solution to complete the same quest and beat the same game on whatever difficulty level they choose.

2) Chess is totally different in that it puts up a test directly on the players themselves: their skills, talents, even genius in playing the game. The difficulty of the chess game itself never changes. But to play it well, one has to be really good at it. Although tips and solutions can be shared and taught to a certain extent, those few chess masters, even when blind-folded, have no trouble always figuring out a solution to defeat the majority of chest players on earth.

3) The Veteran mode of certain games also includes a test directly on the players themselves: their skills and reflex in using their gaming gear. The game stays the same and the Veteran mode is the same to all players. Yet, this is a mode supposed to be beyond the (easy) reach of most players on earth. Although tips and tricks can be shared among different players, one has to prove themselves truly good (and better than most) to beat the game on Veteran. They have to be super fast, super accurate while under enormous stress in order to defeat the game on Veteran. On the other hand, there have never been such demanding and stressful requirements on any of BG1, BG2, BG3 players.

The game is very much like chess. There are pieces on a board with movement and abilities. You can use your pieces to defeat the other pieces, or you can be defeated in turn.

The problem isn't the analogy of chess to bg3. The problem is the AI in bg3. If the AI in bg3 could learn and adapt to the players tactics then it would become one of the greatest tactical games in the modern era.

Unfortunately, the AI is static.

This is good analysis. There are limitations to what Larian can do to make Honour mode "harder" and we as players can always voluntarily impose limitations on ourselves to make up for that. I think Larian could do things to better facilitate that, such as making the Honour ruleset available in Custom mode (you can get this by purposefully dying in Honour mode and then continuing, but we shouldn't have to jump through those hoops).

They could also expand the Custom ruleset so players can make it harder. For example, if I could, I would set the Camp Cost multiplier at higher than the maximum allows.

I do agree though about the AI. For every time the AI does something unexpectedly smart, there are at least five more times where it does something stupid, like Misty Step directly into a Wall of Fire or Dash, sprint to a location, then Misty Step back to where they were. This is still happening even after patches even on Honour Mode. So that could definiitely be improved. The AI in D:OS2 was way better.

Let me add to this a bit.

In chess, the AI is designed to win, to beat you. That's the goal.

In BG3, the AI isn't designed to beat you. It's designed for you to win. The only question is "how hard is it supposed to be for you to win?"

When I ask for a harder mode in the game, what I want is a game where the rules are the same for both sides and the AI is designed to beat you, to win. That way I'm going up against a real challenge.

There are some cool Mods to Make the Game Harder already..
Give a Try really nice stuff.
Larian could even Learn something from then.

So far the biggest issue for me in Honour mode has been that bosses simply don't have enough HP. On my current run I've killed two bosses (Gith inquisitor and Gortash) in one turn and none of the others have lasted much longer. The legendary actions don't really matter much if the bosses don't last long enough to use them. Combined damage output of a decent 4 member party per turn is simply much greater than what the bosses can dish out on their own turn and by endgame the mooks with them are too weak to balance the scales. All of which makes the action economy favour the player.

Now, I don't want bosses to be able to cause 300 HP worth of damage per turn, as that simply wouldn't be much fun, but if they can't keep up with a full party on damage output you could compensate for that with durability. Grym is one of my favourite bosses in the game because he's durable enough that the fight against him becomes a multi-turn test of endurance and manouvering. Especially if you don't use the hammer.

You probably won't even survive the nautiloid if they do that, because if Zhalk would turn against you instead of the mindflayer, to make sure none of these pesky thralls get to the helm, you wouldn't stand a chance.

Maybe the problem to get good difficulty levels is that the game pushes too strong adversaries against lvl 1 characters from the beginning. Then they need to do all sorts of arrangements to enable those characters to survive.

Difficulty is a personal subjective experience. If someone finds the game too difficult to the point they stop playing it, they are right. If a significant portion of the player base feels and acts this way, then it is safe to say that the game is "factually" hard.


Game developers never focus on making a super smart AI, because it is a massive amount of work for a questionable outcome. They usually have to cut out a large portion of the planned content anyway, due to time constraints, so the smart AI has no chance of getting anywhere near the backlog. There are cheaper ways to add difficulty: more enemies, that do more damage and last longer.

On the other hand, it is also very hard to balance the game around a smart AI. In the context of BG3, the result of a fight between an expert player and AI would boil down to initiative and pure RNG. The one who goes first, wipes the other one out, provided all attack rolls are successful. I don't see how this could be seen as fun. The randomness goes heavily against the skill aspect of the challenge. You need a fairly stupid AI to be able to build enough buffers to counteract the effects of a potentially catastrophic RNG event.

More realistically though, even a very smart AI would have a number of blindspots to be exploited, rendering the entire effort to create one pointless.

Making Long Rest require more camping supplies won't make the game harder, just more annoying.

The game is too easy because the players are given cheesy exploits like stealth and wet, endless powerful consumables, super strong custom magic items and illithid powers.

Player power potential has to be cut and controlled better. Stealth and burst damage are the worst offenders.

Controlling player damage output is needed, not some senseless HP bloat for bosses. Other non-boss encounters need to be challenging too.

Same rules need to apply to players and monsters. What's the point of players having 100hp and enemies having 1000hp? It's just an unnecessary imbalance.

And tactical combat sucks and needs to be deeper. It's way too easy to get to anyone through any amount of minions or guards. Little less 'fun' movement items and abilities and buffed up jumps would go a long way in making positioning and guards actually matter. As would proper line of sight instead of firing arrows and spells through people. Bosses would be fun to fight if their minions could actually protect them, without clumsy "kill all minions first" invulnerability mechanics.

I fully support it. And not only the jump itself must be balanced, but also the spell 'jump'. In the name of all gods, why is the first level spell is so powerful? It lasts for 10 rounds and is actually a teleport over long distances, which is just ridiculous. Higher-level spells look strange against it. Why waste a higher spell cell for 'Misty Step' or 'Dimension Door ' if you can use overpowered low-level jump.

That is what happened to me in a certain way in my current Honour play. Zhalk killed the mindflayer very fast due to crits, then downed my main and Lae'zel, and Shadowheart barely reached the control panel. I was a bit worried wether it was "game over" that early because of the death of my main, as the others are not true companions of a party in the intro, but luckily she woke up on the beach.

I'm fine with Honour mode, it should not be the litmus test for the true hero/heroine but a difficult but manageable mode with a chance to fail permanently, a bit like in life. More difficulties should be added in Custom mode.

I also don't understand why self restriction is such a problematic feature for some people. I did not use any scroll or potion (other than healing) in my first real playthrough (after EA), did shove only one time, did not look for magical items except what I found by chance (I missed a lot ...), used stealth in combat only for my Rogue, avoided Illithid powers and, above all, never started a fight from the meta instead from the flow of the game. I do the same in Honour mode, to a certain degree at least. In my current Honour mode I was nearly wiped in the Gith fight because I did the dialogue and the initiative went badly, and I was so furious about the 600 gold and the stress that I started the revenge fight from stealth (because they now were hostile) with a fireball scroll I found, shame on me. Why cannot people use self-restricting house rules to make Honour mode more difficult?


What I would really appreciate would be a true 5e DnD mode without the op stuff the game offers to the player (and that's although I never played DnD tabletop).

You play this game almost the same way as I do. My rules for BG3 are the same as for BG2 (I played BG2 + BG2EE a lot):

1) Don't die - permadeath all the time (this is RPG: death means journey ends & game over.)
2) Don't kill companions - even if I don't use them - unless otherwise dictated by plots.
3) Don't use one-time items - potions, scrolls, barrels, etc. - unless I'm about to break rule #1 above (I haven't used scrolls in combat in BG3 yet).
4) Talk first, fight later - always, even if it means I have to walk into a death trap/big ambush (examples: House of Grief, Hag's Lair, etc.)

I found BG3 is not nearly as hard as I had expected. For 500+ hours playing on Tactician, I have not died once yet, which is totally unexpected. To me, BG3 is unbelievably easier than BG2. As a result, to fully enjoy BG3, I prefer to use cantrips, low-level spells, basic abilities, stay away from alchemy and healing, delay leveling up, etc.. More often than not, Karlach does not rage, Moon Druid Jaheria does not transform, nobody in my party uses Haste, etc. After a fight starts, I more often than not try to tease enemies (so that I get a chance to see their full power), instead of killing them in the first 1 or 2 rounds.




All these rule changes can be - most easily - done on the player's part - by you the player.

- reduce available found food by 70% => You can always sell or ignore or refuse to pick them up
- No multiclassing. There is no way to balance multiclassing cheese => You then just choose never to multiclass. So easy to get it done.
- remove the surprise enemy effect. => You can do what I do: chat first, don't surprise NPCs, only fight after a chat if you have to
- (people wont like this one) Remove 50% of itemization. Too many weapons and armor. => You can always ignore them!
- Random enemy attack as you're just exploring the map => You are not going to like this, I'd stop playing this game should this ever get implemented by Larian.
- rez only through scrolls => What do you mean??
- Reduce found scrolls and potions 60% => Just ignore all the scrolls in the game or as many as you wish.
- Make pickpocketing very difficult. => Well, you can always choose a character with -1 skill in Sleight of Hand when you wish to get caught pickpocketing.

We are not kids. BG3 is meant to be played by mature adults (due to its extensive adult contents). We don't need those parents, teachers, supervisors, developers hired by Larian Studios to come into us gamer's life, laying down some basic, easy-to-follow, extra gameplay rules for us to follow. If we don't like to cheese, then just don't cheese. Self-discipline. Easy enough.

Due to its RPG/DnD nature, BG3 cannot be genuinely hard to play. There is simply no way to make that happen. What can happen and what most players would like to see is, simply just make the game more interesting to play AND to replay. This is a totally different perspective. For example, from this perspective, "no multiclassing" would be really a setback, "reducing found scrolls... 60%" would make no real difference other than estrange wizard players, etc. In my opinion, the right way to making game more interesting to replay is NOT by arbitrarily making it "hard" (read: boring). Instead, how about Improving combat AI? - Examples: how about letting bosses use "smart tactics" against players - not just via legendary actions but also via some other creative kind of things?

The suggestion/feedback is for Larian to make the game more difficult.

Coming in and saying "you can self restrict!" is not helpful. Everyone *already* knows that they can self restrict whatever they want. Do you think you're enlightening someone with a new idea?

Again, the game is too easy. The suggestion/feedback is for Larian. The "want* is that Larian upgrades the difficulty. A few suggestions have been offered as to how, which Larian can hear and then consider. By consider, I mean that Larian can factor those suggestions into understanding *why* the game is too easy and then figure out how to appropriately address the concern.

The suggestion that the difficulty can't be raised without hp bloat or some such is patently absurd.

To the right of Honor Mode is Custom mode that you can customize anyway you want

Well i just finished Honor mod with 4 pt members. No tadpole no cheese no cheat run no suprise no respec single class no prebuff.

So there are some difficult things but just a few.
The noticeable bosses where : Spider queen / Inquisitor / Grym / Gortash /Ansur / and the Titan. Few of my companions or even the main character died in those encounters.


Medium difficulty I had with Myrkuls avatar+ Thorn and Nere.

Everything else was the same like in tactican there was no increase in difficulty really. I never saw anything " about the later encounters getting harder as the Honor mode description points it out" . Also traps are ridiculous in act 2-3 I don't even bother to disam them. I still had issues that I don't even needed to rest really and because of that I missed a lot of content.


But I think if I will play it solo and on the top of that i use the custom mode to get a - 1 proficiency bonus +x4 on camp supply and price of the merchants. Then I think even me with 3400 hours in BG3 will be challenged w/o tadpoles ofc.

So this is a step into the rigth direction but only really challenging in act1 and actually act 1 was not so bad in tactican.

So as others said before me Honor is too easy but ( for a 4-3 man party). Enemies don't have armor class so they got hitted 90% of the time this is really a joke. It doesn't matter if they have 18 or 10 if the average to hit bonus of any lvl 12 character is around 14-20 + advantage. I also think the vet effect is to strong. This was the first time I used sorcerer and tempest cleric but it's insane VS this classes Paladin or tavern brawler monk is a joke. Most of the time I just skipped the turn of Lazell (sorc) and shadow. H( tempest) because if the act first!! there is nothing left to experience from the encounter.

My personal opinion with honor + custom mode it's challenging for 1-2 players.
I tryed to give a spoiler free feedback but as I moved to act 2-3 I was dissapointed because Ac1 started so strong.

PS
If I could influence the dev team to make a change.???

Then my suggestions are the following X3 more trap damage.

Moving objects or talking them out from inventory should cost an action or bonus action. In both divinity 1-2 it costs points to move an object I don't understand why here don't. It's ultra unrealistic. In this way the carrying capacity makes no sense why is it even present??


Its insane that this is even possible.


I also think that trowed potions should not effect multiple targets and it should use the complite action instead attack / round. It's so stupid that a figther with action surge can bring back from a death door state the full party to a maximum hp with just throwing potions. And he can trow at least 6-7 potions .