any benefits, playing on "hard" difficulty...?

[Migromul]

...except for the satisfaction that you played it on hard?
What I have in mind is more exp mainly. (As I have no Idea for other things for this game...)
I would play higher difficulty. ff it would be rewarded ingame (not some stupid achievements, they don't interest me, at least not steam-ones as they don't give any ingame-reward.)
Do anyone remember the goldbox-games? At higher difficulty, you got more experience. So it had some reward.
And how is hard? Are the monstes just harder, or are there more of them?`or both? Since you can't lower the difficulty after you start the game, these questions do interest me. Did anyone compare the difficulties of the game?
(Sorry, if my grammar is 100% correct, I'm a Geman guy. So you also can answer in German.)

[Dr.Disaster]

Beside the achievement "Hard Boiled" and the satisfaction making it there is no additional benefit for playing "Hard" mode.

How is Hard?
The difficulty setting only effects monster speed, damage and aggressiveness.
They do not increase in numbers.

In case you did play LoG1:
LoG2 Easy is similar to LoG1 Normal
LoG2 Normal is similar to LoG1 Hard, maybe a bit more
LoG2 Hard is .. Ouch!

In addition you can select
- Old-School mode like in LoG1 which permanently disables the map.
- Ironman mode which reduces saving the game to crystal use alone.
- Single-Use Crystals which does what is says: one crystal for one use only.

[Cursed Life]

Is not that Hard at hard, you just have to avoid certain locations when youre low leveled.

[crashdown]

I play normal ironman and I kind of regret playing Ironman. But it make the game more edgy, I'll give them that. There is no shame playing normal, it's difficult enough in my opinion.

[Little Strawberry]

Originally posted by crashdown:

I play normal ironman and I kind of regret playing Ironman. But it make the game more edgy, I'll give them that. There is no shame playing normal, it's difficult enough in my opinion.

To be honest, Ironman should be the norm for this kind of game because in similiar games you could ♥♥♥♥ yourself over permanently in puzzles. Which is why hard saving points would prevent you from getting stuck completely, but I guess there are no puzzles like that in LoG2.

[Migromul]

I'm no masochist... so I won't play ironman. (And I HATE it, to loose... If one of my characters dies, I load my last save!)

And with my age, I want play the game not draw maps... I started to play Eye of the beholder not long ago. (rebuyed it on GOG) and to draw the map is way to much time-intensiv imho. So I printed the maps that you can get on several fanpages.

So I don't play in classic-mode. LoG 1 and 2 has enough riddles. (almost too much.)
You can't change the difficulty, that's the reason I asked, if it has some ingame-reward. But since that isn't the case, I won't play it on hard. Normal is ok. thanks for the answers.

[Cursed Life]

Originally posted by westy.fan:

If one of my characters dies, I load my last save!)

Thats makes no sense, is just plain stupid.

[Dr.Disaster]

Originally posted by westy.fan:

(And I HATE it, to loose... If one of my characters dies, I load my last save!)

You've only lost once all characters have died or got petrified. I understand that urge to reload but it can lead to frustration at times. In some areas and especialy traps it can be rather challenging to get all characters out alive so when you load each and every time one character dies it might become a looong game. Backtracking to a crystal or using a potion of resurrection might be better.

[Syrris]

The trouble is that characters don't gain XP while they're dead and the others don't gain the dead one's share, so the party as a whole ends up weaker in the long term.

As for better rewards on Hard: it's both counterintuitive and counterproductive. If anything, rewards should be LOWER on Hard so that it's actually... harder. Giving better XP/loot, aside from telling players that there's a "correct" way to play, also ends up making it not actually harder because the better stuff offsets (and maybe even overshoots) the supposed difficulty increase.

[Steelflame]

Originally posted by Syrris:

The trouble is that characters don't gain XP while they're dead and the others don't gain the dead one's share, so the party as a whole ends up weaker in the long term.

As for better rewards on Hard: it's both counterintuitive and counterproductive. If anything, rewards should be LOWER on Hard so that it's actually... harder. Giving better XP/loot, aside from telling players that there's a "correct" way to play, also ends up making it not actually harder because the better stuff offsets (and maybe even overshoots) the supposed difficulty increase.

Yes, the xp isn't shared while dead, that is true. But often enough, the xp lost is minimal. You might lose a tenth of a level long term, tops. Often enough even the dead party member will level with the others, or be 1 mob behind. And that single level will never be a game breaker. At absolute worst, you could go to an area with respawning mobs and kill those a few times, and eventually the soft level cap will even everyone out. What does it matter if Sprod Longbottoms is 1/50th a level behind Sir Duncehead? It doesn't, thats what. And an Alchemist, who tries to get both of the rare plants asap, can effectively make up any issues just by themselves by storing up the plants to have them ready by the boss fights at the end. Short of you spending half the game with a member dead, the scaling level system keeps them all pretty in check.

It's far better than the old LoG1's leveling system, where you got half xp if you didn't contribute to a mob kill, and 0 if you were dead.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Syrris:

As for better rewards on Hard: it's both counterintuitive and counterproductive. If anything, rewards should be LOWER on Hard so that it's actually... harder. Giving better XP/loot, aside from telling players that there's a "correct" way to play, also ends up making it not actually harder because the better stuff offsets (and maybe even overshoots) the supposed difficulty increase.

Can't be more agree and I feel it very obvious. Can't understand players requesting better rewards , and dev doing it look totally weird and illogical for me.

[Migromul]

Well. There ARE players, that have a masochistic side. THey demand "hard safe points". I tell you what: if you don't want to load any time: dont do it!
For me it's a principle, that no one in my (RPG)-game (it doesn't matter what game) dies. So I load and try again.
Why do peaple play NG+ (Dark souls for example?) Because of the more difficult gameplay with higher rewards and skills,
Why is there an extreme hard mode on D3 for example, but with much better chance of better loot?
Both are examples for harder difficulties with more rewards for that. Better rewards on higher difficulties don't necessarily make the game "easier".

[Rax Savvage]

hard is quite unrelenting and quick to annhilate you early on but once ya get some levels to you, it evens out and drops off quickly after level 11ish i'd guess with moderate - high end weapons.

do kinda hope LoG 3 has NG+ difficulty thats just straight up brutal

[Liro Raériyo]

Imagine if on hard, they decided that 20 of the secrets were randomly selected to have their loot removed.

This could mean catastrophe if say, you were planning on using bane, only to find out bane didnt spawn.

Now THAT would be a ballsy game to play, and just for the fun of it, the island master could leave a note in place going something along the lines of "You were expecting something of value? What makes you think something of value lies at the end of every road."