Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General New hard difficulty

Hello!
What do you think about new hard difficulty? I noticed that the game is way to easy - even at level 1 you can kill all your opponents at first turn.
What if we will get new difficulty where all stats of enemy are twice higher and we will get as a reward better items? (for professional players)

There is some tricks that making game easier:
1. Killing everybody one-by-one (teleport 1 enemy faaaaar faaaar away from his team when you are not in battle),
2. Grouping enemy with Netherswap and teleport spell and killing them all with AoE atacks of knight (with rage),
3. Frosing all if you have 2 characters with area frosing spell (enemy can't move),
4. Taking better starting position while you are talking with your enemy,
5. Locking position of your enemy with barrels while you are talking with your enemy,
6. One-shooting enemy with knight that have rogue skills,
7. If you have 2 or more heroes with steal skill you will have almost unlimited gold (if you steal only gold).

So all of this will help at higher difficulty. At classic mode this tricks making game way to simple.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, they are going to include a Tactician mode in the game, which will feature harder fights, not higher stats. Think more enemies, more abilities on those enemies, more traps, more environmental objects, guards popping out of barrels and windows when you try to start something, etc.

It will be great if Larian add more enemies. But it will give you more exp, more items, more gold... I didn't think that it will be balanced.

You should try out the Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin, the first game. It had tactician mode, and they did it well then. The enemies gave more XP, sure, but you needed it, and they balanced the later acts around you having that extra XP. Let us know what you think after you've tried it!

This is the ALPHA.
There have been ZERO major patches since the release of the Alpha.
Balance will come in time.

Certainly a new difficulty is coming, but week 3 of the alpha, before any balance patches or mechanics tweaks is not the best time.

I received an answer from Raze: "The difficulty of Classic/Explorer will be balanced as Early Access progresses (improvements to AI, changes to stats, etc), and Tactical and Honour Mode difficulties will be added at release."
We will have harder difficulty! Great!

I do not think the game is to easy at the moment, I think it is too unbalanced.
Some character builds and abilities are very overpovered.
Many enemies can kill or CC your entire party in one turn, you can kill or CC most enemies in one turn.

I played the alpha only once from beginning to end and I had big problems against some enemies. Now I wait for the next update and then I try again.

The game (in easy or normal mode) should be balanced for a player who plays it for the first time. A new player (like me) will not know the most effective chars and skills. I spend points and learned skills in a way that seemed fitting acording to the description of that stats or skills. This did not lead to optimized chars, but I was able to finish the game without using overpowered skill combos or extreme cheese (like barrel stacking). Only the final battle required some "cheese" in order for me to win.
If you try a game again and again to look for an optimal char, of course the game will become very easy.

For those who seek a challange they can add a hard mode. More enemies per encounter, the enemies cause more damage, have more skills, more HP and armor and better AI. Add perma death and only a single save if you like. Call this "the masochist mode" and you will see that even than some players will solo it and say that it was too easy.

suggestions:
- the damage of some enemies should be lowered. (The mage at the final battle can kill any char with his first action, for example)
- the power of some skills should be lowered a lot (rage, warlord, elven racial skill and some others, other players know this better than me)

PS: The stat system will be changed and lots of balancing will be done in any case.
Feedback (like this thread) might give the direction how things will be changed.

[quote=SlamPow][quote=MegaVladimir]It will be great if Larian add more enemies. But it will give you more exp, more items, more gold... I didn't think that it will be balanced. [/quote]

You should try out the Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin, the first game. It had tactician mode, and they did it well then. The enemies gave more XP, sure, but you needed it, and they balanced the later acts around you having that extra XP. Let us know what you think after you've tried it! [/quote]

Eh, you didn't really need it. Even tactician mode was too easy in DoS1 EE, so my hope is that they'll really ramp up the difficulty this time.
I understand that this might be a fitting difficulty for those who aren't like me (a glutton for punishment), but I remain hopeful that once the new difficulties come around things will get super-friggin' nasty.

Enemies need more armor and more consumables or ways to restore armor.

Fights need to be thematic in the sense that they have set tactics and a game plan and will try their best to exhaust resources on a tactical and strategic level - for this, I would recommend that they expand what skills the enemies have to give them greater counterplay and to avoid taking damage, even withdrawing or calling reinforcements if they have to, and scale initiative to level + performance.

It's too bad they don't introduce any counter spells/ripostes in the game. However, if they increase armor and prolong the fights through that as well as expanding enemy utility and game plan then information gathering might be a little bit more important than it is currently.

Also, fights should be a bit more dynamic; even if the mobs are the same the ability pools and tactics should change, and they should have access to hybrid builds.

who called me?

The one that's not out yet? Kinda hard to form an opinion on it.

As others have said, there are going to be four difficulty levels. Explorer, Classic, Tactician, and Honor Mode (names subject to change). These will be selected on the different panes of the mural/painting that we can't choose now. Alpha only has explorer (easy mode) and classic (normal mode). None of the "hard" modes have been released yet and the difficulty levels available are going to be balanced throughout the Alpha.

i would like to see a real challenging Difficultly level

I agree. I guess the best way we could use this thread is to state how the devs could make the game harder.

My suggestions.

On the hard mode, the mobs ought to be able to teleport you away the same way we do to them.

They ought to be able to sneak if we break line of sight to them (and not show up on the map).

Huntsman ought to have an abundance of special arrows and use them continuously.

The mages ought to dual wield wands.

The opp ought to be able to use loremaster on you to determine your weakest stat and try to use that against you.

Each opp ought to have large healing potion that it could use as soon as it is below 50% health.

I liked how the Tactician mode from DoS1 added more enemies, and they had new abilities instead of just blindly increasing their stats or reducing the output of the player.
This kind of difficulty takes more work, but is a lot more interesting and rewarding. Hopefully we get the same kind of thing with Tactician mode this time around. I'm sure we will when it is released.

Give me a slider all the way up to ludicrous. I'm playing to many of these types of games and almost everyone's hard is a joke if you have even an general understanding of math.

I do think a mirror of the mindset behind Tactician Mode would be a good direction rather than simply an increase in stats or the quantity of enemies.

Letting the enemies make smarter decisions with special items like arrows and grenades would be a good start, also if there's a way to let them take advantage of terrain surfaces and line-of-sight obstacles.

The easiest way would be to leave all existing Difficultly Modes as it is and add a new Impossible Mode.
Just edit the Enemy Characters for "Impossible Mode" and give them

(new) Impossible Mode

+50% more Damage for Enemy Characters
+50% more Armor Rating for Enemy Characters
+50% more Vitality for Enemy Characters