I think a lot comes down to scaling A.I. and their gear/skill/level with the player. I feel like they were torn for realism in the sense that in a world of 1000s of bandits and thrown together soldiers not many of fhem are going to be anything amazing; once in a while you’ll come a cross someone who is something special (for example Runt, if he had a helmet lol). Henry, though it’s fast, trains and trains and fights bandits all over the area, so he’s gotten pretty good. I think just increasing AI overall and maybe removing stuff like the green shield would be cool; or removing the strike star so you have to pay attention to your weapon/arms more.
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Problem is leveling scale - just bad rpg system design that all:
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You start with everything on 1 and ends with 20… 20x more in every stat - its exponential - Player should start with stat on 10 a maybe get to 15 (Except Speech) when is best in the world and find arnold gym in the woods…
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You gain other bonuses through perks
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Weapon and other skill Skill are way to overpowered - simple cut or stab - really cant get to much better with “skill”, only could be better targeted.
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You get much better equipment
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Overpowered alchemy potions, effects could be stuck
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Only you can use mounted combat
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Only you can heal yourself
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Bow is not broken after first cut though it…
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Shield / Defense are overpowered
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When you are geared you getting damage almost only when you are out of stamina
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There is not possibility to kill you from behind or bigger bonus for rear attack
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No enenies with spears or javelin - javelin hit could ground you easily, multiple enemies with spear could keep you at distance and damage you a lot
Those are paper rpg design essentials, i dont know what is wrong with their designers, maybe they play to much Diablo… All buzz about realism and hero stats evolves 20 times - totally realistic
Every bandit has already plate armor and good sword that is not problem.
Once I get past level 10 even if I use the weakest weapons in the game I still kill most enemies in 1-5 hits. This is without any damage perks as well. Cuman killer is forced upon us, who thought it was a good idea to make Cumans not fight half of the time and on top of that give Henry double damage against them? I love this game and have started over and over because I love the beginning of the game. But once I get to around level 10 all the problems start to unfold. I’ve decided to put the game aside till they balance it. Even though I have 260 hours played already I still want to play more. 
God I need a life.
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If i get attacked from behind, which i do, they do insane damage. For two reasons
1 im using stam to attack someone and probably used some for blocking
2 they have me completely vulnerable and almost always do a combo
How do you know you have 260 hours thats a lot of guacamole
the game is too easy right from the start.
We need to admit that this is a sandbox game which you could do whatever you like. Many of us would grind our levels before engaging deeper content.
Sadly most enemies’ hardiness is mainly calculated by what they are equipping, and their stats only do so little to that. They even have the same HP. This results to most enemies being too easy when they wear shitty armour and weapon compared to yours.
Remember the fights when you are around lvl10 with a Merchant sword? Those fights sparkling the swords feels good.
IMO Warhorse made high-end swords too OP, especially the one you could easily purchase/steal from the swordsmith in Rattay. I personally love battle axe, yet axes are rather weak in this game.
In load game section, there is indication of how many hours you spent in-game for each save.
Steam says how long the game has been played.
Steam sometimes miscalculate the time you played, mostly less than the actual time spent.
At the end of the day, even though its a console game, the premise is exactly the same as a tabletop RPG, where these problems dont exist (or at least they dont in the one I play). The issue here is upscaling. Henry doesnt just improve, he improves unrealistically.
In real life, even the best swordsman could be defeated by a complete novice, sure its not likely, but its possible.
Why not allow the player to choose fixed stats for henry? Why not allow perks and profficiency to improve him only so much (say 150% efficiency)? Why not make the overpowered master strokes only available when your weapon is in the corrosponding vector as your opponents? Why not remove the silly weapon variety and just have say, all longswords labelled ‘longsword’, with SLIGHTLY different stats, values and 3D models, and have a straightforward quality modifier (bad, poor, exceptional, superior, masterwork)? Why not have those quality modiers improve damage no more than up to 20%?
If realistic limitations are put on your characters development, you can still improve at the same rate, but those improvements are simply worth less. End result? Henry is powerful, not over powerful.
I agree that combat is very quickly becoming too easy but… I do not see a point in messing with the amount of gear you can carry or cash flow in general. Both of those you, as a player, have 100% control of already. It is your decision to pick every piece of loot you can carry, to earn as quickly as you do. So if you think it is too much, too quickly or whatever, then just limit yourself. No point for an ingame mechanic to do it for you. Also that way you will not force every other player to play as you like, while still be able to pick a playstyle that suits you. Everyone wins.
There has to be, imho, some sort of scaling in the game, if the enemies don’t get harder as Henry gets harder then he will get op, no matter what. So it’s more of a question how to handle that scaling, so that we still have a feeling of progression but don’t get overpowered so rapidly.
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The main issue is balance and how to find it when the goals differ from player to player. There need to be various difficulty settings to account for different players skills and play preferences, for ex. making combat too hard for those that are not into it would not be a welcome change for them, while others are not going to find the game worth playing without such challenge. I am not one to want to force players to play my way, particularly in a game like KCD.
Having said that, I do understand what you are saying. I am not suggesting that the scaling should make it so that it feels as if it cancels your own progress, I am actually looking to achieve the opposite.
Henry starts as someone that is not good at doing anything, everything seems out of his reach, but eventually he develops the ability to do whatever he likes. I presume this thread is about combat, so now highly skilled Henry wants to use his abilities to achieve feats worthy of him and for that he needs enemies that provide such a challenge.
He does not want to fight bandits in ragged armour armed with clubs.
You see my idea of a well-balanced scaling difficulty goes hand in hand with what you say:
“The game SHOULD get easier as you get better”
The game does get easier for Henry and that is why he can handle harder enemies than He could at first and, to the point, that is why He needs harder enemies to satisfy his appetite for glory (keep the game challenging).
But how? Well a few a few ideas.
( Examples of Difficulty settings in menu )
- Very Easy - Easy - Normal - Hard - …)
- Number of enemies
- Equipment of enemies
- Remove encounters with bums
- Skill of enemies
Perks and skill would need balancing
Weapons and armour could get balancing but (and this is an important point) it could also be left to the player to not use items that they think are overpower. The obvious way to let players define what need of extra help or challenge they need. You could even have achievements (if you are into that kind of thing) to reward that, for ex. for killing a cuman captain with a smoked sausage.
There are busy and talented modders that will undoubtedly help.
Anyway I am not saying anything new at all.
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I would prefer to set certain opponents skill levels rather than upscaling. That way we can find opponents we are not ready for and either try to flee or surrender. If you allow some decent variability between populations it would make the game interesting. Upscaling has a problem of how would you deal with poorly armed and trained bandits? What if you find some brigands with great equipment early on? Would you be able to engage them and steal from them?
Henry can only become OP because the game mechanics and perameters allow for that. If the mechanics didnt allow for that, then he couldnt. Saying ‘hes always going to be OP’ just isnt true.
Enemy upscaling is a feature only included in games with poor levelling mechanics, to save ruining the game because they want to feed you with power. If the system paces itself, the game gets easier at a slower pace, and if the mechanics were fixed, he would never get as OP as he does.
Like I said, the premise is the same as tabletop RPGs, and if the problem doesnt exist there, it certainly shouldnt here, in a game with a limit of how much time you have with a character.
I went off a boy to become a Clint Eastwood type bounty hunter from them old westerns.
SPOILER
I came back a man and started the main quests line.
Poison the food, burn the arrows 
. I did just that. But why stop there .A river a blood runs through that camp. It’s still hazey so many dead. The bandits ran like the scene from Watchmen and the giant Doctor Manhattan in Vietnam.
What have I become. Am I even one of these people anymore.
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-Bums/villagers who attack are hot garbage and they go down if you hit them once and their defense is whack.
- Bandits are basically bums with gear and they should go down from 1-3 solid connects with a good weapon to an unarmored/slightly armored area (once every so often you’ll come across a decent fight but not usually cuz bandits are just bullies with some scavenged supplies thrown together in little units to make an “army”).
-Cumans have real armor (their chain and helmets), take minimum if 3 solid connects to an unarmored/slightly armored area like their legs but since most cuman(aside from archer IMO) wear chain and helmets. Cumans should have much better fighting ability then bandits, at least as far as the average unit goes, because Cumans are an actual army vs just a group of thugs with gear. These should be the mosh difficulty, non speciality, enemy in the game yet they seem no more difficult then bandits.
-Mercenary’s on the road vs the wandering knight. Wandering knight is a joke but the lone mercenary waiting for the person he’s escorting should be a good/hard fight…what’s he doing protecting people if he can’t fight worth a shit? Mix this with tournaments/actual knights who can swing fast and riposte and you’d have a good fight every now and again. Look when Radzig swings in combat or when you first train with Bernard how fast he is. It would be nice to have a few people in game worthy of a fight.
Take away the green shield, take away the aim arrows, make attacks cost more stamina the heavier your gear light/heavy armor. Your speed adjusts but does your stam use per swing:block?
Maybe I am not expressing myself correctly.
What I mean by scaling is nothing more than fair play, as a general guideline, the enemy should have the same kill capacity as the player in terms of equipment and naturally be capable fighters. Mix it up a bit in the traditional manner, some strong bosses and some weaker minions that make up for it in numbers.
On top of that a simple option in the menu to adjust the difficulty would help fine tune to suit individual player needs.
One other thing worth mentioning is that some of the enemies I encounter show some buggy behaviour which lessens the difficulty of the duels considerably.
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Pretty much. I have posted some detailed proposals somewhere else on the thread.
I just get so bummed that the mercenary is looking for a good fight so I give it to him just to knock him out in like 2 hits…I knocked on out so fast I accidentally killed him because he gave up while I was attacking
Well I beg to differ Diego0911. Show me one open world CRPG without some sort of scaling, where player does not become god of war in mid to late game. Two ways you can achieve it: enemies you encounter in new areas (opened as story progresses) get tougher - only doable if you do not have an open world, or enemies scale in some way or another in relation to player.
I have an issue with combat as it is now, not even because it lacks challenge (thats a thing with crpgs in general, you get to know mechanics, level up properly, gather good gear and combat gets progresively easier) but because one/two shotting deprives us of the fun - combos, dodges etc. It becomes useless if all it takes is to graze an enemy. Sure balance (or rather lack of one) is an important issue, but it will only delay the inevitable. Difficulty levels could help if done properly, not sure how easy it would be for WH to implement it now. Scaling if and only if properly thought through could help achieve a situation where the player feels that he is getting stronger/better but still has to make at least bit of an effort to kill somebody. Right now Henry (after getting few levels in his weapon of choice and stats) barely needs to sneeze in the general direction of a bandit and its all over.
BTW
In a tabletop RPG you almost always have scaling. Enemies your party encounters are about their (players) level. Otherwise you will get exacly same issues. Try sending level 1 goblins after a level 10 dwarf warrior and see where it gets you.