What difficulty are you playing on and how do you fare? (Poll)

[J_C]

So, some people are boasting about the game being easy even on Path of the Damned. And you know what, you can't feed me with that BS. I might believe that there might be some super hamsters who are metagaming the shit out of the system, but I don't believe it that you have to play PotD to have a challange.

Lets put an end to it. What difficulty are you playing on and how do you manage the game on that. Is it just right or it is easy?

 

[Kirkpatrick]

Hard, and majority of fights were easy. There were some "tough" fights in the Raedric's Keep, and just recently in the Lighthouse, but I blame mostly the toughness of those on my lack of proper preparedness.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Hard, and yeah so far it's been pretty easy. The bounty fights have been somewhat challenging and pretty fun. I think I was overlevelled for Endless Paths, didn't have any issues until I got to like level 12 where there's a fight with several teleporting banshees at once. With the exception of the bounty fights and a few others, the difficult fights in this game all come from enemies that can teleport past your front line. It's disappointing, because it would be nice if there could be more variety of challenge, but most of the time it seems like there isn't really much the AI can do to defeat you if you have a couple capable front line guys to engage most of the enemy force while the rest of your party pelts them with ranged weapons and spells.

 

[Athelas]

I didn't want to play on PoTD because of stat bloat so I went with hard, but so far it has not been very hard at all.

I can't imagine what a party of six min-maxed rogues/rangers armed with blunderbusses would do. They'd shoot from stealth and likely annihilate every enemy instantly without taking any damage.

 

[Rostere]

Yeah, well, it's really only if you play on PotD and think it's too easy you can say there's something wrong with the game.

Obviously, if you've ran through all the IE games on Insane or harder with mods until it became a breeze, you might be too grognardy too play on Hard.

 

[Makabb]

Normal, had problem with bear and forest lurkers.

 

[mutonizer]

Path of the Damned with self imposed rules to make things a bit more interesting for me, and some In Character playthrough as a Ranger tank with a bear

Some areas were really hard, especially early fights involving shadows (well shades more than shadows but you know what I mean). Got 5 game over so far and I'm about ready to move out from Dyrford. Out of the 5, I think 2 or 3 were just "there's nothing I can do" kind of fights due to level/equipment and whatnot (like group of bandit one shotting everyone, lighthouse just completely destroying me at level 4 or 5, etc). One story boss fight, I just fucked up tactic wise and instead of trying to get to better ground, I stood my ground and got swarmed into oblivion. Last couple fights were shadows under first village where sometimes you're just fucked.

Other than that, it's ok. You don't "breeze" through any fights but it's good fun if you like to really pause, think, play a second, pause, think, etc.

I've actually been recording all of it, both for me to remember about it (wish I had a recording of my first ever playthrough of BG and BG2...) and for others to see a relaxed playthrough of PotD without insane min/max meta-gaming and abuse of systems. If you want to check some areas you already know and what they look like in PotD and don't mind the accent, slow pace and shitty microphone, have a look: Pillars of Eternity (Path of the Damned, RP)

Edit:
Poll has no choice for PotD between "not difficult" and "sweating blood" so...

 

[Mazisky]

PoT is the only way to go for a challenge.

I'm playing hard, act 3, i had only difficult on raedric fight. I'm not even a hardcore player, i'm a semi-casual one.

Hard difficulty needs buffs

 

[Ninjerk]

Normal, I just passed Act 2 and I mostly just no-stealth right-click the fights now.

 

[Ivan]

Hard. Game is getting easier. Save for the fight against

Spoiler

the silent dragon

and the fucking lighthouse it's been smooth sailing.

 

[Bubbles]

Obviously, if you've ran through all the IE games on Insane or harder with mods until it became a breeze, you might be too grognardy too play on Hard.

You don't need to play an IE game on the hardest difficulty, fuck with the rules or add hp bloat to have a harder experience than PoE on PotD. Even just the SCS mod for BG2 (which in the core package simply improves enemy AI to make the best use of complex abilities) makes that game much, much harder than anything in PoE.

 

[Rostere]

Obviously, if you've ran through all the IE games on Insane or harder with mods until it became a breeze, you might be too grognardy too play on Hard.

You don't need to play an IE game on the hardest difficulty, fuck with the rules or add hp bloat to have a harder experience than PoE on PotD. Even just the SCS mod for BG2 (which in the core package simply improves enemy AI to make the best use of complex abilities) makes that game much, much harder than anything in PoE.

What can I say, I disagree, I'd say IE games vanilla on Insane is just a bit more easy than PoE on Hard.

Not sure about SCS though, my last replays were made without SCS. Can't remember thinking it made the game insanely harder, but I also don't remember which difficulty I played on when last using SCS.

How would you rate the IE games in order of difficulty?

 

[Bubbles]

I can't fairly rate most of them, since I can't stand the IWD games and usually play both BG1 and BG2 in one go with a larger combination of difficulty boosting mods (and lately, rebalancing mods) than just SCS. BG2 is generally harder though (obviously PST doesn't factor into this at all).

PoE's AI targeting system and lack of instadeath abilities and semi-hard/chubby counters just makes combat feel a great deal less scary than it does against a smart-AI wizard in BG2. For example, the Lich for the Edwin(a) quest took me over an hour to take down on my first try (with a fairly low level party and Blade PC), because he had so many defensive abilities, weapon immunities, spell shields, magical and other resistances that I had to debuff him in a very specific order with two properly prepared mages to even have a chance of dealing damage to him. And then I had to figure out how to actually survive the damage he dealt. There's nothing remotely like that in PoE.

Not that I necessarily want that kind of gameplay all the time, but at least it's hard.

 

[Rostere]

I can't fairly rate most of them, since I can't stand the IWD games and usually play both BG1 and BG2 in one go with a larger combination of difficulty boosting mods (and lately, rebalancing mods) than just SCS. BG2 is generally harder though (obviously PST doesn't factor into this at all).

PoE's targeting system and lack of instadeath abilities and semi-hard/chubby counters just makes combat feel a great deal less scary than it does against a smart-AI wizard in PoE. For example, the Lich for the Edwin(a) quest took me over an hour to take down on my first try (with a fairly low level party and Blade PC), because he had so many defensive abilities, weapon immunities, spell shields, magical and other resistances that I had to debuff him in a very specific order with two properly prepared mages to even have a chance of dealing damage to him. And then I had to figure out how to actually survive the damage he dealt. There's nothing remotely like that in PoE.

Not that I necessarily want that kind of gameplay all the time, but at least it's hard.

I'm not sure what to call that, it's certainly hard in some sense but the difficulty is completely removed if you have played the game before. It's kind of like a QTE. Or like memorizing labyrinths in Zork. As long as you remember the moves, you have done your best. It's fun at at first but at length it becomes like answering a riddle many times.

The difficulty also arises from choosing certain gimped classes, artificially restricting your selection of party members, and so on. I've recently played through both the IWD games, it's been a while since BG2, but I remember always having either Keldorn or a PC Inquisitor. Kensai/Mage dualclass is also a good no-brainer PC choice. There is a very, very big difference in power levels between classes. Some are almost worthless. It's not challenging if you do your best to beat the game.

It sure is fun to restrict yourself if you're playing a great game, but in that case, Arcanum's combat is also hard and challenging since you can gimp yourself by playing a herbalist with bad choice of attributes or something like that.

 

[Bubbles]

A QTE is just pressing buttons, a good mage battle revolves around knowing what is actually possible in the game and devising a plan around that knowledge. We're not talking about the first main quest boss here, just a bit of extremely challenging optional content that you can grind yourself against for hours before figuring out how you could crack it. The BG games and their expansions both had that kind of content (or at least attempted it, until the proper cheese strategies were figured out, mods were developed to combat them, etc. etc.).

Another example were the beholders during the Unseeing Eye quest, which were buffed in my game to cast level 7-9 spells and had a bunch of contingencies and charm abilities, while player immunities was capped at 50% (no hard counters!). There were multiple ways to combat these guys, and figuring them all out was fun. FUN.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Normal

Had a few sticking points early that each took 2 or 3 tpks to figure out
shadows
forest lurkers
raedric

Aside from that I beat everything on the first try. For most of the act 3 fights I don't have to pause and the only micro I need to do is reposition my rogue and throw some cheap CC with hiravias and grieving mother

 

[Agesilaus]

Hard, but it's not that hard. Or perhaps it is; there are times when I get stomped into the ground, but I adjust my strategy and ultimately overcome the encounters. I like where the difficulty is at, but I wouldn't mind a few encounters that remind me I'm a low-level party and force me to come back later.

The phantom/shadow/shade combo at the bottom of the church, and the phantom/shadow/will-o-wisp combo in the abandoned stronghold, were the toughest encounters in my opinion. I strongly hate all those monsters, and if you don't approach them with a plan you will get killed. The biggest let-down of a monster was the giant spider in the stronghold, I think I killed it by accident.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I didn't want to play on PoTD because of stat bloat so I went with hard, but so far it has not been very hard at all.

I can't imagine what a party of six min-maxed rogues/rangers armed with blunderbusses would do. They'd shoot from stealth and likely annihilate every enemy instantly without taking any damage.

Rangers, blunderblusses? Is that a synergy of some sort? Blunderblusses looked shit from the stats, is there something I'm missing here?

 

[Kattze]

Is there benefit to going hard aside from the challenge itself? Any extra xp, or unique items?

 

[mutonizer]

Rangers, blunderblusses? Is that a synergy of some sort? Blunderblusses looked shit from the stats, is there something I'm missing here?

On non PotD, enemies ACC and DEF really doesn't scale well from what I remember so the guns -ACC penalties arn't that bad.
On PotD, due to +15 DEF on enemies, I personally use crossbows for frontliners (shoot and drop) and just bows for others mainly.

Is there benefit to going hard aside from the challenge itself? Any extra xp, or unique items?

Bit more mobs, so faster bestiary xp but that's not a big deal really. Otherwise, more items too since more mobs. Not sure about unique items really.

 

[LizardWizard]

First playthrough Hard/Iron man. Been a total steamroll, a few errant knockdowns on Barb while frenzy'd, but never once in danger of full party wipe.

Have a POTD/Iron freeze Wizard playthrough started thats going to be built around that one cloak ... waiting for patch. Was knockouted immediately during the caravan brawl while Calisca solo'd everyone. She's such a bro

 

[Bubbles]

Arbalests are generally better than Crossbows. Blunderbusses are great for Ciphers and against proper trash, obviously.

 

[Nael]

I play on Path of the Path of the Damned AKA - Normal. Its just right for me.

If I actually wanted a real thought-provoking challenge I might play Normal @ Ironman and see how far I can make it. That would actually be enjoyable and fit the definition of the word "challenging" to me. Save scumming on a Hard or Harder difficulty is not. It is being really adept at hitting the F5 and F8 buttons when the arachnid horde eats your group's faces off.

 

[Ulminati]

Hard/Expert in defiance bay. PotD/Ironman just cleared Caed Nua. PotD group is cheesed custom adventurers, and they don't do any encounters I haven't scouted on hard first

 

[Nael]

Hard/Expert in defiance bay. PotD/Ironman just cleared Caed Nua. PotD group is cheesed custom adventurers, and they don't do any encounters I haven't scouted on hard first

Sounds like a bad time to me!