I don't know if you played WotR on the core (the name indicates that this is the level you should play at) or higher, but it was literally a circus there.
I did. I even complained about it on this forum during the first two Alpha.
Frankly by the time the game released it was already tuned down considerably. While I may attribute this PARTIALLY to my increase familiarity with the game, I found the difficulty at release to be absolutely manageable compared to some soul-crushing difficulties I experienced at core during Alpha 1 and 2. I still think that OVERTUNED encounters where all enemies have RIDICULOUSLY bloated stats is the worst thing about the two Owlcat cRPGS so far and the one area where I hope to see improvements.
It's not that it is difficult, but that it is just unfairly difficult. The game is literally made with the idea that the player has all possible buffs on in order to have any chance. The enemies deal extremely high damage, so if they attack a more vulnerable character, it will most likely die within one turn. It is not a problem if you can prepare for the fight by using the tank as a decoy (enemies are so stupid that in 95% of cases, once they have targeted their target, they will attack him to the end). The problem starts when the enemies attack by surprise (just respawn around the team). The game is completely not adapted to it and if you play it for the first time, it ends in immediate death. Random encounters are the worst of it all, not only do you start a fight by being surrounded until you have no opportunity to prepare for a fight in advance. You might think that an intelligent designer in such a situation will make the enemies weaker enough that the player has a chance. As you can see in Owlcat, rather intelligent designers don't work.
I don't even want to mention that literally every spellcaster has such a gigantic DC in this game that the defense against any effect is about 5-20%. I don't understand why it was made like this. I do not understand what is the point enemies with more than twice the lvl level in the magic class than group. And I'm not talking about any bosses here, just ordinary mobs.
Even Kingsmaker, which I don't think is an overly good game, wasn't that bad.
I don't understand this concept either. Why do devs throw impossibly hard enemies at you on Normal difficulty when it's an RPG? Does no one realize that an RPG is meant to be played so that the player can Ironman Mode it?
If I'm tabletopping with a group of players, the suckiest thing I can do is put them in encounters that are constantly almost killing them. None of my players want to ever have their characters die. I mean, I've played with a few who think it's fun to have their characters suck and die, but most want their characters to kick monster butt on a regular basis and be heroes who win. Yes, they like challenges, but challenge does not equal near death every fight.
And that's why I'm worried about BG3 and what Larian has planned for difficulty settings. I'm afraid that in order to enjoy the game I'm going to have to force myself to play using Larian's homebrew nerfed monster difficulty which is similar to current gameplay as opposed to a well-balanced D&D 5e Difficulty where monsters have true D&D 5e stats and act like actual D&D monsters. Instead, it'll be like this:
Easy - Game as is currently with even more nerfing and homebrew so that I can kill even the Gith patrol without much of a challenge.
Normal - Game as it is currently with all the homebrew.
Challenging - D&D 5e monster stats and actual RAW rules which will be next to impossible because we'll be fighting 3 imps with 2 level 1 characters in the prologue and 3 actual intellect devourers with 2 level 1 or 2 characters before we can even build a party. So, best save and get gud, Scrub, if you want to play true D&D 5e because true D&D 5e is going to be next to impossible to play as a beginner. Only the MOST elite D&D 5e gamers can possibly play the game without getting frustrated on this setting.
I want NORMAL to be 5e rules and the game to be balanced for it. Encounters should be designed to challenge but not overwhelm players - from beginner to Moderately skilled D&Ders. Then, if you want a more challenging experience, they have a Challenging difficulty that buffs all enemies, or something like that, and they have an Easy setting that nerfs all enemies and such.
