Rogue Trader Difficulty Survey - Unfair still too easy?

[Z405]

In light of this survey, even though it was conducted weeks ago, I’m wondering how the difficulty currently is on Unfair. I last played just after the release of the latest DLC and still found it too easy. Tweaking the sliders to the max until just around when the Drukhari capture the sun is great, but after that, it becomes unbalanced. Yet setting it back to Unfair feels like cheating. I also don’t want to have to adjust the difficulty sliders for every battle, nor do I want to gimp myself by avoiding certain characters, builds, or weapons that I come across organically.

I’m hoping most people made this clear in the survey, which makes me wonder—will the next DLC coincide with a properly balanced Unfair difficulty, or should I just give up on that dream?

[Taifun_Vash]

I would think that the next dlc would at first make it even easier, maybe if they do a nerf after it, but it also could be that it would at first be harder. I don't believe that they will find a proper balance, there are too many broken builds for that. So hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

[JustSmile]

I have not had a fight last longer than one turn since mid-act 2. As soon as builds come online everything dies turn 1, including 3-4k HP bosses. Scaling is completely whack, Unfair is as easy to win on as Story past a certain character level.

[Levi G]

Easy to point of boring. 0 game balance

[LuluTheDuck]

The problem with the difficulty is, it is all over the place. There is no steady progressive rise in difficulty. You can play half the game and breeze through every fight and then suddenly you get an extremely difficult fights hit you in the head out of nowhere.

The difficulty is jumpy, rather than slow steady rise.

[Revan619]

The power creep from the dlc has made it fairly easy for a blade dancer executioner to solo every fight in the game. They might need to do some tuning for unfair maybe add some special abilities like honour mode in bg3.

[Roan Shiran]

Originally posted by Levi G:

Easy to point of boring. 0 game balance

This. DLC only made it worse. Beyond mid act 2 there is no challenge.

[TaKo]

game is too easy to 'game', numbers get ridiculously high very fast, the difficulty settings just make the game more annoying, difficulty settings need to be more about making enemies smarter and get new moves/tweaking encounters rather than just bloating enemy stats

this quickly goes from basic tactics game to press a couple buttons and everything explodes turn 1, my suggestions in the survery was to scale down on numbers all across the board and emphasize tactical play instead, i should not be able to easily be doing hundreds of dmg per melee hit by end-game with a set up that allows like 20 melee hits turn 1 + a dozen psyker actions(and consequentially, enemy stats and ours should both go WAYYYYY down)

and with that said, the lack of balance between archetypes and origins is insane, choosing psyker is basically choosing easy mode, nothing else compares(which makes some sense but as a videogame it makes all other origins feel VERY lackluster) while the difference of power between archetype talents is just silly, warrior talents are a joke for the most part and the archetype is hardly carried by its insanely busted heroic action(also why is shearing strike+rigorous training still bugged)

[Z405]

Originally posted by Taifun_Vash:

I would think that the next dlc would at first make it even easier, maybe if they do a nerf after it, but it also could be that it would at first be harder. I don't believe that they will find a proper balance, there are too many broken builds for that. So hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

Yeah, I have a feeling the next DLC might just shake things up even more in the wrong direction before they even consider balancing it. The problem is exactly what you said—too many broken builds. Unless they do a major overhaul of how difficulty scales across the whole game, it’s going to keep feeling uneven. I’ll keep my expectations low, but maybe we’ll get lucky.

[Z405]

Originally posted by JustSmile:

I have not had a fight last longer than one turn since mid-act 2. As soon as builds come online everything dies turn 1, including 3-4k HP bosses. Scaling is completely whack, Unfair is as easy to win on as Story past a certain character level.

That pretty much sums up the issue. Once your builds hit their stride, the challenge just evaporates. It’s not even about skill at that point—just numbers running out of control. Unfair should actually be unfair, not a cakewalk past mid-game. I really hope they address this in the next balance pass, but I’m not holding my breath.

[Z405]

Originally posted by Levi G:

Easy to point of boring. 0 game balance

Exactly. At some point, it stops being fun when nothing can put up a fight. I’d rather have a well-balanced challenge than just steamrolling everything without thinking. Hopefully, they realize how bad the scaling is and do something about it.

[Z405]

Originally posted by LuluTheDuck:

The problem with the difficulty is, it is all over the place. There is no steady progressive rise in difficulty. You can play half the game and breeze through every fight and then suddenly you get an extremely difficult fights hit you in the head out of nowhere.

The difficulty is jumpy, rather than slow steady rise.

This is exactly the issue. It’s not a smooth progression—it’s just random spikes. One moment, you’re wiping out enemies without a second thought, and the next, you’re blindsided by some ridiculous difficulty jump. It’s like they didn’t fine-tune the scaling at all, which just makes the whole experience feel messy.

[Z405]

Originally posted by Revan619:

The power creep from the dlc has made it fairly easy for a blade dancer executioner to solo every fight in the game. They might need to do some tuning for unfair maybe add some special abilities like honour mode in bg3.

Yeah, the DLC power creep has just made things even more lopsided. When a single character can solo Unfair, you know something’s off. Adding something like Honor Mode from BG3 could help, maybe giving enemies special mechanics or resistances to counter the most broken builds. Otherwise, it’s just going to keep feeling like Story Mode with extra steps.

[Z405]

Originally posted by TaKo:

game is too easy to 'game', numbers get ridiculously high very fast, the difficulty settings just make the game more annoying, difficulty settings need to be more about making enemies smarter and get new moves/tweaking encounters rather than just bloating enemy stats

this quickly goes from basic tactics game to press a couple buttons and everything explodes turn 1, my suggestions in the survery was to scale down on numbers all across the board and emphasize tactical play instead, i should not be able to easily be doing hundreds of dmg per melee hit by end-game with a set up that allows like 20 melee hits turn 1 + a dozen psyker actions(and consequentially, enemy stats and ours should both go WAYYYYY down)

and with that said, the lack of balance between archetypes and origins is insane, choosing psyker is basically choosing easy mode, nothing else compares(which makes some sense but as a videogame it makes all other origins feel VERY lackluster) while the difference of power between archetype talents is just silly, warrior talents are a joke for the most part and the archetype is hardly carried by its insanely busted heroic action(also why is shearing strike+rigorous training still bugged)

Nailed it. The game doesn’t really challenge you tactically because the numbers just spiral out of control way too fast. The difficulty settings only make fights more tedious rather than actually engaging. Instead of smarter enemies or better encounter design, they just bloat stats, which doesn’t fix the core problem.

I completely agree that numbers need to be toned down across the board—both for players and enemies—to make actual strategy matter. Right now, it’s just a race to see who can break the game faster. And yeah, psykers being the ultimate easy mode makes every other origin feel like a downgrade. They really need to overhaul archetype balance if they want all playstyles to be viable.

[Gorwe]

At this moment, I am almost completely certain that Owlcat CAN'T DESIGN a satisfying difficulty curve. It's alright, that thing is an art more than technicalities. Just give us a satisfying product.

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by LuluTheDuck:

The problem with the difficulty is, it is all over the place. There is no steady progressive rise in difficulty. You can play half the game and breeze through every fight and then suddenly you get an extremely difficult fights hit you in the head out of nowhere.

The difficulty is jumpy, rather than slow steady rise.

The issue is the skill system (and items too) that are so vast and specified that they allow for combinations that are extremely overpowered, not just a few, but a bunch. Its impossible to balance the combat encounters against that vast spectrum of possibilities.

Don't really get why Owlcat insist on such overcomplex skill systems, instead of making one that still allows for different builds and styles but make the options limited enough they can actually balance the game against it and have combat that is somewhat consistent with the chosen difficulty level.

Instead it can still be hard on lower difficulties with gimp builds and laughably easy on highest difficulty with good builds so everything dies in the first turn and most characters are not even needed to participate.

Its just not good design. An engaging system would be one where your choices in combat matter more than just science the ♥♥♥♥ out of the skill system and have a boring cheese party for like 2 thirds of the game.