Difficulty curve

[Aegmar]

Anyone else thinking as well that the game starts out reasonably diffcult, but as soon as you get some better weapons, mods and use even just a bit of stealth kills it becomes very easy very suddenly `?

I kinda think that the game is not doing a good job to scale up difficulty as your team gets stronger and better equipped. First third of the game was pretty exciting, 2nd third was borderline boring and last third i struggled to motivate myself to even finish it, since even large enemy groups were so easily defeated...

[suejak]

Yes, the balance team that messed up weapon balance also messed up encounter balance and the campaign curve. Basically they just cranked out a bunch of content for its own sake and the game was successful for it.

[Captain Suction]

Originally posted by engager6:

I have to agree, that AI is dumb as brick. What i found most hilarious, is that it always rushes you no matter what, enemies always run toward you, even snipers, who meant to sit in good camping positions. This creates the situation then the only difficulty comes to have enough damage to kill them all on approach and that's it. Where are other things as well, for example, do somebody remember the case when legion "greanadier" actually used his grenade to make some garanteed damage, instead of carelessly rushing you in pathetic attempt to shoot you with his silly pistol?

People had been talking a lot about sniper rifles OP and to remove silencers. Ok, they are OP, sure, but what this will do? If it will alert whole map it just creates you an excelent opportunity to invite all enemies from good positions they may have to stupidly blind rush you as i talked above. You just take fortified position, mass overwatch, grenades - all dead, even easier then silent one shot sniping... From my point of view this will do nothing, just instead mass sniping you will switch to mass overwatch, with so many OP overwatch perks in the perk trees this won't be even a challenge.

I think the main point of AI tweak should be allowing it to ambush you and keep entrenched positions, to place you in disadvantage and force complex tactical situation for you. Also, instead of trying to dumb rush, and shooting you with nearly zero chance to hit, they should be more focused on doing garanteed damage. For example: grenadiers should actually spam grenades at you when you are in any sort of cover to expose you and your position for others to shoot, instead of going imbicile mod and trying to shoot you with pistol... Assault units like shotgunners and melee guys should not run in the open like crazy, but instead set up ambushes for you, or try to crawl to you through using covers, so you can't shoot them so easily, or run in from cover, stab and run back to cover.

I mean, why the enemy groups do have grenadiers and assaulters at all? what's the point? Just more bullet sponge? They at least should to what they intended to do. And fixing simple things like that, without going deeply tactical will for sure make game much much harder then it is now, no miracles requried, just fix simple behaviours - that's all.

Totally agree with this. On my second playthrough (this time on MI) I'm not using silencers/stealth and it doesn't even matter. Turn one of combat, kill 4-5 guys with snipers. Turn 2, mass overwatch, kill 2-3 guys. Turn 3, same. Turn 4, same. Turn 5, even the sniper is trying to rush you.

It's sad that there are these really well crafted maps (for instance the top right corner) but 80% of the battlefield isn't used because I am just camp sniping a field of death. Admittedly this doesn't work for the final two Corazon fights, but it works very well for 90% of the game. Allowing the AI to hang back (or cheat to find an alternate way around) would fix this imo.

[mr_oluap]

Originally posted by Captain Suction:

Originally posted by engager6:

I have to agree, that AI is dumb as brick. What i found most hilarious, is that it always rushes you no matter what, enemies always run toward you, even snipers, who meant to sit in good camping positions. This creates the situation then the only difficulty comes to have enough damage to kill them all on approach and that's it. Where are other things as well, for example, do somebody remember the case when legion "greanadier" actually used his grenade to make some garanteed damage, instead of carelessly rushing you in pathetic attempt to shoot you with his silly pistol?

People had been talking a lot about sniper rifles OP and to remove silencers. Ok, they are OP, sure, but what this will do? If it will alert whole map it just creates you an excelent opportunity to invite all enemies from good positions they may have to stupidly blind rush you as i talked above. You just take fortified position, mass overwatch, grenades - all dead, even easier then silent one shot sniping... From my point of view this will do nothing, just instead mass sniping you will switch to mass overwatch, with so many OP overwatch perks in the perk trees this won't be even a challenge.

I think the main point of AI tweak should be allowing it to ambush you and keep entrenched positions, to place you in disadvantage and force complex tactical situation for you. Also, instead of trying to dumb rush, and shooting you with nearly zero chance to hit, they should be more focused on doing garanteed damage. For example: grenadiers should actually spam grenades at you when you are in any sort of cover to expose you and your position for others to shoot, instead of going imbicile mod and trying to shoot you with pistol... Assault units like shotgunners and melee guys should not run in the open like crazy, but instead set up ambushes for you, or try to crawl to you through using covers, so you can't shoot them so easily, or run in from cover, stab and run back to cover.

I mean, why the enemy groups do have grenadiers and assaulters at all? what's the point? Just more bullet sponge? They at least should to what they intended to do. And fixing simple things like that, without going deeply tactical will for sure make game much much harder then it is now, no miracles requried, just fix simple behaviours - that's all.

Totally agree with this. On my second playthrough (this time on MI) I'm not using silencers/stealth and it doesn't even matter. Turn one of combat, kill 4-5 guys with snipers. Turn 2, mass overwatch, kill 2-3 guys. Turn 3, same. Turn 4, same. Turn 5, even the sniper is trying to rush you.

It's sad that there are these really well crafted maps (for instance the top right corner) but 80% of the battlefield isn't used because I am just camp sniping a field of death. Admittedly this doesn't work for the final two Corazon fights, but it works very well for 90% of the game. Allowing the AI to hang back (or cheat to find an alternate way around) would fix this imo.

it wouldn't be much better nor much harder if ennemies camped their positions though, it would simply be slower

I think difficulty is mostly fine, best way to increase it is probably simply by multiplying the number of ennemies, even without changing the AI.

I might try the mod that does that

[Rhapsody]

Being a brick is not a downside if what you need are bricks and not tiles.

Most turn-based strategy games have pretty boring and often ineffective AI. Only games in recent memory where that is not the case would be D:OS2 and BG3, and even there the devs had to tone things down because their AI was too smart.

In the words of a certain game designer, it's more important to not have bad AI than to have good AI.

[mr_oluap]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

Being a brick is not a downside if what you need are bricks and not tiles. :papyrus:

Most turn-based strategy games have pretty boring and often ineffective AI. Only games in recent memory where that is not the case would be D:OS2 and BG3, and even there the devs had to tone things down because their AI was too smart.

In the words of a certain game designer, it's more important to not have bad AI than to have good AI.

Is combat good in BG3 ?

[Grayef]

I'm not so sure ,mate.

I mean yeah as soon as I gave sniper rifles to Livewire and Fox , they killed half the enemy's team.

But I'm out of ammo at the moment for the M14 and the sniper rifle. So holding onto revolvers , ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mp5 and AK-47 is pretty hard. I've been savescumming a lot at FORT BARRIERE. 22 enemies kick my ass it's freaking annoying even with Barry's explosives

[Grayef]

Also one thing that pisses me off is the melee system.

When I attack an enemy with a knife, he doesn't fall under melee overwatch like the other enemies do with my characters. If my characters move next to a melee enemy, they get attacked. But if it's an enemy they can get away with it just fineee

[grunty]

the difficulty of ja3 is extremely polarized.
on one side you have players on the hardest difficulty thinking its too easy and the ai is too exploitable and dumb. on the other side you have players on the easiest difficulty with forgiving mode and a few easy-mode mods unable to progress after ernie island.

this will be interesting how HG will handle this in the future

[Grayef]

Originally posted by Grunty:

the difficulty of ja3 is extremely polarized.
on one side you have players on the hardest difficulty thinking its too easy and the ai is too exploitable and dumb. on the other side you have players on the easiest difficulty with forgiving mode and a few easy-mode mods unable to progress after ernie island.

this will be interesting how HG will handle this in the future

" who do you think I look like, Sigmund and Freid?"

[mr_oluap]

Originally posted by Grayef:

Also one thing that pisses me off is the melee system.

When I attack an enemy with a knife, he doesn't fall under melee overwatch like the other enemies do with my characters. If my characters move next to a melee enemy, they get attacked. But if it's an enemy they can get away with it just fineee

Sadly it's a trait only a few merc and IMP can have

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by mr_oluap:

Is combat good in BG3 ?

Well it's of course very different game compared to JA3, but one thing that often stands out in both D:OS2 and BG3 is how opponents regularly assist themselves. Not just by buff spells, but also by things like shoving an ally out of harm's way or intentionally causing small amount of damage to wake a sleeping ally up. Sadly there aren't really that kind of interactions available in JA3, but I do like how we've got destructible environment here, and that's one of the few areas of improvement that I can think for AI in this game. I think currently they simply try to avoid explosives laid by the player and never intentionally try to punch holes in walls or obstacles or try to set off the explosives by shooting them or anything like that. It's part of the intended experience, of course. Modern video game AI is increasingly likely to outsmart humans especially in early game settings unless it's intentionally handicapped, even if it's not allowed to truly cheat.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Aegmar:

Anyone else thinking as well that the game starts out reasonably diffcult, but as soon as you get some better weapons, mods and use even just a bit of stealth kills it becomes very easy very suddenly `?

Mmm did you replayed the game once? Game start is no way difficult, it's very easy get quickly multiple SR, and stealth is no way requesting any special perk to be very effective.

When there's OP holes, SR and Stealth, there isn't much to do.

Originally posted by Aegmar:

I kinda think that the game is not doing a good job to scale up difficulty as your team gets stronger and better equipped.

There's multiple points.

The game is incredibly open, and to target it, dev didn't choose use a enemy scaling like based on squad in sector, or income level, or anything. Instead there are chock places. And some some are tougher than others, and are supposed to be barely manageable at lower level. If the OP holes made you not see it, it's clearly here anyway.

Another small mechanic is best weapons drop are scaled on player level of chapter progression or both. But there's some holes with some fixed loot so players can abuse it.

And then I'd say, it's missing a player option so there's a global time pressure and mines depleted isn't a good mechanic.

But first for a true tactical game (already a great CRPG) the op holes need be targeted, SR, Stealth and Barry, there's perhaps a few other I didn't noticed.

[SirHawk]

Worst offender of JA3 AI difficulty is how trivial the game becomes, once you get a hang on the combat.

[engager6]

Originally posted by Grunty:

the difficulty of ja3 is extremely polarized.
on one side you have players on the hardest difficulty thinking its too easy and the ai is too exploitable and dumb. on the other side you have players on the easiest difficulty with forgiving mode and a few easy-mode mods unable to progress after ernie island.

this will be interesting how HG will handle this in the future

That's why games do have difficulty selection right? Just make those settings to match their names: make highest harder and easiest - easier.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by engager6:

Originally posted by Grunty:

the difficulty of ja3 is extremely polarized.
on one side you have players on the hardest difficulty thinking its too easy and the ai is too exploitable and dumb. on the other side you have players on the easiest difficulty with forgiving mode and a few easy-mode mods unable to progress after ernie island.

this will be interesting how HG will handle this in the future

That's why games do have difficulty selection right? Just make those settings to match their names: make highest harder and easiest - easier.

Yes and no, you can't fix SR and Stealth op holes without affecting all difficulty levels.