Difficulty tuning

[Epleskront]

Hi there!

First of, I'd like to say that this game is one of my top 5 favourites when it comes to design style and gameplay. The graphical style is just completely brilliant, and is probably the best I've seen in any game so far.

So, what I wanted to discuss.

I just finished the game on veteran (stupid me played the first 2 levels on experienced, so no veteran achievement for me, I guess), and my experience is this: The game is generally more difficult in the beginning, and easy near the end. I did lose several quests in the outskirts, a few in the core systems, and generally stomped through open space with little resistance.

By the time one gets to open space missions, each character has access to so many useful skills that the game becomes very easy. One of the reasons is that the enemies' damage output is too low for this late in the game. The 2-turn charging turrets and big bots attacks are too easy to play around, and thus can be ignored, or even played to one's advantage. The act 2 turrets, in comparison, are quite dangerous, and the burning oil mechanic is more tricky to play around.

tl;dr: Make the game harder in act 3.

I'm hoping to see a sequel with the same brilliant art style, and with some new characters, skills, and obstacles. I'd like the guy in the lighthouse as a playable character, please!

[Iso Koala]

Yeah, definitely agree. I love the game, but at Act 3 it became a bit boring, since it was way too easy (exprienced). Enemies should do like 5-6 dmg instead of 2. By now you are used to the game, so they should punish you a lot more. I stopped using health packs in Act 3 as they werent needed anymore.

[Woudo]

Seems weird to request a higher difficulty when you're not playing on the hardest difficulty available.

Play on Elite from beginning to end, and then go for the 4-star ending afterwards.

Originally posted by Iso Koala:

I stopped using health packs in Act 3 as they werent needed anymore.

Medpacks aren't worth using to begin with. Time spent healing is time not spent moving forward.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

The thing about healing is that you can get Free Turn healing items. At which point you no longer have a real excuse for not using them. Sometimes the enemy gets lucky and if you don't wanna save scum (I've done it occasionally when I screw up), then once in a while you WILL find yourself needing some medical aide. You can only use Piper's Team Heal once, and Fen's requires a charge or two.

Some characters just take more damage, it happens. No shame in healing if you need it. For me, there's no point to playing on the higher difficulty outside of achievements, so I probably won't even play it legit for that. I'm enjoying the setting I'm on (middle?) but this isn't the sort of genre I normally dive into.

[Iso Koala]

Originally posted by Woudo:

Seems weird to request a higher difficulty when you're not playing on the hardest difficulty available.

Play on Elite from beginning to end, and then go for the 4-star ending afterwards.

Its not weird, since I (we) are complaining that the game gets much easier in later on. It should get harder, not easier.
When my weapons didnt one shot the enemies in beginning of Act 2, I was having much harder time.

I should have played Elite, but I am pretty certain that the same balance issue is in every difficulty setting.

Game was still fun though , acts 1 and 2 just were better than 3.

[Woudo]

You don't seem to understand. You are not playing on the real difficulty so you are not experiencing the intended difficulty of the game. Weapon/Gear statistics do not scale with difficulty level, but enemy health, damage and numeracy do. By playing on low difficulty settings, you are gimping the enemy which is what facilitates the "problem" you are having.

If you play on Elite, your damage output will remain the same as if you were playing on Casual; but the enemy damage, health and quantity will increase.

[Epleskront]

Woudo, we both understand. It's not a complaint that the game isn't hard enough. It is an opinion on how the game is easier in act 3 than in act 1 and 2, because the enemy scaling is insufficient to keep up with character skill progression. Of course, it might be the case that the scaling is completely different on Elite.

The level that provided the most trouble for me in the entire game, was the act 1 challenge mission where you have to move through a very long ship and pick up an optional amount of swag. Act 3 never provided much of a challenge at all.

I agree on healing items btw. Never found them useful. Armors sort of do the same thing without costing you a move.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Not gonna lie, I did feel that Act 3 was harder than two, but not as significantly harder as I'd expected given who we're fighting. However, I also realized I hadn't swapped out Piper's weapon in ages and that I had unintentionally handicapped myself through a good portion of Act 2. She had this great penetrating sharpshooter weapon but it didn't have a lot of punch so once I got her an Act 3 weapon the fights definitely got easier.

On the other hand.. I don't think I want the game any harder. I'm already too obsessive with redoing turns if I screw up a particularly tricky (but seemingly important) shot.

If I had to suggest a tweak, it'd be some way to reduce the outrageous amount of waving the characters do when you're trying to line up a shot only to have them move at the last second.

[Iso Koala]

Originally posted by Woudo:

You don't seem to understand. You are not playing on the real difficulty so you are not experiencing the intended difficulty of the game. Weapon/Gear statistics do not scale with difficulty level, but enemy health, damage and numeracy do. By playing on low difficulty settings, you are gimping the enemy which is what facilitates the "problem" you are having.

If you play on Elite, your damage output will remain the same as if you were playing on Casual; but the enemy damage, health and quantity will increase.

Yeah well, the thing is, that the difficulty names dont make it sound it like that. There is Casual, Regular, Experienced, Veteran and Elite. Regular sounds kind of NORMAL difficulty, and experienced HARD. I thought the rest 2 were aimed at people who have finished the game already, and nowhere it makes it sound that Elite is the "intended" difficulty setting to which the game is balanced.

I guess the Act 3 would have been harder with added enemy health. I could one shot most of the enemies, which made them trivial. At some point in Act2 I couldnt do that, and some rooms were much much harder than anything in Act 3 due that.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I have to say.. Calling the hardest setting "the intended difficulty" is really a load of nonsense. Is it intended to be a challenge? Perhaps, but it's hardly the way the devs meant for everyone to play the game. Even on Regular or Experienced the game can put your bolts in a sling.

It smacks of the same sort of logic behind "playing on Legendary for first run" of an FPS. It doesn't matter how good you may or may not be, it's hardly the difficulty the devs intended players to do their first time.

[thegrassyknoll]

The devs gave you 5 difficulty levels. This is rare in gaming, as most games people worry about the product being too easy or too hard. No one should be worried about too easy/too hard when the choice is already provided. If you want easy-pick easy. Want hard, play on hard.

Dont forget either: that the DLC provides gear that makes level 3 significantly easier. And arguably one of the more powerful characters in Fen. Although i never used Fen.

A big part of Steamworld mechanics is manual aiming. I suspect that by level 3 players are also way better at picking headshots and overall aim, thus increasing survivibility.

Also, Tough beginnings compared to endgame seems to be a common balance issue in rpg gaming. On this point, maybe future devs can try to adjust accordingly, because i too, find many games anticlimatic in the end. If you play hardest or second hardest difficulty in SteamWorld heist, you WILL find the endgame challenge you are looking for.

[Iso Koala]

Originally posted by thegrassyknoll:

The devs gave you 5 difficulty levels. This is rare in gaming, as most games people worry about the product being too easy or too hard. No one should be worried about too easy/too hard when the choice is already provided. If you want easy-pick easy. Want hard, play on hard.

Its been a while since I played, but I am pretty sure the game states the 3rd out of 5 as "hard" already. The way the difficulty levels are named and explained give the impression that 1 is easy, 2 is normal, 3 is hard, 4 is super hard, and 5 is almost impossible to complete. I always pick "hard" in games, so in this game I took 3 since I thought the rest are meant only for long time veterans and 5 is just a curiosity mode made for 0.1%.

[Epleskront]

Well, I played on 4 out of 5, and found some levels in act 1 to be tricky, some levels in act 2 to be tricky, and most levels in act 3 to be easy. I took out the final boss on the first attempt in my first playthrough, which was on difficulty 4 of 5, yet had to retry at least once on the second boss.

Reason was, as stated before, that the overall damage output of enemies were lower than in earlier acts compared to player characters. The only enemies in act 3 that does deal a ton of damage, are the ones that used an entire turn to aim, making them easy to avoid getting hit by.

The hardest level of all levels for me was the last challenge level in act 1. I tried this level on difficulty 5 of 5, and ended up reaching maximum alarm on my way back to the exit, meaning that 5 enemies spawn every turn. Other than that, level 5 has not been that hard because of the added XP gain.

[MoltenFrost2021]

So avoid getting the dlc until finishing the game? So far on veteran it is intense

[indio68]

i found this to much difficulkt...not knowing where u can shoot through floor and where not, taking so much dmg form shielded guys, (playing in expert) seems i can't clean the mine...without being rekt...so for me it's to much difficult..and btw i like steamdig world much more than this

[White Shadow]

Personally found it to be other way around. Or more precisely - Act 1 ok (aside from the boss which was significantly harder), Act 2 easy for the most part, Act 3 ok with some unusually hard difficulty spikes. (Experienced Difficulty). Not sure if there have been any updates since this post was made and maybe Act 3 was made harder, but I personally find that enormous rooms with many teleporting enemies as well as energy shields can make missions harder than the smaller corridors of earlier acts where enemies can't really get you so long as you're in cover.