As i was playing the game anew yesterday, playing with only the two Sourcehunters and trying to find the new companions... i ran into a couple of very good examples of what im talking about here.
I got to level 3 fairly easy, doing the very first quests in Cysael and upper western area.
Then by mistake i started a fight with the first group of zombie boars and undead, in the middle of the map, leading to the cave where the Sparkmaster is.
That group is lvl 5, two levels above me.
Without any cheating, cheesing and abusing the game rules or Ai and without careful preparation beforehand i find it a fight that is almost impossible to win. I hold my own for some time ... then i usually get killed off in a series of bad RNG results.
Then there is a group of three lvl 5 zombies next to the northern gate.
I stomp those three very easily. Of course.
The encounter is designed to allow that, with zombies nicely staying in a puddle of poison that just begs to be set on fire.
The true difficulty of these two encounters is not in the penalties reflecting the level difference.
It is in the party composition, their abilities, Ai and environment that dictates your own approaches, based on your characters abilities.
Then i walked a bit to the east and thought to just take out that first Burning Soldier from the left. Cant do anything because my two Sourcehunters at level 3 opposed to a burning soldier at level 8 - results in my chance to hit being 0. Zero.
Why exactly is that?
The burning soldiers arent some agile dodgers. They are massive, relatively slow enemies.
It doesnt seem like a reasonable or sensible thing to see in the game.
I should be able to hit such an enemy, unless he has the ability to transform into air for each hit.
What damage i do with my hits can be a matter of stats, or specific enemy resistances. But not my chance to hit - being only dependent on level difference (as it seems in the gameplay).
I wont be able to win against the burning horde with lvl 3 characters regardless of that 0... so... why is it even in the game?
It just locks the player from even trying to handle some tougher area and promotes gamey meta behavior and exploitation and abuse of games rules.
