First Boss is Unbalanced and Broken

[onix8198]

So the game is perfectly balanced for the entirety of chapter one on Daring. Then you get to the boss fight against Aurora at the starport and suddenly if you do not have specific abilities that you wouldn't know to take prior. You just cannot defeat this boss at all. My units do between 10 and 12 damage max to this guy. Even while debuffing him and buffing my guys with the abilities I have. Hitting him for two full rounds isn't even enough to put a dent in his health.
Then while surrounded and blocked by cover. He gets to run through the cover to another spot on the map to blow up a shuttle and none of your guys get attacks of opportunity. Whoever made this fight is dreadful at game design. I don't mind him running off to destroy shuttles when he is able to move. But allowing him to clip through your people and cover to do so is horrid. This is just bad game design pure and simple.

Edit: Changed from impossible to poorly made and coded because the word impossible needs to be taken literally in a world where people spell get good, "git gud".

[DragonSoundxSG]

I went through this battle on my recent 2nd playthrough, and it does suck. What gets me is the Sniper. I caved and turned it down to Normal bc the sniper was one-shotting my companions before they could get close. Normal felt more natural.

[May XD]

You can cheese sniper by quick saving and quickloading, and reposition one of your character slowly but surely to him. It's a bug - if you reposition your party, save and load, game acts like you didn't reposition them, so you can move them wherever.

Hardly an ideal solution, obv, but if you're really struggling, it might help.

[onix8198]

Originally posted by DragonSoundxSG:

I went through this battle on my recent 2nd playthrough, and it does suck. What gets me is the Sniper. I caved and turned it down to Normal bc the sniper was one-shotting my companions before they could get close. Normal felt more natural.

No game should force you to lower the difficulty in order to beat it. That is just very bad game design. The sniper in my game missed luckily but yeah he can one shot lvl 16 characters very easily. I am super annoyed that I do minimal damage to Aurora for two full turns. Then he runs through my characters and objects to destroy a shuttle as if the objects and characters do not exist in his programming.

[onix8198]

Originally posted by May XD:

You can cheese sniper by quick saving and quickloading, and reposition one of your character slowly but surely to him. It's a bug - if you reposition your party, save and load, game acts like you didn't reposition them, so you can move them wherever.

Hardly an ideal solution, obv, but if you're really struggling, it might help.

A game where you have to cheese a bug in order to win, also solidifies how poorly this game is made. I am very disappointed in Owlcat. Both Pathfinder games are good games and yes they are very challenging. But I never got to a boss that would run through cover and characters to go destroy the thing you need to protect while also being so heavily armored that your units do minimal damage.

[May XD]

Originally posted by onix8198:

A game where you have to cheese a bug in order to win, also solidifies how poorly this game is made. I am very disappointed in Owlcat. Both Pathfinder games are good games and yes they are very challenging. But I never got to a boss that would run through cover and characters to go destroy the thing you need to protect while also being so heavily armored that your units do minimal damage.

You know, funny thing - it didn't happen to me. I locked him between boxes with Abelard, and kept debuffing him, and he was helpless as a puppy. Techpriest and Idira wombocombo him into oblivion + Cassia for DPS, and he really isn't that bad. On Daring, and I level up my characters like a dumbass x)

[tempest.of.emptiness]

He has in fact been defeated on Daring (and higher). It is a very tough fight, though. Debuffing his armor and dodge is helpful, if not critical, but that alone won't kill him.

Some of his boss mechanics, which you mentioned, are just bs. The distance he can move in one round (when his attack on a shuttle is triggered) is astounding. I didn't realize that he could also clip through terrain and your characters when doing that; the combination is ridiculous.

I think the developers went over-the-top on the end-of-chapter boss battles because they want them to stand out and feel like unique challenges. Perhaps the results qualify as bad design, but they did succeed at creating memorable challenges. Once you get past that battle you might be a little bit okay with it, because you will see that it is possible, but it certainly isn't a fair fight.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by onix8198:

No game should force you to lower the difficulty in order to beat it. That is just very bad game design.

Sorry, but this is inaccurate. Any given person might not be able to beat any given encounter at any given difficulty level, but be able to beat it at a lower one. That's a simple fact of having different difficulty levels. It isn't an encounter that "forces" someone to lower the difficulty level, it is that person's skill level.

The truth is that no one is forced to lower the difficulty level; the alternative is to keep replaying the encounter on the same difficulty level, learning from mistakes and trying different strategies, until the player learns to overcome the challenge.

I don't mean that as an insult to anyone who has trouble beating an encounter. Rather, I mean that being able to lower the difficulty is a crutch that people are tempted to use and then feel the need to excuse by blaming the game instead of their own unwillingness to improve.

[DragonSoundxSG]

Yeah it's frustrating how overturned boss battles are. Sure, I can replay them a number of times to git gud, or I could lower the difficulty so the fights feel more naturally challenging vs Owlcat simply entering much high numbers into the enemy stats. There is a ship battle that I put down to Story due to how ludicrous the odds are.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by onix8198:

A game where you have to cheese a bug in order to win, also solidifies how poorly this game is made.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know this encounter can be beaten without abusing the bug that was mentioned, because I've beaten it on Daring, twice (with different parties), without even knowing about that bug.

Originally posted by onix8198:

Both Pathfinder games are good games and yes they are very challenging. But I never got to a boss that would run through cover and characters to go destroy the thing you need to protect while also being so heavily armored that your units do minimal damage.

Wrath absolutely has boss encounters that are arguably worse (more difficult) than the fight with Aurora. They are different games, so no, those exact same mechanics are not present in those fights, but there are bosses that will crush a party without even needing to take a step.

[eech1]

Lol, i kill him many times on daring, nothing difficult. Try harder.

[DragonSoundxSG]

Essentially you can git gud and keep trying, it's def possible. But if it's bringing you immense grief, there's no shame in lowering the difficulty.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by DragonSoundxSG:

Yeah it's frustrating how overturned boss battles are. Sure, I can replay them a number of times to git gud, or I could lower the difficulty so the fights feel more naturally challenging vs Owlcat simply entering much high numbers into the enemy stats. There is a ship battle that I put down to Story due to how ludicrous the odds are.

I don't have a problem with someone turning down the difficulty to get past an encounter that they aren't enjoying at a higher difficulty. My point is that when a player does this they haven't been "forced" to lower the difficulty. There was an alternative and they chose not to pursue it. It's your game and the point is to have fun. If that means spending some or all of the time on a lower difficulty level, then go for it... but don't blame the game for "making" you do that.

[onix8198]

Originally posted by May XD:

Originally posted by onix8198:

A game where you have to cheese a bug in order to win, also solidifies how poorly this game is made. I am very disappointed in Owlcat. Both Pathfinder games are good games and yes they are very challenging. But I never got to a boss that would run through cover and characters to go destroy the thing you need to protect while also being so heavily armored that your units do minimal damage.

You know, funny thing - it didn't happen to me. I locked him between boxes with Abelard, and kept debuffing him, and he was helpless as a puppy. Techpriest and Idira wombocombo him into oblivion + Cassia for DPS, and he really isn't that bad. On Daring, and I level up my characters like a dumbass x)

I promise you, I just did the fight. Had him blocked by boxes and surrounded by all of my units except for the Battle Sister. He ran through the boxes and my units with no problem.

[onix8198]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Originally posted by onix8198:

No game should force you to lower the difficulty in order to beat it. That is just very bad game design.

Sorry, but this is inaccurate. Any given person might not be able to beat any given encounter at any given difficulty level, but be able to beat it at a lower one. That's a simple fact of having different difficulty levels. It isn't an encounter that "forces" someone to lower the difficulty level, it is that person's skill level.

The truth is that no one is forced to lower the difficulty level; the alternative is to keep replaying the encounter on the same difficulty level, learning from mistakes and trying different strategies, until the player learns to overcome the challenge.

I don't mean that as an insult to anyone who has trouble beating an encounter. Rather, I mean that being able to lower the difficulty is a crutch that people are tempted to use and then feel the need to excuse by blaming the game instead of their own unwillingness to improve.

I am not making mistakes in my strategy or combat. Clipping through characters and terrain. Doing 10-12 damage max is not something I can fix. This is not a git gud scenario. Either I lower the difficulty or I die. No option.

[onix8198]

Originally posted by eech1:

Lol, i kill him many times on daring, nothing difficult. Try harder.

Do you take the same exact abilities every time?