Raising Game Difficulty - Anyone Do It?

HaHaCharade

I've never done it but I'd be interested to hear how it changes the gameplay experience.

kamuizin

as long it's made in a different way than just making enemies do double damage or reduce % of the damage i do to enemies i'm in. The actual difficult levels are poor developed and ridiculous, feels too unreal just make me take double damage or give less damage.

Difficult should have a direct link with AI, should be a locked choice, so the difficult you choose at character generation is the difficult you gonna play that game and should have some special contents for the high difficult playthroughs.

Cheesebelly

Current difficulty settings in the BG games are useless. Keep it to Normal or Core rules, that's all you need - if you play the game well enough, you are hardly gonna get hit anyway

Shin

Always, though not as much through the difficulty slider as through AI-enhancing mods. Sword Coast Stratagems 1&2 make enemies act a lot smarter while playing relatively fair, and also bumps up the difficulty of various boss/chapter-end encounters and (especially when combined with the Spell Revisions mod) significant enemies like dragons, demons, elementals, djinni/efreeti, etc.

This is a matter of personal taste of course, but for myself, having gotten used to this kind of AI makes it very tricky to go back.

kamuizin

i only use core rules, hard and insane are just ridiculous, raise/reduce damage into a fixed % based on difficult is just too lazy.

ryuken87

I never change the slider, as I really like the idea that your party and enemies are all playing by the same rules which is absent in most other games. I don't generally enjoy higher difficulties where the only difference is that enemies do more damage.

Changing the slider in BG1 can have a big effect, as you will get hit, whereas in BG2 the spell system is advanced enough that you need not get hit very often and when you are hit the damage can be reduced.

I have however used difficulty enhancing mods in BG2 such as SCS2 and Ascension. I really like SCS2 as for the most part both you and enemies are still playing by the same set of rules (it's mainly AI changes if you don't know). It gave a fresh feel to the game as I had to rethink a lot of tactics, and spells which were staple before became less useful and vice versa. It can however be obtuse in places. Ascension is great for giving ToB a more grandiose feel with it's epic battles.

kamuizin

BG old engine changed the game experience received based on the difficult, what was something good (if not by the fact that you could pause and make the difficult isnane just before the killing blow).

The only reason in BG II to reduce difficult is to scribe scrolls, as in very easy difficult you never fail in scribe a scroll, what make sense, as normally people would just reload if they fail in add a spell to the spell book.

MatteoTurini

I like to play with Core Rules. The current way in which Difficulty is implemented doesn't appeal to me at all; I would prefer more monsters per encouter, instead of simply doing half damage or receiving double damage, that messes with the rules of the game and doesn't actually enhance the experience in any way. I wouldn't touch AI either: I would use the better AI always at every difficulty.

Just give me more enemies to frag up!

kamuizin

@MatteoTurini i would prefer different monsters in the map based on the difficult along more of them in number in some moments.

Instead of flesh gold you find a stone golem, instead of gnolls you find gnolls veterans (not that this make any change), instead of a mob of zombies or among them, you could find a zombie lord (or some shit like this) or even a greater ghoul or a mummy, instead of spiders a wyrm... and therefore on, this is just an example.

BelgarathMTH

The difficulty slider does change monster numbers and types in some boss encounters, at least it does in ToB.

The one time I finished Throne of Bhaal, I was having a lot of trouble dealing with Melissan's Elder Orbs and high-level demons in the final encounter. In frustration, I turned the difficulty slider down to easy. To my surprise, there were then no more Elder Orbs, and the demon types went down a category, and there were fewer of them.

The best way to get a difficulty increase is probably Sword Coast Strategems, though. I didn't like it myself - I uninstalled it after my party got wiped three times each by kobold shamans casting Sleep spells, against which we were defenseless, and spiders casting Web spells.

TJ_Hooker

I don't think you actually got more XP on higher difficulties in BG. You may have got reduced XP on lower difficulties though. The only Infnity Engine game I remember actually increasing XP at higher difficulties was the first Icewind Dale. While it was kinda fun to level up super fast, it wasn't really a good idea because your party ends up more powerful than they'd normally be at any given point, so it ends up partially negating the difficulty increase.

MatteoTurini

@kamuizin Yep, that would be another way to do it that I think I would enjoy more than the current one.

Gallenger

You get less xp if you play below the "core rules" setting. The monster numbers are virtually the same on Insane vs. what you would get in core. I never noticed a huge additional amount of encounters. The main punishment was that, on insane, you took double damage from EVERYTHING - furthermore - your HP rolls were random at core+ difficulty, thus, your experience often boils down to being unable to take hits... because if you do take a hit, you're going to be forced to use a potion or spell IMMEDIATELY or you'll die - also - fireballs will often wipe your entire party with 0 chance of success so you must never allow casters to do that, and always be checking for traps. I tried to play through insane - it was fun, until I got to the TOSC content, then it was basically impossible, durlags tower and the demon in Ulgoth's were straight up impossible for my party lol.

mlnevese

Difficulty should change both amount and kind of monsters you encounter, not damage done, in my opinion, as Kamuizin said above. Instead of Beholders and Gaths, you get Elder Orbs, for instance. Also locks and traps should be upgraded as well.

But whatever difficulty do it shouldn't make the game impossible. In BG1, for instance I wouldn't expect to find a monster that can only be hit by magical weapons just outside Candlekeep. You're still playing a level 1 party, after all.

So release some dire wolves at Imoen just outside Candlekeep, but keep the golems away. Also don't expect the player to be able to open a 200% difficulty lock, make it 125% and you'll need potions for most thieves in the game all the time

DJKajuru

I HATE the double damage of insane mode - it just makes you fight with missile weapons to avoid dying. Not being able to use your melee weapons sucks.

In IWD1, a higher difficulty would trigger more enemies to appear - three ogres intead of one, for example. It's a nice way of making it way more difficult, without seriously affecting the way you play the game.

moody_mage

I like the different monster options for increased difficulty. However to balance this these monsters shouldn't be worth more XP as you'll just end up levelling up faster.

AHF

I up both the slider level and use several mods to increase difficulty. I can't help but give my PCs/NPCs a huge advantage by knowing things they wouldn't know since I have played through so many times. I think it just balances the playing field a bit and keeps things interesting.

kamuizin

@decado, they could have more HP, instead of an ogre with 8hit dice, you should fight ogres with 12hit dices. They should be inteligent also, ogres are slow and they can't reach the mages in time, so 2 or more ogres should always try to attack the same target. Fast enemies should try to focus on the mages or arches.

creator1629

yeah ive never liked it when games increase difficulty by simply increasing the enemies life, damage, hit chances... etc. i prefer an intelligence boost, like better use of spells, proper positioning of enemies, pulling back injured ones to heal and bringing healthy ones up to the front... basically stuff that i would do

moody_mage

The way AD&D xp is calculated is that more HD = more XP.

They would be better placed to have a scaling AI system for the difficulty slider rather than simply just beefing up the foes physically. Most times you can easily kill a group of stupid enemies several times over. Giving them over the top HD just means it takes longer.

James

There is a nice little mod called BGSpawn which adds creatures from BG2 and calculates random encounters based on distance from civilisation and level of party among other things

mlnevese

BGSpawn is a nice mod. It loves to give me some Trolls to fry outside Firewine ruins

James

mlnevese said:

Teabalho. BGSpawn is a nice mod. It loves to give me some Trolls to fry outside Firewine ruins

Stupid howling vampiric wolf reload nightmare also at firewine ruins

mlnevese

The Trolls are probably a pet of the vampiric wolves

Cuan

SCS is the best way to go for difficulty increases along with BGSpawn. The slider in the default game is just pure lazy design. I loathe those type of artificial difficulty increases. It pushes you to use nothing but cheese tactics to survive as you have no other choice. Getting one shotted constantly by the gibberling in the first starter area is not difficult, it is fustrating, which leads to long sessions of kiting. Same goes to things like ogres berserkers in later game doing like 30-40 damage normal swings which lead to one shot deaths to most party members. This just leads to even more kiting.

Kaxon

I haven't increased the slider, but now that I hear it changes the enemy spawns I may try it. I agree with everyone that increasing damage is a bad way to change the difficulty.

AHF

Does anyone know if SCS is compatible with BGT? I already have the Weimer AI mods for BG2/TOB and Ascension installed.

Wanderon

One way to increase difficulty in BG1 is to play at extremely low reputation levels. Let the evil side of your character shine and drop that reputation down to 1 or 2 where most merchants won't deal with you and the guards show up in bigger and stronger groups literally every time you change screens.

It's my opinion that playing vanilla BG1 without using any cheats it would be almost impossible to take a party through the game in this manner in fact I'd be surprised if you could even get as far as BG City before giving up. ;-)

mlnevese

@AHF It is. Straight from the Readme:

BGT

While SCS was originally designed with a BG-only (i.e., not BGT) install in mind, it now seems to run pretty smoothly on BGT. The range of BGT mods is so huge that it is difficult to give general installation advice; in general, though, SCS should be installed as late as possible in the install order, and certainly after most or all BG-content mods, but before SCSII. However (for slightly complex reasons) the AI improvements from the Quest Pack need to be installed before SCS (to be precise: before the Durlag's Tower component of SCS).
Players trying to build a complicated BGT install involving Sword Coast Stratagems are strongly advised to seek advice on the boards at forums.spellholdstudios.net.



Notice that in a BGT installation you'll need both SCS and SCS II.

kamuizin

@Wanderon, unless they fix it do not enter Naskhel with less than 3 reputation points, there's a bug with the bounty hunters in the vanilla game, where they spawn infinitely and with no control.

It's a shit, the day i did it i couldn't even walk in Naskhel cos each bounty hunt that spawn trigger a banter, i had something like 50-60 bounty hunters in the screen, for each one that i killed 2 or 3 others appeared, and each one of them triggered a banter. Serious, they tried to talk me to death by boringness, i'm pretty sure of this !

mlnevese

That's a good tactic... if you can't kill your target, bore him to death