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Additionally, specifics in terms of: * What's too hard, specifically. * What abilities are too powerful, specifically. are helpful. There are several hundred abilities in the game and dozens of encounters utilizing a lot of prefabs in the Backer Beta.
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Jan 4, 2015 01:58
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I am finding that humanoid encounters are quite easy, even on Hard. Every single one I've faced that only has humanoids is a walk in the park. For humanoids the only things that seem OP are DoT abilities like Deep Wounds (which some I think someone just reported another bug about on the BB forum) and a couple Druid spells, but I'd have to go check which ones. It's some creature-based encounters that are the problem on Hard. Some creatures deal too much per-hit damage. Too much damage in the encounters, and too much damage when you consider the length of the adventuring day. In large groups, the amount of damage they can deal in a single round of attacks is extremely nasty. The specific creatures: Lions, Elder Lions, Stone Beetles (they were ok before the DR% removal), Elder Bears, Forest Lurkers and the Spider Poison DoT (that's the only reason they're difficult). Crystal Eater spiders in previous versions (haven't seen them for a while) are also pretty silly - but they tend to kill half of their allies with their OP Freezing Pillar spam, which is pretty funny. Poison seems to be about as strong as regular IE poison (not the super duper Ettercap poison), but you can't remove it with potions. The best way to deal with poison is to kill the creature that applied the DoT as fast as possible. When you're swarmed by a dozen spiders, it can be hard to kill all of them very quickly, and subsequently you suffer several KOs (unless you cheese AoE disable spam, ofc). Probably one of the rare cases where Suspend Affliction is actually good. A regular Lion will hit a character in Plate armor for around 30 damage on a single regular hit. That can be about 1/3 - 1/4 of a character's total Endurance in the level range we are playing. On Hard, Lions are usually in packs of 4-6 in the Stormwall Gorge, some of the groups have Elder Lions, which hit for upwards to about 50-60 damage on a normal hit, through plate armor. I can beat these Lion groups no problem, but if you walk in and play the encounter "the normal way" and run up your main tank to engage them, you can end up with multiple characters KO'd in the first or second wave of attacks, that's how fast and how strong their damage is when multiple Lions are attacking the same character. If an Elder Lion targets anyone but the BB Fighter/main tank, that character will sometimes die in a single hit. That might feel realistic to some people, but IMO that's too much damage too quickly, and the best way to deal with most of those encounters is to use AoE disable spells every encounter - Slicken (which is OP atm), Web, Druid CC if you have them. Things that cause the hobbled effect so that those creatures can't reach your party until you've done a fair bit of ranged/AoE damage to them. Not many creatures dealt very high per-hit damage in the Infinity Engine games. In BG1 for example, Ogres and Ogre Berserkers hit pretty hard, but they actually had to hit you first, stacking on AC would protect you from getting hit as often. In PE you can stack your deflection on a Fighter, or a Paladin - wear a shield, take the Sword and Shield talent etc - that makes it a little bit better, but in doing that you're sacrificing a huge amount of DPS on that character, and that means that encounters will go for longer because you're not killing creatures quicker, which can sometimes lead to taking more damage anyway, and stacking Deflection is not as effective as stacking AC in the IE games. PE doesn't seem to take into account the fact that creatures in the IE games could miss in regards to the amount of damage things do in this game or the amount of health/endurance that classes have relative to that damage taken, or the fact that you could use healing potions in the IE games to keep you going. For me, playing on Hard, the pace of the game is way off, particularly in this version. Even if you play this specific way against creature encounters to mitigate the high incoming damage - cheese the poo poo out of AoE slows and nuke the crap out of them before they get to you, You can only do that for the first few encounters, then you'll be out of daily spells, and you'll take more damage in the upcoming encounters than you would have if you'd saved some of them in the previous encounters, and that incoming damage will catch up to you anyway, and that means you're out of Health after maybe 4-6 encounters depending on how many crits you got. In the Infinity Engine games, I could usually sustain my adventuring day for the full time it took for fatigue to kick in. Ciphers add a lot to the survivability of the party though because they can continuously keep disabling a single enemy and it's very easy to replenish focus - disable, auto attack, disable again, auto attack, disable again ... etc Adra Beetles also hit REALLY hard, but it kind of feels appropriate for them. They still might do a bit too much per-hit damage (and their 10 DR pierce is hosed), but it's more the fact that the designers have increased the number of wood and stone beetles, which are harder to deal with now due to armor changes and weapon/ability nerfs. That makes those beetle encounters frustrating and not very fun (whereas they were a good difficulty for a trash mob in many of the previous versions - v278, v333 etc). Sensuki fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 05:20
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Would it be unreasonable if Hard, rather than increasing level or swapping monsters out for higher ranked critters, applied a modifier to stats that maybe split the difference between a normal and current-hard version (ie if a level going up increases damage by 10%, Hard just adds a +5% damage modifier)? Or if going to hard kept the monster the same, but gave them an extra ability or an ability from an improved category of monster? I mean it'd be a bit boring, I guess, but would it do the job? marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 05:32
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The increase in creature numbers / variation in creatures is good and refreshing (but very taxing on PC performance for me in this unoptimized beta, shouldn't be an issue when they do a 3D optimization pass though), it's just that because the creatures aren't balanced for those numbers it requires specific strategies to play effectively (and specific character creation choices), making it not very fun to play. That's why I thought tuning for Hard would be more sensible, then all of the difficulties would feel good.Zephro posted:IWD2 was way harder than BG2, though, so if you define difficulty that way it's a pretty huge range. The general gameplay required more attention, chargen was more restrictive and there weren't anywhere near the number of exploits. I still think BG2 had the edge in setpiece encounters - The Final Seal Guardians in Watcher's Keep is probably the best encounter in all of the games. quote:But in the real game you'll have 3 levels worth of custom skill and ability selections and items from the quests you completed. I don't think this vertical slice can possibly be representative of the difficulty curve of the full game. I've cheated myself up levels (to level 12 even) and cheated in gear as well. Creatures still deal too much damage, even then. Setpiece encounters against humanoids are significantly easier to deal with, damage-wise. It's kind of lopsided because party v party encounters in the IE games were really fun. In this (the BB, anyway) they're not, really but that might just be because some of the AI scripts aren't very good. Enemy Priests and Wizards could definitely stand to be more annoying than they are. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 05:35
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The Lurkers' damage was tuned down a while ago, so I'm surprised it still seems too powerful. I haven't found that, personally, but I can look at them again. Most critter weapons haven't been tuned in a while. Their damage may be too high. AoE disabling spells seem like the perfect answer to fast-moving high-damage low-armor enemies because they are. IIRC, lions are sacks of Endurance with little to no armor and very damaging attacks. Even if their damage is lowered, wading in to go toe-to-toe with them is dangerous unless you can dish out damage really quickly. PoE does take Graze into account. It's one of the more reliable ways of normalizing overall damage output. If characters are taking too much damage, it's because the damage ranges are too high, not because we didn't account for Grazes.
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Jan 4, 2015 07:07
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rope kid posted:The Lurkers' damage was tuned down a while ago, so I'm surprised it still seems too powerful. I haven't found that, personally, but I can look at them again. I haven't actually faced one of those this version, that info was based on the last version. I get horrible performance in the Dyrford Crossing in v392 and the game constantly stutters, so I haven't had the patience to actually suffer through the hitching to get to that encounter yet. So I'd go by what you think on that one for the moment, I should have mentioned that like I did with the Crystal Eaters. quote:Most critter weapons haven't been tuned in a while. Their damage may be too high. AoE disabling spells seem like the perfect answer to fast-moving high-damage low-armor enemies because they are. IIRC, lions are sacks of Endurance with little to no armor and very damaging attacks. Even if their damage is lowered, wading in to go toe-to-toe with them is dangerous unless you can dish out damage really quickly. The design for Lions makes perfect sense, but yeah currently I think their per-hit damage is too much though, especially for Elder Lions. Many times has an Elder Lion one-hit killed one of my characters in an encounter. I've even tested it equipping the BB Wizard in the BB Fighter's Plate armor, he still died in a one hit crit to the Elder Lion. quote:PoE does take Graze into account. It's one of the more reliable ways of normalizing overall damage output. If characters are taking too much damage, it's because the damage ranges are too high, not because we didn't account for Grazes. I meant that incoming damage to the party in the Infinity Engine games was more sporadic than it is in this game. Properly built characters didn't get hit very often. Weapons and creatures do way more damage in Pillars of Eternity than the Infinity Engine games and that damage is applied almost every attack. Characters have about double (or a bit more, for some classes) the Endurance that the same character might have in HP in the IE games, but they might have only got hit once out of every 3-4 attacks from an enemy in the IE games for much lower damage. This translates to more lethal, faster paced encounters and shorter adventuring days because you're often taking between 100-200 damage per encounter, particularly on Hard difficulty. In some of the previous BB versions, optimal playing/super opening combos could mitigate a lot of the damage because you could take individual creatures out of the encounter very quickly, but with the nerfs to weapon damage and character ability/spell damage it's harder to take creatures down, and now there's more of them. That opening advantage doesn't mean as much anymore. The nerfs to Arbalests/Firearms also makes a huge difference in how fast you can deal with creatures now too. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 07:47
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Sensuki posted:The design for Lions makes perfect sense, but yeah currently I think their per-hit damage is too much though, especially for Elder Lions. Many times has an Elder Lion one-hit killed one of my characters in an encounter. I've even tested it equipping the BB Wizard in the BB Fighter's Plate armor, he still died in a one hit crit to the Elder Lion. I would be very disappointed if on Hard I never had a character die in one hit. It shouldn't be something that happens a lot, but there should certainly be an enemy or two in the game that has the potential to one hit kill one of my characters. They should be fairly rare, and not have too much company, but something that can really throw me is important, and the ability to one hit kill makes me be on my toes, and that's when things get exciting. Naturally, we need to have the tools to get passed them.
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Jan 4, 2015 10:36
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I enjoy high lethality in other games (one bullet headshots are great in FPS) and other RPGs, even stuff that's random and I don't have anything against save or die effects either, but it generally goes against the design of this game IMO. Particularly because hits are consistent and damage is pretty constant anyway. One-shotting a severely underleveled character with poor CON, maybe.
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Jan 4, 2015 11:28
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Sensuki posted:I enjoy high lethality in other games (one bullet headshots are great in FPS) and other RPGs, even stuff that's random and I don't have anything against save or die effects either, but it generally goes against the design of this game IMO. Particularly because hits are consistent and damage is pretty constant anyway. Well, everyone to their own. But it IS hard. I come from playing BG2, and while it didn't happen often, it did occur and was scary and exciting when it did, and made me have to really think about 1 or 2 fights in a fun, out of the box type way. I kinda expect any game that is a spiritual successor to games like BG2 that it occasionally kicks my rear end. I mean, we have groups with 5 and 6 characters. One character being out of action from the start of a fight shouldn't be the end of the world. *To be clear, you may be absolutely right about the lions. They may be buggy and/or unbalanced. I just think 1 hit kills in very rare circumstance are a nice shake up for me and I would hope for something that scary at some points in the game. Funso Banjo fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 13:53
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No creature in BG2 can one shot one of your characters with a weapon attack, but there are plenty of save-or-die effects from spells/spell-like abilities in the game - I really enjoyed those and preparing for those encounters. I also enjoyed the stat draining creatures that killed you when a stat was reduced to 0. Promoted drinking Potions of Genius before fighting Mind Flayers. It feels very strange that save-or-die effects from spells have been removed, and spells in general aren't really that powerful, but a single creature attack (from a Lion, of all things) can drop you in one hit. Here's an Adra Beetle One-shot KO from just before 
Sensuki fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 14:12
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Disables and War Bows seems to be the way to go in this build, taking virtually no damage from any encounter using anything and everything that causes the Hobbled effect and focus firing with every party member.
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Jan 4, 2015 15:33
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I know this isn't the current discussion and has probably been asked before but....when is this coming out? I plan on throwing myself into it 110% and I need to know when I need to have my gaming table cleared for what is looking like the best game of 2015 that I've seen so far.
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Jan 4, 2015 16:25
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Jastiger posted:I know this isn't the current discussion and has probably been asked before but....when is this coming out? They haven't said exactly, but in the coming months. Looking at the state of the beta I'd say in perhaps 2 months time, with a few weeks added on in case of sudden bugs. Edit:vvv Well, I'd personally hope they stick to their guns and not release the game until it is well and ready. I'm a bit torn on if I want to wait a whole extra month for it though. evilmiera fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 16:33
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I'm hoping it's more like 3+ If it has to be March, hopefully late March.
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Jan 4, 2015 17:00
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Guy who runs the Dev Tracker: seems it is broken? Last reported post is from 2014.12.22, and there's been several since then.
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Jan 4, 2015 17:20
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This one is better: http://poedevtracker.net/
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Jan 4, 2015 17:35
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Thanks for the heads up.
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Jan 4, 2015 17:57
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Sensuki posted:It feels very strange that save-or-die effects from spells have been removed, and spells in general aren't really that powerful, but a single creature attack (from a Lion, of all things) can drop you in one hit.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:56
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What I meant by "there aren't really any powerful spells" is that spells/magic doesn't outclass other types of actions and spells that mirror their Infinity Engine counterparts (eg. Crackling Bolt) are nowhere near as powerful as they were in the Infinity Engine games. Spells usually deal less damage, have smaller AoEs and much shorter durations (That bit is just a statement, not a complaint). There are indeed a lot of "powerful" spells relative to normal class ability attacks, but I haven't yet seen a single spell that can do as much damage as a creature hit. "Powerful" spells (high level damage spells) are also per-rest resources for classes at least, whereas a creature attack is an at-will action. I also didn't mean literally die :P If "save or die" effects did exist in this game, I would assume it'd just KO the character instead of permanently killing them unless they were down to their last health multiplier, but it doesn't really suit the game with your unified attack mechanics. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 20:04
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Just based on these discussions - is the whole opening game really just fighting cockroaches?
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Jan 4, 2015 20:24
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The Backer Beta isn't the start of the game. Depending on which direction you go, you could be fighting lions, druids, forest lurkers, a variety of beetles, a variety of spiders, small adventuring parties, spirits, or cultists.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:26
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Whew. Bring on the cultists. 
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Jan 4, 2015 20:38
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They have funny hats.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:39
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FRINGE posted:Just based on these discussions - is the whole opening game really just fighting cockroaches? The starting area starts off with wolves and human enemies if the videos are to be believed, after which you run into a variety of stuff once the game opens up a bit. The reason these beetles and whatnot are getting mentioned a lot is because they kick almost everything's rear end when set up against most parties, compared to how they used to work. You can fight human enemies in town and not have that hard a time of it then get completely bowled over by these guys in just a few seconds. They were always powerful, but a recent change in balance threw them way out of whack. Soon to be fixed, though.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:40
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They can kick the BB starter party's rear end on Hard, but the encounters aren't anywhere near as gnarly on Normal.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:05
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Unless your PC is a Druid anyway. Tanglefoot + Ranged weapons/spells = no damage taken from beetles.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:32
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Sensuki posted:Unless your PC is a Druid anyway. Tanglefoot + Ranged weapons/spells = no damage taken from beetles. Well it is certainly a good reason to try out different builds. Trying to melee those things seemed completely impossible on higher difficulties. Might give it a whirl next playthrough. Vvvvv Set, sort of. No idea how many there will be, except "a bundle". Don't think ropekid will tell us this early! evilmiera fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 21:39
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HOw many enemy adventurer parties will there be in the game? Or are they randomly generated? I ask because I have fond memories of those fights in Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 where the enemies were just lke you and you really had to use your head to get through them.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:43
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evilmiera posted:Well it is certainly a good reason to try out different builds. Trying to melee those things seemed completely impossible on higher difficulties. Might give it a whirl next playthrough. While not the stock BB party, this is what it sounds like when Beetles cry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-Sk0bGcK8
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Jan 4, 2015 21:50
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Sensuki posted:Unless your PC is a Druid anyway. Tanglefoot + Ranged weapons/spells = no damage taken from beetles.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:00
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I've always found wading the majority of characters into melee and wrecking stuff way more fun, but you can't really do that in this game, at least not to anywhere near the same effectiveness. The web/fireball/cloudkill/bow spamming wasn't really my thing.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:08
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Sensuki posted:I've always found wading the majority of characters into melee and wrecking stuff way more fun, but you can't really do that in this game, at least not to anywhere near the same effectiveness.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:16
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Sensuki posted:I've always found wading the majority of characters into melee and wrecking stuff way more fun
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Jan 4, 2015 22:20
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Basic Chunnel posted:Not on the difficulty you're playing!  quote:There is no circumstance I can think of where doing this against melee-only enemies would be more efficient than slowing/holding them and using ranged attacks against them. I mean, you can wade in and wreck stuff in melee in the IE games but it's always likely to be more efficient to Entangle/Web them and shoot bows/slings at them, even at low level. Even if you want to melee them, thinning their approach is extraordinarily beneficial in the IE games (especially the IWD games). I don't think that's true. Wading into melee with high armor class often expends almost no drain on strategical resources, especially if you don't get hit. Consequently using ranged weapons expends ammunition, which might be limited (due to inventory space). Using spells uses a daily spell slot. Using Exploding consumables is using a limited resource. Taking 10 damage from a melee hit is almost always preferable to using a limited resource. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 22:26
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You almost always wind up getting hit quite a bit in the IWDs, meaning you wind up casting one+ healing spells after the fight. Compared to a single Entangle, that's a pretty easy choice.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:31
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I'm way more familiar with Icewind Dale, than I am the second one (20+ completed playthroughs compared to one completed and a few half-finishes), but you're given enough Healing Potions to sustain very long adventuring days. On my last playthrough I did everything up to Kresselack's Tomb - Easthaven, Kuldahar Pass, all of the Vale of Shadows exteriors and mini tombs without resting once and that was with four melee characters (Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Wizard) and two ranged (Ranger, Fighter/Thief). I used all of my Cure Light Wounds and Lay on Hands, and every healing potion, and probably could have done a few rooms on the inside too. That was with a min-maxed party and Max HP per level though. Also forgot to buy arrows at Kuldahar, so ended up being 6 melee in the Vale of Shadows before long. Very well designed that game, while not super challenging, you're given just the right amount of loot to play very comfortably through areas. Would be a bit easier tuning for a linear game though. The second one is great fun, but has several graphical glitches on modern machines. You can fix some of them but on my current machine I get severe flickering on some UI elements (such as the mouse cursor). Sensuki fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 22:41
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Sensuki I appreciate the 6 waifu party. Very strong. It does strike me that in general low level bg1 always had a very very strong emphasis on kiting. I used to go fight the vampire wolves with my level 1 dudes and just kite them around while throwing magical poo poo at them and then immediately levelling up to level 3-4. The viability of melee always seemed to be super dependent on the weird behaviour of to hit rolls in 2nd ed - versus low level monsters, you could get about 0 ac pretty easily and thus be close to invulnerable. However, even only slightly more dangerous monsters would suddenly be hitting you up to 5 times more (from 1 in 20 to 1 in 4 attacks landing with only a +4-5 decrease in thaco). It was certainly very variable.
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Jan 5, 2015 01:22
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You start taking a lot more damage overall in Dragon's Eye both due to creature THAC0s and spell use. And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.
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Jan 5, 2015 03:52
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Yeah absolutely (haven't played Blood Money myself but Hitman 2 was really fun). I was more trying to get across that I don't think that (in this particular build) it's very fun to play on Hard due to how polarized it is against entering melee, which has not been much of an issue in any previous version. The extra creatures and the per-hit damage give you more of a tough time than I think it should. That's IMO anyway.SurrealityCheck posted:Sensuki I appreciate the 6 waifu party. Very strong. I always snuck into the Beregost Blacksmith at night to steal the Bastard Sword +1 and then just strolled my best melee character up to the Vampiric Wolves and started beating on them. I never felt it was necessary to kite in BG1, you can individually pull those wolves if you are careful. You can beat that encounter as soon as Imoen hits level 2 and has enough lockpick to access the sword. That's a quick level up right there. You could buy Plate Armor from the Friendly Arm Inn for a pretty good price (which you could afford straight away if you looted the Diamond in the tree on the Coast Way), and have a negative AC on your Fighter very early in the game (combined with a Ring of Protection +1 hidden in a rock in the next area), and then you've got the Ankheg Plate at Nashkell, and you're pretty much set for the game.
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Jan 5, 2015 07:11
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Bears and ogres would easily one shot crit. even higher level mages in BG so that's not much of a change by itself.
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Jan 5, 2015 07:22
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