I've spent 30+ hours on previous version, trying to do every quest and read every dialog. I enjoyed it a lot.
This time i decided to avoid quests, and kill npc and test hard difficulty, just to enjoy tactical fight.

I didn't enjoyed it at all because there was no challenge. The game was too easy in previous version, it's still way too easy. Even in hard difficulty, it's a piece of cake. I didn't noticed any difference between normal and hard mode. Worst : it's even easier than previous version, because the loot is much better.

The only real improvement in this version is the increased AP cost of potions. Everything else sucks. And I encountered much more bugs than before.

I killed every living creature in cyseal : npc, sheeps, chickens, cows, everything (only cats were left alive because they are cute). When I left the city i had 80k useless gold and many epic weapons and jewels. What's the point ? Why npc are so easy to kill, and why do they drop so good loot ? Aren't city guards supposed to be strong ?

After the slaughtering in Cyseal, i killed some mobs in the land around, but it was so boring i stopped playing.

Do you really intend to release the game in june ? This game could be great, but balance and game mechanics really looks broken right now, and a lot of work is needed.

What balance improvements would you suggest ?

Same improvements i've already suggested in my first feedback for previous version a few weeks ago.

I played a mage/ranger hybrid and a warrior. Like in previous version, i think that melee are overpowered, mostly because melee weapon deal too much damage. Difficulty is ok at very low level with basic weapons, but once you start to loot some good weapons it kills challenge.
Some skills need to be nerfed too. "Phoenix dive" is awful : very long range teleport + good aoe damage and only 2 turns cooldown, it's insane. This skill does everything : you can use it for offense or defense, for movement or dps, and you can use it very often.
Some spells combo are very op, like "haste" + "oath of desecration" (especially when cast on melee characters who have the "raistlin" trait).
Crowd control is too easy : freezing, teleport, stunning... you can easily incapacitate a lot of mobs.
Some traits combo are still there and still op, despite the fact that many beta players reported this flaw : "lone wolf" + "raistlin" can kill this game.
Npc in Cyseal are too weak, citizens should be lvl 4, guards lvl 6-8 and merchants at least lvl 10. Right now killing merchants is so easy and give so much loot it's ridiculous.

Mobs AI is lame, but i suppose we can't expect better, it's a common flaw in most games. At least, they should compensate this with higher mob damage and hp (in hard difficulty).

Some people will find the game frustratingly hard...
Moreover, its is maybe easy because you don't drive forward, and comeback after some time in a place you "shouldn't".
Maybe things are balanced overall in the whole game.
But I agree there is severe unbalance in the beta. Wrote a subject about weapon balance and damages, I still think some primary combat unbalance comes from here. I couldn't get any proper figures, because I am probably right, but no fanboys here will admit it.
Too bad.
My suggestion: Don't make weapons with such a big differnce. Organise the numbers. think about balance before building the systems, it could help.

So for example:
1h weapons: 5-6 damage /AP. Maybe a little bonus here or then so that a mass isn't the same as an axe (stun chance, armor piercing chance, and so on...)
2h weapons: 7-8 damages /AP Still better.

Poor weapons: -1Dam, good weapons +1Dam.

Magical weapons: beside giving special bonus, +1 (weak magic) to +5 (high magic) to good damage, those last being hard to come by, and requiring high stats to wield.

This is only an example.

Because if you go from 5-6 dam to 15-20 damage for basic weapons, how can you balance anything ? Unless mobs HP follow the same increase of course, but then what ?

As someone who has also played more than 30h on the alpha/beta, mostly in co-op, I can say that all your points are indeed very true.
I'm not too concerned about weapons and skills balance, because I figure that must be one of the latest things to be done down the development pipeline and that it shouldn't be too hard to correct that course by altering some numbers... but I also share your worries about the ennemy AI. True, we haven't had the chance yet to encounter some higher level monsters whith a greater set of abilities, but the current ones do not offer much challenge.
It's indeed very easy for the players to alter the battlefield and stun lock mobs or damaged them over time while easily escaping their pathetic attempts at closing range... and the AI currently reacts poorly to those situations. You also rarely find yourself hindered by the same spells you cast relentlessly at your opponents, which makes it really unfair, to say the least... :P I really hope Larian has some surprises in store for us in this department, because it would really make a huge difference in the final game. Right now, combat is still fun but becomes trivial once you reach level 3-5.

What is the tiping point ? Why does it become so easy suddenly ? Maybe that would hint to some changes .

My tipping point was finding a decent weapon. Bfore = fights frustratingly hards. After = fights frustratingly easy.

If it is so easy to change the numbers and the balance of such an important aspect of the game, Why didn't Larian just do it, so the beta can test this ? Because there are more important things to change, I agree. Unless this is a real balance issue.

I disagree. Why would you want to kill everyone? I can understand that someone maybe wants to "try it out". But please, for a normal playthrough nobody would kill all the NPCs and merchants in town. If you want to kill all balance, immersion and roleplaying for yourself feel free to do so. But then calling for the devs to make that harder is ridiculous. This is not a "game to master" alone (aka Dark Souls). It's an RPG which means that there is roleplaying involved. That's a fundamental difference...

For the actual combat balance I agree though as I've said numerous times before. Some spells are overpowered and enemy AI is lacking. Loot balancing could be improved as well.

For me it's much more about skill diversity and thus variety of possibilities. Shitty weapon makes combat more tedious, but not really harder.
However, once you get a hold of "combos" like teleportation/blitzbolt/oil/flare and you also have an archer, for instance, you can easily stun ennemies, keep them at range when they're finally closing in, etc. and damage them from afar, while the poor undead swordsmen and zombies don't have that kind of arsenal to oppose you.

Granted, the amount of possibilities you get as a player in combat is also what makes the game's fights unique and so enjoyable, thus I don't think you want to limit the player more there. I'd say that's where resides the difficulty on making this game's combat both challenging and interesting in the long run.

I guess the people who had the hardest time with combat at this point were those who hesitated to diversify and built characters focused around one archetype, like they're used to in "classful" games, mmos and the like.

To be fair, some of the higher levels encounters might be more challenging if you don't have the right tools, but by level 6, your party should be able to tackle any kind of opponent, be it fire elemental, pirate ghosts and whatever its particular immunities etc. will be. I'm still confident they have much more in their pockets for the final release, though. (Those environmental effects seem nasty, I think starting in the next area after Cyseal "weatherman" is going to become a must have.)

As for the level of the citizens, and guards especially, in the city, I'd agree that it's maybe a little too low... but I also agree with LordCrash here : why would you absolutely want to kill everybody, and why is it a problem if it's easy to do so ?
Also, making really overpowered guards could be a problem for those few starting encounters near the gates where it's easy to draw the city watch in to help...

How so, drawing in the guard is a valid tactic, and these battles aren't the hardest... it's a good introduction. I don't think it would harm those encounters if guards became harder (and a bit more prominent, especially in the market region).

I had the same experience where fights prior to level 3 were balanced: they were extremely difficult, I had to run away from most of them, and those that I won required a great deal of effort.

Rant about the early game encounters being 'too hard':

As others have pointed out, the game immediately becomes trivial once you find your first mediocre-average weapon. However, the balance changes we need are much more than a simple number rework on weapon damage and monster HP as others have suggested.

If weapons were reworked so that the strongest and weakest weapons in the game did not have a huge difference between them, then both looting, crafting, trading, and gold all become useless. Why would I bother learning how the crafting system works or saving up gold to buy from vendors if I'm only getting a 5 point damage boost at the end of it? Imagine identifying all your loot if you knew that no significant improvement could come out at the end of it.

There needs to be a huge range between a random weapon you find and a great one you buy or craft in order for these major systems to function, so the difficulty of the game must be somewhat independent of the damage from the weapon you are using.

A great example of this is the Lighthouse fight, which seems to be widely praised as the most challenging and best encounter in the game.

The reason this fight is great from a balance standpoint is the reason why it is challenging:
1. You have to react to what the enemies do.
As soon as the fight starts, one of your characters has multiple dogs and archers attacking him. He will almost surely die the second turn unless you do something about it.

2. There is a significant asymmetry in the enemies that you are fighting.
The dogs are easy to kill but get resurrected every turn. The archers are hard to get to, but deal the most damage. The ghoul just needs to be killed immediately, but is protected by the archers.

3. The challenge is not killing the enemies, but in surviving while you do so.
Even if you have great weapons, you will still be at the risk of dying unless you play it out properly. Obviously good weapons make it easier, but some of the challenge still remains despite it.

Compare this to any of the orc, skeleton, or cultist fights.

There are a bunch of orcs. Some of them are melee. Some of them are ranged. Some of them heal their allies a little bit. All of them have a high pool of HP and deal OK damage. There is nothing to react to. It doesn't really make much of a difference on who you kill first. The only "challenge" is killing them before they kill you.

Since there are no other elements at play, the fight just turns into a: is your weapon good enough to kill them before they kill you?

Just to list some easy to code ways to make current fights challenging in a good way, rather than a "gear-check" of boosting pure numbers. The idea behind these is that the player has to react to what the enemies are doing and is encouraged to kill the enemies in a certain order. Since the enemies they need to kill are way off in the back, they face the consequences of getting attacked the entire time they try to move to kill them.

1. Zombies leave a trail of poison wherever they run.
Makes you really consider movement. If the zombie follows you, you have more poison to deal with.

2. Add skeleton shamans that deal no damage, but summon a relatively weak zombie dog / skeleton every other turn and run further away from you whenever they are not doing so.
Do you try to chase down the thing dealing no damage to you right now, or deal with the actual threats?

3. Give certain enemies powerful defense reduction curses on a long cooldown.
If you charge straight in with Madora, you need to decide if you might just need to get her out of the thick of things and wait or come to her aid.

4. In all fights, buff the damage of ranged enemies, but give melee the chance on hit to cripple/blind/etc. for several turns.
Depending on the fight, you would want to take out one or the other first. Gives you a choice with significant consequences for how the battle will play out.

5. Add additional sleeping enemies to fights. They don't attack until they are attacked or turn 5. Every turn, they place a 30% damage and health boost on themselves.
Do you want to deal with the weak version now, or later?

6. Add shamans that deal no damage, but cast a long-duration curse or buff on someone every turn.
Are you going to try to end the fight fast before the curses make a significant difference, or will you actually need to kill that thing now?

7. Normal enemies (look just like any skeleton warrior, etc.) that summon enemies around them when they die.
Surprise! Makes the player react to what happens during the fight.

And so on and so forth.

What I feel is important about changes like these is that they do not require a massive amount of work on enemy AI. You are simply giving enemies a basic skill that fundamentally changes how the fight is played out. The resulting change typically forces you to make a decision that would yield a different result from one fight to another.

I'm not saying that we don't need a numbers change on weapons / enemy damage, etc. We do. Improved enemy AI would also be fantastic. But until Larian gives us meaningful decisions to make about how to approach fights by changing the enemies we encounter, any balance changes they do will never improve the combat experience. It will either be easy and boring (like it is now), or difficult and tedious.

I like your assessment of the Lighthouse fight and I agree with your rant about "realistically" early game.



I think one thing that can be done about the strength of weapons and the interest of players to pursue loot -- and that's already the case to some degree -- is not to scale them in terms of linear power (i.e moar dps) but also in variety and usefulness in various circumstances.


Weapons and armors that might not vary tremendously in damage or protection but provide different secondary bonuses, resistances, etc. are a good thing. For example, I held on to a pair of boots in the early game because it gave a nice boost to sneaking while I already found alternatives with 3 or 4 more ranks in protection.
It seems they already have introduced more of this type of items when they reworked the loot matrice and I think reducing the disparities between damage ranges but increasing their particular advantages like chances to stun/petrify/poison/freeze, types of damage, bonuses to talents or skills, etc. might do great things to both balance and loot.

I'd have an interest in paying lots of gold for a weapon that does not do a lot more damage than what I already have but would fit my character's build perfectly in terms of secondary characteristics and tactical possibilities... and I would probably hold on to it longer than a straight "improved damage" item.

That way, you might also want to level your crafting abilities to add some "fire damage" to your favourite sword in case you encounter skeletons immune to slashing, add some movement speed to your rogue's boots at the cost of reduced armor, add a stun effect to a mace wielded by a warrior with no other crowd control abilities, sharpen a low damage dagger to provide a a high chance of critical strike, etc.

Great analysis Arjiki. You've managed to put some things into words in a way that I haven't been able to.

Indeed, great ideas Arjiki.

I have to add my own rant, but this time to some players. Some people here look for the ultimate challenge that would allow them to tactically approach each little battle and learn it by dying multiple times. How would that be interesting and fun if every time you encounter an enemy you'd have to die 15 times before you figure out the best strategy? I don't find it challenging I find it stupid. But of course there are people who want this game to be a round based demon souls.

Others though want to relax while playing the game and have a nice smooth progression, so that by the time they finished the game on easy or medium they would say - man, that was one of the best experience in years. Let me turn it up a notch and go for hard difficulty.

And there are also hotties that would want nightmare difficulty too. So what's more important? I believe both are important, but difficulty right now is a bit unbalanced. It seems that no matter the level of difficulty the first few levels are always the most challenging ones, and in some cases almost unforgiving. And then as higher level you get, as more weapons you find as easier the game becomes. Is that not normal?

I think the big thing here is that people over level and have nothing else to do but slaughter everything they can find I the map. I believe when we get access to "another 70% of the game" this will all even out. That's why I mentioned that it is important to let us test the rest of the maps so that we can collect a feedback for LS either anything needs to be balanced. Because no matter on which difficulty you play right now the Beta map everyone ends up destroying pretty much everything of the map by the time they are done exploring which is about level 8. If we'd have somewhere to go and flex our muscles before more powerful monsters the problem of us being overpowered wouldn't be so immediate IMHO.

I don't know what the problem with the lighthouse fight is...

I killed them all in three turns without any losses.

The fight against Braccus court of sceletons in the far east was much harder imo, the hardest in the game. But then I met them at level 5 and the lighthouse party at level 10. Guess why my experience is different than yours. For me the lighthouse fight was really a cakewalk...


But nevertheless I agree with most of what was said here about balancing in general.


Another suggestion:

Again me - as a fan of D&D and of the omnipresent mage as Stabbey might call me - I would vote for more deadly spells that have a low chance of succeeding. Not only for the player but especially for enemies. "Finger of death" or "entomb" are good examples from D&D. If they suceed one character has almost no chance to survive. Party members hit by deadly spells like "turn to stone" of "entomb" were even impossible to bring back by normal means or usual resurrect spells. The biggest con of these spells were that they were hard to cast and in most times the casting just failed. In that case the mage only waisted a lot of time, making decisions more meaningful and combat more determined by luck and dynamic behaviour instead of static "numbers games".

I know that some people hate games based on luck and percentages (this philosophical battle is even bigger in board and tabletop games) but personally, I'm a fan of that to a certain contect especially if it is connected in a meaningful way with other gameplay elements (not being able to save during fights is CRUCIAL to that!). And Divinity: Original Sin already has a chunk of percentages and luck integrated, namely for melee fighters. Every time you swing a sword there is a chance to miss the target. That - very very sadly - doesn't apply to spells and skills so far with is a HUGE hit to balancing. Everyone should be able or in danger to miss the target which means mages and rangers as well with every attack and not only melee fighters.



I fear that it is not even balancing we're talking about here. Balancing would mean that you have working system with the wrong numbers. But I fear that we have (partly) broken or non-functioning systems. In that case numbers don't matter because you would never be able to balance the game properly, to neither hardcore fans nor casual gamers... :-|

Having to die 15 times in each and every fight or having to spend some time in the game to learn some of its mechanics and the basic enemy capabilities is not the same thing. To me, the latter only means that the gameplay has some depth and, yes, that's pretty much what I'm expecting, and would very much like for it to stay that way. Now if people want to play it on easy so as not to suffer terribly through the most challenging fights, fine by me.

This is a good example, again involving the lighthouse : these guys have been playing the game for quite some time and know its mechanics well ; you can tell that the fight is a challenge for their characters, but they come up with a solution to each new threat, even though they have to consider their next move at each turn. It doesn't seem absurdly difficult to survive it either. I think in that regard the game has a nice vision of what balance to seek between fun and tactical involvment, now they just have to execute it well... :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSDJw9mx8vc&feature=player_detailpage

@Clemens

To me a good turn-based game is NOT based on skill or learning the mechanics. "Skill" in that respect would only mean that you know how to beat the numbers. It's not about being fast or having good reflexes like in first person shooters. There is no skill in games like D:OS. To be able to react with what you have to a challenge ahead of you isn't based on skill but on basic intelligence.

As I said in my post before, I think that the game should offer a lot more randomness. A game like D:OS which is based mostly on number games and simple causal combat mechanism (actio->reacio) is somehow "dead" to me. You beat every enemy by the same patterns or different set of patterns based on their resistencies and stuff.

I think a good game with some "challenge" here should mean that you have to die in hard fights. Maybe two times, maybe ten times, maybe you make it in the first attempt. Since many stuff is based on random principle you can never know how it plays out in the end. That's the basic principle of many board games as well, at least the entertaining ones. They combine tactics and strategy with luck. A game which is only based on one of them is either too chaotic or too boring and expectable...

I completely agree. I personally hate games like Dark Souls because I feel the difficulty arises for all the wrong reasons: the player is not provided with adequate information and the mechanics are needlessly challenging. Some people are into that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

This is not the type of tactical challenge we are asking for. What I was proposing was a level of tactics in the fights where optimal solutions would naturally emerge. Just because optimal solutions exist does not mean that they would be the only solutions. Easy-Medium-Hard difficulty settings appear to be simple adjustment of the numbers of the HP and damage of enemies.

On the easier settings, I would hope that that virtually any strategy would be enough to win any fight. You should be able to just run into battle, attack the enemies in whatever order you want, and ultimately come out victorious. Granted, there would be optimal ways of going about things where you take less damage and win more quickly, but they would not be necessary.

On the harder difficulties, yes, you should have to approach fights with some form of good strategy in order to get through them. That does not mean that there's a particular grand strategy that you have to figure out for each fight in order to survive the encounter. No. The "optimal" solution should reward you with a relatively easy win. Any good/okay tactic should get you through, but maybe with a few potions used or a resurrect scroll. A bad strategy or lack of one should absolutely get you killed.


To a degree, yes. As your characters get stronger, they should feel stronger. By the end of the game, you should definitely feel powerful.

Ideally, you would have something along the lines of:
Level 1, you fight a skeleton. The fight isn't too hard.
Level 2, you fight a zombie. The fight is really hard, but you manage to get through it. Zombies are really scary and you avoid groups of them.
Level 8, you no longer run in fear from packs of Zombies. Cultists are your new nightmare now. Why are they so strong?
Level 15, Zombies, cultists, and skeletons are all things of the past. You can fight off hordes of them whenever those turn up.
Level 15, Demons are a hard fight, but not impossible. You still kind of want to make your way around that group of 5 of them, though.
Level 30, you can kill anything in the game. You walk straight through armies of zombies like they weren't there. Even the higher level enemies like Demons no longer pose a serious threat. Only the huge bosses matter now.

Players should not start out the game being able to kill every monster they encounter. There should be easy fights, difficult fights, and enemies that are impossible for you to kill that early on. Eventually, the enemies that are impossible should become difficult, and eventually be really easy even in large quantities. But, by that time, you should have new enemies that are hard, and new fights that you avoid because you are not ready for them.


I can see this being an issue, but that was not the case for my playthrough. I don't think I encountered a single difficult fight after level 3. At level 5, I was taking on fights with 10 level 8 monsters with ease, and it only went more downhill from there. I didn't actually end up completing the Beta map. I think I have ~60% of it explored.

Although I agree with you, I think Larian has already told us that the later maps will only make it into the game with its release.

Allow me to disagree with you - I think there is pretty much skill involved in D:OS: ability and skill to think strategically, to perceive the weaknesses and strengths of your enemies, to solve riddles and so on^^. I agree, those are based on basic intelligence, but not each and every player has this intelligence! Otherwise, everyone would also be able to play chess... which clearly is not the case. (In contrast, in my personal opinion: there is not real skill involved in first person shooters - they are based on brainless smashing of buttons and for me there is no skill involved in being able to hit the right button when there is a red prompting on the screen "press 'F' to finish your enemy")

As you mentioned in a previous reply, the argument is largely philosophical, but I could not disagree more with this.

Luck based mechanics that determine whether or not you win or lose fights are the most frustrating and unrewarding things you could put into any type of game.

There is nothing worse than going into a fight 5 times and die each time all while knowing you made all the correct decisions but just got really unlucky. Then, when you finally win the fight, there is no sense of satisfaction since you know that you would have probably lost if your 5% chance to insta-kill spell had not succeeded.

I do agree that a game with challenge should mean that you die in some fights, but those deaths should not have anything to do with luck. Whenever you go into a fight, you should be able to win 100% of the time if you make the right decisions, and all the information to form those decisions (enemy abilities, resistances, etc.) should be handed to you upfront, not through several deaths of collecting information.

I would much rather have games challenge me to think through my actions before doing them than challenge me to beat my head against a wall multiple times until I am lucky enough for it to give way.

Well, in that case it depends on your own definition of skill (or mine of course). But I think you blame the wrong genre: first person shooters are not the same thing as QTE (what you describe here).

Anyway, that doesn't add to the discussion I fear...But bringing chess to the discussion wasa good idea: without enough elements of randomness D:OS and every other turn-based game would be just a different version of chess in combat - with probably inferior rules and mechanisms- which would make it a game I definitely wouldn't want to play.

As you would expect, I firmly disagree. But maybe I wasn't able to express myself good enough here: I don't want a game based on luck and randomness alone, not at all. I want a game with a clever combination of luck and logic. Luck is the spice in the meal imo. Maybe if I could use a picture: luck is chaos and logic is order. Each of them is bad but together they are king.


Where is the satisfaction of memorizing patterns and using numbers games to win a fight? There is quite some fascination to beat a human player in a strictly logical game like chess, I wholeheartedly admit it. Being more clever than the other one and having the better strategy (or the ability to think more in advance and knowing the rules better...).

But this fascination is hugely inferior in a SP video game against a pre-defined enemy AI. Pure logic and numbers games just make the whole experience boring here. There are only two possibilites to eventually prevent that: first, making each opponent unique with a unique fighting style, abilites and strategy (which is almost impossible in a game like that, but that's mostly the solution of Dark Souls for example) or second, add randomness to the forumula (which is the solution used in most games of its genre and even pen and paper games like Dungeons & Dragons).
Luck in that respect means that your strategy or tacitcs could fail. Anytime. There is no golden way to the win. There is no pattern to memorize (hello, Dark Souls...) but there is sure tactics and even strategy left. You just have to react what actually happens in batlle. Your mage failed his cast? Bad luck, adapt your tactics. The enemey failed to hit you? Fine, use the advantage.

And as I said, there is already "luck" in the game. You melee fighters can miss their targets. If you don't want any luck or probabilites in the game even your melee fighter had to hit with each turn. On top of that there shouldn't be even a range for weapons since 70-170 damage is also based on luck and probabilites. Just let them hit every time with 100 damage. I don't know what you think but to me that sounds incredibly boring. In a game like Dark Souls this is ok because you still have the action and to press the buttons all at the right time but here, in a turn-based game? It would be an inferior version of chess against a predictable enemey. Doesn't sound like fun to me tbh...


As I said before the outcome of a fight should rely on luck alone. But luck should be part of it for each and everyone, not only melee fighters.


But of course you don't have to agree with me. Maybe (or even likely) to some a turn-based game without any random component sounds like great fun. Praise the variety!

To go on a little tangent that's at least partly relevant to the latest discussion (and that will probably also start a huge forum battle that I won't be taking part in, since I've been there before), there are three old ideas still kicking around the CRPG world that need to be repeatedly killed with fire:

1) Enemy level scaling: thank God Larian hates level scaling as much as I do. It robs the player of the option to ever explore a tougher area and try to take on a bigger challenge - or on the flip side, to feel the satisfaction of actually getting stronger vs. enemies that could previously kick the player's tail - and essentially makes every... single... battle... the... same.

2) Hard level caps: especially when you hit the level cap significantly before the end of the game, again, this kills player development - which is much of the fun of a good RPG. It's a clumsy and lazy attempt to force "balance" on the endgame, which should properly be done by ensuring battles consistently require strategic thinking, while not stifling the player from exploring new equipment, skills and abilities.

3) Abuse of random factors (RNGs, etc.): all this does is encourage tedious save-scumming. As Arjiki explained, I want combat challenge to be based on the relative strength and strategic skill of the enemies and player characters - not from some lame RNG throwing off the entire fight. That's just cheesy, sloppy programming, IMHO.

OK, getting back off the soapbox now. There's some interesting discussion in this thread, anyway.

Thank you for the added explanation. I think I understand your point and I see where you are coming from.

I think there is a balance to be had. A game should have enough certainty in its mechanics for you to plan ahead with a reasonable degree of confidence. This can be achieved either through a high probability of success (eg. 90% chance to hit) or low cost of failure (it only cost you 3 action points to try to trip your enemy) ...or both.

This is necessary for a game to have an element of strategy. To give an example of what I mean, imagine a skill that had a 20% chance to hit, costs 12AP, and deals 1000 damage. You can't count on it killing your target (because it probably won't), but you also can't plan around it not doing anything because you're out of Action Points for that turn and can't do anything about it. It results in a scenario where you just cross your fingers and hope to try again next time if it doesn't work.

On the flip side, you need some amount of uncertainty in order for a game to be interesting. If there was a 100% chance to hit and your weapon dealt the same damage every time, fights would before extremely tedious. You'd know ahead of time that you can kill each zombie in precisely 3 attacks, so your course of action becomes obvious. Given the chance to "fail" on any given step of your plan makes the game more interesting to play because you have to take into account the fact that something could go wrong at any given step and what you are going to do about it.

If there are too few random elements or they are too insignificant, then you know exactly how each fight will end before it even starts, making things somewhat anticlimactic.

Edit: I should clarify that my main objection to randomness in the previous reply was the notion that it should be prevalent enough to determine the outcome of fights. I do believe randomness should determine how fights are played out, and possibly determine the outcome occasionally in cases where it would have been a really close call to begin with. However, I feel you should be able to approach any encounter with 99%+ confidence of the ultimate outcome, just not exactly how you'll end up getting there or how easy it will be.

I personally feel DOS is in a good spot right now when it comes to balancing the two, but then again, I played a Rogue/Ranger without companions, so I never experienced the combat with spells. Maybe I would also feel that they need more randomness, but I am inclined to guess that I would be satisfied with the chance to burn/stun/freeze that they have right now.

Yeah, it was a reply to my "powerful spell/skill -> little chance to hit" post which wasn't all that well explained.

The basic principle of my combat design approach is that the chance to hit (or cast) with a skill or spell should be going down with the damage going up. Of course that adds randomness to the combat and depending on your own way to fight some encounters could indeed fail or succeed because of a random element but it would also add tacitcs and gameplay variety. That doesn't mean that I want to force any system on D:OS, it's imo just a working principle to be aware of...

I know that the combat in D:OS has its focus on elemental effects and combos and it's a oool feature. Let's hope that it will stay interesting for the whole game and won't become boring soon.

Lord Crash, any fight can be too hard/too easy if you're too low/high a level for it.

Being three levels below the enemies will make for a tougher fight, and there's no fight in the beta which is challenging at level 10, because no enemy in the beta is above level 8.




Are you suggesting that D:OS add some spells that if they succeed will screw a character unless there's a very specific recourse to curing them?

Okay, but on a scale of screwed from "just need a resurrect scroll", to "need a golden tongue from a winged basilisk which only appears by the light of the waning crescent", what do you think is the sweet spot?

I have an idea regarding difficulty levels: why don't make them partially dynamic? I can imagine a horizontal scale in the options with the classical easy, normal, hard, hardcore, but it could go on and on, so if we play different and the other parts of the world become easy and boring (just like in another thread someone killed the whole city and after exiting the orcs and undead were too easy to beat even in hard mode).

I know, one of the main issues is that the foes don't level up with the characters, but if there would be more difficulty levels, they could give boosts for the foes if needed. For example the next level after hardcore could add +50% to the HP of the foes, or increase their damage, or whatever. With this dynamic concept Larian could solve the issues because of the large freedom of the game, since this is the main factor, why it is so hard to balance the game.

They could balance the game on easy, normal and hard, (or even hardcore), and after that they could add such extra boosts.
The diff level could be changed anytime, so it would be kinda self-balancing.

What do you think?

Sorry if someone already mentioned this, I don't have much time to read the threads..

I think more interesting hard difficulty shouldn't just have an increased enemies level, HP, damage output etc., but also have these things:
-enemies use higher level skills (for example, not flare but fireball) and use them more often
-there should be more enemies in every encounter (but to maintain balance, experience gain for every encounter should not be higher than on easier difficulties)
-there should be more hazardous objects, like oil barrels, in enemy encounter areas
-negative effects, like being stunned, should last longer
-allow companions permadeath if they take damage well above their HP number, like, say, 200% of their HP number (also a good thing in general because it encourages players to try other companions)
-items in stores should have higher prices

Yes, this things you wrote belong to the normal balancing. The extra things I wrote are meant as additional difficulty. I kept this things simple so that it would be easier for the devs to implement.

Alas, I agree 100%. No thought went into character creation and planning in the beta. This balance hopefully will change in the complete game, but I doubt it. Game is wrong from the very beginning, by having you choose between classes in a classless system. It says it all about the planning and thoughts so far.

I just wanted to drop a note that we're quite aware of the problems our system still has. Some of the problems you've been encountering are indeed related to systems not fully working, but that's but a temporary thing. A lot of work is currently being done on encounter scripting & balancing as well as character building and I expect that will make a big difference once we're finished with it. You can also expect fundamental changes in what the "class specific" abilities do (e.g. fire elementalist or way of the rogue)

Absolutely true.

I think the lighthouse fight and Braccus court of sceletons are the two best encounters in the beta - if their level is high enough. Imo both should at least consist enemies with level 8 or 9 or even higher. But I agree that both encounters offer some nice variety of melee fighters, rangers and different mage types.



Well, hard to say. The spells I meant were some kind of "perma-death" spells. That means that you had to decide whether you want to reload the whole encounter (because saving wasn't allowed during combat) or you want to proceed with the respective character staying dead (of course if your main character was hit it was game over). Some people who are friends of perma-death mechanics and hardcore roleplay choose the latter but many others choose the former.

Example: an enemy basilisk casted "turn to stone" on a party member. Now there were two possiblities: either you have a "turn to flesh" spell or scroll available to bring him back to life or you don't. In the worst case some area damage hits the stone statue causing it to burst into pieces which was guaranteed perma-death with no chance to resurrect.

Or another example: mind-flayers had some very nasty ablities to drain your intelligence. That means if they were able to hit you they reduced the intelligence of the respective party member permanently without any chance to cure it (intelligence at zero means death). Fighting against these (very powerful and dangerous) enemies without proper resistencies and/or gear was more or less a suicide mission.

Another thing were lasting effects. You could be cursed or diseased for example and the effects didn't go away just after a few rounds. You have to actively cure them, either by spells (which made them valuable) or by visiting a temple (which were often quite far away with many dangerous combat encounters on the way).

As I see spells in D:OS right now there is no really decision making what spells and skill to use apart from using something that the enemies has weaknesses for or low resistencies at least. In most cases you can just use every spell or skill without any trade-off for the one using it and the whole party. There is no possible negative effect to use your most dangerous and powerful spells and skills as often as possible. That's also true for environmental combinations. They work every time. There is no incentive to not use them apart from using them on enemies of the same environmental school. I wished there would be some kind of additional trade-off based on probablities which would make combat encounters more dynamic and far less expectable. Without that I could just use the same strategy over and over again (which is still true but the chances to suceed would be lower).

Cool, can't wait for the next update!

No, this is precisely not required. Skeleton archers are already vastly unbalanced for their levels. Their damage output, compared to their melee / mage companions is already far higher.

For reference, a fight that isn't mentioned much is the 4 stone guardians, which is badly designed because its difficulty relies purely on the party build you have. 100% two turn petrify x 4 will wipe a melee focused party; however, if you have summons to soak up the effect, you can then use ice wall [on stone enemies? slow at most, surely?] to freeze x2 and split the encounter into two parts.

It was an interesting fight, but I can see it being impossible with certain parties.

The issue at the moment, even without duping them, is that summons can double your party size, and the ice elemental's special is > anything else. Fire elemental gets... flare. Whoo-hoo. (From memory of the alpha, air got elec, earth got boulders?). Adding to this, melee chars can spam x3 trips / knockdowns in a single round [rush / bull (3/4AP) + crushing hand (4ap?)] which adds to the carnage.

In comparison, barring a badly placed ice elemental of my own dying, I think I was tripped / knocked down once during my entire play through. I wouldn't want the ice elemental to lose ice wall, but I would like to see certain enemies immune to freeze and the other summons have comparable utility. e.g. there's really no point to the witches' summon warrior spell.


TL;DR

At the moment, knock-down / freeze / petrify [many weapons have 10% chance on hit] are the mainstay of any fight. I suspect that once mobs start using AP / skills correctly this will change, and probably slaughter players.

Great to hear, lar!



And the basilisk can use this spell multiple times a fight?

I'm not a fan of roguelikes and permadeath myself, but I'll set that aside. One of my concerns with that idea is how will it work in co-op?

"oops, the bad guy used a spell and now you are dead. Forever." It's no fun sitting there for an entire fight doing nothing because you don't have/ran out of/were the one carrying the very special and rare magic scrolls that were the only cure for that special status. (It's different than the more general Resurrect scrolls.)

D&D has a DM whose job it is to carefully guide events so that people are having fun. Sometimes that means fudging rolls, giving players little hints, or having critical items show up just when they're needed most. Computer games don't have that. I can't roll up a new Source Hunter mid-adventure and have him meet the party in the tavern. The systems are different and run in different ways, so you have be cautious what to borrow.




I agree - Skeleton archers don't need a buff, they're already extremely dangerous when there are two or more. Just visit the west cliffs if you don't believe me.

I would hope for such fundamental changes as to see them disappear altogether, they are sending the wrong messages in the classless system you are selling.
A rogue should be defined by its skills, as in a classless system, and not define its skills, has in a class system.

I really really really wish you can come up with a deep interesting character creation and evolution system, because it is a big part of any RPG, as you perfectly know.

I don't know for sure. But point is that you can actually prevent the basilisk from doing so by preventing it from casting or interrupting it. It's very unlikely that it will be able to cast this powerful spell twice during a combat encounter. That's really up to balancing. In D&D video games (let's take BG or ID as examples for its video game implementation again) you had to take care who was probably the most dangerous foe in the enemy party and how to take care of him as fast as possible, preventing him from doing serious damage. Casting times, interrupting mechanics, random elements, buffs, area effects and all sorts of systems played together to make that actually interesting and dynamic.


Well, roguelikes are a completely different genre imo. Perma-death is a mechanic to actually make decisions harder and roleplaying more impactful. I'm not a fan of the "hardest" form of it either, perma-death without saving (like in popular ironman modes). With saving before fights and after them available perma-death (aka the inability to revive fallen companions all the time) actually becomes an active roleplaying mechanic, leading to serious decisions, not by forcing them on the player but by giving him the opportunity to either continue and live with the loss or retry the whole thing (that might be a typcial roguelike mechanic, I admit it, but it doesn't make it the same experience here).
As for your question whether it would work in co-op: I don't know tbh. It was one of my biggest fears from the very beginning that mechanics and systems which are implemented to make the co-op experiene better could make the singleplayer experience "inferior" to what would be possible with two seperate experiences. I know that with the fundamental design decision to make the game a co-op/singleplayer cross-over with the basically same content and systems no matter how you play Larian has to make compromises. Compromises that hurt me personally as a singleplayer enthusiast tbh. So forgive me for trying to make the singleplayer component more enjoyable. I don't know if perma-death and stuff would make the co-op more or less enjoyable tbh. But I do think it would be worth to find it out though...


Sure, but I was talking about the D&D video game adaptations (namely Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale here).
Of course it's hard to make such systems work if you miss basic requirements. Having a good number of companions or henchmen availalbe is crucial for perma-death mechanics imo to be actually able to replace dead party members. Right now they are missing in the beta but as far as I know there will be much more possible party members added to the final release so that won't be the problem. Nevertheless, D:OS would become in trouble due to its classless system. D&D games were based on classes and "full companions" which made their loss impactful. If you are able to just replace the fallen henchman with the next guy in town with the same talents and skills, the death becomes kind of pointless. So I fully admit that with the current systems planned for D:OS or already implemented many adaptations of D&D and stuff wouldn't work as they are supposed to work.

I disagree with your statement that you need a dungeon master for D&D video games though. That can also be done by clever game design, good writing and well meshed systems. A good game designer has to envisage what might happen in situation X and he has to create systems and mechanics to give the player options how to solve the situation - best by giving him decisive power and in the end, player agency. Bad game design would give the player an easy solution to every upcoming obstacle which actually discourages decision making and player agency. Examples are savegames during combat or even more obvious endless healing and resurrecting abilities. A party RPG without any fear of actual loss is imo wasting an opportunity to involve the player on an emotional level. You know, in Baldur's Gate your companions were that well written you began to really like them. If for example Minsc died in BG2 without the chance to resurrect him it would have meant a direct loading for me because I liked him that much that I wouldn't want to progress without him in my party. Every critique I expressed so far for D:OS is mostly based on my personal feelings. There is too little emtion in D:OS and the mechanics and systems don't add to them. Writing is too bland and short (although it's well written and often offers good humor), companions are too one-dimensional and systems don't encourage me to be emotionally involved. Don't get me wrong, I like D:OS very much, but actually not for being a deep RPG but for exploration. To me D:OS in its current state is more like Skyrim than like BG2 (note: not based on actual systems but based on my feeling and the motivation why to play the game after all!) and imo that's wasted potential...

I can just add that i almost completely agree with Arjiki.

The "difficulty" should not come only from crude increases in enemy damage or, god forbid HP, but from tactical considerations and more detailed adjustments and changes to the way enemies are designed, all of their stats and how they behave.

I already mentioned and suggested in other threads that undead should be much more resistant to specific kinds of damages - and susceptible to others.

For example, resistant more to slashing and piercing weapons and Air - Water elemental magic - while more susceptible to blunt weapons and Earth-Fire magic.

Thats already in the game but the difference is not big enough.
- of course, i have no doubt that devs will adjust and balance the difficulties of the game much more, just by themselves since - this is a beta, right? Thats kind of normal for betas...




As for OP suggestion of making the town residents much stronger - i would be completely against that, for reasons already mentioned but much more because they are not meant to be that strong.

The civilians and the guards or fighters of the Legion are meant to be weaker then the surrounding threats. And that should be maintained. Otherwise the whole situation would make no sense.
Why would Cysael be surrounded and besieged if a few guards or merchants can go out and clear almost all undead and orcs easily...

Lets not.



----

Oh, i dont know why everyone thinks Lighthouse fight is so difficult.
I mean, yeah... it is - if you go about it in usual ways. If you dont you can end it in a turn or two at the most.

EDIT: Fine.

In my ~opinion~

Permadeath which doesn't wipe your save is not significantly different than a game over screen. The typical player would just reload their last save. There's nothing impactful about that to me. In my personal opinion.

Permadeath isn't the way to make your choices meaningful. Quests with varied and continuing outcomes do, limited points available and no or costly respecs make choices meaningful.

In my own, personal, opinion, being a person who does not like permadeath in their own opinion, I do not personally think that permadeath is a good way to make combat choices meaningful. Maybe that's just because I don't really understand what your definition of a meaningful combat choice is, if it excludes quests and dialogue and such.


D:OS has you with two players because of the story, so it's not just because of co-op that there is no permadeath. Oh, and there's no need to actually try it to see if permadeath would make co-op less enjoyable, because the answer is YES in 72-point font.

The reasoning I am employing for that statement is that permadeath is either a game over or a reload. Currently, D:OS is not designed around/balanced for a permadeath mechanic.


***

I definitely love it when different difficulty levels have more impact than just in increase in enemy damage/health.

For example, in Serious Sam, a higher difficulty doesn't necessarily mean more enemies, it could also mean that instead of a uniform group of all the same type of enemy, there will be a group of mixed enemies that require different strategies to defeat.

I'm thinking specifically about the start of the second level. On Hard, a group that's only a large amount of kamikazis appears to charge you. On Serious, there are fewer Kamikazis, but a few Kleer skeletons are thrown into the mix too, which makes the fight harder because you have two enemies which have different ideal methods to defeat.

I think you should give my opinions the proper respect by marking your statements here as clearly your own opinions and not as they were a fact or something (I got at least the feeling while reading it...)

I told you about my own experiences with various party RPG games and I told you how about I felt in them. You cannot just wipe that away with a bland "the typical gamer would just reload". Maybe most people would do but at least you have the choice...

And I was talking about the impact of combat choices and not the impact of dialogue choices. These are two different issues or better two different layers of choice and agency. Permadeath was just one example of mine how to make combat more impactful. It's not an equation like "perma-death = better combat", not at all. All systems and mechanics have to work together to make the combat system impactful and worthwile.

Of course leveling and the danger of putting points in the "wrong" abilites or stats is again another layer of choice or meaningfulness. There is no indication that all these systems can't work together...


And I disagree on your statement that D:OS has two main players because of the story. I think that this decision was made after someone at Larian got the idea of a co-op game like we can see it now. There is no point in making a game about two characters for singleplayer, especially not in this case, as the game evolved to a real party RPG. And I think that if Larian is really honest about that they would agree with me here...

While I know it's not a popular suggestion with some members of this community because of how badly the implementation was botched with another well known game, there's always the option of scaling enemy encounter levels to the party's current level.

Speaking of difficulty in other games, I have a lot of fun with the tactical combat in Blackguards because it is (in my opinion) pretty well balanced and challenging (but not impossible). Its design is able to get away with using set encounter levels because it maintains a pretty tight leash on the player's rate of advancement and where they are in the game world.

Divinity does exactly the opposite. You're free to go where you want, mostly whenever you want, and based on how aggressive/psychotic you want to be with your party each player will experience wildly different rates of advancement. Without some sort of dynamic scaling, I feel they developers are facing an impossible task of finding a challenging balance for every possible style of play.

No, there simply isn't.

I hate scaling enemies in games, it ruins 'certain other' games.

I love the Divinity, Dark Souls and Gothic sense of "if I wander into a cave as a weakling with a fork I deserve to have my head ripped off.... if I walk in with a torrent of pain at my fingertips cave monster is going down!!

Agreed. Scaling enemies is pure lazy design. No thanks.

The counter to that is that I prefer the freedom of being able to go anywhere and not run into content I can faceroll because it's several levels below me and I didn't visit the certain areas at the right time. I guess I just prefer challenges in my gaming and not being led around by the nose by a series of artificial level ranges.

Just because level scaling was implemented in a way you didn't like in another game doesn't mean all games have badly implemented level scaling. If I dislike the character customization in game-x, does that mean all games should avoid having character customization? Of course not.

Thats a false dichotomy.
Using logical fallacies to get what you want is not the best idea, in general.

True RPGs are not about freedom to do anything and everything. Thats what devolved, deformed mass market abominations are.




- word. Gonna use this for the "respeccing" ... "suggestion" too.
If it ever swims up again. Seems to be sinking to bottom now, as it should.

Placing words in the mouths of others isn't the best idea either.

I never mentioned "true RPGs", I only spoke about the level of freedom I prefer to have. A level freedom Divinity : OS embraces at least on some levels, considering that it's built around the concept of having numerous choices and options. It falls very short, however, when it comes to how we navigate the game world (if you're interested in keeping the encounters challenging and interesting, that is).

What good is the freedom to roam anywhere if visiting locations in the wrong order leads to encounters becoming trivial? That's a poor setup, in my opinion. I don't enjoy facerolling encounters.. when combat is too easy it bores me. When I get bored with a game I lose interest in playing it. Thus my opinions will be molded around the idea of keeping combat challenging.




I'm not sure what you have against "respeccing", considering it's an advertised feature of the game during the Kickstarter campaign.

"Can I re-spec my character?

You will be able to re-spec your character by training, but it will cost you. A lot. It also depends on the difficulty level at some levels, you cant."

I want to be obliberated by enemies that are simply stronger than i am. The big bad archlich shouldn't be the same difficulty at lvl 1 and at lvl 30. It should be hard at lvl 30, and impossible below lvl 25. Also, at high levels, i want to destroy the bandits i feared at low levels. Really dislike games where character advancement doesn't seem to matter at all (no matter how well implemented).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - level scaling makes games less challenging, not more, not to mention booooring. I want the freedom to attempt more difficult battles and areas that aren't forced to be at my exact same level all the bloody time, and by taking those risks potentially reap greater rewards - and yes, I (and I'm sure others) have managed that in the D:OS beta, so the whole "it's still linear even without level scaling" argument I've heard before is bunk. On the other hand, I want to feel a sense of accomplishment/character development by returning to areas with previously tough enemies that I can now handle more easily.

But this whole topic has been beaten to death many times; besides, there's zero evidence so far that Larian will ever do a level-scaling game (though it's up to them, of course). So I guess I'll stop feeding the endless pointless argument now.

Level scaling does not mean all opponents are the same level of power. Creating encounters that are level scaled to the player but offer a differing ranges of difficulty are completely doable. You can have minions, elites, champions, bosses, etc who all share the same "level" but offer huge differences in difficulty.

I find nothing fun about wandering into an encounter that is so far above my level that I have no chance of beating it. The only thought running through my head at that moment is "I'm obviously not supposed to be here yet.". It's not a sense of danger, it's a sense of mistakenly turning left when the game obviously expected me to turn right.

And revisiting the area later at the appropriate level is not satisfying.. it's just what's obviously required and expected. I don't sit there saying "Oh, I'm finally getting my revenge on that no-longer-scary monster who beat me easily when I was 15 levels lower than it.. the way it was clearly supposed to if stats and this game are working properly at all.. ". Instead, I'm realizing the monster is level X, and now I'm around level X, and it's time to revisit that encounter before it becomes trivial and boring.

Nor do I find it fun to come across a new area that's supposed to be exciting but is filled with monsters who are so far below my level that killing them seems like a boring chore of going through the motions. Where no tactical thought is necessary because it's practically impossible to lose a fight where my opponents are (in comparison to my party) so weak they can barely scratch me.

I prefer to come across each encounter and know I'm going to face a challenge. Sometimes the challenge feels impossible, sometimes it's easily doable provided you play smart. The important thing is that it's always present, and the possibility for victory is tied to how prepared you are and how well you execute, rather than some arbitrary level score that rarely provides players with a decent encounter unless they follow a very restrictive tour through the game's content.

But, I guess we'd all rather keep reading conflicting complaints about how Divinity is too easy/hard rather than trying to get it as close as possible to "just right" for everyone. Even the difficulty level settings don't seem to be solving the problem.

/sarcasm-on

I know, I know.. level scaling is the devil. Heck.. I remember how I used to play games in the arcade and the adventure just kept getting harder the further I advanced, instead of easier. Who wants that nonsense, am I right? Why couldn't I just roll through M. Bison by the time I reached him? Why'd the difficulty have to keep scaling up with my skill? There's no sense of progression with that.. - pretty much the ridiculous argument I keep reading here in this thread.

[/quote]
Then you should not do that fallacy either. But then again, without fallaci3s and blatant lies, you wouldnt have anything else to say.

I did not put any words in your mouth. The false dichotomy was what you used in previous argument yourself.

this:



If i were you i would not be in a hurry to state how you dont get whats a false dichotomy there, though i doubt you will listen to good advice.

To my amusement.


thats because I DID!

Nobody mentioned you in the context. You wouldnt know what those are.


Your personal preferences should be kept private instead of being presented as radical design changes that are somehow necessary...


- which all become false with level scaling and "respeccing" which are mass market mechanics that publisher driven design of games for lowest common denominators introduced and which devolved a whole genre into abomination action game hybrids.



False statement - or, simply put lies you invent yourself.

Another blatant fallacy that is simply asserted without any proof that it is actually so.



How does that make encounters trivial?


Your personal opinions are worthless as actual arguments. Especially since they are blatant lies you invent yourself.


Good riddance.


By making it obnoxiously easy through level scaling and making respeccing available.

Great plan.

Oh right, this special level scaling that a genious like you has in mind would never make the game easy... riiiiight.

How about the fact that it would completely ruin any sense of progression - since clearly all enemies would adjust to whatever level i currently have?

You forgot to mention that eh?
because such radical changes would NEVER affect anything else - while being completely fantastical hallucinations that actually dont exist and you yourself have no idea how you would actually create that - not to mention its a few months to release of the full game....



[/quote]

Costing what? Money? That wont be "a lot" since its very easy to get very rich in the game.
And - it wont be available after some level - therefore only maybe through the very beginning.
While it will be available only on easier difficulties - apparently.

Which is the most that it should be. (and i only contest to it at this level because i cannot force Larian to completely remove it, unfortunately)

Until the Devs themselves clarify these very important details you will not present that as some sort of confirmation of your own vacuous ideas.

Seriously, if you want to have a discussion with me you're going to have to group your thoughts together in something less than 1, 2, 3... 11 multiquotes is it? Am I supposed to make 11 responses so you can then cherry pick statements out of each and come back with 22 more? That would be fun..

For example, you broke this statement of mine up..

"Placing words in the mouths of others isn't the best idea either.

I never mentioned "true RPGs", I only spoke about the level of freedom I prefer to have. "

..and then went on a lengthy rant responding to both comments separately, apparently not understanding that the former statement was referring directly to the latter (and not something else as you assumed).

I stopped reading your responses at that point, because I can just imagine the rest of the replies follow the same buggy structure. Sum up your thoughts into a more presentable format and then get back to me. Or don't.. your choice. You seem to have something to say, but I'm not going to hunt through a dozen multiquotes to find it.

Yes, but they are just harder/easier enemies. Your experience and power still won't matter. Archlich example: very hard at lvl
1, very hard at lvl 30.


Well, this is a matter of preference obviously, so i cannot say you are wrong. However, i'll try to explain why i feel differently: For me, part of the appeal of a gameworld, especially in P&P/cRPG games, is its level of "fantastic realism". For example, events progress, so if the Vault Dweller thinks he can solve the "lovesick guy will blow up the power station"-situation in three days, he will be too late. If Frodo simply ventures into a dragon lair, despite all the warnings, and tries to attack Smaug with his little blade, he won't fight an "elite", he will just burn. The expectation that any challange can be solved in any way at any time by everyone simply destroys immersion for me.


Actually, i do find this very satisfying, both in real life and in games. To be able to grow and learn to master a previously unbeatable challange is one of the most satisfying things to me.
Both running a marathon and speaking a new language isn't a matter of trying very hard (elite challenge), you really have to train and get better and better until you can finally do it - then train more to do it well. If you just started martial arts, you can defeat almost nobody - and it is very satisfying to experience the gradual change towards mastery.


Well, i do find it satisfying if bandits and low level enemies don't dare to attack anymore, surrender or die fast. The Dragonslayer and his companions really shouldn't be bothered or challenged by the "rat invasion" in the tavern cellar anymore.
But i also agree, "leftover" dungeons can indeed be solved by level scaling.


Difficulty doesn't depend on level scaling or no level scaling. Both systems can be well balanced, as seen in other games. And "just right" challenges are probably a good thing for the frustration-intolerant mass market. But i do prefer the "old school" approach, and the success of Dark Souls shows that there is a definite market for this. So, i'm happy D:OS didn't choose the "just right" path.

But i can understand your position and i don't think you are wrong, i just have different priorities and thus different preferences.

I think too many things are level dependent. Therefore the difference between levels is huge. You don't only deal more damage you also absorb more.

This makes fighting lower level enemies quickly too easy and higher level enemies too hard.

I would like to see the damage linked to the strength not to the weapon. Armor should also be limited.

Then you could also bring down the values, no need to do 200 damage and no need to have 500 or more hitpoints.

Right now it feels like the base damage gets multiplied by your level/weapon level. Early on this is extreme. Same with your hitpoints.

Thats because each and every sentence you wrote there is a pathetic lie or false assertion you simply invent -not supported by anything at all.

So it all deserves to be addressed directly and specifically - with facts.

Of course you replay like this - having no facts whatsoever to defend with.
Thus this weak pathetic way to try and weasel pout of it.

Of course you dont read anything that isnt comforming with your specific views.

:lol:






Thats because taken as a whole it makes no sense and is a false assertion, or your misunderstanding - at best. So i showed you exactly why it is false. Instead of just claiming it is so.

I thought you dont read, eh?


:lol: yeah sure.


Oh...its a "buggy structure" is it? care to explain how or why?

No? Well, its much easier to make some declaratory statements, isnt it?


:lol: Mhmm.. anything you wish darling. Just for you.

We are all here to satisfy your whims.





You understand perfectly what im telling you. You can pretend that you dont to someone else - sunshine.

The thing is, you have nothing else to respond with but with some weak ad hominems.
Because youre brain cannot produce anything but fallacies.

And another thread has fallen victim to the fruitless level-scaling - no-level-scaling debate... Seriously, guys, can't we all agree that level-scaling is about PREFERENCES? If it were intended for D:OS then, it would be a core mechanism by design and should have been planned for from the very beginning. With something like 5 weeks until the final release I think it is pretty sure to assume that the whole fight system of D:OS won't be overhauled to include level-scaling.

I think basic encounters should be scaled, and bosses shouldn't. That way, the player could still have challenge, whiè¼™e still having a sense of scale.
Moreover, scaling doesn't prevent a sense of amelioration, either in skills, stuff, etc. Scaling can be tied to character level, but not tied to gear or skills.

I am for scaling.

Oh im quite finished with it. I wasnt arguing which is better - because there is nothing to argue about ads faras that is concerned.
I just dismantled some fallacious false arguments that were used as if god given truth that just fell from the sky.

And it isnt just about preferences either.
These are two distinct different styles of design.

While clearly, such a thing was not planned for OS and wont be suddenly included just like that.

The common complaint that level scaling = a lack of progression really makes little sense to me, though. The only sense of progression that's lost is the one where Monster-A used to be able to one-shot me, but can now be one-shot by me instead. As those are both ends of a spectrum I don't find appealing (particularly the latter), I don't mourn their loss.

However, for players to claim that's the sole means of progression is crazy. When advancing through a game, I feel like I'm making progress through a story or adventure. As new areas of the game world become available to me, I feel a sense of progression.

In terms of character progression, even with level scaling I can tell when my current equipment is falling behind the curve and better gear needs to be obtained. Thus, improving my equipment provides me with a sense of progression. I can't just sit there and hoard character points that are rewarded to me or else (once again) I'll start falling behind the curve in terms of character power. And, again, spending them allows me to improve my character, which provides me with a sense of progression. As new skills and abilities open up, I feel a sense of progression, especially when those abilities become key to moving through future challenges.

I don't need to be able to one-shot a trivial monster to shout "Yes! Now that's a sense of progression!". I'm just not that petty in my gaming. I can appreciate a sense of progression that goes deeper than that. I don't know why so many players on this forum seem to focus so much on whether they can bully an encounter (or be bullied by it). Are people turning to their gaming for payback to real-life problems, where they're not happy with a game unless they can soundly dominate the AI competition or something? I just don't get that. Who knows, maybe my desire for more challenges in games is a sign that I'm not being challenged enough in the real world. I'm sure someone can have fun analyzing all this.


Yes, part of the problem is that people hear "level scaling" and they seem to make the mistake that it can only be handled one way (and they tend to pull from the worst possible implementation of level scaling they've ever seen). And that's simply not accurate.

For example, a common complaint that comes up in these discussions is the desire to run into something that is too powerful, so you can then come back later and "experience a feeling of growth" when you finally beat it. Level scaling can be implemented in a way that allows this. Encounters can have a minimum level that only scales upwards (not downwards) to match the player's party. Thus, you maintain the "this area is too dangerous for you" feeling that seems to be popular, while not allowing content to become trivial.

Unfortunately, there are always players out there who will argue that they want to be able to lay their face on a keyboard and roll it around until everything on the screen is dead. They like trivial encounters. I just can't get behind that, because (to me) that's wasted content where I'm simply going through the motions. Especially in a turn-based game where trivial battles take nearly as long as challenging ones, minus the whole "I've been challenged" feeling.


What you've done is create a nest of insulting comments that are so ridiculous, I can't even bother to respond to them. But, keep on patting yourself on the back if that makes you feel like you accomplished something beyond trolling.

Nah, youre just repeating yourself. Lying, misunderstanding and trying to assert some sort of weak ad hominems without any proof or facts to support it.

Thats because you have nothing else to say and nothing else to think.


Nobody is insulting, unless you mean to say that facts are insulting to you. Which is actually true.
Because you are obviously someone who is willing to consider replies that comform with your personal views and desires - only.

The rest is "insults". And "trolling". that you "didnt read".

Because you say so.


You just go down a list of fallacies and empty vacuous assertions which ends in your proclamations of victim-hood - which will supposedly makes you right.

Which is the exactly same logic loop that those like you always go through without a fault.
Youre just one of the clones.



Of course this doesnt make any sense to you. However, as an argument in favor of your position thats completely worthless.

In fact its a clear confession of your level of logic and knowledge.


How is that "crazy"? because you say so?



Is that supposed to explain why you call the RPG progression - "crazy"?

it doesnt, does it? Which means that the above sentece is just another vacous empty declarative statement that you simply invented.


Go play adventures and bioware and bethesda games that are action hybrids where everything is made easy so you can "go through the story" and adventure - not actual true RPGs.

Youre playing a wrong kind of a game and you want it to be changed and devolved into that kind that you like personally.

Thats it.
Thats the actual whole of your argument.

Yep, nothing insulting or trolling there.

It's also interesting how you keep insisting I'm only responding to "..replies that comform with your personal views and desires.." (it's conform, by the way), when I've been responding to plenty of arguments in this thread. The ones I'm trying not to bother with are yours, though, because you're trolling. And trolls are generally not worth taking seriously and/or responding to.

You see, it would be easy to take your route and individually quote and respond to every sentence someone makes, creating a dozen multi-quote response that basically says "You're wrong/lying/an idiot" with each remark. But don't fool yourself into thinking you're saying anything useful with that. You're welcome to your opinions (as odd as they may be), but in the end that's all they are.

Now, I don't consider you a troll because your opinion differs from mine (although that seems to be your definition of one). I consider you a troll because you can't seem to formulate a reasonable response and instead just resort to personal attacks. If you want to put those attacks aside and get back to actually discussing the topic for a change, then let's do that. Otherwise, you're just wasting my time.

I'm sure your next response to me will be further trolling, but you could always prove me wrong. Just don't expect me to respond to you further if that's the route you're going to continue with. And understand that a further lack of response (to you) is not in any way a sign that I agree with the nonsense you've been leaving here. It's more a sign that I feel your argument has failed to make any impression, beyond the fact that you're intent on picking a fight.

And I could not agree more with this. Of course it's good to have some variation in the results of an action so that it doesn't boil down simply into a calculation and in your head you're going "He has 4 health left and my attack will deal 5 damage so I'll win".

However if you make things too variable, you're essentially just making them unreliable. And when you come across that situation where by all rights you should have succeeded but you die because of nothing but pure bad luck you don't feel like it was a deserved defeat, you just feel cheated. And that's not what a game should make a player feel.

DOS is not pure luck. Its not like roll a d6, you win if you do 1-3. There are stats, skills, potions, environments, planning, etc that can be used to reduce "luck" as much as possible.

If luck is both ways, I think it can be ok. That is, if you can critical a monster as much that it can crit you, It shouldn't be feeling like cheated, but like fair trade, that either goes right or wrong.
Then again, how the gameply is implemented can be very important. If a failure means instant death, it might be a little harsh indeed. If it means some heavy wounds that can take time or special stuff to be removed, you still have a critical failure, (or success, whatever), but not life breaking.

Really, a question of balance and gameplay.

@Gyson

You are constantly calling me a troll - without providing any evidence of that... and you accuse me of personal attacks? And you keep repeating that so you can create some sort of excuse of why you "wont reply" or "read"?

You are some kind of a victim? Poor you.


:lol: