Difficulty of Book III

[Sinathor]

Hey guys.

Since I've been planning my eschalon mod for a few days now, and replaying the game to make notes on how stuff is done in the game, I've come across the question about the difficulty of the game.

I started a new character, whose a mage and like in every book, mages are extremely overpowered and practically quite boring to play. But then again, Book III was pretty easy for me on my first go as well.

How do you guys think the difficulty is in the game? Is it just right? Too hard? Too easy? What would be the ideal difficulty? What difficulty would you choose from 1 to 10 when:

1 - Skyrim on easy
5 - Eschalon for the first time
10 - Temple of Elemental Evil on ironman

I just want to know how others feel about it, so I won't just make the mod ridiculously difficult and no one will play it

[Arkos]

I'm actually having a fairly difficult time (although it is getting a little easier, now that I'm higher level), but I am playing a swordsman with no magic (save for the level 1 Bless that comes with the Virtuous axiom).

[Vroqren]

I feel that the game is very well balanced difficulty wise.
Each playthrough I have done so far has had a very difficult start, struggling for money, food, and equipment. By the time I've reached moonrise/mirkland (about the midpoint of the game) I'm going a little smoother, and by the end it's not to challenging. it's not to easy though, which is what I like.

[Palog]

Ironman is just a different way to play a game, the ladder doesn't seem right.

With mage Book 3 seems easier, ok my character died once, exactly once ie I wouldn't have made ironman, but it died just because I was very inattentive.

[KillingMoon]

I've read quite a few reactions to the game, and what people seem to like most about Book III is exploration design and puzzles. Nobody says combat is the best part. So if you make combat more difficult people will probably not like that.
Personally I find it very dependent on how it is set up. Is the combat tactically interesting or not? In some dungeons in Book III - Emayu Witch Lair, Seawarden's Guild, Akadai Underground - I thought the combat was interesting. Dungeons have the advantage that you can play with light/dark and space restrictions.
Fighting the goblins I didn't find interesting, all you do is draw one out and then spam your main attack. Since there are so many of them you have to do this over and over again.
I thought the Borehead Beetles and the Trolls in Book II were more interesting opponents, in both cases the landscape helped to create more interesting combat situations.

BasiliskWrangler has never put more than a few dozen of the same monster in, and I believe that has been for the best.

Balanced between the different skills Eschalon has never been, and in Book III the balance is probably worst. Melee units have a difficult time, as they take a lot of damage, and Book III is a bit too short for developing great defensive skills. Just adding to the game would help melee units, as there would be more time to find or buy good armour and to develop a good Alchemy skill for imbuing your armour.
Right now in Book III your toughest opponents are the goblins, but you already have to face them when you're level 10 or 12 or so, many players feel they're not quite ready for them at that point.
The game has a bunch of skills to choose from, and at Macross point you can buy pieces of armour of 15,000 gold apiece, but in normal game-play a lot of this is inaccessable.
This is one thing that makes mages so strong; they don't need that access; they get a good attack skill for free at the start and they don't need much more to finish the game. In Book II melee units would address the balance as the game went on, but in Book III the time is too short for this.

In general I find that in Book III the time is too short to develop additional skills like Hide in Shadows, Skullduggery, Alchemy, Foraging and such. This is a main point of criticism of mine: Eschalon's character set-up screen promises a rich character development, but that hardly works in the actual game. I think the system of character development is okay, but it needs very rich and well thought out game content to do it justice. It wasn't too bad in Book II, but Book III is struggling in this respect.

Another thing that bothers me somewhat is that there's a great arsenal of weapons in the game, but it remain mainly nice pictures of weapons, the extra damage they do is so limited. The damage of good weapons could be increased, along with the strength of monsters later in the game, so that an upgrade of weapon at some point would become interesting. Right now you can just keep slogging away with that same weapon you found at level 1. It does little damage, but the damage you do is mostly based on stats and skills anyway.

If Eschalon had been more mod friendly, I think a lot of these things would have been addressed already. The toolset is coming rather late, and I'm not sure how powerful it is. It can be a very strong point for a game to have a good toolset delivered with it. It keeps players attracted to a game if they can play, manipulate, set their own rules, incorporate their own ideas, write their own stories.

Too few games come with toolsets nowadays. A game to watch out for is Divinity; Original Sin. I think they've got the right idea at Larian Studios. An isometric RPG, turn-based and with an editor included. When was the last time that happened? Big publishers don't seem to believe in that type of game. I wonder why; enough game fans want it!

I guess I'm starting to stray off topic now, so I better stop here. I'm certainly curious to see what kind of maps fans will come up with, especially Finnish fans of course.

[Sinathor]

Ironman is just a different way to play a game, the ladder doesn't seem right.

The ladder wasn't really 100% serious ^^'

In general I find that in Book III the time is too short to develop additional skills like Hide in Shadows, Skullduggery, Alchemy, Foraging and such. This is a main point of criticism of mine: Eschalon's character set-up screen promises a rich character development, but that hardly works in the actual game. I think the system of character development is okay, but it needs very rich and well thought out game content to do it justice. It wasn't too bad in Book II, but Book III is struggling in this respect.

I wholeheartedly agree. My biggest disappointment with Book 3 was because it was just too short. There's a lot of skills that aren't useful right off the bat (like well, alchemy for example) and they need time to become more effective, but by that time you're already in Astral Range.

I am planning on doing my best to address this issue, depending on how powerful the tools are. I have already a lot of lore and storylines planned so if the tools are easy to use, I should be able to concentrate on a lengthy adventure. Of course, I don't know how this will go at the moment. Have to see the tools first.

[IJBall]

I feel that the game is very well balanced difficulty wise.
Each playthrough I have done so far has had a very difficult start, struggling for money, food, and equipment. By the time I've reached moonrise/mirkland (about the midpoint of the game) I'm going a little smoother, and by the end it's not to challenging. it's not to easy though, which is what I like.

I basically agree with this - I found the opening stretch of Book III to be a lot more challenging than the opening stretches of Books I and II. And, mostly, I think that's a good thing.

[Sinathor]

What was more challenging in Book 3 start than in the earlier ones (or well, book 2), to my experience at least, was that there was very little food. I loved this, and I actually had to take foraging with my ranger to stock up on food. That was awesome!

[Palog]

For me there was more than enough food in shops. And food prices was quite lower than in Book 2 and ha well I put some points in mercantile rather soon. But yeah it's a point rather pleasant, but as food price is always the same and the hero purse is becoming more and more fat, soon or later, it becomes just a mechanism.

Overall it's rare enough in modern RPG to gives a charm even later in a play. But objectively I think Book 1 base was much more solid, just not well tuned at all. Ie food and drink for healing and restore mana, this should have replaced entirely the rest, with eventually rest in some inn and beds.

[hakea]

I've read quite a few reactions to the game, and what people seem to like most about Book III is exploration design and puzzles. Nobody says combat is the best part. So if you make combat more difficult people will probably not like that.
Personally I find it very dependent on how it is set up. Is the combat tactically interesting or not? In some dungeons in Book III - Emayu Witch Lair, Seawarden's Guild, Akadai Underground - I thought the combat was interesting. Dungeons have the advantage that you can play with light/dark and space restrictions.
Fighting the goblins I didn't find interesting, all you do is draw one out and then spam your main attack. Since there are so many of them you have to do this over and over again.
I thought the Borehead Beetles and the Trolls in Book II were more interesting opponents, in both cases the landscape helped to create more interesting combat situations.

SNIPPED - more very good points

Excellent post from KM.

I think that "difficulty" is greatly over-rated as a game attribute. I'm far more attracted by a game that is interesting, intriguing, well written, etc. It's also a big plus if a game can offer some genuinely good opportunities for combat that brings a variety of tactics and skill to bear, rather than just bash bash bash or zap zap zap. I would far rather have something that is "overpowered" and gives you the flexibility to try different manoeuvres than something that's "underpowered" and forces you play your one and only best shot over and over just to scrape through.

The problem here (for me) was - as KM suggested - I didn't have a good option to develop much in the way of 'minor' skills unless I wanted to be effectively crippled and have to struggle through every combat situation.

The other aspect that I dislike a great deal in any game is reliance on random loot, especially when you have to spend a significant percentage of game time opening or smashing chests, crates or barrels just to collect a heap of junk to sell to get something half useful. It just seems lame and overdone now. Fine for the sort of game where the designers expect to mainly attract kids with short attention spans who want a steady stream of petty rewards every few seconds of game time, and a conveyor belt of fancy looking enemies and pretty graphic effects to distract from the basic simplicity and repetitiveness of the design.... but do we all have to keep looking into some darned barrel every few metres on the off chance of finding another rusty dagger to sell? It seems so dreary and mood breaking.


My ideal game or mod would have:


1. Strong dialogue and plot.

2. Intriguing characters that fell outside the usual cliched RPG stereotypes.

3. Some sense that the communities might actually be able to function in some way, and not just be a series of slapped together buildings and locations for the designer to sprinkle more barrels and enemies around.

4. The ability to develop skills through training and practice.

5. The chance to gain better equipment by either earning gold and buying good gear, getting it as pre-offered quest reward, looting items from fallen enemies bodies (or camps) that they might conceivably have actually used (no more spiders dropping bits of heavy armour thanks) or by finding them in vaguely believable situations. I.e. some armour in a forgotten trunk in an old attic, a dropped coin purse, an unexpectedly good item that a market trader didn't see the value of, or whatever. Anything other than more stupid bloody barrels with a few bits of gold, an apple and a cheap dagger, inexplicably left untouched by any other passer by, in the most pointless and unlikely places. Please.

6. Some fresh ideas. Some new enemies and friends. Some locations that feel different from the usual.

Too much to ask?

[Sinathor]

I think that "difficulty" is greatly over-rated as a game attribute. I'm far more attracted by a game that is interesting, intriguing, well written, etc.

I agree. Always hated it when a game has dumbed down features but it says that the game is hard because you can raise the hitpoints of the enemies. For me difficulty is so much more than combat. Like I mentioned before, as my ranger I felt the need to take foraging to be able to get enough food (I was going for the True Ranger challenge). I think that was really great.

And yeah, the difficulty, or challenge becomes irrelevant if you're absorbed to the gameworld. However, I am that much of a mechanics driven guy that very low difficulty in an RPG can take away from my interest to the world and story.

My ideal game or mod would have:


1. Strong dialogue and plot.

2. Intriguing characters that fell outside the usual cliched RPG stereotypes.

3. Some sense that the communities might actually be able to function in some way, and not just be a series of slapped together buildings and locations for the designer to sprinkle more barrels and enemies around.

4. The ability to develop skills through training and practice.

5. The chance to gain better equipment by either earning gold and buying good gear, getting it as pre-offered quest reward, looting items from fallen enemies bodies (or camps) that they might conceivably have actually used (no more spiders dropping bits of heavy armour thanks) or by finding them in vaguely believable situations. I.e. some armour in a forgotten trunk in an old attic, a dropped coin purse, an unexpectedly good item that a market trader didn't see the value of, or whatever. Anything other than more stupid bloody barrels with a few bits of gold, an apple and a cheap dagger, inexplicably left untouched by any other passer by, in the most pointless and unlikely places. Please.

6. Some fresh ideas. Some new enemies and friends. Some locations that feel different from the usual.

Too much to ask?

I think of myself as a decent dialoque writer, and like I mentioned I have a ton of lore already written so I think that the first part I can tackle. Characters, well, I will try my best but it's usually quite difficult to make good characters into games like these, where you spend most of your time exploring the wilderness alone. I mean, if you think about games like the elder scrolls, gothic, avernum... These games are great, but barely have any great characters in them. But maybe the genre is just an excuse?

As for the number 3, I love that someone else has noticed this. I can't be the only one that has noticed that the entire world of Eschalon doesn't have a single farm. Don't think there is even a single fishing hut anywhere. In book 3, there was this cauldron of stuff you could eat in that little caravan outpost (forgot the name, ugh.) but yeah, the world doesn't really come out as very functional.

Developing skills through training and practice? What do you mean exactly? That it's a legit way to develop skills by using gold at a trainer? Or slowly developing them over the course of the game?

Yeah, random chests next to a road bothers me a lot sometimes. Like, I appreciate the loot that's given to me... But... A chest next to a road?

As for the fresh ideas, I am planning on adding several guilds to the mod that you can join, but only if you meet the requirements. Meaning that a mage would actually have to be a mage to join a mage's guild. Not sure about how easy it is to implement new enemies with the tools so I can't say anything about that yet. As for locations; I have few unique ideas that hasn't been seen in Eschalons before, as well as I am planning on implementing a player home (more than just a random shack somewhere.) Not talking about any extensive customization or anything, but something that tells the player that he/she/it actually owns the property, and doesn't just claim it in their head.

So all in all, you're asking a lot, but I don't think you're asking -too- much.

[hakea]

Always hated it when a game has dumbed down features but it says that the game is hard because you can raise the hitpoints of the enemies. For me difficulty is so much more than combat. Like I mentioned before, as my ranger I felt the need to take foraging to be able to get enough food (I was going for the True Ranger challenge). I think that was really great.

Yes, the backbone of so many games is simply killing more enemies and levelling up so that you can kill yet tougher enemies. It would be nice to be able to go through a game improving your character with less fighting (or even possibly no combat), depending on how you felt either about your character or a particular group of potential enemies. I seem to recall that some games do allow a more flexible approach than others.

[Maybe I've been misjudging this game though, and you could sneak through without landing a blow? Maybe I should try a completely different approach some time?]

And yeah, the difficulty, or challenge becomes irrelevant if you're absorbed to the gameworld. However, I am that much of a mechanics driven guy that very low difficulty in an RPG can take away from my interest to the world and story.

Oh definitely. It has to be some kind of challenge. I guess the easiest challenge to implement is combat, but you could score points for all sorts of other actions too. Things that required smarts, cunning, persistence, or whatever.

Developing skills through training and practice? What do you mean exactly? That it's a legit way to develop skills by using gold at a trainer? Or slowly developing them over the course of the game?

Both. Some games improve your skills automatically depending on your in game actions. So if you use the bow a lot you simply get better at it. No need to put points in. In fact there's no real need to have the points system on show at all. You can get told that you have progressed from Newbie to Apprentice, from Graduate to Master, or whatever names the designers like to give. That can apply to individual skills or the whole character. Some people love all the lists, numbers, levels and mathematical fiddling and others don't. Sometimes I do.... and sometimes I don't...

Most of my comments are waffle about games in general and probably not applicable to this game engine though.

I have few unique ideas that hasn't been seen in Eschalons before, as well as I am planning on implementing a player home (more than just a random shack somewhere.) Not talking about any extensive customization or anything, but something that tells the player that he/she/it actually owns the property, and doesn't just claim it in their head.

I for one would like that. The only game mod I ever made was a home that I was able to furnish and layout in a way that provided a place to rest and recover, and read through some of the books of lore. Also handy to store the reserves of various useful items. But I designed and built my own house in real life too, so that sort of thing does appeal to me. The nearest I got in this game was the shed near the Rockhammer mine that had three chests in it but no furniture. It seemed designed for stashing stuff, so that's how I used it.

Good luck with your mod.

[kelticpete]

i think the game would be easy if you were not going for challenges. just me. i don't know. i did just get murdered so i may have to rethink the easy.

[Sinathor]

i think the game would be easy if you were not going for challenges. just me. i don't know. i did just get murdered so i may have to rethink the easy.

Well true, even if I say the game feels easy, it's not like I never die. Sometimes you're just unlucky, try something or you're just being plain stupid Happens to me a lot. But still the overall feeling of the game isn't too pressing. I like to try and get as many challenges at a time as possible, regarding it fits the playstyle I'm going for.

[Palog]

I don't like very high difficulty but with a mage I got the feeling too few combats had a good setup, still a good number, but many not.

Not with a mage but with an Archer I already died at least 10 times in Book 1, I had even forgot the barrel slimes ambush! That ambush was perhaps a bit too mush but I already get many ambushes when in Book 3 in the whole game I get quite less ambushes really working.

That said I noticed Book 1 had some bases not necessarily better for combats but I felt Book 3 didn't exploited very well the new possibilities. For example it seems the light can be setup in a more complex way in Book 3. And Book 3 offers few opportunities to exploit it or even set it by removing or putting a torch at a key place. But overall it's exploited only few times. That's perhaps in ambushes that Book 3 mainly fails for combats.