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Originally Posted by QueenKken
I just finished my first run-through of the early release. I found the battles either SUPER easy or CRAZY tough. In the tough ones, it often seemed the only solution was to find the highest spot in the area so you could actually hit things with your bow (I chose a Ranger to fill out the characters classes available). I'm not sure of the solution to this issue, but I would like a little more balance or more clever ways to win these battles.

Just my 2 coppers.

I second that.
I'm level 3 , but gotten only as far as the goblin camp till now and a few excursions in the neigbourhood, meeting the gnolls an githyanki. (In a previous game as lev. 4)
Often had to do fights 3 tmes or more. The opponents start downing characters after maybe 4 rounds. I had hardly hit one of them by that time.
(Magic missiles excepted, but then the first character that's downed is always Gale of course)
(And the guiding bolt should be renamed to misguiding bolt, since it misses most of the time)

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It's my impression that the gnoll fight has become even harder with patch3. In the previous game, I've defeated them, but now it's been a complete party destruction at every try.

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On the contrary, I'm glad this is shaping up to be consistantly challenging, and not a grind-fest.
I'm finding it well worth it to approach encounters slowly, not just run my party in. Split the party, get some chars hidden or send others to cover or higher ground.

I recently had a go replying Neverwinter Nights, and that was more grind than I remembered. One crazed thug, two crazed thugs, two crazed thugs and a dog.... went to mow a meadow hehe

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I think the perfect solution here would be if encounter design is built into difficulty (i.e. difficulty is having more difficult encounters as opposed to just bloating enemy stats).

This way people who want a challenge mode can get an experience where every fight is a tactical puzzle. Unless you're going out of the way to fight harmless citizens, most designed fights should be tough.

Normal difficulty should be driven by a mix of narrative needs and challenge. I.e. challenging enough to make it fun, but the encounters must fit the narrative/world. I.e. if you are beating up minions for whatever story reason, they should be as weak as you'd expect minions to be, etc.

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Consistently challenging doesn't mean every time you run into a new group there's no jobbers. Leveling up should make you feel like you're getting more powerful not just barely keeping up, at least, there should be both, then everyone can be happy.

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I think making easier encounters should be handled through a difficulty setting. None of the encounters are overly difficult, some are challenging. I say leave it as it is, and offer difficulty settings for players that want more story and easier combat.

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Given there was a solid game design answer that listed out how one should plan the frequency of D&D encounters and at what difficulty, simply "making it easier" would be the opposite of a solution to what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "This is too hard I don't want a challenge," (I've beaten all original Phantasy Star games if you want an example of hard RPGs except for the 4th, all of the Dark Souls games, Shinobi on the hardest difficulty, the original Ninja Gaiden, the original Battletoads, the NES TMNT, etc. etc.), I'm saying I want to at points in the game feel like, "Damn, I've gotten so much stronger." Imagine it's like strength training. When I'm training, I'll warm up with lower weights, and I'll say, wow, I've sure gotten stronger. I'll then train at a near maximum weight which is bigger than what I trained before. Then, around the house, I'll have to lift something that a year ago was heavy and now feels like nothing. If you don't get that around the house experience, it just becomes a monotonous grind.

Last edited by Ankou; 22/02/21 06:26 PM.
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Originally Posted by Pandemonica
easier combat.
I hope if there will be some combat dificiulty settings implemented, it will be a little more complex than "easy / normal / hard" ... :-/

I hope more for options like:
Player AC: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
Player Hit points: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
Player Hit roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5 (aka. critical chance)
Player Damage roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5

NPC AC: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Hit points: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Hit roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Damage roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC using special arrows: enable / disable
NPC using throwable: enable / disable
NPC using potions: enable / disable
NPC using advanced tactics: enable / disable (CC, buffs, debuffs, etc ... or simply damage)

So everyone can adjust w/e they dont like.

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 22/02/21 06:28 PM.

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Originally Posted by Ankou
Given there was a solid game design answer that listed out how one should plan the frequency of D&D encounters and at what difficulty, simply "making it easier" would be the opposite of a solution to what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "This is too hard I don't want a challenge," (I've beaten all original Phantasy Star games if you want an example of hard RPGs except for the 4th, all of the Dark Souls games, Shinobi on the hardest difficulty, the original Ninja Gaiden, the original Battletoads, the NES TMNT, etc. etc.), I'm saying I want to at points in the game feel like, "Damn, I've gotten so much stronger." Imagine it's like strength training. When I'm training, I'll warm up with lower weights, and I'll say, wow, I've sure gotten stronger. I'll then train at a near maximum weight which is bigger than what I trained before. Then, around the house, I'll have to lift something that a year ago was heavy and now feels like nothing. If you don't get that around the house experience, it just becomes a monotonous grind.
This 100%. Right now, all of the fights feel more or less the same to me. Enemies all seem to have pretty much the same strategies, they all want the same thing (to kill you), are defeated in the same way (kill them), and the fights mostly feel like they are at about the same difficulty level.

Sure, you can create different difficulty settings and tweaks, but that doesn't address any of those issues - it just shifts the difficulty of every fight up or down by some amount. They're still going to feel samey and boring. The suggestion of using a grab-bag of user settings feels like a cop-out. It's saying "We've given up on Larian knowing how to make a good game; we sure hope the end users can figure out how to do it."

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Originally Posted by grysqrl
Originally Posted by Ankou
Given there was a solid game design answer that listed out how one should plan the frequency of D&D encounters and at what difficulty, simply "making it easier" would be the opposite of a solution to what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "This is too hard I don't want a challenge," (I've beaten all original Phantasy Star games if you want an example of hard RPGs except for the 4th, all of the Dark Souls games, Shinobi on the hardest difficulty, the original Ninja Gaiden, the original Battletoads, the NES TMNT, etc. etc.), I'm saying I want to at points in the game feel like, "Damn, I've gotten so much stronger." Imagine it's like strength training. When I'm training, I'll warm up with lower weights, and I'll say, wow, I've sure gotten stronger. I'll then train at a near maximum weight which is bigger than what I trained before. Then, around the house, I'll have to lift something that a year ago was heavy and now feels like nothing. If you don't get that around the house experience, it just becomes a monotonous grind.
This 100%. Right now, all of the fights feel more or less the same to me. Enemies all seem to have pretty much the same strategies, they all want the same thing (to kill you), are defeated in the same way (kill them), and the fights mostly feel like they are at about the same difficulty level.

Sure, you can create different difficulty settings and tweaks, but that doesn't address any of those issues - it just shifts the difficulty of every fight up or down by some amount. They're still going to feel samey and boring. The suggestion of using a grab-bag of user settings feels like a cop-out. It's saying "We've given up on Larian knowing how to make a good game; we sure hope the end users can figure out how to do it."

Exactly. No variety is one way to describe the core issue. If it's always the same relative or overall difficulty, and maybe EA is the issue here and I hope that is it, it really does get monotonous. It hardly makes a challenge more satisfying to do it over and over. And by the way, even in a notoriously hard game like Dark Souls, I would one shot most ads by the end of the game. Yet, game was still hard at the end of the game. Because they designed the challenges to be varied and not just based on "Higher level means enemy has scaled to be the same difficulty has before." And people of course know it as a great example of an amazing and challenging game. The point is don't read what I'm saying and think I'm complaining about difficulty. I'm complaining about lazy game design.

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Originally Posted by Ankou
Given there was a solid game design answer that listed out how one should plan the frequency of D&D encounters and at what difficulty, simply "making it easier" would be the opposite of a solution to what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "This is too hard I don't want a challenge," (I've beaten all original Phantasy Star games if you want an example of hard RPGs except for the 4th, all of the Dark Souls games, Shinobi on the hardest difficulty, the original Ninja Gaiden, the original Battletoads, the NES TMNT, etc. etc.), I'm saying I want to at points in the game feel like, "Damn, I've gotten so much stronger." Imagine it's like strength training. When I'm training, I'll warm up with lower weights, and I'll say, wow, I've sure gotten stronger. I'll then train at a near maximum weight which is bigger than what I trained before. Then, around the house, I'll have to lift something that a year ago was heavy and now feels like nothing. If you don't get that around the house experience, it just becomes a monotonous grind.

The only way this would really be done, is if you are say lvl 8+ and go into a lvl 4 or so area of the game. Say if you backtrack to clean up your quest log. When rolling a 1d8 or 1d20 there really is no "God" mode (by that I mean like back in the day of SWTOR you could be max level and do lower level flashpoints and just beat the crap out of everything. I was fun, but even they changed that in a future update). I doubt you will see any real difference in power levels in EA since your limited to lvl 4 and the max characters are lvl 5. But at lvl 4, you can go in and wipe out all the druids in the cove (which are lvl 1 and 2) with pretty much no effort at all. Not really sure why you felt the need to give your gaming resume like someone is questioning your ability, but....thanks?

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Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
easier combat.
I hope if there will be some combat dificiulty settings implemented, it will be a little more complex than "easy / normal / hard" ... :-/

I hope more for options like:
Player AC: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
Player Hit points: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
Player Hit roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5 (aka. critical chance)
Player Damage roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5

NPC AC: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Hit points: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Hit roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC Damage roll: +5 / +2 / +1 / +0 / -1 / -2 / -5
NPC using special arrows: enable / disable
NPC using throwable: enable / disable
NPC using potions: enable / disable
NPC using advanced tactics: enable / disable (CC, buffs, debuffs, etc ... or simply damage)

So everyone can adjust w/e they dont like.

I have never seen a game do this before, generally standard for mode difficulties. But I have seen mods that do the things your wishing for. Before they went into all that variation besides the normal modes of difficulty, I am sure a lot of people would prefer some other things accomplished in regards to the games development. There is only so much variation a game developer can justify for a game, I think that is the main difference between tabletop and video game. It is easy for a DM to make changes like that, but to do that same thing in a game, is a crapload of code.

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I'm establishing that I've played a lot of challenging but fun games, and can point to certain commonalities. Just because something is challenging doesn't make it monotonous nor does it feel like you're not improving.

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I think the best way to do have trash mobs lies in the execution of the open world model. If open world is done correctly, in my opinion, you can find low level quests in most areas throughout the world. This gives a realness to the world instead of a "Done with level 1-5 level area time for the 6-10" which sort of breaks immersion and promotes a more linear exploration. I love to discover an area that seems impossible and then come back later when the party is leveled, or going into a high level area and searching for any quests that I might be able to do. This kind of design not only allows for different leveling experiences but also provides the trash mobs and trash quests. BG3 seems to be doing a good job with this atm but the real test to there open world design comes after we leave this first area and how soon we can leave it.

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Originally Posted by Ankou
I hope as we go into new areas just once in a while, to keep it refreshing, I'd love to run into a group of enemies that would have been troublesome at levels 1, 2,3, 4 etc. but now I get to feel like I've become a total badass by crushing them later on. Obviously the game needs to be challenging and enemies should scale, all I'm saying is once in a while getting that sensation of how powerful we've become would also be nice and is missing from most modern RPGs. Like every now and then we should just be one shotting fools.

Maybe it's due to the limited scope of Act 1, but I feel like, with the non-linear nature of RPGs like BG3, you'll naturally have more and more encounters like this as the game goes on. This can be roughly measured as, the ratio of the amount of XP required for a party to have a reasonable chance of beating an encounter of a given difficulty, over the total amount of XP available to the party through encounters of lower difficulties. This ratio will tend to get lower as the game progresses, although the level cap in EA obscures this somewhat for now. Any encounter in Act 1 can necessarily be beaten by level 4, but there is enough XP available to reach level 5(which is nearly 3x as much as level 4). If you had the opportunity to stomp some Act 1 encounters at level 5, would you feel more like a badass?

I suppose one of the downsides to us being stuck with Act 1, is that those with multiple playthroughs already know where everything is. We know what areas contain the most challenging fights. But the more widely branching paths that are presented, the greater the chance to have encounters with enemies below our level as the map is fully explored.

Part of this can also be due to one's exploration style. If your map looks like slowly expanding completely filled areas, your encounters will tend to more closely track your level. You won't often encounter things far above, or things far below your level. If your map fills in more like a scribble across a page, charging deep into the unexplored, changing course only when you can't progress, you'll have a greater mix of difficult fights and easy fights. That could be a reason why I don't think there's much to be done here as you do. I'm definitely the latter style, but I recognize that not everyone plays like me, or wants to.

In my first playthrough, I found my way into the Underdark very shortly after getting invisibility at level 3, sneaking through the Goblin Camp and Shattered Sanctum. I leveraged Glut heavily, but I got to level 4 before heading to the surface again. Most of the main story arc was still left for me to do, and Risen Road, Waukeen's Rest, Mountain Pass, Fetid Bog and Whispering Depths were still entirely unexplored. I'm guessing that made them significantly easier than they would have been had I visited things in a different order.

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Originally Posted by Pandemonica
I have never seen a game do this before, generally standard for mode difficulties. But I have seen mods that do the things your wishing for. Before they went into all that variation besides the normal modes of difficulty, I am sure a lot of people would prefer some other things accomplished in regards to the games development. There is only so much variation a game developer can justify for a game, I think that is the main difference between tabletop and video game. It is easy for a DM to make changes like that, but to do that same thing in a game, is a crapload of code.
Dont take to too litteraly ...
That was just example, i simply hope we will be able to adjust our game experience a little more precise than just "easy / normal / hard" that is all. laugh

Even if that would mean at least separate combat and social interactions. :-/


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Originally Posted by fkhaller
I think the best way to do have trash mobs lies in the execution of the open world model. If open world is done correctly, in my opinion, you can find low level quests in most areas throughout the world. This gives a realness to the world instead of a "Done with level 1-5 level area time for the 6-10" which sort of breaks immersion and promotes a more linear exploration. I love to discover an area that seems impossible and then come back later when the party is leveled, or going into a high level area and searching for any quests that I might be able to do. This kind of design not only allows for different leveling experiences but also provides the trash mobs and trash quests. BG3 seems to be doing a good job with this atm but the real test to there open world design comes after we leave this first area and how soon we can leave it.

A lot of modern RPGs have basically dismissed the classic idea of "leveled" areas, and adopted the game mechanic of the level of your encounter is dynamic and chosen to match your level. There i very few "true" open world games, or sandbox games. It is like the fabled unicorn, every wants to believe in it, but rarely does it deliver. Even when they advertise open world, there is still a small amount of linear design to direct where the story takes you. Players can get to easily frustrated when they have to keep running everywhere just to find the next stage of the games story. So they will offer a linear breadcrumb to follow, but offer random encounters outside of that path. Which I think overall is the best decision.
Originally Posted by fkhaller
Even if that would mean at least separate combat and social interactions.
Personally, I am so against that. I know I see some modern "game journalists" try to say things like that, and that is not a game, that is a movie. Or maybe more like a Telltale game. A story in a RPG should be discovered through playing the game. I think if a player finds it to difficult on normal, there is no disgrace if you switch it to easy (not saying that is you, just replying to your comment). Personally, I have not found any major battles that are so difficult that cannot be overcome. But that is my personal view, if I did find it difficult, I would switch to easy. For instance, I was dying a couple times when I first played the goblin camp. Then I decided to set up a ranged ambush and pull them out to the bridge (there is even a strategy to wipe out the camp without even having to fight them). When they got close, I would run back and fire a round of arrows and spells. The gnolls if you approach (I don't want to get into too many details) but if you come from a certain approach you can get unexpected help from one of the most powerful gnolls. Or use crowd control like sleep.

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Originally Posted by Pandemonica
A lot of modern RPGs have basically dismissed the classic idea of "leveled" areas, and adopted the game mechanic of the level of your encounter is dynamic and chosen to match your level.

That's one of the worst mechanics. For me, it ruins any sense danger from powerful things in the world, and any sense of satisfaction from getting more powerful, or finding an interesting means of surviving an otherwise unbeatable encounter. I killed a dragon in Skyrim at level 2 with a basic bow and arrow and hiding behind some rocks. At that moment, I knew I wasn't going to play it for much longer.

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Originally Posted by xnihil0zer0
Originally Posted by Pandemonica
A lot of modern RPGs have basically dismissed the classic idea of "leveled" areas, and adopted the game mechanic of the level of your encounter is dynamic and chosen to match your level.

That's one of the worst mechanics. For me, it ruins any sense danger from powerful things in the world, and any sense of satisfaction from getting more powerful, or finding an interesting means of surviving an otherwise unbeatable encounter. I killed a dragon in Skyrim at level 2 with a basic bow and arrow and hiding behind some rocks. At that moment, I knew I wasn't going to play it for much longer.

You are really supplying an extreme example. Try attacking a group of level 3 enemies in EA naked and see how far you get. Not to mention, even if they are CLOSE to the same level as you, depending on what gear they have, that could be a seriously challenging fight. Lets be honest, Skyrim wasn't HALF as popular until their mod community got involved, actually it was negatively viewed when it launched.

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I don't like having fights all scale to your level automatically. I'd rather they be designed at fixed difficulty and range from trivially easy to virtually impossible (with most somewhere in the middle), depending on what level you are when you get to them. Paired with that, the game needs to give you some means (through skill checks) to assess your strength against that of an enemy and perhaps ways to find/recall weaknesses in the case of very powerful enemies.

If every fight is scaled to your level, then you go into it knowing that it should be about as difficult as every other fight you've been in and you should be able to win it about as easily. It doesn't feel like there's any risk. It misses out on the feeling of triumph that comes from eking out a victory in a battle where you were outmatched, but well-prepared.

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