Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
The author of this topic has marked a post as the answer to their question.
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
8 
Report this post
So, you don't know most of the games I've given as examples. You've not commented on Greedfall, btw.
BG 1 features a semi-open world with free roaming where you run into tons of dangerous foes at level 1 already. Either if you rush through the world as to reach quest locations without doing easy side-quests. Or while exploring. The world is split into areas with no hint about when to enter them. You meet bears, dire wolves, vampire wolves, spiders, elite units, evil parties, basilisks, greater basilisks, wraith, ankheg, kobold commandos, spell casters, doom guards, battle horrors and some more I could look up.
Effectively, you need to scout ahead carefully and make wise decisions with regard to when to take up with such foes. Even more so, if trying to enter Durlag's Tower early or visiting Ulgoth's Beard. There is no hand-holding. Players, who rush to Nashkel as part of the main quest, will be under-levelled.
Then revisit the game, at least on Normal difficulty, not Easy or easier, since foes scale with difficulty mode. I've mentioned some details before. Even the Act 1 areas feature forest lurkers, forest trolls, a large group of boars (which cause many new players trouble, particularly those that want to "clear areas" in a linear way!), Xaurip champions, Shades, Phantoms - and it goes on like that in Act 2 and even within the city of Defiance Bay with ogre druids, drakes, guls and others.
Players need to play smart, focus on easy quests first. Especially since it's a game that gives tons of XP for quests while only few to none for kills.
Risen 1 is a bit of an exception, because it was the first one where the devs wanted to change some things in addition to the pirates theme. The game's island is tiny, and therefore the overall number of foes is small. Yet you may choose which faction to get in contact with thanks to free roaming. Even if you enter the bandits camp first, it is near a big swamp full of dangers. Like bog bodies, ghouls, rotworms, skeleton warriors. Player character must gain levels and equipment first by doing errand boy tasks and easy quests. Btw, Risen 1 is one of the games where a very few people bragg about what they can do with bare fists and naked, like dueling some bandit for half an hour.
It's still one of the most entertaining, huge open world CPRGs - if becoming a magician. Yet I doubt it matches your taste, because it doesn't serve anything on a silver plate.
I haven't played Greedfall either. The last RPG I played before this one was Dragon Age Inquisition, which was pretty, but had such bad combat and controls I eventually quit. Currently replaying Dark Souls 3, which Elex combat feels like a bad copy of.
Nah, it's all in how enemies are placed. You are guided by the narrative in certain directions. In BG1 it's leaving Candlekeep, going towards the inn, picking up companions, investigating the Cloakwood mines and so on. In BG2 you escape Irenicus' dungeon, explore Athkatla, then follow the story. Sure you could try to sequence break and go somewhere else, but that's not what the game wants you to do. You can't even reach certain areas from the beginning. Following the main quest and side quests in their proper order, you never feel overwhelmed by the odds. There are exceptions, like Kangaxx, but they're tucked out of the way. They're not on the main road out of town, or something. That's the difference, and that's good design. In Elex, there is no order or progression to quests. You can go anywhere from the start with no clear direction, and even the missions you pick up near your starting location (either Goliet or one of the other main towns) will put you against overleveled enemies you have almost no chance against 80% of the time, for the simple reason that those enemies represent 80% of the game's fauna.
Those are expansion areas clearly marked as high-level. People even warn you about Durlag's tower being deadly for the unprepared. Same for other dungeons like Watcher's Keep, whose final boss is even optional. Not the same thing at all. As for rushing to Nashkel, you can explore the surrounding areas first and you'll never run into enemies you simply can't defeat. I'm talking Elex-style, where they kill you in 2 hits while you do 2 damage per hit.
I finished the game on normal difficulty. I don't recall having particular trouble in one area, not that I couldn't solve with a bit of planning anyway. There's the Endless Paths, but that's divided into levels meant to progress in difficulty. That's a big difference from randomly putting high-level monsters all throughout the game world.
As for Risen 1, I think I joined the crusaders or whatever they're called, the guys with staffs and those twin-bladed swords. The progression felt natural in that I first trained with them and gradually got stronger. It's been 5 or so years since I played it but as I said, I don't remember having trouble or feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty. They should have stuck to that model.
Gothic 3... when people recommend you apply a community patch to make the game playable, you know something's up.
Thanks for confirming once more that you want major guidance aka handholding aka "go here, go there, do this, do that".
In BG1, player isn't told where those places are. There are no map markers. Exploration is required as to discover new areas at area borders. You mention "Cloakwood mines", but that area is not available early for story reasons. In case you mean Nashkel mines, it is a long way from Candlekeep to Nashkel, and players, who try to rush to Nashkel, encounter enemies directly on the roads and will be underlevelled within the mines. Which is why the surrounding areas give tons of opportunities to do side-quests. A simple ogre can one-hit kill any of your party members due to low HP and lack of equipment.
Your memory doesn't serve you correctly. Athkatla literally floods players with side-quests, many that lead out of the city. No hint on what will be awaiting you. Various quests involve dragons, beholders, liches, adamantine golems, fast troll leaders, vampires. No safe path you can follow blindly with level 8-10 starting characters. Newbies encounter all the pitfalls that lurk in the BG games. Then they restart or go somewhere else and return later. Some quit in rage when they seem to be stuck with a party that isn't ready to handle an enemy like TorGal. There is no "sequence", just an early main quest requirement to gather gold if and only if you want to focus on trying to rescue your childhood friend. Some of the story companions even explicitly recommend preparing well.
Seriously? There isn't one in BG2 either. ELEX gives you main missions, which are you supposed to look into early - for story reasons, too.
Who would be the one to give Jax a "clear direction"?
Hardly any missions in Goliet strictly require fighting. The remaining Alb forces at the broken converter are an intentional threat and remind player of the need to prepare well.
Tons of people have major problems defeating Tarnesh, Karlat, Silke, Neira, Greywolf and Mulahey early at Core difficulty or harder.
You are mistaken about PoE for various reasons. Its areas are inhabited by a mix of enemies one doesn't need to fight, since one can avoid them just as in ELEX and can return later or not. There are enough quest XP in the game as to be successful without fighting everything and everyone on sight. I strongly doubt that you clear PoE's ingame areas in a linear way. No, you focus on the low-hanging fruit and skip various fights.
v1.75.14 fully patched and including the CPT's major modification options is available in Steam's beta subscriptions channel of that game for convenience reasons. v1.6 is not the original unpatched release, though, but operating systems, drivers and other runtime environment dependencies have changed over the years, and the software development life cycle of games isn't endless.
Not major guidance, no. I actually dislike handholding. But those games are crafted in such a way that the player is guided in certain directions, yeah. Fallout New Vegas is another good example of this. You start the game in the village of Goodsprings. You know your target is Vegas, but you are warned that going north you'll be running into critters who are too tough for you (which is true). So you go south instead and get eased into the story and gameplay gradually. It's a brilliant bit of design, really.
It's been years since I last played BG1 so I don't remember all the details, but I do know that I never felt lost or not knowing where to go next, nor did I run into blatantly overpowered enemies while exploring. You're right about the ogre, by the way. There's one just outside the Friendly Arm Inn if I remember correctly, who's got a belt you need for a quest. And he can in fact kill your guys in a couple of hits. That's why you use a summon and/or take him down with ranged weapons. If it was Elex, that ogre would also be nearly invulnerable to damage, but he's not. He's still killable.
And yet you never feel like you don't know where to go next because everything is too hard. You investigate the circus tent and pick up Aerie, then you visit the slums, the sewers and so on. None of those places feature unkillable enemies or things you need to run away from. Some tough fights for certain, but it's possible to come back to those because they're in isolated places, not spread around everywhere, nor unavoidable except by running past them. I don't know what's so hard to understand about that.
BG2 in particular has a different kind of difficulty. There are many enemies that might seem unfairly overpowered at first, until you learn or figure out the trick to beating them, then they become just free xp. Beholders, vampires, mind flayers, umber hulks, etc., all fall into this category. Elex has none of that subtlety. Enemies just have grossly inflated damage and armor values until you reach a certain level and equipment threshold, then suddenly they become easy. It's a fairly simplistic system.
Actually, there is. In BG2 there's a well defined story and by unlocking areas and doing the sidequests you progress naturally. Elex tries to give you total freedom from the beginning, with poorly defined objectives like "survive" and "get your armor back." Okay, so let's say you follow the quest marker for your armor. Enjoy running into mutants who 2-shot you along the way. And even if you manage to find Ray and reach the Fort, all the missions there that send you outside are the same - enjoy getting 2 shotted by enemies you can barely damage. The other hubs as well.
It's called "narrative design", something PB has a lot to learn about. And it has nothing to do with explicit handholding, that's just a strawman argument.
True, there are some missions that don't require fighting. There sort of need to be, because otherwise the game would be borderline impossible. It doesn't change the fact that almost any mission that sends you outside Goliet or the other major towns will be a suicide attempt at first.
Those are bosses and major story events, and there are many ways to prepare for them to make them beatable. Irrelevant to this discussion. How do you prepare for a Fort quest that sends you to look for a guy in the middle of a dozen mutant bugs with skull icons? And how do you prepare when every mission that takes you outside the walls will have you run into enemies of similar strength?
As I said, I don't recall skipping fights or areas. Some were tougher than others, certainly, but nothing felt so hard that I needed to come back later, with the possible exception of boss fights. Even if I had discovered an area with very tough enemies and decided to visit it later (don't recall, but it's possible), there's a difference between that and having those enemies spread out everywhere in the world to the point of not knowing where to go anymore because it all felt impossible.
As I said, it's been many years since I played it. I'm just giving my impressions at the time. I was playing things like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas at the time, and couldn't help but make comparisons. Gothic 3 had some interesting ideas but the combat felt lackluster and the story/world design amateurish and vague. I also heard the ending was unfinished.
It actually wouldn't take much work to greatly improve Elex, to be honest. Just increase the player's health and damage a bit so you don't feel so weak and helpless in the beginning (already possible by switching to Easy difficulty, which I recommend) and tweak monster placement a bit so you don't have stupidly overpowered enemies right next to major towns where a low-level player might start his questing. This is not accounting for the various technical flaws of course, but at least balance would be much better.
You can go around things or over them if they are currently too tough for you.
Fairly easy with good weapon but challenging otherwise. I kill them in one combo on ultra. As fracs said dodge or simply run aside from the charge attack and then initiate your combo with heavy attack if one handed or normal attack if 2 handed. If you don't manage to kill them in a single combo you will have to roll a couple of times to dodge their attacks (timing is important) while recharging stamina to initiate another full combo.
As far as I remember they don't have ranged attack so you can jetpack cheese them as well if the above is too difficult for you.
As for the mutant bugs/spider rippers they are one of the easiest enemies in the game. You can literally kill a group of 20 of them without dying or even getting hit. All you have to do is heavy attack, roll back and run a little if they are closing within striking distance. You can also pull them one by one and just spam heavy attacks forever and roll back with the last of your energy.
I've already tried that, but if I move any distance away they start spitting at me and killing me in 3 hits (that's really a ubiquitous pattern in this game...). It's also very hard to pull them individually, they seem to enjoy attacking in groups. I'll give it another try and see how it goes.
No. You're stuck in the loop where you want ELEX to be a different game with different gameplay.
The primary target group of ELEX (and the Gothic series, too) don't like such handholding. Sometimes NPCs give hints like that and warn about a troll in the forest, for example, but it is by design that there isn't any difficulty rating of "areas", NPCs and enemies.
In ELEX, player may choose where to go first thanks to an open world with free roaming possibilities. Some players listen to Duras and dislike what he tells about the berserkers, so they say bye to him and join the clerics instead before they visit Goliet. It's also quite entertaining to get there as a cleric, possibly as a Suggestor. Others immediately like the outlaws for various reasons.
In BG1, depending on difficulty setting and party level. I assume you've never played on Insane or Legacy of Bhaal mode, since you prefer easy-going combat that makes it possible to start a fight and know that you will win.
Despite lots of walkthroughs being available about the Baldur's Gate series, BG1 newbies ask regularly about where to find some locations, since even the most simple "areas" are hidden on the world map and need to be searched for. It's the exploration factor in BG1 that makes it rewarding. Many newbies also complain about getting killed with just a few hits.
Ancient and more recent forum topics tell a different tale.
Same about Icewind Dale, although it is very linear, but it's combat heavy.
Various fights in BG2 are unavoidable, such as Irenicus and the clones in Asylum, and without any way to go elsewhere as to return later - other than reloading an earlier savegame and preparing the party differently.
In ELEX, there are only a very few examples of battles that cannot be avoided at all and which may lead to returning to an older savegame. All those creatures in the wilderness can easily be avoided and eliminated later (if player enjoys combat based hunting).
It requires tons of trial-and-error playing and learning about secrets, such as foes with innate abilities/protections, or golems you cannot hurt with a weapon that is not enchanted enough. Increased difficulty by obfuscation and insufficient documentation. Compared with that, ELEX's combat rules are clear and concise. Particularly, enemies with simple attack patterns, which can be observed and exploited.
No difference compared with kobold commandos shooting fire arrows and quick (or hasted) warriors hitting like trucks.
I don't see the difference. Side-quests in BG2 are filler content. Lots of stuff that is entirely unrelated to the story and is only present in the game as to give opportunities to gain experience, equipment and allies. As in ELEX, it is a role-playing choice how long to prepare and when to take the risk of looking into a main quest/mission that may advance the story.
Then don't run blindly, but move cautiously, and don't get killed. Perhaps learn Sixth Sense or use sunglasses to grant you that skill for free - you can find some with a bit of exploration while searching the world for stuff to turn into cash. You are not forced to choose a straight path to a map marker. It's not a map marker chasing game! You may search for a safer path. Why? Mission objective is to reach a destination and then to take a look. The destination may be a camp filled with a dozen heavily armed bandits. Or a harmless trader near an abandoned building. Who knows? Investigate, draw conclusions, act.
As above. Move cautiously, don't get killed.
Nah.
Why? And how do you define "suicide"?
A suicide mission would be one that strictly requires you to fight a battle you cannot win. In ELEX, if you spot dangerous foes near you while travelling through the world and not using teleporters yet, simply avoid them. It doesn't take much to get away.
Uh, what? Bosses? Tarnesh, Karlat and Neira are seemingly random attackers as to create artificial hurdles and give player something to chew on. Player only learns later about the reason for these attacks. Tarnesh gives tons of new players major troubles, since most newbies arrive at Friendly Arm Inn without companions and get picked off by him. The other four are optional encounters, because they depend on exploration, but if underlevelled, they pose a threat. And Mulahey, uh oh, is a first roadblock with regard to story progress. Infamous for slaying the party from newbie players, who don't do side-quests and enter Nashkel mines underlevelled. That said, only a very few players leave the mines through the front door, because using the lower exit seems so obvious. On the way out, an evil party attacks that is considered overpowered by many players.
With a role-playing decision. Jax scouts ahead, investigates the destination area, notices the highly dangerous creatures and decides that he is not up to such a task yet. Jax returns to the mission giver, and if it's not possible to talk about the mission some more, he will revisit this mission later.
As in "every mission, but not every mission"?
The primary target group of this game would not like such a change. It's all about the thrill. Eventually you can get rid of more and more beasts and bandits, whatever, and you will run into more dangerous foes when you enter Xacor, for example.
I doubt that a dumbed down ELEX would gain a higher rating (at Steam, for example) or that it would sell more often. A lot more would need to change in order to address a much wider target group of players, including casual gamers, and there is no safe recipe for a small developer studio.
We're talking about different things here. Map markers are not necessary if your journal does a good enough job of informing you where to go. And they are useless if the place they direct you to features enemies 10 levels above you.
Fine, take away map markers as long as you balance enemy placement. I didn't think so. Saying "I don't want every place I travel to have enemies that kill me in 2 hits" does not equal "I want handholding". There's a lot of compromise between the two extremes.
Different does not always mean good, just saying.
Sure, and some players consider a game fun if it takes them 2 hours and 20 reloads to kill a single regular enemy. It's up to the devs which group they cater to.
It really doesn't matter where the player goes first, the experience is the same. Blatantly overpowered enemies everywhere you go, with the name of the game being running away and doing talking quests for the first 20 hours.
I usually play on Normal difficulty or whatever its equivalent is, since I'm not a hardcore powergamer or a masochist. Most games even mention that Normal is the difficulty the game was designed and balanced for.
BG1 has a bit of a learning curve. It also came out in 1998 and features some design decisions and mechanics that have become obsolete since then. BG2 is much better in this regard. But even in BG1, once you learn how to approach encounters most players shouldn't have any problems. That's a far cry from "I don't know where to go because everything 2-shots me."
Also played Icewind Dale 1 and 2, they're tough in places but never feel unfair.
Which is still light-years better than "run past them, avoid them and come back 10 levels later." :P
The problem is that those creatures are everywhere, not just in certain areas. The player doesn't know what to do or where to go, because 80% of enemies feel overpowered, in both damage and armor.
As I said, they take knowledge (or reading a guide) in order to figure out how to defeat them, but it's doable. In Elex, there's no trick. They're just stupidly overpowered and you're supposed to avoid them until later in the game. The problem is, they're everywhere.
Kobold commandos? Fireball or other AoE spell and they're all gone. Hasted warriors, plenty of ways to deal with them. None of those require you to run away and come back later when you've gained 10 more levels.
Exactly, you get opportunities to gain experience. Things that are doable. Not quests that put you up against overleveled monsters. In Elex, there are no side quests for low-level characters except for talking, fetching things, and running away. Everything that involves fighting needs to be left for later. At least if they'd specified this...
There are no safe paths, the sunglasses are hard to find if you don't know about them, and sixth sense comes fairly late in the game. You'll be running into overpowered enemies no matter which way you go, that was my point. It's like playing a weakling who disintegrates if an enemy sneezes in his direction.
Running away, that's what the game should have been called.
And yet they're all doable once you understand how to fight them. The same cannot be said for Elex enemies. if Tarnesh had 1000 hitpoints and clones of him were scattered all throughout the beginning areas, you could make a comparison to Elex. Same for the others.
Except that Jax needs to improve his stats and equipment to take on the mission later. And he can't do that because he needs xp, and in order to gain xp he needs to finish missions... quite the conundrum.
You're just telling me to learn to enjoy the taste of the moldy oranges again. Sorry, but no.
I think certain changes would lead to a higher rating, and it would do the devs good to stop listening to a loud minority of vocal fanboys and focus on the gaming community at large instead, but in the end it's their choice.
You cannot foresee what will be required to complete a mission. It may be possible to resolve it without fighting, with sneaking, with talking. It may even be that as soon as you approach the target location, a cutscene will trigger. You need to take a look first and then draw conclusions. If the requirements are way above your skills (also "player skills"), return later. Mission giver NPCs don't know either whether Jax is capable enough. They don't care about that.
Why the heck don't you simply stay away from fearsome attackers? I still don't get it.
Hear, hear! Yet you suggest changes that would alter ELEX in ways that would alienate its primary target group of players.
You don't pay attention. The recently released "Gothic playable teaser" created by THQ Barcelona Studio has shown what can happen, if potential players are disappointed.
Huh? The devs don't require anyone to retry the same fight for 2 hours.
Not true and won't get more true the more often you repeat it. Level 1 Jax can handle lesser creatures. Within short time, Jax has recruited a few companions and has levelled up and can handle even more creatures and humans like Bigby. No need to restrict yourself to talking.
Not true. Pillars of Eternity, for example, is balanced in special ways that the entire game including the expansion can still be solo'ed at highest difficulty. Not because balancing makes all fights trivial, but because the game offers the tools to get the job done, and players can figure out what tools they will use and how.
We won't ever agree on that. Characters in BG1 starts with low health, it even takes no more than a single shot to kill a character. Or a single Hold Person spell to hold your most capable warrior. That is exactly what newbies complain about with regard to BG1.
"Unfair" is your choice of words. I never claimed the IWD games or ELEX to be "unfair".
What may be "better" is subject to personal taste.
Why would that be a problem?
You can go anywhere at level 1 already, and you gain XP for that, too.
Why do you fight "enemies" you don't need to fight?
As in "everywhere but not everywhere"? Magalan is so huge, surely you can find ways around enemies, if you refuse to run and if you don't use your jetpack either. There are also the teleporters. Outside combat, at any time from anywhere you can teleport to any teleporter location.
Ah, requirements. Level 5 wizard at least. Or possessing a wand already.
Tell that all those players that complain about TorGal. Kahrk, the level 12 ogre mage in BG1, isn't hasted, but protected when he attacks - many, many players have learned it the hard way how to metagame the BG series.
Not true. And who would send you on missions to kill critters and other lesser creatures and why? What would be the point? You can eliminate beasts whenever you like and whenver you're capable enough. Surely you can handle 25-45 XP beasts before level 10. Right?
Early fighting missions in ELEX involve clumsy rotboars very early when going with Duras to the ruins at the Small Camp where to search for cleric weapons, weakened rotboars within Goliet, mass rats at Wick's hut, duels and Bigby, raptor hunting with Geron, ...
If you insist on spending time in desolate places in the wilderness, Magalan is huge enough for Jax to get through unharmed. Yet it's safer on the broken highways. And you meet story NPCs there, too. That has been mentioned before, btw.
Jax starts very weak after his assassination and withdrawal of Elex. Do something about it!
That would make no sense, given how much you can fight in this game.
ELEX doesn't throw any capable enemy like Tarnesh at a level 1 Jax as part of an ambush. And yes, hardly any new player of BG1 doesn't flee as soon as facing a Tarnesh who casts mirror image. Tarnesh even manages to defeat guards, so with sheer luck players survive that ambush.
As before, give details about your active missions. There are so many missions Jax can complete in addition to gaining extra XP for hunting and consumption of Elex. Furthermore, I still doubt that you explore actively enough. You dislike or hate the game, and that has a huge impact on your motivation.
I don't care whether you enjoy ELEX due to a vastly different taste with regard to action CRPGs. Yet some of your fun reducing views are not based on taste but on misconceptions.
It's not as if all negative reviewers agree with eachother.
And it would be entirely unexpected for PB to ignore the 71% of satisfied players all of a sudden and try to satisfy the 29% unhappy guys instead. A much better plan would be needed to reach all of them - and an even wider audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLjuDgZuLkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W63K3kEEqw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_CYRUM7SY