Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Current state of game balance?

The problem here is common, I mean for many players, and it's fault of design.

There are skills/spells to increase your ToHit significantly. But they show lame numbers as 1 or 2 and only for few rounds. Psychologically most players will just reject those skills/spells because of the lame numbers. It could be wrong choice logically but it's still the result.

The design should have shown more appealing numbers to attract attention of player on tools to increase ToHit.

Those tools are buffer/debuff mainly on attributes and also through some states, this includes increase luck that increase ToHit, decrease/increase attributes, surround enemy to lower its defense or increase your ToHit, some states on enemies that will increase a lot your ToHit, some more I can't remember now.

I quote your post but it could have been another. But you write, "Hopefully they're not just"...

This evokes all the complexity of difficulty design. I also felt overall a lowdown of difficulty, it was before last patches that are supposed to have change Dark Forest combats. But when I played Dark Forest area during my first play, I skipped most combats, not because they was too hard but because it was more fun to sneak through.

This is leading to a core game problem the dev will hardler fix:
- Class design isn't enough progressive, overall you can rush your character building and get most at level 10, and almost anything at level 14, and really all at level 16. The links with difficulty is no significant new skills doesn't help offer new problems to players.
- The second element is purely design of each combats, if level progressions and enemies change hardly ensure new problems for players, design of each combats would be the way to offer now problems. Because difficulty isn't just tougher, it's also new problems to solve.
- The third problems is OP tricks. For many party builds you could apply a few tricks through most combats. So it makes feel the combats easy because it's just repeat.

Fix first point is almost impossible, I mean without design a new game.

Fix second point is a huge work because improve and tune the design of many combats is a lot of work and can have many side effects. A point is it doesn't help that most combats are outdoor allowing some easy tactics to player.

Fix third point is perhaps part of the coming change about difficulty and balances, it's still a huge work.

No. If a player choses to not observe and think, fine, than he has to live with the consequences.

Your statement would make chess a game with "fault of design" just because players know they can change a pawn into a queen reaching the back rang of the enemy but noone took the players hand in a move losing just another pawn and hindered him doing so.

Regards,
Thorsten

I have roughly 550 hours of game time since I got the game last month. I am on my 3rd play through so I don't profess to be an expert I do know something about the game and what works for me and what doesn't work.

My primary reason for posting is a recent update in Steam where one of the notes from Larian stated that they adjusted the game balance! Adjusted is a broad term IMO, the word is really "ruined the game balance"

As an example, King Boreas. This fight for me was a nightmare the 1st time out and I beat it on the 3rd try. In my co-op games we managed to kill the boss after about 20 turns and it was barely! On my 2nd play through with more game experience, choosing the right gear and the right skills, the battle went smoother but was still a challenge. After the recent "balance" patch I was able to get the boss to half health on turn one! I even checked to make sure the game wasn't on easy for some reason, and it wasn't. The good king was dead an buried before he was able to summon his 3rd set of elemental minions. Way to easy and quite a let down. Yes my game skill has improved quite a bit but this was way too easy. I notice a definite bug where the boss will just stand still for 4 or 5 turns, do nothing at all! Then as soon as his/her last minion is dead the boss suddenly comes to life.

There is another battle in Laculla Forrest against Orcs. There is a female orc caster and an elite warrior. On Turn one, the orcs turn the female orc summons her war party and then the battle heats up. On my 3rd play through after the patch, the two orcs are dead before they even get a turn! I reloaded it and skipped my turn just so more enemies would spawn and I'd get the exp for the whole group instead of just two!

Prior to the patch a level 3 or 4 trying to take on a level 7 was pure suicide. Now? My group of level 4s wiped out 5 or 6 level 7 wolves in the Cyseal zone. Now that is just wrong :(

The combat has become busy work, its just too easy. Yes, I bumped the difficulty to hard and now instead of killing them all in 1 turn, it takes 2 or 3..yay!

So Larian maybe you need to set up a play mode, lets call it "classic" and revert back to your original play balance and then an easy mode for people that are new to the game or need some help to get over that one battle they just cant seem to win.

I am in my 4th playthrough, only 2 completed. I did not notice any diffculty change in battles except minor tweaks (the source spider in black cove e.g., before change significantly harder water attacks but no minions, now less severe water attacks but 3 mini spiders added).

Boreas was easy the first time and is easy now. The wolves, I just ran accidentially into them with a party level 5 and without the hound support, were always easy, the main challenge is to keep the one character alive that they focus on with their speed.

Sorry, I disagree. No major change. If fights become much easier you changed tactics or have a better skilled party. Quite normal.

Regards,
Thorsten

His point was that many gamers refuse to use activateable skills that only have very short durations. And prefer long duration and direct effect actions.

2 rounds hit chance up on 1 dude (which still does not guarantee hits)? Or setting all enemies on fire, blasting them with meteors and setting a frozen wall up so that they can't get to you? Guess what most players choose.

And in D:OS, the hit chance up buff is never the right choice Even when I have the choice just between THAT and HEALING I would always choose healing. Because a dead dude never deals damage in that combat again. So killing enemies and preventing enemies from killing your own dudes is how D:OS works. The Hit Chance stuff should be among many toggleable auras.

You make very good points and I do not disagree with them at all. I wish designers at the start of a new game would take into account such "difficulty modes." But I wish Larian the best of luck in this, I do definitely understand it's a tough process.

However, one point I'd like to refine. I'm actually okay with increasing enemy damage. I'm not okay with increasing enemy health.

The latter results in health bloat, which is one of the most annoying aspects of any game.

The former evokes a "Glass Cannon"-esque gameplay, which while on paper is "even," is a more fun playstyle (for me).

For example I love the "deadly/realistic" modes in certain non-arcadey FPS, where you and your opponent both can die in one hit (headshot, at least). Neither the player nor his enemy actually has it more difficult, but the atmosphere and encounters put you much more on your toes.

Okay now my train of thought is going... Does "harder" difficulty require nerfs to players along with buffs to enemies? What if both groups were nerfed in playstyle (see the last paragraph) so that it would still present a significant difficulty hurdle for the player.

The problem with making things harder in any other way than truly changing the type of challenge that is in front of the player is that the tools to deal with situations are not all that vast. You have buffs, debuffs, mitigation, crowd control and damage..that's really it. Players will always be at an advantage unless you pay for a ridiculously horrendous Ai system that can out think the player. Most games don't have that, so they do what they can to disadvantage the player. They make the enemies do way more damage, have more resistance and access to better gear..but act stupidly. The problem with this and mods that increase difficulty by ramping up numbers or even trying to level the playing field is that you completely eradicate the one major component the game has going for it, variety. Right now, you don't HAVE to play a certain way to win, if you make it very difficult with numbers then you would have to do certain things to win. Make resistance or WP too high then you have to have a class with a debuff to resistances, make poison heal enemies so much then you force players to stay out of melee..you may think its tactical, most people will find this kind of play repetitive and boring because the combat becomes formulaic and methodical.

A die in one hit scenario would be horrible for an RPG, it's just not set up for it..at all.

I think what you truly need is more skills that do more interesting things, most of the skills repeat themselves in other forms..fast track = wildfire, invisibility = hide in shadows, damage is damage then the AI for the enemies needs to get much smarter, it needs more variance and logic. The enemies need to understand when lightning strike is better than blitz bolt, when ricochet is meaningless and a basic attack is better etc. Honestly anything other than teaching the enemies how to fight better is simply glossing over numbers and pretending its harder when its not..its narrowing the necessary skill set, forcing players to play a certain way and beefing up the enemies with numbers to compensate for the lack of intelligence.

i heard somewhere that Larian will add a new harder difficultly level!
That would be great!

You want a harder game? Just use two characters on hard mode.

Not if you get Lone Wolf, haha.

I m in my first run. I started in hard right off the bat because I know myself , after a little bit of dilly dalling , I tend to get serious and start tweaking the numbers , checking the maths and get the most out of the mechanics and the game in normal becomes too easy.

So far , hard has been the right difficulty for me ,fights are usually challenging , in the sense that I had to correct my approach (meaning the first turn decision and prebattle positionning) for every big fights. I usually fight ennemy at my level or +1 , +2 level start to be hard if they are more than 5 of them since I can't CC all of em.

Still , since it is my first run and that I refrained myself from tweaking at start , I m aware that I could get my optimisation (mostly in terms of talent) starting right from level 1 (and I will do so in the second run).


@Thorsten , you seem to find the game too easy , are you playing hard ?
@skinnylegs , are you it s not just the fact that it was your third run that made the game easier ? I m assuming you have learned to assess situation with increased accuracy during the previous runs , didn't you ?


nt;dr : @OP the game is in a good shape for a first run in hard , it is challenging and fun and a first run will already take you hours , if you happen to have a life , you might not finish the first run before increased diff are out.

hi,

i am playing hard and it is too easy!

I am also having this issue

As already said I am a complete newbie to RPG. After my first round of mistakes in my first playthrough yes - I find it a bit easy. Example - I ran into the 7 character level 7 wolves group Cyseal southeast by accident with a level 5 party. No dog support - was on the far other end.

It was a ridiculously easy fight, although I could not prevent a gang up one of my party members which died. This 2 levels below, outnumbered and surprised (no battle preparation work possible).

Yes, on hard.

Regards,
Thorsten

This was never intended to be punishing or be dark souls. They have a small enough customer base as it is, they need to the games to be as inviting as possible. Its never going to be as hard as hard core gamers want it, ever, the best we can get is Mods like the unfair difficulty by Rhydian.

Not one person ever said anything about make it hard on easy or normal and most are happy with just adding another. IMO if you want a classic to be talked and played for a decade you do want a pretty challenging setting. If they never make a change it was still a great game, but like other games of theirs, they do make enhanced versions, a little more polish, this game can still be improved upon like any. It is a hit, it is a great game as-is.

Depends on where the difficulty comes from. Nobody cares if if its hard because the enemy resistances and such are high, people want better AI.

That, by the way, is pretty close to asking for the moon. The AI is already reasonably smart and that's already pushing into the limits of just how good AIs can be made today.