Your opinion matters: Adaptive Difficulty or Region-Locked Difficulty? And why?

[funkmonster7]

I personally like Adaptive Difficulty... But only until I get to a point where I want to try using animals and other than bears which are an obvious choice, everything else just falls short.

But then I play Region-locked and I feel like I get locked out of trading, or questing in lower-difficulty regions becomes kind of moot or not fun. Especially since this game involves a lot of traveling, particularly when trading. And also in early game I like to trade to slow down my leveling a bit so my equipment can catch up.

What do you guys think?

[[{JimPanC]

Im playing adaptive and I dont like it at all and I think I broke it, not sure
I have currently 10 mercs and they are all lvl 6 and I made the "mistake" to capture 2 lvl 8 bears
now EVERY encounter is at lvl 8 and Im facing 15+ mercs
its not impossible but all the gear I get out of those fights is lvl 8 and you need lvl 7 to wear it, in short completely useless to me
also you dont feel much progression even after getting legendary gear because everything scales up
I dont care what anyone says but I believe that region locked is the only real way to play this game

[Gregorovitch]

I loathe level scaling with a passion anyway so I'm playing region locked. I'm half way through Arthes and Vertruse after clearing Tiltren, doing both mainly 'cos trading, mine restocking and just variety.

At level 5-6 now across my party it's pretty easy in all three regions at this point but I know it'll get harder when I venture further but I don't mind as I'm busy farming resources, clearing rats nests for plague samples->oil and generally gearing up my 9 merc crew, making pots of money to get skill upgrade books and so on.

Put it this way, I enjoy the (no doubt temporary) feeling of power at this stage and I would not like to have a to fight a half hour death match every time I want to harvest some boars for meat or a ghost pack for white leather etc. On region locked resource farming feels zen, not an arduous struggle and thank God for Tiltren I say.

Next time I start a save I'm definitely going to stay region locked but more importantly go ironman. Like Battle Brothers I imagine this game comes totally alive in ironman especially with the the enemies' turn order switched off. The dread, the agonising decisions and the different and I expect more interesting battle tactics approach needed when you don't know which enemy goes when.

Yes it feels a little easy now. I imagine ironman hard, for the average player like me, is going to be wall to wall squeaky bum time. Shhh!....What was that.........

[Slavo]

Can't even imagin to fight against Low-Bob-Units under my level. So it's adapitve for me. Since i know that the leveling is quite time intensive i would lock me form content, or i have to be very quick on my feet to run away. Downsite is ,like someone said before, if you capture something like bears or prisoners, well the fights become quite interesting to say the least. Had a fight against Inquisition today where the fanatacis just One-Shoted one of my Tank with a non crit of 360... (Mercs are lvl 6-7, Prisoners 8-9 Enemy are 10)
Region locked is just... what if i get bored with the last region if i want a change of Battlefields i can just pummle Level 5 Wolf ... just not my case. Adaptive is just the better choice for me and since the game is challenging for me it's not so easy, well at least now :D

[Lightning]

I'm playing the normal "Experienced" options on both with Region lock and seems to be getting a bit harder in the 3rd zone but still doable i think i should have been level 8 by now with the Tier 3 gear though which i'm not yet but soon i will be.

[Khalunka]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I loathe level scaling with a passion anyway so I'm playing region locked. I'm half way through Arthes and Vertruse after clearing Tiltren, doing both mainly 'cos trading, mine restocking and just variety.

At level 5-6 now across my party it's pretty easy in all three regions at this point but I know it'll get harder when I venture further but I don't mind as I'm busy farming resources, clearing rats nests for plague samples->oil and generally gearing up my 9 merc crew, making pots of money to get skill upgrade books and so on.

Put it this way, I enjoy the (no doubt temporary) feeling of power at this stage and I would not like to have a to fight a half hour death match every time I want to harvest some boars for meat or a ghost pack for white leather etc. On region locked resource farming feels zen, not an arduous struggle and thank God for Tiltren I say.

Next time I start a save I'm definitely going to stay region locked but more importantly go ironman. Like Battle Brothers I imagine this game comes totally alive in ironman especially with the the enemies' turn order switched off. The dread, the agonising decisions and the different and I expect more interesting battle tactics approach needed when you don't know which enemy goes when.

Yes it feels a little easy now. I imagine ironman hard, for the average player like me, is going to be wall to wall squeaky bum time. Shhh!....What was that.........

Dont go ironman, in the sense of file format. Go free save, and play AS ironman. Because there are still some weird quests and bugs later in the game and you dont want to lose your save file for nothing.

[Nasarog]

I've tried both. I prefer adaptive because then I can grind a region as much or little as I want and go to a new region when I feel like it. Ludren is an exception, at least for my playstyle.

[scumbag]

I'm playing region locked on hard combat difficulty but it really doesnt seem that hard. I straight up skipped arthes and went straight to ludern after vertrous (I didnt know what order to do them) where I was outnumbered fighting level 9's with a lvl6-7 party.
I think they could probably bump the level of all enemies by 1 or 2 if youre on hard mode and it would be more challenging for people who want one.

[Valekrin]

I prefer adaptive, especially after you know where to find items you want. You can get the Training Dummy as soon as you craft your team some iron gear or go after whatever legendary weapons you'd like, especially the tomb ones, once you're able to craft the Lectern. If there's a region you'd prefer to grind bounties in, oils you'd like or enemies that have items you want (here's looking at you, Alazarian Heater Shield!), you're not held back.

[Nasarog]

Originally posted by Valekrin:

I prefer adaptive, especially after you know where to find items you want. You can get the Training Dummy as soon as you craft your team some iron gear or go after whatever legendary weapons you'd like, especially the tomb ones, once you're able to craft the Lectern. If there's a region you'd prefer to grind bounties in, oils you'd like or enemies that have items you want (here's looking at you, Alazarian Heater Shield!), you're not held back.

Where can you get it?

[HellSlayer]

I played region locked... but.. adaptive would mean you can just visit lots of towns and lots of mines and mills for wood... and stuff like that... both options are nice

[Ruben[ESP]]

region locked is for a longer experience becouse you will need to fight more and survive more for reach every region, when you reach lvl 8 its a pain go to lvl 9, i suggest take adaptive its better in almost all scenarios :)

[Keith 'Blood' Hanson]

In region locked we do sorta have a type of level scaling we can take advantage if we ever want a challenge: The guards will always be our level and have the same amount of units. Playing with region locked makes going into Ludern terrifying. I've also had the pleasure of beating arena bosses that were *definitely* not meant for me to beat at three levels below them. Sometimes there are instances where I wish that yes, we just had some level scaling, but sometimes I just wish to get a region over with and cream them.

Usually I actually would just play adaptive, but then I could just zoom into all of these dangerous zones and everything would just be my level.

...Ugh, there's just a pro and con to both of them. I'd like one where it was adaptive but the party size was fixed per region?

[Fulgen]

I play region locked because I dislike level scaling, but there's pros and cons to both.

I think I'd like a mix between the two, I don't want higher level enemies to be brought down, but I'd like lower level enemies to be brought up

[Lightning]

Yeah, i'm 1-2 levels below where i should be in this area but really hard to level seems the xp doesn't scale as well if your party is big

[FlashXAron ☕ (Alex)]

For me it is simple in all games, no matter which genre , LOCKED, else you have no feeling of progression and it removes any sense to collect new weapons and items !

Best WORSE EXAMPLE was OBLIVION, where you could kill the God End Boss, if you reject to Level your char and if you have done it, he will wipe the floor with you, when you confront him with level 100 ... or the bandits on the streets, who demanded 100gp for passing, but have been dressed in glass armor worth 100 Mio ...

Hate dynamic and looter shooter game mechanics !