Awesome game without existing balance

[papacracker]

Hey guys,

does anyone know/think that the game will get a balance overhaul with the new dlc? I am now close to finishing my first playtrough and even unfair feels like story mode. Act 1 had some challange but after that it was literally a cake walk. Act 4 is basicly just a question whom I gonna use to kill all enemies this time.

It's really a shame. I'm a huge pathfinder games fan and was quite shocked to see what they did with RT. I mean it would be okay if daring or even hard was easy, but unfair?

There are way too many items and way too many OP items. I can't even imagine how the game played a year ago. Must have been crazy.

[Greedogre]

personally i believe is because the class design is flawed at fundamental level, if you don't build your character in a specific way, your difficulty level will skyrocket, for example, depend on your build, you might find the hardest fight on your unfair difficulty might be in act 3 when you lose all your gears.

[papacracker]

Well the class design gets most of its flaws when you reach the 3rd archetype. There are some talents/abilities that are so fundamently good that everyone takes them. The 2nd archetype already gets so many talents that if you don't play a psyker there isn't much room to think about. In the end its more about what is earlier better than later as you will eventually get most talents which are suited for this build you're playing. This is a problem most games have, as I don't think anyone wants to create a PoE-depth like game for a single player story based game.

I actually don't think the classes are OP at all and most talents seem to be fine. Things that stacks seem to be OP but only so when you get into absurd amounts of AP and bonus rounds.

The game needs more limitation, atleast on higher difficulty. Something that BG3 did would be awesome. A extra difficulty with diffferent rules would make the game way more strategic and ejoyable for players like me, which is something Owlcat was known for as their Pathfinder games are something completly else than RT. Some rules like no more than 1 bonus round for each party member (including officer ulti), a stack maximum for everything (also versatility) and giving some enemies (exspecially bosses) more hp would be a good start.

I think there are just too many problems making the game is so easy that it gets laughable later on. I will definitly play another time just so for the DLCs. If the difficulty wont change however, I will have to play as a 4 man party or so.

[Johnny 5]

Like 50% of encounters end on kibellahs turn

[BingusDingus]

It's because the math behind everything is so over complicated that not even Owlcat themselves know how to balance it. Abilities, talents, items and effects just stack on each other to ludicrous degrees. You can intentionally build your character terribly and have the most miserable experience imaginable, or you can haphazardly build a character remotely well and the game becomes a cakewalk.

This feels more like a punishment than freedom of choice, for example I want to be able to build a good soldier arch-militant, but I also don't want to obliterate the entire enemy team before the first turn ends, which leads me to needing to personally handicap my characters or play style just to find some measure of enjoyment.

You'd think a game like this would be much easier to balance than a game like WOTR, but I feel like Wrath is more balanced half the time.

EDIT: Another large culprit for the balance issues are the extra turns, the turn economy singlehandedly messes up any level of balance this game could of had, especially since many archetypes build stacks of whatever when they attack or kill, more turns allow them to build everything faster which offers such a large boost to power that it's impossible to balance around it. If they make another game with this system, they should not include extra attack turns, of any kind.

[Revan619]

There is a balance patch coming after dlc 2. However they said the 1.4 patch won't be as heavy handed as previous balance changes.

They are considering a brutal mode where player action economy abuse will be toned down much like bg3 honour mode

[matson]

Just wondering: are Unfair skill checks a non-issue for you?
More to the original point, I was under the impression that if you don't overwhelm the enemy with damage and battlefield-control abilities, then they will quickly do so to you.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by Revan619:

There is a balance patch coming after dlc 2. However they said the 1.4 patch won't be as heavy handed as previous balance changes.

They are considering a brutal mode where player action economy abuse will be toned down much like bg3 honour mode

You be talking about BG3? dude Honour mode did nothing for the game I did not even get BG3 until after it was added to the game, and guess what? the game is a total joke on Honour never played BG3 on anything below it as well.

The easiest way to make the game harder is to just remove the heroic acts from the game they more or less break it. If they do remove them heroic acts then they will have a chance at balancing the game before that not a chance.

[papacracker]

Well I don't know how others play exactly, but by the start of act 4 I basically did all the time the same combo which made the game just a breeze.

My main char is an arch militant but you could do this with Argenta, Ulfar or however else I could even choose Jae, which can do like a couple thousand in a round btw. You just need 1 carry character 1 officer grand strategist and 1 biomancer. I used Cassia as she's also the ONLY char with navigator power which is nothing else then having an additional unique spell caster class (more CC debuff focus with dmg which is ultra amazing). Heinrix is my biomancer but also specced as an assassin (a vangurad buffer heinrix could be better for this but I wanted my inquisitor/interrogator assassine) which makes the combo goes:

Cassia acts first, buffs carry, makes him do extra turn. His extra turn dmg + her spells give enough momentum for officer ult (actually by act 4/5 cassia can simply activate a ring item/+ amulet and ulti way earlier/right away). Biomancer turns is next thanks to an act 4 ring which adds the grand strategist passive. He buffs carry more and gives him with biomancer last spell extra turn. Within this time I generate enough momentum to activate at least one if not both ultimates with my carry. Then Heinrix actuall turn is ready and he can dance trough the rest. Everything is dead by now or so badly wounded that I could just auto shoot with my other 3 members waiting and my main char still didn't made his actual turn...The end

[papacracker]

Originally posted by lordmilier:

Originally posted by Revan619:

There is a balance patch coming after dlc 2. However they said the 1.4 patch won't be as heavy handed as previous balance changes.

They are considering a brutal mode where player action economy abuse will be toned down much like bg3 honour mode

You be talking about BG3? dude Honour mode did nothing for the game I did not even get BG3 until after it was added to the game, and guess what? the game is a total joke on Honour never played BG3 on anything below it as well.

The easiest way to make the game harder is to just remove the heroic acts from the game they more or less break it. If they do remove them heroic acts then they will have a chance at balancing the game before that not a chance.

I can't agree more. BG3 was a cakewalk aswell, played it first time blind on honor mode. RT started on hard but restarted after act 1 this time on unfair. I even played a littel bit of act 4 on "extrem" all sliders to the max, which interestingly made the fighting go longer but not harder. I had to debuff more and CC, but thats already done by the other 3 members in my group already.

Originally posted by matson:

Just wondering: are Unfair skill checks a non-issue for you?
More to the original point, I was under the impression that if you don't overwhelm the enemy with damage and battlefield-control abilities, then they will quickly do so to you.

Well thats a reason why I made my Jae a vanguard and other things. My party is basicly immortal, like literally. I have somewhere around 200 temporary hp (on EVERY party member) since act 3 at the start of the combat only cuz of an amulet that Jae wears. + maybe all the other talents and skills I use but that thing alone makes easy 100+

So you can also make your party tanky. This is also super easy as everyone is somewhat already a tank, don't wanna mention my 200 hp 160% dodge unbuffed Cassia...

Skills checks were not an issue after I took Jae. She can carry so many skill by her own that for a long time she even did all the tech test not Pascal :P
But yeah I often switched rings for +skill at certain areas, but not always. The only thing that hurted my play trough so far (I'm quite literally before the end fight) in terms of skills checks was learning a ceratin xeno language in act 5...

[spammdc]

IMHO, if you are a seasoned player you are much more likely to have an easier time.
But if you are not then it can be a bit of a slog.

Note: The above depends on party makeup, build, how you play the game and if you have the first DLC.

[Croft]

I think this is an open-world problem, where you can level up characters in weak battles and side quests, and only then you fight in story battles that should be difficult, but because you've have too high level, the difficulty level decreases.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by Croft:

I think this is an open-world problem, where you can level up characters in weak battles and side quests, and only then you fight in story battles that should be difficult, but because you've have too high level, the difficulty level decreases.

You could stop leveling your characters at around lvl 30-32 and ALL the difficulty would be gone from the game even on unfair. You know at the start of act 3 when you lose all your gear? it did not matter there is this place were there are 3 drukahir after you wake up from the pit my RT killed them naked in 2 turns alone without taking any dmg on unfair I was lvl 34. Right now in act 4 my RT has 225% dodge out of combat however that is with gear and more lvls the game is beyond broken not to mention I got overcapped parry on it as well.

[Croft]

Originally posted by lordmilier:

Originally posted by Croft:

I think this is an open-world problem, where you can level up characters in weak battles and side quests, and only then you fight in story battles that should be difficult, but because you've have too high level, the difficulty level decreases.

You could stop leveling your characters at around lvl 30-32 and ALL the difficulty would be gone from the game even on unfair. You know at the start of act 3 when you lose all your gear? it did not matter there is this place were there are 3 drukahir after you wake up from the pit my RT killed them naked in 2 turns alone without taking any dmg on unfair I was lvl 34. Right now in act 4 my RT has 225% dodge out of combat however that is with gear and more lvls the game is beyond broken not to mention I got overcapped parry on it as well.

Well, relatively recently, the developers conducted a survey about difficult, maybe they will do something about it.

[Clangeddin.86]

Did they fix (or nerf, whatever) Cassia's buffs and debuffs stacking on top of themselves?
I remember that was rather stupid, the final boss had it's max HP debuffed by something like 60% and some stats nuked to 1 (yes, one) while my main character had all stats over 200+, In my playthrough that was one of the worst sources of unbalance.

[lordmilier]

Originally posted by Croft:

Originally posted by lordmilier:

You could stop leveling your characters at around lvl 30-32 and ALL the difficulty would be gone from the game even on unfair. You know at the start of act 3 when you lose all your gear? it did not matter there is this place were there are 3 drukahir after you wake up from the pit my RT killed them naked in 2 turns alone without taking any dmg on unfair I was lvl 34. Right now in act 4 my RT has 225% dodge out of combat however that is with gear and more lvls the game is beyond broken not to mention I got overcapped parry on it as well.

Well, relatively recently, the developers conducted a survey about difficult, maybe they will do something about it.

I hope they make combat better and harder(not ship as ship combat blows) on higher difficulties while nerfing skill checks hard they are simply not fun. You can not even build around them in the late game I failed tech checks with 170 tech use to open a damn chest.