I beat the Alpha after the patch SOLO with an Elven Huntsman/Rogue and now I just left Fort Joy at lvl 4 SOLO Dwarven Warrior/Necro/Hydro (and so far it has felt easier than my first run).
Every problem becomes easy once you understand how to solve it. In DOS1, without magic armor, CC spam = GG. Didn't get lucky with a roll? get used to saving mid-combat and reloading...Until Honor Mode comes out, everything will be easy. And then, once you are able to learn every winning strategy in Tactician, you know a priori it can be applied to Honor Mode. Then it's a matter of execution.
If CC reigns supreme, which it does, what do we do? Get rid of CC? Sure. I would still enjoy the game, but I don't think it would be significantly more or less enjoyable than with CC.
The problem with that view is that a player had to actively go out their way to save scum and break/cheese the system; which was fine cause that was their choice and if they wanted to go through the headache of save scumming and, in my opinion, lessen the experience with it than that was their choice.
Here though? It's right up front and in our faces. It's built into the main combat system. You can't miss it. You can't pretend it's not there. You can't even not use it since that's how the AI does combat, so you have to cheese to an extent to retaliate on higher difficulties.
I understand what you mean. Honestly the main source of my confusion right now is what exactly constitutes as cheese/game breaking. For example, just a few minutes ago I just defeated Alexandar with the solo dwarf I mentioned above at lvl 7. In my previous run with with my solo ranger/rogue, I had initiated the battle by pulling Alexandar out into the open where the Shriekers were. At the time I didn't realize that because I hadn't spoken to Exeter about having the purging wand I would have about 6 NPCs as backup. The fight became much easier this way having so many NPCs to tank for me. Now, with my solo dwarf, I told Exeter I had the wand and they all left on the boat, so I was left to fight alone. After a couple of failed attempts at isolating the Markswoman on the westernmost side and taking down her physical armor to CC chaining her directly, I thought that if I go invis and block both ladders leading up to this area with Barrels then none of the other enemies would come up. This actually happened, so I was able to defeat her and then teleport the Gheist up, and repeat. I actually went into sneak and waited for the voidworm to do his magic, then I killed the Gheist 1v1 and after that it was me vs. Alexandar and another Markswoman. I applied the same concept on the eastern side of the map and managed to get Alexandar 1v1. At this point he has full life and armor.
This build was made to be flexible so that in a 1v1 I can target Physical or Magic armor depending on of which the enemy has less. Alexandar happens to have about the same Physical and Magical, so I went for my nuke combo. In sneak, I waited for all my cooldowns and switched to my Staff. Using Hail Strike + Chloroform + Staff + Adrenaline + Invis + Wait 3 turns + Chloroform + Decaying Touch + Restoration + Teleport + Sneak he was dead.
Is that cheesing? It actually took thought and strategic thinking from level 1 to get to this point. This was even more enjoyable than my other run, and it took about the same time (13 hours). The whole time I had no idea if it would work, if I would get stuck in any place, etc. At each step I had to find a solution, and it was different. In some battles "cheesing" wasn't necessary and the approach was more direct.
Look, with CC and AI the way it currently stands, if I roll a party of 4 there is just no need to "cheese" in the way I have. In fact there is very little need to think at all. Maybe the *real* cheese is in the ridiculous power of certain combinations of skills, in particular exploiting Invis and Adrenaline to nuke and restore cooldowns, Cloak and dagger to flee out of dangerous situations, leave combat (without using flee mechanic, even). Also, Decaying touch + Restoration is just out of this world.
To be honest, I've had more fun playing this Alpha 3 times over than I had playing DOS1. Thinking about how to strategically take down armor to initiate CC chain, and also avoiding enemy CC chain is actually fun for me, much more fun than rolling through battles with a party of 4.
