Difficulty Setting

[Breezy Meadows]

For those of you that have some extended time playing BG3, do you find the encounters relatively easy? I've got about 270 hours of early access under my belt and it's almost like the leveling up progression is not quite balanced or aligned. I would assume some type of difficulty settings will be implemented for full release, but curious if others feel this way as well during early access.

[KeepCleaving]

I feel the same except I'm pretty sure in my case it's 90% pre-combat knowledge. In the beginning of EA, the combat was a lot closer in difficulty. I've learned so many tricks and strategies for each encounter that they are kind of a Zzz now.

Take the 1st encounter off of the ship. Fighting the intellect devourers in melee, you learn fast and hard that it's a bad idea, to the point that it's almost a tpk. Even Swen demoing the game on live stream died to them lol. But after you learn to range them/throw them away into the fire, they then become very easy.

In the last 2 games released by Larian, they offered 2-3 difficulty modes tho.

I completely feel the same tho. I'm expecting that the 1st act will be refreshed enough to make it slightly more challenging again upon release.

[wtiger27]

I am sure there will be multiple difficulty levels to choose from in the release version. The EA seems to be normal.

[FuNb0Y86]

There's always a re-balance for Beta phases. I would predict they do this a month or two before shelf release.

[ExcaliburV]

The devs have said there will be options on release, but they stuck the EA on normal so that they could get accurate results if encounters seem too hard or too easy.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

The encounters can be very hard, until you apply metaknowledge, prepositioning, min/maxing and make use of all the exploits, at which point it becomes trivial.

[Mosey]

I think the problem here is exactly the same problem from DOS2.

With static encounters, you already know in advance every trick an encounter can throw at you after you play it a number of times.

RNG on rolls might skew things towards harder or easier, but that is entirely random outside of stacking a lot of modifiers that are also fairly well known.

Generally speaking, the people saying the game is 'too hard' are probably on a first or second playthrough and the people saying the game is 'too easy' have a few hundred or more hours.

Outliers exist, of course, but generally that's how it goes down.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Mosey:

I think the problem here is exactly the same problem from DOS2.

With static encounters, you already know in advance every trick an encounter can throw at you after you play it a number of times.

RNG on rolls might skew things towards harder or easier, but that is entirely random outside of stacking a lot of modifiers that are also fairly well known.

Generally speaking, the people saying the game is 'too hard' are probably on a first or second playthrough and the people saying the game is 'too easy' have a few hundred or more hours.

Outliers exist, of course, but generally that's how it goes down.

nah like i said in the other thread metaknowledge hardly plays a role teh game is just super easy simple as that if you know how to play a crpg you are set... THere is only like one 2 ambushes in the game and lack of Hp are the real problems.

No combat patrols that would ♥♥♥♥ you up if you take to long stuff like that... and again HP nothing can survive for long in this game. Cos avoidance armor system just can't do the job on it's own..

THe AI is bad as well cos enemies waste turns all the time and only know how to rush..to their deaths one by one.. instead of grouping up and attacking after they grouped up if they are spread out let say. God forbid they would retreat and go for help...

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by Mosey:

I think the problem here is exactly the same problem from DOS2.

With static encounters, you already know in advance every trick an encounter can throw at you after you play it a number of times.

RNG on rolls might skew things towards harder or easier, but that is entirely random outside of stacking a lot of modifiers that are also fairly well known.

Generally speaking, the people saying the game is 'too hard' are probably on a first or second playthrough and the people saying the game is 'too easy' have a few hundred or more hours.

Outliers exist, of course, but generally that's how it goes down.

Yeah, that's usually how it goes for encounters with story/plot significance even in games that do have random encounters.