Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Difficulty not scaling enough

I recall in BG2 you change the difficulty along the way. So if the game got too easy you could turn up the difficulty - or vise versa. This would apply a multiplier to hp and damage if I remember correctly and give small bonus to XP - just to give an incentive to turn it up.

I'm not sure how far along I am; but currently at level 8/9 and I found the king fight very diffcult. I'm finding a lot of easy fights but quite a few hard ones mixed in the batch so it might be i'm a weak player; or I didn't maximize my characters or my classes aren't built to be over-powered but at this point I'm not going to declare the game too easy or too hard.
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One thing I will note is that I only skimmed the beta; AND in many other games I've played (like DD, BG2, Wizardry 8, ...) the first time I play them they are not overly easy (with respect to combat) but for the most part by the nth play through (n some number > 1 but not always 2) they are ridiciously easy even on max difficulty (wiz 8 is an example where the game is very easy with a party of 3 or 4 on max difficulty).
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What is my point (I do have a point): if the game is challenging on first play through then it is ok. If you've played a few times (this is directed at those who spent many hours with the beta); then yes it will be eas(ier) as you've learned how to shape your party and utilize the mechanics.
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I might not yet be in a position to fully comment and my opinion might change once I progress further into the game but right now I think it is fine.
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Btw I don't think the game requires level scaling but I do think it is touch and go depending on where you go and when. For example I never left the city during the beta; when I played the released game I totally missed the area with black-cove because I went out the other gate. I only knew to search for it because after a while I realized i hadn't seen it and I was already level 7. Clearly the areas i've covered are not in the expected order (if there is an expected order). As I mentioned above I just killed the king at level 8/9. No clue if I am high level or low level for such a fight; had no clue he was there I just stumbled upon him quite by accident (was mostly trying to figure out what to do with the ghost the cat commplained about and find that last bloody key). I'm currently in an area I have no clue what it is called or how it relates to the main story (lots of fire) and I have no clue if it is appropriate for my level other than I'm moving forward with slowly and the fights are not overly hard but I still have to think about them.
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(I mentioned the king twice in this post because the fight was about as hard as a fight can be and still achieve victory - er for myself and my current party).
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Any ways taht's my 2ct and a nickel on top.

The King fight is easier if you back out of the room, in fact the "character" that starts all those encounters for me is a fire elemental.

basically this

the fight if you step in normally is quite hard for the starting aoe that halves your party

whatever trick you do makes the fight pretty easy, you just have to find a way to a void the starting aoe

this is another ai problem, ai cant really make a good use of spells, even if they have good ones

yeah but that doesnt change much cause the easiness is based on the infinite stunlock a player can do, and enemies stunlocked do 0 dmg anyway, and also the abuse of elementals/charme

you could give 500000 hp but if you charme it the difficulty doesnt change

This game was hard even on easy difficulty at first. But once you realize how obscenely powerful some characters are and how buffs and debuffs trivialize every encounter it gets real easy even on hard. I'd really like a mode where enemies deal approximately the same amount of damage but have say +20% AP per round compared to hard and CC lasts one round less.

Also from around level 10 or so game gets a lot easier and many encounters are over in just a couple of turns..

Larian, I think your systems and combat team is really going to need to sit down and consider the future problems that will develop as people start to become learned in cRPG systems again. You are going to need to really delve into more complex AI and encounter systems above standard linear progression models. Should be some interesting times in the future.

yes good point the game is over in the end of first area, probably at lvl 7 i think or around that
spells are just too strong, cc is op

also the difference of melee is obscene
my warrior charge and ive never seen a enemy warrrior charge me, they just run and so they never reach my mages

my rogue is hidden and when he pops up he destroy ppl and i ve never seena enemy rogue hidden

also items are ridicolous, my rogue with every atack has a chance to stun chill, and stuff, the enemies dont have shit

anyway we can go talk for weeks but the result is just that the game after the first area is super boring in combat

Hard should be changed to "Monsters get a bonus to all their attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Speed, Perception)." Scratch the other bonuses; scratch the penalties to players. This would increase monster difficulty on virtually every facet, but it would be by a variable percent... if a particular monster is already very strong in one category, it doesn't become overwhelmingly strong.

I agree that the game becomes too much of a cake walk later on. I see partially for the resistances at fault, while it's kinda epic you can become immune to Earth/Air/Water/Fire easily, and to some extend Poision as well, I feel it kinda breaks the game, not only you can become immune, but also you get healed by it; I feel like stupid AI here is a bit at fault as well, as it will keep attacking you even when it keeps healing you ... at the very least it should "try" to attack differently or renember not to use that kind of attack on you anymore if it doesn't do any dmg or even worse heals you.
Maybe it's also the crafting that wasn't considered when making this, as 2x ruby in your requip can net like 40% resist element on all chars on higher level items.

My lv 16 tank has 50% block, high armor, about 160% resistances (also thanks to 50% boost from the talet), 90% poison and leeches life from his own blood when he gets hit. Pretty much never dies at this point.


It also seems some balance issues with the AI skills are there too, I don't see them using high level spells (or cetain spells) too often, which could be devastating (well, assuming you're not immune!) ... but often they just go melee you or shoot their staffes. Archer use their few elemental arrows but then stop and attack normally; don't seem to use the ranger talents either except for the multihit thing.
Also do the AI skills scale with their level? I could have sworn they use a low level heal (50HP) later instead of the equivalent of ~150hp or so. Also some skills are just laughable and useless like bleed, it doesn't do shit (2-4 dmg, TERRIBLE!!!11eleven), that one needs up scaling so it seriously hurts.

Another problem would be that the AI battles/encounters are predictable. They have the same skills and the same setup every time (it seems anyway), so to get become more unrepedictable would also be to add the ability call reinforcements (they shouldn't give EXP though for balance) [on hard this might occur more often for example], so the encounters get some more randomness too.
Another set of unpredictability is to have some of the enemies in preset groups like melee that choose a random melee type enemy (different skills) or have their skill sets a bit randomized, it means the encounters would play a little diffrently every time (and in addition this would add to replay value).


I suppose the "Hard" penality should be adjusted as well, as it seems to hurt non-mages mostly. The HP debuff is also pretty wierd in the way it works with glass cannon, it stacks up for a total of -75% from original, which makes it useless on non lonewolfs (on lonewolfs it just negates the bonus for a -5% total).
Maybe also offer more difficulty options beyond hard.

Besides from other things already suggested I'd like to suggest non artifical difficulty as well, so that on hard the enemies use more diverse skills the on normal or easier.

yes this is a big problem, enemies skills are laughable, while i can nearly 1 shot them with a spell they can do like 10 15% dmg



good point, every party is 1 2 mages, 1 2 archers, rest randomly melee without interesting skills

you just start cc/shot the ranged while you tank/kite the melee
or aoe all of them if they are close
then teleport the closest melee into them for another aoe and dont get 1 dmg in whole fight often

this is boring




yeah but with important changes
ok ai is long and hard to improve i know
but to make enemies strong you cant just add some hp or dmg, it wont change anything
you have to add them skills that change the teamfights, and most of all way to not get CCed or to remove it, high resistences and such