Difficulty is MASSIVELY overtuned.

[Alexfrog]

I really like a lot of things about the game. The setting, dialogue, role play elements, etc seem amazing.

However, I am completely unable to even play the game because I cannot win a single combat, with the exception of like 1 extremely easy one against a single opponent. I have literally spent hours just reloading over and over again trying to get excellent RNG in some fight so I can make any progress, but this is NOT how I want to play the game. It

I am not a casual player and I am used to hard games. I've played tons of difficult permadeath roguelikes. This game feels like you are playing Nethack but with no trash mobs early on to get any exp/skills/gear on.

I saw in the reviews some people complaining about difficulty. I took that as a good thing. Usually when the only bad reviews I see are people complaining about difficulty, I buy a game, because there are people who will die one time and then want to refund. :D
But this time they are correct.


The current difficulty should be maintained as a hard mode, for experienced players who want to go in with an optimized build, who already know where everything is and want to test themself. But there desperately needs to be some way for people playing this for the first time to actually be able to get into the game and accomplish anything.


Additionally, the game could use some more tutorials/explanations, and also some page to show you what all the controls are. Before I read on here about holding Tab highlighting interactables, I was struggling to figure out where I could move, find doors, etc. Also I didnt understand the stealth mechanic. I literally took one step and got attacked by the frogs, who basically 1 shot me. :D

But I think that is secondary to the difficulty.

TL:DR: Instead of playing the game all I am doing is loading over and over for RNG in combat, and it is breaking the experience.

[Vince]

Can you post your character screen and explain what exactly is the problem? Can't hit your targets? Doing low damage? Taking too much damage? Which fights are you struggling with?

[Nox]

The game has some implicit dependencies that are not explained, and some required build components that can make the game unplayable. I'm expecting that will work itself out as the design progresses.

[Drakken]

OP, i had the same issue, solved by finding me a better character.
Today my main character is a non combat character so i have a lot of non combat options but if i need or want to fight i can deal some nice damages and i can deal with most fights.

2 screenshots, one with my stats near the end of the first chapter, and then evans inventory, my tank. (for a reason the spoiler warning is not visible, so watchout.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2451109924

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2451109769

Btw, for me faythe is a killer with a simple pistol.

[Nox]

Here's an example of the problem with some of the design of the game -

Level 2 armory. you end up against 5 opponents. 3 of them skilled shooters, and 2 melee. Their positioning allows you to stealth kill one melee.

There are a limited set of builds that will ever win this encounter without burning through a great many consumables. You can avoid combat, but doing so has a measurable impact on progression. Avoiding combat doesn't reward you 1/10th of what fighting would.

Melee characters can -never- win this encounter because winning requires using grenade consumables which can't be used on danger close melee characters.

The game has few encounters and most of them are overtuned and designed by people who have an intricate knowledge of the game and are playing what I suspect are a narrow set of builds - diplomatic leaders, and shooters.

[skaudus]

You can kill three of the five guards with a stealth-focused character. Or just sneak past them, or lockpick the secondary door and sneak more easily. You can lob the grenades from further apart, so it affects them disproportionately. I think poison is affected by having a rebreather, so you can actually poison them while standing in the middle. Also, if you're a melee character, you can just run away, lob the grenade, disappear behind a corner and wait for them to come to you. You also have a disruptor, and angry juice stims which end up giving you a lot of bonking power.

As far as I know you can simply talk your way out of the encounter, including using combat reputation as opposed to speech checks.

Having to use everything you had at your disposal isn't really metagaming. There are plenty of consumables, so you never really run the risk of running out.

[William Shakesman]

A tutorial should be forthcoming but I can say you've played a lot of hard games but I don't think you've played many WRPGs with a combat system that cares so intently about your build as there just aren't many that are as stringent and willing to ruthlessly murder lesser builds. If you get your stats right and copy a build from here and remember to use the big wad of cash you start the game with to get a gadget or two and then plinko about the environment bouncing off fights until you find the easiest ones and iterate up through those, the game becomes a lot more manageable.

That said if you play it like Fallout, or, hell, like Nethack, you're going to get skunked as this game just really demands decently focused builds more than the majority of WRPGs on the market. (Don't get me wrong. Nethack will ♥♥♥♥ you other ways far harder than this game.)

[Mechalibur]

Melee characters can absolutely win fights like that. Someone posted a solo blunt character in the character screenshot thread that made it through the toughest fights.

[skaudus]

ITS games are not meant to be solved by murder-hobo-ing your way through with every character. Murder-hoboing on a build not specifically designed for it is meant to be something special, available to those who want to metagame.

For instance, in AoD, a lot of my hybrids would actually skip the fights in the first act, since they were too squishy. I still got rewarded for them, just not by brute-forcing.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by Nox:

There are a limited set of builds that will ever win this encounter without burning through a great many consumables. You can avoid combat, but doing so has a measurable impact on progression. Avoiding combat doesn't reward you 1/10th of what fighting would.

5 corpses is a rich bounty but so far most of what you'd spend that on is just more grenades. So far I haven't seen anything in the shops worth saving huge piles of cash for. That said, in the devs' previous game, there was explicitly many fights you would have to be an idiot to pick and a lot of routes that were just hard locked to you if you did not have a build optimized to pursue them. An excellent player could win those fights but I am fairly certain it is a design goal of the game to provide you conversation or stealth ways around these sorts of fights rather than treating every enemy like a loot pinata.

[skaudus]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

An excellent player could win those fights but I am fairly certain it is a design goal of the game to provide you conversation or stealth ways around these sorts of fights rather than treating every enemy like a loot pinata.

+1

[KreatureCreature]

I can actually understand this guys point. I enjoy hard games from time to time. And I love this style of game. I have however chewed through maybe half a dozen different characters before FINALLY being able to manage to get even beyond the Pit. And the only way I've managed to do that is by going diplomatic, which, personally speaking, is disappointing. I prefer intelligent combat builds, but... jeez... I basically spend this entire game save scumming. There's little to no tutorial or clear direction/information half the time. I've almost walked away from it at this point, because I've got a hundred other games I want to play, and putting too much time into going over the same missions and things repeatedly just to MAYBE get it right this time is too much.

I do feel like you shouldn't really consider trying to go for combat at all until you've gone through and completed the game at least once as a diplomat as a kind of "training wheels" run. The game seems to require it. Honestly, it's a bit exhausting to play. I probably spend half my time playing going through the discussions looking for answers to questions that should be obvious, but I'm given no indication or help in-game to find them.

[skaudus]

That's totally true, a tutorial + in-depth mechanics explanations would be very useful. Right now the difficulty comes from unfamiliarity with the mechanics. You can either become familiar by playing the game a lot, or by having resources explaining it to you in-game.

Going at it blind can definitely be frustrating, and it's something that a lot of other players (me included) have to keep in mind. Sometimes I have to step back and say "Yeah maybe I think this fight is easy because I have 500 hours in previous ITS games who had a similar system, and someone new couldn't possibly have known what to do."

[Robineus]

Should just make frogs less of a pain in the A$$, let them miss now and then, don't start them out with 2 billion initiative, don't have every hit blind, poison and cripple people wearing body armour. It's a real surprise they haven't overrun the entire ship.

[Nox]

I don't really think the game is difficult per se, it's just very specific about what builds will work.

I'm aware that certain specific builds will overcome this encounter. I've solved this encounter several times with different characters. You need 4 lockpick to circumvent the door and killing the melee guy next to it takes zero steath ability. Once you do all of the other characters die and you can loot them which doesn't actually follow the onscreen narrative.

Otherwise a decent shooter team can chokepoint them on the door and it's a moderately difficult fight.

You can't discuss these encounters from the perspective of "Once I got all implants and levelled up to 8 this encounter was trivial. Yes, that's true but it doesn't prove anything other than what people are saying about the difficulty being nonlinear.

Originally posted by Robineus:

Should just make frogs less of a pain in the A$$, let them miss now and then, don't start them out with 2 billion initiative, don't have every hit blind, poison and cripple people wearing body armour. It's a real surprise they haven't overrun the entire ship.

Yes, this is one of the design problems. the frogs have superhuman initiative so unless you can escape the entire first attack without being hit, you lose because getting hit can result in a knockdown which is an almost death on the first turn even for a heavily armored character.

[skaudus]

Originally posted by Robineus:

Should just make frogs less of a pain in the A$$, let them miss now and then, don't start them out with 2 billion initiative, don't have every hit blind, poison and cripple people wearing body armour. It's a real surprise they haven't overrun the entire ship.

Frogs attack your legs. You'll want some very heavy duty boots and a duster with melee DR. Respirators mitigate much of the poison damage. Disruptors are very good against them since you can activate them during deployment and they deal damage based on how many hits they score, making it easy to finish them off.

Or just sneak past them, they don't really provide any loot. The corpse in the Armory gives you no unique loot, and the fights with the psi frogs are meant to be difficult (even there, they have 10 initiative and are extremely squishy, meaning that you always have a chance to finish them off before the fight proper).