Combat is too easy

[Arcane]

I have finished the EA version of the game with a patch 5. And in my opinion the game is too easy. Most fights were so easy I did not have to use any tactics whatsoever.

I was playing with a party of 4, I think this is how it is intended to be played. I had Wizard, Fighter, Cleric and Warlock. It is more or less balanced DND party so it is not some sort of minmaxing or exploits.

The only tough fight was Githyanki patrol and I beat them from the second attempt at level 4. They were level 5 and I think this fight is intended for lvl 5 party. I did not even have to use Haste potions and anything tricky. Just a bit of tactics and positioning and I beat them. But I admit it was not easy, and I had to think for a bit for the second attempt. If I used Haste potions it would have been way easier too.

Everything else was just too easy and no challenge whatsoever. No tactics, high grounds, potions, nothing. Just go, see, press attack and win in the most straightforward manner. This is a bit disappointing in a turn based tactical game.

Never had to use any consumables and even healing potions. Just Cleric support is enough to cover in all fights except Githyanki patrol.

If you ask who I beat from the first try with no tactics: Hag fight, underdark Bulemy (forgot the name), Spider boss under Goblin town, entire Goblin Temple, Harpies, 3 Ogres. Don't remember any more notable bosses.

In my opinion difficulty of the fights needs to be drastically increased. It would be nice if we have to use more abilities spells and clever combos. More tactics and positioning and planning. Otherwise it is just boring.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

I think the point, which is getting lost in all the noise, is that an encounter itself isn't balanced around the idea that a player will lose and then reload and do it better.

Reloading and save scumming are there because if they weren't, not many people would play the game. With so much RNG, and so much of the game invested in progression over time, the thought of starting the game over every time you failed is pretty much unbearable to most players. So we have save game files.

But the designers don't go into the process of designing an encounter and think to themselves, "You know what, I can make this encounter much harder than I would, because players can just reload until they get it right."

If you're balancing the game that way, you're doing it wrong. Encounters would be balanced instead around the information and tools the game gives you, and the player that successfully uses that information and those tools should succeed.

That said, most of the encounters in this game DO telegraph some information to you - the gith, for example, do not just jump you out of nowhere. They are clearly visible from a distance, they do not trigger any kind of ambush. Of course, even seeing them in advance one has to assume that the player knows what a "gith" is, else why does it matter? The new player who has never played D&D before would get all that info (and maybe even has a gith in their party, assuming that this makes them 'friendly', which is not an unreasonable assumption to make) and still not have enough information to decide to be cautious. Of course, there's the whole thing about the dragon burning the Flaming Fist alive and destroying the bridge, so that's a pretty big clue right there, experienced D&D vet or not. But the point is that you cannot balance this encounter entirely on a player's meta knowledge - to some extent, you have to say, "Should this encounter go south, then the player's ought to be strong enough if they are the appropriate level when they get here, that they have decent (at least 50%, but hopefully better) odds of survival if they do get into combat."

I actually think the gith patrol fight is intended for a party of level 5 adventurers (again, check the CR's). It's beatable at a lower level, like people say with some prep and positioning but it wasn't actually intended to be fought until we reach level 5.

Much like the rest of the game, there are a lot of Hard and Deadly+ encounters which will tear most players a new one on their first try. Most have some kind of 'tell' - the goblin ambush has a perception check at the gate, the scavengers in the crypt have people outside and at the door that should warn you that there are more inside, and the harpies can be heard singing their unmistakable song long before you reach the shore.

However, and I always say this, check the CR's: this game is on the harder side in terms of balance when you work out the pure math of it. Enemies are strong, they have a lot of hp, and they tend to hit really hard and often have access to many tools in abundance you wouldn't expect (like goblins having tons of elemental arrows and grenades for breaking concentration spells).

BG3 isn't really "easy" or "hard" - many encounters are tuned to be Hard or Deadly+ on the CR scale, and there's a ton of exploits you can use to level the playing field, and pre-positioning and meta knowledge helps. You can also try to outlevel and outgear most fights except the hardest ones (gith, spectator, goblin bosses, constructs) but only because we are level capped right now. In other words, there's more than one way to win - including in many cases not fighting at all. BG3 gives us many options to skip combat altogether if we're willing to use our other skills, and that's pretty amazing for a crpg. I haven't played a game that gives us this many ways to solve a problem in a very long time.

But don't pretend that combat in this game is 'easy' - the CR values of the monsters show otherwise. Only the imps in the tutorial are 'easy', and only now that they have been nerfed (before, if you were playing any kind of caster, you were in constant danger of being one shot in the tutorial, which meant that whether you made it through or not came down entirely to luck).

Combat is not easy - it's winnable. There's a difference. The difficulty is decided by the relative strength of the enemies to the player's, and all of the enemies in this game are very strong for the level we are encountering them at. There are a multitude of ways around this and tools we are given to deal with it, but it's by no means "easy".

[NixAhmose]

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

Of course there is no way to erase that knowledge, and I didnt argue about that. But for our characters that would still be their first encounter. They arent magically resurrected, thats why prepping yourself is gamey, you are using knowledge that your characters cant have. This knowledge is given to you by virtue of stepping into a fight and has 0 connection to your skills.

Gamey? Sure. Exploit? No. Being able to learn from your mistakes and make different decisions based on your previous attempts is a core part of 99% of games. Developers don't design games under the notion that a player is just going to repeat the same mistake over and over again just to match the knowledge that their character would have. They design games under the assumption that players will reload and adjust their tactics in order to win.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

First off, my solution is play however you like.
Second, prepping and positioning before the fight are exploits unless there is a clear evidence of hostile encounter.
Third, fights themselves is completely different matter, refine your strategy, find what suits you the most, go on. You are overcoming the barrier, not lowering it with out-of-combat actions.

1)No, you specifically said that players should just start the fight exactly how they did the first time but pick different actions mid fight, not do whatever they want since anything else is an exploit.
2) Nope. You said that me prepping for my first fight against the gith using information I got from the game itself was me using exploits.
3)What's the difference? If you're changing your actions based on knowledge gained from previous attempts, then you are still "exploiting" knowledge your character shouldn't have regardless if its done in or out of combat.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

Do we need to walk circles? Positioning before the fight lowers the difficulty of encounters. Positioning in the fight is completely ok.

So what you're saying is wearing armor and having weapons equipped prior to a fight lowers the difficulty of the encounter, ergo having anything equipped prior to a fight is exploiting the game.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

I said that I want to see video reference, because I think he is bullshitting everyone, he INSULTED me, without ANY explanation, i responded to him. You dont need to lie here, its all in the thread.

Yes, so you insulted him first. In what universe is calling some a liar and saying that their spreading bs not a insult?
Like if you give what you think is a pretty good examples and reasoning for why you think something is the case based on your experience, and then some guy comes up to you and says "You're spreading ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! I don't believe you at all. Give me video evidence of event that probably happened 10 months ago actually happened!!!", are you seriously going to think that's nice polite response instead of an insult.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

Whats rng doing here lol. You can come to gith patrol with literally the same party, same hp same spells same ac same equipment, in a more or less timely manner. Especially if he facerolls every fight prior to that.

You do know what rng stands for? RNG stands for Random Number Generator, which is able to generate a random number within a predefined range of numbers. Since the game uses this system to determine whether or not an action succeeds, the probability of getting the exact same, let alone similar results, in the battle by repeating the exact same actions is incredibly unlikely.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

How many times exactly? 3?5?10? Count out and you'll find something new about your reading ability, and maths knowledge. And yes you'll better shut up about it afterwards, mr "The guy literally said in his opening post that the Gith fight required him to use good positioning". Good positioning equals a bit of positioning lmao.
Again about positioning - I havent said A SINGLE WORD about if he mentioned 0 positioning or not. I said, "POST THE VIDEO of how you kill gith patrol, without position/exploits etc" NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT CONTENTS OF HIS POST. NOT. A. SINGLE. WORD. Then you came up and said "The guy literally said in his opening post that the Gith fight was tough and required him to use good positioning to beat on his 2nd attempt" - FIRST MENTION OF ORIGINAL POST. You are imagining what i said and fighting with your imagination because apparently confronting real words is too much for your small head. Not to say you very inaquratelly try to diminish my position by taking small pieces like "good positioning" out of your ass to get more legitimacy to your stupid claims.

"only one of us has reading issues and thats not me lmao. i said POST THE VIDEO of how you kill gith patrol, without position/exploits etc. "

"well "literally" he said he used a bit of positioning, not a single word about tough fight"

" i expressed my doubts about clearing up gith patrol without positioning/preps/or any other gamey abuse"

Yeah, at least 3 times to the posts that I've been responding to. Man you are getting really pissed about this. Just accept the fact that you made a mistake instead raging and trying to act like I'm the liar for saying "good" instead of "bit". And to be completely honest, I don't see how good is even that inaccurate since if that's what he said helped won him the fight, then I think its safe to assume it did more good than bad for him.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

It is relevant because the same way you "potentially" can keep Laezel loyal with prepetual checks you can evade gith patrol, so I still dont understand how you can trust (and travel with) her, but not other giths, if she is the one to walk you in their hands.

I can trust that she can be a valuable ally based off the fact she isn't currently attempting to kill me, helped save my character's life at the beginning of the game, and has a mutual goal of finding a cure for the tadpoles.
I can not blindly trust other Gith when a) Laezel has a very biased view of them, b) other characters have mentioned how Gith have been attacking and killining innocent people, and c) there's an entire cutscene showing them burning a bunch of soldiers from the faction that I had just made friends with 5 minutes prior.
And when I saw I don't blindly trust them, I don't mean "I hid from the bushes and attacked them unprovoked". I mean I left my wizard from a potential advantageous point(unbeknownst to me, Gith are able to jump from the ground to the top of the bridge very easily) in case things go south while my character and my tanky healer went down to go talk to the Gith to see if they could actually help us.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

1. Point me when I said that you claimed the game was easy.
2. That is one way to play, ducking your way through the game, nothing bad with that.

1) "Game is easy if you prepare for every potential fight" That was your response to me describing my strategy when exploring the map and prepping for potential encounters.
2) Okay, not sure why you're treating it like an exploit then.

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

When you approach dwarves prior to myconid colony you can easily count their numbers. Not to say how are their numbers connected to possibility of a fight? 3-peaceful encounter, 4-ability check with a fight upon failure and 5-100% probability fight? Whats the reasoning behind this lol.

We might be talking about different dwarves then. I was specifically referring to the ones at the dock which, as far as I was aware, stay hidden until you reach a certain point and then they ambush you. If that's not the same situation or I just missed the fact that they are spottable prior to the cutscene, my b.
Also I didn't say their numbers were connected to how possible they were. I was referring to numbers being a way to gauge how difficult a fight with them could possibly be.

[Izunyami]

Publicado originalmente por Спартак здесь?:

Doesnt look like or worded as subjective opinion, but if it really is then all this debate is meaningless.

Publicado originalmente por Arcane:

In my opinion difficulty of the fights needs to be drastically increased.

Publicado originalmente por Arcane:

In my opinion difficulty of the fights needs to be drastically increased.

Publicado originalmente por Arcane:

In my opinion difficulty of the fights needs to be drastically increased.

[Jack Hawklight]

Publicado originalmente por pandariuskairos:

I think the point, which is getting lost in all the noise, is that an encounter itself isn't balanced around the idea that a player will lose and then reload and do it better.

Reloading and save scumming are there because if they weren't, not many people would play the game. With so much RNG, and so much of the game invested in progression over time, the thought of starting the game over every time you failed is pretty much unbearable to most players. So we have save game files.

But the designers don't go into the process of designing an encounter and think to themselves, "You know what, I can make this encounter much harder than I would, because players can just reload until they get it right."

If you're balancing the game that way, you're doing it wrong. Encounters would be balanced instead around the information and tools the game gives you, and the player that successfully uses that information and those tools should succeed.

That said, most of the encounters in this game DO telegraph some information to you - the gith, for example, do not just jump you out of nowhere. They are clearly visible from a distance, they do not trigger any kind of ambush. Of course, even seeing them in advance one has to assume that the player knows what a "gith" is, else why does it matter? The new player who has never played D&D before would get all that info (and maybe even has a gith in their party, assuming that this makes them 'friendly', which is not an unreasonable assumption to make) and still not have enough information to decide to be cautious. Of course, there's the whole thing about the dragon burning the Flaming Fist alive and destroying the bridge, so that's a pretty big clue right there, experienced D&D vet or not. But the point is that you cannot balance this encounter entirely on a player's meta knowledge - to some extent, you have to say, "Should this encounter go south, then the player's ought to be strong enough if they are the appropriate level when they get here, that they have decent (at least 50%, but hopefully better) odds of survival if they do get into combat."

I actually think the gith patrol fight is intended for a party of level 5 adventurers (again, check the CR's). It's beatable at a lower level, like people say with some prep and positioning but it wasn't actually intended to be fought until we reach level 5.

Much like the rest of the game, there are a lot of Hard and Deadly+ encounters which will tear most players a new one on their first try. Most have some kind of 'tell' - the goblin ambush has a perception check at the gate, the scavengers in the crypt have people outside and at the door that should warn you that there are more inside, and the harpies can be heard singing their unmistakable song long before you reach the shore.

However, and I always say this, check the CR's: this game is on the harder side in terms of balance when you work out the pure math of it. Enemies are strong, they have a lot of hp, and they tend to hit really hard and often have access to many tools in abundance you wouldn't expect (like goblins having tons of elemental arrows and grenades for breaking concentration spells).

BG3 right is isn't really "easy" or "hard" - many encounters are tuned to be Hard or Deadly+ on the CR scale, and there's a ton of exploits you can use to level the playing field, and pre-positioning and meta knowledge helps. You can also try to outlevel and outgear most fights except the hardest ones (gith, spectator, goblin bosses, constructs) but only because we are level capped right now. In other words, there's more than one way to win - including in many cases not fighting at all. BG3 gives us many options to skip combat altogether if we're willing to use our other skills, and that's pretty amazing for a crpg. I haven't played a game that gives us this many ways to solve a problem in a very long time.

But don't pretend that combat in this game is 'easy' - the CR values of the monsters show otherwise. Only the imps in the tutorial are 'easy', and only now that they have been nerfed (before, if you were playing any kind of caster, you were in constant danger of being one shot in the tutorial, which meant that whether you made it through or not came down entirely to luck).

Combat is not easy - it's winnable. There's a difference. The difficulty is decided by the relative strength of the enemies to the player's, and all of the enemies in this game are very strong for the level we are encountering them at. There are a multitude of ways around this and tools we are given to deal with it, but it's by no means "easy".

I've told you repeatedly the CR calculator is useless due to the changes between table top, its conversion to PC, and some homebrew. So if that is what you are basing its difficulty on.... just stop. Please.

The game will be easier for some and harder for others. Even between fights it can be easier or harder depending on how you have built your party. That is pretty much how every game, ever made, is. Some find it easier and others harder. Though, I definitely have never felt that it was a 'hard' or 'deadly' encounter. (Maybe just the booal fight and gith)

I do agree the gith fight is probably the hardest fight in the game and we are probably supposed to be level 5 when we fight them. But people have still been beating it. I imagine that fight is the way it is for Larian to collect data from. As I imagine the rest of the encounters in the game currently are as well.

Just because something isn't easy for YOU does not mean it cannot be easy for SOMEONE ELSE. This guy just gave his opinion based on his gameplay experiences. Of course others will have had a different (or even very different) game play experience related to a variety of factors. That does not invalidate his experience. Just as people who are having a hard time don't have their experience invalidated either by someone having an easier time.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

They design games under the assumption that players will reload and adjust their tactics in order to win.

No, this is false. Or at least, it should be. Particularly on 'normal' difficulty.

The game should be balanced so that if the (average) player is paying attention to the clues and using the tools at their disposal, then they should have fair (greater than 75%) chances of surviving the content on their first playthrough.

Of course RNGesus plays a big role in this, and a series of really bad rolls can ruin anyone's day, preparation be damned, and so we have save scumming.

But the game is NOT balanced around the premise that the player will save scum. In fact, Larian have been working hard to try and do everything they can to get the player NOT to save scum (just look at the changes to - and comments about - dialog. Clearly they'd rather people don't save scum if possible).

In normal mode, failure should only come when one ignores clues in the environment, fails to use resources and tools that are available to them, or just gets really bad luck and rolls bad which is just something that happens in these games. Otherwise, players should be expected to win most of the time, given the above things to be true.

[Jack Hawklight]

Publicado originalmente por pandariuskairos:

They design games under the assumption that players will reload and adjust their tactics in order to win.

No, this is false. Or at least, it should be. Particularly on 'normal' difficulty.

The game should be balanced so that if the (average) player is paying attention to the clues and using the tools at their disposal, then they should have fair (greater than 75%) chances of surviving the content on their first playthrough.

Of course RNGesus plays a big role in this, and a series of really bad rolls can ruin anyone's day, preparation be damned, and so we have save scumming.

But the game is NOT balanced around the premise that the player will save scum. In fact, Larian have been working hard to try and do everything they can to get the player NOT to save scum (just look at the changes to - and comments about - dialog. Clearly they'd rather people don't save scum if possible).

In normal mode, failure should only come when one ignores clues in the environment, fails to use resources and tools that are available to them, or just gets really bad luck and rolls bad which is just something that happens in these games. Otherwise, players should be expected to win most of the time, given the above things to be true.

So basically, if they play badly they lose and if they play well they win. Makes perfect sense.

[Izunyami]

Publicado originalmente por pandariuskairos:

The game should be balanced so that if the (average) player is paying attention to the clues and using the tools at their disposal, then they should have fair (greater than 75%) chances of surviving the content on their first playthrough.... Otherwise, players should be expected to win most of the time, given the above things to be true.

I don't know about you guys but, I feel like my success rate is about 90%... and that was roughly my success rate my first time too, when the game was harder....

[Jack Hawklight]

Publicado originalmente por Izunyami:

I don't know about you guys but, I feel like my success rate is about 90%... and that was roughly my success rate my first time too, when the game was harder....

Well, in my current playthrough I'm sitting at 100%. I'm sure my luck will run out at some point though. I do think it must have been harder before in some (maybe many) ways.

[Izunyami]

Publicado originalmente por Funniesthobo:

Publicado originalmente por Izunyami:

I don't know about you guys but, I feel like my success rate is about 90%... and that was roughly my success rate my first time too, when the game was harder....

Well, in my current playthrough I'm sitting at 100%. I'm sure my luck will run out at some point though. I do think it must have been harder before in some (maybe many) ways.

I hate saying 100％ in general, but I did technically lose once....... it was pathetic. Against the intellect devourer and 2 thrall pack, I missed literally every attack and they crit me twice (and hit every attack). RNGesus had it out for me that time T . T but yeah, other than that, I'm at 100% win lol.

[Jack Hawklight]

Publicado originalmente por Izunyami:

Publicado originalmente por Funniesthobo:

Well, in my current playthrough I'm sitting at 100%. I'm sure my luck will run out at some point though. I do think it must have been harder before in some (maybe many) ways.

I hate saying 100％ in general, but I did technically lose once....... it was pathetic. Against the intellect devourer and 2 thrall pack, I missed literally every attack and they crit me twice (and hit every attack). RNGesus had it out for me that time T . T but yeah, other than that, I'm at 100% win lol.

That is why you gotta say a prayer to RNGesus before every time you play haha. My luck will run out sooner or later though, I'm sure of it. Unless they really have just nerfed every combat scenario.

[dolby]

Wipes are not a problem at all... I play for no knockouts...rezing is broken cos you can just keep healing downed companions they really need to add injures like dragon age origins had... I mean if you accept rezing even gith fight becomes easy...

[Baka]

I think all enemies should have a % chance to 1-shot your party members.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Publicado originalmente por Baka:

I think all enemies should have a % chance to 1-shot your party members.

I hope that's sarcasm, because it's ridiculous on it's face.

[Izunyami]

Publicado originalmente por Baka:

I think all enemies should have a % chance to 1-shot your party members.

A 100% chance.

[Chillearth]

Publicado originalmente por Izunyami:

Publicado originalmente por Baka:

I think all enemies should have a % chance to 1-shot your party members.

A 100% chance.

.........and some would still claim the game is too easy.

I've seen these 'too easy' claims in forums for almost every game that ever existed.

Myself, I'd call the game tricky, with a handful of combats where things would go better if the party were at level 5.

For those that find it too easy, there are several things you can do without changing the base difficulty. Have more fights per long rest, so you are not always at full strength, play with a party of three instead of four, avoid the more obvious exploits of pre-knowledge positioning/height advantage/barrels/extreme sniping/hiding between every shot to gain a sneak bonus.

If you don't want to do any of that, then perhaps you should search for a game that offers a tougher challenge elsewhere.