Love everything, but lack of balancing is killing it for me -.-

[Varyn [GER]]

For the first few hours, before I got any meaningful choices, the gameplay was fun and engaging. But the more choices I got, the clearer became the image that the game's balancing was created around people rolling dice for every gameplay decision.

After some hours, the only enemy left was the 9.999 dmg cap. It made most only-doing-1-hit-skills obsolete. I destroyed all bosses (those which clearly weren't designed with uncapped damage in mind) on expert without any struggle. No it wasn't with "internet-help". There's no need to find the absolut minmaxed build to trivialize the content. If you use 2 braincells the first synergy you stumble upon will be enough to breeze through expert.

Then, finally after act 2, I thought wow, now I can go finally play the game. But no, instead of needing 2 rounds to kill the bosses, the far from being perfect builds I quickly patched together now oneshot every boss. Great.

Now in the middle of act 3 I lost all will to "progress" - the (awesome) story is unveiled enough and the gameplay simply can't carry.

My 2 wishes for your hopefully coming second game in this genre:
1. Change parry+dodge to do damage reduction instead of negating all damage. This way you still have the engagement and mechanics around it involved but the focus shifts more towards the rpg-elements, which make it easier to...
2. Balance the game. Give 2 difficulty sliders: one for parry etc and one for enemy stats. When every 2nd build you stumble upon trivializes the highest difficulty, there's something clearly wrong.

[['w']]

Fire FIre FIRe FIRE!!!! CRIT CRIT !!!!CCCCRIIIIIT!!!!

[Grahor]

The game is built around timed qtes and memorising patterns. It is not meant to be played with numbers at all. It is not a turn-based gameplay.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Grahor:

The game is built around timed qtes and memorising patterns. It is not meant to be played with numbers at all. It is not a turn-based gameplay.

Sounds more like an admission that you have no idea how to plan ahead based on when your vs enemies turns are.

[Varyn [GER]]

Originally posted by Grahor:

The game is built around timed qtes and memorising patterns. It is not meant to be played with numbers at all. It is not a turn-based gameplay.

When I hit enemies, a number comes up. If this numbers add up to a sum big enough I win. My game-given ability to change these numbers pretty much proves that numbers are a big part of the game. The only relevant QTEs are the ones for the defensive - which just make numbers on only the survivability side less important, but still not irrelevant.

[Namdaets]

I suspect the game was balanced around players who skip most of the extra content and quests, at least before NG+.

I played the game on Expert and avoided most side content but fully cleared the main story levels, and I ended up beating Act III with my characters somewhere in the level 50-54 range, which felt like a sweet spot, at least in terms of not one-shotting tougher enemies and bosses (my characters also got mostly one-shot themselves if I failed a parry/dodge).

The most damage I ever dealt in a single attack was a Maelle counter that did like 100k damage. People are talking about dealing millions and millions of damage on the first strike? Maybe I just got lucky and never discovered a truly broken build (although Maelle's Virtuose stance is still a ♥♥♥♥♥♥' powerhouse).

[Ratsplat]

If people are so obsessed and dependent on 1 shotting everything in the game, why did they ever buy the game in the first place before knowing such a thing was possible...?

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Namdaets:

I suspect the game was balanced around players who skip most of the extra content and quests, at least before NG+.

Yes... that is what makes it optional. If a game like this requires you to complete all optional content to not be totally underpowered, then it was poorly balanced.

It does a decent enough job of keeping the balance in check for Act 1-2, even if you do complete optional content.
It only falls apart totally in Act 3 if you do side content before going straight to the final mission, which should be painfully obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the genre.

[Varyn [GER]]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

If people are so obsessed and dependent on 1 shotting everything in the game, why did they ever buy the game in the first place before knowing such a thing was possible...?

What do you mean by obsessed and dependent? It clearly is no fun when even slightly engaging in the game mechanics trivializes content to a degree no further improvement is needed, ever.
Or are you one of these iF yOu DoNt LiKe It DoNt usE iT! people who can't realize that abandoning the core gameplay loop of improving is still not creating more fun?.

[Ratsplat]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

If people are so obsessed and dependent on 1 shotting everything in the game, why did they ever buy the game in the first place before knowing such a thing was possible...?

I'm on your side, commenting on how so many are clinging to their bugged Stendhal when 1 shotting bosses is still just as achievable.

[jack]

try fighting simon and then see for yourself how broken some bosses of act 3 are :) Many rely on that broken move because A. not everyone has 6 hours per day to play games as well as spend time on memorizing the movesets of bosses with lightning speed techniques like simon or wasting time on grinding resources to fight them and B. some of us are already too old and our reflexes are not like u youngsters. I have already spent 2 months playing this game and having to spend 2,3 hours on every single difficult boss has been a drag. Spending another 8 hours for resources just to beat Simon is truly drudgery. Oh btw, I ve just recently discovered the move since last week and it has been a blessing for such pp with not that much time for gaming on hands like me.

I have already beaten the endless tower, sprong and the flying snake on the sky, but simon is another story. Completing all content seem too hard for me without that move, so I give up. Maybe someday when u kids reach the age when u have to pour half of your life into work will u understand why some pp love op builds.

[RocketLLama]

You're given the choice to make whatever build you want. Did you consider choosing not to make that one shot build? Just play what you want.

Why do people complain about Freedom?

[Varyn [GER]]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

If people are so obsessed and dependent on 1 shotting everything in the game, why did they ever buy the game in the first place before knowing such a thing was possible...?

I'm on your side, commenting on how so many are clinging to their bugged Stendhal when 1 shotting bosses is still just as achievable.

Then i read that wrong and apologize.
Ye Standhal is only the tip of the iceberg. The power escalates so crazy. When I finally chose a weapon to upgrade; when I found the Picto which doubles my turns; or 2-3 pictos which made me have max AP each round. All these upgrades sound so good, but even with half of them the difficulty is a joke. I found some pictos I haven't even unlocked although they'd be a big improvement, because what for? I lost all interest in engaging with lumina etc. And going for another build to discover, AGAIN, that it's no better (i.e. also op AF) lost its appeal.

[Varyn [GER]]

Originally posted by RocketLLama:

You're given the choice to make whatever build you want. Did you consider choosing not to make that one shot build? Just play what you want.

Why do people complain about Freedom?

The freedom to chose which I-Win-Button to press?
Do you know what difficulty setting are for? To give players the freedom to enjoy the game how they like it. I you wanna faceroll thru the game, there's a difficulty for that. If you want to engage in the game mechanics, find things which more or less work and improve on that foundation? There's often a difficulty setting for that. Not here. Here even the highest difficulty means that using ANY of the MANY possible builds you found a foundation for quickly end in trivializing the whole content and feel like I'm cheating.
This isn't an action game where you can challenge your skill by doing a handicapped run.
Sure you can say ok, that ONE skill clearly is broken op, so I wont use it. But here you find broken op stuff left and right. You do realize how contrarily it is to sell the player a gameplay loop where one is promted to improve and on the other hand force him to exactly NOT do that because it would feel like cheating?

[Varyn [GER]]

Originally posted by jack:

try fighting simon and then see for yourself how broken some bosses of act 3 are :) Many rely on that broken move because A. not everyone has 6 hours per day to play games as well as spend time on memorizing the movesets of bosses with lightning speed techniques like simon or wasting time on grinding resources to fight them and B. some of us are already too old and our reflexes are not like u youngsters. I have already spent 2 months playing this game and having to spend 2,3 hours on every single difficult boss has been a drag. Spending another 8 hours for resources just to beat Simon is truly drudgery. Oh btw, I ve just recently discovered the move since last week and it has been a blessing for such pp with not that much time for gaming on hands like me.

I have already beaten the endless tower, sprong and the flying snake on the sky, but simon is another story. Completing all content seem too hard for me without that move, so I give up. Maybe someday when u kids reach the age when u have to pour half of your life into work will u understand why some pp love op builds.

But... that's what difficulty setting are for. If you have no time or nerves for higher difficulties, you can play on easy and that's totally fine. My reflexes also suck balls these days - I barely ever parry, I only dodge because it has a 50% wider time window and the benefits of parry aren't big enough to counter the consequences of the immensly higher fail rate imho.

[Platapoop]

I actually agree pary should be damage reducton, like 75% dr. Dodge can be full evade like usual but mistime means enemy guarantee crit. This would actually make vitality and defense and those million damage reduction and healing pictos do something.

IM just spitballing, parry being just dr would mess up the shield mechanic amd whatnot, i didnt talk about whether it should still count as a "miss" for enemies. but i think giving true iframes reduces how much you can do with character builds. Prob if they ever decide to do a harder difficulty with major rebalancing