KC:D & It's Difficulty

Gameplay
#1

Hello, my name is Lord Vyne Ezekiel and I love RPGs but find myself frustrated quite often in RPGs with the difficulty of the game and enemy scaling(yes I seen some other posts relating to this but no set topic that I saw). I would like to hear your opinions on the difficulty setting for the game and should there be a scale bar that you can drag(Oblivion comes to mind) or just a preset difficulty that cannot be changed(Demon Souls/Dark Souls)?

I loved Dark Souls and how tough it was so I think I would be fine with a preset difficulty but on the other hand if it ends up being way to easy(like the AC games where you literally have to try to get yourself killed or you will never die) then I would be pretty upset and sad thus wanting at least a scale bar that I could put to max.

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#2

Difficulty and scaling
 All right. First of all, as much hate as the concept got with Oblivion, I very much hope that KC: D does have some form of level scaling. See, my reason for this is that it’s supposed to be an open-world RPG, and open-world RPGs don’t work all that well without some level-scaling (let’s keep in mind that scaling is not concept introduced in Oblivion, it’s been around for ages. Earliest example I can think of is Baldur’s Gate 2, but I’m sure there are even older games than that which have elements scaling).

Now, the reason why I think open-world RPGs should contain some bits of level-scaling is that it’s the way to give player the most freedom possible while keeping the game interesting and fresh. It allows introducing new characters and concepts into the world as the player levels up, which does work if it’s well-concealed to seem like it comes with the flow of time so player doesn’t feel like the world revolves around him.

Furthermore, some RPGs like Gothic keep difficulty by basically cutting player off from certain areas until you reach a certain level - I do not believe that is the correct way to approach open world design as it only serves to limit you. Now I do believe that the game should contain areas unaccessible to you on lower levels, but those should be few and far between, not the norm - I don’t want to end up in game world where a peasant can’t stroll a mile away from the town in any direction without getting horribly murdered, however I also want a world which will pose a challenge regardless of the level of my character.

However, in the end, it all comes down to how Warehouse ends up designing the game world. Perhaps they will come up with a concept we have not seen yet that would work better than any form of scaling. Still, thouse are my slightly chaotic thoughts on the matter.

#3

Preset like in Gothic!
(and as far as I know, they will do it like that)

#4

In my opinion it would be similar on the one way like Oblivion (higher level would generate higher level of possible enemies), but without it’s mistakes (that you can have an OP character before you left sewer at the start and on level 1).
And on the other way based on Mount&Blade that difficulty of some area depends on activities of local Lord, mayor ect., and of course depends on your previous action. If you pissed of local lord, it would bad idea be around without proper skill.
Other thing from Mount&Blade would be that local lords and mayors act or behave allways the same for a few days of playing, than is it more or less on your actions and behavior and "random number generator"
OR you will set all things before (like MOB difficulty, injuring, mods of saving, scale of battle) and it will calculate a percentage difficulty like in Mount&Blade

#5

I don’t care about difficulty, as this would just make combat more unrealistic.
im merely hoping that the combat isn’t made for adults with a 6 year olds reaction time, I REALLY hope that the reaction time to counter an attack or to see an opening in an opponents defenses is so quick ( depending on the opponents skill) { but still not less then 1 second} that it actually immerses you into combat and that failure is actually a possibility, where as most rpgs like assassins creed counter, you get a reaction time of 2 seconds and I never miss, its boring

#6

I think they mentioned in the combat video update that the slow-motion/reaction time could scale with the difference of aptitude of opponents. Or maybe I just extrapolated a bit :slight_smile:

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#7

i thought it was just skill based with a character lvl. the higher your lvl was opposed to the enamy the essayer it would be to block and hit. i think that should be good enough though.

#8

I would also like Gothic-like difficulty. But it is difficult for me to imagine it in realistic open-world game. What opinions do we have? Much more skilled later game opponents? Better armor? But why enemies in west part of the map have better equipement than enemies in the east?

#9

I hope there is a fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to “button through” dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don’t enjoy listening to dialogue and they don’t want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you’re a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can’t have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting

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#10

Personally, I would like to see the difficulty just make the opponents smarter and harder to fight against. The thing I hated about The Elder Scrolls is that as you put the difficulty level up, the enemies took 100 hits to kill and killed you in one hit. I would like to see that the damage and health levels never change. It would take a couple hits to kill someone and a couple hits to die.

I would also like to talk a bit about level scaling. I would like to see no level scaling. If you are fighting against an experienced bandit, he should be VERY hard to kill if you are just starting and have no combat experience. Make it so you have to avoid fights you can’t win against veteran or well trained opponents until you are also experienced and trained.

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#11

I am in the no scaling group, there should be opponents of all skill levels throughout. As you are beginning there should be some you want to stay away from until your skill increases and, if you survive, as you grow in skill you should become hard to defeat and maybe they should stay away from you unless they have reinforcements


I understand why games like the elder scrolls use scaling, but with the game engine and AI in use here they should be able to come up with a better solution.

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#12

Warehouse. Had me chuckle.

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#13

No idea how that got there. Oh well, on the basis of the ‘Fenixp is always right’ rule, Warhorse studios will now get renamed.

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#14

I wouldn’t mind an adaptive scaling where there is no set difficulty but the game adapts to how you are coping with it, I.e. if you are almost dying in every fight the game will scale the difficulty of the opponents down a notch or if you are finding it too easy to kill opponents then the game will scale it back up again.

Either that or the standard Easy, Normal, Hard, One Life type scaling.

#15

Skyrim with the Requiem mod. That was a lot of fun and I am unable to play Skyrim without that combat mod activated. It makes the combat quite realistic. I also loved the combat in Dark Souls. Punishing and painful but if you know what you’re doing and keep calm you can also kill things in one or two hits.

Main point is that I want it be realistic. If I shoot someone in the face with a bow he should be dead. And the same goes for me.

As for difficulty scaling (I am interpreting this as having enemies scale to player skill/level) then I think a combination of Skyrim and Morrowinds approach would be a good idea. And by that I mean that every area scales to the player level but only to a certain threshold. For example this dungeon would scale to the players level but be capped at level 10. So if you enter at level 8 it scales to level 8 but if you enter at level 12 then it only goes to level 10.

And I also think there should be some areas which are quite difficult (like morrowind) where if you walk into a certain dungeon that is set to start at level 30 and you are only level 12 then you will die really fast. So a bit of both of these styles maybe?

But hey I’m not a dev so I’m sure they will come up with something great. That’s what we pay them for :stuck_out_tongue:

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#16

I don’t think it should be dynamic or automatic. I like a challenge, and I tend to crank the game up to hard in my first go. Even if I die over and over again.

Some players are not in it for the fighting. I know a lot of people who are more interested in the story, and play on easy to get the combat over with.

#17

I’mm in the middle of the two I don’t mind there being easy normal and hard but I do think there can be a dynamic system in place that will aid you in completing stuff. there is nothing worse in a single player game than a boss you just cant complete for love nor money!

#18

Scaling, i hate why would they even make something like this.
Okay I admit I understand I lake balance too. But what is the point of leveling up if the environment levels to scale.

This, no character should ever have an ridicules amount of health, Armor okay yes but not health. If every character has a comparable amount of health (ideally equal) than there is no need for scaling. M&B may not be a classic openworld RPG but I love the way it handles difficulty and hope KCD learns from it. I don’t think the strength of characters should vary too much, sure unlocking skills and better weapon handling is an important feature but you should never be in the position were being out numbed isn’t an issue. Where is the problem with keeping all characters roughly in the same liege, progressing in the story shouldn’t necessarily mean being confronted with higher tier opponents all the time.

Gothic doesn’t use scaling that’s true and I do prefer that system to extensive scaling as in Bethesda games because the progress seems more real and consistent. Also in G3 you have a huge open world can go into any direction and it’s still more or less balanced. But the way some people just have so much more health than other is just wrong and would completely contradict KCDs realism policy.

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#19

Level scaling does not only have two states of ‘Oblivion’ or ‘Gothic’. There’s a massive range of degrees in between, and it’s pretty difficult to find an RPG which would not contain one form of level scaling or another. Baldur’s Gate 2 had scaled bits. Planescape Torment had scaled bits. Morrowind was scaled as well while we’re at it. Scaling is good - it’s just important to implement it in such a way that player still feels progress and motivation to move on.

#20

I despise level scaling. I agree with those who feel that it defeats the purpose of levelling up.
And if this game is going to be realistic, it would only make sense that enemies don’t level up with you.

I actually asked this question in Kickstarter comments, and the response seemed to imply that there will be no scaling, or at least not 100%.

As for having an open world, I think it’s still possible without level scaling. Risen did this extremely well, for example. With some intelligent design choices, it’s easily achievable.

As for difficulty settings, I like it when games offer three or four options:

  1. Easy: I just want to enjoy the story, don’t care about combat.
  2. Medium: I want a challenge, but not an extreme one.
  3. Hard: a.k.a like Dark Souls

But I also don’t mind it when there’s just one preset difficulty that can’t be changed. I think that way, the devs can optimize the experience better, but they can’t make it so difficult as to alienate some players who don’t give a damn about combat.

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