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

the game and the combat most of all is great, but there is a big problem imo: the enemies dont scale enough and so at some point the game become trivial

the problem is that humans use much much better the combos
increasing the player level means having just too many combos, and too many CCs to use so circling them can nearly stunlock the whole enemy party

since its impossible to give ai the same tactics they should be just roughly stronger to pose some threat

the problem at the end of the first zone is big imo, the end fights are SUPER DISAPPOITING, all those bosses i was like "meh just 2 aoe and we owned them"

this is increased by the fact they are also too low level... you get to ending the first area lvl 9-10 but the last bosses are nearly always lower than you...

i think end area bosses should be stronger and a couple level higher, they should be a good challenge while they are super easy, tbh the first pack of zombies lvl 3 is harder

im starting second area now, and i hope its difficulty scales better

Level scaling is a plague upon RPGs that must be completely exterminated.

Therefore, it is an excellent thing that enemies do not scale. They shouldn't scale, ever.

Level scaling should be killed, hanged, exterminated and forbidden on sight, and anyone trying to promote it put into jail (the last one just kidding of course, but you get the drift ).

As far as enemies, don't know what difficulty you play on but i am playing on hard with 2 lone wolves and trust me fights are nowhere near trivial in the first zone. The AI is using everything, combinations, aoe, arrows, a damn mage even used resurrection on his skeleton buddy once. Quite interesting and challenging.

Oh, just to clarify.

Level scaling is when enemies change their level/power according to the level of your character(s).

I don't think he was necessarily referring to auto-scaling (which is indeed a plague upon RPGs), he probably just meant that the enemies later in the game should have been set to a higher level.

Oblivion level scaling... /facepalm

Indeed. Perhaps he meant to say that he'd like some areas to be generally harder and bosses to be stronger, regardless of the player's level. That's why I later added a definition of level scaling to prevent confusion and needless arguing.

Anyhow.. using the word "scaling" has certain connotations.

yes i never mentioned or intended enemies autoleveling to match the player

i just meanst they are too easy the more you level up

i explained why, enemies at lvl 10 are just 2x stronger than at lvl 5

but player at lvl 10 is like 5 6 times stronger than at lvl 5

also the more you add skills to the pool the more ai uses them badly and player uses them perfectly
so at lvl 10 for whatever potential strenght the enemies have, they use like 40 %

How did the original poster start off with a discussion on scaling up the difficulty only for it to turn into a level scaling debate one post later? Come on guys, read what he took the time to write before responding.

OP, I'm assuming you've already tried out the hard difficulty setting? Keep in mind that the current difficulty settings have more of an impact on Warrior types than Mages (so if you have a mostly caster-oriented party you're not going to be too concerned with the increase hit-chance penalties, for example).

That said, having a few levels over your opponents will (unfortunately) make combat a lot easier. Since the other people responding immediately went to level scaling, I will say that I'm in favor of a level scaling system that bumps opponents up near the party's level, but does not lower opponent levels to match the party (meaning you can still get in over your head while not having to worry about content being wasted on trivial encounters you can faceroll).

You suggested simply bumping up the level of the opponents, but the problem there is that D:OS allows players to move through the game in many different ways, and there's no guaranteeing that every player will be level-X by the time they reach encounter-Y. Where as you may be running into opponents you've outgrown, others may be encountering them at a much lower level. If the current freedom is to remain intact there aren't a lot of solutions beyond level-scaling opponents.

It would be interesting to see it show up in a mod, and to see how players feel about it once they've gotten their hands on it in *this* game (instead of always looking back to Oblivion), but I don't even know if that's possible.

I think higher difficulty should influence enemy resistances to impede magic as well but that's off topic.

Anyways at the current system, you finding it too low levelled may not be the case for someone else. E.g. If I went with charisma for all my encounters, I'd receive a lot less experience than having fought thru every fight. With experience being a finite resource, I could be a couple of levels lower than your play through when I approach the boss

main rogue and mage hybrid, so i think im a bit influenced, id say
not sure how much


yeah this is the most problematic part



yeah this is a decent idea, even though i think it would be enough to make enemies not so much hindered by the level difference



well one could be to rise some bosses... like you said if ppl cant kill them already they could go elsewhere since the game allows to do so

no thats actually a very good idea
the problem with ai is not raw damage, cause ai has it...
the problem is human can easily combo and chain cc and effective focus which ai doesnt

giving ai +% dmg or hp woudlnt change much (until its so much no one can handle ofc)
cause the result would be the same, the higher dmg ranged would be stunned, the melees teleported and slowed etc etc

giving more res would really hurt the foundation of human tactic
making more CC resisted human would have to work around it with more strategy



trust me... it is
i just ignore side quest, i just go and kill stuff and folloow the main quest, nothing else...
im sure most players go and explore and follow side quest way more than i do

I guess the main problem is you want the game to be remain, somewhat difficult (totally subjective) for you as the game progresses. I take your point. I am early in the story but I think it makes some sense for us to turn into...well...gods of sorts. In any case, raising the difficulty doesn't solve the problem because it makes the early game much too difficult.

It is a quandry, it is one of the reasons scaling came into existence. However, it is totally subjective. I remember reading about how brutal some of the fights were in Baldur's Gate 2, after I had finished the game and hadn't a single issue. They can't optimize the end of this game because the game is not built for min/maxed characters. Give the freeform nature of character building it's quite clear that the end bar was lowered to account for some slightly less that optimized builds.

There are a few characters (a hireling no less) that could solo the game but you would need precision in your build such that you knew going in that soloing/duoing was your goal.

Does that mean the game can't use some optimizing, of course not, but scaling in any sense of the word for a game of this nature is not meant to be. Even in Diablo 2, as an example, there are class builds that can very easily solo the game, and ones that absolutely cannot, at the other end of the spectrum. But everyone who plays the game knows what these builds are and what they can do.

I know what you mean. My party is dominating in combat right now. Once we came into a decent amount of gear and skill selection we became unstoppable. Haven't had to reload a fight ever and I'm level 12 right now on normal difficulty.

On the other hand, I really, REALLY like that the game is accessible. I feel free to experience the game in other ways and appreciate I don't have to build an ideal party or use the optimal tactics to win.

Perhaps future mods (or upping the difficulty setting) will scratch the itch for more difficulty when you use an ideal party and superior tactics.

I think the resistance system is OP (once you've crafted/enhanced your gear). You shouldn't be able to reach complete immunity against every element and even be healed by elemental attacks/effects. That's just OP. The rest is more or less ok.

And I think there should be a much higher chance that summons turn against you if you harm them with friendly fire/AoE damage.

The scaling problems with enemies in D:OS is pretty apparent...

The very earliest enemies already have all the stops thrown at you. Nothing is saved for later.

Making bosses difficult is a matter of giving them disable immunity and a walk it off like thing that only affects bad things and reduces them to 1 turn.

The first end boss is an extremely hard fight when he isn't disabled as an example.

I agree that chances to disable enemies should be reduced in late game. Boni from intelligence/strength/dexterity for spells and skills should be disabled again. Spells like Ice shard are powerful enough, but with a freezing chance of 100% or more it's just OP.

it makes no sense at all tbh
not from a gameplay perspective (the most important)
nor from a role point of view

I'm certainly silly, but OP is just a bragging post, people read it as a post about monsters scaling or not, but OP is just about bragging the game is too easy for his genius level, not that genius to not quote there's no scaling.

But monsters scaling, there's clearly none or at least I don't see any, is a real topic and I totally disagree on the pure reject from some RPG players. When badly done as in the whole Elder Scroll series yeah that's bad stuff. When smartly done as in Baldur's Gate 2, it's superior to a zero scaling system and a game that try be more open to players.

A DA designer had wrote a full article on this subject and that was pretty interesting. That said in that matter BG2 still is the best monster scaling achievement that I know.

read all the previous posts... the matter was explained well and even you could understand it