Hardcore Mode in KCD2 : Suggestions and Improvements.

[xR']

Hi everyone,

With the upcoming arrival of Hardcore Mode in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I’d like to discuss possible improvements to make the experience more immersive and challenging.

I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m basing this on my current experience as well as feedback from other players. So far, I’ve felt the need to use several mods to adjust certain aspects of the game, especially XP progression and the reputation system.

Please, consider I don't have every idea's in mind. You are all here to make you'r suggestions OFC.

The following suggestions are from everyone. They are however intended to remain realistic and achievable by the developers, with the game we already have. They mainly propose improvements, more or less already available through mods and which mainly modify somes values in xml or lua files. The goal is to bring thoses values changes standalone in HC and why not in normal for some of them...

The suggestions on this post are not "the only way", but more a direction and a line to take. A reminder that everyone can debate about it, if you're not convinced at all by some changes, there's nothing I can do about it.

🔸 Progression is too fast
-XP gains are way too high. You quickly become an expert in combat or crafting (such as blacksmithing), which removes any real sense of progression. It would be more interesting to have to make choices about which skills to focus on.

🔸 Combat is too forgiving
-The combat system lacks punishment and is too lenient on the player.
-The counter window is too generous.
-Why is it possible to dodge or riposte when you have no stamina left?

🔸 The economy is too generous
-Money is too easy to obtain, making purchases and gear management feel meaningless.

🔸 Hunger mechanics are too forgiving
-Right now, you can go an entire in-game day without eating and suffer no real consequences.

🔸 Reputation is too easy to gain
-A few good deeds are enough to make a village love you, even after committing crimes.
-Selling items to merchants gives too much reputation.



Suggestions for Hardcore Mode

🔹 A drastically slower and more realistic progression
-Reduce combat skill XP by at least 50%. Reduce other skill XP (blacksmithing, survival, etc.) by 80% (my take here, a more friendly version would be 60%) .

🔹 A more demanding combat system
-Reduce the counter window to make ripostes harder to perform.
-NPC attacks are more frequent.
-Dodging and riposting should be impossible to perform when stamina is depleted.
-less stamina should determine the duration of ripost slow-motion. less > shorter. This way, slow-mo become a feature. (imo) <- NC integration ? ->
-Armor should be the same for henry & NPC. Errors have more impact.
-Reduce damage cause by Bane poison on arrows and weapons.

🔹 A harsher economy
-Merchants should pay significantly less for sold items.
-Repairing and maintaining equipment should maybe be more expensive.
-The prices of certain items sold by merchants should be increased.
-Money found in nature (chests, bags, etc.) should be reduced.
-Food such as honey and the found plants should be reduced.
-NPCs playing dice should have a limit on the amount of money they carry.

🔹 A stricter hunger system
-The player should be required to eat at least twice a day.
-Going more than six hours without food should result in performance penalties.

🔹 A more difficult and unforgiving reputation system
-Crimes and bad actions should have long-term consequences.
-Earning a village’s trust should take much longer.

🔹 Crime system
-Killing multiple characters in the same area within a short time is directly punishable by death.
-Sneaking is way too powerful, noise stats should be a lot more impactful.
-visibility/conspicousness needs improvement.
-The guards are more suspicious, especially when Henry is covered in blood after a murder.

🔹 Other
-(why not) Heavily damaged armor & weapons, in the red, are not repairable.
-Make Save Shnaps much much harder to create
-Players alowed to save with Savior Shnaps every "......." minutes.
-Twitch items rewards are not available in HC.
-Twitch items rewards are available after a specific mid-game quest.
-Reloading a save is disabled. The player must face their choices.
-Disable quest objectives / HUD.
-Provide the option to enable or disable map markers or the HUD at the begining.
-Max carry weight reduced.


🔹 Other suggestions for the game in general (NC/HC)
-please make in-game days slightly longer if possible (exemple : 12 noon > 10 AM).
-I'm not sure if it's possible to have all the perk, but if that's the case, the player must make choices in his journey (at least in hardcore).
-less stamina should determine the duration of ripost slow-motion.
-Let the player skip the scene before meet Bozjena or let us choose to start directly in front of the head of this good woman.
-natively add an XP modifier system in the menu.
-Horse/mutt not teleporting (like rdr2, & everyone was ok with that).

[Orthor]

+1. I agree with all of your points.

[Pelikan]

I wholeheartedly agree about all your points except perhaps the hunger. But I would welcome your suggestions even if it includes it. Thank you for your good post, hopefully the devs pay attention to this.

As it is, unfortunately, the game is far too easy past the first couple of hours, the challenge is gone way too quickly :/

To such an extent that I basically set house rules to wear no armor (just a bit of padding at best) and almost never loot corpses because the game is just way too easy compared to KCD1, though I only ever played hardcore mode in KCD1 with the negative perks on slow progression.

I mean Henry is a teenager and it should take a lot of efforts to transition from a begginger to apprentice then a real swordmaster, let alone become someone who can defeat multiple opponents at the same time, something that is almost impossible in real life against competent armoured opposition. I think that a certain midgame questline should perhaps have been lengthened considerably to achieve this objective of mastery.

In general, as you said making money is also way too easy by just selling gear for crazy prices ( and horses, weapons, fine clothes etc are way too cheap).

But yes, my main issue with KCD2 is the combat and progression not being rewarding at all sadly since you can just hack and slash ( no need to combo even ) and kill in 2-3 hits with a sword mid-game or even before, sometimes only 1-2 hits against guys with gambesons + steel armor + helmet late game, which is not right at all and makes axes and hammers basically pointless.

Like you said, they should tone down xp progression massively as well IMHO, at least perhaps starting from level 7-9 so that it becomes a rewarding achievement to max your abilities later on. I also think that they are too generous with perks points, because eventually Henry excels at everything which is a pity.

I think it would have been a lot more interesting if you actually had to choose between being a scholar silver tongue or a great archer with average melee skills, or being a master swordsman or specialized polearms user or shielded axeman/maceman etc.. The fact that you can become a God that is the master of everything hurts immersion and makes xp/perk allocation not really meaningful to me and damages the replayability ( to make different "Henry"s or "builds") .

Also another of my issue is that sneaking is way too powerful as it is honestly, they should increase AI detection range and abillities by a huge margin to make it more realistic/credible, because currently crouching is almost like hitting the god mode key... you can literally run circles around NPCs at night very close which hurts immersion. In general, the noise stats should be a lot more impactful and visibility/conspicousness actually matter, because currently, i barely see a difference personally.

I also think that if they can with DLCs, they really should add more weapons variety, because currently, there are maybe 5-6 different longswords ( and less worth using) when I expected to see a plethora of oakeshott designs with lots of different hilts, pommels and scabards.

Lastly, maybe it is just me but perhaps they should consider buffing the longbows damage a little as well, because as it is, i just do not see any reason to use them over crossbows, but I could be wrong on that, it is just my experience.

[Appuleuss]

Originally posted by xR':

Hi everyone,

With the upcoming arrival of Hardcore Mode in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I’d like to discuss possible improvements to make the experience more immersive and challenging.

I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m basing this on my current experience as well as feedback from other players. So far, I’ve felt the need to use several mods to adjust certain aspects of the game, especially XP progression and the reputation system.


🔹 Progression is too fast
-XP gains are way too high. You quickly become an expert in combat or crafting (such as blacksmithing), which removes any real sense of progression. It would be more interesting to have to make choices about which skills to focus on.

🔹 Combat is too forgiving
-The combat system lacks punishment and is too lenient on the player.
-The counter window is too generous.
-Why is it possible to dodge or riposte when you have no stamina left?

🔹 The economy is too generous
-Money is too easy to obtain, making purchases and gear management feel meaningless.

🔹 Hunger mechanics are too forgiving
-Right now, you can go an entire in-game day without eating and suffer no real consequences.

🔹 Reputation is too easy to gain
-A few good deeds are enough to make a village love you, even after committing crimes.
-Selling items to merchants gives too much reputation.



Suggestions for Hardcore Mode

✅ A drastically slower and more realistic progression
-Reduce combat skill XP by at least 50%. Reduce other skill XP (blacksmithing, survival, etc.) by at least 80%.

✅ A more demanding combat system
-Reduce the counter window to make ripostes harder to perform.
-Dodging and riposting should be impossible to perform when stamina is depleted.
-less stamina should determine the duration of ripost slow-motion. less > shorter. This way, slow-mo become a feature. (imo)

✅ A harsher economy
-Merchants should pay significantly less for sold items.
-Repairing and maintaining equipment should maybe be more expensive.
-The prices of certain items sold by merchants should be increased.
-Money found in nature (chests, bags, etc.) should be reduced.
-Food such as honey and the found plants should be reduced.

✅ A stricter hunger system
-The player should be required to eat at least twice a day.
-Going more than six hours without food should result in performance penalties.

✅ A more difficult and unforgiving reputation system
-Crimes and bad actions should have long-term consequences.
-Earning a village’s trust should take much longer.

✅ crime system
-Killing multiple characters in the same area within a short time is directly punishable by death.
-The gallows mean the end of the game — you have to start over. :D
-Sneaking is way too powerful, noise stats should be a lot more impactful.
-visibility/conspicousness needs improvement.



Other suggestions for the game in general

-please make in-game days slightly longer if possible.
-I'm not sure if it's possible to have all the perk, but if that's the case, the player must make choices in his journey.
-Let the player skip the scene before meet Bozjena or let us choose to start directly in front of the head of this good woman.

You can apply to be one of the 100 testers and give your suggestions directly

[xR']

Originally posted by Appuleuss:

Originally posted by xR':

You can apply to be one of the 100 testers and give your suggestions directly

I think the 100 players have been choosen already.

if 50% of them downloaded "XP x200", "easy smithing", "more carry weight", "reticule for bow", "easy combat", "jiggle physics adjustements" or maybe tomorrow "skip the entire game" mods :

I personnaly think we are doomed.

please can you delete the quote part of you're message ? thx

[tequilatibbs]

Apart from features of KD! hardcore like No HUD and No player map marker, I would like:

* Much slower time passing (so you cant notice the shadows move)

* Reduced player and NPC walking and running speed.

* Perfect block needing to match direction of attack so much harder for player and NPC.

* Dodging nerfed, no iframes.

* NPC and player base armour/ health/ and attack power matched.

* Buffs from perks massively reduced.

THINGS I WANT TO BE EASIER:

* Dogs easier to kill (Personally just find it tedious and annoying having to wait for their attack to parry)

* Mutt more faithful (dogs dont leave you).

* Map icons easier to read relative to map (smaller icons)

* Nighthawk cleanser so you dont go blind in the day

* Less blood (how does Henry smear blood all over himself when butchering)

* Can travel on horse when overweight

[Flavalicious]

I'd just be happy with the hardcore mode in this game getting you out of the intro tutorial section before permadeath kicking in. lol

I like the first game, but the hardcore mode in that version forcing you to do all of Henrys tedious chores before the attack starts is a hell of a way to waste my precious gaming time and I never could be bothered to go back and give it a real second shot. At the bare minimum, give us a checkbox option to start the game after the prologue in this one.

[Argador]

I also think hard core should exclude integration items (like the special edition, account, or twitch items) that appear for free in your chest.

[frankie-b]

don't delete normal compass in HC

[Snootch]

I found that even with all the negative perks that only the sleepwalking one became to be only slightly bothersome. The game was basically the same on Hardcore in the first one with the exception of getting your bearings with no map icons. I didn't really feel any spike in difficulty.

[frankie-b]

+ make Save Shnaps much much harder to create

[Snootch]

Originally posted by tequilatibbs:

* Dodging nerfed, no iframes.

There are no iframes when dodging, if someone is close enough to hit you, they will. I've been hit by dodging into a swing before. Even archers can still hit you if they are accurate enough.

[er.tz]

When will the hardcore mode be released? Will it be compatible with saves of already started games?

(i am using five mods from nexus wich replicate a hardcore mode called ; Tougher Economy, Slower Leveling, Reduced damage scaling, Reduced weapon damage and Shorter Perfect Block and Master Strike Timing )

[doomsquad]

do you like to get hit in the balls during sex, what is this

[xR']

Originally posted by er.tz:

When will the hardcore mode be released? Will it be compatible with saves of already started games?

(i am using five mods from nexus wich replicate a hardcore mode called ; Tougher Economy, Slower Leveling, Reduced damage scaling, Reduced weapon damage and Shorter Perfect Block and Master Strike Timing )

No. Only New game

[xR']

Originally posted by doomsquad:

do you like to get hit in the balls during sex, what is this

A... Always...

Prefer enjoying a quality gaming experience than just rush every aspect of a game in 5 hours

I suppose ?