This game sucks without Mods

[schmonz]

Really, the balancing is quite unforgiving, and only mods make it playable. You are literally never getting to a level in the starting zones which prepare you for whats to come without mods which either boost your skills or which give you better skills or starter gold.

Larian, learn to balance your game mechanics correctly. I dont really get what's your problem in here. Why are mods or even walkthrough guides needed at some points to make this a compelling experience to start with?

At the end you bring up players to lie to themself wanting hard games while the trick is to use mods.

[kuaikukia]

Originally posted by schmonz:

Originally posted by Mist-Odyessy:

It's clear you don't like the game, but you aren't changing minds, here.

Oh i love the game. Thats the reason i want it to become better. And to cater to its players.

There are tons of other games out there which people find more fun than this. You don't need to feel bad just because this game doesn't cater to spesific audience. Also regarding to difficulty, I think it's funny when people said playing cheats or mods because the game is bad or broken or hard or whatever, while it is actually an alternative way for people to have fun and enjoyable experience on the game.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Mist-Odyessy:

Oh. That was hard to tell, with how much you hammer on the existance of something the devs don't even have anything to do with.

Actually it is the devs fault if most of their customers and gamers are not able to even finish the easiest difficulty. And if mods make the game playable.

[Hobocop]

Good thing you came to that conclusion based on faulty data with too many unknowns to ignore, or I might've been concerned.

[BlueShadow]

Originally posted by schmonz:

I mean.. one of the most popular mods is the cheat commander.. that tells a lot.

No, the game is not well balanced, for example you need to become a pickpocketer to have a chance to farm gold and loot, wich is quite scary in a rpg if you want to play a shiny knight, for example.

The game wants you to become criminal.. heck, even slaughtering the complete fort gives you nothing but advantages as every npc either drops gold or loot.

Larian seems to want you to become an as shole.

Dude! I just finished Act 1 and I think the game is TOO generous with gold and loot. I'm in act 2 and I have 10k gold ffs and greens and blues on all my chars, 2 of them have purple items. I never murdered and never pickpocketed.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

It's almost as if you missed the point about me bringing up a cheat utility a game, but I'm not surprised considering the leaps of logic on display here.

Well, seems at least a tenth of the players of this game need a cheat mod to play the game.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Skyrim is also a six year old game with a notoriously poorly designed UI for mouse/keyboard use and mediocre sound design even for its time.

You want to tell me Skyrims music is designed badly? Go and tell Jeremy Soule, who won a lots of awards for his performance in Skyrim. No, actually those mods are about just giving more diversity. If you listen carefully to the sounds in DOS2, you will discover that the sound diversity also could be made better.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Of course one of the main things people are going to want to improve upon it are the graphics to make use of their hardware and the UI to make the experience less horrible.

Obviously not in DOS2, in DOS2 the most successfull mods are the cheat commander, starter gold and the taunt mod. While i would want to ask the question why taunt needs shields down. It doesnt matter, from a RP POV, if someone has a physical shielt and is being called "@!$/(" by some melee brute.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

That's why Tidy Skillbars and similar mods were extremely popular for D:OS2 before they patched that functionality into the base game.

Do you want to suggest to add the cheat commander baseline? I mean.. what about just balancing it correctly at easy mode to start with?

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Explorer Mode is already in the game.

Yes, but horribly balanced. It is supposed to be the story mode, but still is obviously way too difficult if you check the completion rate.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

That's the game's easy mode, and being easy mode doesn't mean you don't have to engage with the game's mechanics or not make semi-intelligent decisions in combat situations, it just makes the punishment for silly mistakes significantly less punishing.

And it is also poorly designed in balance aspects, if you check encounters like Malady, where Malady is literally being killed in two moves just because she has a lower health pool compared to character power, making it even more difficult than on normal difficulty.

Face it. The easiest difficulty should be for those who dont want to steal every NPCs gold, dont want to kill anyone but the main characters. It should be for those who want to see the story without the need to rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat is for normal and in special for the challenging difficulties.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by schmonz:

Well, seems at least a tenth of the players of this game need a cheat mod to play the game.

90% of players not using it at all is a pretty good number, wouldn't you say?

Originally posted by schmonz:

You want to tell me Skyrims music is designed badly? Go and tell Jeremy Soule, who won a lots of awards for his performance in Skyrim. No, actually those mods are about just giving more diversity. If you listen carefully to the sounds in DOS2, you will discover that the sound diversity also could be made better.

There's a difference between a game's musical score and it's sound design, and the sounds in D:OS2 do their jobs far better than vanilla Skyrim's do. Plus, again, six year old game.

Originally posted by schmonz:

Obviously not in DOS2, in DOS2 the most successfull mods are the cheat commander, starter gold and the taunt mod. While i would want to ask the question why taunt needs shields down. It doesnt matter, from a RP POV, if someone has a physical shielt and is being called "@!$/(" by some melee brute.

That's because hotbar mods were pretty much removed entirely since they patched the functionality into the base game and would cause problems when installed in the current version of the game.

Originally posted by schmonz:

Do you want to suggest to add the cheat commander baseline? I mean.. what about just balancing it correctly at easy mode to start with?

It's balanced fairly well already with a few outliers, assuming you actually take the time to learn the game's systems. Not even talking about powergaming or minmaxing, just basic comprehension.

Originally posted by schmonz:

Yes, but horribly balanced. It is supposed to be the story mode, but still is obviously way too difficult if you check the completion rate.

I'm sure you have all the statistics for the people who completed the game on the GoG version as well as those who completed the game while using hotbar mods so their achievements were disabled. Oh wait.

Originally posted by schmonz:

And it is also poorly designed in balance aspects, if you check encounters like Malady, where Malady is literally being killed in two moves just because she has a lower health pool compared to character power, making it even more difficult than on normal difficulty.

She dies in two turns of being wailed on uninterrupted on every difficulty since enemy damage is also scaled accordingly. Perhaps people should actually take a look at all the skills they have available at that point in the game including an incredibly useful one they practically throw at you and exercise those braincells.

Originally posted by schmonz:

Face it. The easiest difficulty should be for those who dont want to steal every NPCs gold, dont want to kill anyone but the main characters. It should be for those who want to see the story without the need to rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat is for normal and in special for the challenging difficulties.

Considering it's already completely unecessary to use Thievery to steal everyone's gold on Tactician difficulty when you can use the half dozen other ways to make money, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job of it as is. Thievery is just the easiest and most obvious.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

90% of players not using it at all is a pretty good number, wouldn't you say?

No. As it is less than 10% who managed to complete the game at all difficulties.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

There's a difference between a game's musical score and it's sound design, and the sounds in D:OS2 do their jobs far better than vanilla Skyrim's do. Plus, again, six year old game.

What you dont seem to get is that the mods we talked about just added more sounds to skyrim and didnt replace them mostly. This could be something for DOS2 as well.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

It's balanced fairly well already with a few outliers, assuming you actually take the time to learn the game's systems.

If it was balanced fairly, the cheat commander would not be in the top 10, and at least 10% of the players would have completed it on easy.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

I'm sure you have all the statistics for the people who completed the game on the GoG version as well as those who completed the game while using hotbar mods. Oh wait.

I am sure you understand that the total number of steam players and the completion rate of these players in percentage is relevant for statistics, even considering the fact that most of the game licenses got sold on steam. It is about representative numbers, and they are actually representative.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

She dies in two turns of being wailed on uninterrupted on every difficulty since enemy damage is also scaled accordingly. Perhaps people should actually take a look at all the skills they have available at that point in the game including an incredibly useful one they practically throw at you and exercise those braincells.

On story mode, it should not be about skills, and it should not be about challenges. It should be about the story without the need to read guides and rinse and repeat. Reread my former statement.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Considering it's already completely unecessary to use Thievery to steal everyone's gold on Tactician difficulty when you can use the half dozen other ways to make money, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job of it as is. Thievery is just the easiest and most obvious.

No, they arent. And my arguments are reasonable statistics. Your argument is your wish everyone should have to "l2p", literally, which is not meant to be part of a story mode. You still have normal, tactician and honor mode.

Oh, and a pro-tip: Do not try rinse and repeat on argumentation. It isnt going to work. Your arguments dont get better because you just repeat them over and over.

[Hobocop]

Percentages are all well and good, but without hard numbers and all the unknowns floating around like what was already explained but you like to ignore, there's too many holes in what's currently available to draw any kind of concrete conclusions about difficulties and completion rate of the game based on that.

I'd be very surprised if someone got to the end of Act 1 on any difficulty without thinking about their party composition and how their abilities worked at some point. There's easy mode and then there's pandering.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

I'm sorry, but I'd be very surprised if someone got to the end of Act 1 on any difficulty without thinking about their party composition and how their abilities worked at some point. There's easy mode and then there's pandering.

Which will be the reason that less than half of the players completed malady on easy.

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Percentages are all well and good, but without hard numbers and all the unknowns floating around like what was already explained but you like to ignore, there's too many holes in what's currently available to draw any kind of concrete conclusions about difficulties and completion rate of the game based on that.

Well, statistic percentages are at least better arguments than, lets say, "l2p noob git gud". Or dont you agree?

[Hobocop]

No, because no hard numbers. Simple as. The only thing we know is that over one million copies have been sold by now, but no way of knowing the exact number or how many were on GoG or on Steam.

[schmonz]

http://steamspy.com/app/435150

And sorry, but your argument is bulls hit. Sure the percentages are telling, as they are representative. How about reading everything about representative statistics first.

[Hobocop]

Okay, now give me the exact percentage of all the people who use mods that aren't Cheat Commander because those people aren't going to be represented in achievement percentages either.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Okay, now give me the exact percentage of all the people who use mods that aren't Cheat Commander because those people aren't going to be represented in achievement percentages either.

You are very well able to get those numbers yourself. Check nexusmods and the workshop. If you need to get an argument going, get your numbers as well.

My argument still stands. A cheat mod is in the top 5 of mods. And more than 90% of the players, based on steams very own statistics, didnt complete the easiest difficulty. No matter how many last straws you try to get your "l2p"-agenda going.

[Levihime]

I play on tactic mode, no thief on team, all good with money. TS - crying kid. No money to buy ressurection scroll? i craft it. No money to buy new equip? I'll farm it from mobs.

[Valkurm Emperor]

I got through the game twice without mods. Not necessary at all.