How To Fix The Difficulty?

[River Running Games]

As I'm starting to work on the first actual balance patch, it's the perfect time to talk about difficulty! I know that a lot of players eventually reach a point where the game starts getting frustrating. This is because enemies gradually outpace the party in power. This was a deliberate choice contrary to a lot of JRPGs where things tend to get easier as the game goes on due to how strong the party becomes. I always thought that the inverted difficulty curve was a strange characteristic of the genre, so I wanted to try something different. But because of this, things inevitably become too difficult at some point. Usually this happens in the jungle.

Something I've noticed when people express their dislike of the difficulty is that it usually comes with the term "trash mob" or "trash fight". I actually never liked the idea of having trash fights: I thought it would be more interesting if even non-boss encounters demanded strategy. But then of course the consequence of that is fights become very draining very quickly.

This is where I'm very curious about feedback! My "solution" to doing away with trash fights was to make standard encounters skippable. Granted as the game goes on they become harder to avoid, but even the most difficult random encounters should be avoidable, even in the jungle, as shown here:

https://i.imgur.com/p4IcYS3.mp4

To those who dislike the difficulty of standard encounters, I have a feeling it might be because you prefer to fight every available mob by choice. Is this true? If so, I can totally understand why things would really start to drag once you reach the jungle. I guess I never meant for this, but it's definitely not the first thing I didn't account for. I suppose a way to address this would be to decrease the number of flames in these regions.

The other primary complaint about difficulty is AoE and getting constantly one-shot by it, forcing you into very specific team comps. Now, I haven't watched enough people play late-game content to be sure, but I have seen a few, and I think it also has to do with habits from other JRPGs and the idea of trash fights: I think a lot of us are conditioned to blast through random encounters by spamming attack or using all the damage. And so, a lot of people falling back on this probably feel like the most viable strategy is to get your damage so high that the enemies die before they can act.

I think this really comes down to a failure of the game's teaching of mechanics. Only one NPC really talks about how important it is to debuff, and even that is only if you're defeated by the nearby boss. In Crystal Project, statuses which affect damage given and damage taken make a huge difference. Applying Power Down or Magic Down to an enemy before it uses an AoE attack will absolutely be the difference between getting one-shot and being completely fine.

Here's a clip with a party fighting a monster in the jungle that uses one of these AoE abilities. This is on Normal difficulty with a party that is under-levelled and has no accessories nor passives equipped (this is usually how I test things to help make sure that lots of builds are viable).

https://i.imgur.com/x9MZcdw.mp4

They got absolutely destroyed by the Fire Breath. This is a party wipe. If this happened to me over and over again, I would be extremely frustrated. It's not a good experience.

In the following clip using the same party, I apply an instance of Magic Down followed by an AoE cure. Everyone is completely topped up. I even survived a follow-up crit from the enemy's strongest single-target attack without using Defender nor stripping its Power Up buff.

https://i.imgur.com/4rvuQNk.mp4

Since these kinds of buffs and debuffs are almost required (they're not necessarily, but builds which don't use them are definitely quite niche and tricky to set up), there are several sources for each that can be used to integrate them into your party. However, maybe there aren't enough, and this is what people mean when they say that they're feeling too restricted to be creative. Should there be more sources for these status effects?

I completely understand the frustration of constantly getting one-shot or wiped all the time. It's not fun to have that happen. But, I'm kind of conflicted because if I nerf the difficulty of the enemies to the point where these status effects don't need to be used, then the encounters would become much too easy when they are used. I could reduce the effect of these buffs and debuffs at the same time as nerfing the enemies, but then the status effects wouldn't be useful (which is something else I often notice happens in JRPGs that I was hoping to avoid).

I know that a lot of people strongly dislike the difficulty in this game. I would like to fix it, but I know that if I rush, things will be worse off. So I just want to be careful and make sure that I make the right changes. Everyone's different and there will be no difficulty that is suitable for everyone, but maybe I can get something that is at least one step closer.

[crgmyster]

It would be nice if some (but not all, I think it's nice that various nuke strats exist) bosses had nuke resistance. Slay the spire presents some interesting ideas to counter common nuke strategies. Two that would work for this game are 1) for every 8 actions by the player the boss counter attacks the person who made the last action or immediately gets an extra turn (counters warlock and quick spam) or 2) cap the amount of damage a player can do to the boss in a single turn. This is more elegant than just buffing the HP of the boss, which causes the boss to take longer for people who are playing traditionally.

Also, as a way to nerf Rogue while maintaining its high power level, you could make it so that trick slash and eye gouge both make your rogue automatically the highest threat. More specifically, when you activate these abilities you gain threat equal to the highest threat on your team. This would make it more challenging to continuously use those abilities. It even creates some utility for those abilities in niche scenarios.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

It would be nice if some (but not all, I think it's nice that various nuke strats exist) bosses had nuke resistance. Slay the spire presents some interesting ideas to counter common nuke strategies. Two that would work for this game are 1) for every 8 actions by the player the boss counter attacks the person who made the last action or immediately gets an extra turn (counters warlock and quick spam) or

I think the bosses, or at least late-game ones already do that to some degree (i.e. when they have taken enough damage they change their actions to more dangerous ones). That said, it would be interesting.

Originally posted by crgmyster:

2) cap the amount of damage a player can do to the boss in a single turn. This is more elegant than just buffing the HP of the boss, which causes the boss to take longer for people who are playing traditionally.

This I can't agree with though. That would make a lot of skills useless when you get enough power. For example, you won't want to use spotlight (or the fire summon) because the extra damage will exceed the cap. And a great point of this game is how even the most basic skills stay useful late game.

Also I think a common mistake when developing a game, or when asking the developers for stuff, lies on thinking a lot of focus must be put into balance. It's not necessarily the case. Unbalance creates optimal builds/teams/etc and memorable situations (in which a boss may be too OP that you'll remember it forever). The thing is making the game balanced enough to be fun, Making it more balanced than that could just subtract from it. And since it's not a multiplayer game, balance to avoid some classes being too strong is just unnecessary.

[crgmyster]

Originally posted by Leviathan:

Also I think a common mistake when developing a game, or when asking the developers for stuff, lies on thinking a lot of focus must be put into balance. It's not necessarily the case. Unbalance creates optimal builds/teams/etc and memorable situations (in which a boss may be too OP that you'll remember it forever). The thing is making the game balanced enough to be fun, Making it more balanced than that could just subtract from it. And since it's not a multiplayer game, balance to avoid some classes being too strong is just unnecessary.

I generally agree with everything you are saying in this paragraph. I think it's great that this game offers the players so many imbalanced strategies. I am just saying that some or even just one boss could use this damage cap mechanic. Slay the Spire's heart boss uses this mechanic (you can only do 25% of its health in a turn) and it creates an extremely interesting fight because the player must find a way to deal a lot of damage to the boss, while also playing somewhat defensively because at minimum you must survive 3 turns of the heart. The spotlight flare example you listed would still be useful against such a boss because it would increase the efficiency with which you hit the cap, allowing you to invest more turns into defensive options.

Currently, the game has a lot of accessibility options for people who want to make the game easier, but none for people who want to make the game harder. It would be nice for there to be some boss fights that test people who want to push the game's mechanics to their limits.

[Hurkyl]

I sort of like the mountain claiming metaphor for strategy.

The strategies available to you is a mountain range with lots mountains, except it's all obscured so that you don't know which trails lead up or how high each mountain is. So in your quest to climb higher, you have to do things like explore all of the different ways you can go on whatever mountain you're currently trying to climb... and sometimes you need to jump shop and try looking at a bunch of different mountains to find something that has some promise of being even taller.

But if the developers put a lot of effort into lopping off all of the tops of the mountains to avoid having some being taller than others... well, it makes for some pretty boring exploration since you can get to the top of your mountain so there's nothing left there to explore,, and there isn't much point in switching over to a different mountain since you won't get any higher.

Of course, you need lots of interesting mountains for that to work. If you really can see one is obviously going to be taller than everything else, rather than just being the tallest point nearby, there also isn't much point in exploring.

---

This also explains why people get a lot of different perspectives on what is 'obviously' good and bad but they all disagree with one another: they're climbing different areas of the mountain range, so they've found ways to travel to get to the highest point in their region, and to do much better would require a big shift to get to another point in the mountain range.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

I generally agree with everything you are saying in this paragraph. I think it's great that this game offers the players so many imbalanced strategies. I am just saying that some or even just one boss could use this damage cap mechanic.

Yeah, the existence of a boss with a damage cap would be interesting. That said, there is a completely antinuke boss already (The shadow summon boss).

Originally posted by crgmyster:

Currently, the game has a lot of accessibility options for people who want to make the game easier, but none for people who want to make the game harder. It would be nice for there to be some boss fights that test people who want to push the game's mechanics to their limits.

I mean there are some boss battles that are harder than the final bosses, and there is also hard mode. Adding even harder difficulties could be nice, anyways.

[River Running Games]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

Currently, the game has a lot of accessibility options for people who want to make the game easier, but none for people who want to make the game harder. It would be nice for there to be some boss fights that test people who want to push the game's mechanics to their limits.

I can promise that I do plan to add such options. I hope that they live up to the challenge! (Full disclosure: I might be releasing some stuff eventually that is too difficult for me to beat myself... haha) The latest patch was a bit of a detour because some of the work I was doing on challenges allowed me to quickly implement those two assist features.

[crgmyster]

Originally posted by River Running Games:

I can promise that I do plan to add such options. I hope that they live up to the challenge! (Full disclosure: I might be releasing some stuff eventually that is too difficult for me to beat myself... haha) The latest patch was a bit of a detour because some of the work I was doing on challenges allowed me to quickly implement those two assist features.

That sounds incredibly awesome. I think it's great that you go out of your way to make the game fun for every kind of player. To be honest, I think the game is already incredible and this would just be icing on an already delicious cake.

[Pilwiz]

Originally posted by River Running Games:

Originally posted by crgmyster:

Currently, the game has a lot of accessibility options for people who want to make the game easier, but none for people who want to make the game harder. It would be nice for there to be some boss fights that test people who want to push the game's mechanics to their limits.

I can promise that I do plan to add such options. I hope that they live up to the challenge! (Full disclosure: I might be releasing some stuff eventually that is too difficult for me to beat myself... haha) The latest patch was a bit of a detour because some of the work I was doing on challenges allowed me to quickly implement those two assist features.

Hi River Running Games! I'm a Hard mode player who's finished all of the content, and enjoyed the challenge and everything this game had to offer! Thank you so much for this game, I haven't had this much fun in a long time! Keep up the great work!

So I've been reading there's a new Assist option that increases the level cap beyond 60. I haven't enabled any of the Assist options before, but I'd kind of like to make use of the higher level cap for fun. However, I don't want to trivialize any future content that may be released as you mentioned above. Will this content be balanced around level 60? Essentially, I'm wondering if I should keep a separate save file at level 60 before I start messing around.

As far as the difficulty of this game goes, I personally found it to be just right on Hard mode, but I'm a player who really enjoys challenging turn-based games like SMT and such. The only thing I'd maybe recommend is buffing up some of the weaker classes, such as Beast Master and Samurai (the recent buffs helped, but I still think it needs something more than just damage). I did have to start grinding a little bit starting around Land's End, but the grind really didn't take that long compared to many other jRPGs. I think the recent changes to tanks were pretty much perfect, though I would like to see the Crit Resist stat on more armors. I found the Construct Mail to be pretty much the only viable option for my tank now since the Crit Resist is so strong.

Also, while I'm at it, can I recommend allowing the Treasure Finder key item to also track ores? All I'm missing is a gold ore and gold dust for 100% Archive completion, and I can't seem to find them.

Thanks!

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by Pilwiz:

Also, while I'm at it, can I recommend allowing the Treasure Finder key item to also track ores? All I'm missing is a gold ore and gold dust for 100% Archive completion, and I can't seem to find them.

You can buy them from the Lost&Found, right? Or is it just the dusts?

[River Running Games]

Originally posted by Pilwiz:

I don't want to trivialize any future content that may be released as you mentioned above.

It should be OK. Further challenge content will be accessible either by starting a new file or with newgame+, except for one thing: an arena for re-fighting bosses (which I admit I'm not yet totally sure I'll be doing, but I would like to add).

Although now that I think of it, if you do want to start newgame+ and go to level 60, I would have to think about this applies to a file that is already past 60. I'm sure some people may want to do newgame+ keeping level 99 if they already spent the time to grind their way there. Maybe just to be safe, I'd recommend keeping a save file at 60, but my goal is to do this properly so that that's not necessary.

[Eggplant]

Originally posted by Pilwiz:

I don't want to trivialize any future content that may be released as you mentioned above.

Originally posted by River Running Games:

It should be OK. Further challenge content will be accessible either by starting a new file or with newgame+, except for one thing: an arena for re-fighting bosses (which I admit I'm not yet totally sure I'll be doing, but I would like to add).

Although now that I think of it, if you do want to start newgame+ and go to level 60, I would have to think about this applies to a file that is already past 60. I'm sure some people may want to do newgame+ keeping level 99 if they already spent the time to grind their way there. Maybe just to be safe, I'd recommend keeping a save file at 60, but my goal is to do this properly so that that's not necessary.

Couldn't they just use the respec NPC to level themselves back down to 60 if they wanted to?

[Leviathan]

Yeah, a New Game+ in which you choose what to keep would be really nice.

[Pilwiz]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

You can buy them from the Lost&Found, right? Or is it just the dusts?

I'm pretty sure I checked the Lost&Found and didn't see either a dust or an ore, but I'll check again when I get home from work! Thanks.

Originally posted by River Running Games:

Originally posted by Pilwiz:

I don't want to trivialize any future content that may be released as you mentioned above.

It should be OK. Further challenge content will be accessible either by starting a new file or with newgame+, except for one thing: an arena for re-fighting bosses (which I admit I'm not yet totally sure I'll be doing, but I would like to add).

Although now that I think of it, if you do want to start newgame+ and go to level 60, I would have to think about this applies to a file that is already past 60. I'm sure some people may want to do newgame+ keeping level 99 if they already spent the time to grind their way there. Maybe just to be safe, I'd recommend keeping a save file at 60, but my goal is to do this properly so that that's not necessary.

Good to know! Can't hurt to keep a separate file just in case. Thanks for the response! I'm definitely looking forward to the challenges. EDIT: Just read in another thread that there's a randomizer mode planned, too. I am really excited for that as a fan of randomizers, that sounds incredibly fun!

Originally posted by Eggplant:

Couldn't they just use the respec NPC to level themselves back down to 60 if they wanted to?

That's a good idea. I'll admit I'd forgotten this was a thing, since I only ever used the respec NPC to change my stats around. Thank you!

[thegreatpie]

So I haven't read most of the discussion, and I've already weighed in a little elsewhere, but I'd like to add my thoughts, since this seems to be an ongoing conversation.

I have enjoyed the use of buffing/debuffing as tools for ending fights more quickly, in the earlier stages of games. Part of that is I like making my rogue's damage go brr with armor down and attack up, but part of it is just, I know if I defeat the enemy THIS turn with a debuff rather than THAT turn, I won't have to deal with the fallout of another [bad attack], which I could survive, but I got a whole dungeon to get through and I can't use up all my resources recovering from the fallout of taking more damage from this fight than I have to. It's the long term view - Sure, I can just hit the mob until it dies, but can I do that 20 times as I go through this place? No. It's resource management.

If it's a matter of I literally cannot fight this mob without buff/debuffs without feeling like I'm drowning, I immediately resent doing it like 20 times. I just want to get through the dungeon. And then every time I fail, not only do I have to trek back out to the danged place (and some of them are tricky to get to!) but then I have to fight all the ding dang mobs again, wondering, is my luck gonna turn sour again and make me do it all again?

Part of it for me also is that without certain setups, debuffs/buffs don't actually last all that long? I get it all set up, and then do my one great turn, and then the enemy is still alive, and I gotta... get it all set up again, but now my party is like, dying and stuff, and I need to be healing, and do not have the time or space to be setting up all the debuffs, which makes me die even more, and then oops time to trek back out there again... or find something else to do, and die there instead. It's not that I need them to be super long, it's just, if it's a matter of sticking on a debuff for a turn, which is what my team may have, it's usually gone before I can make use of it (for like armor down or whatever). It makes the debuffs feel like a bonus, not a strategy. Or a bit. "Okay, my rogue got their AP up, so I gotta make this next hit REALLY count - I'll have my warrior not worry about maximum output and do armor break instead." Which was a really common strategy for me for about half the game! But my rogue doesn't charge AP all the way up nearly so much anymore, because I feel so frantic trying to just go fast, no time for long term strategy or I will heckin die, so just stab as fast as you can. It's actually the difficulty itself that is making me try to go back to bonk tactics. Though part of my bonk tactics sometimes involve spotlight/magic res down + Flare or Thunder, so... I guess the debuffs are still in there to an extent. That might take out a third of the health of most things I'm fighting.

Which... makes me think, how many other players might criticize me for only doing a third damage with a combo like that? I have no idea, really, but I've never been great at making the numbers go. I tried toying around with the character stat optimization and felt happy with the results, but also unsure that I really could make the most optimal use of what I was doing. I'm okay at numbers, but they aren't my strong point. I am decent at strategy and coming up with nice combos, but I'm not a master. But I get excited at things like putting together Chemist MP juice + Dervish/Cleric to clear out their AP and allow them to continue to gain AP and therefore MP. Like, that's apparently not a master class strat, but it IS a strat and I felt happy putting it together. But it isn't gonna like, let me get where I wanna go (which is late end game stuff) and that feels... sad.

I'm playing on Normal, because in my mind, anything above that is for people who like/know how to tweak down to the last strength bonus, and can actually add the % perfectly rather than going, "Yeah 26 sounds like a lot, this is pretty goo- oh THIS one does 30, nice! That's better!" which is where I'm about at. You know - who HAVE to figure out the master strats and enjoy doing that rather than just going, "Idk I just really like the Nomads, I think they're a cool unique class, I'm going to figure out how to make them work." Erm, sorry, I think my train of thought got away from me a little here - ADHD - lemmie get back to Normal - in my mind, Normal means that if you take time and put some thought into it, with room to play around and experience things (is Reaper/Wizard a bad combo or an AWESOME combo? Let's find out!) you can beat the game and access at least MOST of the content. There may be some extra stuff you need to try even harder at, like FF Omega Bosses (never could beat those). But right now, it doesn't feel like the time and thought I'm putting into the game is even nearly enough and that's frustrating. I feel like I'm experiencing a Hardmode game rather than a Normal one. I feel frustrated that if I wanna try out a combo, I get curbstomped so hard, I didn't even really get to tell if I liked the combo and want to try to make it work or not, I just feel like it wasn't The Correct Choice. Which, y'know. Is a little contrary to the theme of the game ;) (please take this as an extremely gentle tease.)

And that's not to say I don't like the idea of the enemies actually getting harder as the levels go up! I was noticing that was the case, that... it actually seemed harder the stronger I got, and I was trying to think how I felt about it. I like that challenge, just... not when it's so much I start feeling shut out, like I can't progress anymore, like I can't try new things for fun anymore, because I'm not the kind of person who is really good at perfect optimization, in any game. If I feel like I can't win without looking up a guide from "better" players, I can grumpily manage that with a boss or a big puzzle, or even one lil sneaky mob, but... when it's a lot of mobs, when I feel like I need to look up, okay, what should my team look like... that takes all the fun of the job system out for me. I wanted to make my own combos, even if they aren't The Best, because to me, on Normal, Better But Not Best should be good enough. (I saw suggestions about nerfing Eye Gouge; man, that was the only way I got through the Gran fight, was carefully managing my Threat levels so my rogue could keep doing that and saving my magic users. The fact that it's like 12 AP meant I couldn't use it every round anyway, when I was low on AP. I felt so satisfied figuring out a way to spend more time doing heavy magic damage and less time recovering from Devour!)

So I guess my TL;DR is that... I could see on Hard, buff/debuffs being a quintessential part of gameplay required to survive, but I would like to see on Normal, buff/debuffs be an important part of comfortable/smooth gameplay, an important factor in long-term fighting (I cannot get through this dungeon if I have to revive 75% of my party each time therefore I cannot let them die therefore I cannot just bonk the enemy, I have to kill them faster/take less damage with buff/debuffs) and boss fights, but not so important that without master strategies, you'll fail. Master strategies are for Hard.

I know there's the suggestion of "why not play on Easy?" Easy feels to me like, "I want to experience the story without being challenged." I do not want to experience the story without being challenged. I would like to be challenged. I'd like to have to think carefully about my next move. I'd like to barely scrape by in hard fights. I enjoy this. But not so carefully I need to go back to the last save point and completely reconfigure my party each time, and spend hours figuring out why my solution(s), which seemed so reasonable, still don't work (and then when I look up what other people do, feel exasperated because that's a combo I *don't like* or because it feels like a level of micromanagement I hate).

Anyway I think I repeated myself a bit - again, partly an ADHD issue - so I'm sorry about that. I sometimes feel like it is going to be hard for me to be understood, so I like to really clarify. Also, I'll add - even though I have been feeling frustrated with the fight curve, like every new enemy I meet is going to kill me no matter what I do, I'm still playing because this is, despite that, an incredible game. I really love it, and even if it remains too frustrating for me, I'll probably still beat my head against it, because I've really enjoyed playing. I just... uh, would be really happy if my play experience at this point didn't feel like beating my head against anything, heh.

[z̷͕͒é̶̤͔ṟ̶͇̏o̶͈̿]

As you seemed to have predicted the issue. I believe it is exactly as you said. People are used to mindlessly slamming "trash fights" in other similar styled RPGs without giving a single thought to anything. This also manifests in the "I have to fight everything" mindset. I had a similar mindset for the first 20-30 hours I played wondering why I was getting absolutely ♥♥♥♥ on in Hard mode by trash fights. I assumed I was just crap and probably not able to play this well. Once I started thinking more critically about "Why am I even engaging everything," "What am I getting out of fighting everything," and "Why am I struggling so much?" I took a bigger look at the classes and my builds and noticed that most classes that are tanky have lots of debuffs to reduce enemy dmg and other classes have buffs to reduce what I take. I learned that some buffs make other attacks do way more dmg like spotlight, oil, flame scroll, etc. and Instead of depending on casting flare 4-5 times I could actually setup a flare to do the dmg of 2-4 flares. This saved me tons of MP and let me initiate huge dmg faster while having characters focus on debuff/buffing to stay alive better.

It really does seem the problem originates from just bad habits from other jRPG type games. Now after having played so much of this game I wish other jRPGs had a similar level of difficulty and strategies available. I still have not seen a single other player or streamer use a setup relatively close to mine which speaks volumes to the games variety and balance in my eyes.

The other thing I love I absolutely love is there is a lot of the game where I can finesse my way around issues. For instance, I was able to at the beginning of the game get the Reaper crystal by simply avoiding mobs intelligently and on the boss before the crystal I could jump in a way to barely touch his platform and jump again making him fly off into the lava. Letting me get Reaper without having to fight the boss. I then came back later to fight it. I felt incredibly accomplished doing this cause I got one of my favorite classes I didn't know I would love and did it by finessing my way through the dungeon when I was like lvl 10-20 ish. I have a few other parts like that, skipping the ninja boss, skipping the owlbear, etc. Using the fish race to get the actual salmon violin, getting Weaver early. Etc.

The best solution I can think of as a player who still regularly plays after a hundred hours of grinding. You may wanna do some tinkering with the starting zone. Make it a bit less backtracky for new players so they don't feel they are wasting time early before they get a taste for exploring. Then have the Nans explain a bit more about the vital importance of using your buffs/debuffs to survive your fights, to buff your dmg for big hits, etc. I think a bit of this form of education may go a long ways to tinkering with their mindset. Let them know that every fight could be a fight they lose if they don't have a strategy. Overall I think this game is a Gem and one of the few jRPG type games I absolutely love. I am looking forward to the Randomizer 10,000% and any other projects you decide to get moving.

I am at the point I kind of wish on Hard the normal fights were a bit harder. I did start really enjoying the regular run of the mill fights since it took some focus. If you want to do me a big favor could you add a setting to let all monsters in the game scale to your level when you flip it on? So if you for instance have the level cap removed option enemies could also scale up alongside you. I could flip it on at the start of a randomizer run and everywhere would be dangerous all the time. Please sir, I beg of you :)